A senior Kremlin official said Moscow was ready to discuss a prisoner swap with Washington that people familiar with the matter say could see U.S. women’s basketball star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan traded for a Russian arms dealer imprisoned in the U.S.
The comments from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a news conference in Cambodia, came a day after a Russian court sentenced Ms. Griner to nine years in prison following her guilty plea and conviction on charges she brought a marijuana product into the country. The U.S. maintains Ms. Griner has been wrongfully detained.
“We are ready to discuss this topic, but within the framework of a channel that was agreed upon by Presidents Putin and Biden,” Mr. Lavrov said Friday in Phnom Penh, on the sidelines of a regional forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Mr. Lavrov didn’t give any more details of the framework. Mr. Biden had raised the issue of Americans imprisoned in Russia with Russian President
at a high-profile summit in Geneva last year.
U.S. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken,
who was also in Phnom Penh for the ASEAN forum, acknowledged Mr. Lavrov’s remark and reiterated the U.S.’s “significant concern” about the Russian government’s legal system and its use of “individuals as political pawns.”
“We put forward, as you know, a substantial proposal that Russia should engage with us on,” Mr. Blinken told reporters. “And what Foreign Minister Lavrov said this morning and said publicly is that they are prepared to engage through channels we’ve established to do just that, and we’ll be pursuing.”
Ms. Griner’s sentence was close to the maximum 10-year penalty for the charges of drug…
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