The world has never ceased to be at war, and the difference is only in total war and local conflict, which are tempted by people's endless desires, and people have carried this original sin since birth, which is difficult to get rid of. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, tensions between countries eased, but the Middle East and Africa remained at war.
Even though the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on these special battlefields at that time, it gave some extremely ambitious arms dealers a new opportunity for violence, and this policy undoubtedly became the soil for the cultivation of arms dealers. Victor Boot was the "most prestigious" of these arms dealers, so much so that Pitt Hayne, the former Foreign Minister of England, nicknamed him the "Embargo Destroyer" and the "Merchant of Death". Later, in 2005, Hollywood used him as a prototype and made a movie called "The King of War" based on his story.
Victor Boutben was a major in the Soviet Army, and his parents were Russian. Victor trained in the Soviet army until the 1990s, at the age of 18, and then worked at a Russian military base in Vitebsk, and his tasks became increasingly important as his abilities became more prominent, including even training the special forces of the Russian Air Force.
After graduating from the prestigious Soviet Military Foreign Language Institute in Moscow in 1991, Bout was trained fluently in Russian, Uzbek, English, French and Portuguese, and even had a rough understanding of Chinese. At the same time, he earned a degree in economics, and from then on he became a Soviet army translator in Angola.
However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union shortly after, Boute and his colleagues, despite their excellent quality, could not escape the fate of unemployment. So he used his military background to start an arms business. In 1993, he began to create his own transport channels, founding the Return Export Freight Company to assist the Belgian army in Somalia in transporting supplies and equipment.
Later, out of interest, the GRU (intelligence department of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces) funded three Ofonov transport aircraft, which also led to the association of him through his relationship with the GRU Foreign Language School that he was most likely a GRU agent.
However, he did not only do "business" in Africa during this period, he also dumped a large amount of arms on the Islamic State in Afghanistan from 1992 to 1995, thus earning $50 million in this "imperial cemetery" and strengthening his own arms empire. His military background enabled him to acquire heavy armaments such as tanks, aircraft and missiles in the former Soviet Union.
The Afghan militants were arguably one of his early patrons. Over time, however, an armed group called the Taliban sprang up in Afghanistan. The islamic State of Afghanistan was driven to a handful of northern Afghan provinces, so the group was later known as the "Alliance of the North," which also indirectly affected Boot's business.
As the saying goes, "Misfortune depends on blessings, and blessings and misfortunes lie down." "In May 1995, a shipment of Afghan government troops was intercepted by the Taliban, and the transport aircraft that helped the government troops deliver goods was provided by Bout. The intercepted crew of the flight was released from Afghanistan in August, and Bout was able to connect with the Taliban. As a result, Bout sold arms to government forces, the Northern Alliance and the Taliban at the same time, exacerbating the conflict in parts of Afghanistan.
But for Boot, Afghanistan is just one of his many clients, in the Middle East or Africa, where he is everywhere. In his view, there is no ideology, as long as the profit is enough to impress him, he can simultaneously export weapons to two customers who are rivals to each other. To meet the growing "size of the economy," Boot even used the name of several of his airlines to get 60 transport planes to smuggle weapons. In May 2006, he had 200,000 submachine guns and rifles that could be accidentally lost, which shows the size of his business.
However, at that time, the international embargo on these areas had been explicitly imposed, and Bout, who had already done business in the United States, became a well-known arms dealer in the world for a time. However, he still ignored the threat of the United States, and continued to change the registered address of the company around the world, and even intensified, not only focusing on the sale of firearms, and even shipping helicopters, anti-aircraft guns and armored vehicles to The African region.
With the outbreak of 9/11 and the Pentagon attack, the anger of the U.S. government was completely ignited, and they believed that Bout supplied arms to the Taliban, and al-Qaida and the Taliban had links, so they listed Bout as the top criminal of the U.S. government, ranking second only to bin Laden on the CIA's blacklist.
However, Bout, with his years of experience and vast business network and political influence, is not an easy one. At that time, although the United Emirates promised to arrest Bout, it did not dare to fight the grass and snake. But Bout managed to escape back to Russia right before their eyes. The Russian Constitution does not allow citizens to be extradited to foreign countries, which allows Bout to escape the fate.
Skynet was restored, neglected but not leaked. On March 6, 2008, Boot was arrested by the Thai police for falling into a trap set for him by American agents in Bangkok, Thailand. Although both Russia and the United States later pressed Thailand, Bout was extradited to the United States and sentenced to 25 years in prison. A generation of drug lords has also come to an end.