United States basketball player Brittney Griner has been moved to a penal colony in Russia’s Mordovia region to serve a nine-year prison sentence for drug possession, her lawyers have confirmed, as Washington continues to push for her release. Griner’s lawyers said in a statement Thursday that she was transferred to the IK-2 Women’s Penal Colony in the city of Yavas, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Moscow. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star was transferred from a detention center near the Russian capital on November 4. While her lawyers said at the time that she had been moved to a penal colony, her exact whereabouts were unknown to the public. “We can confirm that Brittney has started serving her sentence at IK-2 in Mordovia. We visited her at the beginning of this week,” lawyers Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov said in Thursday’s statement. “Brittney is doing as well as you would expect and trying to stay strong as she adjusts to a new environment.” The US State Department said on Wednesday that the embassy in Moscow was unable to contact Griner after the transfer. “We, through our lawyers, are aware of her location and are in frequent contact with Ms. Griner’s legal team, but officially, the Russian Federation has still not provided any official notification of such a movement of an American citizen, which we are protesting. strongly,” deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters. “Our embassy and our mission in Moscow have continued to press for more information about her transfer and her current location and these requests are ongoing.” Russian penal colonies are known for their harsh conditions, where prisoners are placed in barracks, not individual cells, and forced to perform daily labor. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is one of two American citizens Washington says are unjustly imprisoned in Russia. Paul Whelan, a veteran US Marine, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on espionage charges. Griner’s arrest earlier this year came just days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and her case has moved through the Russian court system amid frayed relations between Moscow and Washington over the war. Russian authorities said they found vapor cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage as she was coming into the country to play for a Russian team during the WNBA offseason. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in August and, last month, a Russian court upheld that sentence, which the basketball star’s defense lawyers called excessive. In earlier proceedings, Griner said she did not intend to bring the vapor cartridges to Russia and that it was an “honest mistake” that they ended up in her bags. Since Griner’s arrest, her family, teammates and supporters have been calling on the US government to put its full weight into the case to secure her release. In September, US President Joe Biden met with the Griner and Whelan families to update them on his administration’s efforts. Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken said in July that Washington had made a “substantial offer” to Moscow to release the pair. Several US media reported at the time that the Biden administration had proposed a prisoner swap with a Russian arms dealer jailed in the US. US officials said they were continuing to work with their Russian counterparts to secure the release of the two Americans. Despite worsening relations between Washington and Moscow, Russia in April released Trevor Reed, a former US Marine. In exchange, the US released Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko who was serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US on drug charges.
