A court in Moscow announced on Tuesday that the Russian government had detained 32-year-old American citizen Robert Romanov Woodland for at least two months on drug charges that could carry a sentence of 20 years in prison.
The Ostankinsky District Court of Moscow said Woodland was taken into custody on January 5 and will be held until at least March 5, pending trial for the “illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, manufacture, and processing of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, or their analogues.”
Court documents described Woodland as a dual Russian-American citizen with no legal employment and no criminal record. Investigators said “criminal activity is his main source of income” and justified his lengthy pretrial detention by describing him as a flight risk.
Russia’s Interfax news service said Woodland was arrested while attempting to purchase 4.5 grams of an unnamed drug and was suspected of wanting to resell it. The police said he possessed a synthetic narcotic called mephedrone when he was arrested.
If Woodland is convicted, Russian sentencing guidelines for his alleged crimes call for a prison sentence of eight to 20 years.
The U.S. State Department acknowledged the report of Woodland’s arrest and said it has “no greater priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas,” but made no further comment.
Russian media speculated Woodland is the same man who gave a 2020 interview to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in which he said he was born in Russia’s Ural Mountains, left in an orphanage, and adopted by an American couple at the age of two.
The Robert Woodland who gave that interview said he traveled to Russia when he grew up, met his Russian birth mother on a Moscow TV show, and decided to settle in the town of Dolgoprudny near Moscow. As of 2020, he said he was working as an English teacher at a school in Dolgoprudny.
“Mama was crying and begging for forgiveness. But I forgave her before this meeting. I’ve never been angry at her. I simply always missed her very much,” the man told Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020.
“I was drawn to Russia with a tremendous force. And here I am. I have decided to stay in my motherland forever,” he said.
Reuters discovered a Facebook account under Woodland’s name in which he said he was an English teacher living outside Moscow and seemed to indicate that it was the same man. CBS News noted the Facebook account in question, and an Instagram account also attributed to Woodland, have been inactive for the past year.
Reuters quoted reports that Woodland was carrying both Russian and American passports at the time of his arrest.
Woodland’s arrest came at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia is holding at least two other American citizens: U.S. Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan, arrested in 2018 and serving 16 years in prison on espionage charges, and Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained in March 2023, also on espionage charges.
Another journalist and dual U.S.-Russian citizen, Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe (RFE), was detained in October during a trip to visit her family. Kurmasheva was accused of “failing to register as a foreign agent” when she entered Russia, a charge dismissed by her husband Pavel Butorin as “absurd.”
Both Whelan and Gershkovich, along with the U.S. government and Gershkovich’s employers at the WSJ, strenuously deny the allegations made against them by Russia.
In this Aug. 23, 2019, file photo, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine who was arrested for alleged spying in Moscow on Dec. 28, 2018, stands in a cage as he waits for a hearing in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia. The Moscow City Court on Monday June 15, 2020, convicted Paul Whelan on charges of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in a maximum security prison colony. Whelan has insisted on his innocence, saying he was set up. (Alexander Zemlianichenko. File/AP)
President Joe Biden met with Whelan’s sister Elizabeth on Wednesday, following Russia’s rejection of a “new and significant” State Department proposal to secure Whelan’s release in December. The State Department said Russia has rejected “multiple offers” for Whelan’s freedom.
“I hope we will find a solution. But I repeat, the American side must hear us and make a decision that will satisfy the Russian side as well,” Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said after rejecting the offer, essentially admitting Whelan is a political hostage.
Whelan himself has been talking to reporters from the labor camp where he is imprisoned, saying the Biden administration “left me behind” after freeing other Americans from Russia with prisoner swaps.
“I know that the U.S. has come up with all sorts of proposals — serious proposals — but it’s not what the Russians are after. So they keep going back and forth. The only problem is, it’s my life that’s draining away while they do this,” he said in a December 20 phone interview with the BBC.
Critics of the Biden administration fear President Biden incentivized Putin to grab more American hostages after making an absurdly lopsided deal to trade infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout for women’s basketball player Brittney Griner in December 2022.