Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been arrested on espionage charges, which he denies.

A Moscow court has extended the pretrial detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested on espionage charges, until the end of March, meaning the journalist will spend at least a year behind bars in Russia.

United States Consul Generall Stuart Wilson attended the Lefortovo District Court hearing on Friday, which was held behind closed doors as authorities say details of the criminal case against the journalist are secret.

In a video shared by state news agency Ria Novosti, Gershkovich was seen listening to the verdict and standing in a court cage wearing a hoodie and light blue jeans. He was pictured a short time later walking toward a prison van as he left the courtroom.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in March during a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 2,000 kilometers east of Moscow.

The Russian Federal Security Service claimed that the reporter “collected information on behalf of the American side that constitutes a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

Gershkovich and the US newspaper he works for deny the allegations, and the US government has said he was wrongfully imprisoned. Russian authorities have provided no evidence to support the espionage allegations because he was imprisoned expanded several times.

‘It is not easy’

During his annual news conference in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was in talks with Washington about sending Gershkovich and the detained American home Paul Whelan and the Kremlin hopes to “find a solution,” even if “it is not easy.”

Whelan, a former U.S. Marine and security official, was arrested in Russia in 2018 and convicted of espionage in 2020.

Putin was responding to a question about an offer from US President Joe Biden’s administration to secure the release of the two men. The US State Department referred to the offer in December without providing details, saying Russia had rejected it.

“We have contacts with our American partners about this. There is a dialogue on this topic. “It’s not easy, I won’t go into details now, but in general it seems to me that we speak a language that each of us understands,” Putin said.

“I hope we can find a solution,” he continued. “But I repeat, the American side must listen to us and make a decision that will also satisfy the Russian side.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it will not consider swapping Gershkovich until after a verdict in his trial. In Russia, espionage trials can last more than a year.

Gershkovich is the first U.S. reporter to be charged with espionage in Russia since Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB in 1986. Gershkovich is being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, which is notorious for its harsh conditions.