Putin’s ‘Merchant of Death’ Selling Guns Again After U.S. Freed Him: WSJ
Infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout is reportedly back to his old ways less than two years after his release from U.S. custody in a prisoner swap for WNBA star Brittney Griner.
The Wall Street Journal reported that, when emissaries from Yemen’s militant Houthi movement visited Moscow in August to negotiate a $10 million arms purchase, they encountered the man known as Vladimir Putin’s “Merchant of Death.”
The polyglot former Soviet intelligence officer turned to arms dealing after the Cold War, buying up enough surplus Soviet-era military equipment to seed his gun-running into a global enterprise that brought in hundreds of millions in revenue by selling to militant groups in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.