Puig, Pec each score a goal as Galaxy beats Dynamo 2-1

CARSON, Calif. (AP) — Riqui Puig scored the go-ahead goal in the 59th minute, Gabriel Pec added a goal and an assist and the LA Galaxy beat the Houston Dynamo 2-1 Saturday night.

Puig scored to give LA a 2-1 lead in the 59th minute. Pec tapped a cross to Puig at the top of the area for the put away from 15 yards out.

LA (6-2-7) is unbeaten in five straight games.

Goalkeeper John McCarthy tried to play a clearance but Latif Blessing stole it and rolled the ball into a wide-open net to give Houston a 1-0 lead in the 18th minute.

Pec, a 23-year-old rookie, scored his fourth goal of the season to make it 1-1 just before halftime. Miki Yamane, on the right side, cut back to evade a defender and then, at the edge of the box, chipped an entry to the center of the area where Pec flicked a header inside the back post in the 44th minute.

Andrew Tarbell had four saves for the Dynamo.

McCarthy stopped three shots for the Galaxy.

Houston (5-6-3) has scored multiple goals in just three games this season, all of which were 2-1 victories. The Dynamo’s 13 goals this season are second fewest in MLS, behind the New England Revolution (nine).

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Houston Dynamo forward Latif Blessing, right, heads the ball as LA Galaxy midfielder Riqui Puig defends during the first half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Houston Dynamo forward Latif Blessing, right, tries to scores as LA Galaxy midfielder Gastón Brugman, center, defends and goalkeeper John McCarthy stands in goal during the first half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Houston Dynamo forward Latif Blessing celebrates his goal during the first half of a Major League Soccer match against the LA Galaxy on Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Los Angeles Galaxy forward Gabriel Pec, right, battles with Houston Dynamo midfielder Griffin Dorsey during the second half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

LA Galaxy defender Julián Aude, left, and Houston Dynamo defender Erik Sviatchenko, upper right try to head the ball during the first half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

LA Galaxy defender Martín Cáceres, left, kicks while under pressure from Houston Dynamo midfielder Amine Bassi during the first half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Houston Dynamo midfielder Adalberto Carrasquilla, left, heads the ball while LA Galaxy defender Julián Aude watches during the first half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Houston Dynamo defender Brad Smith, heads the ball while pressured by LA Galaxy midfielder Daniel Aguirre during the second half of an MLS soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

LA Galaxy forward Gabriel Pec, top, is tripped by Houston Dynamo defender Franco Escobar during the second half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Houston Dynamo goalkeeper Andrew Tarbell, left, tries to stop LA Galaxy midfielder Riqui Puig during the first half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Los Angeles Galaxy forward Gabriel Pec, top, kicks the ball while under pressure from Houston Dynamo midfielder Amine Bassi during the second half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder Riqui Puig, right, celebrates his goal with midfielder Gastón Brugman, center, as Houston Dynamo defender Micael walks away during the second half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Houston Dynamo goalkeeper Andrew Tarbell can't reach a ball kicked for a goal by Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder Riqui Puig during the second half of a Major League Soccer match Saturday, May 25, 2024, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

MOSCOW (AP) — The espionage trial in Russia of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will begin on June 26 and will be held behind closed doors, a statement from the court that will hear the case said Monday.

Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, has been behind bars since his March 2023 arrest and faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

The trial is to be held in the Sverdlovsky Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city, where he was arrested. Gershkovich has since been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) to the west.

The court said trial will be closed to the public, as is usual in espionage cases.

Gershkovich, 32, is accused of “gathering secret information” on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility that produces and repairs military equipment, the Prosecutor General’s office said last week in the first details of the accusations against him.

The reporter, his employer and the U.S. government have denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained.

Russia’s Federal Security Service alleged that Gershkovich was acting on U.S. orders to collect state secrets but provided no evidence to back up the accusations.

“Evan has done nothing wrong. He should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said last week. “The charges against him are false. And the Russian government knows that they’re false. He should be released immediately.”

The Biden administration has sought to negotiate Gershkovich's release, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider a prisoner swap only after a trial verdict.

Uralvagonzavod, a state tank and railroad car factory in the city of Nizhny Tagil, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Yekaterinburg, became known in 2011-12 as a bedrock of support for President Vladimir Putin.

Plant foreman Igor Kholmanskih appeared on Putin’s annual phone-in program in December 2011 and denounced mass protests occurring in Moscow at the time as a threat to “stability,” proposing that he and his colleagues travel to the Russian capital to help suppress the unrest. A week later, Putin appointed Kholmanskikh to be his envoy in the region.

Putin has said he believes a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich, hinting he would be open to swapping him for a Russian national imprisoned in Germany. That appeared to be Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence for the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.

Asked by The Associated Press about Gershkovich, Putin said the U.S. is “taking energetic steps” to secure his release. He told international news agencies at an economic forum in St. Petersburg in early June that any such releases “aren’t decided via mass media” but through a “discreet, calm and professional approach.”

“And they certainly should be decided only on the basis of reciprocity,” he added, in an allusion to a potential prisoner swap.

Gershkovich was the first U.S. journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War. Gershkovich’s arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even though the country had enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.

Alsu Kurmasheva, a reporter for U.S.-funded Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe with dual U.S.-Russian citizenship, has been jailed since October awaiting trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military.

The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich is fluent in Russian and moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who regularly visited Gershkovich in prison and attended his court hearings, has called the charges against him “fiction” and said that Russia is “using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends.”

Separately, U.S. soldier Gordon Black is on trial in Vladivostok on charges of theft and threatening murder in a dispute with a Russian woman. Black, who was stationed in South Korea but visiting the Pacific Coast city, on Monday told a court that he denied the allegation of threatening murder but “partially” admitted to theft, according to the state news agency RIA-Novosti.

The trial of a US reporter charged with espionage in Russia is to begin June 26

The trial of a US reporter charged with espionage in Russia is to begin June 26

FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the First Appeals Court of General Jurisdiction in Moscow, Russia, April 23, 2024. Gershkovich, who has been jailed for over a year in Russia on espionage charges, will stand trial in the city of Yekaterinburg, authorities said Thursday June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)