intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv documents america's story and on sunday, booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including charter communications. >> broadband is a force for empowerment. that is why charter has invested billions building infrastructure, upgrading technology, and powering opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> shark medications along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> welcome to washington post live. david ignatius, columnist, my guess is bill browder, the founder of one of the biggest investors in russia after the fall of communism. now one of the biggest critics in the world of russian

president vladimir putin. he has a new book, "a true story of money laundering, murder, and surviving vladimir putin's wrath". bill browder, thank you for joining us on washington post live. >> great to be here, thank you. >> reporter: before we talk about your book i want to first ask our viewers to join in our conversation. if you have questions please tweet them to us, we will try to select questions that come in over the next half hour and put them to our guest. i want to ask you to focus before we talk about your book, on the war in ukraine. i would be interested in your sense of the battlefield right now as russia launches its

second round, their failure to capture kharkiv. how do you assess this part of the war? >> he has been humiliated, the first 8 weeks of the war everybody thought the first two days of the war that russia would roll into ukraine, take over kyiv, that zelenskyy would flee and they could raise the russian flag with great pride and patriotism and it turned out to be a total disaster. they have lost by some estimates more than 20,000 troops which is twice as many troops as the soviet union lost in afghanistan. they've lost more than a thousand tanks, many planes, etc. their flagship was sunk which is one of the greatest naval losses in the last quarter-century so this has been a big humiliation for

vladimir putin, and in the lead up with the introduction, i was saying on a different tv show that the purpose of this whole war is for vladimir putin to get everybody to rally around the flag so he could boost his own popularity and the russians don't know right now but they are losing this war but if they were to know, putin would be in dire straits, from to have done something so costly for russia both in terms of lives and in terms of money and having such a humiliation is not -- would be a very dangerous thing for vladimir putin. what one can expect in the next phase is a very serious escalation. how that is defined and what they do is yet to be seen but i think what we can say very

clearly is that vladimir putin can't let matters lie where they are and be seen to be a failure and a loser and that is what he looks like based on any objective analysis right now. >> guest: >> host: let me ask about the response from nato, president biden announced a new $800 million package of military assistance, the second of that size in a week for all sorts of weapons in that package but i want to ask you, as you look at the order of battle do you think the us is doing enough, and if you're doubtful about that what more do you think we should do? >> guest: i think the us is doing a pretty good job, doubling not enough. the us is doing a pretty good job. it is always a little too little too late. we should have started this

whole huge military armament much longer ago, we should've started sanctions, sanctioning oligarchs before the war began to give putin a taste of what is to come and it seems that there is this overriding feeling that we don't want to provoke putin, we don't want to get him mad so every time he does something to make us shocked we do something in reaction but we are not doing things proactively. we have helped ukraine a lot and i am very happy with the fact that the us, the uk and other countries are supplying military equipment in large amounts because that is what they need but a month ago the polls wanted to transfer 20 planes, the us said we don't want to do that and as far as i am aware either those planes or

some version of those planes have been transferred so why did we stop that a month ago? similarly every time, they are talking -- the ukrainians have been talking about a no-fly zone since the beginning of this thing and right now in mariupol there is constant aerial bombardment of that part of the country. i think we are going to get to the point we are going to supply a no-fly zone, we and our allies and when we get to that point we can look back and say why did we resist for so long? why did we have to lose one hundred thousand ukrainian civilians before we got to that point? on a military basis there is more that can be done, we are doing a lot but there's more that can be done and coming to the sanctions again i would say we are doing a pretty good job in a certain way, compared to

what has ever been done before against russia or any country i would say the current sanctions being imposed are the most far-reachinging and dramatic that have ever imposed, but we are not there yet in my opinion. the purpose of sanctions is not the weeks that the oligarchs to rise up, they are too scared to do that in the purpose of sanctions is not to get the people of russia to rise up. at the moment, the frenzy and hysteria in terms of pro putin nationalism they are all with him. the purpose of sanctions is to cut off the flow of money to russia so putin can't fund this war. we've done a bunch of good things to do that. we have sanctioned the central bank reserves of russia. 60% are in currencies that are frozen by the us and its allies. we cut off a number of banks

from swift, 70% of the banks from swift. we should cut off one hundred of the banks from swift. it makes no sense because if you can't use one bank to make dollar transfers you can use one of the unsanctioned banks and on the oligarch front, if we sanctioned 32 oligarchs, when i say we, the united states, the eu and others, not all the same people, this 118 oligarchs in the oligarchs hold put naps offshore cash and they should be sanctioned. >> host: the additional assistance the us can provide, one problem with, say, a no-fly zone is the military would tell you to enforce it the us would have to be prepared and probably would directly engage russian military aircraft and you would have a situation where the us was shooting russian planes down.

russia is a nuclear weapon state. the fundamental question we face here. what do you do when a president whose, morecambe will have nuclear weapons, how do you deal with that? >> we have that problem today before we ever shoot down a russian plane. here we are telling vladimir putin the president of the united states is saying we are not going to get involved with you because you are a nuclear state and we don't want to engage with you nuclear, what is the message let 'er rip it gets? the message is very simple. what does he do next? let's just say that he had his fun with ukraine, he then pulls up at the estonian border, points a bunch of weapons at estonia and then points a nuclear warhead at washington, berlin, and london and he says to us are you ready to have a

nuclear war with me over this country? the same question of the same question and what do we respond? we say we don't want a nuclear war with you, you can have estonia and by the way take lithuania, poland, latvia and romania as well? >> host: those are nato countries and we have an article 5 commitment to nato countries, ukraine is not a member of nato so it is not really the same thing, is it? >> we have the budapest memorandum where we said, you give up your nuclear weapons and we will protect your territorial integrity. mark my words if we ever get to this point in estonia there will be on fox and cnn and msnbc every, all sorts of pundits and analysts will say do we want to risk millions of people dying for this country most people can't locate honor map? it is the same thing. he is challenging every rule,

every tradition, you can face it now or later so i would argue it is better to help the ukrainians win this war than ending up in a situation where we are basically folding to putin's bluff because he has the nuclear weapons either in the future or now, he will threaten us with nuclear weapons in the future or now and one thing, i have seen this time and again, he respects strength. he understands in a nuclear confrontation with the united states that is something he doesn't want to do. what he takes advantage of is oliver saying we don't want to engage with you because we don't want to engage with you. that's an invitation for him to do whatever we are not challenging him on.

>> how to win this war short of the reference or conflict with russia which nobody wants. the strategy the biden administration with its nato allies has is to impose sanctions that are so devastating that they effectively shut down russia's ability to make war and cripple its economy, sets its economy back decades. you know a lot about the russian economy. having invested there successfully. i want to ask you whether that basic strategy is viable, you talked about ways, to extend various aspects of these sanctions, how soon if that was done do you think russia would be at its knees and forced to pull back?

>> we are nowhere near there yet. a couple things i didn't have time to mention which are the elephants in the room. the first one is it is great that we've done the central bank sanctions, great we've done the oligarchs but every day, without fail the west, i particularly mean germany and italy and so on are sending $1 billion to putin by buying russian oil and gas. that is a lot of money, billion dollars a day and by some estimates that is what russia is spending on their war effort and that is what european countries are paying them so it is kind of a wash. money and money out and so if you look at it that way, we are not degrading their ability at all. from a business standpoint, if you were to say russia is a company they have a bunch of assets on their balance sheet which we have frozen but they have a bunch of income coming

and other income, bunch of revenue coming in, all of this oil sales and that we haven't messed with yet. that is a harder nut to crack, one because germany and italy and all these countries are so dependent on russian gas and because the gas and oil prices are so high and there's two ways to deal with this. one thing which would have an outsize affect and be crucial is if we could get the oil price down and that is something we could do because saudi arabia is the largest oil producer in the world. in theory they are still an ally of the united states, provide all sorts of military protection for saudi arabia and if they were to cooperate and turn on their taps they could pump out additional one or 2 million barrels a day and if they were to do that, that would push the oil price down by 30% and if the oil price went down by 30% then russian

revenues would go down by 30% whether the germans cut off any gas or not and if that were to happen then we would be putting a serious dent into russia's financial ability to wage this war. >> host: i should know within the last two days saudi arabia's crown prince mohamed been someone had a lengthy phone conversation with vladimir to talk about future continued cooperation so i'm not holding my breath for saudi assistance on this but you made a point i find fascinating, when talking about squeezing the russian economy and that is the oligarchs, the corrupt russian economy we've been discussing are enabled by a network of people in europe and the united states who do the banking, into the legal transactions, who protect the flows of money, who are really part of putin's russia network,

how would the united states and the west really go after that network of facilitators. are there specific things you would recommend. laws already on the books that if enforced would make a difference? >> there' s a really easy one in this is one that i was invited to testify about this issue in front of congress a couple weeks ago. i've been a great witness and victim of these enablers working for the russian government in the united states and great britain and varies places of the person we can do is easy, takes no effort. if you have let's say a bunch of british enablers, people known to be money launderers, known to be lawyers representing the russian government attacking dissidents abroad, pr firms doing this

type of work, something you could easily, the united states could say to those people you can no longer have a visa to come here and similarly the uk could do the same for us enablers in the ute deb et cetera and that is something that doesn't take much effort. a visa is a privilege, not a right. if these people aren't conducive to the public interest of the country, they could be banned from entry and that is something that would immediately within seconds scare the hell out of everybody in the legal profession and all these other professions who rely on moving around to move money and coordinate attacks on journalists, whistleblowers etc. and it is something when i aired this idea the co-chairman of the helsinki commission, representative stephen cohen loved it and jumped onto and wrote to the secretary of state proposing it and naming the

first 6 names of british lawyers which i'm talking to push politicians and european politicians next week about it, something that would have an immediate effect and there are bigger things if these lawyers are taking money or other people taking money from sanction individuals they should be punished for violating sanctions and if they are taking money they should be prosecuted for taking money from the proceeds of crime but the key is enforcement and recognizing this as a problem. >> host: let's turn to your new book. i ask you to tell our viewers the basic story you narrated in the book. you were are prominent investor in russia, you got into

significant conflict with prudent and those around him. they turned on you and began attacking you. you are a lawyer. just talk our viewers through that story and what it taught you about howard hooton's russia really operates. >> guest: the beginning of my book, russian government's murder of my lawyer who uncovered a $230 million corruption scheme and testified against the officials involved and subsequent we arrested, tortured for 358 days and killed for doing that. 's murder really turned changed my life forever. the most heartbreaking awful thing i ever experienced. he was killed because he was my lawyer and i felt an unbelievable feeling of, burden of guilt since then. i made a decision after he was

killed to put aside my life as a businessman and devote all my time, resources and energies going after the people who killed him to make sure they face justice. my book is two part of the campaign to get justice. the first part is freezing the assets and visas of the people who killed him and people who do similar things. it was passed in the united states in 2012 at has been passed in 34 countries around the world. the second part of my campaign was to find out who got the money sergey exposed and testified against and was killed over and we traced that money all over the world, and

what i described in my book is the process of getting these laws passed in other countries and following the money. all the unbelievable things vladimir putin and his regime did to try to stop us and it included a number of people being killed or attempting to kill them. one of my allies in this process. every different lawmaking in the body, he testified in favor and one of the main reasons he was assassinated in february 2015 was his work, his protégé was testifying in different lawmaking bodies they poisoned him in moscow in 2015 and again in 2017 and 10 days ago he went back to moscow and

has just been arrested and he is now the first person the addition to the first person for the first major political figure charged with this new law saying you can't mention the word war or they sentence you to 15 years in jail and many other people including myself were vladimir putin has threatened me with all sorts of things up to and including death. they issued tweet interpol arrest warrants and at the trump summit in helsinki vladimir putin even asked trump to hand me over and trump said for a brief period of time said yes. it is a crazy story. the main conclusion most people come to when they read the book is -- it is not that big a leap these days, would have been 3

months ago that russia is effectively a common-law organization, it's not a sovereign state in the way we think of it, it is vladimir putin is the mafia boss and uses all the power of a sovereign state to steal more money and shut up anybody who stands in their way. >> guest: very courageous in fighting this. tell our viewers the remarkable story about how russia in its pursuit of you sent somebody to meet in new york with some of donald trump's closest associates, jared kushner was at that meeting before the election trying to pressure the trump campaign to embrace resistance, tell folks about that meeting and what it tells us about putin.

>> vladimir putin went out of his mind, banned the adoption, and first major policy paper after being reelected that he wanted to repeal the act and did everything possible, he was looking for an opening, he hadn't been successful after 2012 but he saw donald trump was the republican nominee and so he sent an agent, one of his agents, a russian lawyer, a woman, 2 trump tower june 9, 2016, donald trump junior and jared kushner and paul manafort, the subject of the meeting was to repeal the magnitsky act. in theory he was offering dirt

on hillary clinton, this was quite remarkable when this information came out because this was the first sort of documented meeting between insider trump campaign officials and agents of the russian government and it is still unclear exactly what happened in that meeting which we all know what was asked for, we don't know what was offered but what it did show was two things, how desperate putin was to get rid of the magnitsky act and the second thing it showed was how crafty he was about approaching the trump campaign which i thought was both ominous and interesting. >> host: in the time we have left i want to return to the war in ukraine, which is the showdown for putin and putin's

russia and the outcome will have lasting impact on the world and i ask what you think of as -- on his way into your rack, general david petraeus turned and said tell me how this ends? and i'm curious not simply about the war in ukraine but the larger story of prudent's russia, this corrupt system written with inefficiency and criminal activity. tell me how this ends? where does it go? you see hooton falling from power, you see russia stabilizing after that? some people think it will be more unstable after prudent. what do you think? how does this story end? >> i'm a sort of scenario analyzer. i don't have one pending

scenario, there three scenarios icy in how this could end? there's the good scenario which i would put a low probability scenario, 15% and that is that ukraine defeats russia military ali, we supply enough to comment, military equipment they are fighting for their homeland and fighting better than the russians, the russians are inefficient, corrupt and demoralized and they win and they decisively win and drive russia out of ukraine. it is a low probability scenario but if that were to happen it is my opinion the russian people would no longer allow vladimir couldn't be in charge. how he get changed from that is anyone's guess. there could be a palace coup and you end up with some other kgb general doing the same thing or it could be a massive violent uprising in which case i can imagine a scenario where

someone like alexei novalni becomes president of russia and then we have a good scenario but that the low probability, 15%. the more likely scenario i put at 70% is this thing carries on and carries on and carries on and hooton can't decisively beat ukraine and ukraine can't decisively beat hooton and neither side has any interest in giving up, the ukrainians will not give up their territory and putin can't back down and look week from a conflict that he started. in that case this goes on and on and on and i should point out, we say this war started february 24th but in reality this war started in 2014. that is when russia took crimea illegally and that is when russia sent in various people,

called them russian backed separatists but that term has been very unhelpful in defining how this has been playing out because they are effectively russian proxies fighting a russian war for the last we ate years. this has been going on for twee 8 years and there's no reason it wouldn't go on another we ate years, all sorts of heartbreaking tragedies along the way. i dread to say this but i think that's the more likely scenario, 70% probability and there is the really terrible, bad case scenario which i alluded to before when talking about the no fly zone which is, this is another 15% on this, the rolling of tanks on the estonian or lithuanian border and having a showdown, are you ready to go to war with us over this country most americans couldn't locate on a map and

he's hoping we will hold, we don't want to go to war with you. that's what he's hoping and everybody, i'll talk to people, that is impossible because article 5 of nato but what does that mean? article 5 of nato is just a concept. no one is legally required to do anything, we break treaties all the time if it is in our national interests to do so and prudent's hope is we will all reflect on that and say you can have everything passed 1945, all those things, poland, the czech republic, can all be yours, that is the nightmare scenario. >> host: we need to end that there. ..rom somebody who knows putin's russia. extremely well, so to be taken seriously bill brader. thank you so much for joining us on washable. so i've talked about your book and talk about the issues. we're all following. thank you. thank you. so we'll be back with future

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