The exchange took place in Abu Dhabi and Bout has been taken home by plane as per Russian Foreign Ministry confirmation and the swap was successful. A top Russian official said that the deal was possible before the year’s end as the midterm elections are completed and Russia would engage in a deal now.
U.S. officials had for months expressed their determination to bring both Griner and Paul a Michigan corporate security executive jailed in Russia since 2018 thus surprising the 1-1 swap. The news of “Olympic Gold Medallist Brittney Griner Swapped for Russian Viktor Bout” is all over the internet now.
Brittney Griner, an American Basketball player of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was in the United States Women’s Olympic team in 2016 and was also named in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where she won her second gold medal.
Around February 2022 Griner was detained by Russian customs after hashish oil cartridges were found in her luggage and were arrested for smuggling charges. She went for the Russian Premier League during the WNBA offseason.
On Dec 8, Griner was freed in a dramatic prisoner swap against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout who served 10 years of imprisonment out of 25 years for conspiring against Americans.
The Americans have still failed to win Paul Wheelan who has been jailed for four years.
Biden has achieved a top goal amidst the chaos of heightened tension over Ukraine but carried a heavy price. Griner’s wife Cherelle and administration officials accompanied Biden as he said from the White House that she was safe and, on her way, home.
Paul Whelan was not included in the Reed prisoner swap, escalating pressure on the Biden administration to ensure that any deal that brought home Griner also included him. David, Paul’s brother said that he credits the White House for bringing back Griner and that he was glad. But he is also disappointed for his family but doesn’t consider U.S. officials at fault for making the deal.
Viktor Bout was serving a 25-year sentence on charges that he conspired to sell millions of dollars in weapons that the U.S. officials said were used by Americans. He has also inspired a Hollywood movie with his exploits.
It was the right decision made to bring Griner back and make a deal rather than waiting for one that wasn’t possible” said Paul’s brother.
Griner’s arrest in February made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad. Her status as an openly gay Black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community, infused racial, gender and social dynamics into her legal saga and made each development a matter of international importance.
Her case not only brought unprecedented publicity to the dozens of Americans wrongfully detained by foreign governments, but it also emerged as a major inflection point in U.S.-Russia diplomacy at a time of deteriorating relations prompted by Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
The highest-level known contact between Washington and Moscow the capitals between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in just five months was necessary because of the high-profile American status. The exchange was carried out despite the obvious relations between the two powerful countries.
The announcement to the public by Biden was to communicate that he was doing what he could and to ensure pressure on Russians. It was a substantial proposal of exchanging Griner and Whelan to Russia and was also a secret negotiation but Blinken revealed publicly in July that U.S. was making such a big move.
Griner was arrested at the Moscow’s Airport in February for carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage, she pleaded guilty and acknowledged that she possessed the canisters but had no criminal intentions but was because of hasting packing.
A separate trade, Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in the U.S. in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy, spurred hope that additional such exchanges could be in the works.
Her supporters had largely stayed quiet for weeks after her arrest, but that approach changed in May once the State Department designated her as unlawfully detained.
