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MOSCOW, Dec. 9 (AP) — Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is returning to his home country after serving 14 years in a U.S. prison as part of an exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who he says is determined by the West to destroy Russia.
Bout, known as the “merchant of death” who supplied arms to some of the world’s worst conflicts, was unjustly imprisoned after Russia was deemed too aggressive in an entrapment campaign in the United States.
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Russian state media welcomed his release, showing footage of him talking to his family on a private jet after a swap at Abu Dhabi airport, before embracing his wife and mother on the snowy tarmac in Moscow.
In an interview with Maria Butina on the RT channel, Bout said he was also serving 18 months in a U.S. prison after being convicted of working as an unregistered foreign agent in the U.S. After prison, he is still struggling to control his emotions.
He accused the West of having long aimed to destroy Russia.
“The West thinks that when the Soviet Union started to unravel, it didn’t end our lives,” Bout said.
“And our efforts to live on our own, to be an independent force, horrified them.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the exchange was an agreement between Russian and U.S. intelligence agencies and that contacts were made only to hammer out its details.
“This has no effect on the overall state of bilateral relations, which looks sad,” Peskov said in a televised speech.
The United States has failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan, despite negotiating a swap for the two-time Olympic gold medalist and the most high-profile American jailed abroad, Griner.
Whelan, a corporate security executive in Michigan, has been held in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government say are baseless.
U.S. officials said they saw no immediate path to Whelan’s release and said Russia had handled his case differently because of the “false espionage” charges against him.
Still, they said they believed the lines of communication with the Russian remained open to negotiate his freedom.
“Special services may continue their work if necessary,” Peskov said, noting the role of the UAE and Saudi Arabia in helping broker the swap. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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