United States offers deal to Russia for release of WNBA star Brittney Griner

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration has offered a deal to Russia to bring home two Americans.

In a reversal of previous policy, Blinken said he expects to speak with his Kremlin counterpart for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine

It was the first time that the U.S. government has publicly revealed any concrete action it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified Wednesday at her trial.

It is not clear if the proposed deal will be enough for Russia to release the Americans. At a time when the U.S. has not been friendly with Russia, the public acknowledgment of the offer shows the administration's determination to get the two men home.

The United States would like a response from Moscow. Russia has been interested in the release of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for scheming to illegally sell millions of dollars in weapons.

The Russian Foreign Minister received a call from the deputy US Secretary of State. American officials said the desire for an answer on the prisoner offer was the main reason for requesting the call with Lavrov.

It would be the first conversation that the two men have had in a week. The importance of Russia complying with a UN brokered deal to free multiple tons of Ukrainian grain from storage and warning of the dangers of Russian attempts to annex portions of eastern and southern Ukraine will be discussed by the two men.

A Michigan man was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage. He and his family are adamant that he is not guilty. The US government has denied the charges.

She admitted in court this month that she had a cannabis oil in her luggage when she arrived in Moscow, but said she had no criminal intent.

At her trial on Wednesday, she said she didn't know how the cannabis oil ended up in her bag, but that she had a doctor's recommendation for it. She said she was pulled aside at the airport, but that a language interpreter only translated a fraction of what was said during her questioning, and that officials instructed her to sign documents without an explanation.

If he is found guilty of transporting drugs, he could face up to 10 years in prison.

The US government has resisted prisoner swaps out of concern that it could encourage more hostage-taking and promote false equivalency between a wrongly imprisoned American and a foreign national. The Biden administration has been hounded with political pressure to bring home Griner and other Americans designated as wrongly imprisoned, and the earlier deal in which Reed was traded for Yaroshenko opened the door to similar deals in the future.

There was no indication that the two men had communicated to get Reed released. The last public contact they had was February 22, when they canceled a meeting they had planned as a last-ditch attempt to avert the Russian invasion. Russia's diplomacy was all show and no substance according to the State Department.

The two last met in person in January to discuss what was then Russia's massive military build-up along Ukraine's border and Russian demands for NATO to reduce its presence in eastern Europe. The U.S. turned down the Russians' demands.

At a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 nations in Indonesia, they avoided each other, but at the same time they were in the same place.

The two men will both be in the same city at the same time next week as they attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum. It wasn't clear if the phone call ahead of the meeting would lead to an in- person discussion.