So while all eyes are fixed on the US Russia Alaska talks Trump said about lowering expectations While also raising the possibility of a second meeting to include Zelensky 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 Thank You Chris John and Bill Browder.

Welcome back to the show great to be here.

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?

Well, 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 he was saying that during his campaign and and he keeps on saying that and and and 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 he 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 Solinsky and the Ukrainians standing in the way for peace 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 or his words.

Do you think that Putin is dedicated to that or is there some possibility of a compromise someday?

There is no possibility of a compromise any day as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned And 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 that the culture is one of domination It's like a jailhouse.

It's you're either the winner or the loser either.

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's there's 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 We'll use that against you to say look this guy is not tough.

He's not a proper Compromising Russian we could do better and then Putin was in a position where he potentially could lose power And so and by the way for loose 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 come to a deal?

So what you're really saying is that for President Putin is in his interest for the war to keep going on if this war ends And anyway, other than total occupation of key for which it won't He's in a precarious position you say that 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 I know leader could survive that then they would be replaced ten 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 doesn't need public support.

He just needs public fear, which is what he's got And so he's betting on the fact that he can just carry on doing this and and sooner or later We're gonna cave in the West in terms of supporting Ukraine and we were already seeing that to a greater or lesser extent in the United States and he's also betting on the fact that in a war of attrition he wins because he's ten times bigger than Ukraine How bad is the Russian economy at the moment?

It's bad.

It's very bad the the major companies of Russia gas prom The next org bank all these these companies that used to be very big successful companies are all losing money the government budget is is is Squeezed there 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 them 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 the 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 know, he doesn't need public support He just needs the cash and he's got the cash You probably know more about the internal workings of the Russian economy than any other Western or 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 sixty to sixty three dollars a barrel.

That's pretty low.

How much is that hurting Russia?

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'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 that the word of 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 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 don't bend the metal into anything.

They just sell the metal raw.

They have no capacity to make things in Russia It's not like you've ever heard about a Russian cell phone or a Russian car because I mean, yes They make a Russian car, but no one would buy it.

Even the Russians don't want to buy it because there's there's no incentive to do any type of ingenuity to any type of innovation they just Strip the ground of whatever they've gotten and they sell it to other countries who have much greater capabilities than themselves So you said that the Russian economy depends on selling oil 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 Russia oil.

What would that do to Russia?

Well, so first of all, it's it's kind of a strange story So 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 what why he's picking on India at this point?

It's kind of odd right now.

They're saying if India buys Russian oil and 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 that were put in place Then the Indian companies would stop buying Russian oil and at the Indian companies stop buying Russian oil and the Chinese did and the Turks did the Russians would still sell our oil but they would be so it would be selling at $10 a barrel because nobody would want to get into the trouble and cut off the entire world from the You know cut up from their business and so I think that it's it's plausible Now what you might ask?

Why haven't we done that before 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 Could India just in this war if India decided it wanted to just stop all imports of oil or would that not help?

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 What then could be done?

Economically to put even more pressure on Vladimir Putin 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 three hundred billion dollars of Russian central bank reserves that were held In the West and that money has sat there in the in 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 then that amount that they've done to Ukraine and So 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 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 Well, you've been pushing for that for two years and nothing's happened.

Why not?

Well, something has happened.

I mean, it's it's sort of it's an obvious thing I mean, I'm sure everybody is 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 dollars of their money.

Of course, we should take it and Then you've got a bunch of Lawyers whispering in the ears of their presidents and prime ministers saying well that's complicated etc But slowly but surely it's coming that idea has come around and so 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 to serve 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 going to 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 want to 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, 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 Well, I mean, 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 u.s.

Since Trump has been elected has stopped funding Ukraine if there's no longer There's no bills in front of Congress for another 60 billion for Ukraine, etc And that has been the u.s. Is main leverage not as 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 got to give this up.

You've got to give that up.

You've got to agree to this You've got to agree to that.

I don't think that that's that's I don't think he can make those demands and have Zelensky agree to them And I don't think he can make those demands and have other countries in Europe who are also supporting Ukraine agree to that You know president Trump has said if we can't really get a lasting peace Maybe I'll just walk away from and let this war continue JT Vance the vice president said Americans are sick of funding it We're not going to fund it anymore as you say there's no more bills in front of Congress to fund it What happens if the u.s. Just walks away and quits funding this whole thing?

Well, I mean it has us the u.s. Has already has already walked away.

There has not there is not any Really explicit support the the Trump.

Yeah, but there's still American weapons going to Ukraine off and on 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 like Donald Trump So I don't think there's a risk of that happening.

There are some things that are really important.

One is that the u.s. 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 u.s. Has at this point is NATO so the u.s. 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 going to 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 going to 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's just trying to keep the the transatlantic alliance going so he doesn't 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 Let me 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 going to resolve all the territorial issues now We're going to have a peacekeeping force that keeps a ceasefire in place would Russia would Ukraine Accept that and is that some type of solution?

I think Ukraine would accept that in a heartbeat I think that's um, that would be a very good Outcome at this stage of the game, you know freeze 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 for any further will come after you I think that that's all they want at this point the Ukrainians just want to as best as they can get back to their lives They don't want to 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've made those statements, but I think they would jump at that deal in a heartbeat 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 going to go on.

There's no recognition of Crimea that that's not going to 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 the killing to stop.

I think that that would be a solution that most everybody would get behind Bill Browder, thank you so much for joining us again.

Thank you