A US national who was detained in Russia while on a trip there on Tuesday was released, according to US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, according to the White House.
History professor Marc Fogel, from Pennsylvania, was detained in August 2021 at a Russian airports, for ownership of what he and his family said was biologically prescribed pot.
White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz stated that” President Trump, Steve Witkoff, and the government’s officials negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a signal that we are moving in the right direction.”
Following an unexpected explore by the minister, Witkoff and Fogel had left Russian airspace up on Tuesday, and he was scheduled to be reunited with his family later that day, according to Waltz.
After the “most agonizing time of our lives,” the family is “beyond thankful.”
Shortly after the announcement, Fogel’s family said they were “beyond glad, relieved and overwhelmed” that he was coming house.
” This has been the saddest and most terrible time of our lives, but nowadays, we begin to heal”, they said. Our family you look forward to the future with hope for the first time in decades.
No expression on trade terms however.
Waltz did not explain what the change involved. Russian prisoners held by the US or its allies have frequently been released on bilateral launch in earlier markets.
The most notable current transaction of this kind occurred in August of this year, when three well-known Belarusian dissidents and US journalist Evan Gershkovic were exchanged for eight Russian nationals, including a security official who had been imprisoned for a 2019 death in a Berlin area.
When and why was Fogel imprisoned and convicted?
In his baggage, Fogel was detained in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airports in August 2021, along with 17 grams of marijuana, which he claimed is used for medical purposes.
Fogel’s was sentenced in June 2022, following the strong decline in US-Russian ties amid Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to 14 years in prison on drug trafficking charges.
He was transferred from a prison in Moscow to a penal town where he would spend the rest of his time.
In December 2024, following protests by family and followers, the cheerful Biden administration declared him to get “wrongfully detained”.
The 63-year-old past professor born in Butler, Pennsylvania, worked in foreign universities in many countries around the world during his career. Since 2012, he has been instructing at the Anglo-American School in Moscow.
