Russia released a clip of Brittney Griner going through airport security moments before the WNBA star was detained

• WNBA star Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia, reportedly for possession of vapes with cannabis oil.
• Russia released video of the American basketball player going through security at a Moscow airport.

Seven-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport under suspicion of the "large-scale transportation of drugs" after allegedly traveling to Russia with vape cartridges filled with cannabis oil, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

And now, weeks after the American basketball superstar was first taken into custody, Russia has released a video of Griner going through security at a Moscow airport.

In the 51-second clip, the 6-foot-9 Phoenix Mercury center — wearing a "Black Lives for Peace" hoodie and a pair of gray Jordan 11s — can be seen placing several bags onto a conveyor belt for an X-Ray scan. The video then cuts to an airport employee rifling through an open suitcase, presumably belonging to Griner, on a table as the two-time Olympic gold medalist looks on.

The employee then appears to seal a small plastic evidence bag and presents paperwork for Griner to look over and sign.

Check out the full video, courtesy of the Independent, below:

Though news of Griner's detainment reverberated across the United States this weekend, the basketball superstar had actually been in Russian custody for nearly a month before the American public learned of her situation. After the Times released its report, fellow WNBA veteran Angel McCoughtry noted on Instagram that her friend had "been there for three weeks."

"Free her," the Minnesota Lynx forward added.

Like many other women's basketball players, Griner spends her WNBA off-season competing overseas to supplement her income. She was headed to Russia to join Russian powerhouse and perennial EuroLeague champion UMMC Ekaterinburg, for whom she has played since 2014. She reportedly commands $1 million annually from the Russian team, competing alongside a rotating group of fellow WNBA superstars like Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones, Allie Quigley, Courtney Vandersloot, and Emma Meesseman.

The team's billionaire owner, a Russian oligarch with ties to President Vladimir Putin, has offered Griner and her American counterparts a remarkably comfortable life in the freezing cold Ural town located 1,000 miles Southeast of Moscow. But the pampered existence players long enjoyed in Ekaterinburg may have shielded Griner and her teammates "from the harsher realities of Russian life (and law)," Meadowlark Media's Kate Fagan wrote on Twitter.

"The experience of playing in Russia seemed to have a buffer, and I can't help but imagine that [Griner] is stunned at how quickly that evaporated," Fagan added. "... In reporting stories on [WNBA] players in both China & Russia, the tacit agreement was always that the team (outside of some egregious offense, of course) would allow their players to generally live as they had in the US. That's gone now & [Griner] is paying the price."

The drastic change Fagan alludes to, of course, is the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and Russian governments over Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Several sources suggest that Griner may now find herself being used as a pawn in a fiery feud between two global superpowers.

According to The New York Times, Griner's arrest could be linked to a Russian effort "to create leverage for a potential prisoner exchange with the American government or a reduction in sanctions related to the [Ukraine] invasion." Recently, the Times' Jonathan Abrams writes, in that same article, "Russia has been detaining and sentencing American citizens on what United States officials often say are trumped-up charges."

Slava Malamud, a former sports journalist for a leading national outlet in Russia, told Insider that drug charges are taken extremely seriously in the country. Even possession of cannabis, which Russian authorities claimed Griner was carrying off the plane, could be considered a major offense.

"People in Russia have been detained and given enormous sentences for just having a small amount of marijuana," Malamud said. "They're really, really brutal and medieval about any type of drugs in Russia."

Still, Malamud allowed for the possibility that Griner was caught in a larger geopolitical chess match. He characterized the drug-smuggling indictment as "the go-to charge if you wanna frame somebody."

"If you generally found something on a foreigner and you only want to make a political statement about it, that's a slam dunk for them," he added. "So that's why I was worried when I found out that this is the charge."

As for whether someone with as much money, power, and political sway as UMMC Ekaterinburg's billionaire owner has the means to help free one of his superstars from Russian prison, it depends.

"If it's just federal criminal authorities who are holding her purely because she had that vape on her, I'm sure it can be all decided amicably if you pulled some strings," Malamud explained. "But if she is being held as a retaliation to the United States, and it's basically FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service]-slash-Putin's inner circle who is making the decision, then no."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US is aware of the situation with Griner and is prepared to "provide every possible assistance" to her and other citizens detained abroad, per ESPN.

"There's only so much I can say given the privacy considerations at this point," Blinken said of Griner. "Whenever an American is detained anywhere in the world, we of course stand ready to provide every possible assistance, and that includes in Russia....

"We have an embassy team that's working on the cases of other Americans who are detained in Russia," he added. "We're doing everything we can to see to it that their rights are upheld and respected."