Viktor Bout accuses the West of wanting to “destroy” Russia

The Russian arms dealer freed by the United States in exchange for Brittney Griner was very vocal about the West in an interview.

SourceAFP

HASThe day after his release, Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer detained in the United States and exchanged for American basketball player Brittney Griner, accused the West of wanting to “destroy” and “divide” Russia, in an interview published on Friday December 9.

“Westerns think they didn’t finish us off in 1990, when the Soviet Union started to collapse,” the former Soviet officer told Russian media RT. “And the fact that we try to live, to be ruled by no one and to depend on no one, to be a real independent power […] This is of course a shocking novelty for them. They think they can destroy us again and divide Russia,” he continued.

Other prisoner exchanges deemed “possible” by Putin

Thursday, December 8, after long negotiations, Washington agreed to hand over to Moscow this 55-year-old man, arrested in 2008 during an American operation in Thailand, in exchange for basketball player Brittney Griner, detained in Russia for months for a cannabis business. Other exchanges of prisoners between Moscow and Washington are “possible”, has also indicated Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Contacts continue at the level of the intelligence services, they had never stopped. Do others [échanges] are possible? Yes, everything is possible,” he declared during a press conference on the sidelines of a regional summit in Kyrgyzstan.