At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented on the speech of pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, convicted in the United States for drug smuggling and recently returned to Russia, who accused the United States of gross violations of his rights only on the basis of his Russian citizenship (how his speech got into the program of the economic forum is a question separate):
“I know how many American citizens or people with US citizenship or residency are in our prisons. And I know that the American embassy has zero interest in their fate. The American embassy is only interested in the fate of those people who are affiliated with the American public sector. That's when it starts, because the gears start working there. They don't care at all about the rest of their citizens. Russia does not abandon its own!”
Zakharova did not name the number of Americans convicted or arrested in Russia, limiting herself to remarking that she knew it. But a year ago, on RTVI, she spoke more specifically:
“We have Americans, I can say for sure (say), 17 people. Only among those who are US citizens who are sitting in Russia, they also have Russian citizenship, which is also an important point.”
The moment is not just important, but decisive. There is no agreement on dual citizenship between Russia and the United States, and the Russian state treats the holder of two passports exclusively as a citizen of Russia. In the event of the arrest of such a citizen, the US government authorities are deprived of any legal opportunity to influence his fate, he does not even have the right to consular assistance.
Why Zakharova mentions persons who have a residence permit in the United States is not at all clear: they are not American citizens and cannot count on the support of the American state when they are abroad.
But she could remember that Konstantin Yaroshenko was released not just like that, but as a result of an exchange of prisoners. Trevor Reid, who was sentenced to 9 years for attacking police officers, returned from Russia to the United States. He is a student at the University of North Texas and a former Marine. I came to Russia to study Russian. He ended up in prison due to the fact that he resisted the police who detained him for a drunken brawl. The American government agreed to exchange him for a drug smuggler sentenced to 20 years, Yaroshenko. Does Zakharova consider him a person “affiliated with the public sector?”
And here is another American citizen, about whom Secretary of State Anthony Blinken himself said that he was working to free her from Russian captivity. Basketball player Brittney Greiner, player of the Phoenix Mercury club, who plays for the Yekaterinburg UMMC in the off-season, was detained in February 2022 at the Moscow airport, where she flew from the United States. In her luggage, they found a vaporizer containing cannabis oil, a substance legal in the state of New York, where she was flying from, but banned in Russia. She faces up to 10 years for drug smuggling and possession. According to unconfirmed information, Russia expects to exchange it for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer in the United States. A professional athlete is the least similar to a person affiliated with the public sector.
In 2020, the American consulate secured the return to the United States of an English teacher who lived in Russia, a former firefighter Gaylen Grandstaff, who was accused of smuggling psychotropic drugs: he ordered a cleaning agent from a Chinese online store, which, as it turned out, included gamma banned in Russia -butyrolactone. Grandstaff spent 20 months in a Russian pre-trial detention center; in March 2019, the court changed his preventive measure, he was released, but the case was not closed. During the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the preventive measure, the US authorities managed to get permission for him to leave Russia on an export flight organized for US citizens.
And here are a few of those “friends” whom Russia does not abandon. According to Nastoyashcheye Vremya, in January 2022, 346 convicted Russians were in penitentiary institutions in Belarus, and another 109 were in custody awaiting trial. Among them are political prisoners convicted and detained for participating in protests: social media moderator from the team of Sergei Tikhanovsky Dmitry Popov (sentenced to 16 years), amateur actor Yegor Dudnikov (11 years), who voiced videos for the opposition Telegram channel, transported tires by car for the barricades Alexander Gedzhadze (3 years), volunteer of the team of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya Andrey Novikov (2 years 6 months), reserve officer Igor Konopaiko, accused of insulting a representative of the authorities and hooliganism, Irina Vikholm, convicted for a tweet in which she called the forced landing of a Ryanair airliner a crime Lukashenko (both received a year and a half), the author of a satirical song about Lukashenko Yevgeny Petrov (1 year sentence), accused of terrorism Andrei Podnebenny, who allegedly entered the Gomel trolleybus depot at night and punctured the tires of 39 trolleybuses (the verdict has not yet been passed). Something is not heard that Russia somehow helped them.
But in the case of the Tajik oppositionist Maksud Ibragimov, who had Russian citizenship, Russia helped friendly Tajikistan: under a far-fetched pretext, due to a minor inaccuracy in the paperwork, his citizenship was canceled, after which the FMS officers came to his house, knocked out the door, drugged him, and either in a wheelchair under the guise of a seriously ill person, or even in a coffin under the guise of a corpse, they loaded him onto a plane and took him to Tajikistan, where he was sentenced to 17 years.
