Moscow trades US ex- Marine for Russian pilot in prisoner swap

Russia and the US swapped prisoners Wednesday despite fierce tensions over Ukraine, with Moscow handing over a jailed ex- Marine in exchange for a Russian pilot convicted of drug smuggling.

Trevor Reed, a 30- year- old from Texas who was jailed in Russia in 2020, was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, 53, who had been serving a 20- year US prison sentence since 2011.

In footage shown on Russian state television, Yaroshenko emerged from a US plane onto a sunlit airfield, wearing a T- shirt and accompanied by two men in dark suits.

Simultaneously, Reed emerged from a plane opposite with a guard carrying bags.

The two men walked past one other, each on their way to the other’s plane.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the exchange was carried out on Wednesday after “a lengthy negotiation process.”

State television showed footage of Reed talking to guards in Russian as he left his penal colony and being escorted onto a plane at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport by men in military uniform.

Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court in July 2020 after allegedly attacking police officers while drunk. As he was being driven to a police station, he allegedly grabbed the arm of a police officer, causing the car to swerve, and elbowed another officer in the abdomen.

Reed pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying he remembers nothing of the incident.

Russian television meanwhile reported that Yaroshenko had already arrived back in the country, showing him in an emotional reunion with his wife Victoria and their daughter Ekaterina at a Moscow airport. The pilot was arrested in Liberia in 2010 for drug trafficking, then transferred to the US, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in September 2011.