Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on February 12, 2025
5 min readLast updated: January 26, 2026
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US and Russia discuss a prisoner exchange involving nine Americans jailed in Russia, amid diplomatic tensions.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed a possible prisoner exchange involving nine people from each side during a phone call on Monday, according to Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov.
A source close to the Kremlin said the U.S. side has previously provided Moscow with a list of nine Americans jailed in Russia that Washington wants to have returned.
These are the nine people that the source said were on the list:
STEPHEN JAMES HUBBARD
Hubbard, 73, was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison in October after being convicted in a closed court in Moscow of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine. Russian state media said he pleaded guilty.
An English teacher who had previously lived in Japan and Cyprus, Hubbard had been living in the Ukrainian town of Izium and was arrested after Russian forces took control of the city in 2022. His relatives rejected claims that Hubbard served for Ukraine, pointing to his advanced age.
He was designated by the U.S. in January as "wrongfully detained", meaning Washington is committed to try to negotiate his release.
ROBERT GILMAN
Gilman received a sentence of seven years and one month last October and in April a Russian court added an extra year on to his sentence. An ex-Marine, he was found guilty by a Russian court of assaulting a prison officer and a state investigator at a penal colony in Voronezh, south of the Russian capital.
Gilman was already in prison at the time of the offence, serving a 3-1/2-year sentence for attacking a police officer while drunk, a charge he was convicted of in October 2022.
GORDON BLACK
An active duty U.S. staff sergeant based in South Korea, Black was detained in May 2024 in Russia's Far East on suspicion of stealing money from his Russian girlfriend.
A court in June found Black guilty of stealing 10,000 roubles ($104) from the woman and threatening to kill her, sentencing him to three years and nine months in prison.
In April, a Russian court cut Black's sentence to three years and two months.
DANIEL JOSEPH SCHNEIDER
Schneider was sentenced to six years in prison in September by a court in the Kaliningrad region for kidnapping his own son, after he tried to leave Russia with the 4-year-old without permission from the boy's mother.
Schneider was detained near Poland by Russia's border service while trying to cross the border in a forest swamp, the court said.
JOSEPH TATER
Tater was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for "petty hooliganism" after he was alleged to have abused staff at a Moscow hotel, which he denied. Russian news agencies later said he was also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer, which carries up to five years in prison.
On April 6 a court ordered Tater be removed from pre-trial detention and placed in hospital. State media said doctors have diagnosed him with a mental disorder.
A Russian court later ruled he was not criminally responsible for his actions and committed him for treatment in a Russian hospital.
MICHAEL TRAVIS LEAKE
A musician and former U.S. paratrooper, Leake was sentenced to 13 years in prison last July for drug smuggling.
It was not clear how Leake pleaded to the charges, filed following his arrest in June 2023.
ROBERT ROMANOV WOODLAND
A U.S. citizen adopted from Russia as a child, Woodland had moved back to Russia and was working as an English teacher when he was arrested on charges of attempting to sell drugs. He was sentenced on July 4 last year to 12-1/2 years in prison. His lawyer said Woodland had partially admitted guilt.
In April, a Russian court ordered that Woodland's jail sentence be reduced to 9-1/2 years, his lawyer told Reuters.
EUGENE SPECTOR
Currently serving a 3-1/2-year sentence for bribery, Spector, who was born in Russia and then moved to the U.S., was charged last August with espionage.
Before his arrest in 2021, he served as chairman of the board of Medpolymerprom Group, a company specialising in cancer-curing drugs, state media said. Spector had pleaded guilty to helping bribe an assistant to an ex-Russian deputy prime minister. It was not clear how he pleaded to the espionage charge.
DAVID BARNES
Barnes was sentenced by a Russian court in February 2024 to 21 years on charges of abusing his two sons in the United States. He had been involved in a custody dispute with his Russian ex-wife.
The allegations had previously been investigated in Texas, where authorities found no grounds to charge him.
Another U.S. man imprisoned in Russia was not included in the list of names provided to Reuters by the Russian source:
ANDRE KHACHATOORIAN
An Armenian American from Los Angeles, Khachatoorian was sentenced to 8-1/2 years in prison in 2023 for arms trafficking. He was arrested in 2021, while traveling from California to Armenia via Moscow, after a firearm was found in his luggage.
Khachatoorian, 38, says that his firearm was legal, and that he was tricked into applying for a Russian visa at the airport, and removed from the transit zone, where he could be arrested under Russian law.
(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya and Lucy Papachristou in London, Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Guy Faulconbridge and Alex Richardson)
The article discusses a potential prisoner exchange between the US and Russia involving nine Americans jailed in Russia.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are involved in the discussions.
The Americans are detained on various charges, including espionage, assault, and drug smuggling.
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