For months, Marc Fogel had just been going through the motions of his captivity in the Russian prison system more than 5,000 miles from his home in Pittsburgh.
After being left behind in a massive, multi-nation prisoner swap in August 2024, Marc’s mood had turned foul. He no longer cared about what the guards said to him. He’d become belligerent, isolated.
“I had arguments that I’d never had before,” he said. “I lost my cool more times from August to February than I did the three years before then.”
So, on the morning of Feb. 4, 2025, when two Russian officers entered Marc’s barracks — one of them carrying a camera — he was in no mood.
“‘We need to get some pictures of you in front of the bunk,’” they told him.
He had gone through this process before, so it wasn’t significant to Marc at the time.
As he complied, he decided to mess with the guards a little.
He began to pose like a model, leaning on his bunk, sitting on a stool pretending to read for the pictures. Marc heard other guards who’d been watching laugh, and then the first two taking the pictures left.
About an hour later, another guard who spoke English returned.
“‘How many bags do you have, Marc?’” the man asked.
“‘What do you mean, ‘How many bags do I have?’ For what?’” Marc replied.
The guard repeated the question but gave no explanation.
Frustrated, Marc said he had a bag of food and bags of books.
But the guard kept repeating the question.
“He must have asked five times: ‘How many bags do you have?’”
“I said, ‘If I’m fucking leaving, one.’”
And he said, “‘Get the bag.’”