US school teacher published by Russia

The American school teacher and the former diplomat Marc Fogel ended up in the United States after being released from prison in Russia.

The 63-year-old landed on Tuesday evening in the common base of Andrews just outside of Washington DC. He will later meet President Donald Trump in the White House.

Mr. Fogel’s release was negotiated with Russia as part of an exchange, said US security advisor Mike Waltz on Tuesday before without further details.

Russia did not comment on its release. Mr. Fogel’s sister told the BBC in its freedom of the BBC.

“I plan to celebrate through the next 24 hours,” said Anne Fogel. “We are so happy.”

She said her brother, who held in Russia in 2021, was laid by a criminal colony in Rybinsk last Wednesday. She said the family knew that his release was a possibility, but also that “these negotiations are very weak”.

After the white house had landed on the US floor on X, he published on X: “Promise made, promise!” Together with a picture of Mr. Fogel.

In a statement by CBS News, the US news partner of the BBC, his wife Jane and the sons Ethan and Sam, said: “This was the darkest and most painful time of our lives, but today we start healing.”

Mr. Fogel was arrested at an airport in 2021 for illegal possession of cannabis.

He was accused of wearing a small amount of medical marijuana that had been prescribed in the USA and sentenced to 14 years of prison.

Mr. Fogel’s legal team thanked Trump for his role in the trial and criticized what she described as “bureaucratic inactivity” of the former bids administration.

“President Trump secured Marc’s release in just a few weeks and did not waste time to take decisive measures to bring Marc home,” said his lawyers to CBS.

Mr. Fogel was not wrongly arrested by the US government until December 2024, although he started in 2022.

His family had tried to arrange the former President Joe Biden to secure his release, and remained disappointed when he was excluded from the prisoner in 2022 and 2024.

The US basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in Russia for cannabis ownership in 2022, was Freed in an exchange against the Russian gun dealer Viktor because of 10 months later.

The Biden administration then secured the release of three other Americans last year as part of The greatest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The liberated Americans were Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich, the US Marine veteran Paul Whhelan and the Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.

Anne Fogel the BBC told At the time of the feeling “betrayal” when she learned that her brother was not included in the prisoner exchange – which biden had praised as “feature of diplomacy”.

Mr. Fogel from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was a teacher at the Anglo -American school of Moscow. Previously, he had worked as a diplomat in the US message.

During his time in prison, he reported to English colleagues.

It is unclear whether the United States has released someone in return for Mr. Fogel.

Mr. Fogel flew back to the Middle East to the USA with Steve Witkoff, the special envoy of President Donald Trump.

Witkoff’s trip to Russia is the first of a high -ranking US official in the country in several years. Most contacts between the nations were switched off after the invasion of Russia’s Ukraine.

The national security advisor Waltz said that the release of Mr. Fogel was a “show of the good faith of the Russians and a sign that we go in the right direction to end brutal and terrible war in Ukraine”. He did not provide any further details.

President Trump announced earlier on Tuesday that Finance Minister Scott Bessent would later travel to Ukraine this week.

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

But in an interview with Fox News on Monday, he said: “You (Ukraine) can complete a deal, you may not make a deal. You may be Russian one day, or maybe one day you may not be Russian.”

Anne Fogel asked about the BBC’s link between the publication and the conflict in Ukraine: “These are the huge machinations of world politics.

“It will be interesting to look back and see how it all fits and … how the story plays.”