MOSCOW (AP) – A United States (US) citizen has been arrested on drug charges in Russia, officials said yesterday.
The arrest of Robert Woodland Romanov was reported by the press service of the Moscow courts. It said the Ostankino District Court ruled on Saturday to keep him in custody for two months on charges of preparing to get involved in illegal drug trafficking pending an official investigation. It didn’t offer any details of the accusations.
There was no immediate comment from the US Embassy in Moscow.
Russian media noted that the name of the accused matches that of a US citizen interviewed by the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020. In the interview, the man said he was born in the Perm region in the Ural Mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple when he was two years old.
He said he travelled to Russia to find his Russian mother and eventually met her in a TV show in Moscow.
The man told Komsomolskaya Pravda he liked living in Russia and decided to move there.
The newspaper reported that he settled in the town of Dolgoprudny just outside Moscow and was working as an English teacher at a local school.
The news about the arrest come as Washington sought to win the release of jailed Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich.
