Biden Swaps Prisoner With Russia in Surprise Sign of Accord

  • Russia frees ex-Marine Reed, gets jailed pilot Yaroshenko
  • Negotiations ‘required difficult decisions,’ Biden says
Trevor Reed during his verdict hearing in Moscow in July 2020.Photographer: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
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Russia has exchanged jailed American Trevor Reed for a Russian pilot held in a U.S. prison in a rare example of cooperation between the two countries amid the confrontation over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Reed, 30, a former U.S. Marine who was serving nine years after being convicted in 2020 of assaulting two police officers, was swapped for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot jailed in 2011 for 20 years for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. after he was seized in a sting operation in Liberia.