The US and Russia have exchanged jailed US basketball star Brittney Griner for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, held in an American prison for 12 years.
President Joe Biden said Griner was safe and on a plane home from the United Arab Emirates.
“I’m glad to say Brittney’s in good spirits… she needs time and space to recover,” he said at the White House.
Bout – widely known as the “merchant of death” – has arrived back in Moscow, Russian media reports.
“In the middle of the night they simply woke me up and said ‘Get your things together’ and that was it,” Bout said in brief remarks to a reporter from national television, after landing in Russia.
Bout reportedly came down the aeroplane steps carrying a bouquet of flowers before embracing his mother and his wife.
Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possessing cannabis oil and last month she was sent to a penal colony.
The Biden administration proposed a prisoner exchange in July, aware Moscow had long sought Bout’s release.
The elaborate swap involved two private planes bringing the pair to Abu Dhabi airport from Moscow and Washington, and then flying them home.
Footage on Russian state media showed them crossing on the tarmac with their respective teams. In the video, apparently provided by Russian security services, Bout is warmly greeted by two Russian officials as Griner, who is 6ft 9in (206cm), looks on. Part of the swap is then edited out before the two parties go their separate ways.
“The Russian citizen has been returned to his homeland,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Brittney Griner’s wife Cherelle praised the efforts of the Biden administration in securing her release: “I’m just standing here overwhelmed with emotions.”
His secretive career was brought to an end by an elaborate US sting in 2008, when he was arrested at a hotel in the Thai capital Bangkok, to the anger of the Russian government.
He was extradited two years later and has spent the past 12 years in an American jail for conspiring to support terrorists and kill Americans.
Bout’s circumstances could hardly be more different from that of his opposite number in the prisoner swap.
Brittney Griner, 32, is one of the best-known sportswomen in America. During the US basketball season the double Olympic champion is a star centre for Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA.
Her only reason for flying to Moscow was to play in Russia during the off-season in the US. She told her Russian trial that the cannabis oil found in her bag had been an “honest mistake”.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken singled out the efforts of presidential envoy Roger Carstens, who accompanied Griner on the plane from the UAE.
Leading figures in US basketball welcomed her release, among them twice WNBA champion Breanna Stewart of the Seattle Storm.
