The multi-country prisoner swap that brought Americans Evan Gershkovitz and Paul Whelan back to the United States was hailed as “a big victory” by once-convicted and imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Hours after 24 prisoners were freed from prisons in Russia, the United States, Germany, Norway, Poland and Slovenia and transported to Turkey for repatriation, Bout appeared on Russian media to promote the role played by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader approved a deal with U.S. President Joe Biden in December 2022 to free Bout from an Illinois federal prison in return for American basketball star Brittney Griner, who had been held in Russian on narcotics charges.
“Our people returned, our heroes,” Bout said in an interview on Russia-24, a state-owned pro-government Russian television network.
Gershkovitz and Whelan were among 16 people imprisoned in Russia who were flown to Turkey and freed as part of the deal. Most of the others were jailed Russian dissidents or interred German nationals. In return, the U.S. and its allies released 8 Russians, including a spy chief convicted of an assassination in Germany and others accused of espionage or other serious crimes.
Bout, whose weapons-carrying air transports circumnavigated the globe for more than a decade aiding jihadists, dictators and warlords, became known as “the Merchant of Death,” the most prolific arms dealer of the 1990s and early 2000s. He was targeted by a U.S. sting operation and arrested in Thailand in 2008, convicted in New York in 2011 and sentenced to federal prison the following year, serving a decade before Putin’s deal with President Joe Biden freed him.
In the same Russia-24 broadcast that carried Bout’s approval of the multi-nation swap, another formerly-imprisoned Russian, Konstantin Yaroshenko, also credited Putin — who spent years as a KGB officer — for not giving up on returning the imprisoned spies to Russia. “We never give up our guys,” said Yaroshenko, a former pilot who had been convicted in the U.S. on cocaine trafficking charges.
Yaroshenko, who claimed that he had been beaten during his U.S. prison stint, insisted that the Americans were handled better by Russian authorities than he was — despite Whelan’s anguished complaints for years that he was mistreated during his captivity.