US and Russia swap prisoners but ‘zero change’ on Ukraine
The US and Russia have swapped two prisoners amid their most tense relations in decades over the war in Ukraine.
Former US Marine Trevor Reed was released in exchange for a Russian pilot called Konstantin Yaroshenko.
US President Joe Biden welcomed Mr Reed’s release yesterday but his administration stressed that the swap does not signal any change in Washington’s views on Moscow.
“This is a discrete issue on which we were able to make arrangements with the Russians,” a senior US official said. “It represents no change, zero, to our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine.”
Moscow said it had exchanged Mr Reed for Yaroshenko, who had been serving a prison sentence in the US on drug smuggling charges.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said later on CNN that diplomatic talks with Russia on Ukraine were “at a dead end” despite the releases.
Officials said Mr Reed was on his way home after being in a Russian prison since 2019.
“We welcome home Trevor Reed and celebrate his return to the family that missed him dearly,” Mr Biden said. “The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.”
Mr Biden met Mr Reed’s parents at the White House on March 30. The Reeds said their son would tell his own story as soon as he was ready.
“We’d respectfully ask for some privacy while we address the myriad of health issues brought on by the squalid conditions he was subjected to in his Russian gulag,” the family said.
Mr Price said Mr Reed’s condition required “urgent treatment”.
Russian news agencies reported on April 4 that he had ended a hunger strike and was being treated in his prison’s medical centre.
The prison service said he had gone on hunger strike on
March 28 to protest against disciplinary action taken against him.
His parents said at the time he had been exposed to an inmate with tuberculosis in December, but their son had not been tested for the illness despite a rapid deterioration in his health.
The prison service said at the time he had repeatedly tested negative for tuberculosis and had not come into contact with anyone infected.
Mr Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said they were working to free another US citizen held in Russia, Paul Whelan, also a former Marine.
Mr Biden said that his administration “won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends”.
Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on espionage charges that his family and the US claim are false.
Mr Blinken welcomed Mr Reed’s release from “wrongful detention”.
Images released by Russian state TV showed Mr Reed – dressed all in black and carrying a large bag – being escorted on to a plane at Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport by men in military uniform.
A second senior US official said Mr Reed was “clearly in good spirits, but you’ll understand he’s had a difficult couple of years”.
Mr Reed, a student and former soldier from Texas, was in July 2020 sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court after allegedly attacking police officers while intoxicated.
Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in 2010 for drug trafficking. He was then transferred to the US, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in September 2011.
“I want to emphasise here that this was a commutation of his sentence,” the first US official said of the pilot’s case.
“The action in no way undermines or diminishes the import of the finding of his guilt.”
In a separate case, women’s US basketball star Brittney Griner was detained at a Moscow airport in February for reportedly carrying several cannabis oil vape cartridges.
Women’s National Basketball Association Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said
We won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends
JOE BIDEN US President
this month that the league is “doing everything we can” to bring the Phoenix Mercury star home.
Griner is scheduled to make a court appearance on May 19 and could face up to 10 years in a Russian prison if she is convicted.
Whelan is currently being held in a labour camp southeast of Moscow.
A resolution sponsored by Haley Stevens, a US congresswoman from Michigan, and co-sponsored by 41 other members of Congress, calls on Russia to present credible evidence of wrongdoing against him or release him immediately.