Culture
What We Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia
As tensions rose between Russia and america, Russian authorities detained Brittney Griner, a W.N.B.A. star, on drug expenses. The Russian Federal Customs Service introduced Ms. Griner’s detention on Saturday however stated she was stopped on the Sheremetyevo airport close to Moscow final month.
The detention of Ms. Griner, 31, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star middle for the Phoenix Mercury and a key determine in two champion Olympic groups, comes throughout an infected standoff between Russia and america over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pulls the participant in the midst of probably the most acute disaster between the 2 nations for the reason that Chilly Warfare.
Here’s what we all know thus far about Ms. Griner’s detention.
Russia is speaking about probably severe expenses.
The Russian Federal Customs Service stated {that a} sniffer canine had prompted it to look the carry-on baggage of an American basketball participant on the Sheremetyevo airport close to Moscow, and that it had discovered vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. A state-owned Russian information company then recognized the participant as Ms. Griner.
Cannabis oil is a marijuana focus that has a excessive focus of the psychoactive chemical THC, and it’s generally bought in cartridges which might be utilized in vape pens. The Russian Federal Customs Service stated that customs officers had observed vapes after scanning the traveler’s bag.
The customs service stated {that a} prison case had been opened into the large-scale transportation of medicine, a cost that would carry a sentence of as much as 10 years in jail.
It launched a video of a traveler who seemed to be Ms. Griner going by way of airport safety with a trolley suitcase and a small backpack, adopted by footage of somebody analyzing a bundle that seemed to be from the traveler’s suitcase.
“Brittney has all the time dealt with herself with the utmost professionalism throughout her lengthy tenure with USA Basketball,” U.S.A. Basketball said on Twitter.
The timing of the detention stays murky. Its political implications do, too.
The screening on the airport occurred in February, in keeping with the Customs Service, elevating the chance that Ms. Griner had been in custody for no less than a number of days. She final posted on Instagram on Feb. 5. The timing supplied leaves open the chance that the case might have been underway in secret for weeks earlier than Russian authorities selected to attract consideration to it.
It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not Russia might need focused Ms. Griner as leverage in opposition to america, which has led a widespread effort to impose harsh sanctions on Russia and its elite.
On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White Home press secretary, stated that she had “seen the studies” about Griner’s detention however that federal privateness regulation prevented the U.S. authorities from discussing an individual’s detention with out their written consent.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken additionally cited privateness constraints on Sunday when he wouldn’t touch upon the detention at a information convention in Chisinau, Moldova. Mr. Blinken additionally didn’t reply to a query about whether or not Russia had introduced her arrest as retaliation for the financial, army and diplomatic stress america has leveled in opposition to Russia in latest days.
However American officers have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. residents on uncertain pretexts.
“This follows a sample of Russia wrongly detaining & imprisoning US residents,” Consultant Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, citing the case of Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine whom a Russian courtroom sentenced to 9 years in jail in 2020 on expenses of violence in opposition to cops that his household and supporters described as fraudulent.
On Saturday, the State Division launched an up to date advisory urging Americans to go away Russia instantly given the “potential for harassment in opposition to U.S. residents by Russian authorities safety officers.”
Ms. Griner was in Russia to play. Many W.N.B.A. stars depend on revenue from abroad leagues.
Ms. Griner has performed for the Russian staff UMMC Ekaterinburg for a number of years through the W.N.B.A. low season.
What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia
Many American gamers compete with high-paying Russian groups: About 70 W.N.B.A. gamers have determined to play with worldwide groups as an alternative of resting through the low season this yr, with greater than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine.
A W.N.B.A. spokeswoman stated on Saturday that every one the others had already left Russia and Ukraine.
The monetary incentives are compelling. W.N.B.A. gamers make a fraction of what their male counterparts do, with their most wage in 2022 at $228,094 whereas the highest N.B.A. gamers are paid tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.
Worldwide feminine groups, which are inclined to have extra authorities and company monetary assist than these within the W.N.B.A., pays a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars} a season, and typically greater than $1 million.
Some observers criticized the gender pay hole in American basketball in connection to Ms. Griner’s detention.
The general public statements are cautious, however supporters are rallying round Ms. Griner.
Mr. Blinken stated the State Division would “present each doable help” to any American held by a overseas authorities.
“Every time an American is detained anyplace on this planet, we after all stand prepared to supply each doable help,” Mr. Blinken stated. “And that features in Russia.”
The W.N.B.A. stated in an announcement that Ms. Griner “has the W.N.B.A.’s full assist and our most important precedence is her swift and secure return to america.”
The Mercury additionally launched an announcement saying that they “love and assist Brittney” and that their most important concern was her security, her bodily and psychological well being and her secure return residence.
“Thanks to everybody who has reached out to me relating to my spouse’s secure return from Russia,” Ms. Griner’s spouse, Cherelle T. Griner, posted on Instagram on Saturday, including, “We proceed to work on getting my spouse residence safely.”
Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Chisinau, Moldova, and Michael Crowley from Washington.
Culture
Book Review: ‘Death Is Our Business,’ by John Lechner; ‘Putin’s Sledgehammer,’ by Candace Rondeaux
Western complacency, meanwhile, stoked Russian imperial ambition. Though rich in resources, Rondeaux notes, Russia still relies on the rest of the world to fuel its war machine. Wagner’s operations in Africa burgeoned around the same time as their Syrian operation. In 2016, the French president François Hollande “semi-jokingly” suggested that the Central African Republic’s president go to the Russians for help putting down rebel groups. “We actually used Hollande’s statement,” Dmitri Syty, one of the brains behind Wagner’s operation there, tells Lechner.
“Death Is Our Business” provides powerful descriptions of the lives that were upended by the mercenary deployments. Wagner is accused of massacring hundreds of civilians in Mali in 2022, and of carrying out mass killings alongside local militias in the Central African Republic. “Their behavior mirrored the armed groups they ousted,” Lechner writes. As a Central African civil society activist whispers to Lechner, “Russia is no different” from the sub-Saharan country’s former colonial power, France.
Both books are particularly interesting when they turn their focus toward Europe and the United States. In Rondeaux’s words, the trans-Atlantic alliance does not “have a game plan for countering Russia’s growing influence across Africa.” Lechner, who was detained while reporting his book by officials from Mali’s pro-Russian government, is even more critical. He notes that, whatever Wagner produced profit-wise, the sum would have “paled in comparison to the $1 billion the E.U. paid Russia each month for oil and gas.”
And, while Wagner was an effective boogeyman, mercenaries of all stripes have proliferated across the map of this century’s conflicts, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Yemen. “The West was happy to leverage Wagner as shorthand for all the evils of a war economy,” Lechner writes. “But the reality is that the world is filled with Prigozhins.”
Lechner is right. When Wagner fell, others rose in its stead, although they were kept on a tighter leash by Russian military intelligence. In Ukraine, prisoners are still being used in combat and Russia maintains a tight lid on its casualty figures. Even if the war in Ukraine ends soon, as President Trump has promised, Moscow’s mercenaries will still be at work dividing their African cake. Prigozhin may be dead, but his hammer is still a tool: It doesn’t matter if he’s around to swing it or not.
DEATH IS OUR BUSINESS: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare | By John Lechner | Bloomsbury | 261 pp. | $29.99
PUTIN’S SLEDGEHAMMER: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse Into Mercenary Chaos | By Candace Rondeaux | PublicAffairs | 442 pp. | $32
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that challenges you to match a book’s memorable lines with its title. This week’s installment is focused on popular 20th-century novels. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books themselves if you want to get a copy and see that quotation in context.
HOW TO BE WELL: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, by Amy Larocca
Oh, the irony of cracking open “How to Be Well” while on vacation in Italy. There, on an island off the coast of Naples, a breakfast buffet included three varieties of tiramisu. Wine was poured not to a stingy fingertip’s depth but from a bottomless carafe — at lunchtime, no less. And when stores closed in observance of an afternoon siesta, the only people on the streets were American tourists, jogging. (I was on the prowl for a postage stamp because, yes, I still send postcards.)
It was from this place of abundance and balance that I followed Amy Larocca, a veteran journalist, into the hellscape of stringent food plans, cultish exercise routines and medical quackery that have, over the past decade or so, constituted healthy living in some of the wealthiest enclaves of the United States. Blame social media, political turmoil or the pandemic — no matter how you slice it, the view is dispiriting. But Larocca’s tour is a lively one, full of information and humor.
The book begins with a colonic, “the flossing of the wellness world,” Larocca writes. We find the author herself on an exam table, “white-knuckled and curled up like a baby shrimp, naked from the waist down.” She recalls her doctor’s disapproval of the procedure — a sort of power washing of the colon — and its risks, including rectal perforation, juxtaposed with one woman’s claim that a colonic made her feel like she could fly, like it was “rinsing out the corners of her psyche.”
Where did we get the idea that the body — specifically a woman’s body — is unclean inside? A problem to be solved? And how did the concept of wellness bloom “like a rash,” Larocca writes, into a $5.6 trillion global industry?
These are the questions she seeks to answer, using data, history, medicine, pop culture and her own experience. She parses fads and trends, clean beauty and athleisure wear, the gospel of SoulCycle and the world according to Goop. She weighs the advantages and disadvantages of micro-dosing and biohacking. She too goes to Italy, where she attends a Global Wellness Summit featuring a spandex and sneaker fashion show and a presentation on ending preventable chronic disease the world over.
At times, Larocca seems to approach her own subject with the same sweep. The second half of “How to Be Well” reads like a survey course, cramming the industry’s relationship to politics, men and the environment into single chapters when each could fill a whole semester. As for why meditation merits more real estate than vaccines, I can only assume that the book was already at the printer when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as health secretary.
But when Larocca goes deep, as she does on self-care, body confidence and sex positivity, she’s at her best — authoritative and witty, personal without being chummy.
She debunks the cockamamie but persistent notion that “feeling old is not an inevitable byproduct of aging but something easily avoided by paying attention.” (And by forking over gobs of cash; more on this shortly.) After attending an Oprah-sponsored conference on menopause, a subject Larocca has covered for The New York Times, she realizes that “aging is different from disease” and “isn’t necessarily something to be cured,” let alone through “neat, tidy, attainable solutions.”
Then there’s the sneaky rebranding of old-school dieting for “detoxification,” another wolf in sheep’s clothing. Think fasting, juicing, abstaining from all manner of verboten foods. Even if the professed endgame is “glow,” Larocca makes clear, “part of the promise is still, always, to rid us of a bit of ourselves.”
And finally, refreshingly, she’s honest about the money at stake for the wellness-industrial complex — not just for stylists turned wellness coaches or models turned nutritionists, but for massive corporations cashing in on an age of worry.
“None of these institutions is nonprofit; none of these institutions is altruistic at its core,” Larocca writes, in a passage reminiscent of Carol Channing’s monologue from “Free to Be You and Me,” in which she reminded us that happy people doing housework on TV tend to be paid actors.
“It is their job to persuade me to come back,” Larocca continues, “to spend more money on what they’ve got to give, to serve their investors, to serve themselves.”
And that, as “How to Be Well” wisely shows us, is the bottom line.
HOW TO BE WELL: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time | By Amy Larocca | Knopf | 291 pp. | $28
Book Review: ‘Death Is Our Business,’ by John Lechner; ‘Putin’s Sledgehammer,’ by Candace Rondeaux
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