The US Did Not Get Fleeced in the Brittney Griner — Viktor Bout Trade
And it’s crazy that anyone thinks it did.
A friend celebrated US WNBA player Britney Griner’s return home from Russia this past week with a short but sweet post on Facebook. My friend was simply congratulating Griner and her family for finally being reunited after an international prisoner exchange, where Griner was traded for Viktor Bout, aka The Merchant of Death.
An American guy wrote in my friend’s comments: “We got fleeced on this trade.”
I’ve been seeing similar comments on Twitter and other social media spaces. Some of these comments are referring to Paul Whelan, the Canadian-born, multi-national ex-Marine imprisoned in Russia since 2018 on charges of espionage. The US Feds were initially negotiating a two-person prisoner-swap for Bout, in exchange for Griner and Whelan, but the Russians wanted a two-prisoner swap on their end as well: Griner and Whelan for Bout and Vadim Kasikov, a Russian spy currently serving a life sentence in Germany for murder.
In the end, the exchange negotiations only settled on Griner for Bout.
