When Robin Stultz got the text from her brother one morning last June, she thought he was joking; he’d always had a playful sense of humor.
“Great, I’m with the Russian Navy now,” he texted.
At the time, Chuck Zimmerman was sailing from the United States to New Zealand, the culmination of a lifelong ambition to sail the world.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Robin texted back. Then, perhaps wondering if her brother wasn’t joking, she added: “You ok?”
Zimmerman replied: “So far so good.”
More sibling banter continued until Zimmerman texted: “Following me all the way — 22 miles. In a 150-ft ship with guns.”
“Holy schmokes!!” Robin texted back. She still wasn’t sure if he was messing with her. “Pics or it didn’t happen! Lolol.”
Her brother’s reply was a photograph: of the Russian gunboat that was, indeed, forcing him to port in the Black Sea.
That began an ordeal that, nine months later, has the Salem High School graduate languishing in a Russian prison, a trio of Virginia lawmakers working on ways to get him out and one of them — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner — faulting the Trump administration for not doing enough to pressure Vladimir Putin to let the electrician-turned-sailor go.
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Zimmerman’s case is both unusual and painfully common. The painfully common part is that at least 10 Americans are currently being held in Russian prisons. “It’s a standard practice throughout Russian history,” says Keir Giles, who follows Russian policy for Chatham House, a Great Britain-based think tank. “They acquire Americans, until they’re exchanged or bribed.”
The practice has accelerated under Putin, who has been more “blatant,” Giles says, about holding Americans as prisoners because the Russian president has less interest in a good relationship with the United States than many of his Soviet predecessors. Often these captured Americans are simply “targets of opportunity” who make some small misstep — such as the basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in Moscow for possessing a small amount of cannabis oil, something medically permissible in the United States but not in Russia. The Russians held Griner for 10 months before trading her for the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in a high-profile prisoner swap.
The unusual part of Zimmerman’s case is that he was apprehended in international waters; most Americans held in Russia were already in that country when they were arrested. “It has been verified, independently, that he was not somewhere in Russian territory,” Giles says. “The method by which he’s been kidnapped is piracy.”
The result, though, is the same: Zimmerman sits today in a Russian prison. Because that prison is IK-9, in Krasnodar Krai, about 60 or so miles from the war zone in Ukraine, Russia has blocked U.S. embassy officials in Moscow from visiting him. His sister, a bank manager who lives in Botetourt County, gets only sporadic updates from Zimmerman’s court-appointed attorney. Those come in Russian and they are generally not encouraging.
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Zimmerman — now 59 — was born in Roanoke, and grew up in Salem and Craig County. He went to high school in Salem, where he played trumpet for the Pride of Salem marching band. He graduated in 1985. He worked as a dishwasher at Roanoke College, then joined the U.S. Navy at age 19.
“In the Navy, he learned the electrical trade,” his sister says. “He’s always been grateful for that. He’s earned a very good living.” He worked for a while in the Roanoke Valley, then California, and about four years ago moved to New Bern, North Carolina. Along the way he managed to secure patents for some of his electrical innovations, although they haven’t been commercialized yet.
As kids, the siblings Chuck and Robin grew up loving the outdoors. “My dad loved camping,” she says. “We’d go all the time in summer. We’d go all the time in the summer to Holliday Lake and Lake Shenandoah. We’d go almost every weekend.”
As an adult, Zimmerman developed a love for one particular outdoor activity: sailing. “He loves with his whole heart,” Stultz says, and her brother embraced sailing with the same enthusiasm. He wanted to sail around the world — or, at least, a good portion of it.
The opportunity eventually came in 2024. Their mother died, leaving Zimmerman some money. He took that, pooled it with his life savings and set out for New Zealand in a 35-foot sailboat named the Trude Zena. This was not some spontaneous lark. He’d been planning the adventure for some time and had already secured an electrical job in New Zealand.
He set sail the third week of July 2024 — and soon caused his sister to worry.
Zimmerman had left her his schedule and promised to check in when he reached Bermuda in mid-August. He never did. When he was three weeks overdue, Stultz contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, which put out an alert for sailors to be on the lookout for him.
Not until a month later — mid-September — did Stultz hear from her brother. There’s no cell service in the middle of the ocean. By then, he was in Spain, blown well off-course by Hurricane Ernesto.
“He ran out of food, when he got caught in the hurricane,” she says. “He had plenty of rice, plenty of sides,” but no protein. “He taught himself to fish. He’d never really fished from a boat before. He survived off fish.”
She says he laughed when he heard about the Coast Guard bulletin, because lots of ships passed him but none reported a sighting to the U.S. authorities. Once Zimmerman was in Spain, he talked with his sister “almost daily,” either by phone or by text. “He had quite a few stories to tell,” she says.
They’d always been close. She calls him her confidante, “my protector.” Now her big brother was having the adventure of a lifetime. “He sent all kinds of gifts back to us,” she says. “He was doing just fine, just sailing around” and traveling in Europe, as well.
By June 2025, Zimmerman had made his way across the Mediterranean. “The last time I actually spoke with him was the 15th of June,” she says. “We talked on the phone; he was in Turkey. He didn’t know what his plan was.”
He had intended to sail through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and then out into the Indian Ocean. However, Iran and Israel were then engaged in their 12-day aerial war. Meanwhile, Iran-based Houthis in Yemen were threatening shipping in the Red Sea; many commercial vessels were rerouted around South Africa. That was quite reasonably a deterrent for Zimmerman’s sailing excursion through the region. “He could actually see and hear the missiles down in the Red Sea,” Stultz says.
Two days later, Stultz got the text from her brother: The Russians were forcing him to port in the Black Sea.
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Zimmerman had decided to wait for Mideast tensions to cool down and use the time to go explore the Black Sea. Global Reach, a nonprofit group that helps secure the release of Americans held abroad, says on a website set up for Zimmerman that “Almost immediately upon entering the Black Sea via the Bosphorus Strait, the Russian Navy intercepted Chuck in international waters.”
The Black Sea is 730 miles wide. From the Bosphorus Strait in the west to the Russian coast on the east is about the same distance as from Roanoke to Chicago. The entire southern coast of the Black Sea borders Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country. In theory, that should have been a safe place to sail as long as Zimmerman stayed away from the northern coast along Ukraine and Russian-held Crimea. The Russian navy felt otherwise.
The Russians wanted Zimmerman to go to a certain port (Americans don’t know which one), but “he finally had to throw a fit,” Stultz said, because he didn’t have enough gas to get there. (Yes, modern sailboats have small motors to help with docking and other navigational matters.) The Russians relented on the original point but did make him sail and motor 22 hours to Sochi, the Black Sea port that hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. (Based on the map, that original port was likely to be much closer to the war zone in Ukraine than Sochi is.)
“On the 18th, I was able to talk to him” via text, Stultz says. “He said it was going to be fine. He explained that he cannot enter the country without notifying the country,” so the Russians were likely to fine him for illegal entry even though they forced him there. (Those who follow Russian policy say this is not an uncommon tactic the Russians use.) “I said, ‘Chuck, you were in international waters,’” Stultz says. Her brother told her the Russians were about to do a routine inspection of his boat, then all he had to do was figure out how to pay the fine and he expected to be on his way.
The next day, Stultz had just sat down to dinner when she got a text from her brother. He said the Russians were taking him into the city. “I don’t know where I am,” he told her.
She asked him what the Russians were saying; he said he wasn’t sure because it was in Russian. “I said, ‘Just try to remain calm. Is there anything around that says “police”?’”
No.
“Where are you?” she asked.
He didn’t know.
“The last thing I got from him, he sent me an emoji of praying hands.”
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Two days passed and Stultz heard nothing. On June 22, she was finally able to reach the U.S. embassy in Moscow, which had no information.
More days passed, with no news.
Then nearly a week later, she got a text from an odd number. It was in Russian.
“I hit the translate button,” she says. It claimed to be from a Russian lawyer who had been appointed to represent Zimmerman.
Stultz sent it to the embassy. The embassy’s advice, she says, went like this: “You need to answer this. It’s most likely real.”
It was.
During the boat inspection, the Russians had asked Zimmerman if he had any weapons on board. He said yes — a pistol and a rifle for self-defense at sea. For the Russians, that was enough to charge Zimmerman with gun smuggling.
He was sentenced to five years in prison.
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One of Zimmerman’s two daughters put Stultz in touch with Global Reach, a nonprofit that represents — at no cost — families of those held overseas. “In the last 10 years, the officers of Global Reach have worked on 124 cases of wrongfully held prisoners worldwide,” the group’s website says. “78 are now safely home with their families.” Of the 10 or so Americans now held in Russia, Global Reach is handling the cases for six of them.
“They’ve been a lifesaver to me,” Stultz says.
Global Reach’s chief investigative officer is Kiernan Ramsey, who once headed hostage recovery efforts for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He says Zimmerman’s arrest is “the typical Russian playbook.” It would have been obvious to the Russians that a guy sailing without GPS was no threat. However, “once they saw he was an American, ka-ching, ‘Let’s take this guy,’” Ramsey says. “Now he’s a pawn in a major geopolitical game.”
The good news, says Giles, the British Russia-watcher, is that at some point the Russians will want a trade for some American they’ve managed to scoop up. “It sounds terrible to say it but the most helpful thing you can say is the Russians tend not to hold them very long and they tend to release them alive.”
However, the definition of what constitutes not a long time differs. Ramsey says Global Reach is currently representing some Americans who have been held for more than four years. The most recent high-profile prisoner swap came in 2024; one of those released from Russian custody then was Paul Whelan, a former Marine and auto parts company worker who was held for five years, seven months and five days.
The immediate problem is that no one from the U.S. embassy has been allowed to meet with Zimmerman. “That’s a blatant violation of whatever limited rights he has,” says Giles.
Stultz has also heard, through the Russian lawyer, that her brother has had dental issues in prison. “He has developed a couple of cavities,” Stultz says. “One of the teeth has rotted out of his head.” And he’s lost about 40 pounds.
The Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to an inquiry about the case.
A U.S. State Department report in 2023 described conditions in Russian prisons as “harsh and life threatening” with “overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.”
“This haunts Robin every night,” Ramsey says, “whatever problems her brother might be going through.”
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While Zimmerman’s situation has not gotten the celebrity-level attention that Griner’s detention did, his case is well-known to those in security circles, both in and out of the United States. Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County, whose district is home to both Stultz and Zimmerman’s boyhood home in Salem, has talked to State Department officials about the case. So have Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, D-Va.
“We’re assured it’s a top priority for him,” Cline says of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In a formal statement to Cardinal News, the State Department said: “The Trump Administration takes seriously our commitment to Americans abroad and will continue to advocate on behalf of American Citizens detained in Russia. The State Department is closely tracking Mr. Zimmerman’s detention, and remains in regular communication with his family, and continues to advocate for access to him. Despite our ongoing efforts, consistent and routine access to U.S. citizen prisoners in Russia continues to be a challenge.”
The exact details of what’s happening are difficult to tease out. Cline, Warner and Kaine, in separate conversations with Cardinal, have all been circumspect for security reasons.
“Steve Witkoff has mentioned my brother’s name to the Russians,” Stultz says, referring to President Donald Trump’s de facto envoy to Putin.
Giles, the Chatham House fellow, cautions that any administration’s State Department has to be “mindful of the overall thrust to have better relations with Russians,” meaning that prisoner swaps are always going to be just one part of a larger and more complicated relationship with Russia. Giles also worries that Trump’s cuts to State Department staffing may have made it more difficult to handle these kinds of issues. All those relationships have now become more complex with the ongoing war with Iran. Given the nature of Zimmerman’s apprehension in international waters, “there are a lot of things a U.S. administration that was less inclined to be nice to Russia could be making a stink about,” Giles says.
Global Reach officials make it clear they have no such criticism. “I’m not critical of U.S. government efforts at all,” Ramsey says. “I’m appreciative of what the government is doing and all the quiet professionals in the background, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking these things. There is a delicate balance. We’re not critical of the U.S. government but we want stuff to happen.”
Warner, though, is critical. “I don’t believe they’re putting enough pressure on Putin to release these Americans,” he says of the Trump administration.
There have been at least two U.S-Russia prisoner swaps in Trump’s second term; both took place before Zimmerman was captured.
When Americans are held in Russia, there’s always the question of how much attention should be devoted to their case, because the more attention a captive receives, the higher the “price” for his or her release becomes. Despite that, Giles, the British expert, comes down on the side of publicity — not to pressure Russia, but to pressure the U.S. government. “The pattern does seem to be repeatedly, the more public attention it gets, the more pressure there is on the home government, be it the U.S. or U.K., to take action,” he says. “If it isn’t in the public eye, it’s very easy” for the case not to be a priority. “The more publicity there is, “ he says, “the better chance there is of getting somebody back.”
Global Reach has set up a website to monitor Zimmerman’s case: bringchuckhome.com. Over the weekend, he passed 270 days in captivity.
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