Viktor Bout 'trying to sell weapons to Houthis'

Western sources believe notorious Russian arms dealer has implicit approval from Kremlin

BERLIN — The Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is trying to broker a deal with Houthi militants in Yemen, according to Western officials.

The negotiations between 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 officials said.

Nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” by US officials, Bout was arrested in a US-led sting operation in Thailand in 2008. He was extradited to the US and jailed, but was released in December 2022 in a prisoner swap that freed American basketball star Brittney Griner from a Russian prison.

Freeing Bout, 57, was long a priority for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Western intelligence agencies do not have direct knowledge that the Russian leader told Bout to reenter the arms trade, but officials said Bout would not have restarted his work without the implicit approval of the Kremlin. Had an arms deal with the Houthis been against Russia’s interests, they said, the Kremlin would have reined him in.

The Russians have been pursuing several weapons agreements with the Houthis, and Bout’s negotiations are not the only ones under way. Bout's initial deal, reported earlier in The Wall Street Journal, was a potential agreement to transfer small arms to the Houthis.

Western officials believe that other Russian officials and arms dealers are involved in potential agreements to send missiles to the Houthis from Russia.

More advanced and precise weaponry in the hands of the Houthis would allow them to target Israel more effectively and strike at ships in the Red Sea.

No arms or missiles had yet been transferred, Western officials said, but Bout is still coordinating his deal with the Houthis.

The officials believe the Kremlin is proceeding slowly and sending a message to the West with its negotiations with the Houthis. If Britain, France or the United States approves long-range missile strikes into Russia, Western officials said, the Kremlin is likely to complete the deal with the Houthis as part of an escalation strategy that seeks to apply pressure on the West without moving Russia closer to a direct war with the United States.

Bout has always denied accusations that he smuggles arms. The Kremlin and Bout dismissed reports about the deal with the Houthis.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a call with reporters Monday that the reports were an example of “fake or informational attacks on our elected representatives”.

In an interview Monday with RBC, a Russian economic publication, Bout called the Wall Street Journal article a hoax but praised the Houthis, saying they had achieved results despite “insufficient resources”.

“They have, at least over the past year, shot down more than 10 American reconnaissance drones, and so all merchant ships that belong to the Americans or the Israelis have great difficulties passing through the Red Sea,” he said.

But Western officials believe Bout and the larger negotiations with the Houthis are part of a carefully calibrated effort to be ready to escalate tensions if the United States and its allies provide more support to Ukraine.

In addition to a stepped-up sabotage campaign in Europe, Russia is considering a broad campaign to assist groups including the Houthis and others challenging the United States and its allies if Washington removes restrictions on the use of US-made arms, Western officials said.

A recent US intelligence report said Putin was likely to retaliate with greater force if the Biden administration allowed Ukraine to fire US-made weapons deep into Russia.

The assessment described many possible Russian responses to a decision to allow long-range strikes using US- and European-supplied missiles, such as increased acts of arson and sabotage targeting facilities in Europe and potentially attacks on US and European military bases.

In an interview with the New York Times last year, Bout said that he needed time to learn to use a smartphone and that he was someone who had “very little of my business left, very little of my own life” and “nothing much left of any old contacts”.

After his return to Russia in late 2002, Bout joined the Kremlin-aligned, far-right Liberal Democratic Party. In July 2023, he won a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Ulyanovsk, a territory of 1.3 million people about 700km east of Moscow.

In the interview with the Times, he acknowledged opening a business consulting company but dismissed the possibility of returning to his old line of work — one he insisted against all evidence had been “totally focused on logistics, different than the sales of weapons”.

On Monday, he told RBC he was working on a script for a feature film about himself.

“We are preparing our response to Hollywood,” he said, “and today’s clickbait is another good plot for one of the episodes in the series that is currently being prepared.”