Russia raises jail sentence of American Robert Gilman to 10 years for assault on prison staff
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Former U.S. Marine Robert Gilman, who serves a prison sentence for assaulting a Russian police officer in 2022, attends a hearing of a court that considers new charges alleging he attacked prison staff this past August, in Voronezh, Russia, November 11, 2025. REUTERS/Vladimir Lavrov
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MOSCOW, Dec 3 - Former U.S. Marine Robert Gilman was convicted by a Russian court on Wednesday of a new assault on prison staff and sentenced to two more years in prison, where he now faces a total of 10 years, state media reported.
TASS news agency quoted his lawyer, Irina Brazhnikova, as saying he would not appeal.
Gilman, a former U.S. Marine, was first jailed in 2022 for assaulting a police officer while drunk, and his sentence was extended in 2024 following further convictions for assaultingprison officials and a state investigator.
The latest charges also related to an assault on prison staff, which Gilman did not deny.
Kommersant newspaper quoted Gilman as saying he had started violating prison rules after being threatened with being transferred from a detention centre in the city of Voronezh - where he said he was well-treated and could receive packages from relatives - to a maximum-security penal colony.
Gilman, who became an English teacher after serving in the Marines, is one of at least nine Americans still behind bars in Russia following U.S.-Russia prisoner exchanges in 2024 and earlier this year.
They include two other men with backgrounds in the U.S. military: Michael Travis Leake, an ex-paratrooper convicted of drug smuggling, and former staff sergeant Gordon Black, found guilty of stealing from his Russian girlfriend and threatening to kill her.
Gilman's supporters say his case has similarities with that of another ex-Marine, Trevor Reed, who was convicted in Russia in 2019 of endangering the lives of two police officers while drunk. Reed was freed in a prisoner swap in 2022.
Gilman's supporters in the United States say he was ill when he was first arrested, and that he was provoked while in prison into actions that led to the further charges. REUTERS
