The Trump administration is preparing to release a Russian cybercriminal as part of a prisoner exchange that led to the release of an American schoolteacher from a Russian prison, three U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
Officials were preparing to release Alexander Vinnik, who pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2024, to Russia as part of a swap for Marc Fogel, according to the three officials. Mr. Vinnik is a nonviolent offender and is forfeiting tens of millions of dollars in assets in the exchange, one of the officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic negotiations.
In a post on his website Truth Social, President Trump said late Wednesday morning that he had just had a “highly productive” call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to begin working toward a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday, as he awaited Mr. Fogel’s arrival back in the United States, that his administration had traded for “not much” — suggesting he had gotten the better of the deal — and later described it as a “very fair” exchange.
But they did see the exchange as an effort to establish good will as the administration looks for ways to bring about a peace settlement in the war in Ukraine that Russia began almost three years ago.
Mr. Fogel’s release was negotiated by Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s decades-long friend and his Mideast envoy, whose portfolio has expanded to helping find a way to end the war in Ukraine. Mr. Witkoff flew to Russia on his private jet, then brought Mr. Fogel home on that plane, and to the White House to meet with Mr. Trump.
“I think they had a great friendship,” Mr. Witkoff said outside the White House on Wednesday, referring to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. “I think now it’s going to continue, and I think it’s a really good thing for the world.”
Mr. Witkoff’s visit to Russia was the first by a senior American official since before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The trip, according to two people with knowledge of the events, was part of a new outreach by the Trump administration to the Kremlin, one that could result in the rebuilding of a channel for communication between the White House and Mr. Putin.
The Fox News host Sean Hannity, who is a close friend of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Witkoff, reported on Tuesday that Mr. Witkoff held a meeting with Mr. Putin that lasted more than three hours. Mr. Witkoff declined to address that in a separate interview with Fox News on Wednesday morning, but he credited several Trump administration officials with helping work toward the exchange, including the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and the C.I.A. director John Ratcliffe.
Mr. Trump has appointed Keith Kellogg, a retired three-star general, to be his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. But he has also assigned Mr. Witkoff a role in trying to work the Russian side of the peace deal. Mr. Witkoff has discussed the conflict with some of his contacts in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Mr. Witkoff told reporters that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, as well as a “gentleman from Russia, his name is Kirill” were key to securing Mr. Fogel’s release. Mr. Witkoff appeared to be referring to Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who is a close associate of Mr. Putin, has long fostered ties with Mr. bin Salman, and sought a back channel to Mr. Trump during his first term.
Mr. Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine with talks between the two sides and has said he wants to stop the loss of life by both sides and stem the huge amount of money the United States has spent supporting Ukraine’s defense.
Mr. Zelensky is preparing for key meetings with senior American officials at a major security conference in Germany later this week.
Mr. Vinnik was being prepared to travel to Russia early Wednesday, according to one of the U.S. officials. Mr. Vinnik was charged in 2017 with overseeing a black market Bitcoin exchange, known as BTC-E, that laundered money. Federal prosecutors said the exchange facilitated ransomware attacks, identity theft and other crimes.
Mr. Vinnik was arrested in Greece in July 2017, and the indictment against him said he had directed the operations of the exchange.
At the time of the arrest, the Justice Department said the Bitcoin exchange had laundered more than $4 billion and was used by more than 700,000 people. The arrest of Mr. Vinnik led to the exchange, one of the largest at the time, being shut down.
Mr. Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering last May. Justice Department officials said Mr. Vinnik ran the exchange with the intent to promote cybercrime.
He had earlier, in December 2020, been convicted by a French court and sentenced to five years in prison. He was extradited to the United States in 2024 and was then held in U.S. prisons.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said earlier Wednesday that intense talks between the United States and Russia had led to “both the release of Fogel as well as one of the citizens of the Russian Federation currently held in detention facilities in the United States.” He said Russia would not identify the prisoner until after his release.
Mr. Fogel, who had spent more than three years in a Russian prison,
was greeted at the White House Tuesday night by Mr. Trump, whom he praised and thanked for arranging his release.
Mr. Fogel, 63, had worked at the Anglo-American School of Moscow for almost 10 years before being arrested at a Moscow airport in August 2021. He was found to have been traveling with cannabis, which his lawyer has said was intended to alleviate back pain. Mr. Fogel was convicted in June 2022 for what the Russian authorities said was engaging in “large-scale drug smuggling” and sentenced to 14 years in a high-security prison.
The U.S. State Department publicly declared Mr. Fogel “wrongfully detained” in December. The designation — described by his family as long overdue — meant that Mr. Fogel’s case shifted to a special State Department office focusing on the release of hostages held abroad.
Mr. Fogel’s family said in December that he had endured “unimaginable hardship” in prison while other Americans held in Russia were brought home in three different prisoner swaps.
Mr. Vinnik’s expected release in exchange for Mr. Fogel marks a striking departure from the tight choreography of prisoner swaps between Moscow and Washington during the Biden administration.
In high-profile deals like the ones that freed the basketball star Brittney Griner in 2022 and the journalist Evan Gershkovich in 2024, the Americans were flown to airports in a third country, where they were exchanged for Russians on the tarmac.
The delayed approach allowed Mr. Trump to claim an unalloyed win on Tuesday without discussing what the United States gave up in return for Mr. Fogel.
Mr. Trump said that “we were treated very nicely by Russia,” and that the deal could pave the way to an end to the war in Ukraine. He added, “I hope that’s the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war.”
Mr. Trump’s warm words toward Russia after Mr. Fogel’s release were shown extensively on Russian state television on Wednesday. Russian commentators praised Mr. Fogel’s release as a clever step by Mr. Putin to give Mr. Trump the political cover he needs to move forward with policies favorable to Russia.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst in Moscow, said in a telephone interview that by winning Mr. Fogel’s release, “Trump got the right to do something good for Russia.”
Mr. Markov suggested that Mr. Trump could start lifting sanctions against Russia and push for a Ukraine peace deal on Russia’s terms — or simply stop delivering weapons to Ukraine.
