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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has offered Russia a deal aimed at bringing home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another imprisoned American, Paul Whelan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

In a sharp reversal from previous policy, Blinken also said he expected to speak with his Kremlin counterpart for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Blinken’s comments were the first time the US government has publicly disclosed any concrete steps it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified at her trial on Wednesday.

Blinken did not offer details about the proposed deal presented to the Russians, but a source familiar with the matter said the US government had offered to swap convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for Whelan and Griner.

The person insisted on anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

While it is unclear whether the proposal will be enough for Russia to release the Americans, the public confirmation of the offer at a time when the US has otherwise avoided Russia reflects the growing pressure on the administration over Griner and Whelan and its determination to win them over. home.

It also signals that the White House is increasingly embracing prisoner exchanges as a solution to cases of Americans imprisoned abroad, especially after the April trade that secured the release of Marine Corps veteran Trevor Reed and gave the administration a much-needed publicity boost.

“We put a comprehensive proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release,” Blinken said. “Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly about this proposal and I will use the conversation to follow up personally and hopefully move us toward a solution.”

President Joe Biden, who approved Reed’s prisoner exchange after meeting with his parents, signed off on the deal the U.S. offered in the case, officials said.

“The president and his team are prepared to take extraordinary steps to bring them home,” John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, told reporters.

If the call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov goes ahead, it would be the first conversation he and Blinken have had since February 15, about a week before Russia invaded Ukraine. U.S. officials said the desire to respond to the prisoner offer was the main, but not the only, reason the U.S. requested another call with Lavrov on Wednesday.

Blinken said he would also speak to Lavrov about the importance of Russia honoring a UN-brokered deal to release several tons of Ukrainian grain from storage and warned him about the dangers of possible Russian attempts to annex parts of eastern and southern Ukraine .

“It’s helpful to send clear, direct messages to the Russians about key priorities for us,” including the release of Griner and Whelan, Blinken said. They also include “what we see and hear around the world is a desperate need for food, a desperate need to lower prices.”

Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on espionage charges. He and his family strongly maintained his innocence. The US government called the allegations false.

Griner, who has been in Russian custody for the past five months after authorities there said they found vape cartridges containing hemp oil in her luggage, testified at her trial Wednesday that she had no criminal intent to I would bring them to the country and quickly pack them. for her return to the Russian Basketball League during the WNBA season.

During her testimony, Griner said she still doesn’t know how the hemp oil ended up in her luggage, but explained that she had a doctor’s recommendation to use it to treat chronic pain from her sports injuries. She said she was pulled away at the airport after inspectors found the cartridges, but that an interpreter translated only part of what she said during her interrogation and that officials ordered her to sign documents without giving an explanation. .

Griner faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of drug trafficking. Sources told ESPN’s T.J. Quinn that a verdict and sentencing is expected on August 5.

For months, U.S. officials have sought to deflect criticism of the apparent lack of momentum in the Griner and Whelan cases by saying the work is being done in secret and out of the public eye. That stance made Wednesday’s announcement all the more surprising, but Kirby said the administration decided to make it clear that a deal was on the table.

“We believe it is important for the American people to know how hard President Biden is working to bring Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan home,” he said.

For years, Russia has expressed interest in the release of Bout, a Russian arms dealer once dubbed the “Death Merchant” who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 on charges that he masterminded the illegal sale of millions of dollars in arms.

Supporters of his release say he was jailed after an overly aggressive US operation, and the judge who sentenced him told The Associated Press this month that she thought he had already served enough prison time.

The U.S. government has long resisted prisoner swaps out of concern that they could encourage additional hostage-taking and promote a false equivalence between an American wrongfully detained and a foreign national deemed justly convicted. But an earlier deal in April, in which Reed was swapped for jailed Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, appeared to open the door to similar resolutions in the future, and the Biden administration was hounded by political pressure to bring Griner and other Americans home. marked as wrongfully detained.

There was no indication that Blinken and Lavrov communicated to secure Reed’s release. Their last publicly acknowledged contact was on February 22, when Blinken wrote to Lavrov to cancel a meeting they had planned as a last-ditch effort to prevent a Russian invasion, saying Moscow had shown no interest in serious diplomacy on the matter. The State Department later said that Russian diplomacy was “kabuki theater” – all show and no substance.

The two last met in person in Geneva, Switzerland, in January to discuss the then-large Russian military build-up along the Ukrainian border and Russian demands that NATO reduce its presence in Eastern Europe and permanently deny Ukraine membership. The US rejected Russia’s demands.

Blinken and Lavrov avoided each other earlier this month the next time they were in the same place at the same time: a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of 20 nations in Bali, Indonesia.

The two men will be in Phnom Penh, Cambodia at the same time next week, where they will both attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum. It was not immediately clear whether the phone call ahead of the meeting, scheduled for Aug. 4 and 5, would herald an in-person discussion.

This report used information from the Associated Press.

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