On Thursday, a Russian court sentenced basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in a penal colony. Griner, who was playing in a Russian league during the offseason just ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was found with about a gram of hash oil and received nearly the maximum sentence after being found guilty of drug trafficking.

Now that the trial is over, Griner’s situation is revealed for what it always was: hard-core geopolitics.

The Phoenix Mercury women’s basketball superstar is caught between Russia and the US, competing powers on opposite sides of the Ukraine war. “It’s unacceptable, and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends, and teammates,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. The US State Department has been attempting to negotiate for her release, possibly through a prisoner swap, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the sentencing “further compounds the injustice of her wrongful detention.”

Griner is not a hostage per se, but scholar Danielle Gilbert says that it’s part of the strategy Russia is deploying called hostage diplomacy, where the country is using the basketball player as a pawn to extract concessions from the US.