FAIR ENOUGH: (1) Viktor Bout’s RT interview ... (2) Putin responds to Merkel bombshell

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10 Dec, 2022 18:02

‘Nazi’-inspired US prison guards, American ‘revolution’ and Ukraine conflict: Highlights from Viktor Bout’s RT interview

The Russian businessman described “inhuman” conditions in US jails and ridiculed claims that he armed the Taliban

In his first major interview since his release, Viktor Bout, whom the US claimed was an arms dealer, spoke to RT on Saturday. Bout was returned to Russia in a high-profile prisoner swap for basketball player Brittney Griner on Thursday.

During the conversation, the businessman revealed his techniques to stay sane while behind bars, spoke about the conflict in Ukraine and on whether he believed the US might be on the verge of an uprising.

Arming the Taliban

Bout served 12 years in American prisons on arms-trafficking charges that he denies. Despite evading Taliban captivity in the mid-1990s, several American media outlets reported this week that he supplied up to 200 Soviet T-90 tanks to the Afghan Islamists. This claim apparently originated in an anonymously-sourced report by Germany’s Der Spiegel in 2002.

“No, I did not have any relations with the Taliban,” he told RT. “The Taliban put a bounty on my head. How can anyone say I worked with the Taliban?”

Regarding the supposed delivery of tanks to the militants, Bout asked how he could have possibly pulled off “200 flights to Afghanistan” and hammered the US media for not providing any evidence to back up this claim.

“Even Soviet propaganda understood that there are some limits,” he said. “You had to at least say some truths."

The plea deal 

While Bout maintains his innocence, he said that he accepted a plea deal to serve 25 years because “what was one supposed to do?” However, he said that his attempts to switch lawyers before signing the deal were thwarted by his public defender, who misled him into sticking with her and admitting guilt.

“How can you trust this system when it works against you?” he argued.

Prison conditions

Bout said that guards would withhold food from troublesome inmates and leave harsh cell lighting on overnight, all in what he called a Nazi-inspired bid to “break a person’s will.” He described the quality of food served to prisoners as “inhuman” and said that he “lost a lot of weight” while incarcerated in the US.

However, the “biggest challenge” he faced behind bars was being granted only a single phone call every month.

The prison population

Bout spent much of his time at the United States Penitentiary, Marion in Illinois in solitary confinement, before he was housed with the general population of the facility from 2016 onwards.

The majority of inmates were African-American and Hispanic, Bout told RT. He added that “mostly my fellow inmates were sympathetic towards Russia. Or at least if they knew nothing about it, they would ask me questions.”

Bout passed the time by reading and learning several foreign languages, but recalled that drug use was rife among his fellow prisoners. “If it happens in a prison, just imagine what is happening out there on the street,” he said.

On Ukraine

Bout told RT that he sees the sanctions placed against him by the US as an “experiment,” and a warning to his fellow Russians. As such he was not surprised when the West responded to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine with economic penalties.

Viktor Bout: Back home from imprisonment | RT exclusive

“I fully support the special military operation,” he stated, arguing that Russia should have sent its troops into Donbass in 2014. 

“If I could, I would share the skills I have and I would readily volunteer,” he declared.

Meeting Griner

When Bout learned of Griner’s arrest on television, he recalled that an inmate approached him and told him “this is your ticket back home.” While the businessman said that he didn’t get his hopes up, the two would meet on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi on Thursday during the exchange.

“She wanted to shake my hand,” Bout said of Griner. “You could feel that she was really positive.”

An American revolution?

Asked whether he’d prefer to see Joe Biden or Donald Trump in the White House, Bout compared the two to “Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi,” adding that Russians “pay too much attention to US politics.”

“I don’t believe they’ll have a revolution in the United States,” he said, referring to political division in the country. Bout elaborated, arguing that excessive drug use is making young Americans too passive “to do anything,” while Washington ruthlessly punishes dissent, as it did when it jailed the Trump supporters who protested against Biden’s electoral victory on Capitol Hill last January.

Recap

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9 Dec, 2022 14:20

Putin responds to Merkel bombshell

The President believes that the former German leader's remarks justified Moscow's offensive in Ukraine

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he is “disappointed” by former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent comments regarding the Minsk agreements – the now defunct roadmap for peace in Ukraine – which she admitted was a ruse to buy Ukraine more time to build up its military.

“What can you say to that?” Putin said during a press conference on Friday, adding that he was shocked to hear such a confession from the former German leader, having believed that Russia’s partners in Berlin “treated us with sincerity.”

The Russian leader said Merkel’s remarks once again prove that launching a military operation in Ukraine was the correct decision. 

“As it turns out, nobody intended to fulfil any part of the Minsk agreements,” Putin said, recalling that former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko also recently admitted that he had no intention of adhering to the documents when he signed them in 2014 and 2015.

“I thought the other participants of this agreement were at least honest, but no, it turns out they were also lying to us and only wanted to pump Ukraine with weapons and get it prepared for a military conflict,” Putin said. “Apparently, we got our bearings too late, to be honest. Maybe we should have started all this [the military operation] earlier, but we just hoped that we would be able to solve it within the framework of the Minsk agreements.”

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Merkel has admitted deception over Minsk peace deal – Russia

Vladimir Putin said Merkel’s admission raises an important question about trust. “Trust is already almost at zero, but after such statements, how can we possibly negotiate? About what? Can we make any agreements with anybody and where are the guarantees?” Putin asked, while acknowledging that some sort of agreement will have to be reached eventually.

Putin’s comments follow Angela Merkel’s interview with the newspaper Die Zeit on Wednesday, in which she said the actual purpose of the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements was to stall for time and allow Kiev to build up its military potential for a future confrontation with Russia.

Moscow has expressed shock over the admission, with Russia’s Foreign Ministry claiming that Merkel’s words are legitimate grounds for a tribunal.

The Minsk agreements, brokered by Germany and France, were supposed to be a roadmap for peace in the war-torn country, giving the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state, whose rule they rejected after the 2014 Maidan coup.

Russian has explained that its current military offensive in Ukraine was largely prompted by Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the accords."

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