US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday in the highest-level known contact between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine, with Blinken urging Russia to accept a deal to win the release of American detainees Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.
Russian officials gave no public hint whether Blinken had made any headway, only issuing a chiding statement afterward urging the US to pursue the Americans' freedom through “quiet diplomacy, without releases of speculative information."
US officials have in recent days publicized their efforts to get back Griner, a WNBA star, and Whelan, a corporate security executive, whose cases have drawn widespread national attention.
Blinken did not provide details of Lavrov’s response to what he had previously called a “substantial proposal" for Russia to release Whelan and Griner. Blinken had publicly requested the call and revealed the existence of the offer to Russia. People familiar with the offer say the US wants to swap Whelan and Griner for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25 year-prison sentence in the United States.
Blinken described the call as “a frank and direct conversation” centered primarily on the detained Americans.
“I urged Foreign Minister Lavrov to move forward with that proposal," he said. "I can’t give you an assessment of whether that is any more or less likely.”
Families of Americans detained abroad, many of them by some of the top US adversaries, have been increasing pressure on US President Joe Biden, most recently in the case of two-time Olympic gold medalist Griner, who was arrested on drugs charges at a Moscow airport on Feb. 17 and could face up to 10 years in prison.
Lavrov told a news conference that talks on prisoner exchanges had been taking place since a summit in Geneva last year where President Vladimir Putin and Biden had agreed to nominate officials to look into the issue.
