Russia raises jail sentence of American Robert Gilman to 10 years for assault on prison staff

A Russian court has handed former U.S. Marine Robert Gilman an additional two-year prison sentence after convicting him of assaulting prison staff, Russian state media reported on Wednesday. The ruling extends his total prison term to 10 years.

According to TASS, Gilman’s lawyer Irina Brazhnikova said he would not appeal the verdict. The new charges stem from an incident involving an alleged assault on prison personnel, which Gilman did not deny during proceedings.

Gilman was first jailed in 2022 for assaulting a police officer while intoxicated and has since faced multiple extensions to his sentence for further alleged assaults on prison officials and a state investigator.

The Kommersant newspaper quoted Gilman as saying he began violating prison rules after being threatened with transfer from a detention facility in Voronezh—where he said conditions were decent and he could receive parcels from relatives—to a maximum-security penal colony.

Before his arrest, Gilman, who served in the U.S. Marines, worked as an English teacher. His case has drawn comparisons to that of Trevor Reed, another ex-Marine who was convicted in Russia in 2019 and later released in a 2022 prisoner exchange between Washington and Moscow.

Gilman is among at least nine American citizens currently imprisoned in Russia following a series of high-profile U.S.–Russia prisoner swaps in 2024 and early 2025. Among them are two other former U.S. servicemen: Michael Travis Leake, an ex-paratrooper convicted of drug smuggling, and Gordon Black, a former staff sergeant found guilty of theft and threatening to kill his Russian partner.

Gilman’s supporters in the United States maintain that he was ill at the time of his initial arrest and was provoked while in custody into actions that led to his additional convictions. They have urged Washington to pursue diplomatic efforts for his release, citing deteriorating health and alleged mistreatment.

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