Releasing WNBA star Brittney Griner from a Moscow jail is a priority for President Joe Biden But apparently Moscow has other pressing issues on its plate, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday, as reported by USA Today.
“In this tense situation, I think his (Biden’s) primary concern is the upcoming midterm elections,” he said Yury Ushakov on Russian State TV. “He keeps emphasizing the need to get[griner]home… However, it’s not the main issue we’re worried about.”
In recent months, the White House and the Kremlin apparently agree that an exchange of prisoners was planned, in which even convicted arms dealers would be named Victor fight be exchanged for Griner, who is now in her ninth month in a Russian prison for possession of cannabis oil when entering a Moscow airport to end their seventh season with Russian team UMMC Yekaterinburg.
Russia’s war comes first
Adding to the ongoing and widening war with Ukraine, also in its ninth month, NPR reported Sunday that Russia launched a criminal investigation after gunmen shot dead 11 people at a military training center near the Ukrainian border while fighting raged in the Eastern and southern Ukraine raged.
Biden will only discuss Griner with Putin
Ongoing efforts to arrange a swap appear to have waxed and waned as US-Russia relations deteriorate. Even though Biden said CNN’s Jake Tapper last week that he would he would be ready to speak to Putin at next month’s Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia, but only to discuss Griner’s case.
grinner, sentenced on 4.8, admitted at her trial that she had less than a gram of cannabis oil in her suitcase, which she forgot to pack in her rush to travel back to Moscow to finish the basketball season. She was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
Your lawyers want to appeal this draconian ruling on October 25th.
