Imprisoned American Marc Fogel freed by Russia, White House says
Marc Fogel, an American teacher arrested in Moscow in 2021 for alleged drug smuggling and later sentenced to 14 years in prison, was released from a Russian prison Tuesday following a negotiation headed by Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, the White House announced.
A statement released Tuesday afternoon by Trump national security adviser Michael Waltz said Fogel, traveling with Witkoff, “is leaving Russian airspace.”
“By tonight,” the statement said, Fogel “will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump’s leadership.” Adam Boehler, Trump’s newly named special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, posted a picture of Fogel apparently aboard a private aircraft.
Later, the White House said Trump would meet with Fogel in the Diplomatic Reception Room at 10 p.m.
Waltz’s statement said that Witkoff “and the President’s advisers negotiated an exchange,” although it did not say who or what was traded for Fogel’s release.
Waltz tied the release to Trump’s efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine, saying that the successful negotiation “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.”
Fogel’s family said in a statement that “we are grateful, relieved, and overwhelmed that after more than three years of detention our father, husband and son … is finally coming home.” They thanked “the unwavering leadership of President Trump.”
Martin De Luca, the lawyer representing Fogel, called his release “a testament to the power of strong leadership” and criticized the Biden administration for “consistent refusals to designate Marc as wrongfully detained” until late last year, while Trump arranged his freedom “in just a few weeks, wasting no time in taking decisive action.”
While it remains unclear what administration action secured Fogel’s release, Trump has said he plans to speak soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine and other matters.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said he would resolve the three-year Ukraine-Russia war “in 24 hours” after taking office. Last weekend, he told reporters he was “making progress” with both Kyiv and Moscow toward a negotiated settlement. In a Friday interview with the New York Post, he said he had spoken to Putin about ending the conflict but would not say when or how many times they’ve talked. Putin “wants to see people stop dying,” he said.
In an interview with Britain’s ITV News published last weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he “would be ready for any format for talks” if there was “an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees.”
Putin, while saying he is open to talks, has not conceded any of his goal of making a significant amount of Ukrainian territory part of Russia.
Keith Kellogg, the retired three-star general Trump appointed as his special envoy to the Ukraine war, was widely expected to announce a negotiating plan at this week’s Munich Security Conference in Germany. But he said he plans to use the gathering, attended by European leaders, to instead consult with the Europeans before revealing any specific proposals.
Kellogg has delayed a trip to Kyiv, and his talks with Moscow leading to Fogel’s release were kept secret until Tuesday’s announcement.
Vice President JD Vance, who is also attending the Munich conference, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is scheduled to meet with Zelensky there on Friday.
Fogel, who worked at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, was arrested at the airport there when customs officers found marijuana and cannabis oil in his suitcase as he returned from a trip to the United States. His family said it had been recommended by his U.S. doctor to treat back problems.
He pleaded guilty to charges of transporting and possessing illegal drugs, although his lawyers and family charged that his 14-year sentence was disproportionate to the sentence given Russians charged with the same crime.
His case bore resemblance to that of Brittney Griner’s, the U.S. women’s professional basketball star who was arrested in February 2022 on smuggling charges by Russian customs officials who found cartridges containing a small amount of medically prescribed hash oil in her luggage. In December of that year, after Griner was sentenced to nine years, the Biden administration negotiated her release in exchange for U.S.-imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Griner’s release, and that of other prisoners such as Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan, led Fogel’s family and supporters to charge that Biden’s failure to include Fogel in swaps amounted to “betrayal.”
The Biden administration never acknowledged reasons for not including Fogel in previous exchanges, although some reports have highlighted the amount of marijuana he was carrying, which his family said was less than 20 grams. Griner was arrested with less than a gram of hash oil.
The State Department undertakes what officials at the time said was a long process of declaring someone imprisoned abroad as “unjustly detained.” In Fogel’s case, he was not so designated until October of last year, a classification that was not announced until the end of Biden’s term in late December.
Trump has long said that the release of Americans unjustly detained abroad is one of his highest priorities, and he has criticized Biden and previous presidents for exchanges he has said he would never agree to. In March 2019, during Trump’s first term in office, his special envoy for hostage affairs, Robert O’Brien, said Trump’s “unparalleled success in bringing Americans home without paying concessions, without prisoner exchanges” had come “through force of will and the good will that he’s generated around the world.”
But several subsequent releases under Trump involving Americans held in Iran, Afghanistan and Yemen included prisoner exchanges.