Marc Fogel is free. In 2021, the American schoolteacher was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport when he was found carrying 17 grams of marijuana in his luggage. Russian prosecutors charged him with international drug smuggling and drug possession and sentenced him to 14 years in a Russian penal colony. On Feb. 11, the Trump administration announced that they had secured Fogel’s freedom through an exchange.
Fogel is the latest American to come home from Russia in a high-profile swap. Since 2022, the United States has recovered seven Americans held hostage by the Kremlin. Trevor Reed, Brittney Griner, Evan Gershkovitch, Paul Whelan, Alsu Kurmasheva – and now Fogel – were victims of what I call “hostage diplomacy” – when autocratic governments use their criminal justice systems to take foreigners for leverage.
Fogel was wrongfully detained
In October 2024, the Biden administration designated Fogel as “wrongfully detained.” This designation serves as the U.S. government’s acknowledgement that an American is being held for leverage by an adversarial government, and that intervention will be necessary to set them free. In contrast to other recent high-profile Americans arrested in Russia – like Griner and Gershkovitch – Fogel had to wait years before receiving the designation. His family and members of Congress advocated relentlessly on his behalf during this time.
While the deliberations for the official designation are not made public, the State Department tends to make the designation quickly when there is evidence that the charges were fabricated or exaggerated, or when the arresting government makes demands in exchange for the American’s release. Perhaps the designation took so long because of the sheer amount of medical marijuana in Fogel’s possession – more than 24 times the amount for which Griner had been detained.
As the first U.S.-Russia prisoner swap under the new Trump administration, Fogel’s release reveals a dramatic shift in U.S. hostage recovery policy. Here are some ways that Fogel’s return suggests we may see a new era of hostage diplomacy.
A hostage “drop”?
During the Biden administration, we became accustomed to seeing prisoner swaps take place in real time on an airport tarmac. Much like the Cold War era spy-v-spy swaps, planes carried the prisoners to be exchanged to a neutral country’s airport. Each side released its prisoners through a closely choreographed swap. Prisoners then walked past each other on the tarmac, headed toward the planes that would bring them home.
Such simultaneous trades are crucial to ensure that both sides continue to comply with the terms of the deal. In interviews I’ve conducted with current and former senior U.S. hostage policy officials, experts stress the importance of the coordinated swap. Officials often work until the very last second to ensure compliance with the terms of trade – and that no one has been left behind.
In abandoning the simultaneous exchange, Fogel’s release – though non-monetary in nature – much more closely resembled the ransom “drop” in a kidnap-for-ransom case. Instead of concurrent exchanges, kidnappers insist on collecting payment long before they set a hostage free. In my interviews, hostages’ family members and hostage negotiators describe hiding money in the wheel wells of vehicles or stuffing duffel bags full of cash to present to the captors: “You give them the money, and then you trust.” The hostage is only released days later, after the kidnappers “validate the payment” and give the order to let them go.
“Very fair, very reasonable”
In making this trade, Trump follows his Democratic and Republican predecessors in making concessions to bring Americans home from captivity.
In exchange for Fogel’s freedom, the Trump administration released Alexander Vinnik, a Russian money launderer. The U.S. Department of Justice had accused the Russian of laundering $4 billion through the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange. A U.S. grand jury charged him on 21 counts related to laundering stolen funds. Vinnik faced up to 20 years in U.S. prison.
In the past, Trump and other Republicans jumped to criticize Democrats’ deals to bring hostages home, often calling them “unfair” or “bad deals.” In contrast, Trump asserted, the Fogel-Vinnik swap was “very fair, very reasonable, not like deals you’ve seen over the years.”
Indeed, the president is correct that this deal was unlike those negotiated during the Biden administration. In this case, Trump seems to have conceded much, much more to bring an American home.
Is Fogel’s release part of Trump’s Russia strategy?
As I wrote here on Good Authority in December, Trump tends to reward hostage-taking countries by embracing their autocratic rulers. In the past, for instance, Trump heaped praise on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after they took Americans hostage.
But beyond the apparent thaw in U.S.-Russia relations, there’s good reason to think that the president now plans to concede Ukraine, too. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz called Fogel’s release “a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine.”
In the days since Fogel’s release, Trump has suggested that Ukraine “may be Russian someday.” He agreed to “work together, very closely” with Vladimir Putin on a deal to end the war in Ukraine – a war that Trump hinted was Ukraine’s fault, for seeking to join NATO. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, proclaimed that the United States would not support Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO, and that Ukraine cannot liberate the territory occupied by Russian forces. Taken together, these comments represent a complete rebuff of Ukraine’s self-defense position, throwing support behind Putin’s norm-shattering aspirations.
Beyond the jarring reversal of U.S. policy on Ukraine, such policy concessions mark a pointed shift in how American presidents bring hostages home. Past presidents have, on rare occasions, tacked hostage recovery onto broader geopolitical negotiations. During the Obama administration, for instance, prisoner swaps played an important role in negotiating the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations and finalizing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
But even in these rare examples, hostage recovery was one component of an ongoing shift – not the quid pro quo to a policy change. In almost every other instance, presidents kept hostage negotiations separate, protecting major U.S. policy and strategy from hostage takers’ demands.
Trump wants “something demonstrable”
In interviews, former hostage recovery officials have stressed that President Trump “loves” the idea of resolving a hostage situation, because it’s something “demonstrable.” As I’ve written previously, hostage recovery bolsters Trump’s self-image as the “dealmaker-in-chief,” showing off his negotiator bona fides.
But beyond the deal-making symbolism, hostage recovery is also a made-for-TV policy win. As officials have admitted, having the president greet a returning hostage “polls really, really well.” Trump has long orchestrated photo opportunities with former hostages and detainees. One video, shot for the 2020 Republican National Convention, features former detainees invited to the White House to thank the president personally for their freedom.
This week was no exception. Upon returning to the United States, Fogel was brought straight to the White House for a press conference. Overcome with emotion in front of the cameras, Fogel proclaimed Trump a hero.
Watching Fogel’s return to the United States, it’s difficult not to share the relief and joy in his freedom. And yet, this week’s photo-ops actually violated all best practices for caring for the newly freed. Standard protocol is to bring hostages and wrongful detainees immediately to a U.S. military base, where they go through the Post Isolation Support Activities (PISA) program. For up to two weeks, military medical and mental health professionals monitor each person carefully for physical and psychosocial trauma. PISA stresses the individual’s agency, autonomy, and privacy – it is in the program’s quiet, protected spaces that former hostages begin the incredibly difficult process of adapting to their post-detention future.
Such a change in protocol would seem particularly jarring for Fogel, whose poor health and severe chronic pain made his detention in a Russian prison so challenging in the first place. Instead, Fogel came straight from the plane to White House, delaying his recuperation. Taking credit for Fogel’s freedom appeared to be the clear priority for the Trump White House.
