Russia frees ailing ex-US marine after Putin’s ‘goodwill’ pardon

Robert Gilman was released on humanitarian grounds with no prisoner exchange after intervention by the White House

Gilman was being held in a prison in Voronezh, about 340 miles (550km) south of Moscow. The exact circumstances of his health are unclear.

But Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing Gilman’s family, said last week that Gilman was moved in late June from the prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in a catatonic-like state assessed as a “dissociative stupor”.

The US officials said Gilman on Tuesday was on a State Department plane carrying him from Russia to Washington Dulles Airport.