Former US Marine Trevor Reed, sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for violence, has been exchanged with Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot imprisoned in the United States for cocaine trafficking, Russian diplomacy announced on Wednesday.
"On April 27, following a long process of negotiation, Trevor Reed (...) was exchanged for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, sentenced to 20 years in prison by an American court" in 2011, indicated Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Telegram.
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Trevor Reed, aged 30, was sentenced in July 2020 to nine years in prison for having assaulted in August 2019, while intoxicated, two police officers called to the scene of a party in Moscow.
He had denied the aggression and denounced a “political” affair against the backdrop of Russian-American tensions.
The American detained in a penal colony in Morodovia
Konstantin Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in 2010 by US secret service agents.
Accused of drug trafficking, he was taken to the United States where justice sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
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US President Joe Biden had pledged to do everything to free Trevor Reed and other Americans "wrongly detained" in Russia and the possibility of an exchange of prisoners was regularly raised, especially before the meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in Geneva in June 2021.
Detained in a penal colony in Mordovia, 500 km from Moscow, Trevor Reed had gone on a hunger strike in November 2021 to protest against his conditions of detention.