The Biden administration has offered Russia a deal to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another jailed American, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Secretary of State Antony said Wednesday They blink.
In a sharp reversal from previous policy, Blinken also said he expects to speak with his Kremlin counterpart for the first time since before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The statement marked the first time the US government has publicly disclosed any concrete action it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified Wednesday in his judgment.
Blinken did not offer details on the proposed deal, which was offered weeks ago, although it is unclear whether it will be enough for Russia to release the Americans.
But the public acknowledgment of the offer at a time when the United States has shunned Russia reflects growing pressure on the administration over Griner and Whelan and its determination to bring them home.
Blinken said Washington would want a response from Moscow. Russia has for years expressed interest in the release of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer once dubbed the “merchant of death,” who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 for indictment that he planned to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons.
Blinken said he had requested a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. US officials said the desire for a response to the prisoner offer was the main, but not the only, reason why the US requested the call with Lavrov on Wednesday.
Should the call take place, it would be the first conversation between Blinken and Lavrov since February 15, about a week before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Blinken said he would also talk to Lavrov about the importance of Russia complying with a UN-brokered deal signed last Friday in Turkey to release several tons of Ukrainian grain from storage and would warn him about the dangers of possible attempts Russians to annex parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on espionage charges. He and his family have vigorously maintained their innocence. The US government has denounced the allegations as false.
Griner, in Russian custody since the spring, acknowledged in court this month that he had vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in his luggage when he arrived in Moscow in February to play basketball in Russia, but claims he had none criminal intent and inadvertently packed the cartridges. .
At his trial Wednesday, Griner said he did not know how the cannabis oil ended up in his bag, but explained that it had a doctor’s recommendation and was packed in a hurry. She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of drug trafficking.
The U.S. government has long resisted prisoner swaps out of concern that it could encourage additional hostage-taking and promote a false equivalence between an American wrongfully detained and a foreigner deemed justly convicted. .
But an earlier deal in April, in which US Marine veteran Trevor Reed was swapped for jailed Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, appeared to open the door to similar resolutions in the future. The Biden administration has been hounded with political pressure to bring home Griner and other Americans designated as wrongfully detained.
There was no indication that Blinken and Lavrov had communicated to secure Reed’s release.
Wednesday’s announcement received mixed responses.
Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, applauded Blinken’s efforts on Twitter but urged the State Department to also include Marc Fogel in the deal.
“I applaud the efforts of @SecBlinken & @StateDept to bring home Britney Griner & Paul Whelan, even if it means handing over Viktor Bout. I support the exchange. I just hope they include Marc Fogel in the deal. Bout is a real criminal. Worth freeing 3 innocent Americans,” McFaul tweeted.
Fogel is an American professor who was sentenced to 14 years in prison earlier this year after Moscow airport authorities detained him for carrying marijuana in his suitcases, which he insisted had been prescribed in the U.S. United after a column operation.
Others were more critical, with one opponent tweeting: “An arms dealer for someone who had weed. I’d say this trade is a steal for Putin. We need a new GM [general manager].”
The New Hampshire Libertarian Party responded to the news of the prisoner swap by writing about the crackdown on drug crimes in the US, saying: “America is mad at Russia for doing to Brittney Griner what it is doing to 374,000 people a year”.