A court docket in Moscow introduced on Tuesday that the Russian authorities had detained 32-year-old American citizen Robert Romanov Woodland for at the least two months on drug fees that would carry a sentence of 20 years in jail.
The Ostankinsky District Courtroom of Moscow mentioned Woodland was taken into custody on January 5 and shall be held till at the least March 5, pending trial for the “unlawful acquisition, storage, transportation, manufacture, and processing of narcotic medicine, psychotropic substances, or their analogues.”
Courtroom paperwork described Woodland as a twin Russian-American citizen with no authorized employment and no felony file. Investigators mentioned “felony exercise is his fundamental supply of revenue” and justified his prolonged pretrial detention by describing him as a flight danger.
Russia’s Interfax information service mentioned Woodland was arrested whereas trying to buy 4.5 grams of an unnamed drug and was suspected of eager to resell it. The police mentioned he possessed an artificial narcotic referred to as mephedrone when he was arrested.
If Woodland is convicted, Russian sentencing tips for his alleged crimes name for a jail sentence of eight to twenty years.
The U.S. State Division acknowledged the report of Woodland’s arrest and mentioned it has “no higher precedence than the security and safety of U.S. residents abroad,” however made no additional remark.
Russian media speculated Woodland is similar man who gave a 2020 interview to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda by which he mentioned he was born in Russia’s Ural Mountains, left in an orphanage, and adopted by an American couple on the age of two.
The Robert Woodland who gave that interview mentioned he traveled to Russia when he grew up, met his Russian start mom on a Moscow TV present, and determined to settle within the city of Dolgoprudny close to Moscow. As of 2020, he mentioned he was working as an English trainer at a college in Dolgoprudny.
“Mama was crying and begging for forgiveness. However I forgave her earlier than this assembly. I’ve by no means been indignant at her. I merely all the time missed her very a lot,” the person instructed Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020.
“I used to be drawn to Russia with an incredible power. And right here I’m. I’ve determined to remain in my motherland perpetually,” he mentioned.
Reuters found a Fb account below Woodland’s identify by which he mentioned he was an English trainer residing exterior Moscow and appeared to point that it was the identical man. CBS Information famous the Fb account in query, and an Instagram account additionally attributed to Woodland, have been inactive for the previous 12 months.
Reuters quoted stories that Woodland was carrying each Russian and American passports on the time of his arrest.
Woodland’s arrest got here at a time of heightened tensions between america and Russia over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia is holding at the least two different Americans: U.S. Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan, arrested in 2018 and serving 16 years in jail on espionage fees, and Wall Road Journal (WSJ) reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained in March 2023, additionally on espionage fees.
One other journalist and twin U.S.-Russian citizen, Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe (RFE), was detained in October throughout a visit to go to her household. Kurmasheva was accused of “failing to register as a international agent” when she entered Russia, a cost dismissed by her husband Pavel Butorin as “absurd.”
Each Whelan and Gershkovich, together with the U.S. authorities and Gershkovich’s employers on the WSJ, strenuously deny the allegations made towards them by Russia.
On this Aug. 23, 2019, file photograph, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine who was arrested for alleged spying in Moscow on Dec. 28, 2018, stands in a cage as he waits for a listening to in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia. The Moscow Metropolis Courtroom on Monday June 15, 2020, convicted Paul Whelan on fees of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in a most safety jail colony. Whelan has insisted on his innocence, saying he was arrange. (Alexander Zemlianichenko. File/AP)
President Joe Biden met with Whelan’s sister Elizabeth on Wednesday, following Russia’s rejection of a “new and vital” State Division proposal to safe Whelan’s launch in December. The State Division mentioned Russia has rejected “a number of affords” for Whelan’s freedom.
“I hope we’ll discover a answer. However I repeat, the American facet should hear us and decide that can fulfill the Russian facet as properly,” Russian dictator Vladimir Putin mentioned after rejecting the supply, primarily admitting Whelan is a political hostage.
Whelan himself has been speaking to reporters from the labor camp the place he’s imprisoned, saying the Biden administration “left me behind” after releasing different Individuals from Russia with prisoner swaps.
“I do know that the U.S. has provide you with all kinds of proposals — critical proposals — however it’s not what the Russians are after. So that they preserve going backwards and forwards. The one downside is, it’s my life that’s draining away whereas they do that,” he mentioned in a December 20 telephone interview with the BBC.
Critics of the Biden administration concern President Biden incentivized Putin to seize extra American hostages after making an absurdly lopsided deal to commerce notorious arms supplier Viktor Bout for ladies’s basketball participant Brittney Griner in December 2022.
Russian Viktor Bout, who was launched from a U.S. jail in December 2022.(Boris Alekseev/Anadolu Company by way of Getty)