Ten days ago, sixteen of Putin’s political prisoners were released from various prisons and penal colonies in Russia . . . traded for eight Russian criminals being held in several European countries and the United States. The world celebrated, and the sixteen people who had done nothing more than voice their opposition to Vladimir Putin’s repressive regime are now re-starting their lives. The road ahead may not be an easy one, but they are free to take whatever direction they may choose. And I have no doubt we will continue to hear from them as they carry on the fight against Putin’s tyrannical dictatorship.

But eight Americans — and hundreds of Russian dissidents — remain locked up in Russia. So we continue to remember them each week, and will do so until each and every one has been returned home.

But one in particular, Ksenia Karelina, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, was not included in the exchange because her case had not yet come up for trial. Russian regulations require that sentence be pronounced before a prisoner can be eligible for a possible “swap,” and she missed the deadline by just a week.

A resident of Los Angeles, Karelina was visiting family in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in February of this year, when she was arrested and charged with having donated $51.80 — while in the United States — to a charity that offered assistance to Ukrainian war victims. Her trial began on August 8th, at which time the prosecutor asked that she be sentenced to 15 years in prison for “treason.” A guilty verdict is a certainty; only the sentence remains in question.

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Marc Fogel, a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, was arrested in August of 2021 for possession of 0.6 ounce of legally-prescribed (in the U.S.) medical marijuana. In June of 2022 he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

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Robert Romanov Woodland, a dual US-Russian citizen, was teaching English in Russia when he was arrested in January of 2024 for allegedly attempting to sell drugs. In July, he was sentenced to 12-1/2 years in a maximum security prison.

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U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Gordon Black was stationed in South Korea when he fell into a Russian “honey trap.” He was on his way back to his home in Texas, on two weeks’ leave, when he was lured to Vladivostok by the Russian girlfriend he had met in Korea. He was arrested in May of 2024 on charges of alleged larceny and murder threat, and sentenced the following month to a prison term of three years and nine months.

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Robert Gilman, already in jail in Russia serving a 4-1/2-year sentence (later reduced to 3-1/2 years on appeal) for kicking a police officer in 2022, found himself facing added charges in 2023 of punching prison staff in the head, and later also attacking a criminal investigator and another prison guard.

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David Barnes, an American citizen and resident of Texas, was arrested in January of 2022 while visiting his children, who had been taken to Russia from Texas by his Russian wife. He was charged and sentenced in the fall of that year to 21 years in prison for child abuse (allegedly occurring while in Texas), on his wife’s accusation. I really wish I knew more of this story!

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Eugene Spector, a dual US-Russian citizen already serving a four-year sentence handed down in June of 2021 on a bribery conviction, received additional charges of suspicion of espionage in August of 2023. No other details have been found, as the evidence is labelled “classified.”

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Michael Travis Leake, a rock musician and former paratrooper, was sentenced in July of this year to 13 years in prison on drug charges — specifically, suspicion of selling mephedrone, and organizing a drug trafficking business “involving young people.”

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Are any of these prisoners actually guilty of the charges leveled against them? I don’t know. But I do know that the recent timing of a number of the arrests, and the speed with which they were brought to trial, is a clear indication of Russia’s intentional roundup of American citizens to be used as (what I call) Putin’s Pawns.

What they are, quite simply, are HOSTAGES. And they will not — MUST not — be forgotten. Let’s shorten this list to zero.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/11/24