pleaded guilty to the charge against her, admitting to possessing the cartridges but saying they were left in her luggage as part of an oversight while she was packing in a hurry.
The U.S. State Department has floated the idea of a prisoner swap, in which the United States would release a convicted arms dealer in exchange for Griner and Paul Whelan, a former U.S.
Marine and businessman who has been detained since 2018 on espionage charges, but Russian officials have largely been cold to the idea.The U.S.
State Department condemned what it called the “wrongful detention” of Griner and panned the Russian legal system, as well as the Russian government’s “use of wrongful detentions to advance its own agenda, using individuals as political pawns.”“Nothing about today’s decision changes our determination that Brittney Griner is wrongfully detained, and we will continue working to bring Brittney and fellow wrongfully detained U.S.