MOSCOW, 28 Jul. American Twitter users called for Washington Capitals forward Alexander Ovechkin to be put in jail in order to later demand his exchange for Brittney Griner, a basketball player arrested in Russia. Greiner was arrested in February on suspicion of drug smuggling. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier that negotiations on the exchange of the Russian Viktor Bout for the Americans Greiner and Paul Whelan are being conducted between the relevant departments, but there is no concrete result yet.
"Why don't we just capture Ovi under the pretext of some some national security law, throw it in Guantanamo and then sell it to Russia?" — MarcusPrice33 wrote on Twitter.
«Exchanging Griner is stupid while Ovechkin is just walking along the street,» Return of the Mack shared his opinion.
"We can return Griner home even tomorrow. Just say that each subsequent day of Griner's imprisonment will be equivalent to a month of Ovechkin's ban from the United States", suggested Bill Brooker.
There were also those who did not support the opinion that Greiner's imprisonment was unfair.
" ;I'm sure Ovechkin would have been jailed if he had been in a fatal drunken car accident. You are breaking the laws of the host country. If it had been you or me, we would have been jailed. A strange request for Greiner", — noted in the TradeOrFade dialogue.
Ekaterinburg UMMC basketball player Greiner was detained at Sheremetyevo Airport in February 2022 for trying to transport liquids containing prohibited substances.