Putin, Trump Did Not Discuss Case of Jailed Pilot Yaroshenko - Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump did not discuss the case of Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, currently serving a 20-year sentence in a US jail, during their Monday summit in Helsinki, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

"The issue of Yaroshenko's case was not brought up," Peskov told the Izvestia newspaper.

Yaroshenko was captured in Liberia in 2010, and was jailed a year later in the United States on charges of conspiring to import drugs into the country. In 2016, the New York Court of Appeals refused to revise the pilot's sentence.

In a letter to Russian High Commissioner for Human Rights Tatiana Moskalkova in July, Yaroshenko complained about being tortured and called for a fair trial where violations of his rights would be made public.

Last week, Moskalkova said she hoped that Putin and Trump would discuss Yaroshenko’s case as well as a possibility of his pardon.