Possible prisoner swap: who is Viktor But?

Viktor Bout could be part of a prisoner swap between the US and Russia. He is serving a long prison sentence in the United States and had a martial reputation around the world before his conviction.

So now he’s in the news again around the world: Viktor Anatolyevich But – the man whose nickname is “Dealer of Death”. A windy entrepreneur whose story provided material for a Hollywood film. An arms dealer serving a minimum of 25 years in a US prison.

The United States is said to have offered the 55-year-old Russian in exchange for two US citizens currently detained in Russia: US basketball player Brittney Griner, who is currently on trial in a Russian court on alleged drug possession. And Paul Whelan, who was convicted of espionage in Russia three years ago.

But, on the other hand, was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and sentenced in the USA after his extradition in 2012. Is he still of interest to Russia?

Large-scale arms shipments

But, a military interpreter by training, rose to become a successful businessman after military service in Angola and Mozambique in the 1990s. His company meanwhile owned a fleet of around 50 aircraft. Officially, these planes transported flowers and household goods around the world. Unofficially there were also weapons in the hold.

The Russian businessman is said to have transported them to Afghanistan, Liberia or Togo. No customer seemed too difficult: But is said to have also delivered to organizations that were officially classified as terrorist by the European Union and the USA, such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban or the Colombian FARC.

Never completely disappeared from the headlines

But although But’s case is old, his name keeps coming up in the Russian media. Just last year, an exhibition of pictures he painted was shown in Moscow. Painting is pretty much the only thing her husband is allowed to do in prison, Alla But said at the start of the exhibition.

Most of Bout’s 24 pictures were telling references to classic Soviet films. For example, there is a man who narrowly escapes an insidious attack with a knife: a scene from the well-known cult film “White Sun in the Desert”, which Russian cosmonauts also watch before their trips into space.

Image of an “honest businessman”

Another picture But painted is an allusion to a poem by Pushkin: In the poem, a cat chained to a tree tells stories throughout the day. In But’s picture, however, the wise cat crept around the tree until his golden cord strangled him.

But Bout is consistently “washed clean” in the Russian public. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the man convicted of arms smuggling in the past as an “honest businessman”.

As recently as January of this year, the state news broadcaster Rossiya 1 reported on the “Russian entrepreneur” who ended up in prison for “deliberate provocation by US secret services”. Russian diplomats and lawyers would do everything to fight against the “unfair verdict”.

Cooperation with the FSB?

In June 2021, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden negotiated a prisoner swap. But’s name was also mentioned back then. The Russian medium “The Insider” then asked why Russia wanted to free the convicted arms dealer so urgently?

The Russian investigative medium claims to have found a possible answer in a video interview that has surfaced. There, the former lieutenant colonel of the first Soviet and then Russian secret service, Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London in 2006, tells how he met But: namely at the headquarters of the domestic secret service FSB. According to “The Insider”, But not only had close contacts with the Russian secret service, but even smuggled the weapons on their behalf.

But himself always claims to have only delivered weapons, but never sold them. In an interview that he published in the Russian magazine “MK” in 2015, he says that he is in prison with “so-called Islamist terrorists”. His “political fellow prisoners” are “patriots”. A word that he himself puts in quotation marks. All of them would “hate the American government”.