Viktor Bout

These seems like a fine deal. Bring our people home!

Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth Whelan, released a statement to CNN that reads in part: “Why are the Whelans not getting a call? Due to the increasing amount of national attention that Griner’s case has been garnering, family members of Paul Whelan were compelled to speak out on behalf of their forgotten love one. “My hope would be in speaking to Foreign Minister Lavrov, I can advance the efforts to bring them home,” he said. And it appears the gamble may have paid off, as it’s being reported that President Joe Biden is trying to bring both Griner and another American citizen, former U.S. marine Paul Whelan (who’s been jailed in Russia since 2018 after receiving a 16-year prison sentence for espionage) home in exchange for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution.” While remaining optimistic about his chances to successfully secure the release of Griner and Whelan, Blinken remained cautious about the expected outcome.

The Biden administration has offered to release Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed the "Merchant of Death," in exchange for WNBA star Brittney ...

However, she argues that she had no criminal intent and that she had inadvertently packed the cartridges in haste. The U.S. has long resisted prisoner swaps out of fears that they could encourage hostage-taking and suggest that a wrongfully detained American is equivalent to a justly convicted foreign national. His extradition was ordered by then-U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric John and subsequently mandated by the Thai High Court in 2010. On the other hand, Griner acknowledged in court that she had vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. The focus of Bout's trial in Manhattan was on his role in supplying weapons to FARC for use against American forces in Colombia, which Bout has denied. He is thought to have been the inspiration for the character that actor Nicholas Cage played in the 2005 crime drama "Lord of War."

According to CNN, the Biden administration has offered to exchange Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker serving a 25-year US prison sentence, ...

The Biden administration has offered a deal to Russia aimed at bringing home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan,” Antony ...

In his bombshell announcement Wednesday, Blinken also said that he intends to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with whom he has not talked since before Russia invaded Ukraine. Blinken said he hopes to discuss both the potential prisoner swap and a recent UN-brokered deal about releasing Ukrainian grain. Pressure has mounted on Biden to bring the two home and the trade, if successful, could be a much-needed political win. He described the offer as a “substantial proposal” and said it was made weeks ago, though the Associated Press reports that it remains unclear whether Russia will accept it. Reed, who was held in Russia for more than two years on what the U.S. said were trumped-up charges of assaulting police, was exchanged for a Russian pilot who had been in U.S. federal prison for more than a decade on cocaine smuggling charges. The White House may have been emboldened by its recent success in bringing home Trevor Reed, a former Marine, through a prisoner swap. The offer would see notorious Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout be released from a U.S. prison in exchange for the two American detainees.

The Biden administration has proposed returning Viktor Bout to Russia in exchange for the release of detained Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, ...

“It has been communicated to the American side very clearly that they’re going to have to get real on Viktor Bout if they expect any further prisoner exchanges,” Zissou told the New York Times earlier this month. Biden recently spoke by phone with Griner’s wife and Whelan’s sister to update them on the administration’s efforts to free their relatives. We start all of these with somebody who has taken a human being American and treated them as a bargaining chip,” the person added. Griner, a star of the WNBA, has been locked up in Russia since February on drug possession charges, to which she pleaded guilty earlier this month. The secretary said he would “raise an issue that’s a top priority for us — the release of Americans Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, who’ve been wrongfully detained and must be allowed to come home. “We’ve conveyed this [offer] on a number of occasions, and directly to Russian officials.

A Russian arms dealer known as the "Merchant of Death" could be exchanged for WNBA star Brittney Griner and retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan in a prisoner ...

Griner was arrested at a Russian airport in mid-February after police said they found cannabis oil in her bags. "Moscow wants him back because he possesses critical insights that he can share with the GRU, his former agency. The Biden administration confirmed Wednesday that it has made a "substantial proposal" to help free Griner and Whelan. Having been in a U.S. prison and interrogated by U.S. officials, he knows what our intelligence requirements are and other information that is valuable for the Russians," Koffler, the author of "Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America," told Fox News Digital. Russian officials have long pushed for the release of Bout, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence in U.S. prison after being convicted in 2011 of conspiracy to kill Americans, conspiracy to deliver anti-aircraft missiles, and aiding a terrorist organization. Prosecutors said that Bout was prepared to provide the group with $20 million worth of "a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives."

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he would speak to his Russian counterpart for the first time in months about a “substantial proposal” to free the ...

Ms. Griner’s Russian legal defense team said it had learned about the American offer from the news and that it had not been participating in the discussions. The senior official said that the White House contacted Elizabeth Whelan, Mr. Whelan’s sister, about the proposal, and that she received it very positively. But the United States did make a trade with Moscow in April, sending home a convicted Russian drug smuggler in exchange for Mr. Reed, who was arrested on charges of assaulting two police officers. The State Department has classified him and Ms. Griner as “wrongfully detained” and has referred their cases to a special hostage affairs office. “She emphasized that she never planned to bring it to Russia and use it.” In an interview last month, however, the judge who sentenced Mr. Bout, Shira A. Scheindlin, said that Mr. Bout “was not a terrorist, in my opinion. In 2010, Mr. Bout agreed to sell arms to undercover U.S. federal agents who said they belonged to Colombia’s FARC rebel group, which the United States classified at the time as a terrorist organization. A lawyer came to help after 16 hours of detention, he said. She said she was told to sign papers with no explanation of what they were. Speaking at the State Department, Mr. Blinken said he expected to talk with Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, in the coming days and would urge him to accept the proposal. The notion of trading Ms. Griner for Mr. Bout surfaced in Russian news media several weeks ago. Some analysts believe that Mr. Bout enjoys loyalty from former criminal associates with continued influence at the Kremlin.

U.S. Proposes a Prisoner Swap to Bring Brittney Griner, Paul Whelan Home. The trade announced by Antony Blinken reportedly involves Russian arms dealer ...

In 2020, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in Russian prison. She now faces up to ten years in prison. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday that the Biden administration has proposed a prisoner swap that would bring home basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been in Russian jail for five months, and ex-marine Paul Whelan, who was accused of spying and has been detained since 2018.

Prisoner swaps are complicated, as the U.S. trade to Russia of a convicted arms trafficker for an WNBA star shows.

If he chooses, and I suspect he will, he can make a victory for himself — in a PR sense and a real sense as well — of the fact that he has brought this man home. Although at the end of the day, it has to be said it is good news that Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan may be coming home. TN: Obviously, we have to factor in that there was all this public pressure, and they didn’t have a lot of leverage here. TN: I think the only thing you can say with some certainty is that the White House — assuming she does indeed make it home — is going to champion this as an example of good diplomacy. We certainly know that the Kremlin has — well before this case and before the war in Ukraine — wanted Viktor Bout freed and has made various representations over the years to that effect. Just a couple of months ago, the State Department spokesman said something to the effect that wrongful detention as a bargaining chip was a terrible thing and it would endanger Americans traveling in countries all over the world. Policymakers, diplomats, ambassadors, they don’t like the precedent that suggests that if you are a foreign government and you’d like to get one of your own citizens freed from an American prison, perhaps all you need to do is grab an American citizen on your soil, charge them with something, hold them against their will and maybe you’ll get a great deal in return. He got caught because the United States arranged an operation in Bangkok. Agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency offered an arrangement with Bout in 2008, in which they said they wanted to buy 30,000 AK-47s, some plastic explosives and other munitions for the FARC rebel group that was operating in Colombia. He agreed to the deal. He did a lot of arms trafficking in Africa, in the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular. He was absolutely known and on the radar of U.S. and European law enforcement, at Interpol and so forth. This one is a wildly uneven swap, even if you accept all the charges that have been levied against Brittney Griner in Russia, namely that she was carrying some vape cartridges with cannabis in them. I think this case is particularly complicated and particularly controversial for a couple of reasons.