Russia sentences US citizen to 13 years in drug case, Tass says

A Russian court sentenced a U.S. citizen to 13 years in prison for attempting to sell narcotics, the latest in a series of cases against Americans.

Michael Travis Leake was found guilty of attempting to sell drugs on a large scale, the Tass news service reported Thursday, citing the court in Moscow. Leake was ordered to serve the term in a maximum security penal colony, the agency reported.

Leake, who was detained in June 2023, is a musician and former paratrooper who has lived in Russia for many years, the BBC has reported.

Earlier this month, another Russian court sentenced U.S. citizen Robert Woodland Romanov to 12 years and six months for attempted drug trafficking.

A court in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg is currently holding the espionage trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in the city in March last year while on a reporting assignment. He and the newspaper have denied Russian Federal Security Service allegations that he was spying.

The State Department has declared Gershkovich to be “wrongfully detained,” allowing the U.S. to negotiate on his behalf. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that talks were taking place between the two countries on a possible swap deal and that the U.S. was taking energetic steps to secure the reporter’s release.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in December that President Joe Biden’s administration made a “very serious proposal” to free Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, but that Russia “balked” at the offer. Whelan was jailed in 2020 for 16 years on spying charges he denied.