And yet, experts in hostage-taking issues warn that trading a basketball star arrested with a minuscule amount of hashish oil could result in more Americans being unjustly arrested and used as hostages for future swaps.

If there were a prisoner exchange for Griner — and, perhaps, Whelan — who would Russia want back? Indications from Moscow are that it could be Viktor Bout, a notorious international arms dealer, sentenced to 25 years in a US prison, dubbed the “Merchant of Death” for fueling civil wars in Africa and bloody conflicts in Latin America and the Middle East.

Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, is suspected of having had close ties to Russian intelligence. In 2002, in an interview I conducted with him at the CNN Moscow bureau, he described himself simply as a “businessman.”

Under normal circumstances, prisoner exchanges are sensitive and delicate issues, usually best negotiated out of the glare of cameras. The case of Brittney Griner is anything but quiet and relations between Russia and the US, in the midst of Russia’s war against Ukraine, are extremely tense.