'Merchant of Death' Russian legendary arms dealer Viktor Bout to be released in December 2022 under President Joe Biden's bias prisoner exchange WNBA star Brittney Griner on Monday claimed that U.S. media reports about her return to the arms trade are “fake news” and clickbait.
Bout made the announcement to Russia's state-run TASS news agency. suspicion in wall street journal A WSJ article on Monday that said he was selling small arms to Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen was “baseless” and an “intelligence flash.”
According to WSJ According to the article, Houthi envoys visited Moscow in August and found themselves doing business with Bout in an attempt to buy $10 million worth of automatic weapons. According to the article, the deal has not yet been finalized.
Bout said: WSJ “A long time ago we transitioned from a strictly economic press, traditionally covering financial and economic issues, to a biased political media.” His “evidence” for this claim is completely unfounded by Russia. It was a fanciful persecution. WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich.
President Vladimir Putin's government arrested Gershkovych was trumped up on charges of spying in March 2023 while reporting from the city of Yekaterinburg. After Gershkovitch was detained for more than a year, the Russian government went out of its way to accuse him of some crime and then published a bizarre conspiracy theory that Gershkovitch was “gathering classified information for the CIA.” .
Although not a shred of evidence against these allegations was presented, Gershković was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a secret “trial” in July 2024. This was a clear prelude to using him as a hostage. prisoner exchange Biden took office in the end of the same month.
every human rights and freedom of the press World organizations have denounced the Gershkovich incident as a farce, but for Viktor Bout, it is WSJ Worked as a division of the US government.
“We know this especially from the case of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was caught red-handed in Yekaterinburg, acting covertly and gathering intelligence for the CIA while working for the paper. That is why such media coverage should be viewed primarily from the perspective of who it benefits and what kind of news hook it is trying to create. '' he claimed.
Bout accused other U.S. media outlets of “overhyping the image of arms dealers they have promoted in the past.”
No one promoted the Merchant of Death more vigorously than Bout himself. His notoriety as an arms dealer made him a target of criticism. hollywood movies. he made billions It sold weapons recovered from the collapsed Soviet Union to Third World militaries, rebel groups, and terrorists, including Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.
Bout's arrest in 2008 while trying to sell surface-to-air missiles to FARC terrorists in Colombia was a major international law enforcement project. The charges against him included conspiracy to murder American citizens. Veterans of the operation were furious at the Biden administration for releasing Bout, warning that he remained a major risk to international security.
Bout told Tass that Western media did not appreciate his rehabilitation and entry into Russian politics. The match is elected In September, he ran for the local parliament in Ulyanovsk Oblast as a member of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party. For Western security officials, his career change was of no consolation. said One of the scenarios they were most concerned about was that Biden would gain power and influence as a politician after his release.
