BEIJING, July 3. /TASS/. Viktor Bout, who spent 15 years in an American jail on trumped-up charges, says he doesn’t harbor any ill will toward the United States or its people, believing they aren’t much different from the rest of the world, wanting only to build a good life for themselves and their family.

"I believe that Americans, much like other people on the planet, want peace, for everyone to live in harmony and joy with their family," the Russian businessman, lawmaker and public figure told a TASS correspondent at the opening of his art exhibition entitled My Shore is a Thin Line at China’s Millennium Center in Beijing.

In his opinion, it’s America’s political system that has lost its way, not its people. "I have very good impressions of Americans, among whom I have many good friends," Bout concluded.

Bout was returned to Russia in 2022 as part of a prisoner swap for US basketball player Brittney Griner. Over his years spent in US prison, he created about 300 paintings and drawings using various techniques: pencils, pastels, water colors, acrylic and oil. The Beijing exhibition includes more than fifty of his works.

Bout says he saw his two-square-meter prison cell as a "monk’s abode, a library and an art studio." He used art as therapy in prison, to keep from going crazy and to preserve his peace. While imprisoned, he painted portraits of legendary Russian aviators, the main characters of Soviet motion pictures, his family and friends as well as various aircraft and the picturesque regions of his native land, all from memory.

Beijing residents who attended the exhibition’s opening were also interested in patriotic posters, created by Bout out of newspaper clippings, his personal belongings, the books that he read during his incarceration in the US as well as the letters of support from Russians and foreign nationals, including those from the US.

Bout’s exhibitions were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, Chita, Ryazan, Ulyanovsk and other Russian cities.