Former Marine, Russian pilot freed in U.S.-Russia prisoner swap
“Today, we welcome home Trevor Reed and celebrate his return to the family that missed him dearly,” Biden said in a statement. “The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.”
U.S. and Russian officials said the swap was the culmination of an extended negotiation that the Biden administration said was unrelated to the countries’ standoff over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which has plunged relations to their lowest point since the Cold War.
It leaves at least two well-known Americans in Russian custody: Paul Whelan, another former Marine, who was arrested in 2018 on espionage charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison; and Brittney Griner, a professional basketball player who was detained upon arrival at a Moscow-area airport in February for allegedly carrying hashish oil.
U.S. officials, who spoke to reporters on Wednesday morning on condition of anonymity under Biden administration rules, said Reed was on his way back to the United States and was in good spirits, and that Yaroshenko was in Russian custody. They provided few details about the exchange.
“This is a discrete issue on which we were able to make an arrangement with the Russians,” a senior U.S. official said. “It represents no change, zero, to our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine.”
Reed’s family thanked Biden for actions that “may have saved Trevor’s life.”
“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely on his way back to the United States,” the family said in a statement.
Russian state television broadcast images of Reed boarding an aircraft at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. Carrying a black duffel bag, he had dark rings under his eyes and was held by armed men wearing camouflage.
The exchange signaled that Washington and Moscow retain the ability to engage in basic diplomatic business even with relations at rock bottom. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declared this week that the Biden administration hoped to weaken Russia enough that it would no longer be able to threaten its neighbors, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of a “real” danger of World War III.
Soon after the conflict erupted in Ukraine, Reed’s family and U.S. officials renewed calls for Reed’s release as his parents said his health was worsening. They said last month their son told them he was “coughing up blood multiple times a day, running a fever, and still experiencing pain in his lung.”
The push for freeing Reed, who served as part of the presidential guard during the Obama administration, received bipartisan support, as some U.S. lawmakers accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of using the Marine veteran as a political bargaining chip.
U.S. officials have repeatedly accused Russia of holding Americans like Reed as potential leverage in a swap. Reed’s detention stemmed from a drunken night in Russia that he said he did not remember. It resulted in a nine-year prison sentence in 2020 for endangering the “life and health” of Russian police officers. He denied any wrongdoing and has described his case as “clearly political.”
During a trip from North Texas to Moscow to visit his girlfriend in 2019, Reed was jailed after a night of drinking that ended with him allegedly attacking two police officers. U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan has described the evidence used to convict Reed as “ridiculous.”
The prisoner on the other end of the swap, 53-year-old former Russian pilot Yaroshenko, was serving a 20-year sentence at the Danbury, Conn., federal prison for conspiracy to bring drugs into the United States. His attorneys previously argued he had been entrapped by the Drug Enforcement Administration after he was picked up by authorities in Liberia and turned over to DEA officials. A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment onhis release.
In 2010, Yaroshenko met with two men about transporting large shipments of cocaine from South America into Liberia and on to other destinations, including the United States, according to court documents. The two were confidential sources for a long-running undercover DEA operation.
Wednesday’s exchange took place in Turkey, Yaroshenko’s wife, Viktoria, told the Russian newspaper Izvestia. She said she was informed about the plan for a swap ahead of Orthodox Easter. “They told me that he was coming today,” she said. “I want to cry. I will be going to the airport.”
His lawyer, Alexei Tarasov, told Russian outlets that arrangements for the trade were finalized last week and that Yaroshenko was now heading home. There was no confidence that it would take place until the last moment, the lawyer was quoted as saying.
U.S. officials said Reed’s health was a driving element in the decision to accelerate months-long negotiations over his case. Reed went on two hunger strikes while in prison to protest the conditions in the facilities and the way the prison administration and guards treated him.
In late March, Reed stopped accepting food to demand medical help, which his family said he was being denied. His parents said their son had been exposed to an inmate with active tuberculosis in December and was “coughing up blood.”
Despite a rapid deterioration in his health, he had not been tested for the illness nor given proper medication aside from “vitamins”, the family said. Russian prison service said Reed’s condition was “satisfactory.”
Reed also went on hunger strike for almost a week in November 2021 to protest his incarceration and violations of his rights, which the prison service also denied.
His health “contributed to really ratcheting up the conversations on this issue, getting to a point where we were able to make this arrangement, getting to a point where we were able to turn to some of the logistics of simply getting it done,” another U.S. official said.
Officials said no senior U.S. officials traveled to Russia as part of the negotiation.
They said the United States would continue to find ways to work with Russia on certain topics, including their goal of securing the release of other Americans detained in Russia.
In a statement, Whelan’s twin brother said he hoped that Biden would make a similar decision on his brother’s case.
“Paul has already spent three and a quarter years as a Russian hostage,” David Whelan wrote. “Is President Biden’s failure to bring Paul home an admission that some cases are too hard to solve?”
Timothy Bella, Shane Harris, Matt Zapotosky and Amar Nadhir contributed to this report.