Ukraine stops publishing Russian missile-attack data as interceptor shortage bites
1 hour ago
Russia has freed ailing former US Marine Robert Gilman on humanitarian grounds without exchanging any Russian prisoners in return, US President Donald Trump said on August 11.
"After my discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Russia has agreed to release him, very much on a Humanitarian Basis. We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return - No exchange took place," Trump wrote on Truth Social. Putin approved a pardon for Gilman, a US official told Reuters.
Trump added that he had spoken to Gilman by phone and that the former Marine's only request was "a GREAT cheeseburger" on landing - "I will take care of that!" Gilman is being flown home on a medical evacuation plane to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, DC, according to CNN.
Gilman, from Lowell, Massachusetts, was arrested in Voronezh in January 2022 on charges of assaulting a police officer while drunk and was initially sentenced to four-and-a-half years; a later conviction over alleged clashes with prison staff extended his term to 10 years. His family and lawyers said in early August he had been moved from a prison hospital to a civilian psychiatric ward in a dissociative, near-catatonic state, unable to move or communicate and being fed through a tube.
The White House and State Department had pressed Moscow for his release on medical grounds; Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised the case directly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a meeting in Manila on July 23.
The release comes without the kind of large-scale prisoner exchange that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan on August 1, 2024, in the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War - Gilman, held on an assault conviction rather than the espionage charges Whelan faced, was not part of that deal. His release now, on Putin's own "goodwill" pardon rather than an exchange, marks an unusual case of Moscow handing back an American detainee without extracting a concession in return, at a moment when US-Russia relations otherwise remain strained over the Ukraine war.
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