MOSCOW, December 10. /TASS/. Viktor Bout always had a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his prison cell in the United States, he said in an interview with RT on Saturday.

"Yes, always," he said when asked a corresponding question. "I am proud of being Russian and that our president is Putin."

The Russian Foreign Ministry reported on December 8 that Viktor Bout, a Russian citizen, who was serving out a prison sentence in the United States on arms trafficking charges, was returning to Russia as a result of a deal with the US to swap him for American basketball player Brittney Griner, who was apprehended in Russia for drug smuggling in February 2022.

Viktor Bout was arrested in Thailand’s capital of Bangkok in 2008 following a sting by US federal agents. He was charged with conspiracy to deliver weapons to a group regarded as a terrorist organization by the United States. In 2010, Bout was extradited to the United States. In April 2012, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $15 million.