A U.S. Army soldier currently detained in Russia was stabbed by his Russian girlfriend months before his arrest, his wife has claimed.
Staff Sergeant Gordon Black was attacked while making a surprise video call to his 6-year-old daughter in Texas from his overseas tour in South Korea, Megan Black told Reuters. She said she and their daughter watched as Gordon got into a fight with his Russian girlfriend which escalated into screaming and bloodshed.
Megan Black, who was finalizing her divorce with Gordon at the time of his arrest, says his Russian girlfriend could be seen on the call clawing at his face and then pulling out a knife. “She stabbed him,” she said, adding that her husband “had blood on his face” and that their young daughter was distraught during the ordeal.
ADVERTISEMENT
Gordon Black was taken into custody in the city of Vladivostok in Russia’s far east on May 2. He is accused of theft after an argument and is currently being held in pre-trial detention, Russian authorities say. The Pentagon says Black, who was posted at Camp Humphreys outside Seoul, had traveled to Russia without the authorization of the U.S. Army.
Melody Jones, his mother, told Reuters that her son decided to follow his girlfriend to Russia despite the fact that they “fought like cats and dogs.” The report did not name the girlfriend, but a Vladivostok local and TikTok user named Aleksandra Vashchuk has uploaded multiple videos featuring Black and refers to him as her “husband.”
His stepfather, Martin Jones, told The Daily Beast last week that he had warned Black against traveling to Russia to visit the “so-called girlfriend.” Martin claimed the Russian woman had been deported from South Korea, and that’s why Black had made the trip to Vladivostok.
Megan Black, the estranged wife, told Reuters her own relationship with the soldier started to deteriorate in 2018, and he later initiated divorce proceedings shortly after his departure to South Korea.
She first found out about his new girlfriend in Jan. 2022. Megan also said that she and her daughter were expecting Black to return to Texas as his tour in South Korea had just ended. They had no idea he’d traveled to Russia, she added.
On the day of his arrest, Megan received a message from him “telling me that he wasn't coming home,” she said. Megan says she has not heard from him since and says their child “now looks at her dad as a bad man.”
A lawyer for Black has filed an appeal against his detention in Russia, state-owned Tass news service reported Monday. The grounds on which the appeal has been made are not clear. He could face a sentence of up to five years imprisonment if convicted.
