Viktor Bout tells Russian state news he isn't 'valuable' despite Brittney ... trends now

The Russian arms dealer freed from US custody as part of a prisoner exchange for Brittney Griner has denied he is of any significance to the Russian government.

Speaking to Russian state news outlet RT on Friday, Viktor Bout, 56, said he does not believe he was exchanged for the Olympic medalist because he is especially valuable to the Kremlin, as he suggested both the United States and Russia benefitted equally from the exchange.

'To consider why they exchanged me now — it's unhelpful,' Bout said. 'They exchanged me and that's that.

'I don't think that I am important to Russian politics,' he continued. 'We just don't leave our people behind.'

The interview comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is willing to conduct other prisoner exchanges with the United States in the future following Bout's release — which many saw as a victory for the Kremlin.

Bout, who has been dubbed the 'Merchant of Death,' was arrested in 2008 in Thailand and was convicted three years later for conspiring to kill Americans by selling tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons to FARC, a narco-terror group in Columbia.  

He has also been tied with trying to sell arms to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and was a former intelligence officer in the Soviet Union.

The Russian government has since been pressuring the United States to set Bout — who has been called the Merchant of Death — free.

But Bout has repeatedly claimed to be a legitimate businessman, and has denied having anything to do with the Kremlin.

He told RT correspondent Maria Butina, who was also imprisoned in an American jail for acting as an unregistered foreign agent in the 2016 election, that there were 'probably thousands and thousands and thousands of cases like his,' and he was simply caught up in the gears of geopolitics.

Bout also spoke about his experience serving time in an American prison, denying that he was a victim of 'Russophobia,' which he attributed in part for the prison's location in what he called the 'red belt.'

The so-called Merchant of Death was incarcerated for more than a decade at a medium-security prison in Marion, Illinois.

'Mostly my fellow inmates were sympathetic towards Russia, or at least, if they knew nothing about it, they would ask me questions.'

And when asked to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the prison exchange — which saw former United States Marine Paul Whelan left behind — Bout denied that the Biden administration was weak.

'I am certain that our leadership does not think in those terms, whether you are weak or not,' he told Butina. 'Real strength does not require expression on such a, frankly, cheap level.'

'I believe the deal happened because some common ground was found that allowed both sides to be satisfied,' he said, noting that he was glad to be home and spending time with his wife, Alla.