Parents of former US Marine call for the release of their son from Russia, Putin indicates 'prisoner swap'

Trevor Reed, a 29-year-old from Texas, was sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia last year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated on Friday that he’d be willing to talk about a potential ‘prisoner swap’ between two former U.S. Marines, Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan, for Russians being held in the U.S. Reed, a 29-year-old from Texas, fell into the hands of Russian police after a party in Moscow in the summer of 2019 while visiting his girlfriend. He was initially taken to a police station to sober up but after agents from Russia’s FSB intelligence service arrived to question him, he was abruptly charged with assaulting two police officers, his family said. He was sentenced to nine years in prison last July in a trial that was denounced as absurd by the U.S. embassy in Moscow. "In any real court system in the world, there’s no way he would have been convicted,” said his father, Joey Reed. During the court hearings, the two police officers struggled to recall the alleged incident and contradicted themselves so much that at one stage in a session, attended by ABC News, even the judge began to laugh at them.