The Russian government has rejected reports that notorious arms dealer Viktor, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” is involved in arms deals with Islamist militant groups in Yemen.

“We tend to classify this in the category of fakes or attempts at a verbal attack against our people’s representatives,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, following a report about Bout’s alleged activities in the US-based Wall Street Journal newspaper.

The newspaper reported that Bout, who was released from US custody in a prisoner exchange in 2022, appears to have brokered the sale of small arms to the Houthi militant group, primarily Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Bout himself praised the Houthi militants, saying they did a “pretty good job” by shooting down more than 10 US reconnaissance drones despite limited resources.
But Bout described the newspaper article as targeted information for the birthday of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who turned 72 on Monday.

Bout claimed the US media used his name and image to attract attention, because there are no well-known actors operating in Yemen.

In comments to the Russian state news agency TASS, Bout called the report an “unsubstantiated accusation”. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Bout did not address whether he was back in the arms business.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, the anti-Western Houthi rebels in Yemen have regularly fired missiles or drones at targets in Israel and ships in the Red Sea, something that has severely affected commercial freight traffic through the Suez Canal.
Bout was arrested in 2008 for supplying numerous criminal groups with weapons and was later sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States, where he was known in the media as the “Merchant of Death”.

Source: SCMP