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Bad deal for Viktor Bout, and a terrible day for the US

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It is good news that Brittney Griner, a political pawn of Vladimir Putin, is free. Too bad it is because of a terrible deal by Team Biden.

It’s an outrage that Washington sprung notorious arms-dealer Viktor Bout in exchange, without even also winning the release of as-unjustly “convicted” Paul Whelan, who’s been languishing in Russia since 2018 with a decade-plus left to serve. 

This is fresh ugly proof of how weak the United States has become on the world stage, thanks significantly to the doddering foreign policy emanating from the White House. 

Griner’s arrest, sham trial and subsequent outrageous sentence to nine years’ hard labor earlier this year (for accidentally packing pot-oil-filled vape cartridges in her suitcase) were nothing less than Putin making a big bet against the US with a naked act of political targeting. 

Well, with the Bout exchange, he’s won. We folded. 

And we couldn’t even get this bad deal done ourselves. We had to outsource it to Saudi Arabia and the UAE

Bout on a plane in Abu Dhabi before departing for Russia after the prisoner swap.
Bout while on a plane in Abu Dhabi before departing for Russia after the prisoner swap.
Fsb/TASS via ZUMA Press

Yes, getting Griner back was 100% the right thing to do morally — but at what cost? Bout is a true war criminal responsible for endless death and chaos, who one point was the second-most-wanted man in the world after Osama bin Laden. Are we going to spring Khalid Sheik Muhammad next? Former National Security Adviser John Bolton says the Trump administration was offered the same deal for Whelan — one-for-one trade for Bout — and it refused.

After the Kremlin nixed a deal of Bout for both Griner and Whelan, a more palatable trade, the White House could have found some way to raise the pressure. Instead, it evidently just … waited, only to capitulate after Moscow sent Griner to the gulag.

It’s of a piece with the administration’s eagerness to give away the store on their resurrected, terrible Iran deal.

To confront Russia’s global ambitions, America needs to be bold and resolute, or things will only get bloodier. On top of embarking on a relentless pressure campaign to free Whelan, Team Biden must make clear Russia is a destination non grata for Americans, even those crazy enough to want to go. 

Spinelessness has to stop being our president’s default position. 



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