Moscow:
Russia on Wednesday convicted a former U.S. Marine who fought for Ukraine in absentia after spending more than two years in a Russian prison before being released in an exchange.
In a statement, Russia’s Investigative Committee said Trevor Reid “voluntarily joined the Ukrainian army as a mercenary on July 25, 2023.”
“The court sentenced him to 14 years and six months.”
When Reid was a college student in Texas in 2019, he traveled to Russia with his Russian girlfriend.
He was arrested for assaulting a police officer while drunk and sentenced to nine years in prison.
He was released in April 2022 after the White House negotiated a swap with Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and drug smuggler who was sentenced to 20 years in prison by an American court.
On July 26, 2023, the U.S. State Department announced that Mr. Reid was wounded in combat in Ukraine.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the suspect was fighting in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
A Russian court on Monday sentenced a 72-year-old American to nearly seven years in prison for fighting as a mercenary on the Ukrainian side.
Stephen Hubbard has been in custody for more than two years and was sentenced after a closed-door trial.
Several Western nationals, including Americans, are currently imprisoned in Russia.
Among them is Ksenia Karelina, an American-Russian national who was sentenced in August to 12 years in prison for donating about $50 to a Ukrainian organization.
The U.S. government has accused Russia of imprisoning Americans to secure the release of Russian agents held overseas in prisoner swaps.
On August 1 of this year, Russia and the West conducted the largest such exchange since the Cold War.
The move resulted in the release of U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich and several other Russian dissidents in exchange for Russian agents, including a convicted murderer in Germany.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
