exchange of prisoners with the USA
“I know we will win”: Arms dealer Bout reiterates support for Putin and the Ukraine war
Back in Russia, he’s enjoying “the air of freedom,” says arms dealer Viktor Bout
© Christophe Archambault / AFP
Shortly after his return to Russia, arms dealer Viktor Bout gave his first public interview. He would go to Ukraine to fight himself, he says.
After being released from US custody in a prisoner exchange, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout has expressed his support for Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin and the offensive in Ukraine. He “fully supports Russia’s attack on Ukraine,” Bout said in an interview with Russian television channel RT on Saturday. He was “proud to be Russian and our president is Putin”.
Bout said he “always” had a portrait of Putin in his cell while he was in prison in the United States. The 55-year-old former Soviet Air Force pilot was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and four years later sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States.
Bout also said: “If I had the opportunity and the necessary skills, I would volunteer (to fight in Ukraine)”. He “can’t understand” why Moscow’s massive offensive in the neighboring country didn’t take place in 2014. “I know we will win,” he added.
After returning to Russia, he enjoys the snow and “the air of freedom,” Bout explained. The interview with him was conducted by Maria Butina, who herself had served a short sentence in the US for working illegally as a foreign agent for Russia.
Viktor Bout denies allegations of collaboration with the Taliban
In the RT interview, Bout denied press reports from the USA that he had sold weapons to the radical Islamic Taliban ruling in Afghanistan. “The Taliban had put a bounty on my head, so how can you say I was collaborating with them? That doesn’t make sense,” Bout said. He accused the West of promoting a “suicide of civilization” with “drugs and LGBTQ+”.
According to a UN report, Bout was born in 1967 in Dushanbe, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan. He studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, after which he enlisted in the Air Force.
He is accused of acquiring numerous weapons at low prices from military bases in former Soviet republics during the chaotic period after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and reselling them in various conflict zones, particularly in Africa. Nothing is known about Bout’s possible connections to the Russian secret services.