Brittney Griner's clemency pleas to the court fell on deaf ears
Article Author:
Washington Post
Robin Dixon
RIGA, LATVIA — Russia beats US to WNBA star Britney on Thursday • Negotiations on a prisoner exchange were underway for the first time between Washington and Moscow after they proposed a deal to release Griner and another American prisoner, Paul Whelan.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has confirmed that negotiations are underway through channels set up by President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met in Geneva last June.
Talks on the exchange began after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed last week that Russia was ready to talk, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ivan Nechaev on Thursday.
"Instructions were given to authorized bodies to carry out the negotiations," Mr Nechaev said. "They are being enforced by the competent authorities," he told journalists in Moscow on Thursday, state media reported.
The Biden administration has come under considerable pressure to secure Griner's release after his arrest at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport in February. She had her two e-cigarette cartridges containing cannabis oil containing less than 1 gram of the substance, which she banned in Russia.
Griner's pleas in court for leniency went unheeded, and she was sentenced to her nine years in prison by a Russian court last Thursday. Her legal team announced her plans to appeal.
Secretary of State Anthony Brinken announced last month that officials had made a "substantial" offer for a deal to secure the release of Griner and Whelan, but Washington's decision to take action against Russian arms trafficker Victor He is serving a 25-year sentence in the United States for not confirming media reports that he offered to exchange for a bout.
After Lavrov's comments, Brinken said Russia "is ready to engage through the channels they have established to do just that..we will pursue it." Biden "I am hopeful. We are working hard," he said Friday.
I'm here. Mr. Biden spoke to the families of Mr. Griner and Mr. Whelan by phone last month and assured them the administration was doing all it could to get them released.
Security consultant former Marine Whelan, 52, who was arrested in 2018 and convicted of espionage in 2020, is serving a 16-year prison sentence. He says he was framed. He was left behind when the U.S. traded convicted Russian drug dealer Konstantin Yaroshenko in April for another former Marine, Trevor Reed. Another American arrested for bringing cannabis into Russia, schoolteacher Mark Vogel, has not been classified as wrongfully detained by the State Department and does not appear to be included in the proposed prisoner exchange.
Russian officials all the way to the Kremlin have accused Washington of "megaphone diplomacy," an attempt to use public pressure to release Griner at the talks. has repeatedly warned against I will comment on the details of the negotiations.
The Kremlin warned last week that disclosure of the process could "obstruct the whole process."
"The Americans made this mistake," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. "They for some reason decided to solve these problems in a megaphone fashion," he said. "This is not how they are resolved."
Nechaev repeated that message in comments on Thursday. And call them to focus on practical work through established channels.
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