US citizen gets prison on drug charges in Russia after he went back to find birth mother

A US citizen adopted from Russia as a toddler, has been sentenced to a 12-and-a-half-year prison term after returning to Russia to find his birth mother. Robert Woodland was arrested on drug charges after choosing to remain in the country following a reunion with his biological family on a Russian TV show.
A Moscow court found him guilty of attempting to traffic a large quantity of drugs as part of an organized group and sentenced him recently.During his court appearance, images showed Woodland with a shaved head inside a glass courtroom box, briefly smiling before the verdict was read aloud.
Identified by Russian media as an English teacher interviewed by Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020, Woodland was born in Russia’s Perm region in 1991 and adopted by an American couple at age 2. As an adult, he returned to Russia to reconnect with his birth mother on state television, deciding to settle in Dolgoprudny and teach English at a local school.
However, his story took a tragic turn on Jan. 5 when he was detained on drug charges, although his lawyer, Stanislav Kshevitskii, asserted Moscow lacked evidence of drug sales tied to Woodland.
The conviction follows a series of American arrests in Russia, amid allegations from Washington of political leverage during the Ukraine conflict.
Western officials have long suspected that Moscow detains Western citizens to use them as bargaining tools in prisoner exchanges. US law prohibits paying ransoms to terrorist groups, but successive administrations have been willing to make concessions to other countries to secure the release of Americans.