ROSTOV-ON-DON, April 17. /TASS/. Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year-long prison sentence in a US prison, has started receiving medical assistance, his wife Viktoria Yaroshenko told TASS on Wednesday.

In November 2018, Yaroshenko requested the prison authorities provide him with medical assistance for his toothache, which was also the cause of digestion problems as he was not able to eat normally. Earlier this year, Yaroshenko wrote a letter to Russian Ambassador in US Anatoly Antonov, asking to facilitate his transfer to another prison, because he was not receiving proper medical assistance in the Danbury prison in Connecticut. Antonov responded by saying that he planned to request help of US-based human rights organizations on the matter.

Viktoria Yaroshenko said her husband had his stomach and back examined recently and was now waiting for results.

"They have started doing something, although they [US doctors] are not as active as we would like them to be," she said. "I think that our embassy has played a role."

Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in May 2010, and was later clandestinely transferred to the United States. In September 2011, he was found guilty of conspiring to smuggle a major cocaine shipment into the US, and sentenced to 20 years behind bars. However, Yaroshenko pleaded not guilty, saying that his arrest was a setup and the case was fabricated.

The Russian was first sent to the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution, but in mid-June, 2018, he was first transferred to a transit prison in Brooklyn, New York, and then to the Danbury prison, which holds more than 1,400 inmates.

Russian officials and the pilot’s family have on numerous occasions requested that Washington extradite him to Russia.

In early March, Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said she would request the US authorities to transfer Yaroshenko to another prison because of his poor health.