According to Fox News, former Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, also known as “The Merchant of Death,” is seeking for political office in that country. The arms dealer was apprehended in Thailand in 2008 and sentenced there before being released by President Joe Biden in December 2022 as part of a prisoner swap for WNBA star Brittney Griner. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is to Putin’s United Russia party’s right, is where Mr. Bout, 56, joined. Of his 25-year sentence, Bout had already served ten years.
Despite its name, the LDP is neither a sanctuary for liberals nor those who support democracy. The party’s founding leader, who passed away last year, was renowned for appealing to the Russian populace with ultranationalism and antisemitism. The LDP was at its strongest in 1993 when it effectively won 23 percent of the vote for the Russian parliament and was the biggest party. By the time of the 2021 parliamentary elections, the LDP party was merely a marginal player.
Bout was detained in Thailand in 2008, and he was found guilty in a US court in 2012 of conspiring to kill Americans and supplying weapons to terrorist organizations. At the time, Russia referred to these accusations as “baseless and biased” and charged that the United States was targeting the arms trader, who was born in Tajikistan, for political purposes. It was believed that Bout served as the basis for Nicholas Cage’s 2005 movie “The Lord of War.”
He was substituted for Brittney Griner, an American who was given a 9-year prison term for illegally possessing cannabinoid-containing vape cartridges by a Russian court. Mr. Bout discussed his experiences in an American prison in his first interview after returning to Russia. He asserted that the Nazis the US took in after Operation Paperclip were responsible for the development of the American jail system. In his interview, Bout lauded Putin as well.
Mike Braun, DEA chief of operations during Bout’s capture, said, “Bout was a master…There was no one who came close to his ability to move any type of armaments around the world and deliver them with absolutely precision, with air drops, landing on unimproved air strips, using old Soviet heavy cargo aircraft.”
When the arms dealer was revealed, Braun expected that Bout would return to his old habits and resume trafficking in weapons. Anybody who believes [Russian President Vladimir] Putin won’t order him back into service is beyond me, according to BraunPeople who think that are ignorant of how the real underworld operates.
