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    Brittney Griner Is Creating a New Normal, for Herself and the W.N.B.A.

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    PHOENIX — Brittney Griner embarked on a four-day itinerary that would disrupt anyone’s circadian rhythm.First came the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, where she was decked out in a sharp, black suit that Saturday night. President Biden pointed to her in the audience and said, “Boy, I can hardly wait to see you back on the court.”Soon she was rushing to catch a flight, landing in Phoenix at 4 a.m. for the start of W.N.B.A. training camp with the Mercury. Then she hustled back east, to New York, for her first Met Gala. She wore a sleek tan suit, and her wife, Cherelle Griner, was in a strapless white gown, both custom outfits by Calvin Klein. They mingled with A-list celebrities that night, but Brittney needed to be back in Phoenix by Tuesday afternoon for more basketball and, she had hoped, a nap.The sparkling events, time-zone hopping and overall spectacle were overwhelming but perhaps also came as a kind of relief for Brittney Griner, who spent nearly 10 months detained in Russia and returned to the United States in December as a new symbol of hope. Ensnared in a geopolitical showdown between Washington and Moscow, Griner drew attention not only to herself and to the plight of other foreign detainees but also to the financial disparities facing women in sports that had brought her to Russia in the first place.On Friday, Griner will return to the court for her first official W.N.B.A. game in 579 days. The league is not the same now, in part because of her. The issues her detention spotlighted are not new and are unlikely to be easily resolved. But she has galvanized a potent fan base and sports work force who are both eager to welcome her home and to use this moment to promote change alongside her.“We have wanted change for a long time, but now we’re really starting to demand it,” Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said. “We’re just getting a little more impatient with that and realizing that it’s an issue where we don’t have the money yet, but pushing so that really, really soon we do have the resources to be treated like the athletes we are.”A modest crowd roared for Griner this month during a preseason game, her first action since she was released from Russia.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesWhy Brittney Griner Was in RussiaRussian customs officials detained Griner at an airport near Moscow in February 2022 after finding vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage as she returned to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional team that reportedly paid her at least $1 million. She was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, but she was freed in a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer, in December. The U.S. State Department said that she had been wrongfully detained.The W.N.B.A., now in its 27th season, has long watched dozens of its players go overseas during each off-season in search of higher pay, though the league has been trying to offer them additional ways to make money stateside. The maximum salary in the W.N.B.A. is about $230,000, and was half as much just a few years ago. Top players like Griner, a seven-time All-Star center, can command hundreds of thousands more from international teams. Many people were not aware of this dynamic until Griner’s detention and expressed shock and frustration on social media and on television shows.“As much as I would love to, you know, pay my light bill for the love of the game, I can’t,” Griner said last month during her first news conference since she was freed.The Associated Press reported that 67 of the league’s 144 players still played internationally this off-season, indicative of the strong pull of the opportunity to make additional income. But in light of Griner’s detention and the war in Ukraine, players eschewed the historically lucrative Russian organizations for teams in countries like Italy and Turkey. About 90 players played internationally five years ago.Collier, 26, who has played for international teams in W.N.B.A. off-seasons, said younger players gain important experience overseas. But she said she doubted she would play abroad again after Griner’s experience and because she wants to spend more time with her daughter, who will turn 1 next Thursday.“I also encourage everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home,” Griner said in December.Caitlin O’Hara/Reuters‘That’s How You Build Household Names’W.N.B.A. officials have attributed players’ modest salaries to its historically modest — and perhaps meager — revenue and media attention. Many W.N.B.A. players have become accustomed to entering the league with less media fanfare and to at times playing before far smaller audiences than they experienced in college.“I’ve been a part of it when I was in college and it was the hottest ticket in the country,” said Mercury guard Diana Taurasi, who starred at UConn before becoming the W.N.B.A.’s career leading scorer. She continued: “How do we make the hottest ticket in the country for the best basketball players in the world in the W.N.B.A.? That, to me, it only happens in women’s sports where the adolescents get more attention than the grown-ups.”Griner, who joined the Mercury in 2013, has been a star since she became known for dunking at Baylor. At her first news conference since returning, Griner pleaded with the unusual swell of reporters to come and cover games during the season, too.“The league is a league that needs celebrity,” said Candy Lee, a professor of journalism and integrated marketing communications at Northwestern. She added: “The league can take advantage of it. The Mercury can take advantage of it.”The surge in W.N.B.A. interest because of Griner has dovetailed with broader momentum for women’s sports in recent years. The N.C.A.A. Division I women’s basketball championship game last month shattered records with an average of 9.9 million viewers, according to ESPN.A whirlwind few days for Griner included the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and the Met Gala, which she attended with her wife, Cherelle Griner.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesW.N.B.A. teams will play a record 40 regular-season games this year, and the league signed a multiyear deal with Scripps to televise Friday night games on the network ION. Griner’s first two regular-season games, on Friday in Los Angeles and Sunday in Phoenix against Chicago, will be nationally televised by ESPN. Viewership during the 2022 regular season rose 16 percent over the previous year, according to the league, making it the most-watched season in 14 years.Flip on the N.B.A. playoffs and you’re likely to spot a W.N.B.A. player, like Candace Parker of the Las Vegas Aces or Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings, featured prominently in a commercial. Puma recently announced the second signature shoe for the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart. Griner, who became the first openly gay athlete signed to Nike in 2014, remains with the brand, a spokesman confirmed, but the company did not answer questions about whether it planned to market her this season.A few weeks before Griner was detained, W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that the league had raised $75 million from investors that she planned to use for marketing and revamping the league’s business model.Collegiate stars like Angel Reese of Louisiana State, Paige Bueckers of UConn and Caitlin Clark of Iowa are poised to enter the league in the next few years, bringing their dynamic games, name recognition and national television exposure.“That’s why we’re putting so many marketing dollars behind some of our star players,” Engelbert said. She added: “That’s how you build household names.”Griner’s absence and images of her behind bars or in court weighed on her Phoenix teammates last year.Pool photo by Evgenia NovozheninaThe Travel DebateConcerns about Griner’s security while traveling since her detention have added to the fiery debate about travel in the W.N.B.A.Unlike in the N.B.A. or on many top men’s and women’s college teams, W.N.B.A. players fly on commercial airlines to games. It has long been a sore point for players, who have had to sleep in airports or rush to games because of delays. This year, it is widely believed that Griner will need to travel privately, though neither the Mercury nor the W.N.B.A. have disclosed her plans.“Would definitely like to make all those flights private,” Griner said. “That would be nice. Not just for me and my team, but for the whole league. We all deserve it. We work so hard. We do so much and it would be nice where we finally get to the point where we get to that point, too.”The W.N.B.A. has said that it cannot afford the tab of over $20 million a season for charter flights, even though some owners might be willing to provide them for their own teams. Charter flights are prohibited in the collective bargaining agreement between team owners and the players’ union as an unfair competitive advantage. The W.N.B.A. fined the Liberty $500,000 for secretly using charter flights to travel to some games during the 2021 season.In April, the league announced that it would have charter flights for teams playing on consecutive days during the regular season and for all playoff games. The W.N.B.A. had made exceptions in similar situations previously.“We’re going to chip away at this as we continue to build this model,” Engelbert said. “Because once you do it, you have to do it essentially for perpetuity, so we want to make sure we’re not putting the financial viability of the league at risk.”On Thursday, the W.N.B.A. players’ union announced a deal with Priority Pass to give players access to airport lounges, which could provide food, spa treatments and places to sleep. Nneka Ogwumike, the star Los Angeles forward who is president of the players’ union, said in a statement that she hoped other “partners” would see the deal as a “call to action.”In a statement, Terri Jackson, the union’s executive director, called the deal a “significant step in the right direction.”Players around the W.N.B.A. wrote to Griner and pushed for her release throughout 2022.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times‘She Impacts the World’Vince Kozar, the president of the Mercury, described an ominous cloud over the franchise last season at every practice, media session and game without Griner. Brief video clips that emerged of her in Russia showed her handcuffed or caged. The day Griner was sentenced, Mercury players came together and cried — then had to play a game. “You carried that weight of the uncertainty and the fear,” Kozar said.It finally, suddenly, parted upon Griner’s release in December. Kozar did not expect Griner to announce immediately whether she would again play in the W.N.B.A. But when she returned to the United States, she said she would play.Griner may have been the most plugged-in W.N.B.A. player last season. Players from around the league sent her letters, their only means of communicating with her. In letters with Kozar, Griner was not asking about the organization and its going-ons as much as informing him about them.“It was just a reminder that basketball was one of the things that had been taken away from her, this thing how she impacts the world that’s central to her identity, that so many of her relationships are built around,” Kozar said.Griner will lead the league in hugs this season. She scribbled autographs and posed for selfies in the tunnel of a preseason game against the Sparks in Phoenix last week. It was her first action since she’d returned. A modest crowd cheered louder than it seemed capable of during Griner’s pregame introduction. Mercury Coach Vanessa Nygaard said chills ran down her spine.Griner towered over everyone else on the court, securing her first bucket on a quick turnaround a minute into the first quarter. All right, here we go, Griner thought to herself. So much had seemed unfamiliar to her lately. Jet-setting for a living? That’s not her, she said with a laugh. But that first shot, she thought, that felt comfortable.Matt York/Associated Press More

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      With End of Griner’s Detention, a New Wave of WNBA Activism Begins

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      With their campaign to free Brittney Griner from prison in Russia over, W.N.B.A. players say they will help free others and focus on women’s health and pay equity.The W.N.B.A. is a trendsetter, a league of mostly Black women who have taken up major progressive causes: voting rights, stricter gun laws, equality for the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But this year’s push to free Brittney Griner, one of their own, from a geopolitical standoff in Russia — that was their toughest test yet.“This is what Black women do,” Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics said. “We carry the weight in our family, this country, and we always have, whether we get the acknowledgment or not from it.”Griner was released from a Russian penal colony on Thursday in a prisoner exchange after, the U.S. State Department said, she had been “wrongfully detained” on drug charges for nearly 10 months. Griner is home. Other imprisoned Americans who also may be in danger are not. The W.N.B.A.’s mission continues.“We also want those other prisoners over there to come home as well,” Isabelle Harrison of the Dallas Wings said. “We don’t want them to just be like, ‘Oh, we just got B.G. home, and we’re done.’ No, that’s not what the W does.”In recent years, W.N.B.A. members helped flip a Senate seat in Georgia by supporting the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, when Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who owned the Atlanta Dream, spoke against the Black Lives Matter movement. They walked out of games to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Wisconsin, and dedicated a season to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by Kentucky police. Their latest collective bargaining agreement set new benchmarks in pay and benefits for women in sports.Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics, center, marched to the M.L.K. Memorial in Washington to support the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020.Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images“But, at the same time, they are mere mortals,” said Terri Jackson, the executive director of the W.N.B.A. players’ union. “Emotionally, this does take a toll. All of their advocacy and their work in the communities around so many issues — pick an issue, reproductive rights, voting rights, gun control — it wears on them.”More on Women and Girls in Sports‘We Have Fun All the Time’: Women’s college running programs can be rife with toxicity. At North Carolina State, Coach Laurie Henes is winning with a different approach.Pressure to Cut Body Fat: Collegiate athletic departments across the country require student-athletes to measure their body composition. Many female athletes have found the tests to be invasive and triggering for those who had eating disorders or were predisposed to them.New Endorsements Bring Up Old Debate: Female college athletes are making millions thanks to their large social media followings. But some who have fought for equity worry that their brand building is regressive.Pretty in Any Color: Women’s basketball players are styling themselves how they want, because they can. Their choices also can be lucrative.The plane returning Griner from Russia had not even touched down in the United States before Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, pledged that the campaign to free Griner would transition into securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans around the world. W.N.B.A. players have been at the heart of that campaign and many others.“While I was fighting for B.G. this year, I was still fighting for sensible gun laws,” Cloud said. “While we were still fighting for B.G., we were still fighting for a woman’s right to her body and to the choice to her body and the choice to her life. We were still fighting and trying to get people out to vote, understanding how important these elections were in the trajectory of where our country was headed.”W.N.B.A. players went about their season while knowing their teammate and friend was imprisoned in Russia. “Honestly, I don’t think the W.N.B.A. ever takes a break from advocacy,” Harrison said. “I think we’re always at a point where we’re fighting and trying to get some type of justice, all whilst trying to build up our league and play basketball.”On Aug. 4, the day a Russian court sentenced Griner to nine years in a penal colony, her Phoenix Mercury teammates played a game.“Nobody even wanted to play today,” Mercury guard Skylar Diggins-Smith said afterward. “How are we even supposed to approach the game and approach the court with a clear mind when the whole group is crying before the game?”Napheesa Collier, of the Minnesota Lynx, said she didn’t go more than a day or two without talking about Griner, and her group chats with other W.N.B.A. players constantly included discussions of the situation in Russia.“They’ve advocated every single day, keeping her in the media, keep talking about her, making sure that no one’s forgetting, making sure that we’re doing everything that we can to bring her home,” Collier said.Isabelle Harrison of the Dallas Wings said Griner had been fun to play with and kind to her when she was a rookie.Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressW.N.B.A. players often proudly refer to themselves as “The 144,” referring to the total number of players in the league. Some, like the Seattle Storm’s Breanna Stewart, a former most valuable player, sent social media messages daily in support of Griner.“I was using my platform in all ways possible and really making sure that throughout this time, everybody was still keeping B.G. in their thoughts during her wrongful detention,” Stewart said. “To finally be at a moment where I don’t have to send that tweet is amazing.”She added: “Ever since I came into the W.N.B.A., we’ve always been at the forefront in speaking out against social injustices, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. As a league full of women and majority Black women, there’s a lot that needs to be fought for, and we’re used to it and we’re used to speaking up on our own account and now for others.”Many players wore Griner-themed clothing designed by Isabella Escribano, a 14-year-old known as Jiggy Izzy, who is popular on social media for her basketball skills. The front of the design, seen on hoodies and T-shirts, features a smiling Griner in her Mercury jersey with a basketball that reads “WEAREBG” — the phrase that became the rallying cry for her release.Griner’s jersey number, 42, is wrapped around the left side, and on the back, her first and last name are printed in capital letters. With the help of her brothers, Escribano worked with Griner’s agent and the W.N.B.A. players’ union to get the clothing to players across the W.N.B.A. and the N.B.A. Escribano said it was “very empowering and rewarding” to see Griner freed.“Because just, like, for all we’ve done, and for her to be home now, it was for a purpose,” Escribano said, adding: “I hope one day I can meet her and tell her how I felt and how I wanted to help her in any situation possible.”Isabella Escribano, a 14-year-old hooper known as Jiggy Izzy, designed T-shirts and hoodies that helped raise awareness of Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesAmira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Penn State University specializing in race, sports and gender, said that the W.N.B.A. had proved itself as a force for social justice, though she “would love for them to have the opportunity to develop advocacy on their terms.”“They meet the challenge every time, but wouldn’t it be great to not have to?” she said.Jackson, the union’s executive director, said Griner’s ordeal shoved to the forefront important issues like pay equity and W.N.B.A. investment. Griner had been in Russia during the W.N.B.A. off-season to play for a professional team there that reportedly paid her at least $1 million, more than four times what she made in the United States. Dozens of W.N.B.A. players compete internationally in the off-season to boost their incomes. But Griner’s detention led many players, fans and opinion columnists to wonder aloud whether more should be done to raise pay here so players do not feel the need to go abroad.“We are not honoring the players, we are not honoring B.G., if we don’t have those conversations,” Jackson said.This weekend, the W.N.B.A. players’ union plans to certify a new executive committee, whose members will set the agenda for the next wave of activism. Jackson and others expect the players to focus on women’s health and continue pushing for the freedom of those like the American Paul Whelan, who is also detained in Russia. Many people were disappointed that Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, had not been included in the prisoner exchange that freed Griner.“Instead of people hating and complaining for one American coming home who has won and has represented her country in the most respectful ways, we should harness that into fighting for Paul,” Cloud said.The league, for years now, has shown that it knows no other path. One issue is solved. Others remain.“They really understand the power of the collective voice, and so they can lean on each other — literally, sometimes — to continue to draw that strength and propel them forward,” Jackson said.Shauntel Lowe More

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      Inside the Prisoner Swap That Freed Brittney Griner

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      WASHINGTON — Month after month, as American diplomats pushed for the release of Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan from Russian prisons, they received the same, infuriating answer: If you want both prisoners, we want Vadim Krasikov as part of the deal.Mr. Krasikov is an assassin who murdered a Chechen fighter in a park in Berlin in broad daylight in 2019, a brazen killing that the German authorities say was committed at the behest of Russia’s intelligence services. Convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Germany, Mr. Krasikov was not in U.S. custody to be traded to Russia.It was, the Americans thought, hardly a viable request for a swap that would include Ms. Griner, a W.N.B.A. star, and Mr. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, who were being detained on what Biden administration officials considered trumped-up charges. American officials felt out their German counterparts to see if they might agree and were hardly surprised when Berlin refused to release what they considered a cold killer. Trying to be creative, the Americans even explored some sort of three-way deal that would give the Germans something in return, but that did not go anywhere, either.Privately, some of the administration’s diplomats concluded that the insistence on freeing Mr. Krasikov was a stalling tactic by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who they believed was determined not to deliver any kind of political victory to President Biden before the midterm elections in the United States last month. Others believed the Russians were serious and saw it as a face-saving way for Moscow’s security services to give up Mr. Whelan, whom they convicted of espionage despite flat denials from Washington that he was a spy.Either way, how Mr. Biden came to agree to a swap that freed Ms. Griner but not Mr. Whelan was a tale of feints and intrigue carried out through secret negotiations and public posturing, all against the backdrop of a brutal war in which American-armed Ukrainians were battling Russian invaders. At the end of the day, according to senior U.S. officials directly involved in the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe delicate diplomacy, it left the president with the unpalatable choice of liberating one American while leaving another behind.Ms. Griner arrived in the United States early Friday, landing in San Antonio, where she was to receive medical evaluations at Brooke Army Medical Center and be reunited with family, a relief for Mr. Biden and his team. Mr. Whelan remains in a dismal Russian prison, his long-term fate unknown, as his frustrated family waits and while the president vows to redouble efforts to bring him home.In Moscow on Friday, Mr. Putin said Russia was continuing to communicate with American officials and that “everything is possible” regarding further prisoner exchanges. American officials have delivered a similar message, pledging to continue talks in the hope of bringing Mr. Whelan home as soon as possible.The Release of Brittney GrinerThe American basketball star had been detained in Russia since February on charges of smuggling hashish oil into the country.Anxiety Turns to Relief: Brittney Griner’s supporters watched with dismay as her situation appeared to worsen over the summer. Now they are celebrating her release.The Russian Playbook: By detaining Ms. Griner, the Kremlin weaponized pain to get the United States to turn over a convicted arms dealer. Can the same tactic work in the war in Ukraine?A Test for Women’s Sports: The release was a victory for W.N.B.A. players and fans, who pushed furiously for it. But the athlete’s plight also highlighted gender inequities in sports.The two imprisoned Americans offered distinct cases that were eventually linked and then unlinked. Ms. Griner, detained on minor drug charges a week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, was seen as a hostage in the midst of the confrontation with the West over the conflict. Mr. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, had been in prison since 2018 on espionage charges long before the war in Ukraine.The outlines of a possible agreement were on the table as far back as last spring. Interacting through intelligence agencies, the Russians made clear that they were willing to trade Ms. Griner for Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer arrested in Thailand in 2008 and serving a 25-year sentence in American prison. But they were not willing to include Mr. Whelan in the package deal.Mr. Bout was important to the Russians because of his ties to the security services. While he is not known to be close to Mr. Putin, U.S. officials said, Mr. Bout has connections in the Russian power structures. And Russia had made a martyr out of Mr. Bout over the past 14 years; freeing him would allow Mr. Putin to boast about finally bringing a patriot home.To the Russians, trading Ms. Griner for Mr. Bout was a swap of two criminals, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Whelan, on the other hand, was supposedly an American agent, in the Russian telling, so only another agent or someone of equivalent importance would merit giving him up. The Americans do not currently have a Russian spy in custody to trade. And that is where Mr. Krasikov came in.Mr. Krasikov, who called himself Vadim A. Sokolov, was arrested after two witnesses saw him throwing his bike and a bag into the Spree River after twice shooting the victim, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen separatist commander who fought against Russian forces in the early 2000s and was labeled a terrorist by Russian state media. Police divers later found a Glock 26 pistol in the river in the downtown park.Frustrated by the demand for a swap they could not make, American officials broke with years of tradition by telling reporters that they had made a “substantial” offer to the Russians, making clear that Mr. Biden would trade Mr. Bout for Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan. They hoped the public pressure would move the Russians off their insistence for Mr. Krasikov and into a deal..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.It did not — for many months.But just after Election Day in the United States, Russian contacts delivered a new message, raising the possibility of excluding Mr. Whelan from a deal and instead focusing exclusively on Ms. Griner. If that were the case, the Russians said, Moscow might consider Mr. Bout a fair trade.The disparity of their offenses was vast: Mr. Bout was an illegal arms merchant to some of the world’s most violent forces, including some intent on killing Americans; Ms. Griner was detained for traveling with vape cartridges containing hashish oil. But it was the first time that the Russians had made what the American diplomats considered a real counteroffer, if they were serious about following through.At the White House, the possibility prompted a series of high-level meetings and discussions, some of which included Mr. Biden, about whether to test if the Russians were serious about making a one-for-one deal, much like they had months before in a swap that freed Trevor Reed, another imprisoned American.The situation was fluid and uncertain. Even as they discussed their options, the family of Mr. Whelan said publicly that he had missed two calls with them, raising fears for his safety and reports that he had been moved from his prison to a hospital in Russia.Had the Russians done something to Mr. Whelan? That could have made a trade for Ms. Griner impossible, but also would have seemed unlikely given that it was the Russians who now seemed eager to make a deal. For days, work on the potential deal for Ms. Griner stalled as the Americans worked to figure out what had happened. Officials eventually determined that Mr. Whelan had been taken back to prison, and he called his family.At a meeting in the Oval Office early last week, Mr. Biden was ready to sign off. The Justice Department had weighed in against the deal, communicating their objections through Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. But the department makes a policy of opposing prisoner trades across the board, arguing that it undercuts the American justice system. The State Department, on the other hand, recommended the deal, as did other officials who concluded that the deal from the Russians was never going to change and so it was time to take it. The president agreed.The careful negotiations, however, almost unraveled a few days later, as Mr. Biden hosted President Emmanuel Macron of France for a state dinner at the White House. A journalist for CBS News contacted the White House with reporting that the administration was preparing to swap Ms. Griner for Mr. Bout.Premature disclosure, officials feared, was likely to scuttle the deal. They asked the network to hold off. According to CBS, it “agreed to a White House request to hold the reporting because officials expressed grave concern about the fragility of the then-emerging deal.”With that resolved, officials moved forward. Armed with the president’s go-ahead, they pressed their Russian counterparts: Are you serious about this? The answer came back more quickly than the American diplomats expected, and it was more definitive. Yes, they said. The day after the state dinner, Mr. Biden signed an executive grant of clemency for Mr. Bout, but held it back while aides set the transfer in motion.Wary of undercutting the deal, the American diplomats carefully made one last appeal for Mr. Whelan, asking the Russians if there was anyone other than Mr. Krasikov whom they might want in exchange for both Mr. Whelan and Ms. Griner. They got a firm no, but the Russians did not use the effort as an excuse to back out of the developing arrangement for Ms. Griner.Within days, plans were set for two planes to take off — one from Moscow, where Ms. Griner had been transferred, and another from the United States, with Mr. Bout.One question to resolve: Where to make the swap? In the Cold War days and even as recently as a Russian-American spy swap in 2010 under President Barack Obama, prisoners were exchanged in the middle of Europe: the Glienicke Bridge in Potsdam, Germany, as made famous in the Tom Hanks movie “Bridge of Spies,” or in Vienna, as with the 2010 trade.But because of American and European sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February, Moscow was not willing to send a plane anywhere in Europe for fear that it could be seized. Even long-neutral Switzerland had joined sanctions against Russia while Helsinki, Finland — a prime Russian-American meeting site during the Cold War — was no longer acceptable because the country is joining NATO.The compromise became the United Arab Emirates, a small Gulf state that is friendly with both Washington and Moscow. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the Emirates, had raised Ms. Griner’s case with Mr. Putin during a meeting in October, and so the Emiratis were happy to facilitate the transfer. The arrangements were made: Both sides would send planes to Abu Dhabi, the capital.Cherelle Griner, Ms. Griner’s wife, was invited to the White House on Thursday morning ostensibly to meet with Mr. Sullivan for an update. When she arrived, however, Mr. Sullivan surprised her by taking her to the Oval Office, where Mr. Biden broke the news that Ms. Griner was coming home. At that point, Ms. Griner was on the ground in Abu Dhabi, while Mr. Bout’s plane was 30 minutes out.Once he landed, his clemency document was finalized and the swap proceeded, captured in grainy video distributed by Russian state media. It showed Ms. Griner and Mr. Bout being walked to the middle of a dusty tarmac, escorted by officials of their countries. After a brief stop, Ms. Griner was led away in one direction, while Mr. Bout left with Russian officials in another.Mr. Biden and Cherelle Griner celebrated before cameras in the Oval Office. But once the journalists were ushered out, the president had another, grimmer task: He had to call Mr. Whelan’s sister to explain why he was not coming home, at least not yet.Neil MacFarquhar More

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      An Open Letter to Welcome Home Brittney Griner

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      When Griner was imprisoned in Russia, letters were her main form of communication with home. Our columnist offers one last letter to mark her return to the United States.Welcome home, Brittney. At long last, welcome home.Like so many others, I wondered if this day would ever come.Now you are home and safe after nearly 10 months of brutal uncertainty and fear.Home and safe after isolating imprisonment in a Russia that has cast aside international norms.Home and safe after getting trapped in a web of geopolitics that grew thicker each day as the war in Ukraine dragged on. What you endured over the last 10 months is nearly unfathomable. As a Black, openly gay woman, you were in particular danger as a prisoner in a country with dangerous, retrograde views on race and sexuality.Home — and safe. What a turn of events.And yet, less than a day after your plane touched down at a Texas military base, controversy and conversation swirl.Some voices say the Biden administration should never have swapped a W.N.B.A. star in a one-for-one trade for Viktor Bout, a former Soviet Army lieutenant colonel described by the Justice Department as one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.Others feel that you deserved no help, that you alone should have answered to Russian authorities for the mistake of having vape cartridges containing a trace of cannabis oil in your luggage, even though you’ve said you use the substance for pain management.The Release of Brittney GrinerThe American basketball star had been detained in Russia since February on charges of smuggling hashish oil into the country.Anxiety Turns to Relief: Brittney Griner’s supporters watched with dismay as her situation appeared to worsen over the summer. Now they are celebrating her release.The Russian Playbook: By detaining Ms. Griner, the Kremlin weaponized pain to get the United States to turn over a convicted arms dealer. Can the same tactic work in the war in Ukraine?A Test for Women’s Sports: The release was a victory for W.N.B.A. players and fans, who pushed furiously for it. But the athlete’s plight also highlighted gender inequities in sports.Then there are those hailing the White House for committing an act of mercy in pressing for your return.I’ll leave the political discussion to someone else. I want to focus on another part of the conversation. Already people are asking: What’s next?When will you return to the W.N.B.A., your Phoenix Mercury teammates, and the U.S. national team you helped lead to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics?Roughly a decade ago, you became one of the first Black and openly lesbian headliners in women’s basketball. In your trademark soft-spoken manner, you pushed for racial and social change in America. So will you use this moment to become an even more powerful advocate?Will you do more, Brittney?“What’s next” is an understandable query, but I hope folks pump the brakes.Brittney, you shouldn’t feel you owe anything more than the gratitude you’ve already expressed to those who stood by your side and worked for your release.You have done more than enough. Don’t feel you have to do anything but heal.During this ordeal, we all saw the anguish and tears of your wife, Cherelle Griner. She, no surprise, has said the two of you will speak up for Americans the State Department has said were wrongly detained in other countries, including Paul Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia since 2018.Before all this happened, you might not have been well-known outside of sports circles. Now, more and more people have heard about how you were part of a wave of W.N.B.A. players who spoke up for racial injustice. More know that you have fought to help L.G.B.T.Q. people and those without homes in Phoenix.So it’s exciting to think about your next move and how you can use your platform for good.When I spoke to Victor Kozar, the Mercury’s president, this week, he mentioned the letters you exchanged over the last several months. “At all times, she was asking about other people,” said Kozar, your boss and friend. “Her concern was about other people. First and foremost, she asked how her teammates were doing, asking us to ensure we were taking care of her wife.”“That’s B.G.,” he added. “Even under this kind of duress, it was not about her. It was about others.”Sports stars offer us inspiration in many ways. Most commonly, it’s on fields and courts, through performances that allow us to see how we can be stretched to the limit.Brittney, you’ve inspired us in ways that matter more than slam dunks, blocked shots or championships.When you were freed, I thought about the timing. This week, Congress voted to cement federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages. (It’s a huge deal for me, too, since I have a nonbinary family member and my Black father and white mother married in 1954, when such unions were finally becoming legal in a smattering of states.)It’s sad that it took until 2022 to ensure such rights, but think about how far we’ve come. Ten or twenty years ago, if you’d been imprisoned in Russia, we probably would not have discussed race, sexual orientation and how those facts of your life put you in danger, this openly and often.“Brittney’s situation is a sign of progress, a sign that our nation has moved tremendously.” That’s how Victoria Kirby York, the National Black Justice Coalition public policy director, put it when she and I chatted Thursday. She noted the serious work that remains to be done, but added: “We have seen Americans move toward racial justice, and we are only going to see more of that happen, and a big part of it is people like Brittney Griner inviting us to see who they really are.”Rest with that, Brittney. May it be part of the support that helps you heal.My guess is that you’ll head back to basketball in due time — particularly when I think about how you grew up, with the game providing solace and healing for a young, Black, gay woman edging toward 7 feet tall in the American South of the 1990s and early 2000s.If history is any guide, you are likely to continue with advocacy and speaking out.Now your name and your story have a resonance few in the sports world can top. Who can better speak to our American shortcomings than someone scorned by many at home but also saved and spared by the intense efforts of the U.S. government?Then again, maybe you don’t do any of this. Brittney, don’t look back or feel bad if you want to ride into the sunset now, healing away from the public eye and maybe staying away for good.If that’s the decision, wonderful. Either way, we’ve got your back. More

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      Griner’s Detention Showed the Strength and the Struggle in Women’s Sports

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      Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia on drug charges could be described through the lens of war and politics, with Griner, one of the world’s best basketball players, a casualty of an international struggle between superpowers.But in the nearly 10 months she was imprisoned until her release on Thursday, Griner became a symbol of much more: the inequities in men’s and women’s sports, the complexity of the fight for social justice, and especially the power of the W.N.B.A.’s players and their supporters, who steadily rallied for Griner’s freedom.“Women, when we’re advocating for something, when we want something to happen, we’ve got the strength of 10 men,” said Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina. She added, “I hope people are watching.”Griner was released from a Russian penal colony in a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States. Griner was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony in August, about six months after she was detained at an airport near Moscow when customs officials found vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage. A week later, Russia invaded Ukraine, heightening tensions between the United States and Russia.As the war in Ukraine complicated the White House’s negotiations for Griner’s release, the W.N.B.A. players’ union spearheaded a public campaign to free her. The players have earned a reputation for potent activism: In 2020, their support helped fuel the Rev. Raphael Warnock’s victory in a Georgia Senate race, and they dedicated their season to fighting systemic racism. This time, they leaned on President Biden to help one of their own.“We realized what power our voices have,” Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said. “Doing it for Brittney, I don’t think it was a burden for anyone.”Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, thanked the W.N.B.A.’s “fearless union,” in a statement celebrating Griner’s release.Disparities in SportsGriner, left, in 2021, alongside Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird. Griner has long been one of the W.N.B.A.’s top stars.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThe spotlight of Griner’s detention brought questions about the modest W.N.B.A. salaries that push dozens of players to international teams in the off-season to make more money. Griner has been one of the W.N.B.A.’s biggest stars since the Phoenix Mercury drafted her No. 1 overall in 2013, and she won two gold medals with the U.S. women’s national team. Still, she was in Russia to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, which reportedly paid her at least $1 million, quadruple the maximum W.N.B.A. salary.“The players are going to do what they think is best for themselves,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said on Thursday, “but we definitely inform them all the time of the security risks of where they might be playing.”Dozens of American men still chose to play for Russian basketball teams during Griner’s detention, though most had little chance of making the N.B.A. But almost all American women stayed away. Many star W.N.B.A. players took pay cuts to compete for lower-paying teams in other European countries.Collier, who won the W.N.B.A. Rookie of the Year Award in 2019, said Griner’s “scary” ordeal had changed her mind about playing overseas again, even though staying home would cost her money and playing time. “For me, it’s not worth it,” she said.Since Engelbert became the commissioner in 2019, she has focused on adding sponsors and developing new ways for players to earn money, such as marketing deals with the W.N.B.A. But increasing the league’s profile and revenue has been a challenge in the face of a sports ecosystem that is mostly blind to female athletes because of its overwhelming focus on men’s sports.Big-name N.B.A. stars, such as LeBron James and Stephen Curry, leveraged that disparity and drew focus to Griner by publicly supporting her. But some critics wanted more vocal support for Griner from the N.B.A., which owns about 40 percent of the women’s league and has $10 billion in annual revenue. N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said he had talked to political figures behind the scenes, but said government officials had asked the league to be low-key so as not to inflame tensions with Russia.Silver said in a statement on Thursday that he was happy Griner was coming home after enduring “an unimaginable situation.”Some have wondered whether an N.B.A. player like James would have been held as long as Griner, or detained at all. Before this episode, many average N.B.A. players would have been better known by the public than Griner, even though she’s at the top of her sport. The W.N.B.A.’s games can be hard to find, with broadcasts spread across multiple channels, streaming services and social media sites. The league has been around for 26 seasons, compared with 77 for the N.B.A.“We have to build more household names in this league,” Engelbert said.Gay, Black, Female and ‘Voiceless’Nam Y. Huh/Associated PressTed S. Warren/Associated PressGriner’s case was never simple. Even though she was said to have been in possession of only trace amounts of hashish oil, a cannabis derivative, she faced drug smuggling charges that carried the potential for a 10-year sentence. The U.S. State Department said in May that she had been “wrongfully detained,” indicating that she should be considered a hostage.“She was voiceless,” said Staley, who coached Griner on one Olympic team. “She was in a place that she couldn’t fight for herself. She couldn’t speak up for herself.”And Griner faced additional risks as a gay Black woman imprisoned in a country known for harsh treatment of people like her. In 2014, she became the first openly gay athlete to sign a deal with Nike. L.G.B.T.Q. civil rights groups, including the National Black Justice Coalition, have stood behind her. The coalition called Griner an “icon” and a “symbol of hope” in a statement as it thanked Biden for making her a “top priority.”It didn’t always seem that way to her supporters. As the months went by and Griner’s name dipped in and out of headlines, fans filled social media websites with the hashtag #WeAreBG to plead for people to care. Some pointed to Griner’s race as a potential factor in the broader public’s ebbing concern, saying that the falloff mirrored the way missing white women often draw more attention than missing Black women.Kagawa Colas, Griner’s agent, thanked “Black women, the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community and civil rights leaders” in particular for standing with Griner.But even as Griner’s detention unified many athletes, fans and advocacy groups, it highlighted the unequal ways a push for justice could play out.“Brittney is going to have to endure the fact that we have people who are questioning why she’s home,” Staley said, referring to those who have criticized the government for not bringing home other wrongfully detained Americans. “Why did they choose her?”Experts have said that there are dozens of Americans held around the world, many of them classified as “wrongfully detained,” as Griner was. But often their families are their most vocal supporters, not legions of sports fans, famous athletes and other celebrities.Cherelle Griner, Brittney Griner’s wife, said in a news conference with Biden on Thursday that their family would work to help free other detained Americans. Kagawa Colas said in her statement that “bringing our people home is a moral issue” and listed 13 Americans detained around the world that Griner’s closest supporters would work to release.“Our eyes have been opened through this process to your struggle and, as we have always done, B.G. and our coalition of activist athletes will ensure that silence is no longer an option,” she said. More

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      In the Deal to Free Griner, Putin Used a Familiar Lever: Pain

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      President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wants to prosecute his war in Ukraine in the same way he secured the freedom on Thursday of a major Russian arms dealer: inflict so much pain on Western governments that, eventually, they make a deal.The Kremlin pushed for more than a decade to get Viktor Bout, convicted in 2011 of conspiring to kill Americans, released from prison in the United States. But it was only this year, with the arrest at a Moscow airport of the American basketball star Brittney Griner, that Mr. Putin found the leverage to get his way.On Thursday, pro-Kremlin voices celebrated Mr. Bout’s release, in a prisoner exchange for Ms. Griner, as a victory, a sign that no matter the desire to punish Russia over the war in Ukraine, the United States will still come to the table when key American interests are at play. Russia negotiated from “a position of strength, comrades,” Maria Butina — a pro-Putin member of Parliament who herself served time in an American prison — posted on the Telegram messaging app.Mr. Putin’s emerging strategy in Ukraine, in the wake of his military’s repeated failures, now increasingly echoes the strategy that finally brought Mr. Bout back to Moscow. He is bombarding Ukrainian energy infrastructure, effectively taking its people hostage as he seeks to break the country’s spirit. The tactic is threatening the European Union with a new wave of refugees just as Mr. Putin uses a familiar economic lever: choking off gas exports. And Mr. Putin is betting that the West, even after showing far more unity in support of Ukraine than Mr. Putin appears to have expected, will eventually tire of the fight and its economic ill effects.The American basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in March, was released from a penal colony on Thursday. Here, she is being escorted to a Moscow courtroom last August.Pool photo by Kirill KudryavtsevThere’s no guarantee that strategy will work. Though President Biden yielded on Mr. Bout, he has shown no inclination to relent on United States support for Ukraine. America’s European allies, while facing some domestic political and economic pressure to press for a compromise with Russia, have remained on board.In the face of this Western solidarity, Mr. Putin repeatedly signaled this week that he is willing to keep fighting, despite embarrassing territorial retreats, Russian casualties that the United States puts at more than 100,000 and the West’s ever-expanding sanctions. On Wednesday, he warned that the war “might be a long process.” And at a Kremlin medal ceremony for soldiers on Thursday, Mr. Putin insisted — falsely — that it was Ukraine’s government that was carrying out “genocide,” suggesting that Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure would continue.“If we make the smallest move to respond, there’s noise, din and clamor across the whole universe,” he said, champagne flute in hand, in remarks broadcast on state television. “This will not prevent us from fulfilling our combat missions.”Mr. Putin did not comment on the prisoner exchange himself on Thursday. But in the context of the Ukraine war, there was a clear undertone to the crowing in Moscow: To supporters, Mr. Putin remains a deal maker, and he stands ready to negotiate over Ukraine as long as the West does not block his goal of pulling the country into his orbit and seizing some of its territory.“He’s signaling that he’s ready to bargain,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst who studies Mr. Putin, said. “But he’s letting the West know that ‘Ukraine is ours.’”Heavily damaged buildings in Bakhmut, Ukraine, last week.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesAsked when the war could end, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, hinted on Thursday that Russia is still waiting for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to accept some kind of deal: “Zelensky knows when this could all end. It could end tomorrow, if there’s a will.”But when one of Mr. Putin’s top spies, Sergei Naryshkin, met with the head of the C.I.A., William Burns, in Turkey last month, Mr. Burns did not discuss a settlement to the Ukraine war, American officials said. Instead, Mr. Burns warned of dire consequences for Moscow were it to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and discussed the fate of Americans imprisoned in Russia, including Ms. Griner.“The Russian negotiating style is, they punch you in the face and then they ask if you want to negotiate,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official who now works as research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “The Americans respond to that by saying, ‘You know, you just punched us in the face, you clearly don’t want to negotiate.’”Nevertheless, negotiations on some issues have continued even as Russia’s onslaught of missile attacks has escalated, talks blessed by Mr. Putin despite occasional criticism from the most hawkish supporters of his war.Russia’s pro-war bloggers fumed in September when Mr. Putin agreed to an earlier high-profile exchange: commanders of the Azov Battalion, a nationalist fighting force within the Ukrainian military that gained celebrity status for its defense of a besieged steel plant, for a friend of Mr. Putin, the Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Some critics have slammed Mr. Putin’s agreement to allow Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea as representing an undue concession.President Vladimir V. Putin, third from left, inspecting the Kerch Strait Bridge this week. The bridge, which connects the Russian mainland and the Crimean Peninsula, was badly damaged in a Ukrainian attack in October.Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, via ReutersAnd then there were the talks surrounding Mr. Bout and Ms. Griner. On the surface, the exchange appeared to be a mismatch, given the wide disparity in the severity of their offenses: one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers and an American basketball star detained for traveling with vape cartridges containing hashish oil.But Mr. Biden showed he was prepared to invest significant political capital in securing Ms. Griner’s freedom, while the Kremlin has long sought Mr. Bout’s release.“We know that attempts to help Bout have been made for many years,” said Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government. “He has also become a symbolic figure” for the Kremlin, he added.Mr. Bout became notorious among American intelligence officials, earning the nickname “Merchant of Death” as he evaded capture for years. He was finally arrested in an undercover operation in Bangkok in 2008, with American prosecutors saying he had agreed to sell antiaircraft weapons to informants posing as arms buyers for the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC.Some analysts believe that Mr. Bout has connections to Russia’s intelligence services. Such links have not been publicly confirmed, but they could explain why Mr. Putin — a former K.G.B. officer — has put such stock in working for Mr. Bout’s release.“If he were just some arms dealer and cargo magnate, then it is hard to see why it would have been quite such a priority for the Russian state,” Mark Galeotti, a lecturer on Russia and transnational crime at University College London, said last summer.President Biden at a news conference on Thursday with Brittney Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, left, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Washington.Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat means that the U.S. decision to free Mr. Bout — likely the most prominent Russian in American custody — represented a significant compromise. It was magnified by the fact that the United States accepted the exchange even though Russia declined to also release Paul Whelan, a former Marine the Biden administration also considers a political hostage.Some analysts believe that the decision to free Mr. Bout carries risks because it could encourage Mr. Putin to take new hostages — and shows that his strategy of causing pain, and then winning concessions, is continuing to bear fruit.Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist who specializes in the security services, said that he was worried about the precedent set by Washington’s agreeing to trade an arms dealer for a basketball player who committed a minor offense.“Back in the days of the Cold War, it was always about professionals against professionals, one spy against another,” he said. While the United States must contend with public demand at home to return a hostage, the Russians can “ignore it completely,” he said.Now, Moscow “can just grab someone with a high public profile in the U.S. — an athlete, a sportsman,” he said. Public outcry in the U.S. “would make that position much more advantageous in terms of these kind of talks.” More

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      Brittney Griner’s Prison Term Is Upheld by Russian Court

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      The W.N.B.A. athlete is facing nine years in a Russian prison on a drug charge. A prisoner swap may be her only path home.A Russian appeals court on Tuesday upheld a nine-year prison sentence imposed on Brittney Griner, the American basketball star arrested after she arrived in the country carrying a small amount of hash oil.Ms. Griner has been jailed since her detention in February, and the new ruling may now pave the way for her transfer to a prison colony, although it was not clear when that might happen. Her lawyers said they might ask a higher court to intervene.“We need to discuss this with our client,” they said in a statement on Tuesday. “We generally think that we must use all the available legal tools, especially given the harsh and unprecedented nature of her sentence.”But higher courts in Russia are loath to overturn verdicts, especially if a case involves foreign policy and the interests of the Kremlin, experts say, and the athlete’s fate may now be in the hands of Russian and American officials feeling each other out about a possible prisoner exchange.President Biden, asked what the United States would do now in the wake of the court ruling, said: “We are in constant contact with the Russian authorities to get Brittney and others out, and so far we have not been meeting with much positive response. But we’re not stopping.”The negotiation comes at a time of extraordinary tensions between the two countries over the war in Ukraine, and the ruling by the three-judge appeals panel Tuesday did nothing to change that.“We are aware of the news out of Russia that Brittney Griner will continue to be wrongfully detained under intolerable circumstances after having to undergo another sham judicial proceeding today,” Jake Sullivan, the American national security adviser, said in a statement.The State of the WarFears of Escalation: Western officials said Moscow was seeking to create a pretext for escalating the war by making false claims that Kyiv was preparing to detonate a dirty bomb on its own territory.Anti-Drone Warfare: Since Russia began terrorizing Ukrainian cities in recent weeks with Iranian-made drones, Ukraine has turned its focus to an intense counter-drone strategy. The hastily assembled effort has been surprisingly successful.A Devastated Land: Ukrainians who are returning to liberated towns are encountering destruction on a staggering scale, vital services cut and the prospect of a lethal winter ahead.A New Front?: Russia is massing thousands of troops in its western neighbor Belarus, raising fears that Moscow might plan to open another front in the war. But officials in Kyiv and Washington are casting doubt on whether the buildup represents a serious threat.Russian officials have said that prisoner exchanges cannot be considered until the legal process has concluded.From the very start, Ms. Griner’s case has become entangled with global tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.On Tuesday, as Ms. Griner appeared remotely in a Moscow courtroom, Russian and Ukrainian forces were battling over territory and concerns were rising that Moscow might be considering detonating explosives laced with radioactive material and blaming Ukraine.Days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Ms. Griner, an All-Star center with the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was detained at an airport near Moscow after customs officials found two vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. She had been en route to Yekaterinburg, a city near the Ural Mountains, where she played for a women’s basketball team.Ms. Griner, who recently turned 32 in Russian custody, pleaded guilty to drug-smuggling charges and apologized for what she called an inadvertent offense. She apologized again on Tuesday before the appeals court ruled.From the very start, Ms. Griner’s case has become entangled with global tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press“I did not intend to do this,” she said via a video link from a detention cell, “but I understand the charges against me, and I just hope that that is also taken into account.”Addressing the court, she protested her unusually long sentence.“I’ve been here almost eight months,” she said, “and people with more severe crimes have gotten less than what I was given.”Since Ms. Griner was sentenced in August, her lawyers have argued that the nine-year prison term — near the 10-year maximum for such a conviction — is too harsh for a first-time offense and was politically motivated.“We are very disappointed,” her lawyers said in their statement Tuesday. “The verdict contains numerous defects, and we hoped that the court of appeal would take them into consideration. We still think the punishment is excessive.”Before the court ruled, the lawyers had appeared to be lowering expectations.“Brittney does not expect any miracles to happen,” they said, “but hopes that the appeal court will hear the arguments of the defense and reduce the number of years.”American officials contend that Russia, struggling under the weight of international sanctions imposed over the war, is hoping to use the athlete and another imprisoned American, Paul Whelan, a former Marine held since December 2018, as bargaining chips.Mr. Sullivan said on Tuesday that American officials had “continued to engage with Russia through every available channel” to secure the freedom of Ms. Griner and other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia.“The president has demonstrated that he is willing to go to extraordinary lengths and make tough decisions to bring Americans home,” Mr. Sullivan said.On the day a Russian appeals court upheld Brittney Griner’s sentence on drug smuggling charges, President Biden said that his administration would not stop trying to secure the basketball star’s release.Network PoolOne person briefed on the talks between Moscow and Washington this summer said that the United States had proposed exchanging Ms. Griner and Mr. Whelan for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for charges including conspiring to kill Americans.Mr. Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are expected to attend a summit of Group of 20 leaders next month in Indonesia, but Mr. Biden has said he would speak with the Russian leader there only if it were to discuss Ms. Griner’s case.For American basketball players, playing in Russia during the off-season can be lucrative, but since Ms. Griner’s arrest, most W.N.B.A. players have shunned the country, and on Tuesday, the organization denounced the court decision.“This appeal is further verification that B.G. is not just wrongfully detained — she is very clearly a hostage,” it said.Ivan Nechepurenko More

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      Brittney Griner’s Sentence Renews Pressure on President Biden

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      The basketball star’s supporters are pressing for action. But critics of any possible deal are already fuming.WASHINGTON — Immediately after a Moscow judge handed down Brittney Griner’s nine-year prison sentence on Thursday, calls grew louder for President Biden to find a way to bring her home.“We call on President Biden and the United States government to redouble their efforts to do whatever is necessary and possible,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement.U.S. officials and analysts had been resigned to a guilty verdict for Ms. Griner, a basketball star who plays for a Russian team during the W.N.B.A. off-season. But the cold reality of her sentence on a drug charge was a shock and renewed calls for Mr. Biden to secure her release — even as critics fumed that offering to swap prisoners with Moscow rewards Russian hostage-taking.The result is a painful quandary for the Biden administration as it tries to maintain a hard line against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over his war in Ukraine.“There’s nothing good here,” said Andrea Schneider, an expert on international conflict resolution at Cardozo School of Law. “No matter what Biden does, he’s going to be criticized — either that we’re giving too much or we’re not working hard enough.”Kremlin officials had said that any potential deal could not proceed before her trial was complete, creating a glimmer of hope that the verdict might open the door for an exchange. But analysts called that unlikely anytime soon.“I don’t think this is going to get resolved quickly,” said Jared Genser, a human rights lawyer who represents Americans held by foreign governments. “I think the fact that Putin has not said yes right away means that he’s looked at the U.S. offer and said, ‘Well, that’s their first offer. I can get more than that.’”That U.S. offer, first presented to Russia in June, sought the release of Ms. Griner and Paul N. Whelan, a former Marine arrested in Moscow and convicted of espionage in 2020.The Biden administration proposed to trade the two Americans for the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is midway through a 25-year federal prison sentence for offering to sell arms to a Colombian rebel group that the United States then considered a terrorist organization.The proposal has already reshaped U.S. diplomacy toward Russia, which had been frozen at senior levels since Mr. Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. A phone call about the matter on July 29 between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, was their first conversation since the war began. But it appeared to leave the Kremlin unmoved. The White House says Russia has made an unspecified “bad faith” counteroffer that the United States is not taking seriously.What to Know About the Brittney Griner CaseCard 1 of 4What happened? More

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      Brittney Griner’s Guilty Verdict Strengthens Supporters’ Resolve

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      The W.N.B.A. star was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony, but her supporters insist they will do “whatever we can to get her home.”Nothing about Thursday’s proceedings in a Russian courthouse, where the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was being tried on drug smuggling charges, surprised experts familiar with Russia’s legal process. Griner was convicted and sentenced to a penal colony for nine years — just one year shy of the maximum sentence.Her conviction was thought to be a formality and a prerequisite for a prisoner swap that could lead to her return to the United States.“I think the negotiations will accelerate now that there’s finality to the alleged court process,” said Jonathan Franks, who has worked with the family of Trevor R. Reed, a former U.S. Marine who was returned to the United States in a prisoner swap with Russia in April. Reed was also sentenced to nine years of imprisonment after he was convicted of assault, a charge his family considered to be spurious and politically motivated.“One thing Americans need to realize is, we’re dealing with thugs,” Franks said. “The people who take our folks hostage or wrongfully detain them, it’s just state-sponsored kidnapping. They’re thugs. Sometimes, in order to get thugs’ attention, they only understand strength.”Last week, the U.S. State Department said it had made a “substantial offer” to the Russian government for Griner and Paul N. Whelan, an American who has been detained in Russia since 2018. Whelan was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. But now that Griner’s trial is over, experts said even more patience would be required from those who support her. After U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken publicly said that the United States had offered Russia a deal, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told reporters that prisoner swaps were negotiated quietly.William Pomeranz, the acting director of the Kennan Institute and an expert on Russian law, said: “There’s no incentive for Russia to do any favors for the United States.”“I am not optimistic that the diplomatic deal will take place any time soon,” he said, pointing to Peskov’s statement and the poor relations between the two countries because of the war in Ukraine.Griner has been detained in Russia since Feb. 17 when Russian customs officials at an airport near Moscow said they had found hashish oil, a cannabis derivative, in a vape pen in her luggage. The U.S. State Department announced in May that it considered Griner to be “wrongfully detained,” which meant her case would be handled by the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. The State Department said it would work to secure her release, no matter how her trial ended.In both the United States and Russia, Griner’s teammates and coaches have offered their support. Members of her Russian team, UMMC Yekaterinburg, testified on Griner’s behalf during her trial.Seattle Storm forward Breanna Stewart, left, said she was “feeling sad and feeling sick” after Griner was convicted on Thursday. Stewart had played in Russia with Griner for UMMC Yekaterinburg.Richard Ellis/UPI/ShutterstockIn the United States, several W.N.B.A. players who had also played in Russia coordinated a social media campaign on Wednesday, the day before her trial ended.Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the W.N.B.A. players’ union, posted a photograph on Instagram of herself playing for her Russian team, Dynamo Kursk.“Like me, she has great memories from her time playing and returned year after year to compete in Russia,” Ogwumike wrote. She added: “I am asking that in honor of all our great experiences competing in Russia and around the world, out of love and humanity, that you show her mercy and understanding. Please be kind to Brittney Griner.”Although the players’ appeals did not appear to affect the proceedings, they had value in showing solidarity with Griner and her UMMC Yekaterinburg teammates who spoke on her behalf, said Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a Russian historian who has consulted with the players’ union during Griner’s detention.“Brittney’s Russian teammates and her coach, those who testified on her behalf in Russia really put themselves at risk because Russia just recently passed even more stringent laws about cooperating with foreigners,” St. Julian-Varnon said. She said the W.N.B.A. players’ public statements were “giving them a nod and saying they appreciated what they did.”St. Julian-Varnon started advising the union shortly after Griner was detained. She said early on she told the players to expect a long process, that they should not expect Griner to be released before her trial and that even if her sentence were light, that would mean at least five years.Now that Griner has been convicted, St. Julian-Varnon is still urging caution.“This does not mean she’s going to be involved in a prisoner swap any time soon,” she said. “Just keep that in mind because this is still a process, but it’s the next step in the process. It could be weeks. It could be months. A lot of it depends on Russia.”The Plight of Brittney Griner in RussiaThe American basketball star has endured months in a Russian prison on charges of smuggling hashish oil into the country.The Ordeal, in Her Own Words: During her trial, Ms. Griner said she had been tossed into a bewildering legal system with little explanation of what she might do to try to defend herself. Who Is Viktor Bout?: The man who could be part of a prisoner swap to release Ms. Griner has been accused of supplying arms to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and rebels in Rwanda.Hostage Diplomacy: In recent years, several Americans have been swept up by hostile governments looking to use them as bargaining chips. Brittney Griner might be one of them.The N.B.A.’s Low Profile: The league has been mostly quiet in the public campaign to free Ms. Griner, even though it founded and still partly owns the W.N.B.A. Here’s why.Terri Jackson, the executive director of the W.N.B.A. players’ union, said Griner’s conviction would not change how the players support her. For months, they spoke out publicly and made other demonstrations of support, such as wearing T-shirts with Griner’s initials and jersey number, 42.The Phoenix Mercury, Griner’s team since she was drafted No. 1 overall in 2013, held a rally for Griner on July 6. Fans held up signs and wore T-shirts and jerseys to show their support.Phoenix Mercury/Via Reuters“Just really feeling sad and feeling sick for Brittney and hoping that she gets home as soon as possible,” said Seattle Storm forward Breanna Stewart, a four-time All-Star who played with Griner in Russia. “Now that the trial is done and the sentencing happened, I know she’s got to be in a very emotional state and just want her to know that we’re still continuing to do whatever we can to get her home.”When asked if the N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. would change anything about their tactics, Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, said both leagues would continue to support the State Department, White House “and other allies in and outside government in the effort to get Brittney home as soon as possible.”The tense relationship between the United States and Russia has not eased in the months since Griner’s detention. She was jailed shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the United States has sent military equipment to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. On Monday, the White House said it would send $550 million in additional arms to Ukraine for the war.St. Julian-Varnon said that could hamper negotiations for Griner’s release, which was not a problem for Russia. “It only hurts the credibility of the Biden administration,” she said. “There’s no impetus for Russia to do anything immediately.”That stance most likely will not sit well with Griner’s supporters. Paris Hatcher is the executive director of Black Feminist Future, a social justice organization that created the #BringBrittneyHome hashtag campaign. She said her initial excitement over a possible prisoner swap for Griner dissipated after Thursday’s verdict.Hatcher said the organization would consider options to keep Griner’s case on the forefront of the minds of politicians.“Will that mean that we’ll be reaching back out to elected officials that we had been in conversation with about the critical nature of this case?” Hatcher said. “Oftentimes, you just don’t have enough information. Now, you have the information. Whatever was making you hesitate, it’s been six months.”Hatcher added: “Whatever swap that needs to happen, let it happen. Make it happen.” More