A Russian court has sentenced an American man to 12.5 years in prison on drug charges, his lawyer told Reuters news agency on Thursday. Robert Woodland, believed to be a US-Russian dual citizen who lived outside Moscow and worked as a teacher, was arrested in January and has been in custody since then.
Russian state media reported that Woodland was found guilty of attempting to traffic large quantities of illegal drugs and participating in an organized criminal group. Reuters quoted Woodland’s lawyer, Stanislav Kshevitsky, as saying he had partially pleaded guilty to the charges.
In a 2020 interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Woodland said he decided to return to his native country after living with a foster family in the U.S. for most of his life. He said he decided to track down his biological mother at age 26. After eventually meeting her on a Russian TV show, he decided to move to Russia.
Asked about Woodland, U.S. State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said during a regular briefing on February 5 that “due to privacy concerns, there is a limit to what I can share, but the [Russian] The Ministry of the Interior informed us of the arrest of this American citizen on January 9.”
Patel also recalled the US government’s standing travel advisory, which warns Americans not to travel to Russia.
Russia is holding several other US citizens in its prisons, including a Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovichwho on June 26, 15 months after his arrest in the Ural Mountains city, stood trial behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage, which he, his employer and the US government strongly deny.
The State Department has declared him “unlawfully detained,” committing the U.S. government to seeking his release.
Paul Whelanan American corporate security executive, was arrested in Moscow in 2018 for espionage and is serving a 16-year prison sentence. The State Department has also deemed him to be wrongfully detained by Russia.
The Wall Street Journal; Sofia Sandurskaya/AP
On June 19, a court in the eastern city of Vladivostok sentenced a U.S. soldier arrested earlier this year to three years and nine months in prison on charges of robbery and making threats to kill, Russian news reports said. Staff Sgt. Gordon Black34, flew to Vladivostok, a Pacific port city, to see his girlfriend. He was arrested after she accused him of robbing her, U.S. and Russian authorities said.
Last year, Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual US-Russian nationality reporter for the US government-funded Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, arrested for alleged violation of the law requiring so-called “foreign agents” to register with the Russian government.
Another woman with dual nationality, Ksenia Karelina from Los Angeles, is on trial, also in Yekaterinburgon charges of treason for allegedly donating a relatively small sum of money to an American charity that supplied weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian military.
The U.S. government has repeatedly accused Russia of wrongfully detaining Americans to use them as bargaining chips for Russian citizens held by the U.S., a practice the government calls “hostage diplomacy.”
