Finding out more details about the Dec. 8 one-for-one prisoner swap that sprung 32-year-old WNBA star Brittney Griner out a Russian penal colony, the government admitted all prior proposals had failed, leaving only one option. State Department officials wanted to include 52-year-old former marine and security executive Paul Whelan in an exchange for 55-year-old Russia arms trafficker Viktor Bout. Russian officials knew they had all the cards with Griner, a cause celebre for the White House, causing nothing by but bad publicity. When the deal emerged, the State Department gladly took whatever deal Russia would offer, knowing that the Kremlin held all the cards. Making any deal for Brittney’s release was unexpected when you consider the current state of war between the U.S. and the Kremlin. Getting Viktor Bout out of U.S. prison was a big win for 70-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Federal law enforcement spent millions tracking down Bout, eventually nabbing him in Thailand before extraditing him to the U.S. for trial. Bout was a big fish in 2011, right behind the FBI’s Most Wanted List that included Osama bin Laden. So when you talk about a prisoner swap for the so-called “merchant of death” for Brittney Griner, it was a great deal for Putin. Trading Griner for Bout was like trading Chicago mob boss Al Capone for Shirley Temple. Bout supplied arms to al-Qaeda and many other rogue states and terror groups around the planet until he was nabbed by the CIA in Thailand. “The Talks were exclusively on the top of the exchange. It’s probably wrong to draw any hypothetical conclusions that this may be a step towards overcoming the crisis in bilateral relations,” said the TASS news agency, quoting Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Some hoped for a breakthrough.
Since the Feb. 24 Ukraine War started, 80-year-old President Joe Biden got personal with Putin, telling an audience in Warsaw, Poland March 26 that Putin should no longer remain as Russian President. Then, one month later, April 26, 69-year-old Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that the U.S. mission in Ukraine was to degrade the Russian military to the point it could no longer wage war. Once the White House directed the war at the Kremlin, U.S.-Russian relations hit post WW II lows. Never before had any U.S. administration funded a proxy war against the Kremlin. Biden and Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky made clear that the aim of the Ukraine War was to topple the Putin government and degrade the Russian military so it could no longer wage war. So, when it comes to improving U.S.-Russian relations, Peskov doubts the prisoner swap improved relations.
Biden’s attempt to defend Ukraine against the Feb. 24 Russian invasion has been at the expense of U.S.-Russian Relations. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stotlenberg told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he feared the Ukraine War could morph into a wider conflict with NATO. Stotenberg has done everything to keep NATO troop out of Ukraine except in an advisory capacity. Stoltenberg, a former Prime Minister of Norway, is due to leave NATO by year’s end to take over Norway’s Central Bank. Expressing concerns of a wider conflict on the European Continent is exactly why peacemakers like French President Emmanuel Macron have urged Kiev and Moscow to resolve their differences at the peace table. Biden and Zelensky have showed no interest in ending the conflict unless Putin withdraws his troops from every inching of Ukraine’s territory, a completely unrealistic demand.
Stoltenberg raised the real stakes in keeping the war going, the growing possibility that NATO could be brought into the conflict. Putin said today in Moscow he considered using the U.S. concept of pre-emptive strike, something former President George W. Bush used to invade Iraq in 2003. When you consider the stakes for world peace, not to mention the deteriorated state of U.S.-Russian relations, you’d think that more world leaders would push both parties to the peace table. “Bilateral relations continue to remain in a sorry state,” Peskov said. U.S. officials have not renewed visas for Moscow’s embassy in Washington. Stoltenberg has good reason to fear a wider conflict because the deteriorated U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations. When the U.S. and Russia work on their differences, the world is a safer place. Today’s U.S.-Russian relations endanger world peace.
Putin cut a deal to get rid of Griner for Bout because it served Russian interests, not bearing on improved U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations. If Biden wants to get things back on track, the Ukraine War will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. Zelensky has acted like he battles the Ukraine war in a vacuum without any regard to U.S.-Russian relations. Whether admitted to or not, the Ukraine War was not supposed to wreck U.S.-Russian relations. Ukraine has a border dispute with the Russian Federation. Biden has tried help Ukraine defend itself against a Russian invasion. But whatever help the U.S. gives Ukraine, it can’t be at the expense of U.S.-Russian relations. World peace is too complex to abandon 70-plus years of cooperation on important world issues between the U.S. and Russia. Zelensky wants all of Ukraine’s sovereign land but he can’t destroy U.S.-Russian relations.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
