He is one of several detained Americans whom US officials are seeking to free.
Washington:
Interlocutor and former US politician Bill Richardson announced that Russia on Thursday released a US Navy veteran who had been held in the country’s Kaliningrad region for nine months.
Taylor Dudley had been held since April 2022 and was one of several detained Americans that Richardson and US officials were seeking to free.
According to CNN, Dudley, 35, had arrived in Kaliningrad, an exclave between Poland and Lithuania, from Poland where he had gone to attend a music festival.
“It is important that despite the current climate between our two countries, the Russian authorities did the right thing by releasing Taylor today,” Richardson said in a statement.
The release came a month after Washington swapped jailed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for American basketball star Brittany Griner, who the US said was wrongly detained and charged with cannabis oil. Was imprisoned for possession of rape cartridges.
In Dudley’s case, the US and Russian governments did not make his detention public, and Washington did not say that he was wrongfully detained.
Richardson made no mention of any exchange involved in his release.
He said a team from the Richardson Center, which has helped free Americans detained in several countries, has visited Moscow several times over the past year in connection with the Dudley case.
“The negotiations and work for Taylor’s safe return were done with careful and on-the-ground engagements in both Moscow and Kaliningrad, and with the full support of Taylor’s family in the United States,” the statement said.
“As we celebrate Taylor’s safe return, we are deeply concerned for Paul Whelan and are committed to continuing to work on his safe return,” Richardson said.
Whelan is a former US Marine who was arrested in Moscow in 2018 and later convicted of espionage.
The US says he was a private citizen visiting Moscow on personal business, and has sought his release.
He was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian prison.
US efforts to negotiate his freedom as part of the Griner deal failed after Moscow demanded the release of a Russian former intelligence officer imprisoned in Germany for the 2019 murder of an anti-Moscow Chechen man in Berlin.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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