Trevor Reed, the U.S. Marine who spent three years in a Russian prison before being exchanged for a Russian smuggler, has been wounded while fighting for Ukraine.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel verified the news Tuesday and confirmed that Reed had been taken to Germany for medical care. Patel did not offer much detail other than to say Reed “was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the US government,” according to Zero Hedge.
According to The Messenger, which broke the story, Reed suffered shrapnel wounds when a mine he stepped on exploded. Reed was being treated in Kyiv but had sought to be transferred to an American military base in Germany or Poland.
Reed’s evacuation out of Ukraine apparently hit a roadblock when Ukrainian officials would not let him leave. Reed reportedly threatened to take his story to the press, and that may have played a role in persuading U.S. and Ukrainian officials to expedite his eventual evacuation, per The Messenger.
U.S. officials are privately agitated by Reed’s situation, according to The Messenger, as they expended a great deal of effort to gain his release from Russia in the first place and the administration is very sensitive about negative press coming out of Ukraine.
Reed’s decision to fight against the country that imprisoned him may negatively impact the cases of The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and security executive Paul Whelan, two other Americans currently held in Russia that the U.S. is trying to bring home, according to the Associated Press.
In 2019, Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court after he was convicted of assaulting a police officer while drunk. He was released in an April 2022 prisoner swap, in which Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the U.S., was released, as reported by The Dallas Express.
At some point after his release, Reed joined a group of mercenaries fighting on the side of Ukraine against Russia, per The Messenger.
