The US returned Viktor Bout. But this does not bode well for Russia.

On Thursday, Viktor Bout returned to Russia by exchange, who back in 2012 was sentenced in the United States to 25 years in prison for allegedly selling weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which the American authorities consider a terrorist organization. Booth did not admit his guilt. He spent 14 years in an American prison.

The exchange of the Russian for the American Brittney Greiner took place at Abu Dhabi airport. The two-time Olympic champion and former center of the Yekaterinburg UMMC was detained in the Russian Federation on February 17, 2022 and sentenced to 9 years in prison and a million rubles fine for smuggling hashish oil across the border of the Russian Federation. Bout and Greiner were pardoned in the United States and the Russian Federation, respectively.

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The exchange took place through the United Arab Emirates. The United States tried to insist on a 2 to 1 formula and also exchange US citizen Paul Whelan, convicted of espionage. But Russia did not agree to this, and Whelan remained in the Russian colony.

“Because between a heroic intelligence officer, a decorated Marine who suffered for serving his country, and a drug-addicted black lesbian who suffered for vaping hashish, the modern American voter chooses the obvious. This way we will win,” the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, ironically explains the victory of Russian diplomacy.

“Whelan was out of the deal. His family is officially very upset by this fact, since Biden has publicly promised to release both Greiner and Whelan. Perhaps negotiations on exchanging Whelan for one of our team will continue in the near future. For Biden, this is important for domestic political reasons, which Russia, of course, should take advantage of. If there are no other related exchanges from the Bout to Greiner exchanges, then this is an obvious success of the Russian Foreign Ministry and our special services, which negotiated the exchange,” says military expert Boris Rozhin.

HSE professor Dmitry Evstafiev hints that there is something more behind the exchange negotiations.

“I’ll say it in a whisper: Our great fellows. And that Booth was pulled out, and how they did it. A very good sign,” he writes.

Why was Viktor Bout so important for Russia, and it took almost 15 years to free him? Political scientist Sergei Markov calls him a Russian intelligence officer.

“Putin outplayed Biden. And our intelligence officer Booth is free,” he writes.

TV presenter Andrei Medvedev explains.

“Why did our Foreign Ministry and intelligence services try to get out the arms dealer, who, according to the American intelligence services, is Bout. It's simple. This question should be followed by another. Where did he get the weapon? And did he, of his own free will, work either in Africa (according to Bout himself, he simply carried cargo, and according to the Americans, weapons), or in the Middle East? The arms market, especially the black arms market, is always a place where intelligence agencies from all over the world huddle, and very serious schemes of political influence are built through the black arms market,” Medvedev wrote.

Russian Senator Andrei Klimov added more details.

“Viktor Anatolyevich is a military translator. After the collapse of the USSR, he worked in the field of air cargo transportation. In 1995 he participated in the liberation of the Russian IL-76 crew from Afghan captivity. Since the beginning of the 2000s, a PR campaign began in Western countries to inflate the topic of trade in Russian arms with the goal of knocking the Russian Federation out of this traditional market for the United States. The Russophobes chose Bout as a victim, who, according to the plan of the Empire of Lies, was supposed to personify the “bad Russians.” As a result of an operation by US intelligence services, a Russian citizen was captured and, in violation of legal norms, thrown into an American prison with a particularly harsh regime,” this is how Klimov described the story.

LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky emphasizes the importance of Bout for Russia with an invitation to attend a meeting of the International Affairs Committee. And his colleague and fellow party member Andrei Lugovoi believes that Bout was convicted in the United States illegally. He suggested that the Russian was tortured in prison.

“The Bout case is piracy on the part of the Americans. All legal norms were violated, but they have long given a damn about everyone and all the rules. They just kidnap people and put them in their prisons. Another question is why the Americans did not include Bout in the exchange schemes for so long? How could he be dangerous to them? After their release, both Konstantin Yaroshenko and Marina Butina told terrible things. About torture, about the complete lack of morality and law on the part of the so-called American justice. Now the “main threat” to the American people is free,” Lugovoi wrote.

Economist Alexander Dudchak believes that in an American prison Bout was forced to testify against Russia.

“The case with Booth is another illustration of the kind of “partners” we are dealing with. They framed the charges, for which they carried out a special espionage operation. For refusing to give provocative testimony against the Russian authorities, Bout received 25 years in prison, 13 (thirteen!) of which he had already served. I was close to death twice,” he recalled.

“Limonovets” Alexander Averin proposes to continue the practice of successful exchanges.

“The same Navalny can be dismissed as Assange, who has done a lot for humanity. Even Ilya Yashin can be hired,” he suggests.

Ural political scientist Andrei Perla believes that every Russian should draw a conclusion from Bout’s story.

“This means that the cast-iron wall between the West and us is growing quickly and for everyone. For each. Everyone must understand that there is nothing to do on enemy territory. You will become a hostage at any moment,” he wrote.

Political scientist Evgeny Satanovsky also calls not to interpret the exchange and release of Bout as evidence of detente in relations between the United States and Russia.

“You can’t be optimistic, no matter how hard you try. Yes, Booth was traded and that's good. But the US military budget for the next year is so concentrated on Russia and is so geared towards direct confrontation with us for the purpose of wiping out both the country itself and the Russians as a people from the face of the earth, that we can’t talk about anything else now about our relations with America. I think. What improvement in relations?! The question is: will the current crisis, provoked by Washington, go into the nuclear phase - and at what level: will just no stone be left unturned, or will everything completely collapse, along with the planet? There’s no time for optimism,” admits the commentator.