For the 16 people released from Russian captivity on Thursday in a landmark prisoner swap, the exchange brought a moment of momentous relief. But many others were left behind.
Hundreds of prisoners in Russia — including Americans and prominent Russian political activists, journalists and artists — are still waiting, hoping that another diplomatic agreement or turn of events might secure their release.
One of them is Marc Fogel, an American history teacher who worked for almost a decade at the Anglo-American school in Moscow. In 2021, when trying to enter Russia, Mr. Fogel was arrested and accused of smuggling drugs after a small amount of medical marijuana was discovered in his luggage. His relatives have said it was to treat severe pain.
In June 2022, Mr. Fogel, a native of Western Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for drug smuggling. In Russia, lesser sentences have often been given to convicted murderers.
On Thursday, upon hearing the news of the prisoner swap, Mr. Fogel’s spouse, Jane, and the couple’s two sons, Ethan and Sam, objected to Russian nationals being released before some Americans. Of the 16 prisoners released by Russia, three were American, six were from other Western countries and seven were Russian.
In an emailed statement, Ms. Fogel and her sons said that it was “inconceivable” to them that “Russian dissidents would be prioritized over U.S. citizens in a prisoner exchange.”
“Marc has been unjustly detained for far too long and must be prioritized in any swap negotiations with Russia, regardless of his level of notoriety or celebrity,” the statement said.
Mr. Fogel, 63, was tried by the same court as Brittney Griner, an American W.N.B.A. star who was exchanged in December 2022 for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms dealer. Ms. Griner was accused of a similar crime as Mr. Fogel and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
Ms. Fogel’s family has been campaigning for his release, pointing out that his case was similar to Ms. Griner’s and arguing that the U.S. government has not paid enough attention to his situation. They said that Mr. Fogel had been suffering from “severe health issues” and that “this may be our last opportunity to bring him home and save him from potentially dying in a Russian prison.”
Apart from Mr. Fogel, many other Westerners are still being held in Russian custody.
Ksenia Karelina, 32, a Russian American citizen, was detained in February and accused of state treason for donating about $52 to a Ukrainian charity in the United States. In June, a court in Yekaterinburg, about 850 miles east of Moscow, began hearing her case.
That same month, Russian investigators detained Laurent Vinatier, a French national, on suspicion of collecting intelligence about Russian military activities.
In July, Michael Travis Leake, an American rock musician, was sentenced to 13 years after prosecutors accused him of organizing a drug-trafficking ring.
Scores of Russian prisoners have also been sent to penal colonies across the country on what rights activists describe as politically motivated charges.
More than 300 people are considered to be political prisoners in Russia, according to Memorial, a prominent Russian human rights group. At least 400 have been prosecuted for their religious beliefs, the group said. At least 3,000 people are implicated in politically motivated criminal cases, according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights and legal aid group that tracks them.
In June, a Russian court sentenced Yevgenia Berkovich, 39, and Svetlana Petriychuk, 44, two accomplished Russian theater artists, to six years in prison for “justifying terrorism” in a play that they wrote and directed about ISIS. That same month, Russian law enforcement officers arrested Artyom Krieger, a journalist for Sota Vision, a Russian news outlet. He was accused of working for an anti-corruption foundation that had been run by Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in prison in February. The organization had been outlawed as extremist in Russia.
In June 2023, a Russian court sentenced Igor L. Baryshnikov, 65, a Russian engineer and activist, to seven and a half years in a penal colony for spreading what the Russian state considered false information about the Russian Army by criticizing the invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, Russia sentenced Ivan Safronov, 34, a prominent journalist, to 22 years in prison on treason charges and Aleksei Gorinov, 63, a deputy at a municipal council in Moscow, to seven years in a penal colony for denouncing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Hundreds of people are in cells and prisons for their convictions,” Kirill Goncharov, a Russian politician, said in a post on Telegram, a messaging app. “They are not as popular with the media, so our main task now is to shed light on their cases and names, help their relatives and seek, if possible, their release.”
The post Russia Released 16 Prisoners. Hundreds of Others Were Left Behind. appeared first on New York Times.
