Brittney Griner and partner Cherelle announce they are expecting a baby… 16 months after WNBA star was released from Russian penal colony in prisoner exchange for arms dealer: ‘#BabyGrinerComingSoon’

Brittney Griner and her partner Cherelle have revealed they are expecting a baby – just over a year after the basketball star was released from a Russian penal colony.

The WNBA player returned to the United States in December 2022 after spending 10 months between prison and a penal colony in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Griner recently re-signed with the Phoenix Mercury – her only WNBA team – ahead of this year’s Olympic Games in Paris.

But this summer, the 33-year-old will also welcome her first child with Cherelle.

“I can’t believe we are less than three months away from meeting our favorite human,” Cherelle Griner wrote further Instagram.

“We’re less than three months away from meeting our favorite human,” Cherelle revealed

She posted a photo of her and Brittney holding hands, as well as scans of the baby, alongside the hashtags “#BabyGrinerComingSoon” and “#July2024.”

Griner previously had twins with her ex-wife and fellow WNBA player Glory Johnson in 2015, but they divorced just a year later.

Brittney and Cherelle first got engaged in 2018, but four years later Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport, with Russian authorities claiming she was caught entering the country with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil.

Griner was placed in a detention center near Moscow until November that year, when she was transferred to a secret prison.

The basketball star was then taken to a penal colony in Mordovia, a Russian region about 500 kilometers southeast of Moscow, to serve her nine-year prison sentence for drug abuse.

Ultimately, in December 2022, the 6-foot-2 WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist was freed in a prisoner swap for arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport and sentenced to nine years in prison