There’s no reason to expect Russia’s war with Ukraine will end any time soon because the stakes are too high for President Vladimir Putin, Bill Browder, the well-known author and prime Putin adversary told the SA Jewish Report in a webinar on 1 September.
“It could go on for more than eight years. Russia has a lot of money, and can do lots of things with it.” Browder told the webinar audience, referring to Russia’s oil and gas cache. “Don’t ever count Putin out. It will continue to escalate.”
“Putin has a history of invasions, and every time, his approval rating goes up,” Browder said. “He came to power by killing Chechens – unbelievable atrocities – then invaded Georgia. Then, he invaded Ukraine in 2014. The story [then] about supporting Russian-backed separatists was complete nonsense.
“He had to do something after the COVID-19 pandemic and economic contraction in Russia. He faced a possible uprising of a million people. Russia actually has no beef with Ukrainians,” Browder said, debunking explanations for the latest war that include Russia’s desire for a return to the Soviet empire or its need to defend itself against unchecked expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
“This is just a greedy, criminal man who wants to stay in power. The war has been a disaster for Russia, with close to 50 000 troops dead and 40 000 incapacitated so far, equipment messed up, but Putin has an approval rating of 83%. In democracy there would be a price to pay, but this is a dictatorship. What’s 50 000 people in a country of 150 million?
“If Russia wins the war, Estonia’s next. If Ukraine pushes Russia out, it will take Putin out as well. Nobody will compromise.”
A successful financier, activist, and the author of two books, Red Notice and Freezing Order, Browder has become famous for his more than 17-year battle against corruption by the Russian government, oligarchs, and plutocrats, and for getting 34 countries including the United States to pass the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions those responsible for gross human rights abuses.
The Act is named after Browder’s Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was investigating the theft of $230 million (R3.9 billion) in taxes which had been paid by Browder’s investment company, Hermitage Capital, to the Russian government.
Browder’s exposure of Russian state corruption, his subsequent deportation from the country, the theft, the investigation, and the brutal death of Magnitsky in custody – “killed after a year in detention by eight Russian guards with rubber batons” – are all detailed in the books.
So, too, is Browder’s court-room dramas to track the stolen money, laundered internationally, and freeze the assets of its beneficiaries, one of the main being Putin himself. He was assisted by the discovery that “anytime anyone transfers dollars from anywhere, it goes through a New York bank for a millisecond”.
En route, he managed to disqualify a conflicted anti-money laundering lawyer named John Moscow, who turned on his former client, and overcome a judge suffering from Alzheimer’s. He also fended off attempts to kidnap him and a blonde “honey trap”.
“I’m a guy who never gives up,” Browder said modestly.
But he lives under no small threat, being sentenced twice in absentia by Russia, and placed on no less than eight Interpol wanted lists.
The bodies pile up in Browder’s two books, and there have been seven suspicious deaths of Russian oligarchs just this year, the latest of which took place on 1 September, when Lukoil executive Ravil Maganov fell from a window in a Moscow hospital. But Browder believes, “killing me on the street won’t solve their Magnitsky problem. They plan to arrest me, torture me into confessing to being a criminal, and then die a slow death in jail.”
Whenever he crosses international borders, he fears kidnap by Russian security. He came close after he was arrested in Spain in 2018, when it took the intercession of Browder’s huge Twitter following including none other than former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson – then foreign secretary – to secure his release.
“I can’t go to 95% of the countries in the world including Thailand, Dubai, the entire African continent,” he says, pointing out that many governments support Russia.
One of them is South Africa, where Browder has a house in Cape Town, which was once his “happy place”, but he can’t visit now for fear of arrest. “I was told by friends who have friends at ministerial level [during the Zuma years], ‘Don’t come here, we’ll arrest you and hand you over to Putin’,” he told the webinar. Browder points out that he’s run into a brick wall trying to get South Africa to pass a Magnitsky Act because Pretoria supports Russia. “The South African government is rotten to the core,” he said. “It’s shameful. These former champions of human rights are now siding with Putin/Russia’s oppression.”
Putin, who Browder estimates has a personal net worth of about $200 billion (R3.5 trillion), ultimately pulls the strings on Russia’s criminal empire, Browder says. “He takes 50% of the wealth of every oligarch, so no ‘oligarch uprising’ will be in the offing following sanctions.”
Though Putin is still making lots of money through oil and gas, Browder believes international sanctions against Russia are biting, and the pie is getting smaller, “hence the fighting and killing”.
“The country is in a terrible depression, and it’s only going to get worse,” he said. “We’ve managed to freeze more than half the central bank reserves, the Russian army is hollowed out by corruption [and the war], oil service companies are no longer helping the country to pump oil, but oil/gas revenue remains the elephant in the room.”
Ironically, Browder, who once intended to become the “biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe”, compares himself to his grandfather, Earl Browder, who was the leader of the communist party in the United States. “He was fighting for the little guy on the shop floor. I’m fighting against injustice from dictators,” he says, “I’m tenacious.”
