Moscow exchanges ex-US Marine for Russian pilot in dramatic prisoner swap

Moscow has released an American ex-Marine for a Russian pilot in a dramatic Russia-US prisoner swap, as bilateral relations between the Kremlin and the White House are worryingly strained over the war in Ukraine.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the swap occurred on Wednesday after lengthy negotiations between Moscow and Washington.

“As a result of the long negotiations process, US citizen Trevor Rowdy Reed, previously convicted in the Russian Federation, was exchanged on April 27, 2022 for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, sentenced to 20 years in prison by an American court in 2010,” the statement said, as carried by TASS news agency.

Ex-Marine Corps Reed, 30, was arrested on August 16, 2019 in Moscow for drunk and disorderly behavior in a public place. Russian authorities alleged that he had resisted detention and assaulted two police officers while in a police car.

In July 2020, a court in Moscow found Reed guilty of endangering the “life and health” of law enforcement personnel, and sentenced him to nine years in prison. He insisted innocence throughout the trial and went on a hunger strike twice, claiming that he could not remember the events of that day as he was drunk at the time.  

Yaroshenko, 53, was arrested in Liberia back in 2010 and extradited to the US. A year later, a federal court in New York sentenced him to 20 years behind bars after convicting him of smuggling cocaine in his planes to destinations in South America, Africa and Europe. He was also found guilty of conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the US.

For years, Russia had worked to secure Yaroshenko’s release, including unsuccessfully through former US President Donald Trump to pardon the pilot in 2017.

President Joe Biden also issued a statement on the release of the jailed American national.

“The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly. His safe return is a testament to the priority my Administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad,” Biden said.

According to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency, Reed was brought to Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, where he flew to the US, while Yaroshenko is flying back to Moscow via Turkey.

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The surprise swap came as Russia is heavily sanctioned by the US and its European allies over an ongoing military operation that Moscow launched in Ukraine on February 24. The waves of unprecedented sanctions have severely damaged the already strained US-Russia relations.

“This is a discrete issue on which we were able to make an arrangement with the Russians. It represents no change -- zero -- to our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine,” an unnamed senior US administration official told AFP.

“These discussions with the Russians that led to this exchange were strictly limited to these topics -- not a broader conversation or even the start of one,” the official further said on customary condition of anonymity.

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