Russian prosecutors announced a major step on Thursday in their case against Evan Gershkovich, the imprisoned American journalist, saying that they had finalized the espionage indictment against him and that he would be tried in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, where he was arrested more than a year ago.
Mr. Gershkovich, 32, should be transferred from the notorious high-security Lefortovo prison in Moscow to stand trial in the city, which is about 880 miles east of the Russian capital, said Yevgeny Smirnov, a Russian lawyer who has worked on similar cases.
When such espionage cases go to trial in Russia, they usually take about four months but can take up to a year, and they are typically closed to the news media, Mr. Smirnov said in a phone interview. If convicted, Mr. Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison.
Mr. Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government have denied the charge against him. The U.S. government has designated Mr. Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which effectively means that it considers him a political prisoner.
The Russian authorities have suggested in the past that they could be open to a prisoner swap for Mr. Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, but only after a verdict is handed down in his case.
At a meeting with representatives of international news agencies last week, President Vladimir V. Putin said Russian and American intelligence agencies were “in touch on this issue.”