Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
On Nov. 17, WNBA and international basketball star Brittney Griner was confirmed to have arrived in Russian penal colony IK-2 in the republic of Mordovia to begin serving out her nine-year sentence on drug smuggling charges. Griner was detained on Feb. 17, 2022, upon landing at Sheremetyevo Airport in Russia. Russian authorities said that two vape cartridges containing traces of cannabis oil were found in her luggage. Marijuana is illegal in Russia, medicinally and recreationally. Although Griner claimed in the spring of 2022 that these items were accidentally placed in her luggage, her case as of recently has progressed beyond this fragment of information. She has joined the sorrowful company of around 60 fellow Americans detained abroad under vague and tenuous circumstances.
Friends and family of Griner have pushed her case into the limelight in sports and international news since her detainment last February. This ongoing global conversation has drawn unprecedented, sustained attention to the conditions of U.S. citizens detained abroad, particularly in Russia. Since her initial detainment, Griner’s impact on the basketball community has been clear. Outcry has been consistent online and outside government buildings as supporters urge the U.S. government to double down on efforts to bring her home. Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, while speaking at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards on Nov. 2, urged supporters to use the site WeAreBG.org to write to Griner as so she knows she has not been forgotten. Cherelle acknowledged that there is little to do in terms of physical support but stated that “words make a difference” and read from a letter that she herself sent: “I took for granted being able to just talk with you. I catch myself picking up my phone, only to sit it back down, because there is only one voice that I want to hear and it’s yours.”
On Nov. 18, the U.S. State Department released a statement detailing the state of negotiations for Griner’s return home. This statement focused on the U.S. request to secure the release of Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan who was sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony in 2020: “The U.S. Government has continued to follow up on that offer and propose alternative potential ways forward with the Russian government. The Russian government’s failure to seriously negotiate on these issues in the established channel, or any other channel for that matter, runs counter to its public statements.” The Russian government has pushed for the release of Viktor Bout, an arms dealer responsible for selling arms to former Liberian President and warlord Charles Taylor alongside a litany of terrorist groups, in exchange for Griner and Whelan. The sincerity of this request remains uncertain as, according to U.S. reports, Russia has not engaged in exchange talks in any concrete manner yet.
Despite this, Russia has a history of issuing fabricated claims to support the detention of foreign citizens as a method for manipulating other countries’ political and judicial behavior. The most recent cases, concerning former Marines Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, are foremost examples of this tactic. Both men were detained under the pretense that they had entered Russia as foreign spies. However, based on the Russian state and their own personal accounts, they were detained with little clear explanation and no fair representation in court. Reed was detained after becoming ill on the side of a road while Whelan was detained in his hotel room, preparing for a friend’s wedding.
While Reed was recently released in a prisoner exchange, Whelan remains imprisoned in a penal colony thought to share the same grim conditions as Griner’s. Although it is possible that Griner’s star power and subsequent global outcry could signal hope for her and Whelan, it is important to consider the complex elements of international politics which are tied up in this conversation. Russia and the United States are notorious for using cultural touchstones as political tools. This is seen in Russia’s ongoing complications with the Olympic Games and the United States’ networks of economic interdependence generated by U.S. businesses–such as McDonald’s–entering the international arena thereby dolling out severe punishment to Russia’s economy as they retreat amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Amid rising tensions between Russia and the United States, any negotiation for Griner or Whelan’s release will have geopolitical implications. Reed was released to the United States under a prisoner exchange agreement in which international smuggler, Konstantin Yaroshenko, was returned to Russia. Reed’s case, although immensely distressing, was not as widely discussed as Griner’s. For this reason, it is likely that any potential prisoner exchange will involve a much higher-profile Russian prisoner. This provides further credence to the possibility that the United States may be considering Russia’s request to exchange Griner and Whelan for Bout.
Meanwhile, as these giants of the global stage engage in a bureaucratic tit for tat, Griner has spent the past week familiarizing herself with the contemptible inside of a penal colony deep in the Russian taiga. Russian activist and member of the punk group Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, was imprisoned in a colony about four miles away from Griner’s from 2012 to 2013. Tolokonnikova described working up to 17-hour days in a sewing shop, experiencing freezing conditions, and regular assaults on prisoners.
Tolokonnikova wrote a letter in 2013 outlining the environment in her colony, IK-14, as follows, “A threatening, anxious atmosphere pervades the work zone. Eternally sleep-deprived, overwhelmed by the endless race to fulfill inhumanly large quotas, prisoners are always on the verge of breaking down, screaming at each other, fighting over the smallest things.”
These conditions are abhorrent and it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the state that Griner is in. Amidst all other Russian atrocities depicted in the media today, it is tempting to pull Griner’s case into a larger narrative of ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Russian. While there is some truth to this, I heartily encourage you to consider the deeply individual pain that Griner, her wife and children, and her teammates are fighting through every day she remains imprisoned.
