Biden faces conflicting demands after Brittney Griner's verdict.

WASHINGTON — Immediately after a Moscow judge handed down Brittney Griner's nine-year prison sentence on Thursday, calls intensified for President Biden to find a way to bring home, even as critics fumed that the offer to swap prisoners with Moscow rewarded Russian hostage-taking.

The result is a painful dilemma for the Biden administration as it attempts to maintain a hard line against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over the war in Ukraine.

“There is no There's nothing good here,” said Andrea Schneider, an international dispute resolution expert at the Cardozo School of Law. "No matter what Biden does, he's going to be criticized - either we give too much or we don't work hard enough."

Kremlin officials had said talks on an exchange could not take place before the end of his trial, but even with an official verdict and sentence, an agreement may not happen anytime soon.

"I think the fact that Putin didn't say yes right away means he looked at the US offer and said, 'Well, that's their first offer.' I can get more than that,” said Jared Genser, a human rights attorney who represents Americans detained by foreign governments.

The Biden administration has proposed to swap Ms. Griner and Paul N. Whelan, a former Marine convicted in Moscow of espionage in 2020, for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is halfway through a 25-year sentence from federal prison for offering to sell arms to a Colombian rebel group that the United States then deemed a terrorist organization.

Mr. Biden finds himself stuck on both sides.

On one side are Ms. Griner's supporters. His wife, Cherelle Griner, has publicly pleaded for Mr. Biden to strike a deal with Mr. Putin as soon as possible. These calls have been echoed by the Reverend Al Sharpton, Democratic activist groups, television pundits, professional athletes and social media celebrities.

But there have also been criticisms of Mr. Biden's other flank - and accuses Mr. Biden of pandering to extortion from Mr. Putin, a man he has called a criminal of war. — like Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia — are holding Americans hostage, because they know they'll get something out of it,” Rep. Mike Waltz, Republican of Florida, told Newsmax last week. “They know that eventually an administration will pay. And that just puts a target on every American's back. ”

Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, echoed the criticism in a Fox News interview last week, saying Mr. Bout's release would "probably result in the arrest of more" Americans overseas. 2024, criticized the proposed deal in stark terms. He said Mr Bout was "absolutely one of the worst in the world, and he's going to be released because a potentially spoiled person walks into Russia laden with drugs". (Russian officials who detained Ms. Griner at a Moscow-area airport in mid-February found less than a gram of cannabis vaping oil in her bags.)