Russia frees ailing ex-US Marine Robert Gilman from detention

Russia freed on Tuesday a former American Marine jailed there since 2022, United States President Donald Trump said, as the man returned to the United States to be greeted with hamburgers and milkshakes.

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 US 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 US. US 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.”

US 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 US official who spoke to Gilman said he was walking and talking. “All things considered, he seems to be in good shape,” the official said.

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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 US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

After his Dulles stop, Gilman was on his way to a rehabilitation centre in San Antonio, Texas, for medical treatment, one official said.

Arrested over police officer incident

Gilman, who served in the US 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. His son, he said, had fallen ill when the incident occurred and accidentally kicked the officer.

The officer was uninjured, dropped the charges, and did not present evidence at Gilman’s trial, he wrote.

Robert Gilman was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in jail. He was one of at least 10 Americans known to be imprisoned in Russia.

The US officials said a Russian senior official, Yuri Ushakov, informed Trump aides last week that Putin had agreed to sign a decree pardoning Gilman for humanitarian purposes, given Putin’s friendship with the president.

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The release resulted from intense negotiations over the weekend by US and Russian officials. The US did not exchange any Russian prisoners in order to gain  Gilman’s release and no concessions were made, the officials said. “It’s a goodwill gesture,” one official said.

Trump thanked Witkoff, senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US special envoy for hostage response Adam Boehler for making the release possible.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Gilman is among 100 US citizens whose freedom Trump has helped secure during his second term in office. Rubio said the US appreciated the “positive step,” but called for the release of other Americans who he said were unjustly detained in Russia, including Stephen Hubbard.

Hubbard, a retired schoolteacher, was sentenced in October 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony after a court found him guilty of serving in a Ukrainian territorial defense unit against Russian forces, tasked with manning a checkpoint.

Hubbard denied the charge.