A former U.S. Marine whose family said just days ago that he was near death in a Russian hospital has been freed after more than four years in custody and is on his way to a military hospital in Texas.
Robert Gilman, 32, was released after Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a pardon on humanitarian grounds, U.S. officials told Reuters. He was being flown out of Russia on a State Department plane, and officials said he was walking and talking, a marked change from the condition his advocates had described only a week earlier. His family said he had been held for 1,666 days.
“I am so grateful to President Trump for saving my brother’s life,” Gilman’s sister, Lexie Hudson, said in a statement released by the family’s advocates to Military.com. “There is no other reason that Robert is alive today other than that President Trump heard about the case and took action.”
From Russia to Texas
The release followed a medical crisis that had, in the span of weeks, turned Gilman’s case urgent. In late June, according to Global Reach, the nonprofit representing his family, Gilman fell into a dissociative stupor. This is a state in which he was unresponsive and unable to eat, and he was moved from a prison to the psychiatric ward of a civilian hospital in Voronezh.
Last week, the group said, he developed a fever and dangerously high blood pressure. His mother traveled to Russia carrying a court order to see him but was turned away by hospital officials.
Those reports, the family said, spurred the U.S. government to act. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had raised Gilman’s case with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in the Philippines in July, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In the days before the release, the State Department had told Military.com it was pressing Gilman’s case. The U.S. government was “deeply concerned about Robert Gilman’s health and continued detention in Russia,” a State Department spokesperson said, and had “raised his case repeatedly with the Russian government and has requested his release on humanitarian grounds.”
After his release, U.S. officials said, Gilman was to be flown to Washington and then to San Antonio, Texas, for medical care. His family, including the mother who had been denied a visit in Russia, has flown to Texas to meet him.
Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, cautioned that Gilman’s recovery is only beginning. “It is too early to know Robert’s long-term medical prognosis,” he said, adding that the family had asked for privacy as they reunite.
The Family’s Response
For Hudson, the release ended years of fear. Only last week, before word of the pardon, she had told Military.com she was “more afraid for my brother than I have been since this horrible nightmare started” and worried that he would die in Russian custody. She had said she had not been able to speak with her brother once since his 2022 arrest.
In statements released to Military.com after his freedom was secured, she thanked Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who had pressed his case in Congress, and the advocates who worked on it for years.
She also gave voice to a lingering anger. “The Russians treated my brother so badly,” she said. “They hurt him for no reason, other than that he was both an American and a Marine. What did they get out of this?”
Lebson credited the release to officials across the U.S. government, including Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the State Department’s office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs.
Who He Is, and How He Got Here
Gilman, who is from Massachusetts and is the son of Russian emigrants, served in the Marine Corps for one year. He later became an English teacher. His lawyers had told Russian state media that he traveled to Russia to study and to seek citizenship.
He was first detained in January 2022, after passengers reported he was drunk and causing a disturbance on a train. Transport police removed him in Voronezh, about 300 miles south of Moscow.
He later told a court he believed his drink had been spiked. That October, a Russian court convicted him of assaulting a police officer and sentenced him to three and a half years.
While in prison, Gilman was convicted of further assaults. In 2024, a court found him guilty of attacking a prison inspector, a state investigator and a guard, raising his sentence to eight years and one month. In December 2025, he was convicted of another assault on prison staff, and his sentence was increased to 10 years.
Russian state media reported that Gilman pleaded guilty to those charges. According to the Kommersant newspaper, Gilman told a court he had acted out to avoid being transferred out of the Voronezh detention center, where he said he was treated well. His family has said the original case was a misunderstanding and that he should not have been imprisoned at all.
Gilman was released through a humanitarian pardon rather than a finding that he was wrongfully held. The State Department had not designated him as wrongfully detained, a status that unlocks additional government support and that his family had said it was seeking.
Five Americans Still Being Held
Global Reach said in its statement that five other Americans it is assisting still remain imprisoned in Russia, each with deteriorating medical conditions:
Aleksandr Antonov, David Barnes, Olga Jezler, Andre Khachatoorian and Chuck Zimmerman. The group urged the Trump administration to build on Gilman’s release to bring the others home.
“It is critical that the administration uses the momentum of Robert’s release,” Lebson said, “before it is too late.”
For Gilman, what comes next is a hospital in Texas, a family waiting to speak with him for the first time in more than four years. It’s the type of recovery his advocates say will take time to understand. “I am looking forward to seeing Robert,” his sister said. “We will make sure that he gets the treatment and support that he needs.”
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