Russia

Marc Fogel, Who Was Imprisoned in Russia for Having Medical Marijuana, Is Freed

Fogel's story closely mirrored that of Brittney Griner's. But he did not receive the same urgency from the Biden administration, even though he was arrested six months prior.

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A man is seen in front of a map of Russia | Illustration: Lex Villena; Midjourney, Jess Loiterton, Peter Fitzgerald (CC BY-SA 2.5)
(Illustration: Lex Villena; Midjourney, Jess Loiterton, Peter Fitzgerald (CC BY-SA 2.5))

An American teacher who was arrested in Russia in 2021 after he was found with 0.6 ounces of medical marijuana, and ultimately sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony, has been freed.

"Today, President Donald J. Trump and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are able to announce that Mr. Witkoff is leaving Russian airspace with Marc Fogel, an American who was detained by Russia," said National Security Advisor Mike Waltz in a statement. "President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the president's advisors negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine." The details of the exchange were not immediately clear.

Fogel's story closely mirrored that of Brittney Griner's, the WNBA basketball player who was sentenced to almost a decade in a Russian prison after law enforcement found hash oil in her luggage. She was ultimately freed in December 2022 after President Joe Biden's administration secured a prisoner exchange in return for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer. But Fogel, who is in his 60s, did not attract the same national attention, nor did he receive the same urgency from the White House, despite the close parallels between their stories and that Fogel was arrested six months before Griner.

"That hurt," he wrote in a letter to his wife, Jane, after news of the Griner prisoner swap broke. "Teachers are at least as important as bballers." Fogel was also left off of the large-scale prisoner exchange executed this past summer, which freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a bogus espionage case; Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist and vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was arrested in April 2022 and sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony for offenses related to treason; Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe who was arrested in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent; and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was taken into custody in December 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison in another sham spying case.

Fogel was classified as wrongfully detained in December of last year, a little under 3.5 years after his arrest.

"We are beyond grateful, relieved, and overwhelmed that after more than three years of detention, our father, husband, and son, Marc Fogel, is finally coming home," Fogel's family said in a statement. "Thanks to the unwavering leadership of President Trump, Marc will soon be back on American soil, free where he belongs. This has been the darkest and most painful period of our lives, but today, we begin to heal."

Still detained in Russia is American citizen Ksenia Karelina, who was arrested in January 2024 during a visit to see her grandmother and other members of her family in Yekaterinburg, Russia, where she was born. Law enforcement reportedly flagged Karelina—whom the U.S. State Department just recently classified as wrongfully detained—at the airport after noting she had a U.S. passport; the Federal Security Service searched her phone, found a $51.80 donation she made in the U.S. to a pro-Ukraine charity, and eventually arrested her for "petty hooliganism." She was ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison after that charge was later upped to treason—yet another example of the country's increasingly severe and despotic crackdown on wrongthink.