Frontline special - Sir Bill Browder, anti-Putin campaigner
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting.

Hello and welcome to Frontline, Times Radio's interview series about the war in Ukraine and global security. I'm James Hansen and today I'm delighted to be joined by a regular guest here on Frontline, Sir Bill Browder, the financier and political activist. Sir Bill is also the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005 when he was banned from the country for exposing corruption. He now campaigns to impose sanctions against corrupt...

people linked to the Putin regime and to free political activists who have been imprisoned by it. So, Bill, it's always a pleasure. Welcome back to Frontline.

I'm glad to be here. Now, we should say, as we're recording this, the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is ongoing. If we have some interesting developments emerging, being briefed from the Kremlin or the White House during the course of our conversation, I will bring them to you. But what do you expect to come out of this call, if anything? Well, if I look at the interests of the different parties, and there's three different parties, there's Russia, there's Ukraine, and there's Donald Trump.

And if I look at the interest between the three parties, I see that Vladimir Putin has been very consistent in what he would like to do. And that is a maximalist approach towards Ukraine. And that means surrender, basically demilitarize Ukraine so they can't fight back, annexation of a large amount of territory, no NATO or any other foreign troops to defend them.

And in his perfect world, even the US and all other NATO troops would get out of Eastern Europe. That's his position. Ukraine's position is not to be invaded, not to be bombed every night, to have Russian troops leave the occupied territory and to live in peace. And then Trump's position is just to get this thing done as soon as possible, whatever different people want.

And so we're in this strange moment when we don't know exactly at what point does Donald Trump say that you've asked for too much from Vladimir Putin. We just don't know where he stands on that. And so anything could happen. It could happen that Putin says, I'm not willing to accept a ceasefire without 10 different conditions, in which case Trump would be mad at Putin.

It could also be a situation where Putin says, here's my 10 conditions, and Trump says, yes, puts it to Ukraine. And then Ukraine says, you're crazy, we can't agree to this. Trump then blames the breakdown on Ukraine and then withdraws military aid for Ukraine. I mean, anything could happen. And I guess we'll find out soon enough. It's kind of hard to speculate. But generally, based on the tone that Trump has taken towards Zelenskyy,

and the tone he's taking towards Putin, it kind of looks like he's going to...

gang up on Zelensky on Putin's side. I could be wrong about that. I hope I'm wrong about that. But that's sort of the way this thing seems to be playing out. I wonder if we've already seen some interesting symbolism today, because the two men were due to speak, we were briefed they would speak between 9am Eastern Time and 11am Eastern Time. And yet, at almost 10am Eastern Time, Vladimir Putin was still on stage in Moscow, addressing the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.

Is that almost a way of sending a message to Donald Trump of going, I've got more important things to do than discuss a ceasefire? Well, yes. And there was another incident, which is when after Ukraine agreed to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, Steve Witkoff, the representative,

representative of Trump, the special envoy, flew to Moscow immediately to figure out what Putin's position was. And they made Witkoff wait around all day until the end of the day before Putin met with him. He had Putin met with Lukashenko for most of the day instead of Witkoff. And you would think that if this war was so important to resolve, that Putin would have seen the

representative of Donald Trump right away. So there's a lot of stuff which would suggest that Putin is not serious about peace. Certainly, all the bombing and attacks that have gone on against civilians in Ukraine would also support that position that in the midst of this ceasefire negotiation,

Putin has done nothing to indicate he wants peace at all. And I should point out the one obvious thing, which is that Putin is the one who can singularly stop attacking Ukraine. He could withdraw from Ukraine. Everything about this is within his discretion. All Ukraine is doing is just trying to defend themselves. And so it's kind of an absurdity to put all this pressure on Ukraine, who is just defending themselves,

no pressure on Putin, who can singularly solve this problem. And we're all sitting there wondering what's going to happen. We've spoken a lot in the past about how Donald Trump views Vladimir Putin. But how do you think Vladimir Putin views Donald Trump? Does he respect him as an operator or does he see him as a useful idiot? Well, there was an interesting interview with Fiona Hill. Fiona Hill was his national security advisor in his first interview

presidency. And Fiona Hill was describing various conversations between Putin and Trump that she was party to, in which there would be a translator and the translator would translate sort of differently than the way Putin was actually presenting. And according to Fiona Hill, and I wasn't there and I haven't seen this with my own eyes, but according to Fiona Hill, Putin was kind of making fun of Donald Trump in these conversations and it would all get edited out by the translator.

So from from one one standpoint, there's that. But the one thing that Trump does have going for him, assuming that that there's not some type of side deal that we're not aware of, is that he's so unpredictable and so volatile that everybody should be a little bit scared of him, including Vladimir Putin.

And they should certainly be scared of Donald Trump because he's the leader of the most powerful country in the world militarily and economically. And so if Trump really wanted to make life difficult for Putin, he could definitely do that. We have this phone call happening as we speak between Trump and Putin, but it's been a week now since the US and Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire if Russia were to sign up to it.

And there was an interesting piece by the Russia expert Mark Gagliotti in the Sunday Times over the weekend talking about the way Vladimir Putin is stalling on either accepting or rejecting this ceasefire plan. And Mark Gagliotti's argument is that, you know, despite Putin's image as this macho, decisive leader, he actually has a long track record of being quite indecisive when it comes to major decisions. Is that a trait you recognise, Bill? What I would say is that Vladimir Putin...

in spite of all this craziness that we've seen, is very risk averse when it comes to his own personal interests. He's not risk averse when it comes to slaughtering Russian soldiers in battle. That doesn't even make his heart beat faster.

but he's always been risk-averse in terms of taking decisions that could affect his own personal interests. And this is a very scary situation for him because on one hand, if he shows weakness, which a ceasefire would show, he puts himself at risk in Russia because he has to be a strong man. And if he's not a strong man, some other strong man may show up and say, I'm stronger than Vladimir Putin. Why do we allow this weak man to lead us? On the other side,

If he were to reject this ceasefire proposal, then he enrages Donald Trump. And Donald Trump has a lot riding on this, solving this problem. And that could potentially be very problematic for Putin. If in certain scenarios it could lead for if Donald Trump is genuinely enraged, it could lead to more weapons being provided to Ukraine. It could lead to more sanctions. It could lead to problems with oil exports and all sorts of other things that Putin cares about.

And so Putin, who clearly doesn't want to look weak in front of his own people, can't really agree to some unconditional ceasefire. But he doesn't want to do anything that's going to make Trump look stupid. And so the best thing to do is to try to muddle it out. Let's try to not say yes, not say no, create some conditions. And in an ideal world, create conditions that make it so Ukraine has to say no.

And I would imagine that that's what they're doing right now. And on that point about Putin being worried about looking weak if he accepts a ceasefire, Mark Gagliotti also made the point in the Sunday Times over the weekend that there are ultra-nationalists who in the long term may...

criticize any ceasefire deal as being somehow Vladimir Putin selling out Russian veterans who are returning from fighting in Ukraine. The ultra-nationalist criticism of Putin, so much as it exists publicly, how worried is Putin about that? How much does he worry about the ultra-nationalists within and around his regime? I'm not sure if he's specifically worried about any different group because Putin's got a pretty firm grasp on everything and anyone who

who even puts their head above the parapet to say bad things about him ends up either dead in jail or in exile. But what I would say is that in order for him to continue to run Russia, to continue to be the dictator, he has to breathe the fear of God into everybody.

He has to have everybody believe that they cannot utter a word about him without something terrible happening. And in order for them to feel that, they can't see him as doing anything that would suggest weakness, kindness, compromise, sacrifice. And whether it's ultra-nationalists or anybody else for that matter, he's got to be the strong man. That's how he's run Russia for 25 years.

And I don't believe that he's ever going to change in that respect because that's his only survival strategy. And so it's I've never seen in my whole life Putin ever making a compromise. It's never happened. He always escalates. And so it would be completely out of his nature and out of all history for him to somehow compromise today, right now.

which is why I don't expect anything good to come from this telephone call. What did you make of the symbolism of Vladimir Putin wearing military fatigues on his trip to Kursk recently? Yeah.

Well, first of all, he looked really stupid wearing military fatigues. And I guess he thought, wow, Zelensky has gotten all this respect from his people wearing fatigues. He should do the same thing. But somehow it doesn't fit with Putin. You know, Zelensky looks like a warrior. Putin just looks like a stupid little man with his military fatigues. Given what you said a moment ago, Bill, about Vladimir Putin never having really compromised on anything significant in his political career,

Why do you think the White House still appears to negotiate in good faith with him? Well, we don't know whether they're negotiating in good faith. We don't even know what has happened in all these back rooms. We don't know what the plan B is. We don't know what the real agenda is. All we can do is watch this from afar and say what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense here.

American people, the American population, the general public doesn't like Vladimir Putin. Republican senators and Republican members of the House of Representatives don't like Vladimir Putin. And so it doesn't make sense that Trump would be acting against American interests in the interest of his own political party. But we don't have all the information. We don't know what else has been agreed. We don't know what else has been promised.

All we can do is sit here and scratch our heads and say, this doesn't quite make sense, but we don't know why. On the economic point, I mean, were Trump to become angry with Putin if Putin rejects this ceasefire proposal, and let's say he were to go further when it comes to sanctions on Russia,

How badly would that hurt the Russian economy now? A lot has been made of the value of the ruble and the threat of stagflation. Is that a pressing short-term problem for Putin, or are we talking about the longer term that that'll store up difficulties for him? Well, sanctions are a very broad term. You could sanction 10 individuals, and that wouldn't have any impact on the overall situation in the country. Or you could sanction all the oil that's coming out of the country.

which is where Putin makes all of his money, and that's where he gets his money to continue to fight the war. If the West were to impose an oil embargo on Russia, that could be devastating. It could bring Putin to his knees. So Trump does have the ability to do something like this if he chose to. There's a lot of reasons why

America and other countries haven't gone after the oil so far. And the reason for that is that Russia produces 10% of the world's oil. If you were to take 10% of the world's oil out of the supply and you have the same demand, then the price of oil goes up. And we're living in a world where governments and countries are desperately trying to avoid inflation because there's so many people suffering from inflation. And so it's a very hard thing to decide to do

And I think that so far we haven't seen any appetite to live with inflation in order to starve Russia of their financial resources. Is there anything that could be done to go after Vladimir Putin's personal wealth? According to lots of people, he is the richest man in the world. Is there a way that Western governments could target that? Vladimir Putin is the richest man in the world. However, he doesn't keep any money in his own name. The people who hold his money are trustees, nominees, uh,

all sorts of proxies of different sorts. And we have sanctioned those people. Those people tend to be the oligarchs. If you see an oligarch who's worth $20 billion, chances are that 10 of it is the oligarchs and 10 of it belongs to Vladimir Putin. So he is suffering. And when we see these oligarchs, money frozen in the West and so on and so forth, that's also Vladimir Putin's money. And he hates that. It's very, very upsetting for him.

But I suppose the worrying thing is Donald Trump probably knows that, but sort of respects in a weird way Vladimir Putin for accumulating such wealth. Well, one of the things that's most worrying for me coming out of the Riyadh meetings was the intimation from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that there was a possibility of lifting sanctions. And so if we were to do that,

that could potentially be a huge benefit to Putin. We hope you're enjoying today's episode of Frontline. Don't forget, you can also now listen to Frontline in podcast form. Just search for The World in 10 from wherever you get your podcasts, where you can also hear daily analysis of the biggest stories relating to war and defence. And we'll put a link to The World in 10 in the description below. One of the Ukrainian demands...

likely demands in any future peace talks is for reparations from Russia. Now, it seems very unlikely that the Kremlin would ever agree to that. But do you think the West may at that moment choose to go, okay, what we'll do instead is use the frozen Russian assets, give them to Ukraine and help Kiev rebuild in that way? Unfortunately, we're in a situation where all that talk about rebuilding Ukraine is extremely premature.

We're at a crisis moment right now where there's a potential that the U.S. is going to throw Ukraine under the bus, stop military aid, which makes up 40% of all the military aid that Ukraine receives. And therefore, any of those frozen assets, and there's quite a few of them, there's about 300 billion of it, needs to be used to defend Ukraine. I think we can talk about reconstruction when Russia has stopped invading Ukraine.

But at the moment, it's all about survival of Ukraine and defending Ukraine. And that's what the money needs to be used for. So, Bill, if it were you on the phone to Vladimir Putin today, what message would you want the United States to convey? That if he doesn't agree to an unconditional ceasefire that lasts 30 days, as the Ukrainians have, that he will triple military aid. He will give Ukrainians full license to use long-term missiles to attack Russian military targets inside of Russia.

and that he will do everything in his power to cut off the money that's received from the sale of oil. And even Vladimir Putin in those circumstances, the man who does not compromise, would have to concede, surely, if that were the threat. I can't see how he would not, but I don't think that that will be the threat, unfortunately.

You think there's no chance, even with Trump's unpredictability, that he may swing that way if he thinks Putin is being deliberately obstructive? There's nothing in his body language, there's nothing in his statements that would indicate he would do anything even remotely connected to that type of scenario. And do you think even if he did agree to a ceasefire, Vladimir Putin would respect the ceasefire? Absolutely not.

I think that Vladimir Putin, there's been many ceasefires. That was the reason. That was the statement that Vladimir Zelensky made in the Oval Office. He told President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance that Putin doesn't honor any ceasefires. And on the back of that, and he went through the whole history of Minsk I, Minsk II, which were both agreements where Russia was supposed to ceasefire where they didn't.

And that was the thing that provoked Trump to jump down his throat and humiliate Zelensky in front of the entire world.

Putin doesn't honor ceasefires. Putin is a liar. He's not a good faith negotiator. And so I'm sure that if he, under what circumstances he agreed to some 30-day ceasefire, he would then stop the ceasefire, blame it on the Ukrainians and carry on. And by the way, one of his conditions is that there's no military aid to Ukraine during this ceasefire.

Well, what does that do for him? It gives him a military advantage at the point when he wants to break the ceasefire. I wanted to ask you, Bill, about what the Europeans are doing in the moment. You've got the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer ramping up his talk about assembling a coalition of the willing to potentially be peacekeeping troops in Ukraine. You've also got Germany today, for example, the German parliament voting to approve changes to their debt rules, allowing them to spend more on defence.

How significant is that currently, or is that a bit of a sideshow to the main event of these talks between Trump and Putin? I would argue that what's going on in Europe is not a sideshow at all. It's equal or even greater than what's going on between Trump and Putin. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries supply 60% of the military aid to Ukraine.

If Germany is approved a trillion dollar increase in defense spending, they're going to become a very powerful player in this whole thing. I think it's very unproductive for the Europeans to sort of slink back into the corner and say that they have no position in this negotiation or they have no agency in this negotiation when in fact,

the Europeans and the UK are major players in this whole story. And do you think Vladimir Putin ever sits back at night and reflects on the fact that what he was aiming to achieve from his full scale invasion has, from a strategic point of view, massively failed? I mean, you know, you've now got two more members of NATO in Finland and Sweden. You've got Germany changing its historic debt rules in order to increase defence spending. You've got the UK, France and many other

NATO countries, including Poland, ramping up defence spending as well. I mean, that's the opposite of what Vladimir Putin would have been hoping to achieve. Do you think he ever reflects on that? I'm sure he doesn't.

I'm sure all he's doing is just thinking to himself, what do I do today? What do I do tomorrow so I can stay in power and stay alive? He's not thinking about, you know, was he right or was he wrong? He's only thinking about what does he need to do to stay alive? And that's his only, that's the only thing that keeps him up at night is just how does he keep this, all these plates twirling in the air so none of them crash and break. Just finally, Bill,

On the Trump-Putin relationship, is there a danger for Vladimir Putin that he's pursuing this tactic, this tried and tested tactic of stalling, of waiting to see what the most viable option is, of not committing either way, of creative ambiguity almost?

But that may have worked in the past with other presidents. But with Donald Trump, who has a very short attention span, who wants to feed the news cycle constantly, the Trump administration has been moving at breakneck speed, that maybe Vladimir Putin can't cope with the Trump timetable, that he may frustrate Trump through his reluctance to commit one way or another. Is that a real danger for him? Well, I think Vladimir Putin is such a sophisticated operator. He's a KGB spy, a

He's been doing this for like 50 years. He knows how to deal with any different type of person. He studied them top to bottom. He'll figure out how to manipulate Donald Trump. He's manipulated all the presidents. All of them wanted to make nice with Vladimir Putin. Started with George W. Bush, who looked into his eyes and saw his soul. Then things went really badly wrong in that relationship. And then Barack Obama shows up and

and he wants to do a Russian reset, and they even showed up with a reset button. Then you had Trump, the first Trump who comes in and, you know, says Putin is, he respects Putin and what a great guy.

Then you had Joe Biden come in and says he just wants to make life predictable for Putin. And now you've got Trump, too, coming in and talking about how they both were suffering under the Russian hoax. And so, you know, Putin plays all these guys as best as he can and he plays them well and he gets whatever he wants. And he's been around for 25 years. All these other people come and go.

On that, which world leader over the past 20 years do you think has come closest to having the measure of Putin? Well, I think...

Nobody, really. I mean, it's it's they've all made mistakes. Everybody. Angela Merkel was a total disaster when it came to Putin, you know, building pipelines to export to bypass Ukraine and export Russian gas. You've had numerous British prime ministers that were were doing everything they could to have the gravy train of Russian money flowing into London.

You've had all these US presidents that were all trying to reset relations. Everybody has kind of messed it up. Nobody seems to understand that this is just, he's a very evil guy and you've got to deal with him. The only thing he respects is a boot on the throat. And I think what's really interesting is you hear some people say, particularly around Trump, that they're trying to avert World War III.

But what they don't seem to fully appreciate is that in Vladimir Putin's mind, he is already at war with the West. They are already at war with Europe. They're already at war with the US. They see it in those terms already. Well, and moreover, Vladimir Putin is a guy who is provoked by weakness and he backs down with strength. And that's the thing that's so missing from all these armchair generalists.

geopolitical analysts saying that they don't want World War III is they don't seem to understand that this guy, the moment he sees weakness, he wants to jump on it. That's his modus operandi. Yeah. I did see an interview, an archive interview from about 10 years ago the other day with John McCain, the late, great John McCain. And he made that point. Maybe he was one of the few, of course, he was never elected president who understood this point. He said, look, you know, for too long, we've allowed Europe to become reliant on Russian energy.

And we haven't fully stood up to Vladimir Putin and nothing encourages Putin like weakness. Exactly. He was he was a great man. John McCain was a great man. Just finally, Bill, if a ceasefire is agreed today between Russia and the US with Ukraine, if that is a result of this call,

Of course, it's only the beginning. I mean, that's a 30 day ceasefire. Then there would be further talks about a potential peace agreement. Donald Trump clearly hopes to get some significant peace agreement done by Easter. Is that pie in the sky? I think that we'll be sitting here six months from now and the war will still be raging, unfortunately.

So Bill Browder, we always appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for watching today's episode of Frontline. For early access to our videos, member-only Q&As and live streams, then sign up for a membership via the link in the description. And for the latest news and breaking stories, listen to Times Radio and follow us at thetimes.com.

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