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  1. #1. Brittney Griner Trade Deal: What Did Biden Have To Swap?

Brittney Griner Trade Deal: What Did Biden Have To Swap?

Searching for information about Brittney Griner Trade Deal? Here we go! WNBA star Brittney Griner, who had been detained in Russian prisons for months on drug charges, was finally freed on Thursday as part of a prisoner swap involving international arms dealer Viktor Bout. Her release followed months of intense high-level negotiations between the United States and the Kremlin to secure her freedom. Also, "Brittney Griner Hates America": Comprehensive Story.
"No harm will come to her. Now she's in the air, "Vice President Biden at the White House announced this. "Currently, she is returning to her residence. Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, where she should have been the entire time she was wrongfully incarcerated in Russia. We've been waiting a long time for today. We continued to insist that she be released."

#1. Brittney Griner Trade Deal: What Did Biden Have To Swap?

 
 
 
Brittney Griner Trade Deal Source: Getty Images
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1600841306560937986
The trade was reportedly made in the United Arab Emirates, and CBS News was the first to break the story, citing a U.S. official. Sources familiar with the matter said that Mr. Biden gave the final assent to the swap arrangement agreed with Moscow in the past week.
According to Trump, he and Griner's wife Cherelle, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, spoke via phone from the Oval Office. Griner was mandated to swiftly get a medical examination, as is customary for all liberated American convicts.

The Conflicts

Brittney Griner Trade Deal
According to Mr. Biden, "Brittney is in good spirits," and she is eager to return home. Trump stated "she didn't beg for special treatment" and downplayed the "show trial in Russia" that landed her in jail. The president mandated Bout's release and return to Russia in exchange for Griner's freedom. In a commutation decision, Vice President Biden reduced Bout's 25-year federal prison term to 15 years.
Retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan is imprisoned in Russia after the Griner for Bout swap. Nearly four years have passed while Whelan has been detained in Russian custody. The United States rejected the espionage conviction he received.
Mr. Biden said on Thursday, "we will never give up" on trying to get Paul Whelan released. U.S. officials told reporters that negotiations with the Russians had made it clear that the possibility of securing the release of both Griner and Whelan in exchange for Bout was a nonstarter and that the U.S. had "a choice between bringing home one particular American — Brittney Griner, or bringing home none."
Whelan called CNN on Thursday to express his joy that Griner was released but his disappointment that "more has not been done to achieve my release, especially as the fourth anniversary of my arrest is coming up."

 

Brittney Griner Trade Deal
Griner, 32, is a standout center for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury. In February, she was held at a Russian airport after authorities found cannabis-derived oil cartridges in her luggage. Griner claimed that she accidentally brought the cartridges to Russia when she went there to play basketball in the off-season for the WNBA.
Sources say the one-for-one swap came together during the past two weeks after five months of stalled diplomacy and many permutations of potential swap deals, including a previously unreported offer by the U.S. this past summer to send two detainees back to Russia for the two Americans.
Former corporate security contractor Whelan was seized in a Moscow hotel in December 2018 while attending a friend's wedding. As time passed, Russian officials convicted him of espionage and gave him a 16-year prison term, a claim both the United States and Whelan strongly refuted. Whelan has been in Russian detention for four years this month.

 

Brittney Griner Trade Deal
In 2008, the DEA set up a trap in Thailand to catch Bout. He was then sent to a federal prison in Marion, Illinois. He began serving a 25-year sentence for planning to kill American citizens ten years ago.
Since February, when Griner was arrested, the situation in Ukraine has made it hard for the U.S. to talk to the Kremlin. The US says that Griner and Whelan were "wrongfully imprisoned," and some think Russia is using them as bargaining chips. The swap of Griner for Bout is the second prisoner swap between the US and Russia that the Biden administration has helped set up.
In April, the US traded Russian drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been found guilty of trying to bring cocaine into the country, for American ex-Marine Trevor Reed, who had been in a Russian prison for almost three years. Last Thursday, CBS News found out about the Griner-for-Bout trade. The White House asked CBS News to hold off on the story because they worried about the vulnerability of the deal. The Biden administration was worried that Griner's safety could be at risk if people knew about the swap before it happened.
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