Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who was wrongfully detained in Russia for nearly three years before being released in a prisoner swap, was injured while fighting in Ukraine, according to U.S. officials.
Reed, who was freed in April 2022, was transported to a hospital in Kyiv and was evacuated to Germany for medical care. The circumstances around Reed’s injury in combat were not immediately clear.
State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that Reed “was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the U.S. government.” He added that Reed was evacuated to Germany with the support of an unnamed NGO.
A U.S. official told CNN that Reed is being treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a U.S. military hospital near Ramstein Air Base.
Patel and another U.S. administration official stressed that Reed’s actions were “entirely separate” from the ongoing negotiations to free two other Americans who are wrongfully detained in Russia: Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Reed’s fighting in Ukraine “shouldn’t have any effect” on the negotiations to free Whelan and Gershkovich.
“This was something an individual did of their own volition,” Blinken said. “It should be treated entirely separately from the negotiations for the release of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.”
Reed was arrested in Moscow in the summer of 2019 for intoxication, and was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2020 for endangering the “life and health” of Russian police officers in an altercation. Reed and his family denied the charges against him, and he was designated as wrongfully detained by the U.S. State Department.
His release from Russian prison in April 2022 came after months of effort by the U.S. government, officials said, and was particularly urgent given concerns about Reed’s health. It was ultimately secured through a prisoner swap for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian smuggler convicted of conspiring to import cocaine.
