Washington: US-Russian relations underwent another gyration with Washington making an offer to release detained American citizens, while space officials from Moscow backtracked on plans to cooperation with NASA on the International Space Station in 2024.

The United States said it made “a substantial offer” to Russia to release US citizens detained there, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday, Washington-time, adding he would press his Russian counterpart to respond in a conversation planned for the coming days.

WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medallist Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing, in Khimki just outside Moscow.Credit:AP

Washington offered Moscow a deal to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan weeks ago, Blinken told reporters, and hoped to advance the process when he speaks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it had not been formally approached by Washington to set up a call, Tass news agency said later.

“There was a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal. And I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution,” Blinken said.

He declined to say what the United States was offering in return. A source familiar with the situation confirmed a CNN report that Washington was willing to exchange Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25 year-prison sentence in the United States, as part of a deal.

A Russian lawyer for Whelan has previously said he believed Moscow wanted Bout to be part of a swap for Whelan.

Blinken declined to characterise how Moscow has reacted to the proposal, which he said had President Joe Biden’s sign-off.

Blinken said his planned call with Lavrov, the first such conversation between the two since before Russia invaded on February 24, would not be a negotiation about Ukraine.

Families of hostages and detainees have been increasing pressure on Biden, most recently in the case of two-time Olympic medallist Griner, who has been held since February.

Griner, detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, was in the courtroom on Wednesday in the latest hearing of her trial on drug charges. The next hearing is set for August 2.

“From a legal point of view, an exchange is only possible after a court verdict,” Griner’s lawyer in Russia, Maria Blagovolina, said in a statement.

International Space Station

Whelan was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison in Russia, accused of spying. He denied spying and said he was set up in a sting operation.

The plight of American detainees has gained visibility after Griner’s arrest and the release in April of former US Marine Trevor Reed at a time when US relations with Moscow are at their worst in decades over the invasion of Ukraine.

The International Space Station: a diplomatic football.Credit:NASA

Russian space officials told their US counterparts that Moscow expects to remain a part of the International Space Station at least until their own outpost in orbit is built in 2028, a senior NASA official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed director-general of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, surprised NASA on Tuesday by announcing that Moscow intended to end the longstanding space station partnership “after 2024”.

Kathy Lueders, NASA’s space operations chief, said in an interview that Russian officials later on Tuesday told the US space agency that Roscosmos would remain in the partnership as Russia works to get its planned orbital outpost, named ROSS, up and running.

“We’re not getting any indication at any working level that anything’s changed,” Lueders told Reuters, adding that NASA’s relations with Roscosmos remain “business as usual.”

The space station, a science laboratory spanning the size of a football field and orbiting some 400 km above Earth, has been continuously occupied for more than two decades under a US-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

It offers one of the last holdouts of cooperation between the United States and Russia, though its fate has been called into question since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

The American and Russian segments of the space station were deliberately built to be intertwined and technically interdependent.

Reuters

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