Putin says more prisoner swaps with US ‘possible’

Russia swapped US basketball star Brittney Griner with the prolific arms dealer Bout at Abu Dhabi airport

Vladimir Putin has said more US-Russian prisoner exchanges are possible.

The Russian president was speaking a day after Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was swapped for basketball star and two-time US Olympian Brittney Griner.

Asked whether other prisoners could be swapped, Mr Putin replied that “everything is possible”, noting that “compromises” were found to clear Thursday’s exchange.

“We aren’t refusing to continue this work in the future,” he added.

Despite negotiating the swap for Griner, the most high-profile American jailed abroad, the US failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan.

Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the US government have said are baseless.

Earlier, Bout, who returned to his homeland after 14 years in a US prison as part of a swap for WNBA star Brittney Griner, said the West is bent on destroying Russia.

Russian state media praised President Putin for “winning” the prisoner exchange battle with the United States.

Bout was serving 25 years in jail and was described by the US Department of Justice as one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers who had sold weapons across the globe to terrorists and America’s enemies for decades, Bout always denied the charges.

He was detained in an elaborate sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in a luxury hotel in Bangkok.

Moscow always maintained he was innocent but he was sentenced to 25 years in jail by a Manhattan court in 2012.

Griner, who touched down in the US on Friday morning, was serving nine years in Russia after she was detained at an airport back in February for allegedly carrying illegal cannibas oil in her luggage. The WNBA star had spent the last 10 months in prison.

Russian media was, unsurprisingly, full of praise for Putin following the deal.

“It is a capitulation by America,” Maria Butina, a lawmaker in the lower house of the Russian parliament told state television on the tarmac of Moscow’s Vnukovo airport just as Bout landed.

“It shows that Russia doesn’t abandon its own while America has shown its defeat,” Butina said beside Bout’s wife and mother, who hugged him as he stepped back onto Russian soil.

“Russia did not forget him.”

Bout’s life story reads like a spy thriller and his notoriety was such that his life helped inspire a 2005 Hollywood film “Lord of War”, starring Nicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov, an arms dealer loosely based on Bout.

Russia swapped US basketball star Brittney Griner with arms dealer Bout (AP)

Little is known publicly about his early life, though he has been linked to Russian military intelligence (GRU), which has always made much of its reputation for never forgiving traitors and never abandoning its people no matter what the cost.

Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, posted a montage under the title “And so 14 years!” in reference to the time Bout spent in detention.

The montage showed historical video of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Zakharova and other senior diplomats saying “Viktor Bout”.

“Washington categorically refused to engage in dialogue on the inclusion of the Russian in the exchange scheme,” the foreign ministry said.

“Nevertheless, the Russian Federation continued to actively work to rescue our compatriot.”

Some Republicans in the United States criticized the Biden administration for making the swap.

“What a ‘stupid’ and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!!!” former President Donald Trump wrote on social media.

Trump questioned why Griner was swapped for one of the world’s biggest arms dealers, and why the exchange did not include Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on espionage charges.

Whelan, who holds American, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in jail after being convicted of spying.

Russia said he was caught with classified information in a Moscow hotel room where agents from the Federal Security Service detained him on Dec. 28, 2018.

He denies that he committed espionage.