After more than a decade on the run, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to 25 years behind bars — but he was released in a 2022 prisoner exchange for American basketball player Brittney Griner.
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia/Wikimedia CommonsViktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms dealer, in 2022.
When Viktor Bout saw an opportunity to build a business in the early days of the Soviet Union’s collapse, he took it. Soon, he would be known as the “Merchant of Death.”
By the early 1990s, Bout had already proven himself a capable linguist with extensive global connections. When the Soviet Union fell, he took advantage of the availability of surplus military equipment and began weaving an elaborate arms dealing empire across the globe.
Bout’s business took him to war-torn countries in Africa and conflicts in the Middle East. Eventually, his dealings caught the attention of the United States — and landed him on the most-wanted list.
In 2008, Viktor Bout was arrested during a U.S.-led sting operation in Thailand and ultimately sentenced to 25 years behind bars. However, he spent just over a decade in an American prison before he was freed in exchange for the release of women’s basketball player Brittney Griner in late 2022.
Today, he’s a free man — but are his arms dealing days over?
The Early Life Of Viktor Bout In The Soviet Union
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout was born in 1967 in Dushanbe, which is today the capital of Tajikistan but was then part of the U.S.S.R.
From a young age, Bout demonstrated a remarkable talent for learning languages. At age 12, he allegedly spoke Esperanto fluently. He later joined the Soviet Armed Forces and graduated from the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages, reportedly becoming proficient in Portuguese, English, French, Arabic, and Farsi.
Market Road Films/IMDbViktor Bout (left) was a member of the Soviet Armed Forces until the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.
Although his background is murky, many experts believe that he served in the military as a translator. However, there are also rumors that he worked for Soviet intelligence agencies. The New York Times reported in 2003 that Viktor Bout was said to have been working for the KGB in Angola when the U.S.S.R. fell in 1991. Bout has consistently denied these allegations.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bout left the military and began his own business ventures, including running an air freight operation. This time presented Bout with a unique opportunity to seize and sell state resources, including dangerous weapons.
Before long, the future Merchant of Death had crafted an elaborate web of business that served to make him one of the most prolific independent arms dealers in the post-Soviet era.
The Illicit Rise Of The ‘Merchant Of Death’
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia was in a state of free fall. The organization and funding needed to protect national assets like weapons and aircraft were scarce, leading to the rise of opportunists like Viktor Bout.
Bob Adams/Wikimedia CommonsA plane that was reportedly used by Viktor Bout’s air freight company.
Bout purchased several surplus Soviet planes to serve as the backbone of his arms dealing operation. He used them to transport goods across the globe and employed former Soviet military personnel down on their luck to fly them.
By 1995, Viktor Bout was expanding his air freight business. From bases in Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and South Africa, he was implicated in the transportation of weapons to countries embroiled in war, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola.
University of CambridgeMilitants fighting in the Angolan Civil War.
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Bout allegedly supplied weapons to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, though he has denied these claims as well. It was around this time that Viktor Bout earned his fearsome nickname.
British Foreign Officer minister Peter Hain said of Bout after reading a U.N. study about his crimes: “Bout is the leading merchant of death who is the principal conduit for planes and supply routes that take arms, including heavy military equipment, from East Europe, principally Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine, to Liberia and Angola.”
Then, in 2006, Bout was tied to another group: Hezbollah. According to a 2008 report in The Guardian, Douglas Farah, a former journalist and intelligence consultant, stated, “There were serious intelligence reports that Bout was in Beirut during the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006 and that he was the purveyor of much of the modern Russian armaments Hezbollah used to great effect in that conflict.”
By this time, Viktor Bout was one of the most-wanted men in the world. Just two years later, U.S. agents took him down.
Viktor Bout Is Captured In A Sting Operation
Despite his global infamy, numerous arrest warrants, and an Interpol red notice, the Merchant of Death evaded capture for over a decade.
Drug Enforcement AdministrationViktor Bout’s extradition to the United States on Nov. 16, 2010.
His global empire backed by Soviet weaponry and his skill as a polyglot and negotiator allowed him to thrive in nearly any environment. According to U.S. sources, Bout was able to deliver on his promises on time and within budget, and that made him a powerful resource for governments around the world.
Alex Yearsley, a member of Global Witness, an organization that tracks corruption and human rights abuses, told The Guardian, “He ran an operation that always had plausible deniability. If his planes got caught delivering weapons to rebel movements or sanctioned regimes, they could always claim he was a rogue businessman. On several occasions when he was about to be arrested by one government another government would find a use for him.”
Viktor Bout’s story even inspired the 2005 Hollywood film Lord of War starring Nicolas Cage.
Entertainment Manufacturing CompanyNicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov, a character partly based on Viktor Bout, in Lord of War.
But his scheme would not last forever.
In 2008, agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration posed as arms buyers for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and met with Bout in Bangkok to negotiate a purchase. The undercover operation gave officials the evidence they needed to call for Bout’s arrest by Thai police, and he was extradited to the U.S. in 2010. There, a federal jury convicted Bout of conspiring to sell weapons to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group.
“Today, one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers is being held accountable for his sordid past,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a November 2011 press release from the U.S. Justice Department. “Viktor Bout’s arms trafficking activity and support of armed conflicts have been a source of concern around the globe for decades. Today, he faces the prospect of life in prison for his efforts to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to terrorists for use in killing Americans.”
Ultimately, Bout was convicted to just 25 years in prison rather than life — but he only spent a decade behind bars.
The Merchant Of Death Is Freed In Exchange For Basketball Player Brittney Griner
Viktor Bout was imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. He attempted to appeal his conviction, but it was upheld in 2013.
Then, in February 2022, WNBA player Brittney Griner was arrested in Russia and charged with drug smuggling after customs officials reportedly found vape cartridges with hash oil in her luggage. She’d been prescribed medicinal cannabis back in the U.S., but it was illegal in Russia.
By May, U.S. officials had offered Russia a prisoner swap: Griner would be allowed to return home if Viktor Bout was released. The exchange officially took place on Dec. 8, 2022.
In an interview with ESPN, Bout recalled learning that he was being released only when guards came to his cell with boxes on the morning he was freed.
“Then, I realized, yes, I’m going home,” Bout said.
Guardian News/YouTubeBrittney Griner (left, in red) and Viktor Bout (center, holding a yellow envelope) meet on a tarmac in Abu Dhabi during their exchange.
Bout and Griner even met on the tarmac at the Abu Dhabi airport where the exchange took place. They shook hands, and Bout recalled, “I said, you know, ‘I wish you good luck,’ and, you know, we both went to our… planes.”
In the following days, Bout gave several interviews to both American and Russian news outlets, telling the world, “I was sentenced to 25 years. Many people would say, ‘For what? Just for talking? Are you serious?’ There is not even a proper translation to Russian of the crime of conspiracy. We don’t have such even the legal term.”
Bout has since maintained that he was a victim of political schemes, stating that he and other prisoners like Griner “pay a price” when politicians “play chess, on this big chessboard which they call geopolitics.”
So, are Viktor Bout’s arms dealing days over? That’s still to be determined. In 2024, he allegedly met with Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants to broker the sale of $10 million worth of automatic weapons. These reports haven’t been verified, but if they’re true, the Merchant of Death may be a deadly as ever.
After reading about the “Merchant of Death” Viktor Bout, go inside the story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, the men who inspired the film War Dogs after becoming arms dealers. Then, learn about nine outlandish covert operations that the U.S. government actually carried out.
