The scene is worthy of a spy movie, or a famous episode of Legends Office. On the runway at the airport in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, we see American basketball player Brittney Griner being traded for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The champion, detained in Russia for nine months, was released on Thursday as part of a prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington.
In a video from the Russian security service released by TASS, a tall figure in a red jacket walks down a track, a small, smiling man with a gray mustache approaches him. The men in suits who accompany them greet each other on both sides and then go in the opposite direction.
Arrival in the United States on Friday
In the images of the exchange, which seems straight out of the Cold War, the athlete appears with her hair cut short, without her usual long dreadlocks.
“A few moments ago I spoke with Brittney Griner. She is safe. She is on a plane. She is heading to the United States,” US President Joe Biden said earlier during a brief speech at the White House.
The basketball player is expected for Friday morning in the United States. He has “good morals” despite the “trauma” suffered, added the US president.
Another video, broadcast by the pro-Kremlin RT channel, and rebroadcast by the US agency Associated Press, shows Britney Griner leaving prison a few hours earlier. A guard asks the basketball player if she intends to return to Russia one day.
The FSB footage also showed the player boarding a plane in the snow and then making sure from the cockpit that she was “happy”, stating that she did not know where she was being taken. “You’re going home,” a man accompanying him replies in Russian.
Source: BFM TV
