Bill Browder: Putin Has “No Intention of Negotiating” Ahead of Trump Summit

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, while all eyes are fixed on the U.S.-Russia Alaska talks, Trump set about lowering expectations while also raising the possibility of a second meeting to include Zelenskyy. So, what is Putin’s ultimate goal? Well, Bill Browder, who was deported from Russia in 2005, is the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, and he speaks to Walter Isaacson about the significance of this meeting.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Bill Browder, welcome back to the show.

 

BILL BROWDER: Great to be here.

 

ISAACSON: So this week we’re having this Trump-Putin summit about Ukraine. We’re speaking right before that summit, but tell me, what do you think Putin’s goal really is?

 

BROWDER: Well, I, I don’t think that Putin has any particular goal about bringing peace to Ukraine. Putin has never altered his objectives, which are, you know, a total victory in Ukraine. I think that what Putin is doing this for is very simple. He needs to help Donald Trump save face. Donald Trump has sort of boxed himself into a corner by promising to end this war in 24 hours. Every – he was saying that every day during his campaign. And, and he keeps on saying that. And and, and he, he’s also made all sorts of ultimatums to Putin that he has to, you know, end this war, stop the killing, all that kind of stuff. And so, Putin needs something so that Trump doesn’t look terrible. And so the summit is, is a way for him to show up, make some offers, which are offers that are totally unacceptable to Ukraine, and then flip the script. So it’s no longer Putin standing in the way of peace, but it’s Zelensky and the Ukrainians standing in the way for peace.

 

ISAACSON: Ukrainian President Zelensky said pretty much the same as you did right before the summit began, which is that he says Putin is bluffing. He doesn’t really want peace. He wants to occupy Ukraine, were his words. Do you think that Putin is dedicated to that, or is there some possibility of a compromise someday?

 

BROWDER: There is no possibility of a compromise any day as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. And what, what you have to know, and what’s hard for people to understand who haven’t been close to Putin or Russia, is that in Russia, the, the culture is one of domination. It’s like a jailhouse. It’s, you’re either the winner or the loser. You’re the, you’re the killer or the killed. Nobody – in any conflict in Russia, and I’ve been involved in many conflicts in Russia with Putin, there, there is no letting off. There is, there is no compromise. There’s no negotiation. There’s just total victory or total defeat. That’s how they think. And moreover, because of that, Putin is in a very precarious position himself. Once you start a fight, if you, if you do anything that you show weakness, then the people underneath you who want your job, want your position, want your privileges, will use that against you to say, look, this guy’s not tough.

He’s not a proper uncompromising Russian. We could do better. And then Putin was in, in a position where he potentially could lose power. And so – and, and by the way, for lose, for Putin, losing power means Putin loses his life. So for him, this is a truly existential battle. This is a battle for his own survival, and he has no intention of compromising. He has no intention of negotiating or any, in any way, showing any type of leniency or halfway towards what, what the Ukrainians would need to, to come to a deal.

 

ISAACSON: So what you’re really saying is that for President Putin, it’s in his interest for the war to keep going on. If this war ends in any way, other than total occupation of Kiev, what, which it won’t, he’s in a precarious position, you say.

 

BROWDER: That’s correct. And what he’s also banking on is he’s banking on the fact that he doesn’t care what his losses are. And, and the Russians have lost, according to Ukrainian estimates, about 1.1 million men, either through death or disability. And, in, in a normal democratic society, that would be devastating. No leader could survive that, that they would be replaced 10 times over. You know, if we lost in the west, any, any – you know, the United States or UK or, or wherever, if we lost 20,000 men there would be a, you know, total protests in the street. But Putin is running a dictatorship, a totalitarian regime. And so those kind of losses don’t affect him because people, he, he doesn’t need public support, he just needs public fear, which is what he’s got. And so he, he’s betting on the fact that he could just carry on doing this, and, and sooner or later we’re gonna cave in the West in terms of supporting Ukraine. And we’re already seeing that to a greater or lesser extent in the United States. And he is also betting on the fact that in a war of attrition he wins, because he’s 10 times bigger than Ukraine.

 

ISAACSON: How bad is the Russian economy at the moment?

 

BROWDER: It’s bad. It’s very bad. The the major companies of Russia, Gazprom, Vneshtorgbank, all these, these companies that used to be very big, successful companies are all losing money. The government budget is, is, is squeezed. Their, the banking system is in a state of, of collapse. The ruble is weak. The only thing that they have going for them, and it’s not a particularly great thing, having going for them is oil. Oil is the one thing that keeps ’em afloat. They sell their oil to the Chinese, to the Indians, to the Turks and a few other countries, and they also sell some of their gas directly into Europe. And it’s their revenues from that that basically fund their war machine. But I wouldn’t say that the Russian economy is doing well. I wouldn’t say that people feel, you know, flush and happy about the economy. But again, it doesn’t really matter from a public – you don’t, he doesn’t need public support. He just needs the cash, and he is got the cash –

 

ISAACSON: You probably know more about the internal workings of the Russian economy than any other Westerner. You were, I think, the largest foreign direct investment there for a while before it all blew up. Tell me about the economy, and you’ve talked about oil, let’s start there. Oil’s now down to about what, $62, $63 a barrel? That’s pretty low. How much is that hurting Russia?

 

BROWDER: Well, I think that their budget revenues have come in about 20% less now from, from oil than they did a year ago, which is of course, a lot of that, that’s a big percentage move. But it’s not so big that they’re bankrupt. So if oil were to come in at $40 a barrel, that they would be in deep, deep trouble. And, and, you know, you mentioned the, the word of the, the Russian economy, there really isn’t much of a Russian economy other than oil. I mean, yes, they have gas. Oil, gas, they have minerals, they have aluminum steel, fertilizers, bit of timber, but that’s it. This is not like China that has, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of small and medium sized businesses. Nobody in Russia ever felt confident to start a business there, because they knew that, that if they did, someone would take it away from them, that the police would come and arrest them and take their business away from them.

And so you’ve got this unbelievably skewed economy, which is just the largest state enterprises, which are basically in the business of selling resources. And they, and they don’t bend the metal into anything. They just sell the metal raw. They, they, they have no capacity to make things in Russia. It’s not like you’ve ever heard about a, a Russian cell phone or a Russian car, ’cause I mean, yes, they make a Russian car, but no one would buy it. And even the Russians don’t wanna buy it. Because there’s, there’s no incentive to do any type of ingenuity to any type of, of innovation. They just strip the, the ground of whatever they’ve got, and then they sell it to other countries who have much greater capabilities than themselves.

 

ISAACSON: So you’ve said that the Russian economy depends on selling oil or oil and gas, but mainly oil. And we’ve watched in the past week or so, this notion of trying to put sanctions on India to stop India from buying Russian oil. It seems to be the one thing that President Trump – and Lindsey Graham has got a whole bunch of supporters trying to force this. How realistic is that? And could you stop India from buying Russian oil, and what would that do to Russia?

 

BROWDER: Well, so, so first of all, it, it’s, it’s kind of a strange story. So the, there are three countries that are the major buyers of Russian oil. The biggest is China. The second is India, the third is Turkey. So why, why he’s picking on India at this point? It’s kind of odd. Right now they’re, they’re saying if India buys Russian oil, then India as a country gets sanctioned with extra 25% tariffs. What could be done a lot less aggressively, is to say that if any Indian company buys any Russian oil, then that company can’t trade with us, can’t trade with European Union, can’t trade with the UK and they can’t sell their refined products, or they can’t bank, they can’t do whatever. And guess what, if, if that were put in place, then the Indian companies would stop buying Russian oil. And if the Indian companies stopped buying Russian oil and the Chinese did, and the Turks did, the Russians would still sell their oil. But it would be, it would be selling at $10 a barrel ’cause nobody would want to get into the trouble and, and cut off the entire world from the you know, cut from their business. And so I think that it’s, it’s plausible. 

Now the w– you might ask, why, why haven’t we done that before? If, if, if Russia’s war machine functions off of oil, and if we could stop that oil and stop the war machine, then why wouldn’t we have done that? And the answer is that Russia produces about 10% of the world’s oil. And if you take a country with 10% of the world’s oil, and you take that off the market and you have the same amount of oil demand then what happens? Supply goes down, demand stays the same, and the price goes up. And we’re living in a world where inflation has been plaguing most central banks and, and most governments and most politics. And nobody wants inflation to go up. And so there’s this very fine line between, you know, how do you balance out your inflation objectives with how do you balance out trying to end this war? And, and up until now, everybody has been really tiptoeing around this issue. 

 

ISAACSON: Could India just end this war if India decided it wanted to just stop all imports of oil or would that not help?

 

BROWDER: Well then, then the Chinese would say, we’ll take that supply as long as you give it to us at another 20% discount. So you need to have India and China out of the picture in order to make this thing happen.

 

ISAACSON: What then could be done economically to put even more pressure on Vladimir Putin?

 

BROWDER: Well, there’s basically two things. One is as we’ve been talking about the oil. And the second thing is that, that when the war started, the west, the United States, the EU, Canada, UK, Australia froze $300 billion of Russian central bank reserves that were held in the West. And that money has sat there in the, in western banks, western central banks. And that money could be confiscated and it should be confiscated. And if that money is confiscated and then given to Ukraine – and the damage is greater than, than that amount that they’ve done to Ukraine, and it’s owed, that money is owed to Ukraine, then Ukraine could afford to basically fund the war. All this talk about who’s gonna pay for it goes away. And Ukraine would have the resources then to look Russia in the eye and say, okay, we’re, we’re gonna be fighting you right up till the end. And then, then again, that puts, puts Ukraine in a much stronger negotiating position and Russia in a much weaker negotiating position.

 

ISAACSON: Well, wait, but Bill, you’ve been pushing for that for two years and nothing’s happened. Why not?

 

BROWDER: Well, something has happened. I mean, it’s, it’s sort of, it’s an obvious thing. I mean, I’m sure everybody who’s listening to this conversation would say, yeah, Russia started the war, they invaded the country, they did a trillion dollars of damage. We have $300 billion of their money, of course we should take it. And the, the the then you’ve got a bunch of lawyers whispering in the ears of their presidents and prime ministers saying, well, that’s complicated, et cetera. But slowly but surely it’s coming, that that idea has come around. And so they, they haven’t, they have agreed the governments of the world that they can confiscate the interest on that money, which is, in my mind, legally the same as confiscating the whole amount. But it’s kind of this negotiating with oneself type of thing where you turn, sort of take baby steps instead of taking the whole step. I’m pretty sure at the end of the day as this war continues, and I think this war will continue, I don’t think that the war is gonna come to an end anytime soon. At the end of the day, a lot of these European governments who have to make a choice, do they wanna raise taxes on their own citizens or do they want to confiscate Vladimir Putin’s money to support the war, will say, I think it’s easier to confiscate Putin’s money.

 

ISAACSON: You know, this week’s Alaska summit. Do you think there’s a real problem of not having Zelensky being part of these negotiations? And can Trump and Putin try to just negotiate them, themselves?

 

BROWDER: Well, I, I mean, I, I, I think, I think that that there are two parties in this war, there’s Russia and there’s Ukraine, and, and those are the two parties that have to negotiate. And, and to have Trump negotiate or sort of foist, foist a deal onto Ukraine is, is sort of completely an inappropriate thing. Secondly the US, since Trump has been elected, has stopped funding Ukraine. They have there, there’s no longer, there’s no bills in front of Congress for another 60 billion for Ukraine, et cetera. And that has been the US’s main leverage, not his only leverage, but its main leverage. And so I don’t think that Trump can, can say to you, to, to Zelensky you know, you’ve gotta give this up. You’ve gotta give that up. You’ve gotta agree to this, you’ve gotta agree to that. I don’t think that that’s, that’s, he, I don’t think he can make those demands and have Zelensky agree to them. And I, I don’t think he can make those demands and have other countries in Europe who are also supporting Ukraine agree to that. 

 

ISAACSON: You know, President Trump has said, if we can’t really get a lasting peace, maybe he’ll just walk away from it and let this war continue. JD Vance, the vice president, has said, Americans are sick of funding it. We’re not gonna fund it anymore. As you say, there are no more bills in front of Congress to fund it. What happens if the US just walks away and quits funding this whole thing?

 

BROWDER: Well, I mean, it has, the US, the US has already has, has already walked away. There has not, there is not any really explicit support. The, the Trump –

 

ISAACSON: Yeah. But there’s still American weapons going to Ukraine off and on. 

 

BROWDER: Well, so they, they, so Donald Trump made a big deal about the Europeans buying the weapons from the American defense industry. And to the extent that Trump wants to cut off his own defense industry in order to make a political point, that just doesn’t sound to me, me like Donald Trump. So I, I don’t think there’s a risk of that happening. There are some things that are really important. One is that the US has unbelievable intelligence as far as satellite intelligence about what’s going on, on the ground that nobody else can replicate. And when, when that’s withdrawn, if that’s withdrawn, that’s not very helpful. 

But the main thing, the main leverage that the US has at this point is NATO. So the US is the, I would say the leader of nato. You’ve got a bunch of other European countries that are part of NATO. And to the extent that, that Trump threatens NATO allies to say that I’m not gonna do NATO if you continue to support the war, I think that that’s really where, where the leverage continues to be. And if he says, I’m gonna walk away from NATO, that creates a much bigger problem not just for Ukraine, but for the security of Europe more generally, which is why you’ve got all these European leaders tiptoeing around trying to flatter him, trying to cajole him, having talks with him, because everybody is just trying to keep the, the transatlantic alliance going so he doesn’t, so Trump doesn’t do something abrupt and moves on to his next issue and, and forgets about all those threats that he made a week ago or a month ago, or six months ago.

 

ISAACSON: Lemme ask you a question I asked you two years ago, saying, you know, this thing continuing is certainly not in Ukraine’s interest. What happens if you just had a ceasefire in place and you said, okay, we’re not gonna resolve all the territorial issues now. We’re gonna have a peacekeeping force that keeps a ceasefire in place. Would Russia, would Ukraine accept that? And is that some type of solution?

 

BROWDER: I think Ukraine would accept that in a heartbeat. I think that that would be a, a very good outcome at this stage of the game. You know, free freeze, the, the battle where it is, nobody recognizes anything. You know, put up a bunch of demarcations, get a bunch of peacekeeping forces in there. Real peacekeeping forces. Have NATO threat to Russia, if you move any further, we’ll come after you. I think that that’s all they want at this point. The Ukrainians just wanna, as best as they can get back to their lives. They don’t wanna accept that they’ve lost territory, but at the same time they’re not gonna say, we have to have it all back. I mean, you know, they, they’ve made those statements, but I think they would jump at that deal in a heartbeat. And I think that that’s what the Europeans are telling Donald Trump right now, which is, you know, there’s no land swaps that are gonna go on. There’s no recognition of Crimea. That, that’s not gonna happen. But what could happen is we all just put down our weapons and then negotiate for the next 10 years, have a frozen conflict but allow the killing to stop. I think that that would be a solution that most everybody would get behind.

 

ISAACSON: Bill Browder, thank you so much for joining us again.

BROWDER: Thank you.