American detainee Marc Fogel released from Russian custody

American Marc Fogel is on his way back to the US in a deal with Russia that the Trump administration hailed as possible progress on talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Marc Fogel is on his way home to the US after three years in Russian detention. Picture: Reuters.

The White House has secured the release of Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher arrested in Russia in 2021 on marijuana charges, in a deal brokered by President Trump‘s special envoy.

The Trump administration hailed Fogel’s release as a harbinger of improving relations with Russia and possible progress on talks to end the war in Ukraine. The private plane of the envoy, Steve Witkoff, had been spotted by online flight trackers in Moscow earlier Tuesday. The Kremlin had denied knowledge of his presence there.

“By tonight, Marc Fogel will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump’s leadership,” said a statement issued by the White House under the name of Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz. “President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the President’s advisers negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine.”

Fogel’s release highlights the unusual style of negotiating with Russia by Trump, who apparently shunned formal diplomatic channels and instead relied on his personal envoy, Witkoff, in the hand-off.

Witkoff, a real estate mogul and close friend of Trump, has also served as the president’s Middle East envoy, a post held by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, during his first term.

Fogel was one of roughly two dozen Americans and dual U.S.-Russian citizens held in Russian jails and labour camps amid a chill in relations with Moscow. He was officially designated by the Biden administration as wrongfully detained late last year.

Fogel was arrested in 2021 at a Moscow airport after Russian officials found less than an ounce of medical marijuana in his luggage that he said had been prescribed for back pain. He was convicted of drug-trafficking charges in 2022 and sentenced to 14 years.

He had flown with his wife to Moscow, where they taught at the Anglo-American School of Moscow.

Fogel’s family became increasingly frustrated during the Biden administration, as talks over his release on “humanitarian grounds” led to nothing.

Fogel was left out of a mass prisoner swap last year that freed jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and a former U.S. Marine, Paul Whelan. That swap followed complicated behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the U.S., Russia and Germany, in which Berlin agreed to Moscow’s key demand — the release of a convicted Russian assassin, Vadim Krasikov.

With Russia showing scant interest in any other exchanges, hopes were dim for a deal to release Fogel, who is 63 years old and whose health had been declining rapidly in Russian custody, his family said.

Fogel’s sisters said their 95-year-old mother, Malphine Fogel, feared she would die before seeing her son again, and wanted to travel to Russia if necessary to stop that from happening. His mother met with Trump at his rally in Butler, Pa., in mid-July to discuss her son’s case, and was on stage when bullets were fired at him, killing a spectator in the audience.

Fogel’s family issued a statement saying, “We are beyond grateful, relieved and overwhelmed that after more than three years of detention, our father, husband and son, Marc Fogel, is finally coming home.”

“Thanks to the unwavering leadership of President Trump, Marc will soon be back on American soil, free where he belongs,” the statement said.

Witkoff’s role in securing the exchange signals how his brief has expanded beyond the Middle East as a negotiator for Trump, whose promise to quickly end the war in Ukraine has run into headwinds. Trump has hinted that he has been speaking with Vladimir Putin, but he has also appeared at times frustrated with the Russian president, and has threatened tougher U.S. economic sanctions to prod him toward a peace deal in Ukraine.

Trump has appointed another political ally, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, as a special envoy to help negotiate an end to the war, but Kellogg hasn’t announced any plans to travel to Moscow. Witkoff’s visit to Moscow appears to have been the first visit by a high-level U.S. official since ex-Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns visited before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The White House statement Tuesday didn’t indicate what the U.S. offered Russia in return for Fogel’s release. The Kremlin didn’t respond to a request for comment. The state-controlled news service, Tass, carried news of the exchange by citing the White House statement.

In the prisoner swap last year, the U.S. released several prominent Russian citizens, including hackers Roman Seleznev and Vladislav Klyushin.

One Russian who wasn’t released then, and who has campaigned openly for his inclusion in any prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia, is Alexander Vinnik. Vinnik, co-founder of a popular bitcoin exchange, was arrested in Greece in 2017 under a U.S. warrant and extradited to the U.S. in 2022 at the age of 42.

On Tuesday, the U.S. federal court where Vinnik’s case was brought announced a status conference on the matter for later in the day.

U.S. officials charged Vinnik in a 21-count indictment, saying that he ran a lucrative money-laundering operation through BTC-e, which he co-founded in 2011. Authorities said the exchange was popular with Russian criminals and was used to facilitate ransomware extortions and identity-theft schemes, as well as narcotics distribution.

Vinnik initially pleaded not guilty to the U.S. charges against him and said that he didn’t have decision-making authority over the exchange.

But in May 2024 he pleaded guilty to some of the charges, with a new lawyer in the U.S., Arkady Bukh, saying that his client hoped to serve less than 10 years as a result. Sentencing for Vinnik has been scheduled for this summer.

Bukh said Tuesday that he was unaware of the reason for the hastily scheduled status conference in his client’s case, or whether his client was still in U.S. custody.

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