Last week’s Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview was with Bill Browder, described in the article as “the man behind the Magnitsky Act.” Also according to the article, Mr. Browder was the largest private investor in Russia, until his expulsion from the country in 2005, for daring to investigate the theft from the Russian treasury of $230 million in taxes paid by his company. Here are some pithy quotes from Mr. Browder regarding Vladimir Putin:
[He calls Putin]…the greatest kleptocrat of the modern era.
[A ready reckoner to calculate Mr. Putin’s wealth: Tot up the worth of every oligarch and divide the sum by two.] Half their wealth is held in trust for Putin.
[On Putin’s worth:] It’s north of $200 Billion. Basically, in order to to be rich in Russia, you can only do it at the pleasure of Vladimir Putin. He can take it away from you at any point unless you do things he asks you to do.
…His wealth is not about having it for his retirement. It’s about power.
The moment he’s not in power, none of these handshake deals with the oligarchs will be respected. [Mr. Putin has all this wealth] because you can’t be the most powerful person in Russia without being the richest person. It’s an alpha-male society on steroids, so you have to be the biggest, meanest, richest, everythingest person if you’re going to be the dictator.
Maybe this partially explains why Putin rides his horse half-naked.
Published in Group Writing[Putin has] a “prison-yard” psychology. He absolutely cannot allow anyone to disrespect him. [Someone who does] has to be attacked not just a little bit, but eviscerated… He wanted Ukraine to be a subservient country to Russia, and they didn’t want to do that… They wanted to be a democracy, not a part of Russia. And so the only answer to that is just absolute annihilation in his mind.
Whatever information blockade he puts up [in Russia] can’t prevent mothers from grieving for their dead sons. And for every dead son, there are family, friends, parents, siblings, who will feel that pain.
There may not be an oligarch uprising, but there may be an uprising of mothers.
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