The West needs to raise a new Iron Curtain to contain Russia and redouble efforts to starve Vladimir Putin’s regime of the money it needs to wage its war in Ukraine. That’s the view of the American-born British political activist, author and former financier Bill Browder, who addressed the Spear’s 500 Live conference.
If the West can achieve this – and help Ukraine drive out the Russian invaders – then that would also hasten the end of the Putin regime, said Browder, author of Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath.
‘He’s a monster,’ declared Browder of the Russian leader. ‘We should just put up our biggest defences around these monsters – we had the Iron Curtain during Soviet times. We need a new Iron Curtain for these guys.’
In an interview with Spear’s editor-in-chief Edwin Smith just days after the failed coup against Putin led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now former leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Browder told the audience at the Savoy: ‘This is the single most damning thing that’s ever happened to Vladimir Putin since coming to power.’
Pointing to the relative ease with which the Wagner forces seized a major city in southern Russia on 24 June, captured a military base ‘without a shot being fired’ and then got its convoy to within two hours of Moscow, Browder added: ‘Then Putin, somehow in his negotiation with this guy, allows him to safely leave the country instead of having his head chopped off on Red Square. I don’t know how Putin recovers from this because how do you claim to be a ruthless strongman when that happened?’
As a result, Browder predicts what happens next will be highly instructive.
‘The next weeks and months will be very determinative of what happens next in Russia,’ Browder told interviewer Edwin Smith. ‘It could all continue to disintegrate for Putin because in Russia they absolutely despise weakness.’
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Browder predicts that Putin will seek to assert his authority by carrying out a purge of those he deems ‘disloyal or not loyal enough’ in the government, oligarchy and armed forces.
Regardless, Browder believes that the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will seal Putin’s fate. ‘If Ukraine wins the war the Russians are not going to tolerate Putin – not just Putin, the whole stuff around him,’ said Browder. ‘They’re going to say, “Why did you sacrifice so many people for a war that we lost? Why is [there] this unbelievable economic damage? Who are the losers that did this?”’
Comparing imprisoned Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny to Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned in Apartheid-era South Africa, Browder added: ‘My fantasy is that the marauding people will break into the prison where Alexei Navalny is being held and bring him out on their shoulders and hoist him out to the Kremlin – and he’s the one that repairs Russia, repairs relations with the West and brings Russian back into the international fold.’
Putin’s great hope, predicted Browder, was to keep fighting until November 2024 in the hope that Donald Trump wins the presidency and then ceases all US aid to Ukraine.
Place embargo on Russian oil exports and seize oligarchs’ assets, says Bill Browder
In the meantime, efforts should be made to enforce an embargo on Russian oil exports, which are still bankrolling the invasion of Ukraine, Browder said. He added that authorities in the West should seize the assets of oligarchs – locked away in ‘asset protection schemes’ – in order to help pay for the $1 trillion worth of damage done to Ukraine by the invasion. ‘It’s not going to be easy because the very best minds in the world have put these things together,’ he said of the methods deployed to protect oligarch wealth. ‘That’s going to be a challenge for Western governments.’
Next Browder dismissed criticism of sanctions against wealthy expat Russians in the West, celebrating the fact that the assets of 45 Oligarchs had been frozen so far. ‘If you want to go after Putin’s money you go after the oligarchs’ money because the oligarchs hold the money for him,’ Browder said, adding of Putin. ‘He hates this because Vladimir Putin values money more than human life. He’s ready to kill for money and so there’s nothing more harmful than to take his money away from him.’
Browder also rejected criticisms that sanctions against Russians were arbitrary, pointing out that they were ‘judicially reviewable’. ‘If you feel like you are being mistreated you go to court,’ he said. ‘We have rule of law. There’s very clear criteria and people who are subject to sanctions are in violation of the criteria and if they believe that they’re not they go to court.’
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‘No such thing as independently wealthy Russians in Russia’
On the source of Russian oligarchs’ wealth, he added: ‘Since Putin came to power there’s been no such thing as the independently wealthy Russian in Russia. Somebody who got wealthy in Russia and maintained their wealth in the Putin regime is somebody who you should terminate business relations with because if they do get sanctioned it’s an absolute nightmare looking after somebody who’s been sanctioned.’
More broadly he hailed the worldwide success of the US asset-freezing Magnitsky Act – which was named after his own tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 without facing trial – part of the package of measures used by the West to curtail Putin’s regime and its supporters. ‘The person who wants to convince us that sanctions aren’t working more than anybody is Vladimir Putin,’ declared Browder. ‘I can tell you they’re absolutely apoplectic about these sanctions. Putin made it his single largest foreign policy priority to repeal the Magnitsky Act.’
Calling for further resolve against Russia, Browder added: ‘This is the time when we have to have a more muscular foreign policy when a country is doing such a terrible thing as invading another country in Europe – and it’s just starting to happen. All countries that have any thought in their mind about invading their neighbour should look at the pain that Russia’s suffering from and come to the conclusion that it’s probably not worth it.’
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Explaining to the audience how he ‘fell victim to the Russian government long before anyone else did’ Browder said: ‘I got an opportunity to see up close, personal – Putin’s a murderer and a thief and a very bad man.’ Back then, Browder said he tried to explain to governments in Britain, the US and the European Union that we needed to have a tougher policy towards Russia, but ‘nobody wanted to hear a word of it’. ‘There was too much money sloshing around,’ he said. ‘Everybody was just cleaning up.’
Then came the Russian war in Georgia in 2008, the invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the Salisbury poisonings in 2018 – and still little happened, until the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
‘It must be very confusing for Russian oligarchs right now – and for Putin. He probably thought he could go into Ukraine and there would be no problems. He’s like, “Wait a second, I’ve done all this terrible stuff and there’s never been a problem before.” I think if we had been tough on Russia after Crimea, after Georgia, after a number of things, Putin might have had a different calculus but he thought there would be no problem.’
Finally, Browder issued a call to arms to Russians living in London and other countries around the world to join the campaign against Putin – or be counted.
Comparing Russia today to Nazi Germany, Browder said: ‘I do think that there are many Russians who are living in London who are really keeping their heads down, not saying anything and this is one of those moments that you have to say something. It’s like Germans during the Nazi reign. You should probably be anti-German, anti-Nazi during the Second World War. That was perfectly reasonable. Any Germans standing up against it – they were the good ones.’
Watch Bill Browder’s full interview with Edwin Smith
Held at The Savoy in central London, Spear’s 500 Live 2023 was sponsored by Archax, the Charities Aid Foundation, HCA Healthcare UK, Henley & Partners, St. James’s Place Private Clients, and Unica Capital.
