Russia\u00a0freed on Tuesday a former American\u00a0Marine\u00a0jailed there since 2022, United States\u00a0President Donald Trump said, as the man returned to the United States to be greeted with hamburgers and milkshakes.<\/p>\n
Russia\u00a0agreed to release\u00a0Robert\u00a0Gilman, 32, for humanitarian reasons after discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Trump said on social media.<\/p>\n
A State Department plane carrying\u00a0Gilman\u00a0arrived at Dulles airport on the outskirts of Washington late on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
The White House and the State Department had urged Moscow to release\u00a0Gilman\u00a0so he could receive medical treatment in the US. US officials said Putin approved a pardon for him.<\/p>\n
On social media, Witkoff thanked Putin for the pardon “and for his personal engagement throughout this process.”<\/p>\n
Tonight, I had the profound privilege of welcoming Robert Gilman home to the United States after more than four years of detention in Russia.<\/p>\n
Robert is a patriot\u2014a former United States Marine who served our country with honor. He can now finally return to his family and receive\u2026\u00a0pic.twitter.com\/imuVWAozYm<\/p>\n
\u2014 Special Envoy Steve Witkoff (@SEPeaceMissions)\u00a0August 12, 2026
\nUS officials said\u00a0Russia\u00a0sought no concessions in return for the release. Trump has\u00a0maintained relations with Putin\u00a0despite tensions over the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Gilman\u00a0had been held in a prison in Voronezh, about 340 miles (550 km) south of Moscow. The\u00a0exact circumstances of his health are unclear.<\/p>\n
But Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing\u00a0Gilman’s family, told\u00a0Reuters\u00a0last week that\u00a0Gilman\u00a0was moved in late June from\u00a0the prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in a catatonic-like state assessed as a “dissociative stupor.”<\/p>\n
A US\u00a0official who spoke to\u00a0Gilman\u00a0said he was walking and talking. “All things considered, he seems to be in good shape,” the official said.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Vanity, prisoner’s dilemma and the logic of conflicts<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Gilman, who requested a cheeseburger upon landing. “I will take care of that!” Trump said.<\/p>\n
Gilman\u00a0was to have been evaluated on the flight by four doctors, said the US\u00a0officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
After his Dulles stop,\u00a0Gilman\u00a0was on his way to a rehabilitation centre\u00a0in San Antonio, Texas, for medical treatment, one official said.<\/p>\n
Arrested over police officer incident<\/p>\n
Gilman, who served in the US\u00a0Marines\u00a0from\u00a0August 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\u00a0Russian state media.<\/p>\n
However, his father, Vladimir\u00a0Gilman, who emigrated to Massachusetts\u00a0from\u00a0Russia, 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.<\/p>\n
The officer was uninjured, dropped the charges, and did not present evidence at\u00a0Gilman’s trial, he wrote.<\/p>\n
Robert\u00a0Gilman\u00a0was sentenced to 4-1\/2 years in jail. He was one of at least 10 Americans known to be imprisoned in\u00a0Russia.<\/p>\n
The US\u00a0officials said a\u00a0Russian senior official, Yuri\u00a0Ushakov, informed Trump aides last week that Putin had agreed to sign a decree pardoning\u00a0Gilman\u00a0for humanitarian purposes, given Putin’s friendship with the president.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0Cuba releases prisoners, confirms talks with US<\/p>\n
The release resulted\u00a0from\u00a0intense negotiations over the weekend by US\u00a0and\u00a0Russian officials. The US\u00a0did not\u00a0exchange any\u00a0Russian prisoners in order to gain\u00a0 Gilman’s release and no concessions were made, the officials said. “It’s a goodwill gesture,” one official said.<\/p>\n
Trump thanked Witkoff, senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US\u00a0special envoy for hostage response Adam Boehler for making the release possible.<\/p>\n
US\u00a0Secretary of State Marco Rubio said\u00a0Gilman\u00a0is 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\u00a0Russia, including Stephen Hubbard.<\/p>\n
Today, after more than four years of detention in Russia, Robert Gilman is on his way home to be reunited with his family. Mr. Gilman joins over 100 Americans whom President Trump has freed during his second term in office.<\/p>\n
We thank Russia for working with Special Envoy Steve\u2026\u00a0pic.twitter.com\/tw9zDX6IMu<\/p>\n
\u2014 Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio)\u00a0August 11, 2026
\nHubbard, 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\u00a0Russian forces, tasked with manning a checkpoint.<\/p>\n
Hubbard denied the charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia\u00a0freed on Tuesday a former American\u00a0Marine\u00a0jailed there since 2022, United States\u00a0President Donald Trump said, as the man returned to the United States to be greeted with hamburgers and milkshakes. Russia\u00a0agreed to release\u00a0Robert\u00a0Gilman, 32, for humanitarian reasons after discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Trump said on social media. A State Department plane carrying\u00a0Gilman\u00a0arrived at Dulles airport …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4845,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4833\/revisions\/4845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}