Russia releases US Marine vet as part of prisoner exchange

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and the United States have carried out a dramatic prisoner exchange, trading a Marine veteran jailed by Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America, both countries announced Wednesday.

The surprise deal involving Trevor Reed, an American imprisoned for nearly three years, would have been a notable diplomatic manoeuvre even in times of peace, but it was all the more extraordinary because it was done as Russia's war with Ukraine has driven relations with the US to their lowest point in decades.

But while the prisoner exchange marked a rare point of consensus between two adversarial nations, it seemed unlikely to herald any larger breakthrough between Washington and Moscow, with a senior Biden administration official cautioning that the negotiations centred on a “discrete set of prisoner issues” and did not represent a change to the US government's condemnation of Russia's violence against Ukraine.

“Where we can have discussions on issues of mutual interest we will try to talk to the Russians and have a constructive conversation without any way changing our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine,” the official told reporters after the prisoner's release.

President Joe Biden, who met in Washington with Reed's parents last month, trumpeted Reed's release and noted without elaboration 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 jailed in Russia, including WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive 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 being driven by police to a police station following a night of heavy drinking.

He was later sentenced to nine years in prison, though his family maintained his innocence and the US government described him as unjustly detained and expressed concern about his declining health.

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