Viktor Bout Says West Wants to 'Destroy' Russia as He Returns After Swap

Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was released in a prisoner swap for American basketball player Brittney Griner, said on Friday that the West wants to "destroy" and "divide" Russia.

"The West believes that they did not finish us off in 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate....They think that they can just destroy us again and divide Russia," he told state-run channel RT, Agence France Presse reported.

Bout, who is nicknamed the "Merchant of Death," was freed on Thursday in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in exchange for the WNBA star who was in Russian prison for possessing vape cartridges with cannabis oil this year. The Phoenix Mercury player had traveled to Russia to compete in a pro league during the WNBA off-season.

The 55-year-old former Soviet military officer was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States prior to his release. Bout was convicted of conspiring to kill U.S. citizens and officials, of selling weapons worth millions of dollars to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and supporting a terrorist organization.

Victor Bout Says West wants to destroy-Russia
Viktor Bout sits inside a detention cell at Bangkok Supreme Court on July 28, 2008, in Bangkok, Thailand. Bout, who was released in a prisoner swap for American basketball player Brittney Griner, said on Friday... (Photo by Chumsak Kanoknan/ Getty Images

Bout told RT said that he didn't experience any "Russophobia" during his jail time in the United States, saying that "basically almost all of my prisoner neighbors had some kind of sympathy for Russia."

Bout, who was born in then-Soviet-ruled Tajikistan, has insisted he is innocent and claimed that he was a businessman working in international transport. A sting operation by U.S. drug enforcement agents, who posed as potential buyers from the FARC, in Thailand led to his arrest in 2008.

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric John ordered Bout's extradition to the United States and the Thai High Court mandated this extradition.

Russia has long called for Bout's release and described his sentencing in April of 2012 as "baseless and biased." The Kremlin also accused the United States of going after Bout for political reasons.

Deemed by the Justice Department as one of the most notorious arm dealers in the world, Bout has been involved in sending weapons to conflict zones from Liberia to Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. His connection to arms trade dates to the 1990s, when he was accused of trafficking military-grade weapons to these conflict zones.

The United Nations previously accused Bout of partnering with former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was charged in 2012 with aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone civil war.

"[Bout is a] businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals [who] supported former President Taylor's regime in [an] effort to destabilise Sierra Leone and gain illicit access to diamonds," U.N. documents state.

Bout's release on Thursday is the second such exchange that the U.S. pushed for since the war in Ukraine began on February 24. In April, Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine who was serving nine years in a Russian penal colony, was released as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko. The Russian Foreign Ministry said at the time that the exchange was a "result of a lengthy negotiation process."

Over the past months, the U.S. had tried to bring Griner back home as talks of a prisoner swap began in July after Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the proposed deal. The swap comes amid tensions between Russia and the West, including the United States, over the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Griner had been detained in Russia since February after officers found cannabis oil in her luggage at Sheremetyevo Airport. She was sentenced by a Russian court to nine years at a Russian penal colony.

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment.

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