The prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia that led to the return of jailed American Trevor Reed has triggered a new upsurge in unconfirmed reports that the Biden administration is considering trading convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout back to Moscow.
Amid Russia’s stalled invasion of Ukraine, Tass and other major Moscow media outlets in recent weeks have suggested that U.S. and Russian diplomats are discussing a swap that would send Bout back after a decade in an Illinois prison in exchange for either WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner or long-jailed American Paul Whelan, or both.
Reed, who was exchanged in late April for Russian pilot and convicted narcotics smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko, added to the pressure this week when he said the Biden administration should consider freeing Bout if it would bring Whelan and Griner back to the U.S.
“I think that the United States should make any type of agreement to get Paul out,” Reed, 30, said in an interview with ABC News. Whelan was arrested in 2018 in Moscow, charged with espionage and sentenced to a Russian prison for 16 years.
Bout has spent 10 years in a federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill. He was sentenced to 25 years after he was convicted by a federal jury in New York in 2011 on conspiracy charges stemming from a sting operation mounted by federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials. Bout was arrested in 2008 in Bangkok by DEA and Thai police, held in a Thai prison and then extradited to the U.S.
“Viktor Bout has been already been in prison for 15 years,” Reed said. “He’s no longer a threat.”
Between the early 1990s and his arrest in 2008, Bout made millions transporting guns and munitions to warlords in Africa and jihadists in central Asia. His clients included the Taliban, Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, Liberian despot Charles Taylor and other regimes.
A graduate of a Moscow language school linked to Russian military intelligence, Bout worked as an independent operator until Vladimir Putin took power in 2000 and gradually became allied with Russian government interests. During his federal trial in New York, a Bout intimate testified that he kept an office in a Russian government military complex.
While Reed’s interview was one among a wave of suggestions of Bout’s impending swap, the Biden administration has given no public indication that a trade is in the works. Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for Hostage Affairs, has also been silent on Bout.
When Reed was released in April, Biden said his “safe return is a testament to the priority my administration on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad.”