Viktor Bout, a former Russian arms dealer exchanged in a prisoner swap with women’s basketball star Brittney Griner, announced his plan to run for a far-right party in an upcoming local election.
Bout, popularly known as the “Merchant of Death,” is seeking a seat with the Liberal Democratic Party in the Legislative Assembly in the Ulyanovsk region, Russia’s state-owned news agency, TASS, reported. The party advocates policies many consider to be to the right of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party.
In December 2022, President Joe Biden announced that Griner, imprisoned after cannabis vape cartridges were discovered in her luggage at Moscow Airport, would be released in exchange for Bout.
Following his return to Russia, Bout went on a media junket across the country and praised Putin’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine. “I am proud that I am a Russian person, and our president is Putin,” Bout told the state-sponsored media outlet, RT.
“I know that we will win. . . . Why did we not do it earlier?”
Shortly after his return, Bout shared a podium with Leonid Slutsky, the Liberal Democratic Party leader, and announced his support for them.
“I want to thank Viktor Anatolyevich [Bout] for the decision he has made and welcome him into the ranks of the best political party in today’s Russia,” Slutsky said in a video address boasting of Bout’s endorsement.
At the time, the announcement even drew the backing of Wagner Group executive Yevgeny Prigozhin who called Bout “an example of firmness.”
“Bout will certainly be good at the head of any existing party and any movement,” Prigozhin noted in a statement.
The arms smuggler was arrested by U.S. federal agents during a sting operation in Thailand in 2008. Bout was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he was convicted on four counts of conspiring to kill Americans, acquiring and exporting anti-aircraft missiles, and sending material aid to a terrorist entity. Weapons procured by Bout, U.S. intelligence argued, were bound for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
“Viktor Bout, in my eyes, is one of the most dangerous men on the face of the Earth,” former chief of operations for the DEA, Michael Braun, told 60 Minutes two years after Bout’s arrest.