A Moscow court has extended the pre-trial detention of Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the US newspaper The Wall Street Journal, by a further three months.
The US citizen, who is being pursued by the Russian authorities for alleged espionage, will remain behind bars until June 30, the Moscow City Court announced on Telegram on Tuesday.
Photos and a video showed the journalist, who was arrested a year ago. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently spoke publicly about his willingness to exchange Gershkovich for Russians imprisoned in the West.
The hearings of the journalist in Moscow are being held in camera because the contents of the criminal proceedings are classified as secret.
The Wall Street Journal's Russia correspondent was arrested at the end of March 2023 while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg. The public prosecutor's office accuses him of collecting state secrets about the activities of a Russian defence company "on the instructions of the Americans."
Gershkovich and his employer deny the espionage allegations. The US government insists that Gershkovich is being wrongly detained.
In December, the White House announced that Moscow had rejected an offer from Washington to release the journalist and another US citizen in custody, Paul Whelan. Details of the offer were not disclosed.
Putin raised the possibility of an exchange in an interview at the beginning of February. "It makes no sense to keep him in prison in Russia," the Russian president said, adding that the US should think about how it could contribute to a solution.
Putin's subsequent statements could be interpreted as meaning that a Russian man who was sentenced in December 2021 for carrying out a contract killing in Germany should be released. He was convicted of murdering an exiled Chechen in Berlin's Tiergarten in 2019 on the orders of Russian state authorities.