Russia arrests US man on drug trafficking charges

A US national has been arrested on drug trafficking charges in Russia, the latter nation said on Tuesday, bringing the number of Americans detained by authorities in Moscow to at least three as tensions rise over the Ukraine war.

Robert Romanov Woodland, 32, was arrested on 5 January, Reuters reported, citing the Russian news website Mash, which said Woodland faced a 20-year prison sentence if convicted.

A district court in the northern Moscow suburb of Ostankino ruled on Saturday to keep Woodland in custody until 5 March on charges of attempted large-scale production and sale of illegal drugs.

No other details were immediately available. And neither the US state department nor US embassy in Moscow has commented, although the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is expected to be asked about the arrest at a press conference later on Tuesday.

Russian media said that the name of the accused matches that of a US citizen interviewed by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020, who said he was born in the Perm region of Russia’s Ural mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple at the age of two.

The man said he later traveled to Russia to find his birth mother, and after locating her he decided to stay in the town of Dolgoprudny 15 miles north of central Moscow. He said he worked as an English teacher at a local school.

Woodland’s arrest comes as relations between the US and Russia grow increasingly strained as the war in Ukraine continues. Efforts by the Biden administration to secure the release of two other Americans jailed in Russia – the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the former marine Paul Whelan – were rejected last month, and Woodland’s detention will fuel analysts’ fears that they are being held