The White House explained Sunday that Russia offered no alternative to release basketball player Brittney Griner other than to exchange her for arms dealer Viktor Bout, and that former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan did not enter into negotiations since Moscow considers him to have a different status having imprisoned him for espionage.
«Russia gave no other choice, as it was put to us,» said National Security Agency strategic communications officer John Kirby. «Griner could only be released because of Bout,» he explained in an interview with Fox News.
Kirby explained that Whelan «is being treated differently because of these false espionage charges against him,» hence the impossibility of obtaining his release.
«The Russians have him in a special category. Believe me that no matter how hard we tried, and we tried until the end, to get both of them out at the same time, there was no way to get them out», he indicated in relation to the criticisms expressed by Whelan himself who, from prison, has declared himself abandoned by the American authorities.
«So it was a matter of making this deal now,» Kirby explained, so that at least one of them would return home, and to continue making efforts to get Paul (Whelan) back».
Finally, Kirby defended the release of Bout, convicted in 2011 of arms trafficking and conspiring to kill Americans. «No one here is doing cartwheels of joy to see him free on the street, but the deal was what it was,» said Kirby, who warned that if Bout «comes back to work, he will be arrested as he was in the past.»
