Brittney Griner’s release not a priority for Russia, Kremlin official says

Yury Ushakov, aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Sunday that releasing WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner, who is locked up in a Russian prison for bringing a small amount of cannabis oil into the country, is not a priority for Russia.

President Joe Biden has been trying to bring Griner back home and ordered his administration “to engage with the Russian government through every available channel and make every effort to bring them [Griner and Paul Whelan] home.” Whelan is an American Marine who is serving 16 years in a Russian jail over espionage charges.

However, Ushakov said that Biden is only announcing those attempts in the wake of the upcoming midterm elections in November.

“In this tense situation, I think that he is thinking first and foremost about the upcoming midterm elections so he keeps emphasizing the need to bring back home the basketball player who was detained for drug smuggling. However, it’s not the main issue that we are concerned about,” Ushakov said in an interview with Rossiya-1, Russian news agency TASS reported.

The White House said earlier this month that there has been no progress in negotiations with Russian officials to release Griner who was arrested in February at a Moscow airport.

In August, the athlete was sentenced by a Russian court to nine years in prison and was fined around $16,000 after she was found guilty of drug smuggling with criminal intent. She has been trying to appeal her prison sentence since then.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing this month that the 31-year-old basketball player has been “wrongfully detained by Russian authorities.”

The press secretary also said at the time that Russia should consider the offer that the Biden administration announced in July to secure Griner’s release. The Biden administration proposed releasing Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is also known as the “Merchant of Death,” in exchange for Whelan and Griner.

Meanwhile, Biden said on Tuesday that he doesn’t intend to speak with Putin during the upcoming G20 summit, unless it’s concerning Griner’s release.

“Look, I have no intention of meeting with him,” said Biden. “But, for example, if he came to me at the G20 and said, ‘I want to talk about the release of Griner,’ I would meet with him.”

Griner’s Jail Conditions

The Phoenix Mercury star is currently serving her sentence at a Russian penal colony, which is known to include barracks surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. Penal colonies have long been in Russia, but evolved from the often-deadly forced-labor camps under former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin to today’s model in which prisoners do less harsh labor such as sewing military uniforms instead of mining.

Still, the current conditions of the jail have taken a toll on the basketball player’s wellbeing, according to one of her Russian attorneys, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Griner is staying in a small cell with two other people who speak English and who are also facing drug-related charges. She also used to sleep on a small bed that couldn’t accommodate her 6-foot-9 figure, until Russian journalist Ekaterina Kalugina, who reportedly visited her in prison, told a Russian prison oversight commission in April that she needed a bigger bed.

Kalugina told the Times that the WNBA player, along with other women in the prison, are allowed to shower only twice a week. Griner is also experiencing frequent pain and headaches, the reporter learned during the visit.

Meanwhile, lawyer Alexandr Boykov said that the temperature inside the penal colony where Griner is locked up changes dramatically based on the weather. The lawyer added that Griner is allowed to be outdoors for only one hour every day, which she uses to walk laps around a “small courtyard.”

Newsweek reached out to The White House for comment.