By Al-Fassel | 2024-10-16

A Russian arms dealer who spent a decade in a US prison is trying to broker weapons to Yemen's Houthis, The Wall Street Journal reported October 6.

Viktor Bout, 57, who was freed in a prisoner exchange with Moscow two years ago, has been trying to sell small arms to the Iranian regime-backed group, according to an unnamed European security source and other anonymous sources.

"When Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout," the Journal reported.

Nicknamed the "Merchant of Death," Bout has sold weaponry to rogue states and rebel groups across Africa, South America and the Middle East.

In a US-led sting in Thailand in 2008, Bout was arrested on multiple charges related to arms trafficking and then extradited to the United States.

In 2012, a court in Manhattan sentenced Bout to 25 years in prison. He returned to Russia following the December 2022 prisoner swap.

Puppet of foreign powers

The report is the latest example of the Houthis doing the bidding of foreign powers at the expense of the Yemeni people.

Bout would not have restarted his work without implicit Kremlin approval, though Western intelligence officials do not have direct knowledge that Russian President Vladimir Putin told Bout to resume selling arms, The New York Times reported October 7.

If an arms deal with the Houthis undercut Russia's interests, the Kremlin would have stopped him, they said.

The Kremlin is using potential arms deals with the Houthis to send a message to the West, said the officials, who linked the discussions to Ukraine's request to conduct long-range strikes into Russia using missiles provided by Britain, France or the United States.

The Kremlin is likely to complete the deal with the Houthis as part of a strategy to pressure the West without risking a direct Russian-US conflict, they added.

Other Russian officials and arms dealers have been working on potential agreements to send weapons, including missiles, to the Houthis, the officials said.

Moscow is "cutting its own deals" with the Houthis to allow its ships to sail through the Red Sea unharmed, US special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking told AFP at the United Nations General Assembly last month.

"We have confirmation that the Russians and the Houthis are in dialogue about ways to cooperate," Lenderking said.

"It's come to the point that we're all sounding the alarm bell to make sure that this [weapon deliveries] does not happen," he said.

Weapon transfers "could potentially change the conflict in a significant manner," Lenderking said, warning of "an escalation" that would doom efforts to end Yemen's decade-long war.