“Putin's big bet is that he doesn't have to win the war, he just has to outlast the patience of the West,” said the activist, who is on the Russian president’s most wanted list.
Mr Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, after which he was denied entry into the country and declared a national security threat for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned firms.“So Putin is waiting it out, hoping that the financial military support for Ukraine collapses with the presidential election in November 2024,” he told CNA’s Asia Now on Tuesday .
Almost 2,000 young delegates from more than 190 countries are participating in the four-day event, which ends on Thursday.In 2008, his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky uncovered a massive US$230 million tax fraud committed by Russian government officials and testified against them. Mr Magnitsky was later imprisoned without trial, tortured, and died in prison in 2009.
“I've been at this for almost 14 years and I've survived 14 years, so I intend to survive many more years. It does require major changes of behaviour, new protocols, all sorts of security arrangements,” said Mr Browder, who has written two books on corruption inside Russia. While some of the money went towards paying for luxury goods, real estate and private jets, among other things, a part of it was channelled to purchasing chemical weapons.