The United States initially wanted to exchange Russian businessman Viktor Bout for US citizen Paul Whelan and basketball player Brittney Griner, Bout's lawyer Alexey Tarasov said on Thursday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th December, 2022) The United States initially wanted to exchange Russian businessman Viktor Bout for US citizen Paul Whelan and basketball player Brittney Griner, Bout's lawyer Alexey Tarasov said on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, Russia released Griner from prison in exchange for the US releasing Bout. The latter was serving a 25-year sentence in the US for alleged arms dealing.
"It is worth noting that the US side initially wanted to pull off the exchange of its two citizens for one Russian citizen, ViKtor Bout for both Griner and Whelan. In the end, as we see, there was a one-for-one swap. The exchange should indeed be equal," Tarasov told the Rossiya 24 broadcaster.
The lawyer added that the swap was expected, but its exact date was hard to predict.
In late July, Western media reported that the US had proposed to Russia that Moscow and Washington exchange Bout, sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in a US prison on charges of conspiring to murder American citizens, export anti-aircraft missiles and financially support terrorism, for US Marine Paul Whelan, sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian prison for spying, and Griner, sentenced in 2022 to nine years for illegally bringing cannabis oil to Russia.
In November, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Bout was one of the persons being discussed as part of the prisoner exchange with Washington and that Moscow was expecting a positive result in this matter.
