A court docket in Moscow introduced on Tuesday that the Russian authorities had detained 32-year-old American citizen Robert Romanov Woodland for no less than two months on drug prices 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 might be held till no less than 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 legal document. Investigators mentioned “legal exercise is his foremost supply of earnings” 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 pointers 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 protection 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 through 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 beginning 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 offended at her. I merely at all times missed her very a lot,” the person informed 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 beneath Woodland’s identify through which he mentioned he was an English trainer dwelling 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 experiences 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 the USA and Russia over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia is holding no less than two different Americans: U.S. Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan, arrested in 2018 and serving 16 years in jail on espionage prices, and Wall Avenue Journal (WSJ) reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained in March 2023, additionally on espionage prices.
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 overseas 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 in opposition to them by Russia.
On this Aug. 23, 2019, file picture, 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 prices 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 presents” for Whelan’s freedom.
“I hope we are going to discover a resolution. However I repeat, the American aspect should hear us and decide that can fulfill the Russian aspect 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 People from Russia with prisoner swaps.
“I do know that the U.S. has give you all types of proposals — critical proposals — however it’s not what the Russians are after. So that they maintain 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 worry President Biden incentivized Putin to seize extra American hostages after making an absurdly lopsided deal to commerce notorious arms seller Viktor Bout for girls’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)
