Nov 17 (Reuters) - U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, facing nine years behind bars in Russia after being convicted on drug charges, has been transferred to a penal colony about 500 km (300 miles) southeast of Moscow, her lawyers said on Thursday.Griner was sentenced in August following her arrest at a Moscow airport in February with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage.Her legal team, confirming an earlier Reuters story, said Griner had been taken to Female Penal Colony IK-2 in the town of Yavas in the Mordovia region.Mordovia is the region where another American, Paul Whelan, is serving a 16-year sentence in a different penal settlement after being convicted of espionage charges that he denies.Russia and the United States have discussed swapping Griner and Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, for a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States, but no deal has materialized amid heightened tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine."