WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and the United States have carried out a dramatic prisoner swap, exchanging a Navy veteran jailed by Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in the United States, the two countries announced Wednesday.
The surprise deal involved reed trevoran American imprisoned for almost three years, it would have been a remarkable diplomatic maneuver even in peacetime, but it was even more extraordinary because it was done as Russia’s war with Ukraine it has brought relations with the United States to their lowest point in decades.
But while the prisoner swap marked a rare point of consensus between two adversary nations, it seemed unlikely to herald a breakthrough between Washington and Moscow, with a senior Biden administration official warning that negotiations focused on a “set discrete prisoner problems” and did not represent a change in the condemnation of the US government. Russian violence against Ukraine.
“Where we can have discussions on issues of mutual interest, we will try to talk with the Russians and have a constructive conversation without in any way changing our approach to the terrible violence in Ukraine,” the official told reporters after the prisoners’ release.
President Joe Biden, who met in Washington with Reed’s parents last month, heralded Reed’s release, noting without elaborating that “the negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.” The Russian Foreign Ministry described the exchange as the “result of a long negotiation process.”
Despite Reed’s release, other Americans remain imprisoned in Russia, including the WNBA star. Brittney Griner and corporate security executive from Michigan paul whelan.
Reed, a 30-year-old former Marine from Texas, was arrested in the summer of 2019 after Russian authorities said he assaulted an officer while police were driving him to a police station after a night of heavy drinking. . He was later sentenced to nine years in prison, although his family maintained his innocence and the US government described him as unjustly detained and expressed concern about his deteriorating health.
The United States, meanwhile, returned Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States after he was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and extradited to the United States. The Justice Department has described him as “a seasoned international drug trafficker” who conspired to distribute thousands of kilograms of cocaine around the world.
A lawyer for Yaroshenko, who last year requested a reduced prison sentence due to Yaroshenko’s vulnerability to COVID-19, did not immediately return an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Russia had sought Yaroshenko’s return for years while at the same time rejecting pleas from high-level US officials to release Reed, who was approaching his 1,000th day in custody and whose health had recently worsened, according to his family.
A senior US official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, described Reed’s case as one of “top priority” for the Biden administration, including because of his health. , which his family said included symptoms of tuberculosis.
“It was a difficult decision, but we thought it was worth it,” the official said.
The two prisoners were exchanged in a European country. Although officials did not say where the transfer took place, in the hours before it happened, commercial flight trackers identified a plane belonging to Russia’s federal security service flying to Ankara, Turkey. The US Bureau of Prisons also updated its website overnight to reflect that Yaroshenko was no longer in custody.
Reed was on his way back to the US, traveling with Roger Cartsens, the US government’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely back in the United States,” Reed’s family said in a statement.
The prisoner swap marks the highest-profile release during the Biden administration of an American considered wrongfully detained abroad and comes even as families of detainees who have met with administration officials over the past year have described them as indifferent to the idea of an exchange.
The US government generally does not accept such exchanges for fear that it may encourage foreign governments to take more Americans prisoner as a way of extracting concessions and avoiding a possible false equivalence between an American wrongfully detained, which US officials they think it was Reed, and a duly convicted criminal.
In this case, however, the US official said the deal made sense in part because Yaroshenko had already served a large part of his prison sentence, which has now been commuted.
The Reed family thanked Biden “for making the decision to bring Trevor home,” as well as other administration officials and Bill Richardson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, who the family said traveled to Moscow hours earlier. . the ukrainian war started hoping to secure Reed’s release.
The Reed family had also been working with a consultant, Jonathan Franks, who has been involved in other recent high-profile pitches, including the case of miguel whitea Navy veteran released from iran in 2020.
Reed’s release did not have an immediate impact on the cases of other Americans detained by Russia. They include Griner, who was arrested in February after Russian authorities said a search of her bag revealed a cannabis derivative, and Whelan, who is being held on espionage-related charges that her family says are false.
US officials have described Whelan as wrongfully detained, with Biden saying Wednesday that “we will not stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.”
Reed’s parents, Joey and Paula, demonstrated outside the White House last month in hopes of meeting with the president.
“We think that meeting with the president is what made it happen,” Joey Reed said in an interview with CNN. “Which is what we had said all along: If we could talk to the president, he is that kind of person.”
When he is reunited with his son, he said: “I want to hug him and not let him go.”
Reference-news.yahoo.com