The United States is celebrating the release of Trevor Reed, a Marine veteran from Texas who was held in Russia for 985 days, and who returned to the United States Wednesday following a prisoner swap, according to the White House, after years of his family pleading for the case.
Reed was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison colony in 2020, found guilty on charges of assaulting two police officers in Moscow after a drunken party while he was visiting his girlfriend. Reed’s family and US officials say the charges and those brought against Paul Whelan, another former Marine still being held in Russia, were made to arrest them as a bargaining chip.
The following is a chronology of key events in the Reed case:
August 15, 2019 – Russian police detain Reed
While visiting his Russian girlfriend, Reed goes out at a party and gets drunk. He said he was on his way home from a party in the early hours of August 16 when their car pulled over and Reed said he got out because he was sick and started running.
Police were called to the scene and took Reed to the police station where Russian Federation agents later arrived and detained him.
March 11, 2020 – Reed’s trial begins
Reed appeared in a Russian court on the first day of his trial. He faces charges of endangering the lives of the officers and is accused of assaulting them and grabbing the steering wheel of a police car and causing it to swerve – although later video evidence showed that never happened. US officials later called the trial “the theater of the absurd.”
July 30, 2020 – Russia sentences Reed to nine years
A Russian court sentenced Reed to a maximum of nine years in prison in a Russian colony prison after his trial faced a lengthy delay from March to July.
July 16, 2021 – Reed is transferred to a remote prison colony
After several appeals, Reed was transferred from prison in Moscow to a remote prison colony. Despite hopes for a prisoner swap at President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva one month earlier, Reed was sent about 350 miles from the Russian capital to a camp in Mordovia.
November 4, 2021 – Reed on hunger strike
Isolated in a remote prison colony, Reed went on a hunger strike, according to his girlfriend, protesting his detention and the “many and flagrant violations” of his rights by Russian authorities. He had been in solitary confinement for nearly three months at this point because he refused to do forced labor in the prison camp, his family said at the time.
February 24, 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine
Russia launched an invasion of neighboring Ukraine, prompting more calls from the Reed family for Biden to bring their son home.
March 8, 2022 – Reed’s parents protest the Biden event
After protesting outside Biden’s event at the Veterans Affairs facility in Fort Worth, Texas, Joey and Paula Reed said Biden called them after his speech.
March 30, 2022 – Reed’s parents meet Biden
Reed’s parents met with Biden for 40 minutes after demonstrating outside the White House amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Around the same time, Trevor Reed again went on a hunger strike in prison to protest.
April 1, 2022 – Reed is transferred to the hospital
Reed was transferred to a prison hospital after being reported with tuberculosis in December, his family said.
April 12, 2022 – Reed appears in court of appeals via video link
Reed was seen publicly for the first time in months in court via a video link from the prison colony for an appeal hearing. The court passed his case to a lower court, but Reed was able to talk about his health, saying it had been two weeks since he coughed up blood, and calling the charges against him fabricated.
April 27, 2022 – USA, Russia announce prisoner swap
Statements from the White House and the Russian Foreign Ministry reported Reed’s release as part of an international prisoner swap. Reed was swapped for Russia’s Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot who served a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US after he was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and extradited to the US.
According to Joey Reed, his son was first flown from Russia to Turkey where he was swapped on the tarmac with Yaroshenko.
“He said it was like a movie,” said Joey Reed. “They walked past each other like in a spy exchange.”
