Pictures this week: December 1-9, 2022
WNBA star Brittney Griner arrives in San Antonio on Friday, December 9. She was released from Russian custody in exchange for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images
Posted 7:57 a.m. EST, Friday, December 9, 2022
Produced by the CNN Digital Photo Team
Brittney Griner is free.
The basketball star, who had been detained in Russia since February, was released in a prisoner swap involving Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
US President Joe Biden announced Griner’s release on Thursday, December 8. “She’s safe, she’s on a plane, she’s going home,” Biden said at the White House alongside Griner’s wife, Cherelle. “After months of unjust detention in Russia, held in intolerable circumstances, Brittney will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should have been there all along.”
Griner’s arrest sparked a diplomatic drama between the United States and the Kremlin that ran parallel to Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the same time that the United States adopted crippling sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine, American diplomats kept open lines of communication with Moscow in an attempt to secure Griner’s release.
“It’s a day we’ve been working on for a long time,” Biden said.
Here are some of the stories that made headlines over the past week, along with a few photos that caught our eye.
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