Who is Viktor Bout, the Russian arms smuggler, involved in the prisoner swap?

Bout’s notoriety inspired Hollywood film “Lord of War”, starring Nicolas Cage, in which the anti-hero escaped justice

Former Soviet air force pilot Viktor Bout, who was swapped for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner on Thursday, fuelled some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts by trafficking weapons across several continents.

In a career spanning two decades, and which stopped when he was sentenced to 25 years in a U.S. prison in 2012, the 55-year-old Russian allegedly stoked violence from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan by bartering deals for planes and guns.

The mustachioed Bout, who is thought to speak six languages, travelled under various false names including “Boris” and “Vadim Markovich Aminov”.

His notoriety inspired the Hollywood film “Lord of War”, starring Nicolas Cage, in which the anti-hero escaped justice.

Expectations of a prisoner swap grew in recent months after Russian leader Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed his fate during a summit in Geneva in 2021.

CIA Director William Burns met with Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR intelligence service, to discuss the swap involving Bout in Ankara last month, in what appeared to be the highest-level talks between Moscow and Washington since Russia sent troops to Ukraine in February.

Despite sanctions from the United States and United Nations, Bout had been trading weapons until he was caught in a sting operation in 2008 that was worthy of the silver screen.