WNBA superstar Brittney Griner has been held in Russian custody since February 17 when authorities claim they found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil inside her luggage.
Griner was put on trial, found guilty, and is now serving a nine-year sentence for drug smuggling and possession charges, even though the cannabis had been prescribed to her.
She is slowly losing hope that she will ever be freed.
While the United States and Russia have been engaged in negotiations for a possible prisoner swap for some time now, Griner’s wife Cherelle is updating her mental health to the country while she is behind bars.
In an interview with CBS News, Cherelle Griner described two very different conversations she had that scared her.
“The first conversation, it was just so delightful just to hear her voice,” Cherelle said. “At that point, I was like ‘you know what, I think she’s okay. We can survive this.’”
However, the second call took a turn for the worse.
“I think I cried for about two, three days straight. It was the most disturbing phone call I’d ever experienced,” Cherelle Griner said. “You could hear that she was not okay. If you think about just a person’s suffering and when they have suffered to a max… she was at the max that day.”
Cherelle fears that her wife doesn’t have “anything left in her tank” to continue to survive in Russia, especially after she was moved to a labor camp.
“She’s, like, saying things to me like, ‘My life just don’t even matter no more,’” Cherelle said. “You know, ‘I feel like my life just doesn’t matter. Like, I’m just being tossed around, like, for people’s enjoyment and gain.’”
