Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on 2 November that Russian security forces have extracted US citizen Daniel Martindale from “territory controlled by Ukrainian armed forces.”
According to the report, Martindale had been providing Moscow with coordinates of Ukrainian military facilities since 11 February 2022.
At a press conference held at the Russia Today media group center in Moscow, Martindale said that for the past two years, “he’s been doing everything to save Russian soldiers’ lives” and “secure some future for Russians in Ukraine,” claiming the desire to continue doing this.
Reuters notes that the US Embassy in Russia has not yet commented on the Martindale case, which had not been previously reported in the media.
Martindale displayed his current passport during the press conference and requested Russian citizenship. He emphasized that he was not coerced and expressed confidence that “Russia will win in Ukraine.”
According to his VKontakte social media profile, Martindale was born in 1991 and studied at a private university in Indiana. The profile indicates he speaks Russian, Polish, and Chinese and lists Polish and Chinese phone numbers for contact. Photos from 2018 show him participating in international student sports events in Vladivostok, Russia, while in 2020, he apparently lived in Poland.
The profile describes him as a libertarian who has shown interest in the case of former Khabarovsk governor Sergei Furgal and appears to support the Free Christian Church in Palowice, Poland. His last VKontakte post was made on 28 February 2022, four days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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