Reports this week describe that nearly one-third of Moscow officials have fled Russia following new conscription efforts, with some Russian politicians directly calling out the president.

Despite these hardships, reports that a convicted drug dealer had been appointed to civic office by Putin directly seemed stranger than fiction.

The Claim

A tweet posted on October 28, 2022, claimed that Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot reportedly arrested in 2010 for transporting a large shipment of cocaine, was appointed to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation.

It claims Yaroshenko was later deported to the United States, found guilty, and then in April 2022 exchanged for “American student Trevor Reed, who was convicted in Russia.”

The tweet also included what it claims was an image of an presidential decree signed by Putin himself, though some doubted whether it was actually the same Yaroshenko.

The Facts

Negotiations on prisoner swaps between the U.S. and Russia have become particularly newsworthy since the arrest of WNBA star Brittney Griner for drug smuggling after she was found with cannabis oil when entering Russia in February.

An appeal for Griner’s release was rejected earlier this week. But hers was not the first case of drug-related arrests that led to a Moscow-Washington swap.

In 2022, a Russian pilot name Konstantin Yaroshenko was indeed freed from U.S. prison and sent back to Russia in exchange for Trevor Reed, who was detained there earlier.

Reed is a United States Marine Corps veteran, who was arrested in Russia in 2019 for alleged violence against a Russian police officer. While some media reports referred to him as an “American student,” Newsweek couldn’t find any conclusive evidence that he was enrolled at the University of Texas or elsewhere at the time of his arrest.

Reed’s family maintained his innocence, while officials in the U.S. said Reed had been unjustly detained. President Joe Biden said Reed’s return was “a testament to the priority my Administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad.”

Yaroshenko, by contrast, was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and convicted to 20 years in prison for conspiring to import $100 million worth of cocaine, in a case brought to trial through extensive international cooperation.

In a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2011, then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Konstantin Yaroshenko agreed to play a vital role in a vast, international drug conspiracy that attempted to transform the country of Liberia into a trans-shipment hub for ton quantities of cocaine.

“But unbeknownst to his co-conspirators, the same Liberian officials they attempted to bribe were working in lockstep with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration to take him and his co-conspirators down. Today’s sentence is the latest manifestation of those historic efforts.”

The political promotion part is also accurate. Yaroshenko does appear to have been granted membership of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation by “Decree Of The President Of the Russian Federation”, as is stated in documents released on the Russian government’s “Official Internet Portal of Legal Information.”

Russia’s Civic Chamber describes its purpose as “to help citizens interact with government officials and local authorities in order to take into account the needs and interests of citizens, to protect their rights and freedoms in the process of shaping and implementing state policies, and to exercise public control over the activities of executive authorities.”

Its website indicates that Yaroshenko was among the “40 appointments approved by an executive order of the President of the Russian Federation.”

While it may seem counterintuitive that former drug smuggler would find himself elevated to the country’s Civic Chamber, similar decisions by Putin in the past signal a penchant for promoting those who haven fallen foul of Western courts.

Among other distinguished members of the Civic Chamber is Maria Butina, a former Russian spy, who was jailed in the U.S. after pleading guilty to a felony charges of a conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia. Upon her release and return to Russia she became a prominent media figure and is now a member of the Duma.

Yaroshenko has previously revealed plans to engage in “social work,” part of which, he claimed, was to unveil to the world “the facts of violations by the American authorities of fundamental international laws.”

Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.

The Ruling

True.

Konstantin Yaroshenko was convicted in 2011 for his involvement in a major drug smuggling operation.

It is also true that he was part of a prisoner exchange that also included Trevor Reed, a former U.S. marine.

In October 2022, Yaroshenko was indeed appointed to civic office by the Russian president’s decree, having earlier expressed an interest in “human rights advocacy” and “social work.”

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team