A former adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Thursday that the prisoner exchange that returned Brittney Griner back to the United States in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout was a victory for Moscow and made the United States appear weak.
Sergei Markov commented in a blistering post on his Telegram channel, “Putin outplayed Biden.”
“It appears we got back our spy and gave away a normal girl,” he added.
Markov lauded Griner as a “outstanding athlete,” but stated that she is less significant to the United States than Bout is to Russia.
He wrote that prisoner exchanges with the West should be “entirely in our favor.”
Russian authorities apprehended Griner, 32, on February 17 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after discovering vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage. After pleading guilty to drug charges, she was sentenced to nine years of hard work in a Russian prison camp.
Since 2008, the United States has held Bout, an infamous Russian arms trader with the alias “The Merchant of Death.” He was in the middle of a 25-year federal prison sentence for plotting to sell tens of millions of dollars worth of firearms to narco-terrorists for use against Americans in 2011.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the president of the United Arab Emirates negotiated the trade.
President Biden personally approved the exchange, in which both prisoners were flown to Abu Dhabi on private jets before returning to their respective countries.
“Britney will soon return to her family, where she should have been all along,” the president declared on Thursday. “This is a day we’ve waited a long time for. We never ceased our efforts to secure her release.”
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