Excitement in Moscow

American arrested for a pack of jelly babies

Vnukovo Airport is located around 30 kilometers southwest of Moscow's city center.(Bild: kichigin19 - stock.adobe.com)

It is well known that Russia is not a good destination for Western tourists in times like these. At Moscow's Vnukovo airport, for example, an American was "fished out" during a check and detained on flimsy grounds.

While the Kremlin continues to seal itself off from the rest of the world, it is also trying to exert pressure on other states by arresting foreigners - they serve as a bargaining chip for the possible exchange of prisoners, so to speak. A US citizen has now been taken away by the police in the Russian capital. The reason: he was carrying a packet of hemp gummy bears in his luggage, as reported by the Telegram channel "Mash". The man was immediately taken into custody.

(Bild: Mikhail Starodubov stock.adobe)

He is accused of smuggling drugs "in significant quantities". The penalty for this in Russia is between five and ten years in prison. The American is said to have been carrying "half a kilo" of marijuana. However, "Mash" assumes that the quantity refers to the total weight of the fruit gum and is therefore completely exaggerated.

Here is an excerpt from the court file.(Bild: mos-gorsud.ru)

The Kremlin's arbitrariness par excellence
The case is reminiscent of the American Marc Fogel, who was released on Tuesday as part of a prisoner exchange between Washington and Moscow. He had worked as a teacher at a US school in Moscow. According to the Russian authorities, he enjoyed diplomatic immunity as an employee of the US embassy in Moscow until May 2021. In June 2022, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for drug smuggling after marijuana and cannabis oil were found in his luggage during a customs inspection at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. Fogel claimed to have needed them for medical purposes.

US President Donald Trump saw the exchange as a "sign of goodwill" on the part of Russia and praised the fact that "we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine". Apparently, however, it is not quite that easy to calm the waters.