U.S. women’s basketball star and Olympian athlete Brittney Griner (photo, left) went to Russia to supplement her income by playing for a Russian team (see story here). She was arrested at the Moscow airport because, Russian officials claim, they found hashish oil in her luggage.
Russia insists she’s not a hostage, but simply is being prosecuted for violating Russian drug possession laws (see story here). That may be true, but nobody trusts Russians — for good reasons — and skeptics can be forgiven for wondering if Russia grabbed her to trade for something they want.
It’s not that hard to plant drugs on a traveler, especially when you’re the government in control of the airport.
While it’s true that foreign visitors are subject to the laws of the host country, e.g. a Russian who comes here and breaks our laws could end up in a U.S. jail, nevertheless Griner’s story is a warning to other Americans: Don’t visit Russia while our weapons are killing their troops in Ukraine.
Shifting gears a bit, when Ukraine was invaded, their leader invited foreigners to join their army to help repel the invaders. Our government warned its citizens against doing that, for obvious reasons: If they’re captured, Washington (1) can’t rescue them, and (2) would be under pressure to bargain with Russia for their freedom (or lives; if you’re the Russians, naturally you want to up the ante to get a higher price for your hostages).
Three American volunteers fighting for the Ukrainian army went missing, and two are known to be alive. The Russians say they’re being held by Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. That might be true, as they were captured in the battles around Karkiv, in that general area.
But whatever the truth is, it’s highly convenient for Russia to play the game that these Americans are prisoners of Russian separatists, not the Russian army. That way, Moscow isn’t responsible for what happens to them.
The Russians, to be sure, are shrugging and saying, “it’s not up to us.” But does anybody believe they don’t control the separatists? They are, in fact, playing games. Whether its a simple or complicated game remains to be seen.
Russia has pointedly declared them “mercenaries” not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, and their spokesman refused to guarantee they won’t be executed (see story here). Three other foreigners fighting for Ukraine have already been sentenced to death (see story here). None of this is surprising, given Russia’s flouting of international laws, and widespread atrocities in Ukraine.
There’s speculation, of course, that Russia wants to trade these prisoners for (a) Russian prisoners held by Ukraine, or (b) bargaining table concessions. That’s the complicated game. But the Russians could have a different motive, and take a different path: Execute them to discourage other foreigners from joining the Ukrainian forces. That’s the simple game, and possibly the more likely one, because the Russian military isn’t good at carrying out complicated tasks.
Is Moscow worried about the uproar that executing Americans would cause? Hard to tell. Putin isn’t stupid, and if he’s trying to drive a wedge into American public opinion, as he appears to be doing, then he’ll likely avoid actions that carry the risk of inflaming and uniting the U.S. public. On the other hand, he could reap the benefits of killing these Americans while avoiding some of the potential backlash by shrugging and saying, “They were captured, tried, and executed by the separatists; we don’t control the separatists; we had nothing to do with it.” His problem, of course, is that nobody in America will buy that argument.
But do they have any trade value? It’s hard to visualize the U.S. government making significant policy concessions to get back two guys it told not to go there, although there will be pressure at home to retrieve them if possible. This is straightforward if all Russia wants is repatriation of captured Russians in exchange for these prisoners. That’s easy … maybe too easy.
It’s hard to imagine Russia not demanding more. We know they don’t like our weapons shipments to Ukraine. Or the sanctions, or seizures of Russian yachts and other property. (But here again, if all they want is a few yachts, including one of Putin’s, returned to them, that’s easy and can be done without political cost or compromising Ukraine’s strategic position.)
Feelings run high on battlefields, so it could end up being as simple as the Russian separatists exacting revenge for their dead comrades. (But I’m thinking if that were the case, they’d already be dead.)
If I were our government, I’d trade for these guys within limits. I wouldn’t exchange Ukraine’s freedom and independence for them, thereby nullifying all the sacrifices Ukrainians have made, and handing their nation over to a brutal and murderous dictator. But I’d trade prisoners and/or yachts for them.
I don’t know where this is going. At the very least, the Russians will make them sweat, and make their next few months miserable. But they knew they were taking risks when they went over there after their own government told them not to, for reasons just like this.
And we also know Russians commit atrocities. This war is filled with them. For example, Reporters Without Borders has concluded that a Ukrainian journalist who went missing in March, and later was found dead, was tortured and then executed in cold blood (story here). Russians don’t seem to worry about their reputation, because they censor the news their own people get, and in the West they don’t have one to lose.