Update: A US citizen was detained in Russia on suspicion of narcotics trafficking.

As tensions rise over the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, Robert Romanov Woodland, a dual citizen of the United States and Russia, is the most recent American detained pending a criminal trial in the nation.

As tensions rise over the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, an American citizen has been arrested and imprisoned in Russia on drug-related allegations, according to authorities on Tuesday. He is the most recent American incarcerated pending a criminal prosecution in the nation.

Robert Romanov Woodland was ordered to be held for two months as part of a “pre-trial restriction,” according to a statement issued by the Ostankino District Court of Moscow on January 6 but made public on Tuesday.

He is charged with “illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, production, and processing of psychotropic substances, narcotic drugs, or their analogues,” according to the release.

According to Russia’s Criminal Code, a person found guilty of this offense faces an infinite fine in addition to an eight to twenty year prison sentence.

According to a court document, Woodland is unemployed at the moment, holds both Russian and American citizenship, and has no criminal history.

Additionally, the document states that the likelihood of him going into hiding justifies his pre-trial custody and that investigators “believe criminal activity is his main source of income.”

According to the document, Woodland’s lawyer claimed that home arrest would be a better course of action than jail, but the court rejected this argument since there was insufficient medical proof to support Woodland’s eligibility for a pre-trial detention facility.

The State Department and the American Embassy in Moscow did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Woodland resides in Dolgoprudyy, a neighborhood north of Moscow, and has experience teaching English, according to his Facebook page. Upstate New York hamlet of Saranac Lake was his school’s location.

Woodland stated on his Instagram page that he was reared in the United States but was born in Russia.

Woodland stated in a 2020 interview with the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda that he was adopted by American parents for a $10,000 fee, having been born in the Perm region of Russia in 1991.

He informed the newspaper that he had first seen his biological mother, a Russian, on a state-run Channel 1 TV program a year prior. After seeing her house, he claimed, he made the decision to remain in Russia.

Journalist Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal is another American citizen who is being held in custody in Russia pending trial. His imprisonment was prolonged by a Moscow court in November until at least January 30.

Both Gershkovich and his employer refute the accusations made by the authorities that he was spying on the Russian military and argue that he was unlawfully jailed while doing his job as a journalist.

The United States claims that Gershkovich is among several of its nationals who are unjustly being held in the nation, including Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine. Reporter Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual Russian-American, was arrested at the end of the previous year and accused of not registering as a foreign agent.