President Trump announced on Tuesday that the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah had freed Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli graduate student taken hostage in Iraq, ending more than two years of captivity for her.
Ms. Tsurkov has been released and is “now safely in the American Embassy in Iraq,” Mr. Trump said on social media.
Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, confirmed her release, writing on social media that Ms. Tsurkov had been released “as a culmination of extensive efforts exerted by our security services over the course of many months, we announce the release of the Russian citizen, Elizabeth Tsurkov.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government or from Kataib Hezbollah.
A doctoral candidate at Princeton University, Ms. Tsurkov went missing while on a research trip to Baghdad in March 2023. The Israeli government publicly announced in July 2023 that she had been abducted by Kataib Hezbollah.
Until Mr. Trump’s announcement, repeated efforts by Israeli and U.S. officials to secure her freedom had seemingly met dead ends. The Iraqi government said it had also been looking for Ms. Tsurkov, and was handling communications with Kataib Hezbollah.
Ms. Tsurkov’s relatives thanked Mr. Trump, as well as his hostage envoy, for working to secure her release. They were previously critical of the Iraqi leadership, including Mr. al-Sudani, saying it had done little to free Ms. Tsurkov from the militia.
“My entire family is incredibly happy,” Emma Tsurkov, her sister, wrote on social media after Mr. Trump’s announcement. “We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days.”
Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite paramilitary group based in Iraq, is a separate organization from the Hezbollah movement, an Iran-backed group in Lebanon. Both groups are tightly linked to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and are listed by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations.
Ms. Tsurkov, an expert on Syria and Iraq, had traveled widely across the Middle East, including to countries deeply hostile to Israel. A fluent Arabic speaker, she had also worked for an Israeli group that advocated for the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and master’s degrees in Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University and in political science at the University of Chicago. According to her website, her research at Princeton focused on the 2011 Syrian uprising and subsequent civil war.
In January 2023, Ms. Tsurkov went to Iraq to do academic research. She holds both Israeli and Russian passports and entered the country using her Russian passport, according to the Iraqi government. Israel and Iraq do not have diplomatic relations; Iraq considers Israel a hostile state and has banned all contact with it.
Several months later, an Iraqi broadcaster close to the country’s Shiite militias released a propaganda hostage video featuring Ms. Tsurkov. Human rights groups have said such videos amount to a serious violation of international humanitarian law.