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GEOPOLITICS On the Edge Episode 6 PhilipIttner ... Sir Bill Browder & the Legacy of Sergei Magnitsky PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ3oWzjJsWY Peter Burgess COMMENTARY A knighthood for Bill Browder is well deserved. Obviously, I do not have anything like the high profile of Bill Browder, but I have brushed through the same general neighborhood. In the mid 1990s I was employed by KPMG to do 'consulting work' on government reform in the former Soviet Union ... specifically in Kazhakhstan. KPMG removed me from the assignment withoug much of an explanation and sent me to work on the other side of thw world in Barbados. It was a long time before I figured out what had actually happened in Kazhakhstan and way too late to do much about it. But every time I listen to Bill Browder I realize that my ignorance may well have saved my life! Peter Burgess
On the Edge Episode 6: Sir Bill Browder & the Legacy of Sergei Magnitsky PhilipIttner 16.9K subscribers ... 27,596 views ... 2K likes Premiered Jun 23, 2024 Transcript 0:00 and so what is a scared little crook dictator who stolen too much money do in order to prevent that from happening is simple Machiavelli 101 you find a foreign enemy and you start a war [Music] hello Our Guest this week on the edge is the head of Hermitage Capital Management Bill Browder recently knighted by his majesty King Charles III uh an event that took place after our discussion but something that uh we here at on the edge 0:57 wholeheartedly support so well done Bill he was given that award in no small part 1:04 because of his uh efforts to tackle autocracy and Corruption on a global 1:12 stage but it stems from Bill's time in Moscow in the 90s a period which we both 1:20 were eyewitness to um and it is also awarded to him mostly 1:28 uh for being a major irrit uh to Russian President Vladimir Putin 1:33 and his hilk um by holding them accountable for their crimes under a law 1:40 sadly named after Bill's slain Russian lawyer we discuss all of that and so 1:47 much more so grer uh it it is a pleasure to have you here we you are high on 1:54 Vladimir Putin's uh list of least favorite people in the world so uh we 2:00 take that as a great compliment and are happy to have you here uh but for those in my audience who may not know who Sergey magnitsky was could you briefly kind of outline uh who he was and uh what the ACT is that is named after him that you have championed so Sergey magnitsky was my lawyer in Russia um I was running an investment fund called The Hermitage fund uh I started complaining about corruption in the companies I invested 2:31 in uh in retaliation for that I was expelled from the country and declared a threat to National Security my offices 2:38 were raided by the police They seized a bunch of documents and I hired Sergey 2:43 who was a lawyer um to um investigate why they had confiscated these documents 2:49 and he discovered that the documents were used in a complex fraud in which $230 million of taxes that I had paid to 2:57 the Russian government was stolen from the Russian government by a bunch of crooked officials Sergey figured out who 3:04 did it how they did it and he testified against them and exposed their crime and retaliation for doing that they arrested him they tortured him for 358 days in pre-trial detention and they killed him on November 16th 2009 at the age of 37 and uh his his murder was the turning point in my life it was the most horrific trauma to to watch effectively my proxy being killed in front of me in 3:36 slow motion and I made a vow to his memory to his family and to myself that I was going to go after the people who 3:41 killed him and make sure they face Justice and the way I went about doing that was to go to different governments 3:48 and parliaments around the world and explain to them the Sergey magnit story and to say to them that um the one way 3:55 we can get Justice is to freeze the assets and ban the Visas of people who committed this crime and commit similar 4:01 types of crimes and that became known as the magnitsky ACT named after Sergey magnitsky my lawyer and um uh the biski Act was passed in in the United States in 2012 then in Canada then in the UK then in the European Union then in Australia in Iceland Norway Kosovo Montenegro and various other places now exists in 35 different countries and it's it's the um template which which is what was then used after Russia um invaded Ukraine to 4:32 sanction oligarchs and other officials and so one man's death Ser magnitsky's 4:38 death has led to a a huge policy which um in some respects is is one of the 4:45 most uh damning things for these uh Crooks these killers huge thorn in 4:51 Vladimir Putin's side and I want to get back to the kind of financial theology questions there's a lot to talk about 4:57 when it comes to that but I'll just take a moment here and and um and Mark uh the 5:04 sacrifice of Sergey magnitsky um but equally also to to Mark uh you know those who die in Russian prisons who are in essence political prisoners when we saw recently the death of Naval in a prison um you know Russian prisons are HID of themselves often times a a death sentence um you when you become a war of the state in Russia you know there's a lot of abuse that comes with it that vs the the very system of of a penal colony 5:38 um so we we we Mark the tragedy of losing s and and Alexander and so many 5:45 many countless others but of course obviously keeping in mind those who are currently in prison friends of yours I 5:50 believe such as Vladimir ter teramura uh or um or Yashin uh so something 6:00 obviously to keep in mind uh moving forward however let's talk about this hypocrisy that existed in the 90s you and I were both in Moscow in the 90s um a lot was happening there uh it did seem like the wild wild East there was a lot of kind of chaos and and Corruption and uh there were accusations of like carpet bagging by the West coming in grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down but then also Russian oligarchs did we mess 6:29 up the '90s is there any responsibility on our side during the 9s to that 6:34 eventually brought about Putin because Putin you know was this guy who came K 6:40 and said he was going to cry heads of you know the foreigners and the oligarchs and the corruption uh did we 6:45 miss a step there well if you were to speak to Putin he would say it's all our fault and he 6:53 he has he has no responsibility for anything I mean let's face it I mean um 6:59 uh the Russians did what the Russians wanted to do and uh we might have you 7:04 know there might have been some professors funded by the US government that went in and gave advice to the Russians on their privatization program or or the IMF was going in and telling the Russian Central Bank what to do but at the end of the day these people are not like imbeciles and children they're they're highly sophisticated individuals who specifically wanted to steal as much as they possibly could um in a in a moment of chaos and they set up rules and processes in order to do that and yeah we could have done a lot of stuff differently but to like for for anyone to say that we we're the ones 7:40 responsible it takes it makes it makes them like babies of course they're not babies these people our proper grown-up 7:47 Mafia Crooks who had a very specific agenda which was to become unimaginably 7:53 rich and they wanted to figure out how to do that and if it helped to have a a a Harvard professor 7:59 say you should privatize things this way they would do that but but they take it's their responsibility what they did 8:06 and and and yes what happened in the 1990s is what set up Vladimir Putin by by basically allowing 22 oligarchs to steal 40% of the GDP of Russia from the Russian people so that they could live in in Villas and mansions and private fine private jets and Yachts and have the rest of the people living in abject poverty that that was a terrible terrible thing but who who was responsible for that Boris yelson was responsible for that the oligarchs were responsible for that there was a whole sort of you know conspiracy within 8:39 within Russia to make that happen and of course you know if some useful idiots from the West could help you know uh put 8:46 a stamp of approval on that all the better but they were going to do it one way or another and and and yes that it 8:51 that that that unfairness that privatization program that all the the um oligarchs stealing from everybody 8:58 that is what set up Vladimir Putin and then we all know what Vladimir Putin did when he was set 9:04 up yeah and and it's worth mentioning I think that while the Russians made a kind of tcid agreement with Vladimir Putin just bring us stability stop the chaos will'll Overlook all the infring infringement on our civil liberties and all the rest of it as long as you bring a stability and a restoration of our Global status you know here in Ukraine where that system was was also that cracy was also being built ukrainians took a very different view in our kind of humus I think this is my opinion 9:37 something I've said for many many years we thought that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and and the victory in 9:43 the cold war that it would be our system that went East our democracy our our our 9:49 our our system of of capitalism what sadly actually in my opinion again H 9:55 seems to have happened is that their corruption like a virus went West and we 10:01 see it throughout Western capitals whether it's Paris or New York notably a certain former president who who associated with a lot of these uh ktic clats from Russia and the bmer Soviet Union and then of course in in London which is of kind of referred to as London grad you go down this nightsbridge or in Kensington and you hear Russian and you you see the Russian Mistresses with their you know Gucci dags did we under estimate you know the the the kind of 10:33 possibility that that this Russian corruption um would would find root in 10:39 our systems and how damaging has it been well I I I think that we didn't underestimate we didn't estimate it all 10:46 um you know the Russians were just busy looking 10:51 for any we hands and anybody who was you know that they would go around unashamedly trying to bribe everybody 10:58 and like you know they they'd approach 10 politicians and maybe one of them would say yes and then they got one politician on the payroll and all of a 11:05 sudden if that person you know wants to say actually you know I'm not really interested in doing this they say well you know we're going to kill you if you don't and uh and so you've got a bunch of idiots um you know who who sold themselves out to the Russians and and here they are now you know um all working for the Russians and so it's been a big problem and and of course also you have all these concierges and and money managers and lawyers and PR Specialists and all these people who who all for very small price were ready to sell their souls to the Russians and 11:37 they became what I call the enablers and um and as you mentioned one of the big 11:42 exports that Russia has other than oil and gas is corruption and in order to export it you need to import it and um 11:49 there were all these people working on importing it in London and New York and Geneva and all these other places and 11:54 and and I I would argue that that the reason for all All the Troubles that 12:00 Ukraine is facing right now comes back to this now I estimate that a trillion dollars was stolen from the Russian people between year 2000 and 2022 which is when the war started and Putin was in this position where he and about a thousand people around him understood that they were going to get hung from the lamposts by the people at some point for stealing all this money 12:24 because everybody was living in in this terrible misery while such a small number of people were enjoying the 12:30 benefits of all this money which is should have been spent on hospitals and schools and Roads and so on inste was 12:37 spent on all this luxury for these small number of people and so Putin was absolutely scared that one day they're 12:44 going to come for him and and when he loses power he doesn't just lose power he U loses his money he goes to jail and 12:51 he dies and so what is a scared little crook dictator who stolen too much money 13:00 do in order to prevent that from happening is simple maavi 101 you find a foreign enemy and you start a war and you distract people from you to a foreign enemy I don't think that the uh war in Ukraine Putin's murder in Ukraine has anything to do with NATO it has nothing to do with Russian imperialism this is these are all the of course the uh it's simply a guy who's stolen too 13:25 much money who's a little man who's scared to death scared of dying liter Lally scared of dying who's will do 13:31 anything um to prevent that from happening and the best thing to do is to start a war and to continue that war and 13:38 that's and I mean it makes there's there's no other explanation for the sacrifice that Putin is making um uh in 13:45 this in in Ukraine um than than his just desperate desire to stay in power and 13:50 for what it's worth all of the um the people the people who really understand Russia in Russia Alexi nalni Mel 13:56 horovsky Gary Kasparov myself we all say the same thing this is why he's doing this it's not it's not because of any 14:02 other reason and and and so you have these political scientists working in governments around the world trying to set policy about what to do about this War and what to do about Russia and they all think that there's some kind of deal that can be done and there's a deal that can be done because Putin is not going to do a deal because he wants this war to go on this war helps him this war keeps people from getting rid of him and so the only way that this thing can end and the only thing that can happen is if ukrainians beat back the Russians at that point the Russians will take care of Putin him himself themselves instead 14:34 of uh I mean that's the only way this thing is going to come to an end and and unfortunately that's not the position 14:40 that the Western governments are taking at the moment no it isn't and and you're you're 14:46 100% right uh with the additional uh factor of of you know I I do think there 14:53 is some imperialism because you know this is this is the restoration of this kind of greatness of Russia and this is 14:59 the contract in in part that Putin has made with the the Russian people and it's collapsing on him um but you know 15:07 this is one of the things that for example nval and Medusa were so good about exposing uh the fact that you know the reason you don't have good roads or now with the war obviously the reason why you know so many soldiers are dying and all the rest of it it'll all be worth it because we'll have this Grand new Empire and restoration of our of our 15:26 status on on the global stage um but uh you know it's it's not just the 15:33 corruption internally within Russia it's not just the the the his cohorts that he's found fertile ground for spreading 15:40 that corruption in the west it's not just Financial corruption we do see also them supporting like extreme rightwing 15:47 movements um uh in the West in in in an effort to destabilize things using their 15:55 money often times so uh talk to me a little bit about the corrosive influence of Russian uh finances and money well 16:03 I'll tell you a funny little story um there was an election um going on in um uh Madagascar uh a tiny little country okay island country off the coast of Africa and um uh you're going to wonder why I'm talking about this but you'll see in a second there's this election going on this is like five or six years ago and um uh there there's a um a a group 16:29 called The dossier group um which is part of hov's operation which does which 16:34 basically collects information from leaked emails from of Russian government 16:40 officials and the dossier group discovered that there was all these leaked emails of the guy who was trying 16:46 to manage the interference in the Madagascar election and in Madagascar election there was like I think there 16:52 were seven candidates and the Russians bribed all seven of them and it wasn't even a lot of money I can't remember it 16:58 was like $1,000 bucks each or something like that because they didn't know who was going to win but they they like placed their bets everywhere so so no 17:04 matter what um whoever won was going to be beholden to Russia and and what what the Russians are very good at is just finding you know the weak link and oftentimes the weak links everywhere and um uh and that's what they do with with all of these um you know these farri groups um you know they've discovered that the uh uh the afd in Germany the farri group which has uh uh which has 17:31 gotten gotten much support recently they were taking money from the Russians um 17:36 Marine Leen the French far-right candidate she I mean there there was not even she wasn't even ashamed of it she 17:43 was she was um took a huge loan from a Czech bank owned by Russians um and on 17:48 and on and on and so and and the Russians Donald Trump I there's too many 17:55 Russians in that sphere there I mean they're out there messing around with 18:01 our body politics in the L but but here's the thing is that it's much cheaper to spend like you know 70,000 bucks on seven different candidates in Madagascar than to send in like the you know the Black Sea Fleet to you know it it cost you almost nothing to do these operations I mean it's just di minimis and it has unbelievable influence and far less risky far less risky and you you don't end up losing a war which in 18:26 Russian history usually means you know the a shift in the Kremlin yeah no 100% 18:32 I I agree and and so they and they also end up you know corroding the support for 18:38 Ukraine by European countries and and potentially if Donald Trump gets elected by the United 18:45 States yeah yeah God forbid um let's let's talk a little bit about uh an 18:51 issue that is part of the war effort here in Ukraine and there are widespread calls uh the assets that have been 18:59 seized not least of which under the magnitsky ACT there's discussion of using those seized assets and 19:07 transferring them here to Ukraine uh to support either in the war effort or in um in um you know compensation uh I know that you have been you know outspoken in this issue but I I'd like to what are the risks the potential risks and the potential rewards uh for doing a pretty precedented Act of of taking all those seized assets and and redistributing them well the first thing I would say 19:35 it's not unprecedented after um after the um after Iraq invaded Kuwait um uh 19:42 the the United States confiscated the Iraqi Central Bank Reserves after um 19:48 after the end of the second world war German government reserves were were confiscated the only thing that's um new 19:55 about this particular proposal is that we're talking about doing it before the war and um that's the only thing unique about it 20:01 and so you've got a bunch of what I call chicken littles um that say that oh my God if we do this the sky is going to fall it's going to be the most terrible thing in the world the world is going to never be like the same again and and that's complete nonsense um the argument is that somehow um nobody's going to want to keep their money in Euros or dollars after this whole thing uh happens because oh God forbid the these 20:25 um these countries confiscated Putin's Central Bank Reserves well um that's 20:32 just nonsense first of all the only reason why your reserves would ever be confiscated is if you start a war of 20:37 aggression against a neighboring country and do a trillion dollars of damage that's a pretty small subset of all the 20:43 the the reserves that are around the world and and secondly it's not as if anyone has any options if you have money 20:50 that you've generated from exports which is China and and Saudi Arabia and all these countries it's not like you can 20:57 keep that money in Iranian RS and Argentine pesos those are you know crazy 21:02 economic Basket Case places you want to keep your money in in like stable economies um in rule of law economies and rule of law is you don't go invading your neighbors otherwise your money gets confiscated um and so it's just a complete nonsense mostly spread by Putin and and his cronies about this world coming to an end if we do this it's just utter utter foolishness to say that and there is one consequence which which is not an unexpected consequence it's an expected consequence which is that if China who 21:35 has more Central Bank Reserves um than Russia in the west sees this happening 21:41 you know maybe they won't invade Taiwan it wouldn't that be a good thing yeah and a costs saer ultimately in as 21:49 well I can tell you from being here in Ukraine the scale of damage and suffering that I have seen uh is is 21:57 absolutely 100% worthy of of um really serious compensation so I for one am all 22:04 for it um let's move on to the question of sanctions um you know very severe sanction programs have been set up since the fullscale invasion um there are massive GS and problems with the sanction program and and I think it ties into this issue you drawn up with the seizure of of assets and this kind of like oh the sky is falling be afraid of the big bad bear there seems to be a sanctions issue 22:34 where it's like people are still willing to kind of you know grease their palms where they can um uh what what what do 22:43 you think of the sanctions program where it's been successful and where it has not and and and maybe you know how can 22:49 we make it better well so um first of all this is another one of these sort of 22:54 misunderstandings so Putin is the main um communic Ator of this of this theme 23:01 that sanctions aren't working he's saying look uh we're we're just doing so well sanctions are not hurting us at all we're just all good and by the way they're hurting you so why do you even bother with it why don't you just like stop it you're hurt just you're just hurting yourself we're fine that's his that's his pitch um the answer is that he's not fine he's getting pummeled in ways that are were unimaginable to him he as as we all know $300 billion of central Russian Central Bank Reserves are frozen oligarch hundreds of billions of dollars of oligarch money is Frozen uh all the Russian companies and Banks and government agencies are banned from borrowing money in the international 23:40 Capital markets companies have left million able-bodied Russian uh men have left um 23:48 it's a mess it's a mess over there and so to say that sanctions aren't working is just not not correct however you're 23:55 you're not wrong all you have to do all all you have to do is look at gas bra operating in in the red which you know 24:01 would have been insane just a few years ago and because it's a pillar of their economy but I I I'll grant you that it's kind of a Putin narrative but there are criticisms to be had about sanctions you're not wrong I mean they're not wrong that that Russia still functions okay so Russia is still at war with Ukraine it can still afford to buy missiles and bombs and all sorts of 24:24 other nastiness to kill ukrainians and and and and the reason for that is for 24:31 one one simple reason which is that the one huge um commodity that Russia 24:37 continues to enjoy the full economic benefits of is oil they're one of the 24:42 largest oil exporters in the world they're responsible for about 10% of the world's oil supply and up until now 24:50 we've said you know what um we're so scared of jacking up the price of oil by touching Russian oil supplies because of 24:57 inflation and we don't want inflation in our countries that we're going to let them export their oil and so as a result 25:02 of that Russia is making between half a billion and a billion dollars a day on oil exports and then they're spending that money on North Korean artillery and Iranian drones and and all sorts of other nastiness and so here we are in the west giving Russia the money to kill ukrainians and then giving ukrainians some money to fight back and we're all saying but we're getting impatient I mean the easy way to solve this problem is to bite the bullet and figure 25:32 out a way to get other oil producing countries to increase the oil output and then do a total embargo on Russian oil 25:39 if we did that which would be hard to do and it's kind of I I there's a lot of things I can imagine I can't really 25:44 imagine that happening but if we did um Putin would be out of business in nine 25:50 months yeah no well you know and 25:56 um they just had the St Petersburg economic Forum uh and during that Forum 26:03 uh they were making big claims about bricks and how this will be a counterbalance to uh Western economic unions and things of this nature and that you know then bricks will expand and things like that you know not not withstanding the fundal idea to which currency are you going to Peg a bricks currency I can't see Russian accepting pegging the ruble to the rupee or you know a Chinese guy 26:34 accepting pegging the the you know y to the uh the South African rand um but 26:41 putting that aside what you know is is the bricks uh a way out for them to find 26:46 a solution I mean they certainly were saying it would expand and become this massive counterbalance what's your take 26:52 on the possibility bricks find saved them if we look at who the buyers of Russian oil are it's um China India and 26:59 turkey those are the three countries that are the major buyers of Russian crude oil at the moment so you know it's 27:05 from that perspective um those three countries turkeyy not in the bricks but those those three countries are providing Russia you know a way to sort of knuckle through this economic crisis that they're having because of everything because of the sanctions and all the other the other stuff but this whole idea of bricks is is um is just a complete utter nonsense it's a it's just a it's a it's was a marketing term in invented in Goldman Sachs in order to sell funds bricks funds Brazil Russia 27:37 India and China funds back in the um back in the day when people were interested in those countries and I was 27:42 even a I even uh managed or advised HSBC on their bricks fund back in the day 27:49 when I was in Moscow and I you know happy for this marketing term but these countries have almost nothing to do with 27:55 one another I mean you know India and China are kind of enemies with one another really I mean they even have like military conflicts over their 28:02 borders and and uh and so we look at you know so the only and and of all these countries the only one that's got like a good economy right now is India so China is going through all sorts of uh contortions trying to deal with all their economic problems um Brazil is is got inflation you know all all over the place Russia's nothing good happening there and South Africa is an economic basket case and so I don't think that there's any great you know Savior for the world of this bricks and as you mentioned what currency are they going 28:32 to settle their trades in there's this there was this great story about how India was buying all this Russian oil and they were afraid of us sanctions and 28:39 so they told the Russians we can only pay you in rupees and so Russians started to accumulate all these rupees 28:44 and they said we don't want to sell you any more oil because what are we going to do with these rupees there's nothing to we you know we've already bought as much tea as we can handle there's 28:51 nothing else that we want to buy from you guys and and um and that's the problem is that these are not 28:56 convertible currencies they're not uh they're not currencies of trade they're not stable currencies and so 29:02 it's completely and and so what are they going to do all team up together and like join join their currencies together into currency Union I don't think so no one's going to want to do that and so this is just again Bluster it's like Putin saying sanctions aren't working bricks are not going to be the Savior for Russia now of course China's going to sell stuff to Russia and buy Russian oil but that's not going to save Russia Russia's is uh uh Russia is in very 29:28 economically desperate situation well I we're going to start to 29:35 wrap it up here but just to follow up on that I mean what is your I am not an economist I I don't claim to be one um 29:44 but what is your prognosis for the future of Russia's economy um you know 29:51 in the next year two years or so well I think that it's going to keep on bumbling along um you know as long as 29:58 oil prices stay at these levels they generate revenues and for all the uh 30:05 stuff that was sort of shut down or or um divested from the Russian economy um they filled it in with the production of weapons and you know tanks and and jeeps and and planes and so on and so um they have what what's called a wartime economy which is funded by oil and then um spent in domestically on on all this wartime stuff and and that's going to be the the the next two years the next five years probably of of Russia is a wartime economy funded by oil yeah and it seems 30:40 far greater minds than I to understand this are saying to me that it's almost like the economy is on a bit of a sugar 30:46 high uh you know because critics of the West say well look Russia's economy has 30:52 survived all that the West is thrown it at and yet it is still you know continuing and it others will say don't 30:59 know this is because of this massive influx of money from the state coffers to keep the war effort going but that 31:05 can only last for so long before you know the oil runs out and the Machinery starts to grind uh what's your take on on this kind of military-industrial economy well it it works as long as they can fund it but the funding it where do they how do they fund it they they don't have any more reserves the reserves they've run down they have a budget deficit um uh in other words the government doesn't collect taxes in the same proportion as they're spending the money um and so they need they need you know cash Cold Hard Cash which at the 31:37 moment they get from oil um you know if we were able to like you know we don't have to fully embargo the oil but maybe 31:44 we we just somehow you know make it so unprofitable for people to buy Russian oil that that so few people want to do 31:50 it that the price goes down 50% these are things we could do and if we did that they would be in in deep trouble 31:57 but as long as there's oil and as long as they're spending it on arms and as long as that's going on then you know 32:03 it's sort of filling in for for where the regular economy was I mean if literally 40% of the government budget in Russia is spent on defense now or offense I should say not defense not defending anything they're offending um and um that's yeah that's not what happens in most countries yeah it's uh it's it's distressing to say the least um 32:31 that that so much like our kind of war effort support the economic support and 32:37 the things that we say you know we we intend to do to to um to punish uh 32:44 Russia for this illegal War there also seems to be some reluctant reluctance to 32:49 really tackle the issue and I don't know where that comes from in the west where there's kind of fear of the big bad bear 32:56 or also you know benefiting from the lucrative oil trade that they but either 33:01 way the West still doesn't I think have come to the conclusion that this is a real existential threat for both sides of the the equation you having spent enough time in Russia and studying Russia certainly know this fored they're not going to stop um this is this is a almost like a win or take call I don't want to categorize it like that but we we got to get our act together I I are you as frustrated as I am sometimes with kind of Western I don't want to say in action because obviously we're doing a lot but boy we 33:31 could do be doing this better in a lot of different ways militarily and economically well I'm probably seven 33:38 times more frustrated you know I've been going around the world trying to explain how Vladimir Putin is a a mafia murderer 33:46 um who needs to be stopped and contained and and I've been saying this for a long time to a lot of people and and um uh 33:53 for the most part people didn't listen to me and and this is the war as a result 33:58 yeah no I mean even I was in Moscow during the the apartment bombings I knew this guy was bad news from the very very 34:04 start and we if we didn't hold responsibility for his rise to power I do have some criticism for the West in the terms of like oh this is a guy we can work with no he's not a guy we can work with and we should have known that from the get-go from his rise to power uh with the blood of his own people that should have been you know that should have sent to large but because you know it was expedient for to try and work 34:28 with him so I'm with you there we should have been doing more um as we again uh 34:34 head towards conclusion here um you and I were both in Moscow in the 90s you and 34:39 I both St off the kind of Chaos in the 90s Vladimir Putin in his rise to power 34:46 aside from the fact of the cruelty and the blood upon which he rose to power he also did it with an implicit contract 34:52 with the people of Russia and that is I will go I will take away the chaos of yelton I will restore us as a great 34:59 Global power I will do this I will do that just turn a blind eye to our 35:04 corruption just don't worry about the Civil Rights infringements um that's the tacet agreement that we make we now see Russia as a pariah we see the economy falling apart uh you know uh infrastructure falling apart uh we see their soldiers uh going to their death this is a betrayal of the contract with the Russian people that that was made in the 990s uh and gave him power how much 35:32 time has Vladimir Putin got do you think well you're you're absolutely right that um you know it used to be he had a 35:38 carrot and a stick the carrot was economics and the stick was oppression now all he has is a stick and um and so 35:46 that's a that's a tenuous brittle place to be um but as as long as he's using 35:52 the stick uh effectively which he has so far been using you know anytime someone stands up against him they you know 35:58 their plane gets blown up or they get sent off to jail for 25 years um uh you 36:05 know that that that sends a very powerful message the message is that you know there's no and Alexi Nali was killed in prison you know there there's no you know there there doesn't seem to be any upside to standing up against him and so at the moment nobody is until the moment that they do and we don't know when that moment will be so Putin could be you know two weeks away from from from being overthrown or he could be never overthrown and everything in between I mean look at the um North Korea situation you now have like three generations of the same family oppressing their country but you can 36:39 also look at at yanukovich and Ukraine and and uh you know he got run out of town very quickly and same thing with 36:46 many other dictators many other countries I I I don't have a prediction and nor does Putin have a prediction 36:51 he's sitting there watching you know reruns of the um of uh Gaddafi being you 36:57 know uh beded in a in a sewer pipe and thinking you know he doesn't want that 37:03 to happen to him and so uh you know that that's kind of you know we're all sitting there he's sitting there nobody knows how long it's going to last and he's desperate to make sure it lasts a very long time and will do a lot of very terrible things including sending hundreds of thousands of young men to their death um in Ukraine just to stay in power well there somebody who's on the ground here in Ukraine and is often 37:28 times Under Fire from Russian missiles or you know living with friends and 37:34 loved ones here on the ground who are truly truly suffering uh from this illegal and aggressive War I'm all for 37:42 it the sooner we can get rid of Vladimir Putin in my mind the better so Bill 37:48 Browder what can the West do to hasten his demise well there there's two things we 37:55 can do we can provide the lally I figur we can provide the weapons the West can provide the weapons that ukrainians have 38:02 been begging for to to finish off the job and we can give them the Financial Resources by confiscating Russian Central Bank Reserves so that they have the money to fight off the Russians and those are the two things we can do ukrainians are the ones fighting at the front line they're the ones spilling blood um but we should be doing everything in our power financially with weapons and with money so that that they achieve the objective so in the West we don't have to be suffering the same tragedy that Ukraine is suffering from right now Putin's not stopping with Kiev no he is not in one way shape or form he is a threat to the globe Bill Roger thank you for your time very much uh this week here on on the edge and thank you for being a great supporter for Ukraine I can tell you uh firsthand that people appreciate your efforts and uh and so thank you for for supporting Ukraine thank you 39:01 [Music]

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