The Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this Tuesday that Robert Gilman, a former U.S. Marine detained in Russia for more than four years, is on his way home to reunite with his family and receive medical care in the United States.
In a message posted on his official account, Rubio expressed gratitude to Russia for cooperating with special envoy Steve Witkoff to secure the release and allow Gilman to receive treatment on U.S. soil.
Gilman was arrested in January 2022 in Voronezh, accused of assaulting a Russian police officer while he was unwell and in transit to the United States embassy in Moscow, where he was headed to replace a damaged passport before traveling to Moldova for work.
A Russian court sentenced him in October of that year to four and a half years in prison in a penal colony. Subsequently, his sentence was extended to ten years following new accusations of assaulting correctional staff, a prison inspector, and other state officials.
In the months leading up to his release, Gilman's health had severely deteriorated. Since June 2026, he had been in a state of dissociative stupor, was fed through a tube, and could neither communicate nor attend court hearings.
In July, he was transferred from a prison hospital to a civil psychiatric ward, and at the beginning of August, his sister and advocacy groups warned that he might be near death. Gilman's mother was blocked from visiting him in the hospital despite having a court order.
U.S. authorities confirmed that the release was not a prisoner exchange: Russia did not demand anything in return and released the individual on humanitarian grounds.
The negotiations were led by Witkoff, who has become the main diplomatic channel between the Trump administration and Moscow, and who had already negotiated the release of Professor Marc Fogel in February 2025.
Rubio noted that Gilman "joins more than 100 Americans that President Trump has freed during his second term," a figure that the White House had already reported in March 2026 when accounting for cases in Russia, Iran, and other countries.
At the same time, the Secretary of State warned that the task is not complete. “Although we value this positive step, we continue to seek the immediate return of all other Americans unjustly detained,” he wrote, explicitly mentioning Stephen Hubbard, an English teacher captured by Russian forces in Ukraine in April 2022 and sentenced to nearly seven years on charges of being a mercenary that Washington considers unfounded.
The State Department classifies Hubbard as wrongfully detained, and his family and Ukrainian officials maintain that he was a civilian, not a combatant.
According to information from Al Jazeera regarding Gilman's release, Hubbard remains the only American formally classified by Washington as unjustly detained in Russia.
"The president will not rest until all wrongfully detained Americans are home," Rubio concluded.
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