The case of Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik in the US has ended, he is free. This was told to TASS by his French lawyer Frederic Bello. "The case against Alexander has been terminated, according to my information, he is already free", the agency's source said. He will be sent to Russia in the near future, the lawyer said.
According to "Reuters", the United States is releasing a Russian cybercrime boss from prison in exchange for the release of American teacher Mark Fogle from Moscow. This is stated in the statement of a US official.
Vinik is currently in Northern California awaiting deportation back to Russia, the official said.
Vinik was arrested in Greece in 2017 and subsequently extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty in May 2024 to conspiracy to launder billions of dollars.
We recall that Mark Fogel, released from Russia after three and a half years in a penal colony, was greeted with flying flags by US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Fogel returned home on a private plane used by Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who made a detour to Moscow.
Neither the visit, nor the flights, nor the initiative were officially announced, and the terms of the release remained unclear. There was no information on what the reverse side of the "exchange" would entail.
In addition to his positive assessment of Fogel's condition, Donald Trump said that his release "could be an important part" since the end of the war in Ukraine.
"We just wanted to bring him home," Trump said, thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin for Fogle's release.
Fogle was sentenced to 14 years in prison for drug smuggling after being detained at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in August 2021 with 17 grams of marijuana in his luggage.
He was not included in the list for the major exchange carried out in August 2024 between the United States and its Western allies, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other. Then Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan were released from Russian prisons, as were Alsou Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, Dieter Voronin, Kevin Leak, Rico Krieger, Patrick Schobel, Herman Moyges, Lilia Chanisheva, Ksenia Fadeeva, Vadim Ostanin, Andrey Pivovarov, Oleg Orlov, Sasha Skochilenko.
In return for them, Russia returned eight people, of whom the most important was the former special services agent with a sentence in Germany, Vadim Krasikov.
During Joe Biden's administration, two more exchanges were carried out between the US and Russia - the exchange of Trevor Reed with Konstantin Yaroshenko, and then Viktor Bout with Britney Garner.
The parameters of all the actions were relatively clear, although, as noted by a number of publications, conducted on the model and channels of the Cold War era war.