Ex-US Marine Whelan to request transfer from Russia to U.S. to serve sentence -RIA

The defense team of former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, sentenced last year to 16 years in a Russian jail, will ask a Moscow court to move him to the United States to serve his sentence, the RIA news agency cited one of his lawyers as saying on Wednesday.

The United States has demanded Whelan's release. He was detained in late 2018 and convicted last June of espionage, a charge he denies.

Whelan had said he hoped to be freed as part of a prisoner swap, a topic President Vladimir Putin discussed with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden at a summit last month.