American schoolteacher and former diplomat Marc Fogel has been released from prison in Russia and is on the way home to the US, according to US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Waltz said Mr Fogel’s release had been negotiated as part of an exchange with Russia, without providing further details.
He said Mr Fogel, 63, was on a plane with Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, and would be reunited with his family by Tuesday evening.
“We are beyond grateful, relieved, and overwhelmed that after more than three years of detention, our father, husband, and son, Marc Fogel, is finally coming home,” Mr Fogel’s family said in a statement.
“This has been the darkest and most painful period of our lives, but today, we begin to heal,” his wife, Jane, and sons, Ethan and Sam, said in the statement, obtained by CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner.
Mr Fogel was arrested at an airport for the illegal possession of cannabis in 2021.
He was charged with carrying a small amount of medical marijuana, which had been prescribed in the US, and given a 14-year prison sentence.
“Today, President Donald J. Trump and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are able to announce that Mr. Witkoff is leaving Russian airspace with Marc Fogel, an American who was detained by Russia,” Waltz’s statement said.
“By tonight, Marc Fogel will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump’s leadership.”
Mr Fogel’s legal team thanked President Donald Trump for his role in the negotiation and criticised what they called the “bureaucratic inaction” of the previous Biden administration.
“President Trump secured Marc’s release in just a few weeks, wasting no time in taking decisive action to bring Marc home,” a statement from his lawyers, also sent to CBS, said.
Mr Fogel wasn’t classed by the US government as wrongfully detained until December 2024, despite beginning his sentence in 2022.
Mr Fogel’s family had tried to push former President Joe Biden to secure his release, and were left disappointed when he was left out of prisoner exchanges in 2022 and 2024.
US basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in Russia on a similar charge of cannabis possession in 2022, was freed in an exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout ten months later.
Subsequently, the Biden administration secured the release of three more Americans last year as part of the biggest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The Americans freed were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Marine veteran Paul Whelan, and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.
Mr Fogel’s sister, Anne Fogel, told the BBC of her feeling of “betrayal” when she learnt that Marc Fogel was not included in the prisoner exchange – dubbed a “feat of diplomacy” by Mr Biden at the time.
Mr Fogel, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was a teacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow. He had previously worked as a diplomat at the US embassy there.
While in prison, he reportedly taught English to fellow inmates.
It is unclear if the US released someone in return for Mr Fogel.
Russia did not immediately comment on Mr Fogel’s release.
Steve Witkoff’s trip to Russia is the first made by a senior US official to the country, which is a pariah in much of the West, for a number of years. Most contact was shut off between the nations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is unclear if the war in Ukraine was another topic on the table while Witkoff was there, but National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said Mr Fogel’s release 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”.
President Trump announced earlier on Tuesday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would travel to Ukraine later this week.
During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.
But in an interview with Fox News on Monday, he mused: “They (Ukraine) may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday.”