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STORY: A Russian court has ruled that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was on trial for espionage, will face 16 years behind bars.

Russia accused him of collecting secret information for the U.S. CIA.

He denies any wrongdoing - as does the paper he works for.

Here’s what you need to know.

:: Who is Evan Gershkovich?

Gershkovich had reported on Russia for more than five years before his arrest.

He's a fluent Russian-speaker; an American born to Soviet emigres and raised in New Jersey.

Gershkovich moved to the Russian capital in late 2017 to join the English-language Moscow Times.

He also worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse and joined the Wall Street Journal just before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

:: The arrest

:: Moscow, Russia

:: March 30, 2023

On March 29, 2023, on a trip to the industrial city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, Gershkovich was detained by the Federal Security Service – or FSB – in a steakhouse.

The FSB says he was trying to gather secrets on a Russian defense enterprise — which is one of the world’s biggest battle tank producers — about 880 miles east of Moscow.

The White House condemned the arrest almost immediately in March of 2023.

:: March 30, 2023

WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY, KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: "These espionage charges are ridiculous.” // “We condemn the detention of Mr. Gershkovich in the strongest, in the strongest terms."

U.S. President Joe Biden has called his detention, quote “totally illegal.”

:: The trial

Gershkovich is the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the Cold War.

The FSB said it caught him, quote, “red-handed” trying to obtain military secrets.

Russian prosecutors say Gershkovich carried out the illegal actions using, quote, “painstaking conspiratorial methods."

They did not release any documentary evidence to back up the charge.

The Wall Street Journal says Gershkovich was on a reporting assignment and has said the accusations are based on lies.

He has always maintained the denial that he's a spy and has consistently demanded his release.

The trial, which Gershkovich's employer branded a, quote, "sham", took place behind closed doors.

:: Swap fund?

U.S. diplomats say that Gershkovich was not a spy and that he was detained by the FSB to build up a store of arrested U.S. citizens who could later be swapped for Russians detained in the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that a prisoner swap for Gershkovich could be possible - but said such negotiations should be held away from the media.