UPDATE - Russian Businessman Bout Says Did Not Face Russophobia In US Prison

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 09th December, 2022) Russian businessman Viktor Bout, who was just exchanged for US basketball player Brittney Griner, said on Friday that he did not face Russophobia while in prison in the United States.

Russia released Griner from prison in exchange for the United States releasing Bout on Thursday. The latter was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States for alleged arms dealing.

"I did not face Russophobia either from the side of the staff (or from the side of the inmates). Basically, almost all of my prisoner neighbors were sympathetic to Russia," Bout said in an interview with the RT broadcaster.

Later in the day, the businessman's wife, Alla Bout, told Sputnik that her husband is in a state of extreme physical and nervous exhaustion and requires medical help.

"Victor is has both nervous and physical exhaustion.

.. Compared to how he looked three years ago, when my daughter and I went to the US and lived in the town of Marion for a month, visiting Victor in prison, now he looks completely different. After all, we have been communicating only by phone for these three years, without seeing each other," Alla Bout said.

In late July, Western media reported that the United States had proposed to Russia that Moscow and Washington exchange Bout, sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in a US prison on charges of conspiring to murder US citizens, export anti-aircraft missiles and financially support terrorism, for US Marine Paul Whelan, sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a Russian prison for spying, and Griner, sentenced in 2022 to nine years for illegally bringing cannabis oil to Russia.