Fogel, 63, was detained by Russian officials in August 2021 and charged with smuggling into the country a small amount of medical marijuana, which was prescribed in the United States for back pain but is banned in Russia. A Pittsburgh-area native, he was a teacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow and spent 27 years teaching overseas in places such as Oman, Venezuela and Malaysia. He is serving a 14-year sentence, during which he has been teaching English to prisoners.
Some lawmakers responded to Thursday’s news by emphasizing that Fogel must not be forgotten. The Biden administration stressed that efforts to secure the release of Americans imprisoned abroad, including Fogel, will continue.
He is among several Americans who remain in Russia, a list that includes Gordon Black, a U.S. soldier convicted of threatening his Russian girlfriend; Ksenia Karelina, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen and aesthetician who was accused of donating $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity; and Michael Travis Leake, an American expatriate and musician who was convicted on drug charges.
“As we celebrate the good news of today, we cannot forget about Marc and the Fogel family,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). “I urge everyone who fought to bring Evan and Paul home to now work to do the same for Marc.”
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), who represents the district Fogel is from, said he was “saddened not only for Marc, but also for his 95-year-old mother, Malphine Fogel, and Marc’s family, who have been without him for more than 1,000 days.”
Fogel was also not included in a prisoner swap in 2022, when WNBA player Brittney Griner was freed in exchange for the return of notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The two Americans’ cases have parallels. Griner was arrested outside Moscow in 2022 for carrying a small amount of cannabis oil. During her swap, there were similar frustrations about the exclusion of Whelan, the former U.S. Marine, whom U.S. officials had also hoped to free in the same deal.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters Thursday, “We absolutely wanted Marc to be included, but it just wasn’t going to happen.”
“Just like when we got Brittney out, we tried very hard for both Paul and Marc, and we just couldn’t get the Russians there,” he said. “In this case, we could get Paul; we couldn’t get Marc.”
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that the administration has called for Fogel’s humanitarian release and “will continue to engage and work through our team in Moscow.”
“There continue to be American citizens detained in legal systems around the world — not, of course, just in Russia. This is a responsibility that we take seriously,” he said.
Martin De Luca, an attorney for Fogel, said in a statement that this was “the second high-profile swap that Marc has been left out of over the last three years” and that Fogel had been “caught in the diplomatic crossfire between the U.S. and Russia leading up to the war in Ukraine.”
He also called on the administration to “finally designate Marc as wrongfully detained.”
Fogel is suffering from “severe health issues,” his family said in their statement. “We sincerely hope that this is not our last opportunity to bring him home and save him from potentially dying in a Russian prison.”
Manuel Roig-Franzia and Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.
