Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan — Pawns in An International Game

In July 2022, Brittney Griner pleaded “guilty” in a Russian court to drug-related charges. Her Russian lawyers told the press that she tested negative for the presence of drugs in her system after she was taken into custody at a Moscow airport in February. The two-time Olympic gold medalist and star player of the Phoenix Mercury has been held in degrading and dangerous conditions ever since her arrest, with family and friends becoming increasingly worried.

Hope for leniency

Her lawyers’ words appear to indicate that Griner hopes her guilty plea will become a mitigating factor against a harsher sentence. Russian courts routinely hand out 10-year sentences for drug possession.

It was Griner’s choice to plead guilty, her lawyers said, since she hoped to “take full responsibility” as someone aware of her status as a role model for others. She “sets an example of being brave.”

In court, the attorneys argued that she had unknowingly carried the cannabis-infused vape cartridges—banned in Russia, but allowed in the U.S. for medicinal use—that Russian officials claim to have discovered in her luggage. The legal team further stated their hope that the “insignificant amount” of the substance, added to her history of numerous positive contributions to the world of international sports, would factor into any sentencing decision.

International chess

But now, it looks like Griner has become a political pawn

Here’s what the chess board looked like in late July: 

The United States continues to consider Griner “wrongfully detained,” and continues its efforts to secure her release, alongside that of another American, Paul Whelan.

The U.S. government has proposed a prisoner swap with Moscow, in which Griner and Whelan would be exchanged for a Russian national in U.S. detention. The Russians have indicated openness to discussion of a swap involving Viktor Bout, an infamous arms dealer nicknamed “the Merchant of Death.”

Bout has been in American custody since 2008, convicted in 2011 of conspiring to kill Americans and sentenced to an Illinois prison.

Bout’s known biography paints him as an “entrepreneur” rather than an ideologue. Trained as a linguist by the Soviet army, he got rich after the break-up of the former Soviet Union. The chaos of the early 1990s left plenty of military weapons and hardware lying unused across the 15 former Soviet republics. Bout managed to scrape up these supplies and use his connections to transport them in Soviet military planes to war zones around the world. He sold to governments persecuting their citizens and to rebel groups alike.

Russia experts see Vladimir Putin’s desire to secure Bout’s release as yet another means of one-upping the Americans. Particularly as the Russian army finds itself dug in further in its brutal assault on Ukraine, Putin is also likely looking for any possible leverage to offset the West’s support for the Ukrainians.

On July 27, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was preparing to speak with his Russian counterpart for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, in order to discuss the prisoner exchange. While Blinken did not confirm, government sources said that everything points to a deal involving Bout for Griner and Whelan. Sources also note that a guilty plea is the most likely first step toward securing Griner’s release in any type of prisoner exchange. 

A long history of prisoner swaps

In April, the U.S. gained the release of Trevor Reed from Russian custody, in a trade for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, sentenced to 20 years for conspiring to smuggle cocaine. Reed, a former Marine, received a nine-year sentence in 2019 for allegedly assaulting a Russian officer.

Prisoner swaps between the U.S. and Russia—and the former Soviet Union—are nothing new. Most, but by no means all, of these exchanges have involved alleged espionage agents.

In 1962, the Soviets traded downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. That famous Cold War meeting in the middle of the Glienicke Bridge near Berlin formed the basis for the Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies.

In 1963, the Soviets handed over American student Marvin William Makinen and Polish-American missionary Walter Ciszek in exchange for a Russian former United Nations worker and his wife charged with espionage in the U.S.

In 1979, the Soviet Union swapped human rights activist Aleksandr Ginzburg and four other dissidents for two Russians held by the Americans on charges of spying. In 1986, the Glienicke Bridge was yet again the site of exchange when the Soviets released Jewish dissident and rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky (now Natan Sharansky) in a trade for a Czech national charged with espionage and his wife.

In 2010 at Vienna International Airport, the U.S. turned accused spy Anna Kushchenko—who had worked undercover as socialite Anna Chapman—and nine other Russian “sleeper agents” in the “Illegals Program” over to Russian authorities. Among those on the other side of this exchange were the Russian nuclear scientist Igor Sutyagin and the former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal, accused of spying for the United Kingdom. Skripal and his daughter, of course, were poisoned by Russian operatives with the nerve agent Novichok in 2018. They barely survived.

Paul Whelan, a business executive and former Marine, denies the charges of espionage on which the Russian government detained him in late 2018, saying he was in the country for a friend’s wedding. His family notes that his 16-year sentence has him doing hard labor in a prison camp. Family members have also said that at the time of his detention, the Russians told Whelan they were planning to exchange him for Viktor Bout.

For both Whelan and Griner, release cannot come soon enough.