Russian Arms Dealer We Traded To Get Her Home is Now Back in Business

Wall Street Journal Reported on October 6:

Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” walked out of a U.S. jail almost two years ago in a trade with Moscow for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner.

Now he is back in business, endeavoring to broker an arms sale to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.

Since his release, Bout won a seat in a local assembly in 2023. When Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout, according to a European security official and other people familiar with the matter.

At the time the Biden Administration traded Bout for Griner, National security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the U.S. government had done an assessment of the risks of Bout’s release before the exchange and had concluded they were acceptable.