MOSCOW — An American citizen arrested on drug charges in Moscow amid rising tensions between Russia and the United States appeared in court Thursday and his case was adjourned until mid-May.
Robert Woodland faces charges of trafficking large quantities of illegal drugs as part of an organized group, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. He was remanded in custody in January and the trial began in the Ostankino District Court at the end of March.
“Our position is that, so to speak, there is no evidence of drug sales in the case materials,” his lawyer Stanislav Kshevitskii told reporters.
The court set the date of his next hearing for May 14.
In January, the U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports of the recent detention of a U.S. citizen and noted that it “has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. citizens abroad,” but He declined to comment further, citing privacy considerations. . The US embassy in Moscow issued a similar statement at the time.
Russian media noted that the name of the accused matches that of a US citizen interviewed by the popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020.
In the interview, the man said he was born in the Perm region of the Ural Mountains in 1991 and was adopted by an American couple when he was 2 years old. He said he traveled to Russia to find her Russian mother and eventually met her on a television show in Moscow.
The man told Komsomolskaya Pravda that he liked living in Russia and decided to move there. The newspaper reported that he settled in the town of Dolgoprudny, outside Moscow, and worked as an English teacher at a local school.
Arrests of Americans in Russia have become increasingly common as relations between Moscow and Washington fall to Cold War lows. Washington accuses Moscow of attacking its citizens and using them as political bargaining chips, but Russian officials insist they all broke the law.
Some have been exchanged for Russians held in the United States, while for others, the prospects of being freed in an exchange are less clear.