Is notorious Russian warlord Viktor Bout planning to become a would-be armourer of the deadly Wagner Group, an arms dealer worse even than Erik Prince? Or is he, as his American lawyer predicts, a future Russian president who will one day sit down with Western leaders? As he flexes his muscles, this book will present a no-holds-barred account of Bout's extraordinary life, from his birth in a remote southern outpost of the Soviet Union to hero's return at the height of war. As well as opening up about the old decades of global arms dealing, he will also detail his years fighting extradition from Bangkok, his experiences of being locked up with some of America's most notorious prisoners, from Al Qaeda to the alt-right, and his future plans.
Bout's story is vitally important at a time when Russia stands alone, accused of committing atrocious war crimes in Ukraine. As much as we may understand some of what the CIA and British intelligence did during the Cold War and after, we still know very little about the inner workings of Russia's FSB, KGB and GRU, its military intelligence directorate, or how East and West are really stoking opposite ends of the Ukraine conflict at a time when a new Iron Curtain has all but descended. We see crises and hardly ever glimpse the proof of how they are fanned. An estimated 20,000 Russian soldiers have already died plus innumerable Wagner recruits, and Putin's two-decades-long grip on power appears - to the Western eye and among some key observers in Moscow - to be faltering. Moscow fought long and hard to get Bout home, but now he is back, he appears to be more of a threat to Putin than to the West. Bout's name is once again appearing in the Western media prefaced by "notorious arms dealer," alongside warnings that he intends to become Putin's new Mr Fix-it.
A biography of Viktor Bout, "'warlord's warlord" who may be the man to replace Putin. His acquaintances include Yevgeny Prigozhin of the Wagner Group, Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, mass murderer Charles Taylor of Liberia and more.
