(Moscow) Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, released in an exchange with Washington for American basketball player Brittney Griner, on Saturday supported Vladimir Putin and the offensive in Ukraine.
In an interview with Russian media RT, he confirmed that he “always” had a portrait of Vladimir Putin in his cell during his imprisonment in the United States, where he was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being arrested in 2008 in Thailand. .
“I’m proud to be Russian and our president is Putin,” he said. This 55-year-old ex-Soviet army officer also said he “fully” supported the attack on the Kremlin in Ukraine.
“If I had the opportunity and the necessary skills, I would volunteer (to fight in Ukraine),” he said, saying he “didn’t understand” why Moscow’s massive offensive hadn’t had place from 2014.
He also presented himself, again, as a businessman who was working legally, but who served as an “example” to force other Russians to accept agreements with Washington, which he says he refused to do. TO DO.
The person concerned also denied having sold weapons to the Taliban, as accused by articles in the American press. “The Taliban had put a price on my head. So how can I say that I collaborated with them? It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Finally, he accused the West of encouraging “a suicide of civilization” with “drugs, LGBTQ”.
Born, according to a United Nations report, in 1967 in Dushanbe, capital of the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, Viktor Bout studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, before entering the army of the ‘Air.
He was able, from 1991 and the fall of the USSR, according to his accusers, to acquire at a low price a quantity of armaments on military bases in the former USSR, then in full chaos, and resell them in several conflict zones, in particular in Africa. His possible links with the Russian services are not known.