U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty in a Russian court Thursday to drug charges but said she did not intend to break the law.
Ms. Griner entered the plea ahead of her trial on charges she brought vape cartridges with oil derived from cannabis to a Moscow airport in February.
“I’d like to plead guilty, your honor. But there was no intent. I didn’t want to break the law,” she said, according to a Reuters report from the courtroom.
The WNBA star played in Russia during the off-season in America but was swept into the fraught diplomatic situation around Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.