racial divide and the outer suppression is destroying our democracy and her most rect book, the second racing guns in fatally unequal america. thank you for your time on this sunday. >> thank you so much. this is wonderful. >> use the qr code on the screen and receive the schedule for upcoming programs with book festivals and more. book tv every sunday on cspan2 and online at booktv.org.

>> welcome to washington post live and my quest today is one of the biggest investors in russia after the fall of communism and the true story of money laundering, murder, and surviving vladamir putin's

wrath. thank you for joining us on war post live. >> great to be here. thank you. >> before we get to your book, i want to first have questions for bill browder, tweet them to us and we'll put to our guest. i want to ask you to focus before we talk about the book on the war in ukraine. i'd be interested in your sense of the battlefield right now as russia in the second round.

>> the first two dais of the war that russia would roll into ukraine and they'd take over kyiv that zelensky would flee and they could then wave the russian flag and with great pride and patriotism and turned out to be a total disasser and they've lost by some estimates more than 20,000 troops, which is twice as many troops as soviet union lost in afghanistan and they've lost more than 1,000 tanks and many planes, et cetera, et cetera, they're flag ship to moscow sunk and the last quarter century and this has been a big humiliation for putin and that lead up with the introduction in a different production with everything in the war is for putin to get everybody to rally arnold the flag so he could boost his own

popularity and they'll know right now that they're losing this war. but if they were to know, putin would be really in dire straights forn him to have done something so costly for russia both in terms of life and in terms of money. and then having such a humiliation and what one can expect in the next phase is a very serious escalation and how that's defined and what they do is yet to be scene and we can see very clearly is that vladamir putin can't let matters lie wherey they are and seem to be a a failure and a loser and that's what it's like in the objective analysis right now. >> i'll ask you about the response from the u.s. and bind

was on television yesterday and announcing a new package of military assistance, a second of that size in a week. you look at the order of battle if you will.do do you think the u.s. is doing enough a and if you're baffled about that, what more do you think we should do? >> it's interesting because i think the u.s. is doing a pretty good job and definitely not enough and i'll get into that in a second and the u.s. is doing a pretty good job and it's always a little bit too late. we should have started this whole sanction, a few oligards before o the war began giving

putin what's to come. it just seems there's this overriding feeling that we don't want to provoke putin and we don't want to get him mad. so every time we have a reaction and we're not doing things proactively and we've helped ukraine a lot and we're very happy with the fast bets that the uk verse other countries are supplying military equipment in large amounts to ukrainians and that's what they need. remember like a month ago the polls wanted to transfer 20 planes and we don't want to do that. either those a planes ryan higgs a version of thosehe planes have been transferred and why did we stop that a month ago and similarly, every time they t wee talking about a -- the ukraines talking about a no fly zone since the beginning of this

thing and now in mariupol and he recollects we'll get to a new new fly zone and why did we re-zest for so long and -- resist for so long and on a military basis, there's more that can be done. we're doing a lot but there's more that can be done. come together sanctions, again, i would say that we're doing a pretty good job in a certain way, compared to what has ever been done before and in that country before and those being imposed are the most far reaching and dramatic ever opposed but we're not there yet.

in my opinion, the purpose of sanctions at this point is not that we should expect the oligards to rise and you happen they're too scared and it's not to get the people of russia to rise up at the moment because of all the frenzy and hysteria in terms of pro putin nationalism and they're all with him. i think the purpose of sanctions, and this is very important is that the slowing of russia and 60% of bank reserves are currency that are frozen by the u.s. and allies and we've cut off a number of banks from swift. about 70% of banks from swift. we should cut off 100% of the banks from swift and makes no sense and if you can't use one bank to a make transfers or othr transfers use one of the unsanctioned banks and then on

the olegard front, we've sanctioned about 32 of them and eu and others and they're not all the same people. there's 118&oligarch. >> they're shooting russian planes down and russia is ach nuclear weapons. >> just the fundamental question we b face here and criminals tht have nuclear weapons, how do you

dealsa with that problem? >> we have that problem today before we ever chute down a russian plane. so just imagine, here we are and we're having fun with ukraine and that washington is in london.ea then he says to us, are you ready for this country and it's the same question, the exact same question and have the war as well. >> it's not the same question.

those are nato countries and we have an article 5 commitment to nato countries and ukraine is not a nato country. it's not the same thing. >> we have the budapest memorandum. >> if we get to the next point and cnn and ms nbc and they'll come on and don't want to risk and he's in a position where he's challenging ever role, every border and later so i would argue that it's better to help the ukrainians than ending

up in a situation where they're folding to putin's bluff because he has the nuclear weapons with nucleark weapons. one thing he does respect and i've seen this time and time again. that's not something we'd t want to do and we keep bowing our heads down and we don't want to engage with you and we don't want to engage with you and seem to do whatever and we're not challenging anymore. >> the strategy that the biden administration and shutting down

the line that's critical and setting the economy back decades. having invested there successfully and is that's the sanctions andif how soon if that was done again how he's forced to pull back and there's a couple of things i didn't have time to mention, which are the elephants in the room. the first one is, yes, it's great we've done the central bank sanctions and, yes, it's

great we've done the oligarchs and by brian russian oil and gas. that's a lot of money, a billion a day and by some estimates and you look at it that way and from a physics standpoint there's -- if you say russia is a company and they have a bunch of income and meaning on the income statement, there's a bunch of revenue coming in, all of this oil sales and we're not -- we haven't really messed with it yet. that's a harder nut to crack. germany and italy and all the

countries are so dependent on russian gas and, two, gas and oil prices are so high. it would be better if we can get the oil price down. that's something that we could do because saudi arabia is the largest oil producer in the world.th inea theory, there's an ally of the unitede states and if they were to cooperate and turn on their revenue going down by 30% whether they cut off gas at all. the financial ability to wage this war.

>> in the next few days and vladamir putin talking about future cooperations and i'm not holding my breath so aside of assistance and p the point i fid fascinating when we're talking about really squeezing the russian economy and that is that the oligarchs corrupt the russian economy and they're enabled bayonet work of people in europe and the united states who do the banking and do some of the legal transactions, who protect the flows of money, who are really part of putin's russia network. how would the united states go after that network of facilitators. are there things you recommend and laws in the book if enforced

would make a difference? >> there's adi really easy one d this is one i was invited to testify about this issue in front of congress a couple weeks ago. if you have money launders and russian attackers and pr firms that are doing this, you can no longer have a visa to come here and uk can come here and u.s.

and enablers and that's something it doesn't take much effort. a visa is a privilege, it's not a right. if these people aren't conducive to the public interest of the country, they can be banned from entry. e anthat's something that would immediately, like within seconds, scare the hell out of everybody in the legal profession and all the other professions who rely on moving around to move money and coordinate attacks on this and when i aired this idea, the co-chairman of the helsinki commission and wrote to the secretary of state are proposing it and naming the first six names of british lawyers and it's something that i'm talking to british politicians about and european politicians next week and it's something that would have an immediate effect and

there's much bigger things that one can be doing if these lawyers are taking money, or other people taking money with sanctioned individuals and punished for violating sanctions and for taking money that have the proceeds and they should be prosecuted for taking money that are the proceeds of crime. but it's just enforcement and recognizing it's a problem. >> >> the new book and the basic story you'vene narrowed in the book and you were prominent investor and you have him dying

under horrifying circumstances and talk auroviewers through that story and what it talks to you about putin. >> so the first part of the story is the beginning of my book, which is the russian government and being killed and they're doing this and they turn my -- change my life forever and it was the most heart breaking awful thing i'd ever experienced and he was killed because he was my lawyer and i felt unbelievable feeling of burden of guilt since then and i made a decision this was with a businessman and devote all my tome with resources and energies going after the people who killed serge and make sure they

bring justice. it's something named the magnifke act and it freezes assets and bans visas and the acts was passed in the united states in 2012 and passed now in 34 countries arnold the world. second part of my campaign to gett justice was to find out who got them money. we trace that and so what i describe in my book is the process of laws passed in other countries and following the money and unbelievable thing and his regime did to try and stop

us. the whole process, he was in almost every different act and i believe it. one is the main reason. he was assassinated and assassinated in february 2015. his protege was also the body that poisoned him in moscow in 2015 and he went back to moscow and he'll be the first person or first major political figure that's been charged with this new law and can't mention the word to send him 15 years in

jail. many people including myself and vladamir putin and threatened me with all sorts of things up to and including death. they've issued eight interpoll arrest warrants and at the summit, helsinki asked trump to hand me over and trump said for a brief period of time, said yes. so it's a crazy story, my book and in my book, the main conclusion that most people come the book is read tha' it's not that big of elites these days and would have been three months ago that russia is effectively a criminal organization that is not a sovereign state in the way we think of vladamir putin as the mafia boss s and uses all the power of the sovereign state to use money and shuts up anybody

that stands in their way. >> you've been very courageous in fighting this. tell our viewers remarkable story about how russia in its pursuit of you and resistance and the appeal and talk to us about that meeting. >> vladamir putin went out of his mind and banned orphans by

american families and banned the paper after being elected and wanted to repeal the act and did everything possible and he was looking for an opening and he hasn't been successful after 2012 but he saw that donald trump was going be the republican nominee and so he sent an agent, one of his agents to the russian lawyer, a woman named natalia to trump tower june 9, 2016. with donald trump jr., jared kushner and paul manfort and the subject of the meeting was to repeal the magniski act and in theory, she was offering dirt on hillary clinton and this was quite remarkable when this information came outca because thise was the first sort of documented meeting of insider trump campaign official.

and people, agents of the russian government and it's still unclear exactly what was offered and what it did show was two things. one, how desperate putin was to get rid of the act and the second thing it shows was how crafty he was about approaching the trump campaign, which i thought was both ominous and interesting. >> in the time that we have left, i want to return to the war in ukraine, which is the show down for putin and putin's russia and the outcome will have lasting impact on the world. i want to ask you what i think of as the question well into

iraq, journalist kris turned to the journalist from the post and said tell me how this ends. i'm curious not simply the war in ukraine and it's the story of putin's russia, this corrupt system and ridden with inefficiency and tell me how this ends and where does it go? do you s see putin's falling frm power and russia stabilizing after that and some after putin. how doesd? the story end? >> so, i'm a sort of scenario analyzer and i don't have a one ending scenario and there's three scenarios that i see in how this could end.

>> it could be a palace coup and you end s up with other kgb general doing the other thing or could be a massive uprising or a violent up rising and in which case, i could imagine a scenario where someone like alexi navalni and that's low probability of 15% and more likely scenario

that's 70% is that this thing carries on and carries on and carries on. that putin can't decisively beat ukraine and ukraine can't beat putin and they're not giving up their territories and putin can't back down from a conflict he started. in that case, the list goes on and on and on and i should point out that we say this war started on february 24th but in reality, this war started in 2014. that's when russia took crimea illegally and that's when russia sent in serres people and call them russian-backed accept ragainitists ands that term has really been beneficial in defining how this whole thing plays out because they're russian proxies with the russian

wars and this thing in my opinion has been going on in eight years and going with unbelievable heart breaking tragedy along the way and i dread to say this but i think there's a more likely scenario with a 70% probability and then there's the really terrible bad case scenario, which is when i eluded to before and this is another 15% on this before and having this big show down with us and saying are you ready to go to war with us over this country that most americans couldn't locate on a map. he's hoping we'll fold and saying we don't wanty to go to war with you. that's what he's hoping and everybody -- it's interesting and everybody says that's impossible because article five of nato but what does that mean?

article 5 of nato is a concept y and it's not, no one is legaly required to do' anything. we break treaties all the time if it's in our national interest to do so and putin's hope is that we'll all reflect on that and say, you know what, we can have everything past 1945 and alln the things that poland, check republic, et cetera, they can all be yours and that's the nightmare scenario. >> i think we need to end it there. it's a a grim forecast from somebody who knows putin's russia extremely well and thank you so much for joining us on washington post live to talk about your book and the issues we're all following. thank you. >> thank you. >> so we'll be back with future wash post live program and if you want to see what we have coming up go to was hpostlive

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