US Women National Basketball Association’s (NBA) basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, leaves the courtroom before the court’s final decision in Khimki outside Moscow, on August 4, 2022. – Russian prosecutors requested that US basketball star Brittney Griner be sentenced to nine and a half years in prison on drug smuggling charges. Her hearing comes with tensions soaring between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine that has sparked international condemnation and a litany of Western sanctions.

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