Russia frees ailing ex-US Marine Robert Gilman from detention
Baku, August 12, AZERTAC
Russia freed on Tuesday a former American Marine jailed there since 2022, U.S. President Donald Trump said, as the man returned to the United States to be greeted with hamburgers and milkshakes, according to Reuters.
Russia agreed to release Robert Gilman, 32, for humanitarian reasons after discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Trump said on social media.
A State Department plane carrying Gilman arrived at Dulles airport on the outskirts of Washington late on Tuesday.
"He can now fully return to his family and receive the medical care he needs," said U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who helped negotiate the release and greeted him at Dulles with hamburgers and milkshakes.
The White House and the State Department had urged Moscow to release Gilman so he could receive medical treatment in the United States. U.S. officials said Putin approved a pardon for him.
On social media, Witkoff thanked Putin for the pardon "and for his personal engagement throughout this process."
U.S. officials said Russia sought no concessions in return for the release. Trump has maintained relations with Putin despite tensions over the war in Ukraine.
Gilman had been held in a prison in Voronezh, about 340 miles (550 km) south of Moscow. The exact circumstances of his health are unclear.
But Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing Gilman's family, told Reuters last week that Gilman was moved in late June from the prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in a catatonic-like state assessed as a "dissociative stupor."
A U.S. official who spoke to Gilman said he was walking and talking.
"All things considered, he seems to be in good shape," the official said.
Trump's post featured a photo of a gaunt-looking man on a plane surrounded by a group of smiling people carrying an American flag. The president said he had spoken to Gilman, who requested a cheeseburger upon landing.
"I will take care of that!" Trump said.
Gilman was to have been evaluated on the flight by four doctors, said the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
After his Dulles stop, Gilman was on his way to a rehabilitation center in San Antonio, Texas, for medical treatment, one official said.
Gilman, who served in the U.S. Marines from August 2019 until August 2020, was traveling by train when he was arrested in January 2022 in Voronezh, Lebson said.
He was detained for allegedly kicking a police officer while drunk, according to Russian state media.
However, his father, Vladimir Gilman, who emigrated to Massachusetts from Russia, wrote in an October 2024 Boston Globe op-ed that the charges were false.
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