Russia confirmed on Thursday (28) that it is in talks with the United States for a prisoner exchange, but has made sure no agreement has yet been reached.
Maria Zakharova, spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement, “Negotiations are being carried out by the authorities. No concrete result has been reached yet.” Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin “at the time” ordered prisoner exchange talks, an issue that has been on the agenda regularly since the June 2021 summit in Geneva, according to Zakharova.
US diplomacy chief Antony Blinken announced on Wednesday that he will speak “in the coming days” with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to discuss a “significant” American offer to release two Americans held in Russia.
It will be about Brittney Griner, a basketball player currently on trial, and Paul Whelan, who is currently on trial, after Viktor Bout was arrested in February for possession of marijuana after arriving in Moscow, according to several US media outlets. He was arrested in February for possession of marijuana. He was sentenced to 16 years in Russia for espionage.
Viktor Bout, a prominent Russian arms dealer, was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and is serving a 25-year sentence in the United States. His extraordinary career, dubbed the “Merchant of Death,” inspired the movie “The Warlord,” starring Nicolas Cage as a cynical arms dealer.
Many prisoner exchanges have taken place in the past. In April, former US Marine Trevor Reed, who was also sentenced to nine years in Russia for violence he denies, was replaced by Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who has been imprisoned in the US since 2010 for drug trafficking with the Colombian FARC.
source: Noticias
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