Maphine Fogel, the 95-year-old mother of Marc Fogel, who remains imprisoned in Russia, expressed profound disappointment with President Joe Biden as her son was excluded from the recent U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange.
Fogel called Thursday’s prisoner exchange “gut-wrenching,” The Daily Wire reported, sharing her video statement on the social media platform X.
Marc Fogel, sentenced to 14 years for carrying prescription medical marijuana, has been in a Russian prison for three years, and despite his critical health condition following three spinal operations, he has not received the “wrongfully detained” status that would trigger stronger U.S. government advocacy.
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On Thursday, Russia and the U.S. completed their largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, which saw the release of high-profile detainees like The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan. However, Marc Fogel and as many as 19 other Americans remain detained under what the U.S. deems dubious circumstances.
The oversight by the Biden administration has particularly stung Maphine Fogel, who noted that while celebrities like WNBA star Brittney Griner have garnered significant attention and advocacy from U.S. officials, ordinary citizens seem forgotten.
“I have not heard anything from President Biden or even anybody in the State Department,” Fogel lamented. This sense of abandonment is contrasted by her interaction with former President Donald Trump, who, during a meeting before a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, reassured her of his commitment to secure Marc’s release if reelected. The rally was later disrupted by an assassination attempt on Trump, with Fogel in close proximity, about 25 feet away from the incident.
The prisoner swap involved 16 people released by Moscow in exchange for eight Russians held in the U.S. and Europe. Yet, many like Marc Fogel were left behind, a strategy that Benjamin Gray of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation interprets as Russia holding cards for future negotiations, according to the Journal.
“This is obviously a strategy of the Russian government to not completely clear the decks, to always have some cards to play later,” Gray was quoted as saying.
The U.S. State Department, through spokesman Vedant Patel, sought to reassure that the government’s efforts to free wrongfully detained Americans would persist. “To the American citizens who continue to be wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world, let me just be very clear that this government, this administration, is not going to stop working,” Patel was quoted as saying.
Among those still detained is Andre Khachatoorian, arrested during a layover in Moscow for carrying a declared firearm, and Ksenia Karelina, a dual citizen charged with treason for a minor financial contribution to a Ukrainian group.
The emotional toll on families is immense.
Lisa Hyland, Marc’s sister, described the process of piecing together information from news reports as soul-crushing when they realized Marc was not on a plane leaving Russia.
The lack of direct communication from U.S. officials only adds to their distress. “When asked, they provide general promises and assurances that they are doing everything they can, but those words are not backed by results,” the Journal quoted Hyland as saying.
