SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The prisoner exchange of WNBA Superstar, Brittney Griner, and Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, is drawing both praise and criticism for the Biden Administration.
"It's a great day for obviously Brittney and her family, her wife Cherelle, and the women's basketball community," said Heidi VanDerveer, UC San Diego women's basketball coach.
VanDerveer and the team have been following Griner's case from the beginning.
"Anyone who's been following this case understands that the punishment didn't fit the crime," she said.
VanDerveer said a lot of players look up to Griner. She said people not only loved watching her play in the U.S. but also in Russia, where she played during the WNBA off-season.
"Obviously, being a woman and being 6'8, 6'9 is a unique feature in and of itself. I think she's always stayed true to herself," VanDerveer said.
But, was the swap a good call by the U.S.?
"I think in political terms, Russians got the better part of the deal," said Erik Gartzke. "Bout's sort of the poster child for the kind of corruption and evil doing that's actually led to the fiasco in Ukraine."
Gartzke is a political science professor and Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at UC San Diego.
He said he understands why Russia didn't release U.S. Marine Paul Whelan along with Griner.
Whelan's twin brother lives in San Diego.
Gartzke said Whelan's charges of spying are more serious than Griner's. Although Whelan and U.S. officials have called the charges baseless, Russia could see him as a threat to national security.
Still, Gartzke feels the Biden Administration wouldn't have gotten a better deal if they had held out longer.
"It's a tougher pitch to release somebody who's punitively an enemy of the state as opposed to somebody who committed a criminal defense that's not a national security issue," he said.
