Former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who was released from Russia in a prisoner swap last year, has been injured while fighting in Ukraine, the State Department confirmed Tuesday.
Trevor Reed was injured several weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
"I want to be explicitly clear about something. Mr. Reed was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the US government," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said in a statement. "And as I indicated, we have been incredibly clear warning American citizens, American nationals, not to travel to Ukraine, let alone participate in fighting. As you know, we are not in a place to provide assistance to evacuate private US citizens from Ukraine, including those Americans who may decide to travel to Ukraine to participate in fighting."
Reed is being treated at a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, a defense official told NBC News.
NBC 5 reached out to Reed's family in North Texas but has not yet received a reply. NBC News is reporting Reed's parents, Joey and Paula, are “politely declining to comment” on the story, according to a family spokesman.
Reed was released from Russian custody in a prisoner swap in April 2022 in exchange for a Russian pilot, Konstantin Taroshenko, imprisoned in the U.S. for a drug trafficking conspiracy. Reed was held in Russian custody for nearly three years until he was released.
The Messenger was the first to report Reed's injury.
Last summer, Reed filed a petition with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention asking them to begin the process of holding the Russian government accountable for his imprisonment.
The 13,000-word petition said Reed was illegally and inhumanely imprisoned for nearly three years and during that time was subjected to horrific living conditions, solitary confinement, malnutrition and physical abuse.
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WHAT HAPPENED TO REED?
After an honorable discharge from the Marines, Reed returned to college at the University of North Texas near Dallas in 2017 and studied international relations and Russia — the native tongue of his girlfriend. Two years later, he traveled to Moscow for a summer of learning the language and visiting her family.
A week before he was scheduled to return home, Reed attended a party where his family said he was encouraged to drink a large amount of vodka. He became nauseous while sharing a ride home, got out of the car and began running around a busy street, prompting a call to the police.
Reed was charged with assaulting the officers who picked him up. Russian authorities alleged he grabbed the arm of the officer driving him to a police station, causing the officer to swerve into another lane, and that he elbowed another officer who tried to intervene. The then-28-year-old was jailed in Moscow for nearly a year before going on trial in 2020.
Russian investigators didn’t give Reed’s defense team video that was recorded inside the police car and his parents expressed other concerns about the case, citing what they said was missing evidence and contradictory accounts by the officers. After Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison, the U.S. ambassador visited him behind bars.
Reed's 985-day imprisonment ended in April 2022, the result of an unexpected U.S.-Russia prisoner swap with the U.S. trading a convicted Russian drug trafficker for Reed.
