Russia releases US Marine vet as part of prisoner exchange

Russia and the United States have carried out a dramatic prisoner exchange, trading a Marine veteran jailed by Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America, both countries announced Wednesday.

The surprise deal involving Trevor Reed, an American imprisoned for nearly three years, would have been a notable diplomatic maneuver even in times of peace, but it was all the more extraordinary because it was done as Russia’s war with Ukraine has driven relations with the U.S. to their lowest point in decades.

But while the prisoner exchange marked a rare point of consensus between two adversarial nations, it seemed unlikely to herald any larger breakthrough between Washington and Moscow, with a senior Biden administration official cautioning that the negotiations centered on a “discrete set of prisoner issues” and did not represent a change to the U.S. government’s condemnation of Russia’s violence against Ukraine.

“Where we can have discussions on issues of mutual interest we will try to talk to the Russians and have a constructive conversation without any way changing our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine,” the official told reporters after the prisoner release.