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Marine veteran Paul Whelan, jailed for the last three years in Russia over espionage charges the United States says are bogus, appeared for the first time in video released by a Kremlin-backed news network.
The video, reported by multiple news organizations and posted by state-owned English language network RT, showed Whelan in settings that included eating in a cafeteria. He declined an interviewer’s request to ask him questions, according to the New York Times.
“Today was the first time I’ve seen what he really looks like since June 2020,” his twin brother David Whelan said in an email to supporters, the Times and Reuters both reported.
“So thank you, Russia Today, because although your reporting is the worst sort of propaganda and you are the mouthpiece for war criminals, at least I could see what Paul looks like after all of these years,” he wrote.
The video was posted by CBS News on Tuesday.
Arrested in Russia in 2018, Whelan, who worked as a security executive, was convicted of spying charges two years later and sentenced to 16 years in a notorious Russian penal colony in Mordovia.
He’s denied the accusations — and the Biden administration has designated Whelan as “wrongfully detained,” a legal term that means charges are baseless and that he was targeted primarily because he is an American citizen, Reuters noted.
In the video, Whelan is seen dressed in the prison’s black uniform and matching hat — and appears in different parts of the lockup with other inmates, working on a sewing machine, and at the cafeteria, RT footage showed.
David Whelan told Reuters that RT — which used to be known as Russia Today — was at the prison in May to film Whelan and when he declined to participate, prison staff retaliated against him.
In the video, Whelan tells the questioner he would not answer questions, Reuters noted.
Aside from diplomatic visits, communication with Whelan has included an interview he gave to CNN in May.
The Biden administration has carried out two prisoner swaps with Russia amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, Russia released Marine veteran Trevor Reed, who’d been convicted there in 2019, in exchange for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko.
In a December 2022 prisoner swap with Russia, Washington secured the release of basketball star Brittney Griner in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout.
The news outlet noted Secretary of State Antony Blinken had talked on the phone with Whelan, and that the Biden administration has insisted it’s doing all it can to bring him home.
Russia is also holding American citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges that carry up to 20 years in prison. Gershkovich was arrested in March and has appealed against the latest extension of his pre-trial jailing in Moscow.
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.