The Wall Street Journal reports that once-convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout met with Houthi militants in Moscow last August when the Mideast terror faction visited Russia in search of new weapons shipments. The New York Times echoed that report in its own story later today.
The Journal report on Monday was sketchy about Bout’s role in the negotiations, but the newspaper said that the “potential arms transfers stop well short of the sale of Russian antiship or antiair missiles that could pose a significant threat to the U.S. military’s efforts to protect international shipping from the Houthis’ attacks.”
The Journal said Bout appeared to be brokering a deal with “two Houthi representatives who had traveled to Moscow under the cover of buying pesticides and vehicles and visited a Lada factory, according to the people familiar with the matter.”
The Times reported late Monday that “negotiations between Mr. Bout and the Iran-backed group have been in progress for some time, but no deal has been completed and no arms have been transferred.” The Times based its report on “Western officials.”
Citing a European official and other unnamed sources, the Journal said the first two weapons deliveries to the Houthis “will be mostly AK-74s, an upgraded version of the AK-47 assault rifle. But during the trip, Houthi representatives also discussed other weapons the Russian side might potentially sell, including Kornet antitank missiles and antiaircraft weapons.”
The Times said that if Britain, France or the U.S. approve long-range missile strikes into Russia, “the Kremlin is likely to complete the deal with the Houthis as part of an escalation strategy.”
After the Journal story appeared online, Bout told the Russian state media Tass the report was inaccurate. According to the Journal, Bout “called the claim he was selling arms to the Houthis an `unsubstantiated accusation.’” The Journal added that Bout “didn’t address whether he was back in the arms business.”
The Journal said that its sources did not “know if the deal was being negotiated at the Kremlin’s behest or merely with its tacit approval.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the account with a line often used by Donald Trump: ““We are inclined to categorize it as fake news or an information attack on our elected representatives,” Peskov said.
Bout told the Times last year that he had “very little” left of his “old contacts” or the formidable weapons transport business that he oversaw in the 1990s arming warlords and militants — a lucrative global operation described in detail in “Merchant of Death,” the book about his activities reported and written by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun.