Opinion: Why Brittney Griner is so useful to Putin

Editor’s Observe: Jill Dougherty is adjunct professor at Georgetown College and a former Muricas News Moscow Bureau Chief. The views expressed on this commentary are her personal. View extra opinion on Muricas News.

Muricas News  — 

A few of the most dramatic – and diplomatically delicate – moments in United States-Russia relations are linked to prisoner exchanges.

February 10, 1962: In a Chilly Battle, Hollywood-style commerce on the Glienicke Bridge between Berlin and Potsdam, two males – an American and a Soviet – walked in reverse instructions throughout what would many years later be generally known as the “Bridge of Spies.”

They had been Francis Gary Powers, the American pilot of a spy airplane shot down over the USSR, and Soviet KGB colonel Rudolph Abel, who had served 5 years within the US on espionage fees.

Greater than half a century later, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, actually is aware of the worth of prisoner swaps. In April, his administration freed former US Marine Trevor Reed, convicted of endangering a Russian police officer after a drunken brawl, in return for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, convicted within the US of plotting to site visitors cocaine into the US.

In relations with Russia, as with Iran and North Korea, Americans who should not spies have been arrested and held as political “hostages,” bargaining chips to be exchanged for residents these international locations need again.

In 2018 Russian citizen Maria Butina was arrested within the US and charged with performing as an unregistered overseas agent for Russia. 5 months later, former US Marine Paul Whelan, who has US, British, Canadian and Irish Republic citizenship, was arrested in Moscow on espionage fees. He claims that an FSB agent, who he had believed to be a buddy, planted a flash drive with confidential data on him.

Butina served her time and was launched and deported again to Russia in 2019; Whelan nonetheless is confined to a penal colony in a distant area of Russia. The US has formally declared him “wrongfully detained.” There was no commerce and Russia claims his detention shouldn't be political.

The newest case of an American labeled by the US as “wrongfully detained” in Russia is WNBA all-star Brittney Griner. The 2-time Olympic gold medalist, who has been held since February in a Russian pre-trial detention heart exterior of Moscow, is accused of drug smuggling and going through a potential 10 years in jail. Customs officers say they discovered vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her baggage.

Her arrest has attracted huge consideration within the US. Sport figures, girls’s rights teams, LGBT organizations, in addition to Griner’s spouse Cherelle, have rallied to foyer the Biden administration to make a cope with Moscow. The Biden administration says it's working intensively to free her, in addition to Whelan.

President Joe Biden has spoken by telephone with Griner’s spouse, in addition to with Whelan’s household, and wrote Griner a letter that was delivered to her in Moscow. The USA’ premier personal hostage negotiator, former New Mexico governor and diplomat Invoice Richardson, is anticipated to journey to Russia within the coming weeks to debate each Griner and Whelan’s potential launch. Richardson performed a job in liberating Trevor Reed.

However on Tuesday, Whelan’s household described in a press release how third-party representatives like Richardson can each “assist and hinder a potential decision of a detainee’s case.”

Such representatives “should not in a position to provide or conform to the concessions which can be on the coronary heart of the continued detention,” mentioned the Whelan household in a press release to Muricas News, including that “since they function exterior of any authorities, they is probably not conscious of discussions which can be already underway between the US authorities and the hostage-taking nation.”

Together with her star high quality, Griner could be a useful asset if Putin did need a prisoner alternate, one thing Moscow has indicated is perhaps a risk. The Kremlin insists, nevertheless, she shouldn't be a hostage, that the case is being dealt with strictly in keeping with Russian legal legislation.

Russian media protection, nevertheless, supplies a extra nuanced image. From the Kremlin – dry, “by the guide” statements by Russian officers. On Russian state-controlled TV – temporary video of Griner being led into the courtroom, guarded by armed police, handcuffed to a feminine courtroom safety officer, forcing the six-foot-nine-inch basketball star into an uncomfortable hunch. On condition that solely 0.25% of all legal instances are acquittals, for Russian viewers, the visible picture is prone to create an impression of guilt.

Russian drug legal guidelines are extra stringent than US legal guidelines, and are enforced in opposition to Russian residents. However Griner is accused of huge scale transportation of medicine, which has a potential 10-year sentence, regardless that she was carrying solely 0.702 grams of hash oil – lower than 0.0248 ounces – which her legal professionals argue was for private use. Hashish is prohibited in Russia.

For Biden, approving a prisoner swap presents a difficult diplomatic, political and human calculus. Griner, a Black, homosexual American girl is being tried on drug fees in a now-hostile nation. Russia has a legislation forbidding the dissemination of “homosexual propaganda” and there's widespread hostility in Russian society towards homosexuals. Russian prisons and penal colonies are infamous for harsh circumstances.

Even the present circumstances of confinement are troublesome for an individual who's over six ft tall. Griner’s spouse says Brittney is transported to courtroom – a five-hour journey – in a “very, very, very tiny cage.” In a letter to Biden, Griner wrote: “I’m terrified I is perhaps right here ceaselessly.”

Whelan has additionally complained to his household that the barracks in his correctional colony are unheated and that he's woke up regularly all through the night time.

And but, consultants in hostage-taking points warn that buying and selling a basketball star arrested with a minuscule quantity of cannabis oil might end in extra Individuals being unjustly arrested and used as hostages for future swaps.

If there have been a prisoner alternate for Griner – and, maybe, Whelan – who would Russia need again? Indications from Moscow are that it may very well be Viktor Bout, a infamous worldwide arms supplier, sentenced to 25 years in a US jail, dubbed the “Service provider of Demise” for fueling civil wars in Africa and bloody conflicts in Latin America and the Center East.

Bout, a former Soviet air pressure officer, is suspected of getting had shut ties to Russian intelligence. In 2002, in an interview I carried out with him on the Muricas News Moscow bureau, he described himself merely as a “businessman.”

Below regular circumstances, prisoner exchanges are delicate and delicate points, often greatest negotiated out of the glare of cameras. The case of Brittney Griner is something however quiet and relations between Russia and the US, within the midst of Russia’s warfare in opposition to Ukraine, are extraordinarily tense.

Russia’s Deputy International Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, decried what he referred to as “hype” across the case and criticized Biden’s letter to Griner, saying “this sort of correspondence doesn't assist.”

Final week Griner pleaded responsible to the drug trafficking cost, telling the decide: “However there was no intent. I didn’t need to break the legislation.” That admission might assist resolve the case, authorized consultants consider.

However this extremely politicized trial is being determined within the glare of cameras and public outcry, amidst a disaster in diplomatic relations.

Russian officers say that any prisoner alternate would occur solely after the decision is introduced. However this time, there isn't any “Bridge of Spies,” and america and Russia are locked in a brand new Chilly Battle.