On May 12th of this year, I introduced you to Staff Sergeant Gordon Black: a 34-year-old, divorced (or soon to be divorced) father of a six-year-old daughter; recently stationed with the U.S. Army in South Korea; and now . . . one of Vladimir Putin’s HOSTAGES.

To recap briefly, Sgt. Black had met and established a romantic relationship with a beautiful Russian woman named Aleksandra Vashchuk. She was from Vladivostok in far eastern Russia, but had been living in South Korea for several years and was working in a bar where they met. While Sgt. Black was still stationed there, she left South Korea to return home to Vladivostok.

When his tour ended and he was scheduled to return to the U.S., Black had two weeks of liberty, and decided — without clearance — to travel through China to Vladivostok to say one last goodbye to Vashchuk. Upon landing on May 2nd, he was arrested and charged with “secretly stealing property” of a person identified only as “citizen T” (but presumably Vashchuk). He was held in detention until at least July 2, 2024.

And only now has word arrived of Sgt. Black’s status. Having spent just over a month in prison in Vladivostok, he was brought to trial on Thursday, June 6th, on charges of stealing from his former girlfriend, the lovely Ms. Vashchuk. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison.

While it is still not clear what he is accused of having stolen, or when, or how, it has been reported by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that Black “has agreed to testify in the trial and will respond to the accusations against him later in the proceedings.” Local police have also indicated that Black is “cooperating with the authorities.” [Associated Press, June 6, 2024.]

After a month in a Russian prison, I’ll just bet he’s cooperating . . .

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But what is the story behind the story? A clean-cut American soldier walks into a bar in South Korea and just happens to attract the attention of a lovely young Russian woman, who also just happens — some time later — to decide to return home to Russia shortly before the soldier is scheduled to transfer back to the U.S. Black’s mother and estranged wife believe that he was then “lured” to Vladivostok by Vashchuk, specifically to become another of Putin’s growing collection of American and other Western hostages.

It may sound far-fetched to anyone unfamiliar with Russia’s long history of “honey trap” schemes; but, in fact, it has been going on for decades. One need only look back on the infamous case of Marine Security Guard Clayton Lonetree, who in 1985 was seduced by a Russian woman working as a translator at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where Lonetree was stationed. In that far more serious case, Lonetree was actually convinced to provide secret material to the woman’s real bosses, the KGB. He was caught by the American authorities, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Sgt. Black’s case may sound far less significant than Lonetree’s, and in terms of damage done to American intelligence, it is. But it is indicative of the lengths to which the Russian government can and does still go in using our own people against us. Human lives mean nothing to them . . . unless they’re the lives of their own agents living and working around the world. And even then, their only real value to their masters is in the secrets they possess.

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So what will become of Gordon Black? That remains to be seen. Odds are that, within the next few days, he will be convicted of theft, given far too harsh a sentence, and locked away in one of the hellholes in Russia’s endless archipelago of penal colonies.

And thus will begin the all-too-familiar process of trying to get him back home. I offer Sgt. Black a sad “welcome” to my growing list of Putin’s HOSTAGES . . . though I fervently wish I had never heard of him, or any of the others on that list.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/9/24

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So please — once again — let us not forget the HOSTAGES, still wasting away in various Russian prisons and penal colonies for the simple act of disagreeing with Vladimir Putin’s excessively onerous edicts. It is for them that this regular Sunday posting is written.

To those known . . .

Vladimir Kara-Murza – HOSTAGE
Evan Gershkovich – HOSTAGE
Paul Whelan – HOSTAGE
Ilya Yashin – HOSTAGE
Robert Woodland Romanov – HOSTAGE
Boris Akunin – HOSTAGE
Marc Hilliard Fogel – HOSTAGE
Asya Kazantseva – HOSTAGE
Ilya Barabanov – HOSTAGE
Alsu Kurmasheva – HOSTAGE
Aleksandr Skobov – HOSTAGE
Antonina Favorskaya – HOSTAGE
Oleg Orlov – HOSTAGE
Boris Kagarlitsky – HOSTAGE
Oleg Navalny – HOSTAGE
Ksenia Karelina – HOSTAGE
Ksenia Fadeyeva – HOSTAGE
Lilia Chanysheva – HOSTAGE
Vadim Ostanin – HOSTGE
Sergei Udaltsov – HOSTAGE
Konstantin Gabov – HOSTAGE
Danuta Perednya – HOSTAGE
Olesya Krivtsova – HOSTAGE
Staff Sgt. Gordon Black – HOSTAGE

. . . and those hundreds of others whose names remain unknown to me . . . you are not forgotten, nor have you been abandoned. The fight continues on your behalf.

Brendochka
6/9/24