MOSCOW (AP) — Lawyers for American basketball star Brittney Griner have recorded an appeal of her nine-year Russian prison sentence for drug possession, Russian news agencies reported Monday, amid talks between the U.S. and Russia that could lead to a high-profile prisoner swap.

Griner, an eight-time all-star center with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was convicted Aug. 4 after police said they deceptive vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

Griner admitted that she had the canisters in her luggage, but said she had inadvertently packed them in lickety-split and that she had no criminal intent. Her defense team presented written statements that she had been prescribed cannabis to benefit pain.

Her February arrest came at a time of heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington, just days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine. At the time, Griner, recognized as one of the greatest players in WNBA history, was returning to Russia, where she plays during the U.S. league’s offseason.

Lawyer Maria Blagovolina was quoted by Russian news organizations on Monday as saying the appeal was filed, as was required, but the grounds for it weren’t immediately clear.

The nine-year sentence was cessation to the maximum of 10 years, and Blagovolina and co-counsel Alexander Boykov said while the conviction that the punishment was excessive. They said that in dissimilarity cases defendants have received an average sentence of near five years, with about a third of them gave parole.

Before her conviction, the U.S. Grandeurs Department declared Griner to be “wrongfully detained” — a promote that Russia has sharply rejected.

Reflecting the growing pressure on the Biden dispensation to do more to bring Griner home, U.S. Secretary of Grandeurs Antony Blinken took the unusual step of revealing publicly in July that Washington had made a “substantial proposal” to get Griner home, put down with Paul Whelan, an American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for espionage.

Blinken didn’t elaborate, but The Associated Press and spanking news organizations have reported that Washington has offered to free Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S. and once earned the nickname the “Merchant of Death.”

On Sunday, a senior Russian diplomat said talks about an exchange have been conducted.

“This quite sensitive philosophize of the swap of convicted Russian and U.S. citizens is bodies discussed through the channels defined by our presidents,” Alexander Darchiev, head of the Foreign Ministry’s North America department, told station news agency Tass. “These individuals are, indeed, being discussed. The Russian side has long been seeking the drip of Viktor Bout. The details should be left to professionals.”

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