The Russian court has given a five-year prison term to an American citizen who had brought into the country illegal weapons, according to a statement of the local court that was issued on Monday, after a firearm had been found on his yacht when it had docked in Sochi, a Black Sea port, last year. The Russian media said the weapons were transported into the country on his personal vessel between July 2024 and June 2025. According to the court press service, a U.S. citizen, known as Charles Wayne Zimmerman was found guilty of breaking Russian laws on the transportation and possession of firearms. It said that Zimmerman pleaded guilty in every way and was sentenced to five years in prison. The court also observed that an appeal against the conviction had been denied.
The Russian officials claimed that Zimmerman was sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea before entering the Russian waters. The court said that he informed police that he had found a Russian woman online and decided to visit her and that he had no idea that carrying a weapon on board his yacht when docked in Russia was illegal in the country. This is the case where the first signs of the arrest and conviction of Zimmerman appeared in the public of the Russian media, which have a high tendency to cover judicial cases that involved a foreign national. The court did not indicate the date of sentencing but ensured that the legal proceedings were done. There have been disagreements in the case by the family of Zimmerman.
His sister, Robin Stultz has stated that he had been stopped at international waters and forced to sail to Sochi and she has applied to the U.S State Department to designate him as falsely detained. The Russian governments did not publicly comment on such allegations. Stultz defended her decision to carry a gun on a long-haul sailing ship in a statement to U.S. media by claiming that it was a safety precaution and that her brother had willingly come out with the weapon. She also doubted the conditions under which he had confessed and claimed that he had been denied the right to see the U.S diplomatic officials. Stultz has already met with the U.S. State Department officials and congressmen to request help, and she said that there was mounting support to make the case of her brother a priority in the U.S.-Russia dialogues. In their announcement of the verdict, Russian courts released images and video footage of the yacht, and photographs of a rifle and ammunition supposedly discovered inside the vessel. Washington has already accused Moscow of holding U.S citizens as possible prisoner exchange subjects, and Russian officials point to the fact that foreign nationals are tried according to the Russian law when infractions are identified.
The arrest of American citizen Charles Wayne Zimmerman on five years imprisonment on Russian soil on firearms charges on his yacht that had sailed into Sochi, put into question critical issues of international law. The Russian officials claim the jurisdiction under the principles of territorial sovereignty when the ship was at the port, according to the UNCLOS Article 27, that allows the coastal states to apply domestic law to the foreign vessels in internal waters. The sister of Zimmerman claims that it was intercepted in the international waters, which refers to the possible breach of the freedom of navigation (UNCLOS Article 87). Competing assertions point to the difficulty of enforcing in the seas. Although Russia has a unified application of its laws, U.S. allegations of wrongful detention highlight diplomatic differences, lack of bilateral consular access agreements in the backdrop of poor relations.