American basketball player Donica Cosby quit her Belarus team after a border search and questioning. She is now on Russia’s wanted list

The entry does not say what the charge is, or which country—Russia or Belarus—brought the case. The two countries share their wanted databases: if someone is placed on a wanted list in Belarus, they will appear on the Russian one as well.

Cosby herself found out about the case from Mediazona. She stopped playing in 2025 and now works as an assistant coach for the women’s basketball team at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

“They treated me like a convict or something crossing the border,” she told Mediazona. “They were looking for any an every reason to arrest me so I’m not surprised at all.”

She said that when she came back to Belarus after a Christmas break in 2024, her backpack was seized “for some further testing or something”. “Honestly, it was bullshit and because I was American who constantly left and entered the country… They wanted to say something with drugs but ofc I had nothing or I would’ve been in jail.”

Cosby was eventually let into Belarus, but three weeks later she was called in for questioning. “I think immigration. I wasn’t at a police station. They were asking me things like where I been, who I was with, why I’ve left and re-entered so much.”

Cosby does not know why the case was opened. “Nevertheless, I will never even think to visit either country again,” she said.

After that “interview” the authorities, Cosby’s agent decided it was no longer safe for her to stay in Belarus, and she left the country. Her contract with Horizont basketball club was terminated “by mutual consent” a few weeks later, in February 2025.

Three years earlier, in February 2022, American basketball player Brittney Griner was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Griner, a champion in the WNBA, a two-time Olympic champion with the United States and a three-time Russian champion with the Yekaterinburg club UMMC, was charged with drug possession and smuggling after vape cartridges containing hashish oil were found in her luggage.

Griner was eventually sentenced to nine years in a prison and fined one million roubles. She spent 10 months in custody: in December 2022 she was exchanged for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.