U.S. Offers Bold Prisoner Swap: ‘Merchant of Death’ for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan

The Biden administration has proposed a prisoner swap with Russia that would allow Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan to come home, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday.

The offer would see notorious Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout be released from a U.S. prison in exchange for the two American detainees. Nicknamed the Merchant of Death, Bout is serving 25 years for attempting to sell heavy weaponry to a terror group so it could attack U.S. forces aiding the Colombian government.

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

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. A senior administration official said that Russia has yet to respond to the proposal, but that while the ball is in their court, the United States “continue[s] to communicate the offer at very senior levels.”

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Griner has been detained on drug charges since February and Whelan has been held on what the U.S. describes as specious espionage charges since 2018.

Pressure has mounted on Biden to bring the two home and the trade, if successful, could be a much-needed political win. However, the offer remains fraught; Russia has repeatedly warned that attempts to pressure Moscow into a deal on Griner would be “futile,” and the AP previously reported that such a lopsided deal was seen by the U.S. as “unpalatable.”

Sources told CNN, which first reported on the offer Wednesday, that the Department of Justice was characteristically against the trade, but eventually conceded that the swap had support among top officials at the State Department and White House, including President Joe Biden himself.

Jonathan Franks, spokesman for the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, which represents families of Americans detained overseas, including the Whelans, said he reacted to Blinken’s announcement with a “bravo.”

“To me, the Russians have been after Viktor Bout since 2016 and they’ve now got the offer on the table, they need to take it,” he told MSNBC.

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Russia has long seemed interested in bringing Bout back to Russia, and a senior administration official told CNN that the U.S. “communicated a substantial offer that we believe could be successful based on a history of conversations with the Russians.”

The White House may have been emboldened by its recent success in bringing home Trevor Reed, a former Marine, through a prisoner swap. 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 swap received an unexpected level of bipartisan support.

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. According to a tweet from 360TV, a Russian television channel, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that there has not been a call between the two men.

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