In November 2021, Robert was on his way to a new job teaching English in Moldova. He had already established a teaching business in Poland and was pursuing this as a career after his time in the Marine Corps. While transiting through Moscow, Robert became ill and had to spend time recuperating before traveling onward. While recovering, he realized his luggage and passport had been tampered with, and he had to replace missing passport pages before he could travel onward.

Robert turned the misfortune of his illness into an opportunity to visit extended family outside of Moscow. On January 17, 2022, on his way back to Moscow to have his passport repaired at the US Embassy, he became violently ill again. Instead of helping him, police hit him with a baton, and he was taken to the police station. He was vomiting and falling, most likely due to a concussion. Russian police tried to restrain him, and his leg accidentally hit one of the police officers’ shins. They took him into custody, where prosecutors began to charge him with a series of vague and escalating charges. He has now been sentenced to 4.5 years despite the unharmed police officer stating that Robert should not be charged for kicking him. In prison, he was goaded into additional actions and related charges through forced drugging, provocations, and torture, including forced exercise for 16 hours and six months in an extreme punishment cell. These escalating charges are meant to set him up to politicize his case. This well-known pattern of escalating charges was seen in the case of former American and US Marine detainee Trevor Reed.