Russia freed Robert Gilman on Tuesday after Vladimir Putin reportedly approved a pardon on humanitarian grounds, ending the former US Marine’s detention in Russia on disputed charges that had kept him behind bars since 2022. He was being flown from Russia to Washington Dulles Airport, with his mother, Nina, on board.
The release was the first clear turn in a case that had grown more urgent by the day. Gilman, from Lowell, had become the focus of repeated appeals as his family said he was in a life-threatening, near catatonic state in a hospital in southwestern Russia before the pardon. By Tuesday morning, US officials said he was already on a State Department plane headed to Washington.
That trip carried its own measure of relief and uncertainty. One US official said Gilman was walking and talking, a sharp contrast to the condition his family had described. The official said, “All things considered he seems to be in good shape,” and added that doctors would evaluate him on the flight.
His case also fits into a broader pattern that Washington has been pressing on for months. The Foley Foundation says five other US citizens remain wrongfully detained in Russia, and the release of one prisoner does not change that tally. But it does show that a pardon approved in Moscow can still move when the political and humanitarian pressure becomes impossible to ignore.
Ed Markey, whose office had been working closely with Gilman’s family, said the news was deeply welcomed but long overdue. He said it was a tragedy that it took Robert’s near-death condition for his case to receive the attention needed to negotiate his release, and he urged the Trump administration to keep pressing for the release of others wrongfully detained in Russia and around the world. For Gilman, the flight to Washington is the first step back to US soil. For the others still held in Russia, it is a reminder that freedom can come, but often only after a case has nearly broken a family first.
