US Officials Met With Brittney Griner in Russia, White House Says

In October, one of Ms. Griner’s lawyers said that she was increasingly anxious about her chances of being freed in a prisoner swap and struggling emotionally. She is allowed outside once a day at a penal colony outside Moscow, the lawyer, Alexandr D. Boykov, said in a recent interview. He said she walks for an hour in a small courtyard, and spends the rest of her time in a small cell with two cellmates, sitting and sleeping on a specially elongated bed to accommodate her 6-foot-9 frame.

Ekaterina Kalugina, a journalist who visited Ms. Griner in her cell in the springtime, said in a phone interview in October that Ms. Griner’s two cellmates at the time were women who spoke English and were also in prison on drug-related charges. She said that Ms. Griner had been reading a translation of Dostoyevsky’s novel “Demons,” a political tragedy.

The Biden administration has been trying to negotiate a prisoner swap with Russia to bring home Ms. Griner and Paul Whelan, an American imprisoned on espionage charges, but with no reported breakthroughs — and extraordinary tension between the two countries over the war in Ukraine — a public pressure campaign from athletes, led by her wife, Cherelle Griner, has intensified.

American officials have said the United States has offered to free the imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout as part of the deal. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence for conspiring to kill Americans.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/europe/brittney-griner-russia-us.html