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Russia on Tuesday released Marc Fogel, a US teacher who had been imprisoned in the country for more than three years on drug charges. The White House confirmed Fogel had left Russia as part of a deal negotiated by the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
In a statement, the White House said that the deal “serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine.”
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he would push to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, with Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg expected to present a plan in the coming weeks.
It is not clear if the deal to free Fogel involved a prisoner swap by the US or an ally, like last year’s exchange that saw the release of American journalist Evan Gershkovich and several others.
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The deal to release Fogel “underscored Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s effort to build warm ties with the new administration,” The New York Times reported, noting Putin’s praise for Trump in recent weeks.
Trump, in turn, has seemed increasingly open to a settlement to end the war with Ukraine that could see Kyiv make significant concessions to Moscow. In a Fox interview Monday, the president said, referring to Ukraine, “They may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian some day, or they may not be Russian some day.”
Also on Monday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told The Guardian that Kyiv would be willing to contemplate a territory exchange as part of any negotiated settlement: “We will swap one territory for another,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Ukrainian held areas of Russia’s Kursk region. However, Zelenskyy stressed that he did not know what Russian-occupied land Kyiv would ask for in return.
“I don’t know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority,” he said.