MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The White House is not considering possibility of Ukrainian national Nadezhda Savchenko exchange for Russian citizens Konstantin Yaroshenko and Viktor Bout, both serving a lengthy jail terms in US prisons, spokesman for the US Embassy in Moscow William Stevens said Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, media reported about confidential talks on the Savchenko swap for the Russian nationals imprisoned in the United States, including alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who were snatched while on foreign soil and handed over to US authorities for trial in past years. Moscow describes both incidents as kidnappings.
"No, we are not considering this possibility," Stevens told RIA Novosti.
Yaroshenko, sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to import more than $100 million worth of cocaine into the United States, was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and was later extradited to the United States by Liberian authorities, while Bout, convicted on charges of conspiring to kill US nationals and conspiracy to sell weapons to a designated terrorist group (the FARC) in Colombia, was extradited from Thailand to the United States and is now serving a 25 year sentence.
Last week, Savchenko received a 22-year prison sentence after being convicted in a Russian court of directing artillery that killed Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin in eastern Ukraine on June 17, 2014.
