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Russian-detained Brittney Griner may get phone call to wife after all following snafu with American embassy

WASHINGTON — A phone call between jailed WNBA star Brittney Griner and her wife has been rescheduled after an earlier attempt to connect on the couple’s anniversary failed because of an “unfortunate mistake,” Biden administration officials said Tuesday.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the original call last weekend could not be completed because of a logistical error that officials have worked quickly to fix so that a new call can take place. The State Department and White House did not offer a date for the rescheduled call.

“It was a mistake. It is a mistake that we have worked to rectify,” Price told reporters Tuesday. “The call has been rescheduled and will take place in relatively short order.”

Griner was to have spoken with her wife Cherelle on Saturday, the couple’s fourth anniversary, for the first time since her arrest in Russia in mid-February. The call was to have been routed through the American embassy in Russia, which was to have patched the conversation through.

But Cherelle Griner told The Associated Press on Monday that no call ever came even though it had been approved by the Russian government and had been on the schedule for about two weeks.

She said that though she was initially concerned Russian authorities had thwarted the call, she later learned that her wife had tried to call her 11 times by dialing a number for the U.S. embassy that she had been given but that no one picked up the line on Saturday.

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