American basketball star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Moscow court Thursday after she was convicted of drug smuggling, concluding a multi-month trial that served as another stage for the geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia and the United States.

Her punishment is a slight reduction from the nine-and-a-half year sentence prosecutors said they were seeking earlier Thursday. Griner’s sentence doesn’t necessarily preclude a prisoner swap, which the Biden administration had been negotiating with the Kremlin in order to secure her and another detainee’s release. The State Department claims Griner was “wrongfully detained.”

In February, Russian officials arrested Griner at a Moscow airport and took her into custody on cannabis possession charges, accusing her of trying to smuggle less than one gram of cannabis oil, which is illegal in the country, into her suitcase. She insisted she never used marijuana in Russia, although she admitted to accidentally packing vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage.

Defense lawyer Maria Blagovolina argued that Griner had no need to bring the cartridges and therefore had no intention to consume marijuana on Russian soil. Griner, her attorney claimed, had no knowledge of the severity of Russian penalties for the drug, which she uses medicinally in her home state of Arizona with a doctor’s prescription. After she was detained in February, Griner was tested for drugs and none were detected in her system, her lawyers said previously.

Griner’s conviction could have resulted in a sentence of up to ten years in prison. She was unlikely to be acquitted given the rarity with which Russian courts return such a verdict.

The WNBA player pleaded guilty to drug charges last month in an attempt to take some accountability and secure a more lenient sentence if she is found guilty, her lawyers said. Griner has assured that she never meant to flout or disrespect Russian law.

“That's why I pleaded guilty to my charges; I understand everything that has been said against me in the charges against me, but I had no intent to break Russian law,” she said Thursday. “I want the court to understand that it was an honest mistake that I made while rushing and in stress trying to recover post-Covid and just trying to get back to my team.”

“Considering the nature of her case, the insignificant amount of the substance and (Griner’s) personality and history of positive contributions to global and Russian sport, the defense hopes that the plea will be considered by the court as a mitigating factor and there will be no severe sentence,” her legal team said last month.

Under the conditions of the prison swap proposed by the White House, the U.S. would free a convicted Russian arms trafficker, Viktor Bout, in exchange for Griner and another American detainee in Russia, Paul Whelan, CNN reported last week. Russian officials reportedly responded to the deal with a counteroffer, but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that it exhibited “bad faith” from Moscow.

The Kremlin has urged quiet and discrete negotiations “without releases of speculative information,” telling the U.S. that dramatizing the case with “megaphone diplomacy” will not help or expedite a prisoner exchange.

Griner wrote to the White House last month, petitioning President Biden to remember her fight for freedom in Russia on the anniversary of America’s independence.

“I'm terrified I might be here forever,” she wrote. “On the 4th of July, our family normally honors the service of those who fought for our freedom, including my father who is a Vietnam War Veteran. It hurts thinking about how I usually celebrate this day because freedom means something completely different to me this year.”