A day after basketball player Brittney Griner was found guilty of narcotics smuggling and given a nine-year prison term for bringing less than a gram of cannabis oil through a Moscow airport, the US and Russia made it known that they are prepared to conduct negotiations over prisoner’s swap.
According to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, told reporters that the Kremlin is “ready for talks over prisoners swap but within the scope of the channel that presidents have agreed upon.”
Lavrov at the ASEAN conference on Friday said, no matter what is said publicly, the agreed-upon channel between (the two presidents) will continue to be in use.
USA Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was also attending the same summit declared that Washington will “pursue” negotiations with Russia.
Addressing the media person secretary Blinken Said “As you are aware, we made a significant proposal to Russia to work with usa. Foreign Minister Lavrov stated this morning that they are willing to communicate through the mechanisms we have set up. And we’ll be looking at that.”
The remarks from each side imply that a negotiation process, which seemed difficult initially, might quicken in the days to come.
According to the sources, last month, Russian government officials proposed the prisoners swap of Viktor Bout and a former colonel who is facing murder charges in Germany for Griner and Paul Whelan.
Paul Whelan is a USA citizen who has been detained by Russia since 2018, and a Russian court found him guilty of espionage in 2020 despite his vehement denials. Similar worries about Griner being exploited as a political pawn in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine have been raised in response to her sentence. According to the USA State Department, the duo has been wrongfully held by Russia.
Star of the Women’s National Basketball Association Brittney Griner said on February 17 that she had marijuana oil in her luggage when passing through a Moscow airport. She claimed in court that she was “stress packing” and was in a haste, but that she was aware of Russia’s harsh drug laws and had no intention of bringing cannabis into the country.
Griner made an emotional speech to the court on Thursday before the decision and begged for mercy. She said that she had never intended to harm anyone or endanger the Russian community, nor had she intended to violate any local laws.
“I hope that your decision won’t result at the end of my life in this place because I committed an honest error. Although I am aware that politics and political pawns are always brought up, I sincerely hope that they have no place in this courtroom.”
Griner’s attorneys had anticipated that her admission of guilt and expressions of regret would lead to less severe punishment. Her conviction, according to Blinken, “highlights Washington’s very serious concern with the Russian legal system.
A representative from the USA State Department earlier on Friday told reporters that Russia had not given a “serious answer” to the planned swap. The same official claimed that Blinken and Lavrov did not interact during the conference in Cambodia and that Blinken had no intention of doing so.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters that Russia would not go public with the idea of a transfer. “These exchanges won’t happen if we talk about some exchange-related details in the media. This error has already been committed by Americans, he remarked.
A minute of silence for Brittney Griner was observed before the start of the WNBA game between the Connecticut Sun and Griner’s Phoenix Mercury on Thursday.
