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

Trevor Reed is exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko at a Cold War-style handover on the tarmac of a Turkish airport.

Trevor Reed is escorted to a plane in Moscow on Wednesday. Picture: Reuters

Russia and the US have swapped prisoners despite fierce tensions over Ukraine, with Moscow handing over a jailed former 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 on to 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 negotiations process”.

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

His father, Joey Reed, told CNN Trevor was moved to a Moscow prison this week and then flown to Turkey where the swap took place. In a statement, Reed’s family asked for privacy while Trevor addresses health issues “brought on by the squalid conditions he was subjected to in his Russian gulag”.

Even on Wednesday, his parents’ joy was mitigated by the concern they said they felt about his physical appearance. They were struck by his unsteady gait and how thin he looked as TV footage captured him walking, flanked by guards, from a van to the jet.

Konstantin Yaroshenko is reunited with his wife Victoria and daughter Ekaterina in Moscow

“He just didn’t sound like himself,” said Reed’s mother, Paula, recounting their brief phone conversation while he was on the plane.

“We just asked him how he was doing and he said, ‘I’m fine’. But he always says that, even when he isn’t. And he just didn’t sound like his normal self,” she told Associated Press.

US President Joe Biden said in a statement the swap required “difficult decisions that I do not take lightly”.

“His safe return is a testament to the priority my administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad,” he added.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also praised the exchange. “I am pleased to announce the release of US citizen Trevor Reed, who was wrongfully detained in Russia,” he said.

“We also remain committed to securing the freedom of all US nationals wrongfully detained abroad.”

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.

While imprisoned in a penal colony in Russia’s Mordovia ­Republic, 500km southeast of Moscow, Reed staged a hunger strike over what he said was a violation of his rights.

His lawyer, Sergei Nikitenkov, told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday that his client did not ask for a pardon.

“He agrees with the fact of the exchange, approves it, but at the same time Trevor does not admit his guilt,” he said.

Russian television meanwhile reported that Yaroshenko had ­already arrived back in the country, showing him in an emotional reunion with 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.

Yaroshenko’s lawyer, Alexei Tarasov, told the RIA Novosti state news agency: “I would call this an Easter miracle,” referring to Orthodox Easter.

He said the swap “had been in the works for a very long while”. The Russian’s health “leaves much to be desired”, the lawyer told state news agency TASS.

Yaroshenko’s family sent a letter to Mr Biden last June requesting a pardon for the jailed pilot.

An exchange of prisoners was on the agenda then during a summit between Mr Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

At the time, Mr Putin hinted that Reed’s case could be resolved quickly, calling him a “drunk and a troublemaker”.

Another US citizen, Paul Whelan, a former security official at a vehicle parts company, remains in a Russian prison serving 16 years on espionage charges.

Mr Biden referred to his case in a statement, saying: “We won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.”

AFP