Brittney Griner Trial VerdictBrittney Griner Is Sentenced to 9 Years in a Russian Penal Colony

President Biden called the sentence “unacceptable” and vowed to pursue all avenues to bring the American basketball star home. Her case has become mired in the conflict between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine.

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The American basketball star was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony.CreditCredit...Pool photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev
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Here are the latest developments.

A Russian judge on Thursday sentenced the American basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in a penal colony after finding her guilty of bringing illegal drugs into Russia, according to her lawyers. The sentencing ended a closely watched trial that her supporters say made her a pawn in a tense geopolitical showdown over the war in Ukraine.

The guilty verdict was virtually preordained in a legal system in which defendants are rarely acquitted. It leaves Ms. Griner’s fate subject to diplomatic negotiations between Russia and the United States. The countries have been discussing the possibility of a prisoner exchange that would bring Ms. Griner home from Russia, where she has been detained since mid-February.

Officials in Moscow had said that no prisoner exchange was possible until after a verdict. The United States maintains that Ms. Griner should not have been detained and that she is being held by Russia as a bargaining chip.

President Biden called the sentence “unacceptable,” saying it was “one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney.” He vowed to “pursue all avenues” to bring her home.

Outside the courthouse, Elizabeth Rood, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, said the verdict was “a miscarriage of justice,” and Ms. Griner’s defense team called it “absolutely unreasonable.” Her lawyers said they would appeal.

The Biden administration has been under pressure from Ms. Griner’s wife and supporters to negotiate her freedom.

Other developments:

  • In comments to the court, Ms. Griner said she had been taught to “take ownership of your responsibilities” and that she had made “an honest mistake.”

  • The judge fined Ms. Griner 1 million rubles, about $16,300.

  • Ms. Griner’s defense team tried to persuade the judge to be lenient, saying that she had brought hashish into Russia by mistake when she arrived to play for a Russian team during the W.N.B.A. off-season, and had no intention of breaking Russian law.

  • The prospect of the United States exchanging a Russian prisoner for Ms. Griner and others is reminiscent of the fraught deals that Washington orchestrated with Moscow and its allies during and after the Cold War.

Ruth Maclean
Aug. 4, 2022, 4:43 p.m. ET

What exactly is a Russian penal colony?

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Penal colony IK-3, in Vladimir, Russia, one of the detention centers where the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny has reportedly been held during his imprisonment.Credit...Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Some prisoners are tortured, or beaten by fellow inmates. Some have to work 16-hour days. A few are forced to watch Russian propaganda on repeat.

This is the world of the Russian penal colony, into which Brittney Griner has been inducted for a nine-year term after her sentencing on drug smuggling charges was upheld in October.

Ms. Griner’s lawyers said on Thursday that the American basketball star was transferred to the IK-2 female penal colony in the small town of Yavas, about 300 miles southeast of Moscow. According to the website of the Russian prisons’ service, the colony is capable of holding 820 inmates.

Penal colonies are the descendants of gulags, the notorious Stalin-era labor camps where millions of Russians lost their lives. The treatment of prisoners has improved markedly since then, according to rights groups.

But the penal colonies, many of them scattered across Siberia as gulags were and laid out in barracks, are still characterized by brutality, overcrowding and harsh conditions, and they are often governed by a rigid prison culture.

In an interview from a penal colony last year, Russia’s most famous prisoner, the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, described a schedule of calisthenics, sweeping the yard and games of chess or backgammon, as well as five daily sessions of screen time where inmates are forced to watch state television and propaganda films.

“You need to imagine something like a Chinese labor camp, where everybody marches in a line and where video cameras are hung everywhere,” he said. “There is constant control and a culture of snitching.”

In June, Mr. Navalny was transferred to a maximum-security prison, where he said he spends seven-hour shifts at a sewing machine.

In 2012, a member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot said that there was no hot water, warm clothes or medicine in the penal colony where she and a bandmate were imprisoned, and that people who got sick could die as a result.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said in 2010 that “The Gulag Archipelago,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s indictment of the Soviet penal system, should be essential reading for Russian students.

During her detention so far, Ms. Griner’s reading material has reportedly been books by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a Russian writer whose work was marked by his harrowing experiences in the country’s penal system, after he was sentenced to four years’ hard labor in Siberia. Dostoyevsky once wrote: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Asked whether foreigners incarcerated in a Russian penal colony were treated any differently, a senior official with the Federal Penitentiary Service said some years ago that they were not. The only difference was that they have a right to visits from consular officials from their home country, the official, Sergey Esipov, was quoted as telling the RIA Novosti news agency.

“There are no special conditions,” he said. “All foreigners serve their sentences on the grounds and in the manner prescribed by Russian law.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reported.

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Michael Crowley
Aug. 4, 2022, 3:54 p.m. ET

John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, declined to discuss whether President Biden might offer Russia a new prisoner-exchange proposal or apply new pressure on Moscow to make a deal. “I don’t think it would be helpful to Brittney or to Paul for us to talk more publicly about about where we are in the talks and what the President might or might not be willing to do,” Kirby told reporters, referring to Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan. “Conversations are ongoing at various levels,” he added.

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Tania GanguliJonathan Abrams
Aug. 4, 2022, 3:21 p.m. ET

‘A political pawn’: Outrage grows in the United States over Griner’s sentencing.

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Supporters of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner during a rally in Phoenix last month.Credit...Christian Petersen/Getty Images

The W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner’s friends and colleagues expressed support and sadness for her after a Russian court found her guilty of attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into Russia and sentenced her to nine years in a penal colony.

“Just really feeling sad and feeling sick for Brittney and hoping that she gets home as soon as possible,” said Breanna Stewart, a four-time W.N.B.A. All-Star who had played with Griner on the Russian team UMMC Yekaterinburg since 2020. “Now that the trial is done and the sentencing happened, I know she’s got to be in a very emotional state and just want her to know that we’re still continuing to do whatever we can to get her home.”

Griner has been detained in Russia since Feb. 17, when Russian customs officials at an airport near Moscow said they found hashish oil in vape cartridges in her luggage. Her trial began on July 1 and the conviction had been widely expected. The U.S. State Department has said that Griner is being wrongfully detained and that it has been working to negotiate her release.

Griner’s family has sought help from Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor who is working to secure the release of Griner and of Paul Whelan, a former Marine who has been detained in Russia since 2018.

“Today’s sentencing of Brittney Griner was severe by Russian legal standards and goes to prove what we have known all along, that Brittney is being used as a political pawn,” Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said on Twitter. “We appreciate and continue to support the efforts of @POTUS and @SecBlinken to get a deal done swiftly to bring Brittney, Paul and all Americans home.”

Moments after the verdict, A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces tweeted “Free BG!” with an emoji of an orange heart. Dijonai Carrington of the Connecticut Sun tweeted “praying so hard for BG.”

The Phoenix Mercury released a statement calling Griner’s situation a nightmare.

“While we knew it was never the legal process that was going to bring our friend home, today’s verdict is a sobering milestone in the 168-day nightmare being endured by our sister, BG,” the Mercury’s statement said.

The W.N.B.A. players’ union posted a statement on Twitter from its executive director, Terri Carmichael Jackson, which called the verdict “unjust” and urged U.S. officials to do all they can to bring Griner home.

“Given her record of service on and off the court, BG deserves to come home,” the statement said.

It then called on the global sporting community to stand with Griner.

N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver and W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert released a joint statement saying: “The W.N.B.A. and N.B.A.’s commitment to her safe return has not wavered, and it is our hope that we are near the end of this process of finally bringing BG home to the United States.”

Some N.B.A. players weighed in as well.

“Smh 9 Years…. Free BG,” Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat said on Twitter.

Nets star Kyrie Irving tweeted: “What is truly happening with our Queen @brittneygriner @POTUS @VP? Please give us an Update.”

Representative Colin Allred, Democrat of Texas, has been working to secure Griner’s release since March.

“Folks must remember that this conviction is all part of a sham trial and Brittney was wrongfully detained,” Allred said on Twitter. “It is just another cynical way for Russia to try and gain leverage.”

Debbie Jackson, Griner’s high school basketball coach, held back tears after learning of Griner’s verdict. Jackson recruited Griner, then a volleyball player, to play basketball at Nimitz High School in Houston, setting her on a path toward stardom on the court.

“It makes me sick that that was the decision,” Jackson said. “I was trying to be optimistic, even fully aware that when you’re dealing with Russia, things don’t go the way you would hope they would.” She said she hoped Griner “can remain hopeful that our State Department will work on a prison swap for her and other Americans that are in prison over there.”

Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 1:51 p.m. ET

The Phoenix Mercury, Griner’s W.N.B.A. team, called Thursday's verdict a “sobering milestone in the 168-day nightmare being endured by our sister, BG” in a statement that also expressed gratitude for and confidence in U.S. officials negotiating her release. “We are steadfastly committed to keeping her top-of-mind publicly until she is safely back on American soil,” the statement added.

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Peter Baker
Aug. 4, 2022, 1:40 p.m. ET

Why prisoner exchanges are such a fraught issue.

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Some observers say a proposed prisoner swap of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner, right, for the arms dealer Viktor Bout would only encourage hostage taking.Credit...Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In the harsh and cynical world of international diplomacy, prisoner exchanges are rarely pretty, but unpalatable choices are often the only choices on the table.

The disclosure in recent weeks of talks between Washington and Moscow about a potential swap involving the American basketball star Brittney Griner raised obvious questions about what, if any, standards should apply when the United States agrees to trade prisoners. That conundrum has challenged the nation’s leaders since its founding.

The debate becomes all the more complex when it involves exchanging not soldiers on a battlefield or spies in a Cold War but dangerous criminals — such as the Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout — for civilians whose real crime is being caught up in wrong-place, wrong-time international intrigue.

“The fact that Bout is a big fish isn’t really part of the calculus,” said Jeremy Bash, who was chief of staff at the C.I.A. when the United States made a high-profile spy swap with Russia in 2010. “We value our own citizens a thousand times more than we value the foreign criminal. Israel takes the same approach. They’d trade a thousand Hamas fighters for one I.D.F. soldier. We in the U.S. take the same attitude. We will do almost anything to save an American life.”

But other veterans of past administrations expressed concern that such exchanges, especially one that seems on its face to be as unbalanced as swapping a death-dealing arms merchant for an athlete who may have vaped, would only encourage the imprisonment of more Americans who could be used as hostages.

“I take a pretty hard line on it,” said John R. Bolton, a former U.N. ambassador and national security adviser. “It’s one thing to exchange prisoners of war. It’s one thing to exchange spies when you know that’s going on.” But “negotiations and exchanges with terrorists or with authoritarian governments” become dangerous “because then you’re just putting a price on the next American hostage.”

Ms. Griner’s case has commanded attention not just because she is a star player in the W.N.B.A., but also because her arrest came a week before Russia invaded Ukraine and seemed to be a brazen attempt by Moscow to gain a bargaining chip.

President Biden has come under enormous pressure to find a way to free her and approved an offer of Mr. Bout over the concerns of the Justice Department, which often takes a dim view of horse trading the criminals it puts away.

Jonathan Abrams
Aug. 4, 2022, 1:17 p.m. ET

Lindsay Kagawa Colas, Griner’s agent, said in a Twitter thread that the severity of the sentence proves Griner "is being used as a political pawn.” She added: “This is a time for compassion and a shared understanding that getting a deal done to bring Americans home will be hard, but it is urgent and it is the right thing to do.”

Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:57 p.m. ET

Terri Jackson, the executive director of the W.N.B.A. players’ union, called Griner’s conviction and sentencing “disappointing” and “unjust” in a statement. She added that a prisoner swap “is critically important to B.G., to her family, to our country. We’re counting on this administration.”

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Valerie Hopkins
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:51 p.m. ET

Viktor Bout Was Probably the Highest-Profile Russian in U.S. Custody

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The United States has proposed exchanging Viktor Bout, an imprisoned Russian arms dealer, for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, a former Marine.Credit...Sukree Sukplang/Reuters

Update: The Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout has been released in a prisoner swap for Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who was imprisoned in Russia. Follow our live coverage.

Shortly after his conviction in 2011 on charges including conspiring to kill American citizens, the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout relayed a defiant message through his lawyer, even though he faced the prospect of decades in prison.

Mr. Bout, his lawyer said, “believes this is not the end.”

More than a decade later, Mr. Bout, 55, has been freed, even though he has served less than half of his 25-year prison sentence. He was exchanged on Thursday for the American basketball star Brittney Griner, who had been imprisoned in Russia for 10 months.

Russian officials have pressed for Mr. Bout’s return since his conviction by a New York jury on four counts that included conspiring to kill American citizens. Prosecutors said he had agreed to sell antiaircraft weapons to drug enforcement informants who were posing as arms buyers for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, called Mr. Bout (pronounced “Boot”) “one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.” Mr. Bout become notorious among American intelligence officials, earning the nickname “Merchant of Death” as he evaded capture for years. His exploits helped inspire a 2005 film, “Lord of War,” that starred Nicolas Cage as a character fashioned after Mr. Bout.

He was probably the highest-profile Russian in U.S. custody and the prisoner Russia had campaigned the most vociferously to have returned. His return to Russia is likely to re-ignite the debate over the wisdom of engaging in prisoner exchanges for Americans the United States considers “wrongfully detained” — as is the case with Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan.

In interviews with journalists, Mr. Bout had repeatedly denied accusations that he worked for Russian intelligence agencies. But Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s security services, said in an interview in July that there were strong signs — Mr. Bout’s education, his social and professional networks, and his logistical skills — that he is a member, or at least was in close collaboration with, Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U.

“That is also the opinion of U.S. and other authorities — and it explains the reasons Russia has been so assiduously campaigning to get him back,” said Mr. Galeotti, a lecturer on Russia and transnational crime at University College London. “All countries try to get their citizens out of rough jurisdictions, but it is clear that it has been a particular priority for the Russians in getting Viktor Bout back.”

Cassandra Vinograd
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:40 p.m. ET

President Biden said the sentence was “unacceptable” and “one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney.” He called on Russia to immediately release Griner, saying in a statement that his administration would continue to pursue all avenues to bring her and fellow American detainee Paul Whelan home safely.

Michael Crowley
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:39 p.m. ET

Griner’s conviction leaves President Biden with painful choices.

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Brittney Griner’s conviction in Russia narrows President Biden’s options to secure her freedom.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Brittney Griner’s conviction and nine-year sentence leaves Biden officials in a difficult position.

They can hope that Moscow will change its position and accept a U.S. proposal to free Ms. Griner by trading her and another American prisoner for a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States, a prospect that is uncertain. Or they can offer to pay an even greater price for the basketball star’s release.

Either approach would bring political costs for President Biden as he manages acidic relations with Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

“My administration will continue to work tirelessly and pursue every possible avenue to bring Brittney and Paul Whelan home safely as soon as possible,” Mr. Biden said in a statement after the verdict.

Russia, however, has so far declined to accept Mr. Biden’s June offer to exchange the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence, for Ms. Griner and Paul Whelan, an American whom the U.S. says was illegitimately convicted of espionage in 2020.

A phone call about the matter last Friday between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov — their first conversation since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine — appeared to leave the Kremlin unmoved. On Monday, the White House said that Russia had made an unspecified “bad faith” counteroffer that the U.S. did not consider serious.

If Mr. Biden stands firmly behind his original offer, he could face accusations that he is not doing enough to bring the Americans home. Ms. Griner’s family and supporters have mounted an effective public campaign to raise her profile and pressure Mr. Biden to do whatever it takes to win her release.

But a new wave of public attention could make a deal even more difficult. Russian officials have insisted that the diplomatic wrangling over Ms. Griner should remain behind closed doors. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Tuesday that negotiations over a potential prisoner exchange “should be discreet.”

And some analysts believe that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is happy to see President Biden facing awkward questions about the U.S. level of commitment to her freedom.

Alternatively, the White House and State Department could up their ante for an exchange. But Biden officials already worry that prisoner trades encourage hostile foreign governments to detain Americans on false or trumped-up charges in the hope of freeing their own, more serious wrongdoers, like Mr. Bout.

Some Republicans have already complained that Mr. Biden’s existing offer, the general nature of which was disclosed by Mr. Blinken late last month, creates such an incentive. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News last week that freeing Mr. Bout would “likely lead to more” Americans being arrested abroad.

The standoff means that, unless Mr. Putin has a sudden, highly uncharacteristic change of heart, Mr. Biden will be left to ponder two uncomfortable choices — much to the delight of a Russian leader maneuvering for leverage against the Western economic and military campaign against him.

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Jonathan Abrams
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:33 p.m. ET

“Now that the trial is done and the sentencing happened, I know she’s got to be in a very emotional state and just want her to know that we’re still continuing to do whatever we can to get her home,” the W.N.B.A. star Breanna Stewart said. “We’re going to keep fighting and we hope that day is coming very, very soon.”

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Credit...Richard Ellis/UPI/Shutterstock
Michael Crowley
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:32 p.m. ET

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the conviction and sentence “spotlights our concerns with the Russian government’s use of wrongful detentions.” In a post on Twitter, Blinken added that he would ensure “we do everything we can” to bring Griner and Paul Whelan home “as soon as possible.”

Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:29 p.m. ET

On Wednesday, in advance of Griner’s final day at trial, several W.N.B.A. players who had played in Russia posted messages about their own experiences playing there and asking for leniency for Griner. Among them was the W.N.B.A. players’ union president, Nneka Ogwumike.

Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:29 p.m. ET

Ogwumike posted a photo of herself playing for her Russian team. “Like me, she has great memories from her time playing and returned year after year to compete in Russia,” Ogwumike wrote on Instagram.

Jonathan Abrams
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:22 p.m. ET

Representative Colin Allred, Democrat of Texas, said that the U.S. government remained committed to securing Griner’s release.

Allred was one of the first politicians who spoke publicly about Griner’s detainment. In June, he led a House resolution to demand that the Russian government free Griner.

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Ivan Nechepurenko
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:19 p.m. ET

Brittney Griner felt “very upset” about the verdict, said Maria Blagovolina, one of her lawyers. “It is difficult for her to talk,” she said after the hearing. “It is a difficult time for her.”

Ivan Nechepurenko
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:20 p.m. ET

Griner’s lawyers said they were “very surprised by the sentence,” which they said is "completely at odds with the existing legal practice for that charge.” Asked whether Griner would ask for clemency, Blagovolina said that the legal team “will look into all possibilities depending on the situation and the wishes of our defendant.”

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Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:18 p.m. ET

N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver and W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert released a joint statement in reaction to Griner’s conviction and sentencing, calling it “unjustified and unfortunate, but not unexpected.” They added: “The WNBA and NBA’s commitment to her safe return has not wavered and it is our hope that we are near the end of this process of finally bringing BG home to the United States.”

Jonathan Abrams
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:09 p.m. ET

Griner has been a star everywhere she has played.

Brittney Griner is one of a handful of players to have won a college championship, W.N.B.A. and EuroLeague titles and an Olympic gold medal.

Brittney Griner became a star at Baylor University, where she dominated through a combination of size and fluidity largely unseen in women’s basketball to that point. Her dunks — still a rarity in the women’s game — and blocked shots became fixtures of her team’s highlight reels, and as a junior she led Baylor to an undefeated season and a national championship in the 2011-12 season.

The Phoenix Mercury drafted Ms. Griner with the first overall selection in the 2013 draft and she quickly became one of the W.N.B.A.’s best players. Hailed for her talents and her confidence in being herself, she became the first openly gay athlete endorsed by Nike.

She also continued to win. In Phoenix, Ms. Griner played alongside Diana Taurasi, another of the game’s best scorers, as the Mercury won the W.N.B.A. title in 2014.

A seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star, Ms. Griner also won Olympic gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2016 and 2021, and she is one of a handful of players to have won a college championship, W.N.B.A. and Euroleague titles, and an Olympic gold medal.

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Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 12:05 p.m. ET

W.N.B.A. players posted messages of sadness and support for Brittney Griner on social media after she was convicted and sentenced. Las Vegas Aces forward A’ja Wilson wrote “Free BG!” with an orange heart emoji. Dijonai Carrington of the Connecticut Sun wrote “praying so hard for BG,” then added that she had “no words.”

Ivan Nechepurenko
Aug. 4, 2022, 11:57 a.m. ET

Elizabeth Rood, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, called Griner’s conviction and sentencing “a miscarriage of justice.” Speaking outside the courthouse near Moscow, she said, “Secretary of State Blinken, President Biden’s national security team and the entire American government remain committed to bringing Ms. Griner home safely to her family and friends.”

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Ivan Nechepurenko
Aug. 4, 2022, 11:30 a.m. ET

Griner’s defense team called the verdict “absolutely unreasonable” and said “we will certainly file an appeal.” The team — Maria Blagovolina, a partner at Rybalkin Gortsunyan Dyakin, and Alexander Boykov, of Moscow Legal Center — said the court had “completely ignored all the evidence of the defense, and most importantly, the guilty plea.”

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Credit...Pool photo by Evgenia Novozhenina
Tania Ganguli
Aug. 4, 2022, 11:18 a.m. ET

Griner was playing in Russia to supplement her W.N.B.A. salary.

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Brittney Griner has played for UMMC Yekaterinburg since the 2014 W.N.B.A. off-season, winning multiple EuroLeague titles with the team.Credit...Erdem Sahin/EPA, via Shutterstock

When the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was detained in a Moscow airport in February, she was returning to Russia from the United States to join her Russian basketball team, UMMC Yekaterinburg, for the playoffs.

Ms. Griner said during her court testimony last week that she knew about a U.S. State Department advisory warning American citizens not to travel to Russia, but wanted to rejoin her team anyway.

“It’s the most important part of the season, after the break,” Ms. Griner testified, according to Reuters. “It’s playoffs. The whole season I worked, my team worked hard to get to a good position. There was nothing that was going to change that for me. I didn’t want to let my team down.”

Ms. Griner has played for UMMC Yekaterinburg since 2014, when the W.N.B.A. has been outside its season. The team, which is owned by the Russian oligarchs Iskander Makhmudov and Andrei Kozitsyn, is known for paying some of the highest women’s basketball salaries in the world.

Many W.N.B.A. players play overseas during their off-seasons to supplement their salaries and garner extra playing time. The W.N.B.A.’s maximum base salary for the 2022 season is $228,094.

About half of the league’s players played in non-American leagues during this past off-season, with more than a dozen playing in Ukraine and Russia.

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Eduardo Medina
Aug. 4, 2022, 11:02 a.m. ET

Here are some prisoner swaps that freed Americans.

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Francis Gary Powers, center, piloted a spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union. He was released in 1962 in a dramatic spy swap at the height of the Cold War.Credit...The Associated Press

The prospect of the United States exchanging a Russian prisoner for the basketball star Brittney Griner along with Paul Whelan, a former Marine, is reminiscent of the fraught deals that Washington orchestrated with Moscow and its allies during and after the Cold War.

Perhaps the most dramatic exchange was the 1962 swap on a fog-shrouded bridge between East Germany and West Berlin that became the stuff of Hollywood. The United States exchanged Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy, for Francis Gary Powers, the American pilot of a U‐2 spy plane that shot down over the Soviet Union two years earlier. More than 50 years later, the trade was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 film, “Bridge of Spies.”

Now, experts say a prisoner exchange may be a path to freedom for Ms. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who plays for the Phoenix Mercury.

If a prisoner exchange occured, she would join a long succession of Americans abducted or arrested abroad whose releases have underscored the delicate task of negotiating with adversarial countries.

Here are some of the highest-profile prisoner swaps between the United States and other countries:

  • The 1962 swap of Mr. Abel for Mr. Powers captivated Americans during the height of the Cold War. Mr. Powers had been subjected to 107 days of interrogation followed by a public trial in Moscow before he was imprisoned for more than two years.

  • In 1985, the United States engaged in what an American official at the time called “the biggest spy swap” in memory. Four Eastern Europeans held in the United States for espionage were traded for 25 people imprisoned in East Germany and Poland.

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Nicholas Daniloff, center, with President Ronald Reagan in Washington in 1986.Credit...Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times
  • Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist who reported on the Soviet Union and was imprisoned in Moscow in 1986, was released from prison that year after the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to a prisoner swap. In return, the Soviet Union got Gennadi Zakharov, a Soviet physicist arrested in New York on espionage charges.

  • In 2010, 10 Russians detained by the United States were swapped for four agents who had been held in Russian prisons after signing written confessions to espionage. To American officials, the exchange meant the end of a Russian spy ring; for Russians, it was a quick deal that resolved a potentially volatile situation.

  • In 2014, the Taliban released Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held for five years after walking off his Army base in Afghanistan. He was later swapped for five Taliban detainees.

  • Later that year, the United States released three Cuban spies who had been in an American prison since 2001. In exchange, Cuba announced that it released a U.S. intelligence agent who had been imprisoned for nearly 20 years.

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Journalist Jason Rezaian with his wife and mother after his release from Iran in 2016.Credit...Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
  • In 2016, Iran freed four Americans of Iranian descent, including a Marine veteran and Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter, in a delicately negotiated swap. The United States released seven Iranians who had been held on sanctions violations. Mr. Rezaian had been languishing in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since 2014 on vaguely defined charges of espionage that he denied.

  • In 2019, Iran freed Xiyue Wang, an American graduate student who had been imprisoned in Tehran for more than three years on suspicion of being a spy, in exchange for Masoud Soleimani, an Iranian scientist who was charged with violating American trade sanctions. Mr. Wang had been charged with espionage and locked in Evin Prison. U.S. officials denied that Mr. Wang was a spy.

  • Trevor R. Reed — an ailing former U.S. Marine held for two years in Russia on what appear to be bogus charges of assault — was released in April in a prisoner swap involving a Russian pilot convicted of cocaine trafficking charges. The exchange came as President Vladimir V. Putin announced the beginning of his invasion of Ukraine.

Ivan Nechepurenko
Aug. 4, 2022, 9:42 a.m. ET

‘I made an honest mistake,’ Griner tells the court.

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The U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner testified on Thursday, before being sentenced to nine years in a penal colony on charges of smuggling hashish oil into Russia.CreditCredit...Pool photo by Evgenia Novozhenina

Brittney Griner offered a glimpse of her personal story while testifying in a Russian court on Thursday in a case in which she faces a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Her legal team has appealed for leniency in the case, arguing that she has contributed to Russian society and that she did not intend to break the law.

“I grew up in a normal house, a normal household in Houston, Texas, with my siblings and my mom and my dad,” Ms. Griner, 31, told the court. “My parents taught me two important things: One, take ownership for your responsibilities and two, work hard for everything that you get. That’s why I pleaded guilty to my charges.”

“I understand everything that has been said against me in the charges against me, but I had no intent to break Russian law,” added Ms. Griner, who was detained in mid-February in a Moscow airport while on her way to Yekaterinburg, a Russian city near the Ural Mountains where she had been playing for a local team during the W.N.B.A. off season.

Customs officials found two vape cartridges containing less than one gram of hashish oil in her luggage.

“I want the court to understand that it was an honest mistake that I made while rushing and in stress trying to recover post-Covid and just trying to get back to my team,” she told the court on Thursday.

Ms. Griner also spoke of her time playing for UMMC Yekaterinburg.

“That hard work that my parents instilled in me is what had brought me to play for the best Russian team,” she said. “I had no idea that the team, the city, the fans and my teammates would make such a great impression on me over the six and a half years that I spent in Yekaterinburg. It became my second home with my friends, my teammates and my fans that I would always interact with.”

The basketball star apologized to her teammates on the Russian squad and the city of Yekaterinburg, her family and her fellow W.N.B.A. players, including her Arizona team, the Phoenix Mercury.

Addressing the judge in the case, Anna S. Sotnikova, Ms. Griner said, “I made an honest mistake, and I hope that in your ruling that it doesn’t end my life here.”

She also alluded to the possibility of a prisoner swap that would allow her to return to the United States, an issue that has been the subject of talks between Moscow and Washington, with pressure on President Biden to help secure her release.

“I know that everybody keeps talking about political pawn and politics, but I hope that that is far from that courtroom,” Ms. Griner said.

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