Who Are The Americans Behind Bars In Russia?

By Mike Eckel, Fletcher alum and Senior News Correspondent

Two are journalists. At least three are current or former U.S. military personnel. Another is a schoolteacher. Another is a trained dancer who works at a spa in Los Angeles.

More than 10 U.S. citizens are currently being held in Russian jails and prisons, accused or convicted on charges ranging from drug possession and theft to treason and espionage.

Some of the charges strain credulity and are widely seen as trumped-up or transparently political or just laughable. Some of the sentences far exceed what legal experts say would be normal.

One of them, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, went on trial in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on June 26 on an espionage charge that he, the newspaper, and the U.S. government deny.

Some of the Americans are seen as hostages and may be part of ongoing, high-level, behind-the-scenes negotiations for a prisoner swap, with Russia seeking the release of its own citizens held in the West, including an intelligence agent convicted of murdering a Chechen man in Berlin in 2019.

Here’s a look at Americans known to be held in Russia.

Evan Gershkovich

The 32-year-old was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg. Accredited by Russia’s Foreign Ministry and based out of The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau, Gershkovich was accused of trying to access classified information.

Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be arrested on spy accusations in post-Soviet Russia. Earlier this month, prosecutors accused him of working on behalf of the CIA. The Journal has vehemently denied the accusation, calling the case against him a sham.

Gershkovich, who has been held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, has been officially designated as “wrongfully detained” — a categorization for specific U.S. citizens that essentially prioritizes U.S. government efforts and resources in order to free them.

Alsu Kurmasheva

A dual U.S.-Russian citizen and Prague-based editor with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, Kurmasheva was first detained in the Volga region city of Kazan in June 2023, while visiting her elderly mother.

Authorities charged her initially with not declaring her U.S. citizenship and confiscated her passports. She was detained four months later, charged with failing to register as “a “foreign agent.” Russian authorities have used the decade-old “foreign agent” law to target reporters, dissidents, civil society activists, and others who receive funding from outside the country.

In December 2023, prosecutors filed additional charge, accusing her of spreading falsehoods about the military. She could be sentenced to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The family of Kurmasheva, 47, who is being held in a crowded facility in Kazan, and RFE/RL deny the allegations. She has not been designated as wrongfully detained.

Paul Whelan

Whelan was arrested in December 2018, while visiting Moscow for a friend’s wedding, and accused of receiving a computer flash drive that contained classified information.

A former U.S. Marine who was working as a corporate security executive at the time, Whelan has said he was set up in a sting operation, and that he thought the thumb drive had contained vacation photographs from his friend.

In June 2020, a Russian court convicted him of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. His time has been spent largely in a prison in the central region of Mordovia.

Whelan’s family and the U.S. government have called his conviction a sham and a mockery of justice.

Whelan, 52, who also holds British, Canadian, and Irish citizenship, has been designated as wrongfully detained.

Marc Fogel

A teacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, a now-shuttered K-12 school established by the U.S., Canadian, and British embassies, Fogel was arrested in August 2021 as he arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, carrying a small amount — around 14 grams — of marijuana.

He said the marijuana was for medical purposes — to treat longstanding back problems — and that he had been given a prescription by a U.S. doctor.

Prosecutors alleged without evidence that he intended to sell the drugs to students. In June 2022, he was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 14 years in prison. As of the time of his sentencing, he was set to be transferred to a facility in the Yaroslavl region, northeast of Moscow.

In court proceedings, he said he had made a mistake in bringing the substance into Russia, and he expressed regret.

Last week, Fogel’s mother filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court, seeking to force the State Department to designate Fogel as wrongfully detained.

Gordon Black

A U.S. Army staff sergeant who had been on active duty in South Korea, Black, 34, was arrested in May in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, where he traveled to meet a Russian woman he was romantically involved with.

Black was accused of theft and making death threats against the woman, who had filed a complaint with prosecutors.

On June 19, a Vladivostok court found him guilty and sentenced him to four years in prison.

Following his arrest, RFE/RL identified a TikTok account that belonged to the woman who appeared to be his girlfriend.

It wasn’t immediately clear where he was being held.

Ksenia Karelina

Karelina, 33, was detained by the Federal Security Service, Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, in January in Yekaterinburg, where she had traveled to meet relatives.

A resident of Los Angeles and U.S. citizen since 2013, Karelina was initially charged with hooliganism, reportedly for cursing at police officers.

Security agents, however, searched her phone and discovered that prior to traveling to Russia, she had made a $51 donation to a U.S-based organization that provides aid and assistance to Ukraine. A dual citizen, she was then charged with treason.

She made her first court appearance in Yekaterinburg on June 20. She faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

Yury Malev

Arrested in December 2023 over social media posts in which he criticized Russian military symbolism, Malev, a dual-U.S.-Russian citizen, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison by a St. Petersburg court on June 5.

The court found Malev guilty of “rehabilitating Nazism” for his mockery of the St. George’s Ribbon, which has been embraced by the Kremlin and nationalists as a symbol of Russian military history and greatness.

A statement released by the St. Petersburg court said Malev had admitted his guilt. His lawyer said the sentence was unusually harsh for a first-time offender.

Russian news reports said Malev had lived in the United States since 1991, working most recently as a security guard at a New York City sports facility, and had traveled regularly to Russia to visit relatives.

It wasn’t immediately clear where he was being held.

Robert Gilman

A former U.S. Marine, Gilman was charged with assaulting a Russian police officer while drunk on a train in January 2022. Russian news reports said he had been in Russia to study the language.

In October 2022, a court in Voronezh, south of Moscow, sentenced him to 4 1/2 years in prison.

Gilman expressed remorse for the attack, but said that the sentence was harsh and that he was a victim of political repression.

An appeal court later reduced his prison sentence to 3 1/2 years.

It’s unclear where Gilman is being held.

Eugene Spector

Spector, who was born in Russia but has lived most of his life in the United States, was arrested in February 2020, charged with trying to bribe a top aide to then-Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.

The aide, a Russian woman named Anastasia Alekseyeva, was also convicted of receiving bribes, in the form of paid trips to Thailand and elsewhere, from Spector, who was a former top executive with a Russian pharmaceutical company.

Spector, who is also known as Yevgeny, pleaded guilty, and he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison in April 2023, but much of that was for time served.

In August 2023, just days before he was to be released, a Moscow court addedthe more serious charge of espionage against Spector. The details of the charge, however, have not been released.

Like Gershkovich, Spector is believed to have been incarcerated at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where nearly all people accused of espionage are held before trial.

Robert Woodland

A Russian-born man who was adopted by American parents as a child, Woodland was arrested by Russian police in January on charges of drug possession.

At the time of his arrest, Woodland had reportedly been working as an English teacher outside of Moscow. Court documents identified him by his Russian surname, Romanov, but it was not clear whether he had Russian citizenship. The Interfax news agency said he was a Russian citizen.

In 2019, Woodland reunited with his biological mother, a reunion that was featured on Russian state TV. He moved to Russia a year later, and was interviewed by the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which said he had originally been adopted from the Perm region.

Woodland made his last appearance in a Moscow court in April and was ordered held pending further hearings.

Michael Leake

A musician and former U.S. military paratrooper, Leake was arrested on charges of drug possession and distribution in 2023.

Leake, who was 51 at the time of his first court appearance in June 2023, was identified by Russian media as a musician with a rock band called Lovi Noch.

The Interfax news agency reported that when Leake initially came to Moscow, he worked as an English teacher and helped translate songs for Russian rock bands.

The State Department later confirmed Leake’s detention and said U.S. Embassy officials had attended his arraignment. But no further information was released, and it was not immediately clear where he was being held or the status of his court case.

(This post is republished from RFERL.)