Russia’s Man of War

A biography of Viktor Bout, a 'warlord's warlord' who may be the man to replace Putin.

An intrepid reporter's fast-paced investigation into the extraordinary life of Viktor Bout, the much-mythologised Russian fixer known as the Merchant of Death.

Viktor Bout was a warlord's warlord, according to MI6, the US National Security Council and the CIA—a terrorist facilitator, and the world's most prolific arms dealer. They tracked him everywhere, smuggling weapons from North Korea and the former Soviet Union into the world's bloodiest conflict zones, from Liberia to Afghanistan. Intelligence services called him a secret KGB asset; the White House, the most dangerous man in the world. But Bout strenuously denied this, describing himself as a businessman.

Washington hunted Bout for more than a decade, before finally trapping him and jailing him for 25 years. Then, in December 2022, the story took an unlikely turn: President Biden pardoned Bout and sent him home to Moscow, in a prisoner exchange to rescue basketball superstar Brittney Griner, jailed in Russia on drugs charges. Soon enough, Bout cosied up with doomed Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and the Russian governors Putin had installed in occupied Ukraine.

Has America's extraordinary decision to swap Bout undermined Western interests? Has Putin put him back to work in his old business? Through candid interviews with US investigators and Viktor Bout himself, this book reveals the true story of the Merchant of Death.