No Shortage Of Arms Dealers In Russia, U.S. Says, As Putin's 'Merchant of Death' Reportedly Back In Business

The United States said on Monday it was monitoring 'very closely' unconfirmed reports that Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as Vladimir Putin’s “Merchant of Death," was trying to broker a deal with Houthi militants in Yemen, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"There are any number of actors that Russia has engaged over years – not just Viktor Bout, but others – to engage in destabilizing behavior, including making arms available.  There has been no shortage of people both inside the government and outside the government in Russia willing to fulfill that role.  And what we do is monitor those very closely, take steps to counteract them, and ultimately take actions to hold Russia accountable," State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing when responding to TURAN's questions.

The U.S. media reported earlier that some Houthi emissaries visited Moscow in August to negotiate a $10 million arms purchase, and while there, they encountered Bout, who was released by the Biden administration in Dec 2022 after serving less than half of his 25-year sentence in U.S. federal prison in connection to his work as an arms trader. Washington swapped him in the prisoner exchange that freed basketball star Brittney Griner from a Russian prison, where she had been held for months after being arrested at a Moscow airport with 0.7 grams of cannabis oil.

Miller defended the trade-off saying that "we have to make the tough decisions to bring American citizens home."

"And I think when you look at the Americans that we have brought home versus the people in Russia’s case that they have been able to get home, it says something about the type of individuals that our societies value," he went on to conclude.

When asked by TURAN about Washington's level of concerns over Russia's potential involvement  in the Middle East, Miller said, "certainly we see the deepening ties between Iran and Russia as something that’s incredibly destabilizing for the region.  It’s incredibly destabilizing for the world, and that applies to the Middle East. It applies to everywhere that Iran and Russia operate"