Robert Woodland Romanov, a United States citizen, has been arrested in Moscow on drug charges, according to the press service of the Moscow court system, according to the Associated Press.
The Ostankino District Court ruled to keep him in custody for two months on charges that he was preparing to become involved in drug trafficking. However, no additional details were provided.
The United States Embassy in Moscow has said that it is aware of the circumstances of the recently detained US citizen and noted "the U.S. Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas," but did not elaborate any further.
Russian observers noted that the name of the detained matches that of a U.S. citizen interviewed by the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020.
Romanov told the publication that he was born in the Perm region of the Ural Mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple as an infant. He reportedly moved to Russia in search of his birth mother, with whom he was reunited on a Moscow television show.
Currently, the United States is still trying to secure the release of Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershovich, both of whom face espionage charges. Last month it was reported that the State Department had several offers on the table that had all been rejected.
Gershkovich was a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. He has remained behind bars ever since on espionage accusations that he and the Journal have denied.
The U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Whelan was arrested in 2018 on espionage charges that he and the United States government denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In recent years, two US citizens arrested in Russia were exchanged for Russians jailed in the United States including WNBA star Brittney Griner.
There is a long history of Russia imprisoning individuals for the sole purpose of using them as bargaining chips with the nation with which said individual was a citizen or native, with the practice dating back to the early days of the Soviet Union.
