Reuters has published a list of US citizens convicted in Russia who could be included in a new prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. The list, as noted, handed over a source close to the Kremlin.
Earlier it became known that the Presidents of Russia and the United States Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump discussed the exchange of prisoners during a telephone conversation on 19 May. According to Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, the exchange may take place according to the formula “nine for nine”. He did not specify who might be included in the lists.
The list of American citizens made public by Reuters includes Stephen Gabbard, Gordon Black, Joseph Tater, Daniel Joseph Schneider, Michael Travis Leake, Gene Spector, Robert Gilman, Robert Woodland and David Barnes. At the same time, the agency notes that another American who remains in detention in Russia is not on the list provided by the source. This is Andre Khachaturian, sentenced in 2023 to eight and a half years in prison in an arms trafficking case.
Included on the exchange list is 73-year-old Stephen Gabbard, 73, who received nearly seven years in prison in October 2024 on mercenary charges for his participation in Ukraine’s territorial defence unit. Russian state media claimed he pleaded guilty. Gabbard, an English teacher from Michigan, had previously lived in Japan and Cyprus before moving to the Ukrainian city of Izium. He was arrested after the Russian military captured the city in 2022. Relatives of the convict denied that he had fought in Ukraine, pointing to his advanced age. In January, the US recognised him as “unlawfully detained”.
Other Americans on the list include Gordon Black. He is serving a sentence of three years and two months in prison on a theft and death threat case. He is an American military man who travelled to Russia to visit a woman he met while serving in South Korea. He was detained in May 2024 in the Far East after a conflict with her. US media speculated that Black had been “lured into a trap”.
Russia and Western countries conducted a large-scale prisoner exchange in August 2024. Russia handed over 16 people, including political prisoners, to Germany and the US in exchange for eight Russians convicted in the West.
After Donald Trump took office as president, in February 2025, Russian Alexander Vinnik, who was in a US prison, was exchanged for an American convicted in Russia, Mark Vogel.