US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov hadn't spoken since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Russian counterpart on Friday, urging the Kremlin to accept the “” the US made to exercise a prisoner exchange to free WNBA star Brittney Griner and another detained American citizen.
“We had a frank and direct conversation,” Blinken told reporters at the State Department about his call with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. “I pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forth on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner.”Multiple outlets over the past two days have reported that the United States proposed to send convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout home to Russia if Griner and Whelan, a former Marine, are returned to the US.
Griner spoke at her ongoing trial on Wednesday and has been detained on drug possession charges since February. The WNBA All-Star was taken into custody at an airport near Moscow when security found cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage.The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in Russia. Griner testified that she didn’t know how the cartridges got into her luggage but that she did use marijuana as a medically prescribed treatment for pain.
Bout was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 on charges that he schemed to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons. Whelan is a corporate security executive convicted of espionage in 2020, an assertion he and his family deny. He is serving a 16-year prison sentence. He was in Russia to attend a wedding.
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