Vladimir Putin’s growing unpopularity in Russia means he cannot afford to end the war with Ukraine, as he will be lynched by his own people, the president’s greatest personal enemy in the West has warned.
Sir Bill Browder told The Independent’s World of Trouble podcast: “If he does a peace deal, he’ll lose power. If he loses power, then he’ll get strung up from a lamp post.”
The anti-corruption campaigner, who once ran the biggest investment fund in Russia, has fought against Putin for nearly two decades.
His latest intervention comes days after Nato leaders met in Turkey and agreed to allow Kyiv to produce its own Patriot air defence missiles, vital in withstanding the onslaught from Moscow.
Putin has variously claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 to see off a potential threat of Nato membership for Kyiv, to save Russian-speaking peoples in the east of the country, or as part of a patriotic duty to return Ukraine to Russia’s empire.
But the truth, according to Sir Bill, is that it is part of a desperate attempt by the Russian president to cling to power after manipulating the country’s wealth for so long.
“A trillion dollars, thousand billion dollars has been stolen by Putin and the thousand people around him from the Russian state,” he said.
“And the reason why people live a bad life in Russia is because that money should have been spent on schools and hospitals and roads and public services. Instead, it was spent on private jets and yachts and villas in the south of France.
“Over time, Putin realised that he stole too much money, that someday... something would happen and people would get really angry really quick, would organise very quickly, and march on the Kremlin.”
Sir Bill said the president could take out his political opponents, but if he compromised over Ukraine – where Russia has endured over 1.2 million casualties – the nation would react with rage at the waste of life.
“He can target people and kill them or imprison people or deport people on a one-off basis. But if a million people march on Red Square, he’s finished, and he understands that,” he continued.
“So what do you do, if you’re a very small man – he’s a tiny little man – who’s a very cowardly little man? You’re scared to death of your own people? ... [You] create a foreign enemy, and you start a war.
“And that’s the reason why this war is not going to end.”
Sir Bill said that as the US appeared to drift away from Nato and European defence under Donald Trump’s stewardship, Ukraine’s role has become increasingly critical.
“I think in a few years’ time, the Europeans – in a new Nato which doesn’t include the United States – are going to be begging Ukraine to be part of their defensive situation.
“I can imagine there will be some type of deal in which Ukraine says, ‘If you help us with our reconstruction financially, we will help you with your defence militarily,’ because they’ve now become the most pre-eminent fighting force in our part of the world.”
Sir Bill, 62, has avoided numerous attempts to extradite him to Moscow during his 17-year campaign for justice for his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured and murdered in Russian detention after exposing a massive fraud against the state.
There have been multiple attempts on Sir Bill’s life, and few individuals who are still alive have had a more personal reason to study Putin.
The US Magnitsky Act, inspired by the killing of the lawyer in 2009, is now the legal basis for personally targeted sanctions in America against Russia and corrupt officials all over the world.
Similar legislation has been passed in the UK, the EU, Canada and elsewhere to sanction human rights abusers and corrupt officials and is the backbone of the international sanctions regime against Russia over Ukraine.
Sir Bill, who was often shunned by the British establishment in London, which was a major centre for laundering dirty Russian money, was knighted in 2024 for his efforts to clean it up.
Russian money is no longer easily sloshing through the City, but he warned that many other corrupt officials and leaders from around the world still use the British capital as a safe haven for stolen loot.
The Russian president is suffering as his country’s energy infrastructure takes a pounding from long-range missiles launched by Kyiv and the economy begins to founder.
There have been signs of senior officials beginning to question the wisdom of the campaign against Ukraine.
As a result, many are predicting a victory for Kyiv over the Kremlin.
But Sir Bill believes the war will drag on and end up in a stalemate, with neither side winning.
“I know him from my own struggle pretty well, and I know that he never does what would be the rational thing to do. His entire modus operandi is to escalate, no matter what.”
He believes the best likely outcome is that Ukraine extracts such a heavy price for Russia’s war that it dwindles into a frozen cold conflict, as in the Korean Peninsula.
“I don’t believe you are ever going to have Putin signing a peace treaty. I don’t think the war is ever going to end officially, but I can imagine it is going to grind down to a low level, potentially even totally quiet front, in the same way as North and South Korea did.”
The latter has enjoyed decades of prosperity and democracy, while the former is shrouded by dictatorship and frequent famine.
“You know what happens 20 years from then,” Sir Bill added. “Ukraine is the South Korea; booming, democratic, vibrant economy, and Russia is the North Korea; isolated from everybody... and it’s a much, much worse situation.”
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