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A spa worker and schoolteacher are among the estimated 20 U.S. citizens still held by Russia

By Brett Forrest and Louise Radnofsky, Wall Street Journal, Aug 03, 2024 12:02 a.m. ET

When news reports started to emerge from Russia about airplanes taking off from Moscow as part of a momentous international prisoner exchange, Marc Fogel’s family went into action.

Fogel, an American high-school teacher, had spent three years of a 14-year sentence in Russian prisons after being convicted of smuggling roughly 17 grams of marijuana into the country. He said he had intended to use the drug for medical purposes to treat chronic pain.

Fogel’s name often had been included in discussions of potential swaps between the U.S. and Russia, but the gathering rumors gave his relatives their clearest hope yet that he might return to them.

While Fogel’s lawyers sought information from State Department officials, the family spent several hours poring over news reports so they "could connect the dots on our own," said Lisa Hyland, one of Fogel’s sisters.

It wasn’t until the family received a call from Fogel from prison in Rybinsk, roughly 200 miles north of Moscow, that they knew he wasn’t on a plane flying clear of Russian airspace. Fogel told his family that being excluded from the exchange was "soul crushing."

Thursday’s landmark swap freed 16 people held by Moscow, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich; fellow Americans Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine; and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who also holds Russian citizenship, as well as U.S. permanent resident Vladimir Kara-Murza. Each had been convicted on charges in Russia that the U.S. called false or unjust.

In return, the U.S. and four other European countries returned to Moscow eight Russians serving prison terms for crimes including espionage and murder.

The exchange buoyed the families of those released but excluded other Americans who are serving sentences in Russian prisons, some under dubious circumstances.

A Wall Street Journal review of Russian court documents and media reports shows that as many as 20 U.S. and dual U.S.-Russian citizens are still being detained in Russian jails and labor camps. Those held include teachers, musicians and dual citizens who returned to the region of their origin only to become enmeshed in a larger diplomatic struggle.

"To the American citizens who continue to be wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world, let me just be very clear that this government, this administration, is not going to stop working," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said at a press conference Thursday.

"This is obviously a strategy of the Russian government to not completely clear the decks, to always have some cards to play later," said Benjamin Gray, vice president of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, a hostage advocacy group.

The foundation has named two American citizens—Andre Khachatoorian and Ksenia Karelina— as wrongfully held by Russia. The U.S. doesn’t announce when it makes such designations.

In December 2021, Khachatoorian had a layover in Moscow en route to Armenia when authorities detained him over a licensed, secured firearm in his checked luggage, which he had declared to employees of Aeroflot at Los Angeles International Airport before boarding his flight on the airline.

He was subsequently convicted of arms smuggling in a Russian court and sentenced to eight years in prison. Khachatoorian denied the charge. His mother, Marina Soltani, said she thought he was targeted as a U.S. citizen.

Khachatoorian’s fiancée, based in Armenia, alerted Soltani earlier this week to Russian news reports of an impending exchange. "I am shocked that they didn’t bring him," Soltani said. "I don’t know why they left him behind."

Karelina, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Russia who had been living in California, was charged with treason in February while visiting her family in Yekaterinburg. Karelina had allegedly made a small financial donation to a Ukrainian humanitarian organization that Russian authorities said was used to benefit Kyiv’s military. Karelina hasn’t publicly responded to the allegation.

Karelina, who worked at an Beverly Hills spa, faces a possible sentence of life in prison. Her next court date is slated for next week, according to her representatives.

When Karelina’s boyfriend, Chris Van Heerden, heard rumors of a trade this week, he said his thought was that she might be coming home. He says he doesn’t know what it means that she was left out of the swap. "Does the trade yesterday mean things have opened up and she will be coming home next?" Van Heerden said. "Or does it mean that her trial came too late and she was left behind?"

Other cases have drawn less public attention, or lack a clear political dimension.

In 2021, David Barnes pursued his ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, to her native Moscow. She had fled the U.S. with their sons in 2019 and was the subject of a warrant in Texas because she shared custody with Barnes and hadn’t secured his approval to take the children out of the U.S., according to lawyers involved on both sides of the case.

The following year, Russian prosecutors charged Barnes with abusing the boys when they lived in the U.S. based on the ex-wife’s allegations that he had molested them. Texas authorities had declined to charge Barnes when his ex-wife had made the same accusations there.

Barnes was convicted by a Moscow court in February and sentenced to 21 years in prison. Barnes denied the charge.

Barnes’s family learned of Thursday’s trade from news reports and have yet to speak with him. "I don’t really know what to tell him," said Carol Barnes, his sister. "How do I explain that his government just left him behind?"

When Whelan, the former U.S. Marine, packed up his belongings last week and departed the IK- 17 labor camp in Mordovia, roughly 300 miles east of Moscow, he left behind two lesser-known American prisoners. Thomas Stwalley and Jimmy Wilgus are serving lengthy prison terms for drug and sex offenses, respectively, crimes which they deny having committed.

"We congratulate all those involved in the release of the four Americans," said Wilgus’s father, James Wilgus. "Needless to say, Jimmy is devastated."

Bob Stwalley said he feared for his brother’s mental and physical well-being. He said inmates have previously assaulted American prisoners following an exchange. "It won’t be good," he said.

In June, a Moscow court convicted a dual U.S.-Russia citizen, Robert Woodland on drug- trafficking charges. Born in Russia and adopted by an American family, Woodland returned to Russia, where authorities alleged that he participated in the packaging and selling of the stimulant mephedrone. Woodland received a 121⁄2-year sentence.

His lawyer, Stanislav Kshevitsky, said Woodland was appealing his conviction on drug selling but that he had little hope of being included in any swap. "Even if he would be exchanged, he’s at the bottom of this list," Kshevitsky said.

In May, Gordon Black, a U.S. Army active-duty sergeant on his way home from a deployment in South Korea, was arrested in Vladivostok on charges of theft and threatening to murder his Russian girlfriend, according to Russian state news agencies. In June, a Russian court convicted Black and sentenced him to three years and nine months. Black admitted partial guilt and plans to appeal the verdict, according to state news agencies.

Musician Travis Leake reassured friends and family via social-media posts about his decision to remain in Moscow after Russia’s expansion of its war in Ukraine. Authorities raided Leake’s Moscow apartment in June and allegedly seized drug-dealing paraphernalia, according to Russian state-run news services.

"I have been formally accused about nothing," Leake said in a video that aired on Russian TV at the time of his arrest. "I don’t know why I’m here."

Last month, Leake was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to 13 years in a maximum- security penal colony, according to a post on a social-media account for the Moscow city courts.

In June, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution calling for Marc Fogel’s release, while his mother, Malphine Fogel, filed suit in federal court in Pennsylvania against Secretary of State Antony Blinken to force a wrongful-detainment designation, as the family has lost faith in U.S. officials.

"When asked, they provide general promises and assurances that they are doing everything they can, but those words are not backed by results," said Hyland, one of Fogel’s sisters. "They tell us very little, and it often comes too late."