Comment At the U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Ill., in a special unit so restrictive it’s nicknamed “Little Guantánamo,” is a broad-chested, mustachioed man nicknamed the “merchant of death” who speaks at least six languages . 25-year tenure after building an arms-smuggling empire that spanned the globe. His name is Viktor Bout. And his native Russia wants him home, badly. The big question: Why? Bout, 55, is the most notorious arms dealer of his time, accused of profiting from weapons that fueled conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Who Is Victor Butt, Russian Arms Dealer Overseeing Rumored Prisoner Swap? This week, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the United States had offered Russia “a substantial offer” to secure the release of two Americans held in Moscow, WNBA star Brittney Griner and security adviser Paul Whelan. Russian officials have hinted that they expect a prisoner exchange. There is no doubt that Bout would be the top prize for Russian officials, who protested his treatment after his 2008 arrest in Thailand following a Drug Enforcement Agency sting. Steve Zissou, Bout’s New York-based lawyer, warned this month that “no American will be exchanged if Viktor Bout is not sent home.” What is less clear, however, is exactly why Russia is so interested in Bhutt. Never CIA Director William J. Burns, at the Aspen Security Forum this month, was asked why Russia wants the fight, Burns replied: “That’s a good question, because Victor Butt is fractious.” Although Russia has complained that Bout was entrapped by the DEA, many U.S. officials and analysts believe its anger is not tied to the merits of the case, but rather to Bout’s ties to Russian military intelligence. US officials hope that public pressure will bring about the release of the Russian prisoners “It’s clear that he had significant ties to Russian government circles,” said Lee Wolensky, a National Security Council official in the Clinton administration who led early efforts to tackle Bout’s network. Although less famous than the KGB and its successor the FSB, Russia’s military intelligence agency, commonly known as the GRU, has a reputation for undertaking bolder and more dangerous actions. In recent years he has been accused of everything from hacking elections to killing dissidents. In addition, reports suggest that Bout could have close ties to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister of Russia and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both Sechin and Bout served in the Soviet military in Africa during the 1980s. Bout denied any such links to the GRU. He also said that he does not know Sechin. But that silence could be the point. The arms dealer refused to cooperate with US authorities, even though he sat for more than a decade, isolated and alone, in a cell thousands of miles from his home in Moscow. This silence could be rewarded. “He kept his cool in prison, he never exposed anything to the Americans, as far as I can tell,” said Russian journalist Andrei Soldatov. Simon Saradzhyan of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs said Bout could never have run such a large smuggling operation without state protection, but that he never talked about it. “The Russian government is willing to get him back so he can stay that way,” Saranjian said. Bout’s release would send a message to others who could end up in trouble, said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security: “The motherland will not forget you.” “The Russians bring success [him] Coming back would be considered a triumph,” Galeotti said. “And let’s face it, right now the Kremlin is looking for victories.” Russian political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of political analysis group R.Politik, said Putin wants something deeper than political gain. “We have a special word in the Russian language for people like Bout: ‘svoi.’ It means someone from “us”. He is someone who worked for the country, at least inside [the government’s] eyes.” Bout, who has said in interviews that he was born in Tajikistan in 1967, studied languages at the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. He said he was forced to study Portuguese and later sent to Angola to work as a translator for the Soviet air force. Military institutes were key recruiting grounds for the GRU (the more sophisticated KGB, meanwhile, stuck to universities), experts say. And while his ties to Sechin are unclear, both studied Portuguese and overlapped with the Soviet military in Mozambique. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bout, like many others who saw an opportunity to profit in the chaos, became an entrepreneur. He used a small fleet of Soviet-made Antonov An-8 planes to build an air transport business and was apparently willing to take risks others wouldn’t, flying into war zones and failed states. Bout is also believed to have access to something more valuable than planes: knowledge of the fate of the Soviet Union’s vast stockpiles of weapons. “He’s been moving weapons for a decade, from places like Ukraine,” said Douglas Farah, president of national security firm IBI Consultants and co-author of a book about Bout. By 2000, Bout was one of the world’s most notorious traffickers. Dubbed “the leading merchant of death” in the British parliament and named in UN reports for supplying heavy weapons to a guerrilla movement in Angola as well as to Charles Taylor of Liberia, he then supported a deadly civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. The extent to which Bout was working for Russian military interests is debated. Farah said he believed that given the scale of military equipment being moved, such work may have been tacitly approved by the GRU. Wolensky said Bout came to the Clinton administration’s attention because he was obstructing the peace processes the president was advocating across Africa. “In some cases, he was arming both sides of the conflict,” Wolensky said. Amid mounting international pressure, including an Interpol arrest warrant issued in 2004, Bout returned to Moscow. By many accounts, Bout at that time withdrew from his more intense work in the arms trade. He lived in Golitsyn, a small town outside Moscow. A friend who visited his home in 2008 later noted that it was full of books as well as, oddly enough, a DVD of Nicolas Cage’s 2005 film Lord of War, which was reportedly inspired by Bout’s life. Unfortunately for him, that guest—former South African Secret Service agent Andrew Smulian—was working for the DEA. Bout was later arrested in Thailand, where he was secretly recorded by the DEA arranging the purchase of 100 surface-to-air missiles, 20,000 AK-47 rifles, 20,000 fragmentation grenades, 740 mortars, 350 sniper rifles, five tons of C-4 explosives, and 10 million rounds of ammunition for people he thought were agents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a rebel group. The elaborate sting operation faced a key problem in pursuing Bout in the US: He had broken no US laws. In 2011, a federal jury in New York found him guilty of various charges, including conspiracy to kill American citizens. Russian officials have particularly complained about Bout’s aggressive and unusual targeting. But Bout’s recording helped make the larger argument that he was no ordinary businessman. When agents posing as buyers for the FARC said the weapons would be used against US Air Force pilots working with the Colombian government, Bout was heard telling them they had “the same enemy”. “It’s not work,” he said. “It’s my fight.”
