Would you order the assassination of Vladimir Putin?
Or does assassination make every world leader a target?
Bill Browder is one of the bravest men I know. Vladimir Putin has spent years threatening his life, and it is only natural that Bill has thought hard about Putin’s death in return.
If you don’t know his story, Bill ran the Hermitage Capital investment house in Moscow at the turn of the century. He recognised the danger signs as Putin grew in power – his grandfather was Earl Browder the leader of the US Communist party, who was purged on Stalin’s orders. Bill knew how violent Russian history could become. He transferred the fund’s staff to London as a precautionary measure. Only Hermitage’s accountant remained. Sergei Magnitsky, wasn’t prepared to leave his home for a life in exile. Alone in Moscow, Magnitsky worked out that corrupt interior ministry police and tax collectors were using Hermitage’s name to steal $230m of public money.
The interior ministry arrested and tortured him, and left him to die in a stinking prison.
Bill knew all about the regime’s viciousness long before the dullard leaders of the West recognised it. But he still took Putin on.
Browder persuaded western governments to legislate for “Magnitsky sanctions,” which hit the Kremlin’s goons where it hurt by freezing their assets in London, Paris and New York. Nothing could be as provocative as denying them access to their loot.
As Bill says, “The truth is Vladmir Putin wants me dead and has wanted me dead for a while.” He has faced murder and kidnapping threats, extradition requests and Interpol red notices from Russia demanding that border police arrest him when he travels.
He wants to turn on the news and hear that Putin is gone. Of course, he does
Many would rejoice if an assassin took Putin of our hands. Imagine the head of the Ukrainian secret service telling Volodymyr Zelenskyy that an agent in Moscow had Putin in his gunsights. All the president needed to do was give the command to fire.
Surely. Zelenskyy would tell him to take the shot.
But that is not an easy order to give.
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