Lori Falce: The American prisoner in Russia who desperately wants to be freed

On Wednesday, The New Yorker published a story about Ilya Yashin.

“The Russian Prisoner Who Didn’t Want to be Freed,” it was titled.

Yashin was part of the complex, multinational prisoner exchange that moved 26 people on Aug. 1, including Americans Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva.

He is a Russian politician with the People’s Freedom Party — or he was until the party was dissolved by that country’s Supreme Court in May 2023. That was 10 months after Yashin was arrested for releasing a video criticizing the Russian war in Ukraine. He was sentenced to 8½ years in prison.

Yashin went to prison for fighting for his country. He wanted to stay and fight. In The New Yorker article, he speaks of a friend, Alexei Gorinov, who also spoke out against the war. Gorinov, 63, was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Gorinov was left behind in the prisoner exchange. Yashin told journalist Joshua Yaffa he feels like “a stowaway in someone else’s seat,” with Gorinov being used as leverage to keep him quiet in his exile.

Yashin’s story is painful for me to read.

I have spoken to Oakmont teacher Marc Fogel from his Russian prison, where he was sentenced to 14 years — twice as long as a Russian dissident speaking against one of the world’s most notorious dictators — for the crime of possessing 17 grams of medical marijuana legally dispensed in Pennsylvania.

Fogel just turned 63, the same age as Gorinov. The day Yaffa’s article about Yashin was published was the third anniversary of Fogel’s arrest. Fogel was left behind by the trade too.

I have sat in Fogel’s mother’s living room, held her hand, hugged her and listened to her voice break as she tried to stay strong for her son. I have watched Marc’s son swallow his shyness to talk to some of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C., on his father’s behalf.

It was heartbreaking to realize Fogel was not coming home in the prisoner exchange. It was worse to know he wasn’t coming home but that the deal brokered by the U.S. government was moving so many other pieces.

To hear now that Yashin didn’t want to leave is crushing.

On Wednesday, senators and U.S. representatives once again wrote to the State Department pushing Secretary Anthony Blinken to prioritize Fogel’s case and designate him as “wrongfully detained.”

They point to disparate sentencing for possession between his case and those of Russian nationals who would be given half the time, saying the difference is “substantially due to Marc’s U.S. passport.” That harsher sentencing because he is American is one of the factors for being designated wrongfully detained.

Nine Democrat and four Republican Congress members, people all over the spectrum of their respective parties, agreed this must be done. But they shouldn’t have to beg the State Department to do so. It should already have been done.

Yashin will not die in prison now, but moving him against his will steals his right to continue to fight against his government for his country in the way that he chose.

Not bringing home Fogel risks his life in a way that is disproportionate to any action he has taken. He remains “The American Prisoner in Russia Who Desperately Wants to be Freed.”