The Biden administration decided to free convicted and notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for WNBA superstar Brittney Griner, who had been detained in Russia since last February on drug charges, sparking concerns about the next steps.
Bout, who sold significant numbers of illicit weapons to rival factions in various African nations in violation of several United Nations embargoes for decades, was arrested in 2008, was serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. prison, and was not set to be released until 2029.
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Biden’s decision to release Bout for Griner, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for bringing vape cartridges that contained minimal amounts of marijuana into Russia, was “a deeply disturbing decision,” per Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“The Russians and other regimes that take American citizens hostage cannot pretend that there is equivalence between the Brittney Griners of the world and people like Viktor Bout, the so-called ‘Merchant of Death.’ Nothing could be further from the truth, and we cannot ignore that releasing Bout back into the world is a deeply disturbing decision,” he said. “We must stop inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips, and we must try to do better at encouraging American citizens against traveling to places like Russia, where they are primary targets for this type of unlawful detention.”
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A senior Defense Department official told Politico that “there is a concern that [he] would return to doing the same kind of work that he’s done in the past,” while National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the United States is “going to make sure that we can defend this country against any and all threats.”
“And so, with Mr. Bout being back on the street, we’re going to stay focused on making sure we can defend this country,” Kirby added during an appearance on CNN.
Various administration officials taking questions from the press have been asked about the precedent this swap sends to other maligned actors internationally.
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“It’s a concern that is, of course, not lost on us,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in an MSNBC interview. “That is part of the reason why these decisions are exceedingly difficult, and truly, only the president of the United States can make a decision like this. And decisions like this are quite rare.”
The State Department is working with nearly 60 countries “to establish what is essentially a global norm that will make clear to governments, to regimes, to nonstate actors around the world that there will be a steep price and there will be steep consequences to pay,” he added. “And that steep price won’t only emanate from the United States, but dozens of countries around the world are going to work with us to see to it that this horrific practice is relegated to the dustbin of history.”
