Moscow managed to "squeeze" Washington, using the US interest in exchanging Trevor Reed for pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry said
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th April, 2022) Moscow managed to "squeeze" Washington, using the US interest in exchanging Trevor Reed for pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry told reporters that as a result of the negotiation process, on April 27, US citizen Trevor Reed, previously convicted in Russia, was exchanged for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko.
The ministry noted that the return of Russian citizen Yaroshenko to his homeland was the result of a long-term coordinated work of interested Russian agencies. The Russian pilot has been subjected to discrimination and degrading treatment for many years, including denials of adequate medical care, it stressed.
"The US side was under pressure at all levels to improve the conditions of his detention, to agree on options for an early return using the available international legal instruments. As a result, we managed to put the squeeze on Washington, using the US interest in the exchange of US citizen Trevor Reed convicted in Russia for drunken debauchery and resisting the police", the ministry said in a statement.
Yaroshenko was sentenced in the United States in 2011 to 20 years in a general security prison on charges of preparing a conspiracy to deliver a large consignment of drugs to the US.
In the summer of 2020, a Moscow court sentenced former Texas student Trevor Reed to nine years in prison, finding him guilty of using violence against police officers. The American was also ordered to pay 100,000 rubles each to both law enforcement officers as compensation.
