The detained American basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a court near Moscow on Thursday, Reuters reported, hours after a top Russian diplomat lashed out at the Biden administration for trying to “foment hype” around her case.
“I’d like to plead guilty, your honor. But there was no intent. I didn’t want to break the law,” Griner said in English, which was then translated into Russian, Reuters reported.
The diplomat, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, said that the publicity around the case was not helping Ms. Griner, who American officials say is essentially a hostage taken by President Vladimir V. Putin amid the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Ryabkov indicated that Moscow would be prepared to negotiate her fate, but only after the court reached a verdict on the drug charges that were brought against her. She has been detained in Russia since Feb. 17, accused by the Russian authorities of having a vape cartridge with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.
“We have a long-established form of discussing these matters,” Mr. Ryabkov told reporters on Thursday in Moscow, according to the Interfax news agency. “The American side’s attempts to foment hype and make noise in the public environment are understandable, but they don’t help to practically resolve issues.”
If Ms. Griner is convicted, she faces up to 10 years in a Russian penal colony.
After her trial began last week, she sent a handwritten letter to Mr. Biden asking him not to “forget about” her and other American detainees overseas.
Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke on Wednesday with Ms. Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, according to a statement released by the White House.
During the call, the statement said, the president read a draft of a letter that he planned to send to Brittney Griner. He also said that his administration was pursuing “every avenue to bring Brittney home.”
In a statement to The New York Times on Wednesday, Cherelle Griner said she was grateful to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris “for the time they spent with me and for the commitment they expressed to getting B.G. home.”
What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia
The United States government has classified Brittney Griner as “wrongfully detained” and is working to secure her release regardless of the outcome of the trial. While the Kremlin claims it has no involvement in Ms. Griner’s case, Russian state media reports have indicated that Moscow may press the United States to free a Russian in American custody — like the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout — in exchange for her freedom.
Mr. Ryabkov said that until the conclusion of Ms. Griner’s case, “there are no formal procedural grounds” to discuss further steps. He hinted, however, that Moscow was interested in negotiating over her fate, claiming that she would be helped by “a serious reading by the American side of the signals that they received from Russia, from Moscow, through specialized channels.”
He did not specify what those signals were, but insisted that talks on Ms. Griner’s fate should take place out of the public eye, according to Russian news reports.
“Hype and publicity, for all the love for this genre among modern politicians, only gets in the way in this particular instance,” Mr. Ryabkov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. “This does not just distract from the case, but creates interference in the truest sense of the word. That’s why silence is needed here.”
