Bill Browder, an American-born financier, political activist, and well-known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin says the only way to rein in the Kremlinās reach in Ukraine is to suppress its financial means.
In an interview on Ā鶹“«Ć½ Channelās Power Play on Wednesday, Browder, whoās been advising the Canadian government and others on how to respond to Putin tactics, said the Russian leader is motivated exclusively by staying in power and wonāt succumb to any level of negotiation.
āWhat we need to do is we need to bleed him dry. We need to make sure that he has no financial resources to execute this war. So when Iām talking to governments, Iām talking about how do we do a total economic embargo of Russia,ā he said.
āWeāve achieved it to a certain extent but itās definitely not a total economic embargo.ā
Browder, the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and author or āRed Noticeā & āFreezing Order,ā has been personally targeted by Putinās regime when he started exposing corruption in the companies he invested in in Russia.
His lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who testified against the Russian government, was detained without trial, tortured and later murdered while in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, 2009.
Browder said heās made it his lifeās mission to āget justice for Sergei.ā
Its led to the creation of the Magnitsky Act, legislation passed in a host of countries including the U.S. and Canada, that gives governments the ability to freeze the assets and ban the visas of international human rights abusers.
Asked how far Putin has gone since then to keep Browder quiet, he said āas far as he could possibly go.ā
āIāve been threatened with death, with kidnapping. Theyāve issued eight Interpol arrest warrants to have me arrested. Theyāve tried to have me extradited from the U.K. where I live. Theyāve been suing me and making movies about me, chasing me around America,ā he said.
āItās been a full-time job just to try to be not destroyed.ā
In terms of next steps governments could take against Russia as the war in Ukraine rages on, Browder listed a few options that would hit hard financially.
āWe need to sanction a whole lot more oligarchs, we have disconnected 70 per cent of Russian banks from the SWIFT international banking centre, we need to disconnect 100 per cent of the banks. But the elephant in the room is oil and gas,ā he said.
āIt costs about a billion dollars a day for Putin to execute this war and every day, purchasers, mostly from Western Europe give Putin a billion dollars a day for his oil and gas. That has to stop.ā
He said Canada and its allies canāt be concerned about the threat of Russian retaliation at this point in the game.
āThe idea that weāre going to be tiptoeing around this guy because weāre afraid that heās going to do worse things ā heās going to do worse things anyway. What we need to understand is that the one thing that will stop him from possibly doing worse things is showing him strength, he does respect strength,ā he said.
Browder is also calling for a no-fly zone, which in the context of the war in Ukraine would be intended to help prevent Russian-backed airstrikes in the region.
The financierās comments come the same day Russia slapped new sanctions on Canadian senators, adding to the list of foreign nationals banned from Russia.
