Brittney Griner celebrates 20 months of release from detention and reacts to US-Russia prisoner swap: ‘This is a big win, huge win’

VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France — Team USA center Brittney Griner had just come off the court after her team beat Belgium in group play at the Paris Games when she was asked about her reaction to the news that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were part of a massive prisoner swap between Russia and several Western countries.

“It’s a great day,” Griner said. “I am head over heels happy for the families right now. Any day that Americans come home, that’s a win.”

Griner, 33, didn’t disclose who first told her about the prisoner swap but said she was “definitely emotional” upon hearing the news.

“I’m just happy,” she said. “Like this is a big win, huge win.”

Griner spent most of 2022 under Russian detainment after she was found traveling with a small amount of hashish oil in her luggage as she went to join her UMMC Ekaterinburg team. The U.S. government declared her to be wrongfully detained, a classification that allowed the government to negotiate her release before a trial or conviction.

Still, that August she was found guilty of smuggling drugs with criminal intent and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. Four months later, the United States secured a prisoner swap, bringing Griner home in exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison.

Gershkovich, 32, had been held since March 2023 and was sentenced last month to 16 years in a Russian penal colony on charges of espionage, accusations that The Wall Street Journal has strenuously denied since he was detained.

Whelan, 54, had been held since December 2018 and was found guilty in June 2020, also sentenced to 16 years for spying charges. In total, the swap included 24 prisoners from the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Russia, a Turkish intelligence official said. Sixteen people were released from Russian custody in exchange for eight people freed by the West, per The New York Times.

On Thursday, Griner also commented on the reacclimatization she experienced upon returning to the U.S.

“I know they have an amazing group of people that are gonna help them out in whatever way they need them, and their families, and I’m glad that I was able to go through that, that program and get reacclimated back into everyday life,” she said.

Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve said she shared a moment with Griner in the locker room after Thursday’s game.

“As soon as I read (the news), I thought of Brittney,” Reeve said. “I thought, ‘I know how happy she is.’ … She knows what, for her, that was like.

“So now knowing and actually visualizing maybe them going through the experience. She seemed OK. But that’s Brittney. She always seems OK. We’ll certainly be checking on her.”

Upon Griner’s return to the States in December 2022, she said she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness for wrongfully held and wrongfully convicted Americans all over the world. She and the Phoenix Mercury partnered with Bring Our Families Home (BOFH).