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The White House on Tuesday said Marc Fogel, an American teacher detained in Russia, was returning to the US with Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in a deal seen as a step to end the war in Ukraine.
US national security adviser Mike Waltz said Witkoff was leaving Russian airspace with Fogel and would be on American soil “tonight” following “a show of good faith” by Moscow.
“President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the president’s advisers negotiated an exchange that 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 in Ukraine,” Waltz said.
An aircraft connected to Witkoff had landed in Moscow earlier on Tuesday, drawing attention to the secret deal which was only announced as it left Russian airspace on Tuesday afternoon.
It was unclear what the US promised the Kremlin in exchange for Fogel’s release, and the White House did not provide further details.
Fogel was arrested on charges of bringing medical marijuana into the country in August 2021. He began serving a 14-year sentence for the charges in 2022 and Joe Biden’s administration classified him as wrongfully detained in late December.
The aircraft, which took off from Dulles airport at 5:40pm on Monday, is registered to a company linked to Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer Trump appointed to be his special envoy. The plane’s transponder reported a position near Moscow about eight hours later, at roughly 10am local time.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday evening said he was “already prepared for meetings with representatives of the United States”.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday that he would send his Treasury secretary to Ukraine to discuss American access to natural resources and ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“This War MUST and WILL END SOON — Too much Death and Destruction.”
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