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RUSSIA PUTIN IS DANGEROUS ... HE HAS NO 'OFF-RAMP!' Byline TV: 'Petrified Putin' could 'be killed at any moment ' \| Bill Browder PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f9kQocrdiQ Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
'Petrified Putin' could 'be killed at any moment ' \| Bill Browder Byline TV 122K subscribers ... 210,461 views ... 8.2K likes Premiered Sep 14, 2024 Independent media can't exist without your support. Help us keep telling the stories that matter and holding power to account by becoming a member and pledging from as little as £1 per month at https://byline.tv/join Bill Browder on Putin To follow us on Twitter, its / bylinetv On Facebook its / bylinetv Transcript 0:00 um Putin is the worst and Putin has has done everything possible up to but not um starting a nuclear war um nothing could be worth um I can say that definitively um having having said that if Putin were to die in his sleep tonight um there's so much economic interest there's a trillion dollars of money that's been stolen from Russia that belongs to the Thousand Putin and the thousand people around him Putin started this war for one very simple and important reason which is that he had stolen too much money from the Russian people and if um uh time were to sort of take time and events were to take their course then the Russian people would eventually unth him to kick him out of his position and in in that circumstance um he would lose all his money he would go to jail and he would probably die um good things don't happen to former dictators in that part of the 1:03 world so he needs to be at war in order um to survive physically survive so I remember us talking probably a year or two ago and you predicted rightly this would be a long war against Ukraine you saw that pu life depended on it he'd Stak everything on this kind of uh Victory and that he would not back down so before we get to the largest strategic implication of that particularly on the Russian economy and the war in Ukraine I'm just wondering what you made of the latest indictments there were two indictments and also a a set of sanctions against um RT employees who were funding to the 10 tune of1 million uh super spreader influences in the US and also this doppelganger Network directly supporting the social design agency directing directly reporting to the president now you've written two books you've been targ of disinformation and even arrested under 2:02 that red notice do you see an evolution of the techniques of the Kremlin since let's say 2016 and EV pran's famous troll Farm um I I think that that first and foremost um we should sort of go back to the basics um Putin started this war for one very simple and important reason which is that he had stolen too much money from the Russian people and if um uh time were to sort of take time and events were to take their course then the Russian people would eventually unth him to kick him out of his position and in in that circumstance um he would lose all his money he would go to jail and he would probably die um good things don't happen to former dictators in that part of the world and Putin who is not a stupid man understood very clearly 3:00 that in order for him to stay alive he needed to stay in power now how do you stay in power when you basically have robbed all the resources of your country from your people and kept them for yourself and about a thousand people around you and the answer is you create a foreign enemy you you redirect people's angers anger away from you towards that foreign enemy and you start a war and Putin has a history of starting Wars when his popularity is flagging in fact he became the president of Russia by starting a war in Chia in 2008 he started a war in Georgia in his popularity which was flagging Rose in 2014 he started the war by taking Crimea and of course in 2022 he started this full-scale Invasion so he needs to be at war in order um to survive physically survive so then you 4:04 have to say to yourself well this war hasn't gone as well as he was hoping he thought that this war would be a three-day War it's now two and a half years in 600,000 dead Russian soldiers hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to his economy hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to the Ukraine economy $300 billion dollar of Russian reserves Frozen it's total um physical and economic disaster for him and so um uh one one way one possible way for him to end this war is to find um is to basically get the United States to stop funding Ukraine well how does he do that um there are two candidates for the presidential election in November um one candidate camela Harris will be a status quo candidate as far as Ukraine goes and will continue f Ukraine and the second 5:01 candidate Donald Trump is a candidate who has indicated that he would cut off economic support for Ukraine and Military Support for Ukraine well guess what that's the preferred candidate for Vladimir Putin um so he he could either spend hundreds of billions of dollars more to um uh uh have in destruction and military spending or he could spend tens of millions of dollars in supporting Donald Trump and so guess what that's exactly what he did and um the the the tip of the iceberg has been exposed which is this $10 million payment um to a firm in Tennessee that was supporting all sorts of of um pro-russia anti- Ukraine right-wing U magga uh uh positions um and that's the tip of the iceberg and surely there's more but what you need to understand is that this whole information War that's being conducted is much much much cheaper than the um physical war and so of course 6:05 he's going to spend money doing it and so coming back to your question how does this vary or or look relative to 2016 well I think it was proven in 2016 that um uh that the the Russians that Putin supported Donald Trump and and did so with all sorts of of uh Facebook and Twitter and other types of things um that was run by pran in his troll factories in St Petersburg and now we're in a much more precarious situation as far as Putin is concerned and he's spending much much more and he has the um total support of one of the social media platforms which is Twitter um or now known as X and then he has the support of of various um underlings of Donald Trump and he's got the support of Donald Trump and and by sort of mixing and matching and and amplifying all this type of stuff Putin is hoping that 7:03 somewhere in this process um he can pick up an extra 40 to 80,000 uh voters for Trump in a few narrow swing States and then he'll get what he wants which is a cut off of funding for Ukraine and the bonus that Trump has also said that he is not too happy about being involved in NATO which is another one of Putin's total fantasies is to is to have NATO disintegrate and so there's a held a lot at stake here this indictment is very important um and the situation is very grave Bill what a Brant analysis we might just point out that a couple of days ago Vladimir Putin said he was supporting KLA Harris this is very much in the KGB Lon is of distract divert and all the Russian commentators on Russian TV are just laughing at this now just going back briefly to 2016 because a lot of these influences some of them now proved to be paid by the Kremlin was saying Russia gate was a hoax the Müller 8:03 in quiry was a hoax we know don't we that while Robert Müller could not prove collusion that that was the major basis of the investigation that Trump had knowingly incited and used Russian information operations there's no doubt they happened there was 50 million spent on Pan's troll Farm they named the Facebook sites they named the operatives so but have we been sleeping for the last what is it now yeah five sorry seven years or do you think this proves in little details you can see in the indictments for example with tenet they've been looking at RT and their influencing and funding for two years um there was talk in the other indictment the doppelganger indictment of 2,800 influences they were seeking to approach or use that actually across the Atlantic we see in France the arrest of the founder of telegram the security services law enforcement is much more 9:00 advanced and looking at this threat in a way it wasn't in 201617 well I I think that that um uh Russia has advanced ITS Technologies since 2016 and the West has advanced its reactions to those Technologies since 2016 I mean the fact that that um here we are um in September um before the election and we're not asleep at the wheel the Department of Justice Just indicted a number of individuals and by the way this is not to mention they um they've also indicted Demitri simes who is a uh uh a a former adviser to Rand Paul who um for for um uh who is taking money and violating sanctions Etc according to their indictment um uh there there is all sorts of um stuff going on um in the Department of Justice in the National Security community in various places in France going after Pavo durov uh you know the the way we have to think about this is that um you 10:06 know Twitter and Facebook and all these other things are not allowed to be um operable in Russia he doesn't allow them as as and the Chinese don't and the Iranians don't all the bad guys have cut this stuff out we have open societies we're allowing these these um uh organizations to flourish and Russia and China and Iran are taking advantage of them and for anyone who's like flapping about saying oh this is a violation of free speech they need to understand that National Security trumps Free Speech when it comes to this type of thing we can't allow Putin to become uh leader of the world and um and destroying all of our security um in in some some fantasy that that um it should be okay for Elon Musk to allow um Putin operated um uh Bots to infect um the voter uh consciousness of people in in Wisconsin that's just it's paradoxical it's bit 11:02 like Maria boua and the NRA pushing for more people to have guns in the US where nobody individuals allowed to have them in Russia and just worth pointing out about Elon Musk he talks about Free Speech but he is willingly cooperated with authoritarian governments including Saudi Arabia by handing over data people have been executed okay so you've talked very eloquently about this escalating hybrid Warfare this non- kinetic information Warfare and it's you know it's escalating as you as you say so but what you describe about Putin his moves to protect himself from prison and death they are escalating too and they're not succeeding are they I mean you you rightly predicted this war would go on for years but what are the signs of the Russian economy that with taxes raising with the sanctions not completely sealed there are many people who bypass the sanctions that the war is beginning to to cost him there are bombings you know 12:01 KK parts of the Kirk of Blas have been taken over there are drones arriving in Moscow no doubt the conscription and the mobilization will affect the children of the middle classes and the elite what do you see of the trajectory within Russia a place you know well um with Putin's strategy of [Music] escalation what what you need to understand is that is not going as well as Putin the economy is not going as well as Putin wants us to believe he he wants us to believe everything is fine all good sanctions aren't working why bother with sanctions they're hurting you um therefore we should all just um you know get back to normal that's his pitch to us sanctions are causing him incredible pain $300 billion of Central Bank Reserves have been frozen Russia can't borrow anywhere in the international Capital markets um 600,000 able-bodied young men are dead another million have fled the country um to avoid being one of those dead people um 13:04 a thousand Western companies have pulled out uh en an enormous amount of of Western technology is unavailable and therefore planes can no longer fly and and factories can no longer operate it's a total mess over there and so for anyone to say oh it's all going fine it might be going fine in the center of Moscow but I promise you it's not going fine overall and so the the Russian people are are not um you know feeling pretty they're not feeling all that great about it and and of course the the part of ksk region of Russia has now been occupied by the ukrainians um oil refineries are blowing up they're they're rationing gasoline in Russia it's it's really ugly now Putin's original promise to the Russian people was that the chaos of the pretin era was going to be eliminated um in exchange you you you get better Eon a better economic future just don't don't put your know into politics and for a long 14:01 time people said yeah I don't care about politics as long as I can like buy a car next year and go on a trip to Turkey or whatever it is they wanted to do but now everybody is is hurting economically um they're they're um uh hurting in all sorts of different ways and Putin um doesn't have that thing to offer them and so as time goes on all he can do is just seem like more and more of a strongman repress more and more in all sorts of ways now now if you if you're in Russia and you even mutter the word War instead of calling it a special military operation which is somehow his spin that it's not you know a war um you go to jail for eight years I mean um my friend Vladimir camura who thankfully was just um released in the prisoner swap on August 1st he he had criticized Putin and was sentenced to 25 years in jail that shows a man who's scared to death of his own people and what that shows is that as time goes on as the situation gets worse for Russia um uh 15:00 Putin has to repress more and more he no longer has the carrot all he has is the stick and the more he represses the more likely it is that that something breaks that something blows you know it's like a pressure cooker you need to somehow release the pressure but um there's no way to release the pressure because the release of the pressure is better economics and he can't offer that to people and so he's in a situation where the pressure gets greater and greater and one of two things can happen it can blow or it could carry on and I would I would argue that that the probability is it probably carries on because we've seen multiple generations of the Kims in in uh in in North Korea we saw Mubarak for 35 years it's more likely than not that a repressive dictator somehow stays in control of it but that doesn't mean that it's a 0% probability that the whole thing blows because nobody can predict it you know so Mubarak was dictator in Egypt for 35 years then one day it all blew um and the same thing 16:03 with Gaddafi and the same thing with um uh yanukovich in Ukraine and I mean and so you know for for every dictator that's lasted multi- decades there's also dictators where the whole thing blows Nobody Knows the probability Putin doesn't know the one thing I will predict is that as time goes on he's just in in order for him to stay in power and stay alive the repressions in Russia are going to get worse and worse because that's all he has has left and you're also going to see um that they're going to have to draft uh have a general conscription of young men in order to replenish the troops that are getting killed a thousand a day on the front line and so as time goes on it it Anything could happen and and that that is the um that that that is our hope is that anything will happen in a way that that um where Putin is not the winner um but what Putin is hoping and banking on is that he can Outlast us that he can wait that that he in November with Trump um that that um Germany the afd comes 17:04 into power that in France Marine Leen comes into power and somehow um you know with all of all of the budget problems everyone's having in the west that we somehow just can't afford to carry on and so it's it's um it's really a battle of wills Battle of time um Putin is bearing a hundred times more pain than we are um but he but he doesn't care about the pain because it's not it's not actually pain for him it's pain for his people and he doesn't care about his people he doesn't care how many die how many all he wants to do is make sure that they don't rise up and and Dethrone him well it's always brilliant talking to you because your analysis both of the nature of the regime and Putin's personality so as stute just picking up those comparisons with Egypt mabarak and the Kim family in North Korea obviously um Putin has made bigger enemies of uh the West Key Partners in the EU and the US um he has friends in the global South of course but he has provoked more than I'd say those other regimes is there 18:03 something else that is a factor here I was in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago in Odessa and the front line in h and it's conf I haven't been back since the maidan revolution um you will he will not be able he can slowly kill them and destroy their cities he will never occupy the whole of Ukraine it would take him it's just an impossible time he'd have to kill everybody wouldn't he well I mean the the Soviet Union couldn't occupy Afghanistan um even if they had won the war in 3 days as Putin that was his fantasy they would have an Insurgency that would eventually lead to the whole thing coming undone anyways and so they're not going to get Ukraine he doesn't even want Ukraine all he wants is to be at War and and that's the big problem if he somehow were able to like you know quote get Ukraine and um uh and install a Russian friendly government that he need another War to carry on to keep him in power and that would probably be a war with with the baltics or with Poland or something like that and therefore you know it's it's 19:03 hugely in our interest in the west to prevent that because those countries are NATO allies and we either have a treaty obligation to then go to war directly with Russia or we abandon our treaty obligation and Putin takes over all of Eastern Europe either way this is a much better deal to have ukrainians fighting him off than us fighting him off I I want to get briefly towards the end back to the UK and the Russia report people always mentioned to me but before we do that um Putin isn't Immortal uh no matter how much Botox or plastic surgery he has uh and reportedly has some medical conditions what I'm often told you know by experts is well you know this is the Western strategy of containment don't escalate because Russia may fall apart and you get somebody worse with nukes I do you see any succession possibilities it's not like maybe meev but there don't seem to be anybody in the lineup to take over 20:01 his role should he retire or you know leave the Kremlin in a box what do you see the Su possibilities to replace Putin and would they be worse no um Putin is the worst and Putin has has done everything possible up to but not um starting a nuclear war um nothing could be worth um I can say that definitively um having having said that if Putin were to die in his sleep tonight um there's so much economic interest there's a trillion dollars of money that's been stolen from Russia that belongs to the Thousand Putin and the thousand people around him and and if if there was some kind of like uncontrolled change of of strategy um the new people would come in and want to take the money away from the old people and therefore the um there's a huge economic interest in all of the elite who has all the money right now getting together in the in a criminal conclave in the Kremlin and then deciding on a leader who would control the situation and create the status quo and then 21:04 eventually they decide on that person some black smoke would come out of the top of the Kremlin and they would denounce the new leader of Russia that's how it would probably work um it wouldn't be worse than Putin um it probably wouldn't be better than Putin the only way for leadership to change in Russia is if everybody in the current situation gets scared and if you remember when pran was marching towards Moscow um it was remarkable if you watched flight radar there were all these takeoffs of private jets from from Moscow and St Petersburg because um all the elite thought that you know they're going to get their head chopped off on red square and all their assets would be confiscated from their families and so they wanted to get out um and that's the way that it could happen but the only way that that's going to happen is if there is a total collapse of confidence in the Kremlin Putin system and that and the most likely that way that would happen is if the ukrainians could actually achieve a military victory in Ukraine where they where they push out Russian troops where it just becomes unsustainable for Russia and then people would Russia would say well why have we 22:05 suffered such a huge number of dead people and why have we suffered um so much economic hardship for this weak stupid leader we don't want him anymore and then all those guys would get on 22:17 their planes and then then who knows who would take over I I was hoping that that that Alexi naly would take over but they of course killed him um but there are other people like Alexi naly people who are um uh uh anti-corruption you know pro-democracy pro-europe uh uh members of the opposition that that still exist out there a number of them including my dear friend Vladimir korza who was just released in the prisoner swap are out there you know waiting to step in in that situation but again I I put a low probability on that um because the status quo is usually how these things go so one of the things that emerged um out of these indictments especially the fascinating um documents by the social design agency again they are an online 23:04 operation that reported directly to the president's office was to instill this nuclear psychosis I don't know if you read that and and people I respect and admire journalists who write for by line times one has said to me well look let's be careful we don't the key thing is to avoid nuclear war and so this has been part of his saber rattling hasn't it according to American defense officials there's no sign of actually any use or Preparation of use for nuclear weapons but every time something happens like a Refinery is here to a western missile is used to strike Crimea they do rattle this nuclear Savor don't they they they do and and and that and you know Jake Sullivan the president's National Security adviser President Biden's National Security advisor has pretty much openly stated he said we don't want we want to give ukrainians enough so that they can not lose but not enough so they win because we're afraid of escalation and nuclear clear conflict and and that that's just like waving a red flag to a bull Putin only um he only 24:06 respect strength not weakness um and so you point weakness that's weakness saying that that we're going to appease this dictator because we're afraid of something he might do um that's he just gets more aggressive that way and so these people don't seem to understand that that's the psychology of Russia and by the way there's nothing insightful that I've just said if you ask any smart Russian they'll tell you the same thing and that's what's been going on for CES in Russia not even not even decades but centuries that's that's how they they operate and so um and the thing I would say is that if Putin were to do this terrible nuclear attack on Ukraine um uh that would be the end of Putin then he loses everybody he loses China and India and the global South he becomes completely and absolutely isolated and there and it couldn't be done without Consequence the West can't allow a country to attack another country with nuclear weapons without some consequence maybe not a nuclear response but a but an a devastating conventional response 25:01 and so I think Putin understands that if he does that that's pretty much him over game over and so that's why he's not going to do it but again he's he he is um if we he is escalated by by weakness not by strength very interesting so I just wanted uh to conclude to Circle back around to the UK this slightly bited Country Now removed from the EU uh which you are now a knight of um um one of one of the things that um uh has emerged you know in these indictments I suspect there'll be more in the Müller indictments in 201718 is a intense investigation of Russian influence operations spying cyber attacks by the Americans um I I you you know about the Russia report I think maybe you submitted evidence to it this was the intelligence Services committee high ranking committee uh in Parliament under Dominic griev who regly talked to at that point which amassed evidence of attempted Russian interference here um 26:05 but then Boris Chon tried to suppress it uh the chair change managed to get bits of it out heavily redacted do you think um that the Britain now is catching up I mean one of the things that emerged even amidst the redacted report was that British intelligence agencies MI5 MI6 NCA gchq had never been tasked to look at this part because the embarrassment of brexit and do you think that can change or is this still a huge oversight we have 2,800 influences in the world the krlin are looking at presumably 800 world in America presumably some are here so are is Britain still open to for interference and is there anything a KN of the realm can do to rectify that well I'm I spend a great deal of my time working with members of parliament and and working with the government trying to get stiffen their backbone when it comes to um taking a tough stand on Russia I would say that the world has completely changed from 27:04 2016 um you know Britain is has been leading not lagging in terms of its overall um position in support of Ukraine and against Putin um Britain has provided Storm Shadow missiles and tanks and training and various other things Britain has opened up its homes to Ukrainian refugees and so Britain is in a totally different place as far as Russia is concerned having said that law enforcement in Britain um is completely um emasculated weak and unable to do the types of Investigations that the Department of Justice does in this type of in these in these types of situations I would be very doubtful that we'll ever see a similar type of of National Crime agency investigation um or prosecution of of Russian influencers in the UK but I would also point out one thing which is very interesting is that Russia wants to influence situations where their influence will make a 28:01 difference and and um in the last election um people were so um discouraged by by the previous um government that that labor was going to win no matter what and so it wasn't like they could get involved in in uh you know changing anything and it wasn't as if labor was going to be any different than than the conservatives you know back in the days when Jeremy Corbin was the labor leader he wanted to you know do something terrible in terms of capitulating through Russia but um kir starmer is not um I I there's no daylight between kir starmer and and Rishi sunak when it came to Russia policy and so it didn't really matter um it wasn't worth investing the money it is worth for the Russians investing the money in Germany where the afd is rising or in France where Marine Leen is rising but in Britain there's really not a lot of latitude and that doesn't mean that there's not influencers around it doesn't mean that there's there's a whole all sorts of different campaigns going on to get people off sanctions lists and so on but but it's not a ripe territory to get amazing win for Putin 29:05 to do the influence except there is evidence especially given the connections of some of these influences like Tommy Robinson Stephen Yaki Lennon and Andrew tape that they probably Amplified along with Elon Musk social divisions around the rights and the Su that's one of the classic techniques isn't it well I I I think I think you're right about that and and I think that um uh you know when when when there's another election coming up and and uh you know the Reform Party is trying to split up their the support for for the conservatives and so on so forth then there's plenty of of fertile ground to be had but but it wasn't going to change anything this time around because labor had such an incredible lead that that and labor wasn't going to do anything different than than the conservatives when it came to Russia bill as always your insights are a global and you provide amazing Narrative of how these things work particularly of the trajectory of Russia under Putin thanks so much for joining us by line Frontline have a great weekend and see you very soon

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