American freed from Russian detention: 'I thought I was going to be stuck in Russia forever'
American teaching in Ukraine Tyler Jacob joined 'Fox & Friends First' for an exclusive interview to discuss his detention by Russian forces for 10 days.
An American who was held in Russian detention for 10 days is speaking out on his time behind bars, detailing the entire ordeal as tension between the U.S. and Russia mounts to an all-time high.
Tyler Jacob, a Minnesota native who was teaching in Ukraine, joined "Fox & Friends First" for an exclusive interview to discuss his detention and why he was taken into custody.
"I realized that once they started questioning me that they… couldn't find anything against me because… I'm just an American teacher who chased after his wife in a foreign country," Jacob told co-host Todd Piro.
"I was okay after the third day of them questioning me because I knew nothing was going to happen, but it was… a scary time to be stuck in a place like Russian prison," he continued.
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Jacob was taken into Russian custody while trying to escape Putin's war. He took a bus from where he was living with his wife and her daughter in Kherson, Ukraine, and was ultimately detained by Russian forces when trying to flee to Turkey.
"They told me that the reason they took me off the bus was because I didn't show them my passport, which I believe that they saw that I was the only American amongst all these Turkish citizens, and they decided that they thought I was a spy," Jacob said.
"So they pulled me aside, made up something and then detained me for 10 days," he continued.
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The questioning over his occupation did not stop there. It continued during his detention.
"For three and a half hours, he just continually told me, you know who this is, and I kept telling him, I don't know who this is, and at that point, I thought I was going to be stuck in Russia forever," Jacob said.
When asked about the first thing he did after arriving home on American soil, Jacob said he bought a Coke.
"The moment that I tasted that back here, American Coke, it felt like heaven," he said.
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