U.S. detainees’ fates tangled in Russia
The family of a lesserknown prisoner hopes Biden administration can bring both home.
WASHINGTON — Brittney Griner is the most prominent American locked up by a foreign country. But the WNBA star’s case is tangled with that of a lesserknown American who is also imprisoned in Russia.
Paul Whelan has been held in Russia since his December 2018 arrest on espionage charges that he and the U.S. government say are false. He was left out of a prisoner exchange in April that brought home Marine veteran Trevor Reed.
That has escalated pressure on the Biden administration to avoid another swap that does not include Whelan — even as it presses for the release of Griner, an Olympic gold medalist whose case has drawn global attention.
The U.S. government may not agree to a deal in which just one is released, potentially complicating negotiations.
But Whelan could also benefit from the attention given to Griner, whose case has cast a spotlight on his own. And though the U.S. may hesitate to give up a high-level Russian prisoner in exchange for Griner, who’s charged with a relatively minor drug offense, it’s possible it would be more inclined to do so if she and Whelan were part of a deal.
The potential interplay between the cases is not lost on the families and supporters of Whelan and Griner.
“It’s still very raw,” said Whelan’s sister Elizabeth Whelan of her brother being excluded from the Reed deal. “And to think we might have to go through that again if Brittney is brought home first is just terrible.”
But “what’s really bad” about feeling that way, she said, is that she and her family absolutely want Griner released.
“It’s not like we don’t want her home,” she said. “We want everyone out of there, out of Russia and away from that situation.”
It all adds up to a “sticky wicket,” said Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in Russia and is advising the WNBA players’ association on Griner’s case.
If Griner, who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, were to leapfrog Whelan in coming home, the administration will face scrutiny from Whelan’s supporters.
“And if Paul Whelan gets out first, you’re going to have questions about why isn’t Brittney out, when Brittney hasn’t even been convicted yet,” she said.
U.S. officials have not said whether swaps are being discussed that could get Griner, Whelan or both home or whether they’d accept a deal that yields the release of only one.
A spokesman for the State Department office that advocates for wrongfully detained Americans, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, declined to say how the cases might affect each other but said in a statement that the office is committed to securing the release of both.
In February, Russian authorities detained Griner at an airport after they said a search of her bag revealed vape cartridges containing oil derived from cannabis. The arrest has heightened public awareness around the dozens of Americans who are classified as wrongfully detained by foreign governments.
The seven-time WNBA All-Star is a gay, Black woman; that has prompted questions about the roles of race and sexual identity in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LGBTQ community. Some question whether the case would have gotten more attention had it involved a white, male athlete.
U.S. officials and Griner’s supporters initially said little publicly about her case, but that changed in May, when the State Department designated her as wrongfully detained.
Griner’s fame cuts both ways, St. Julian-Varnon said. If Russia wants to reestablish itself as a country hospitable to foreign athletes, it would have significant incentive to release her. But given Griner’s “political value” to the country, it may make a huge demand for her release.
“This is the biggest chip that they have to play,” she said.
Unlike Griner, who is awaiting trial, Whelan has been convicted and sentenced.
A corporate security executive from Michigan who was arrested after traveling to Russia for a wedding, Whelan was found guilty in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He and his family have asserted his innocence. The U.S. government has denounced the charges as false.
Reed had been sentenced well before the prisoner swap. He had been jailed over what Russian authorities say was a drunken physical encounter with police in Moscow and was freed in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who was serving a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking conspiracy.
It’s unclear which other Russians, if any, might be part of exchanges. Russian state media have for years floated the name of arms dealer Viktor Bout, though such a deal risks being seen as lending false equivalency between a Russian whom the U.S. government regards as properly convicted and Americans whom it considers unjustly detained.