Russia releases second US citizen in a week as a gesture of ‘goodwill’ as America and Kremlin prepare for Ukraine peace talks in Saudi

Russia has released a second US citizen in a week as a gesture of goodwill to Donald Trump ahead of Ukraine peace talks between America and the Kremlin in Saudi Arabia.

Kalob Wayne Byers, 28, a nurse and musician, was identified as the American who was detained at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on February 7 on drug smuggling charges.

The release – described by his parents as a ‘miracle’ – comes immediately ahead of delicate US-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia on ending the three year conflict.

Byers had been held along with his Russian fiancée Naida Mambetova, 24, accused of possessing cannabis-laced marmalade. It was not immediately clear if she had been released.

The American could have been jailed for up to ten years after being held at the Russian airport, reports have stated.

A court initially ordered that he be held in detention for 30 days after he was accused of attempting to smuggle a ‘significant amount’ of drugs into the country after flying in from Istanbul. But he had claimed he needed the cannabis products for epilepsy.  

Byers is the second US citizen released by Russia amid a thawing of relations ahead of talks demanded by Trump, who insists that Vladimir Putin does want to end the war.

Last week, Russia pardoned Marc Fogel, 63, a teacher from Pennsylvania who taught at the Anglo-American School of Moscow. He had been detained in 2021, also on drug charges.

He was swapped with Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik, 45, a cryptocurrency expert, who had been jailed in the US on money laundering charges.

Byers’ parents posted: ‘He is now in American custody and at the US embassy waiting for his flight home.

‘He is now back on the medicine that helps keep his epilepsy under control but he was without his medication for eight days.’

It comes as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning landed in Saudi Arabia ahead of Ukraine peace talks with Russian officials.

The US Secretary of State spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday, and tomorrow will meet Russian officials alongside Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz and White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.  It was not immediately clear who they would meet from Russia.

But although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is also in the region, a senior Ukrainian government source told the BBC that Kyiv had not been invited to take part in the talks.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the talks would take place on Tuesday in the Saudi capital Riyadh, citing unnamed sources. But Ukraine officials and other European leaders claim they were not informed that the bilateral meetings were taking place.

The talks will be among the first high-level in-person discussions in years between Russian and US officials and are meant to precede a meeting between the US and Russian presidents.

It comes after President Donald Trump last week spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone and ordered top officials to begin negotiations on the war, which he repeatedly vowed to end during his presidential campaign. 

Other US citizens including ballerina Ksenia Karelina, 34, remain in jail in Russia amid rumours of a coming major exchange.

She is serving 12 years under Vladimir Putin’s draconian laws for paying $51.80 to an organisation in the US offering charitable aid to Kyiv. The US says she is wrongfully detained.

The Los Angeles spa worker was arrested in February 2024 while visiting family in Yekaterinburg. After discovering the charity donation on her phone, the FSB security service accused her of collecting funds for the benefit of the Ukrainian army.

Stephen James Hubbard, who turns 73 on Thursday, was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison in October after being convicted in a closed court in Moscow of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine. Russian state media said he pleaded guilty.

An English teacher who had previously lived in Japan and Cyprus, Hubbard had been living in the Ukrainian town of Izium and was arrested after Russian forces took control of the city in 2022.

His relatives rejected claims that Hubbard served for Ukraine, pointing to his advanced age. He was designated in January as wrongfully detained.

Gordon Black, an active duty US staff sergeant based in South Korea, Black was detained last May in Russia’s Far East on suspicion of stealing money from his Russian girlfriend.

A court in June found Black guilty of stealing $104 from the woman and threatening to kill her, sentencing him to three years and nine months in prison. He later lost an appeal hearing.

Musician and former US paratrooper, Michael Leake was sentenced to 13 years in prison last July for drug smuggling.

It was not clear how Leake pleaded to the charges, filed following his arrest in June 2023.

Robert Gilman received a sentence of seven years and one month last October. An ex-Marine, he was found guilty by a Russian court of assaulting a prison officer and a state investigator at a penal colony in Voronezh, south of the Russian capital.

Gilman was already in prison at the time of the offence, serving a 3-1/2-year sentence for attacking a police officer while drunk, a charge he was convicted of in October 2022.

Daniel Joseph Schneider was sentenced to six years in prison in September by a court in the Kaliningrad region for kidnapping his own son, after he tried to leave Russia with the four-year-old without permission from the boy’s mother.

Schneider was detained near Poland by Russia’s border service while trying to cross the border in a forest swamp, the court said.

Joseph Tater was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for ‘petty hooliganism’ after he was alleged to have abused staff at a Moscow hotel, which he denied. 

Russian news agencies say he is also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer, which carries up to five years in prison.

A court in September denied his appeal to be released from pre-trial detention.

US citizen Robert Woodland, who was adopted from Russia as a child, had moved back to Russia and was working as an English teacher when he was arrested on charges of attempting to sell drugs.

He was sentenced on July 4 last year to 12-1/2 years in prison. His lawyer said Woodland had partially admitted guilt.

Currently serving a 3-1/2-year sentence for bribery, Eugene Spector, who was born in Russia and then moved to the US, was charged last August with espionage.

Before his arrest in 2021, he served as chairman of the board of Medpolymerprom Group, a company specialising in cancer-curing drugs, state media said. Spector had pleaded guilty to helping bribe an assistant to an ex-Russian deputy prime minister. It was not clear how he pleaded to the espionage charge.

And David Barnes was sentenced by a Russian court in February 2024 to 21 years on charges of abusing his two sons in the United States.

He had been involved in a custody dispute with his Russian ex-wife.

The allegations had previously been investigated in Texas, where authorities found no grounds to charge him.