(CNN) — Brittney Griner, the American basketball star detained by Russian authorities in February, has just returned safely to the United States after being released in a prisoner exchange.
US officials who met Griner on the ground Friday morning told CNN that he was “in good spirits and incredibly gracious.” A person who appeared to be Griner got off the plane shortly after 5:30 am ET this Friday at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas.
“Very happy to have Brittney back on American soil. Welcome home, BG!” tweeted Roger Carstensa State Department official who was traveling with Griner, this Friday morning.
One of his first stops is likely to be “at a treatment center where he can get medical attention after 10 months in detention,” John Kirby of the National Security Council told CNN on Thursday.
Griner’s release followed a US-Russian prisoner swap involving international arms dealer Viktor Bout, arrested in 2008 in Thailand and extradited to the US in 2010.
The exchange took place this Thursday in Abu Dhabi, senior officials in the Joe Biden government said. A joint statement by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia reported that the Gulf countries were the mediators in the exchange between the United States and Russia.
This is not about an improvement in relations between the United States and Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Griner’s arrest and conviction occurred against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, adding further attention to the plight of other Americans already in Russian custody, including Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed. Whelan’s release fell through in the latest prisoner exchange, while Reed returned to the US in April after a nearly three-year ordeal.
The Biden government will continue to negotiate with Russia to secure Whelan’s release, it said Friday. The Russians “have things they want in this world,” and Moscow knows that ultimately the two sides will come to “a mutually acceptable deal if they keep talking to us,” a senior government official told CNN.
President Joe Biden said efforts to bring Griner home involved “intensive and painstaking negotiations” and thanked members of his administration who participated.
“This is a day we have worked for a long time. We never stopped pressing for his release,” he said Thursday.
The final deal was closed in 48 hours, officials said, beginning the process of transferring Griner from the penal colony where he was serving a long sentence.
Biden gave final approval to the prisoner swap that freed Griner over the past week, an official familiar with the matter said.
Bout has also returned home to Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday. The prisoner exchange with Griner “was successfully completed at Abu Dhabi airport” on Thursday, the ministry said.
Griner’s family thanked Biden and his administration in a statement Thursday, as well as former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose Richardson Center worked on behalf of the family to help secure Griner’s release. They also expressed their gratitude for the large amount of public support they received
“We sincerely thank everyone for the kind words, thoughts and prayers, including those of Paul and the Whelan family, who have been generous in their support of Brittney and our family during what we know to be a heartbreaking time,” says the release.
“We pray for Paul and for the speedy and safe return of all wrongfully detained Americans.”
Britnney Griner
Russia does not want to negotiate Whelan’s return, US official says
While Griner’s safe return was heralded as a diplomatic achievement, officials and supporters expressed disappointment that Whelan was unable to return home.
Whelan, a US, Irish, British and Canadian citizen, was detained at a Moscow hotel in December 2018 by Russian authorities, who claimed he was involved in an intelligence operation. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges which he has vehemently denied. The US State Department has declared him wrongfully detained.
The Russians recently signaled that they were only willing to deal for Griner and not Whelan, a US official said, because Russia said it handles its cases differently depending on the allegations against each.
The Biden administration made repeated offers to release Whelan as part of this deal, even after Russia made it clear that only Griner was acceptable.
In the end, when it became clear that Russia would refuse to deal with Whelan, the United States had to agree.
“The options were to bring Brittney or nothing,” a US official said; and he added that it was a “difficult decision” for Biden, but once again, he felt he had to make it.
Biden acknowledged that Griner’s release was happening while Whelan was in prison and said Whelan’s family “must have mixed emotions today.”
“This was not an election on which American to bring home,” Biden said. “Unfortunately, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And although we still haven’t achieved Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We never give up”.
Paul Whelan remains in custody in Russia.
The Whelan family, worried about what is coming
Whelan told CNN in an exclusive phone call from the prison where he is being held in a remote part of Russia that he was “disappointed” that the Biden administration has not done more to secure his release. Whelan said he was happy Griner was released, but he was “led to believe that things were moving in the right direction, that governments were negotiating and that there would be news soon.”
“I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here,” he said.
Whelan is serving his sentence in a labor camp in Mordovia, an eight-hour drive from Moscow, where he told CNN in June 2021 that he spent his days working in a garment factory he called a “sweatshop.”
The Biden administration has some ideas about “new forms of deals” they will try with the Russians in an effort to secure Whelan’s release, a senior official told CNN on Thursday.
The official said they recognized the US needs to make available “something more, something different” than what they have offered the Russians thus far, and did not rule out offering a Russian spy in US custody in a possible future exchange.
“There is even a willingness to pay a very high price on the part of the president,” the official said. “We have made it clear to the Russians that we are at least open to telling them what is available to us, what we can really offer. It would be someone in our custody,” he said.
Richardson said he expects Whelan to return home by the end of the year.
“We have tried, my foundation, for four years to get Whelan out and somehow he always comes up short… Possibly because of the espionage charge, because he is a Marine, he was wrongfully detained, the Russians held him until the end. And this is what happened again, but that doesn’t mean there’s no chance we can get it out. I think we can,” Richardson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
US President Joe Biden speaks to reporters about Russia’s release of Brittney Griner, with Vice President Kamala Harris and the athlete’s wife, Cherelle Griner, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, June 8. December 2022. (Credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Whelan’s family expressed their happiness at the news of his release, but said Thursday they are “devastated” that he was not released.
“This is a great day for the families of those wrongfully detained and we are in awe of them,” David Whelan, Paul’s brother, said on “CNN This Morning.” “But we do worry about Paul’s future. I think it has become clear that the United States does not have any concessions that the Russian government wants in exchange for Paul. So I’m not quite sure what the future holds.”
Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, Jeremy Herb, MJ Lee, Kevin Liptak, Abby Phillip y Elizabeth Wolfe de CNN contribuyeron a este informe.
