The deal to release Fogel, who was designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department, was negotiated by President Donald Trump, Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff, “and the President’s advisers,” according to a statement from national security adviser Mike Waltz.
The statement did not provide any details about the “exchange,” other than to say it was “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.”
“We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually,” Trump said in the Oval Office later Tuesday.
“I hope that’s the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed,” he added.
The White House posted a photo late Tuesday of Fogel stepping off a plane at Joint Base Andrews with an American flag draped across his shoulders.
In an extraordinary move, Witkoff personally went to Russia to bring back Fogel, Waltz’s statement indicated. There has been no known high-level US travel to Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
Witkoff, who is Trump’s Middle East envoy and didn’t have previously known official dealings with Russia, was involved in part because he leveraged relationships in the Middle East to further the agreement, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
Witkoff has crisscrossed the region in recent months working on the Gaza ceasefire accord, notably in Qatar, a primary mediator. Doha was involved in helping Witkoff and the administration with Tuesday’s exchange deal through introductions Qataris made to Russian intermediaries, the people briefed said.
“By tonight, Marc Fogel will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump’s leadership,” Waltz’s statement read.
Fogel worked for nearly a decade as a history teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, where children of US diplomats were among his students.
He was arrested in August 2021 at an airport in Moscow after he was found carrying cannabis. He had traveled into the country with about 17 grams of cannabis, which his family and lawyer said was recommended by a doctor to treat “severe spinal pain.”
In June 2022, he was found guilty in a court just outside Moscow of committing “large-scale drugs smuggling” and given a 14-year sentence at a Russian hard labor camp. The same court held the trial of detained WNBA player Brittney Griner, who was released in a prisoner swap in December 2022.
Fogel was not included in multiple prisoner swaps under the Joe Biden administration, including one in August that saw the release of journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that while Fogel’s release and an end to the war in Ukraine are not linked, he thinks it’s a good sign that Russia was willing to cooperate.
“It’s a long way to go between here and there. It’s not going to be easy,” Rubio said of ending the war.
“And again, I don’t want to claim that what’s happening here tonight is in any way the first step towards that, but I do think it’s a good sign that the Russians were willing to do something in this regard, and hopefully we can build on that in the days to come.”
Rubio added he didn’t think anybody can assign a timeline to the nearly three-year war ending.
“We don’t just want to see it end. We want to see it end in a way that’s sustainable.”
The news of the “exchange” with Moscow comes as Trump has suggested he could try to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine in ways that are unsettling to Kyiv.
