Brittney Griner will be home for Christmas. And the story surrounding her year-long affair in Russian custody has now won a major award.
The Associated Press on Friday named the prisoner swap that freed Griner as the Sports Story of the Year. The exchange between America and Russia also generated the release of convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
“I think her celebrity and the coinciding with the time of the invasion of Ukraine, those two points together is what made her case national news, international news, but also I think it made it made it feel much more fraught than a lot of the earlier cases of Americans being detained in Russia,” Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a Russian historian and doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, told the AP, days before American president Joe Biden announced the controversial deal to free Griner.
Russia originally sentenced Griner to nine years in a maximum-security penal colony for women 200 miles outside Moscow. The Russians had only recently admitted to transferring Griner, despite doing so at the end of October when they denied her appeal for freedom.
President Biden has faced severe online criticism for striking a deal that didn’t include imprisoned United States Marine Paul Whelan, who is currently serving 16 years in Russian custody on espionage charges.
Griner is currently relaxing with her wife on a military base outside San Antonio, Texas.
