Trevor Reed, a former US Marine who was jailed in Russia for nearly three years on charges widely condemned as trumped up, says he refused to hope for his release until the day he was released from custody because he never wanted the authorities to can take away.
In his first interviews with US media since being released in a prisoner exchange last month, the 30-year-old Texan described the harsh conditions of his 985-day captivity and his struggle to maintain physical and mental health.
"A lot of people aren't going to like what I'm going to say about this, but I kind of felt that their hope was weakness," he said in an interview with CNN that aired on May 22.
"So I didn't want to have that hope that I would, like, you know, be kind of released and then have it taken away from me."
Reid was sentenced in 2020 for attacking two Russian police officers in 2019.
He denied the charges, while the United States of America (US) questioned the fairness of the proceedings, calling his trial a "theatre of the absurd".
He returned to the US on April 27 in a prisoner swap for convicted Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, whose 20-year US prison sentence was commuted in 2010.
Reid said that while in prison, he lost 45 pounds and occasionally coughed up blood, prompting fears that he may have contracted COVID-18 or, worse, tuberculosis.
Still, he said, he never came close to breaking point, even when he was kept in extreme conditions where blood was smeared on the walls with a hole in the toilet floor.
"A mental institution, I was there with seven other inmates in a cell. All of them had serious, mental health issues — most of them," Reed told CNN.
"So over 50 percent of them in that cell were there for murder. Or, like, multiple murders, sexual assault and murder — just really disturbed individuals."
He described the inside of the cell as "a bad place".
"There was blood all over the walls – where inmates had killed themselves, or killed other inmates, or tried to," he said. "The toilet is just a hole in the floor. And there's, you know, shit everywhere, on the floor, on the walls. There's also people walking around there looking like zombies."
Reid didn't sleep for several days, fearing what his roommates might do to him.
"You felt you might be killed?" asked host Jake Tapper.
"Yes. I thought that was a possibility," Reid replied.
Reed served his sentence in Mordovia, a region about 350 kilometers east of Moscow with a long reputation as the site of Russia's toughest prisons, including Soviet-era labor camps for political prisoners.
In recent months, Reed has gone on two hunger strikes to protest prison conditions, including solitary confinement.
Now in the US, Reid said he is trying to adjust to a normal life.
"I've been hanging out with my family a lot, trying to get used to being free again," the former US Marine told ABC News.
"It takes a little time, that process. But every day I feel better."
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