Russia-Ukraine War Updates: Kherson Braces for Battle

U.S. officers met with the jailed American basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday for the primary time since a Russian court docket rejected her enchantment on a drug-possession conviction, and the White House mentioned she was doing “as well as can be expected.”

Ms. Griner has develop into unwillingly ensnared in a geopolitical battle between Russia and the west, and has been grappling with the choice by a Russian appeals court docket to uphold a nine-year sentence in a penal colony on expenses of drug possession. Ms. Griner, who lately turned 32 in Russian custody, pleaded responsible to drug-smuggling expenses and apologized for what she referred to as an inadvertent offense.

“We are told she is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters on Air Force One as she traveled with President Biden to New Mexico.

Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, additionally famous that the assembly had occurred, posting on Twitter that officers from the U.S. Embassy in Russia had seen Ms. Griner and “seen firsthand her tenacity and perseverance despite her present circumstances.”

In October, certainly one of Ms. Griner’s legal professionals mentioned that she was more and more anxious about her probabilities of being freed in a prisoner swap and struggling emotionally. She is allowed outdoors as soon as a day at a penal colony outdoors Moscow, the lawyer, Alexandr D. Boykov, mentioned in a latest interview. He mentioned she walks for an hour in a small courtyard, and spends the remainder of her time in a small cell with two cellmates, sitting and sleeping on a specifically elongated mattress to accommodate her 6-foot-9 body.

Ekaterina Kalugina, a journalist who visited Ms. Griner in her cell within the springtime, mentioned in a telephone interview in October that Ms. Griner’s two cellmates on the time had been ladies who spoke English and had been additionally in jail on drug-related expenses. She mentioned that Ms. Griner had been studying a translation of Dostoyevsky’s novel “Demons,” a political tragedy.

The Biden administration has been attempting to barter a prisoner swap with Russia to deliver dwelling Ms. Griner and Paul Whelan, an American imprisoned on espionage expenses, however with no reported breakthroughs — and extraordinary rigidity between the 2 nations over the battle in Ukraine — a public stress marketing campaign from athletes, led by her spouse, Cherelle Griner, has intensified.

American officers have mentioned the United States has supplied to free the imprisoned Russian arms supplier Viktor Bout as a part of the deal. He is serving a 25-year jail sentence for conspiring to kill Americans.

Every week earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Ms. Griner, an All-Star heart with the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was detained at an airport close to Moscow after customs officers discovered two vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her baggage. She had been en path to Yekaterinburg, a metropolis close to the Ural Mountains, the place she performed for a ladies’s basketball group.

Ms. Jean-Pierre mentioned, in feedback livestreamed by the White House, that embassy officers in Moscow had been capable of go to Brittney Griner on Thursday.

“As we have said before, the U.S. government made a significant offer to the Russians to resolve the current unacceptable and wrongful detentions of American citizens Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan,” she mentioned.

She added, “I can also tell you that in the subsequent weeks, despite a lack of good faith negotiation by the Russians, the U.S. government has continued to follow up on that offer and propose alternative potential ways forward with Russians through all available channels.

“This continues to be a top priority,” Ms. Jean-Pierre mentioned.