Not to us, unfortunately — despite repeated tries over the past decade. But Viktor Bout did grant a four hour interview recently to the Russian news service RIA Novosti. Their account ran over the weekend. Bout spoke defiantly, open in his contempt for his conspiracy convictions, his prison treatment and most of all, the United States. He called America a “cancer” and spoke longingly of the defunct Soviet state and its allied revolutionary regimes. As ever, he denied selling arms, yet dismissed the notion that doing so might be a crime. “Even a frying pan,” he scoffed, “can be used to kill.” (Note: The New Yorker now has a nicely-detailed recap of Bout’s rise and fall, complete with its own interview with Bout, in which he warns from his jail cell: “I’ll get back to Russia. I don’t know when. But I’m still young. Your empire will collapse and I’ll get out of here.”
—RIA Novosti, “The United States is “the world’s cancer,” American media is the same as Nazi propaganda, and Vladimir Lenin was right, said Russian businessman Viktor Bout, who was convicted of arms smuggling in New York.”