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Viktor Bout, the convicted gun runner who spent nearly a decade in a U.S. prison before being sent back to Russia in a prisoner swap, has won a seat in a regional legislature, officials said.
Bout’s election makes him the second Russian who served time in a U.S. prison to be elected to a Russian legislative body, after Maria Butina, who was elected to the national parliament in 2021.
The Ulyanovsk regional election commission said in a statement that Bout won a seat on the regional assembly as a result of party-list voting. Bout is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.
A former Russian intelligence officer who gained notoriety by transporting weapons and other contraband around the world in the 1990s and 2000s — earning him the monikers “merchant of death” or “lord of war” — Bout was arrested in Thailand in 2008.
He was subsequently extradited to the United States, where he was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens.
During his time serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. prison, Bout was the focus of repeated efforts by Russian officials to swap him for Americans held in Russian prisons.
In December 2022, Bout was exchanged for WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner, who had pleaded guilty to illegal drug possession and was serving a nine-year prison sentence.
Since returning to Russia, Bout has kept a relatively low profile, doing only a handful of media interviews and avoiding the public spotlight.
Earlier this year, the Liberal Democratic Party, a nationalist-leaning political bloc that is nominally in opposition to the ruling party, tapped him to join the party’s list of candidates in the Ulyanovsk region, which is about 900 kilometers east of Moscow.
In an interview last week with the American sports network ESPN, Bout said he identified in some ways with Griner and what she might have gone through at the time
“Of course, I feel, you know, bad or sorry for any person who’s going to be used as a pawn, despite whether they committed something or not,” he said.
“Publicity is a, like, multiplying factor which can really kill you if you are not strong enough to handle it,” he was quoted as saying.
Butina was a political activist who was convicted in the United States in 2018 of working as an unregistered foreign agent, for her efforts to build relationships with the Republican Party and conservative activists.
The Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded she attempted to infiltrate President Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 to establish backchannel communications with Russian officials.
After serving about five months in a U.S. prison, she was released and deported to Russia. Two years later, she was elected to the State Duma as a member of the United Russia ruling party.
Other Russians who have won elected positions in Russia after gaining notoriety in the West for alleged criminal acts include Andrei Lugovoi, who was implicated in the killing of former Russian intelligence agent Aleksandr Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Like Bout, Lugovoi is also a member of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Russia held regional and local elections across dozens of regions across the country on September 8-10, for governors, local legislatures, city councils, and a handful of national elected positions.
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