Victor boot sold weapons to both sides of 11 major conflicts involving 32 countries in less than a decade. After the wall came down, 32 billion dollars worth of arms were stolen and resold from ukrane alone. No one else could bring in high caliber machine guns, rocket propel grenades. And that's what made him so incredibly successful, was that he could do all that. You just don't kill the mail man how like, are you stupid? But that was consistently the he did what he said he would do at the price he said he'd do it at.
Viktor Bout might be the most successful arms dealer in history. The US could let him go free if Russia releases the WNBA star, who was just sentenced to nine years in prison. Bout’s biographer, Douglas Farah, explains.
This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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