The Kremlin said Thursday that there is still no agreement on the possible exchange of prisoners proposed to Moscow by the United States.
“At the moment, there are no agreements in this area,” said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov, at his daily press conference.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the day before that Washington offered Russia a “substantial proposal” to secure the release of two Americans detained on Russian territory, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.
Commenting on this information today, the representative of the Kremlin said that these are issues whose discussion does not admit “leakage to the press”.
“Usually the agreements already reached are disclosed,” he asserted.
Blinken also indicated the day before that he plans to speak in the coming days with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in what will be the first conversation between the two since the conflict with Ukraine broke out on February 24 last.
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At the same time, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the head of American diplomacy has not yet requested a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart.
“Beyond what the press says, we have not received a (formal) request,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, quoted by the Interfax agency.
He added that in Moscow they are guided by “usual diplomatic practices” and “not public address practices.”
The CNN television network specified that Washington would have proposed to Moscow an exchange of prisoners foror the one that would release the Russian arms dealer Viktor But in exchange for the freedom of Griner and Whelan, which has not yet been confirmed by the authorities of either party.
Griner is a basketball player who is accused of drug possession and smuggling. The double world and Olympic champion with her country was arrested last February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after customs officials found cannabis oil, a banned substance in Russia, among his belongings.
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This Wednesday, during a court hearing in the Moscow region, the athlete admitted his responsibility for the presence of cannabis among his belongings, but criticized the irregularities committed during his detention in Russia.
Whelan is a former Marine detained by agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) in a Moscow hotel in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of “espionage activities” for the United States.
But, known as the “merchant of death”, is serving 25 years in prison in the US, among other things, for conspiring to kill US citizens and sell weapons to the former Colombian FARC guerrilla organization.
Russia and the US recently exchanged American student Trevor Reed, sentenced to 9 years in prison for resisting arrest, by Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, sentenced in the US to 20 years for drug smuggling.
