The newspaper "Izvestia" published a video of the exchange between Moscow and Washington involving Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko and American Trevor Reed at a Turkish airport. Two planes landed at the airport, one carrying the Russian prisoner and the other the American prisoner. The two prisoners disembarked from their respective planes simultaneously and met in the middle of the pathway between the two aircraft without touching each other. They then boarded each other's planes to return to their home countries.
In his first statement, Yaroshenko said, "12 years of injustice!" The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that a deal had been made for the exchange of American citizen Trevor Raudi Reed and Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko. Yaroshenko was arrested on May 28, 2010, in Liberia on charges of preparing to transport a large amount of cocaine, and was subsequently transferred to the United States, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Yaroshenko has categorically denied the charges against him and considers his arrest a provocative act, claiming his case is fabricated. Meanwhile, American student Trevor Raudi Reed was sentenced in Russia in 2020 to 9 years in prison after being convicted of assaulting a police patrol and refusing to obey their orders in the summer of 2019.
