Russia has achieved the exchange of Victor Buta. Medusa tells why it is so important for the Russian authorities - and how they can use the former prisoner during the war

On Thursday, December 8, at the Abu Dhabi airport, Russia and the United States exchanged prisoners. The American basketball player Britney Grainer, convicted in Russia on charges of drug smuggling, was exchanged for Russian Viktor Buta, who was serving a sentence in the United States for 10 years. In 2012, Buta was found guilty of several articles, including in “conspiracy to provide assistance to a terrorist organization”, money laundering and fraud. "Medusa" tells what Viktor Boot is known and why his exchange during the war with Ukraine can be no coincidence.

Armory baron

Viktor Boot was born in Dushanbe in 1967. After school, he served military service in the Transcarpathian Military District, and at the age of 20 he entered the Military Institute of Foreign Languages ​​in Moscow - and graduated from an external. With the rank of junior lieutenant, Buta went to work as a translator as part of the UN contingent in Mozambique and Angola (in both countries they speak Portuguese).

In the early 1990s, Viktor Boot took up business: he took and rented aircraft that made flights from Europe and Asia to Africa. According to the media, the cost of rent in Europe was significantly lower than in Africa, and the businessman earned on the difference. Buta was also called the owner of Transavia registered in Kazan and IRBIS registered in Alma-Ata, which were engaged in freight air transportation.

In addition to harmless civilian flights that delivered tulips and household appliances, legal military cargoes also carried Buta on aircraft - for example, the French military units were transferred to Angola, the businessman himself claimed. The media reported that on the same planes they transferred a peacekeeping contingent in Somalia and East Timor and delivered humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka injured from the Tsunami in 2004.

In addition, Bout became a successful tenant of the airport area in the city of Sharja in the United Arab Emirates - a large transport hub of the Middle East. Business Bota grew so much that he took second place in terms of transportation from Sharji (at the first it turned out to be Lufthansa airline) - and even received a special award of the free economic zone . In addition, the former translator became the owner of real estate near the Belgian Airport on the shores of the North Sea, from where his planes flew.

Buta was repeatedly associated with the salvation of the crew of the Il-76 aircraft, which was captured by the Taliban in August 1995,-it was reported that he took part in negotiations with the leadership of the Taliban (this was confirmed by Alla Boot’s wife), and then he personally met in Sharge Pilots, who managed to escape from captivity in 1996.

In 1997, a businessman registered a airline to South Africa, who, according to official figures, transported a frozen chicken from Europe. A year later, the South Africa’s authorities recalled his air transportation license, and Buta himself subsequently associated this with US pressure.

In the late 1990s, publications began to appear in the Western media about Viktor But's involvement in weapons trade. He was called the KGB agent close to senior Russian officials. In 1999, The Guardian published an article that Buta airlines are transporting weapons from Bratislava to the capital of Sudan Khartum, and in 2000 the UN Security Council Experts prepared a report on the situation with Angola's supply supplies, which was in a state of many years of civil war. Despite the international embargo introduced against the country, the rebels received weapons from Bulgaria and Romania, and it was the supply of supplies to the report, the report said.

In 2002, Belgium accused the businessman of smuggling diamonds and laundering money and put him on the international wanted list. The UN and the USA in 2004 demanded to freeze the accounts of the Russian and related companies and people. By this time, he had already closed the business in TsA, the UAE and almost did not leave Russia.

However, on March 6, 2008, Viktor Buta flew to Bangkok - in his own words , on vacation. On the same day he was arrested. As stated later in the indictment, the American intelligence agencies lured Buta to Thailand under the pretext of transactions for illegal sale of the Earth - Air missiles to the militants of the Columbian terrorist organization FARC .

Over the next two years, Butot was in Thai prison. Thailand’s authorities refused to extradite him to the United States - perhaps because they considered the accusations of the American intelligence services insolvent (in Thailand FARC was not officially recognized as a terrorist group), and perhaps because they did not want to complicate relations with Russia, which achieved the liberation of But.

In February 2010, the United States brought the prisoner new charges: this time in violation of the embargo for the supply of weapons to the rebels in Africa. On November 16, 2010, the Cabinet of Ministers of Thailand satisfied the US request to extradite Buta. The very next day, in the court of the Southern District of Manhattan, hearing in his case began. He was charged with the conspiracy to kill US citizens, provide material assistance to terrorists, illegal weapons trade and help illegal armed groups. Foreign publications began to be called Buta "death dealer."

On April 5, 2012, the American court sentenced the Russian to 25 years in prison. He was found guilty of all points: conspiracy to kill American citizens, an attempt to sell anti -aircraft missiles and support terrorism through cooperation with the Colombian group of Farc. But did not admit his guilt.

"The whole country is ill for Viktor Buta"

From the first days of the arrest of Buta, the Russian authorities made unambiguous statements about his innocence. So, back in September 2008, the State Duma adopted a statement in defense of the Russian citizen Viktor Buta: the deputies considered that in his case there are political motives, attempts to tie this topic to the fight against international terrorism and thereby damaging the interests and reputation of Russia. ” The Vice Speaker of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky then claimed that the Buta case is political in nature, and American politicians put pressure on the Thai court.

The lawyers of the arrested, in turn, proved to the judicial authorities of Thailand that American agents violated the laws of the kingdom, as they installed listening devices in the hotel room of Buta without the sanction of local authorities.

The first rumors about the possible exchange of Buta appeared in March 2011 - then the media wrote that he could be changed to a convicted person in Russia for espionage in favor of a number of Western countries of the former GRU Colonel Andrei Khlychev, but the Russian Foreign Ministry refuted these rumors.

Shortly after the sentence, in August 2012, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation announced a requested in the United States a request to extradite Buta to Russia, in which he promised that he would continue to serve his sentence in the Russian prison. Two months later, the American court rejected the petition of the Russian side in connection with the severity of the charges.

In March 2016, Interfax, citing unnamed sources, announced the possible exchange of Buta and Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko for Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, sentenced by the Russian court to 22 years in prison. However, the American embassy in Moscow told reporters that the United States was "not considering such an opportunity." In May 2016, Savchenko was exchanged for two Russians - Evgeny Erofeev and Alexander Alexandrov, who were called "GRU fighters." Before the exchange procedure, all three former captives received a pardon in Russia and Ukraine.

Once again, the fate of Buta in Russia began to be discussed in the summer of 2021 - on the eve of the meeting of US President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in Geneva. The host of Vesti of the Week Dmitry Kiselev compared the arrest of Buta with the arrest of the Belarusian oppositionist Roman Protasevich, and the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov to the questions of journalists evasively replied that it was too early to talk about specifics. ”

However, the support of Bout by the Russian authorities was unambiguous, and in the early 2020s it became especially noticeable. In December 2021, an exhibition of drawings of the weapons baron, which he made in prison with pastel and a ballpoint pen, was held in the Public Chamber in Moscow. And in November 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine lasted more than six months, the same exhibition opened in the Federation Council (SF).

The Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the Russian Federation Grigory Karasin at the opening of the exhibition told reporters that “the whole country is rooting for Viktor Buta,” and accused the United States of “intrigues” against the Russian. If earlier politicians have not been the first order for Buta (even the State Duma statement in 2008 was prepared by the LDPR), now his name sounded from the lips of status diplomats.

In April 2022, the United States and the Russian Federation again exchanged prisoners - pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko and student alarmist . It was expected that soon Viktor Bout may return home.

In the summer, after a telephone conversation between the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, dedicated to grain export from Ukraine, there was information that the United States intends to exchange Paul Wylan and Britney Grainer for Viktor Buta. Lavrov called the Americans to “quiet diplomacy” on the issue of the exchange of prisoners, and Dmitry Peskov even asked the commentators to refrain from discussing the exchange mechanism: “If you and I will discuss at least some nuances related to the topic of exchanges through the press, then these exchanges will never take place.” Peskov also reproached the Americans for making a mistake, seeking to solve problems in a “megaphone way”.

But already on November 18, official confirmations of the conducting negotiations appeared - the Russian Foreign Ministry said that he was counting on a “positive result” in Viktor Butor. On the same day, the Izvestia newspaper was an interview with a Russian, in which he talks about diseases and deprivations transferred in prison.

On December 8, Viktor Butt returned to Russia after 15 years of imprisonment. He was exchanged for the American basketball player Britney Grainer, detained in Sheremetyevo and accused of illegal storage and smuggling of hash (hash oil that was not prohibited in the United States, but prohibited in the Russian Federation, was found in cartridges for the Basketball player waip).

"Hero of Russia"

Obviously, from a political point of view, the exchange of “death merchant” Buta for a basketball player Grainer is not unequal. That is why the American side insisted on the exchange of “two on one”, but in the end, for unknown reasons, she had to go to the conditions of the Russian side.

The crisis of Russian-American relations that came as a result of the war makes Viktor Buta in the eyes of the Russian television ausion hero who suffered for the country. The rescue of the Russian who spent 10 years in the US prison has already been commented on by both the Ombudsman for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova and the Russian Foreign Ministry : the representative of the ministry Maria Zakharova reported that people from Russia and from abroad, who rejoice in the liberation of Buta and congratulate him. “They personally are not familiar with him, never even saw. But they worry like their loved one! " - wrote Zakharova.

State Duma deputy Leonid Slutsky had already promised to call Bout to a special meeting in the State Duma, and deputy Maria Butina , who also spent several months in an American prison, proudly stated that “Russia does not throw its own,” and had already managed to take an interview from Buta.

It is still difficult to predict if the boot of the deputy in the Duma Committee on International Affairs will take. However, the Russian authorities may have other instructions for the former prisoner prison of the County of County Marion in Illinois.

Here is what a former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in an interview with Australian journalist Nick Lazaedes in 2003 recalled his meeting with Bout to Lubyanka: in 2003:

One employee of my own security department, whom I met: Sasha, you know, they ( from context should not be directly directly, about whom Litvinenko is talking - approx. Medusa ) Tanks are selling tanks. They sell large weapons to Africa, it goes to the Middle East. In confirmation of these words, I saw in the office of my head of the department [Evgeny] Khokholkova, namely this group was associated with Khokholkov, he was one of the leaders of this group, I saw Buta in his office. Butt, which is now on the international wanted list for the illegal turnover of weapons. This person is associated with Ukrainian criminal groups, this person, according to operational data, was associated with the son of Derkach - the former head of the SBU, the closest person to the President of Ukraine Kuchma .

"Jellyfish"