Russian diplomacy confirmed Thursday, July 28 the holding of talks for a Russian-American exchange of prisoners, but assured that there was “not yetOK, while Washington indicated the day before that it had made a “substantial offer” in Moscow. The negotiations “are carried out by the competent authorities. A concrete result has not yet been achieved“, said in a press release the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova.
According to her, Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have “in their timeordered the holding of talks with a view to exchanging prisoners, while the subject has come up regularly since their summit in June 2021 in Geneva. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken announced on Wednesday that he would speakin the next few days“with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, to discuss an American offer”consequentto secure the release of two Americans detained in Russia.
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“The merchant of death” against a basketball player
According to several American media, it would be a question of exchanging Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner, a basketball player currently on trial after being arrested in February for possession of cannabis when arriving in Moscow, and Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence. in Russia for espionage.
Viktor Bout is a notorious Russian arms trafficker, arrested in Thailand in 2008 and serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States. Nicknamed the “merchant of death“, his extraordinary journey was the inspiration for the film “Lord of Warin which Nicolas Cage plays a cynical arms dealer.
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Several prisoner exchanges have taken place in the past. In April, former US Marine Trevor Reed, sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for violence he denied, was exchanged for a Russian pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, imprisoned in the United States since 2010 for drug trafficking in connection with the Colombian FARC.
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