Brittney Griner

In February 2022, Brittney Griner, the legendary WNBA basketball player, was arrested in Moscow for allegedly having illegal vape cartridges. Now Russia is ...

His freedom could not restore that, and he will be forever known as the Merchant of Death, a stain he will never be able to remove. Bout has already lost what he most valued — his ability to move freely across the globe and act with impunity as an agent of chaos in the service of his Russian handlers and his own interests. The diplomatic and Department of Justice efforts to get Bout to the U.S. to stand trial were a testament to how a whole of government approach can work when done well. In his later years, he was reined in by the Russian state under Putin, no longer able to freelance at will and without unfettered access to massive caches of weapons. Bout ran an aviation and weapons empire from the fall of the Soviet Union until his arrest in Thailand in 2008. In November 2011, the notorious Russian weapons trafficker Viktor Bout was sentenced by a New York court to 25 years in prison for his crimes.

In February, according to her own telling, WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner did exactly what many of us have done at some point in our ...

Griner pleaded guilty on Thursday to carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil through a Moscow airport in February, just before Russia invaded Ukraine, ...

"No one can blame the friends of Brittney Griner for pulling out all the stops to try to win her release," says Phil Boas at the Arizona Republic. But while using a "social justice argument" might touch Biden's heart, it won't move Putin, who is the one who holds the key to Griner's cell. Griner is a hostage, pure and simple, says The Washington Post in an editorial. Maybe the administration's early "muted" involvement in Griner's case might have been due to a fear "that a large campaign might only drive up her value as a bargaining chip for Russia." But The New York Times quoted the former judge who presided at Bout's trial, Shira Scheindlin, "as saying that a swap might not be a bad idea — as long as Russia freed not only Griner but also Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was arrested on espionage charges in 2018." Supporters have questioned whether "the administration just wasn't pushing as hard for a Black, gay woman whose skills far outmatched her household recognition." President Biden this week assured Cherelle Griner, the wife of detained WNBA player Brittney Griner, that he is working to get the two-time Olympic women's basketball gold medalist released from a Russian jail.

Brittney Griner's guilty plea has stirred conversations about a potential prisoner swap between the United States and Russia, which experts say could turn ...

In this sense, the opportunities for quiet diplomacy in this particular case seem to have gone by the wayside." So it will be a battle of semantics in one sense that mirrors the Russia and U.S. confrontation over control of Ukraine." The Russians insist that the arrest is legitimate, and they want the U.S. to acknowledge it. "When we get to swapping something like this with a hardened terrorist, the proportionality is not the same. The U.S. side doesn’t consider Ms. Griner’s arrest as legitimate, even though a substance that’s illegal was found in her possession. I didn't want to break the law," she said, adding that she will give her testimony at a later date. "This brings her closer to being identified as a sentenced convict with less than 1% chance of acquittal. "The Russian judicial system might enjoy giving her slightly less and taking some credit for showing some leniency, but I don't think we're talking about her being released," Schwartz said. "We have a long-standing framework for discussing such issues. So he might surprise us again." "I'd like to plead guilty, your honor. She could face up to 10 years in prison.

Her legal team hopes plea will help her avoid severe sentence.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said: “Brittney Griner remains wrongfully detained in Russia and nothing that happened today changes that 140 days later. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. I didn’t want to break the law. On Thursday, she told the court: “I’d like to plead guilty, your honour. You can’t navigate it or even understand it like our own legal system,” WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson said. “Today BG [Ms Griner] pleaded guilty,” her legal team said.

Until Russia's courts, with their near perfect conviction rate, conclude the trial process, very little is likely to change.

Clearly this case has now become a political case, and there are already discussions, allegedly, about having a plea agreement and a prisoner swap with a Russian prisoner for Brittney Griner," he said. The admission of guilt could play in Griner's favor in the long term, as it may lead to a shorter trial than would be expected if her legal team were to mount a fierce resistance to the charges. "We'll have to see if she gets the maximum sentence. From a procedural standpoint, under Russia's legal system a pardon or prisoner swap can only happen if the individual has already been convicted. "We of course hope for the leniency of the court," the basketball player's Russian lawyer, Maria Blagovolina, was quoted as saying by local media on Thursday outside a Moscow courthouse. Griner is expected to give testimony during the next hearing, which is scheduled for July 14.

Celebrated US basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Moscow court on Thursday (July 7), with hopes of a more lenient sentence, ...

The US State Department said that Griner was “wrongfully detained” and some critics accuse Russia of using the basketball star as a political pawn in the present crisis. … Attempts to present the case as if the American was detained illegally do not hold up,” as reported by The Guardian. US Embassy officials attended Griner’s trial on Thursday after which Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tweeted that a letter from President Joe Biden was delivered to her. Many WNBA athletes chose to play overseas because of the massive pay disparity compared to their male counterparts in the National Basketball Association (NBA), whose earnings can go up to tens of millions of dollars. The two-time Olympic gold medallist has been in custody since February 17, when two vape cartridges containing small amounts of cannabis oil were found in her luggage while she was at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Standing at 6 feet 9 inches, the centre player has been with the team Phoenix Mercury since 2013.

Brittney Griner is a pawn, caught between Russia and the U.S. during a particularly tense time in the relationship between the two superpowers, writes CBC ...

Griner and her lawyers could have undertaken a long and costly trial, but in a country where the odds of an acquittal are even more remote than they are in the U.S., fighting this case likely looked like a waste of several weeks and countless dollars. #FreeBrittneyGriner 140 days our friend and sister @brittneygriner has been wrongfully detainee in a Russian prison. A technical glitch, for sure, but hardly a sign that U.S. diplomats were treating this case with the urgency it deserved. Earlier this month, Dawn Staley, head coach of the women's team at the University of South Carolina, added a pointed Twitter message at President Biden to her long series of public statements in support of Griner. Russian cops could have charged Griner with something more in line with her alleged offence, threatened her with the local equivalent of a light sanction and moved on. To recap, the Russian government has reportedly proposed freeing Griner in exchange for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer, nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," currently serving 25 years in federal prison. The point where the U.S. can call Russia's bluff, because they also have something Russia wants. "#FreeBrittneyGriner 138 days our friends and sister @brittneygriner has been wrongfully detained in a Russia prison," Staley tweeted. So if the Biden administration isn't already on the phone trying to arrange a swap, maybe they've deduced, reasonably, that the two people involved aren't of equal value. This is the charge and the allegation Russia expects the rest of us to reconcile? But they pressed ahead with a process that defies any sense of proportion between potential punishment and alleged crime, while conveniently putting the U.S. in a sticky diplomatic position. "There was no intent," Griner reportedly told a Russian judge while entering her plea.

WNBA star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges and could face up to 10 years in a Russian prison.

Experts are saying her guilty plea of drug possession and smuggling was a strategy to help facilitate a prisoner swap which will bring Griner home. I didn’t mean to break the law,” Griner told the judge in English. Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, spoke with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, pleading for the U.S. government to do something.

Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty in the Russian court where she's on trial for drug possession. NPR's A Martinez talks with veteran defense lawyer ...

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The W.N.B.A. star's appearances this week during her trial on drug charges in Russia highlighted the unclear path to her release and heightened her ...

I visited the arena in April for a Mercury preseason game and was surprised by the muted acknowledgment of Griner in a city where she has given so much. “Free B.G.,” said DeWanna Bonner, of the W.N.B.A.’s Connecticut Sun, speaking to the press. Known as B.G., she helped lead the Mercury to a W.N.B.A. title in 2014 but is as admired there for helping the homeless and championing L.G.B.T.Q. rights. At the time, Griner’s Mercury teammates were following the lead of her advisers, who had decided to stay low-key and not raise a ruckus that might draw Putin’s ire. Over social media, in news conferences and interviews, players demanded that Biden and the White House do whatever was needed to bring her home. The approach flipped a few weeks later when the U.S. State Department declared that Griner had been “wrongfully detained.” The league and its players began to roar — the same as they often do on pressing social issues. Male athletes are the beneficiaries of a sports ecosystem in which their leagues garner more TV time, their endorsements generate more money and their accomplishments are more loudly lauded. It’s a statement about the value of a Black person. It’s a statement about the value of a gay person.” If this were James in custody — or Stephen Curry or Tom Brady — it stands to reason that their fame would push a more fervent mainstream call for release than has been the case for Griner. If this were James in custody, well, a whole lot more than a few hundred people would have shown up to rally for his release. The Mercury center’s teammates, supporters and wife, Cherelle Griner, have not been able to speak with her directly.

Brittney Griner wasn't the first female basketball great to look for a better paycheck in Russian leagues.

Henry Abbott, another former ESPN basketball writer who now runs the digital media company True Hoop, ran the money-laundering rumors by a source: “I asked a veteran of the game, and she laughed, asked if I really didn’t know. The NBA is projecting $10 billion in revenue this season, according to Commissioner Adam Silver. Though the WNBA generates $60 million in revenue annually, Silver said in 2018 that its costs exceed that amount, and the league has lost $10 million on average each year that it has existed. “The only reason you go there is for money,” Taurasi said on an ESPN podcast that aired in 2020. Countries with tense relationships with the U.S. are more often the same ones that offer the most to America’s basketball greats. Griner reportedly makes $1 million a year overseas playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the Russian Premier League. For the Mercury, her salary was $221,450 for the 2021-22 season, making her one of the WNBA's highest-paid players. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has pushed back on the theory that playing overseas is strictly a financial decision. Her next court hearing is scheduled for July 14, and Griner’s legal team said they expect the trial to conclude at the beginning of August, according to Reuters. The WNBA Players Association did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Russian authorities detained Griner, a seven-time WNBA All-Star for the Phoenix Mercury and an NCAA champion at Baylor University, at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in February after claiming to find two vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her carry-on luggage. Just because, you know, she can't make enough money in the WNBA, like, to sustain her life." I didn’t want to break the law,” Griner told a judge Thursday at the second hearing of her trial, according to Reuters. “I’d like to give my testimony later. I need time to prepare.” Griner said in court that she had packed in a rush and the vape cartridges made it into her bag by accident, according to Russian media reports.

For more than three years, as former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan toiled in a Russian prison labor camp, his family wondered what it would take to keep the ...

"That's hard to accept and hard to explain to my parents." They might be willing to release someone with a nine- or 10-year sentence [as Griner might face] than someone with a 16-year sentence." "I think in a way her experience has been so much harder than other families' -- not to say that our loved ones haven't suffered," he says. But that swell of attention is not the same thing as progress, David Whelan says. In some cases we don't need to know the details, but I think a line can be drawn [where officials] can share more." The White House was asked about her case almost every day this week, and those questions drew a response that the administration is committed to getting all wrongful detainees home. The people held in China? I really think the president is a good man who's trying to be helpful." "The focus should be on the fact that Russia is taking Americans hostage," she says. "In America we're used to negotiations where each side has something they want and they find something halfway between those groups," she says. "What annoyed the crap out of me is this whole idea that they protested, they got their meeting, and their loved one came home, as if there's some sort of formula. Speaking on Friday, she says her anger isn't with the Griners or Biden; in fact, hours after she spoke with ESPN, President Biden called her to reassure her he is committed to getting Paul home, the White House announced. They emphasize that until one of them is on a plane home, almost no one knows what's really happening behind the scenes.