Brittney Griner reveals chilling details about Russian cellmate’s crimes

WNBA star Brittney Griner has revealed chilling details about her time in a Russian prison, including disturbing information about her cellmate’s crimes. In a recent interview, Griner shared that she was housed with a woman convicted of serious and gruesome crimes, which added to the psychological toll of her imprisonment.

"I had a cellmate in the very beginning. I thought something was off with her. She acted like a child, but she was a grown woman, but she very much acted like an adolescent child," Griner explained while talking to Cam Newton on the Funky Friday podcast. "And then she had burn marks all over herself, and I found out after the fact that she was selling videos online of her husband and her child together."



Griner, 34, also revealed that inmates were often not separated based on the severity of their crimes, leading to dangerous and unpredictable living conditions.

"There’s not a lot of torturing from inmates with girls on the women’s side," Griner said. "But if you in there for something like that, yeah, you going to get tortured. And they would put their cigarettes out on her and make her sleep at the door, too."


Griner expressed her frustration over the lack of separation between inmates based on their crimes, saying she was 'mad' about the arrangement.

“I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t want them to think that I’m in here for this crime. Don’t associate me with that one,” the WNBA champion said. "I didn’t really sleep at night ‘cause she be over there singing and doing weird stuff at night."


Griner was detained at Moscow’s airport on February 17, 2022, after Russian authorities found two vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage.

After being sentenced to nine years in prison, Griner was transferred to a Russian penal colony located approximately 300 miles outside of Moscow. She spent 293 days in a Russian detention facility before being released in December 2022 in exchange for Viktor Bout, an international arms dealer who had been serving a 25-year prison sentence in the US.

Nine-time WNBA All-Star Griner currently plays with Atlanta Dream, where she’s averaging 10.3 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game.