Bill Browder On Saving Ukraine, NATO, And The Threat Of Vladimir Putin
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This is Bill Browder. Vladimir Putin is running a mafia state. He's the capo. He's the head mafia boss. And his intention is to commit terrible crimes, get away with them, and further his reach.

We should be scared of Vladimir Putin. We should do everything possible to contain his evil intentions. We should support NATO, which is our joint defense agreement with other countries. And we shouldn't allow Putin to run riot over Ukraine and Syria and all these other countries. That's from when we last spoke to Bill Browder in 2018. He's a financier turned anti-corruption campaigner who made his fortune in post-Soviet Russia before falling afoul of President Putin.

Back then, few imagined Russia would dare carry out a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but Browder wasn't one of them. Now, with Donald Trump's return to the White House just weeks away, Bill Browder says world leaders must act immediately to give Ukraine the support it needs and avoid a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale across Europe. He joins us after the break to explain why Putin remains such a huge threat to Ukraine and the world.

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Are you interested in deep dive conversations about what's going on in Arizona? Then tune in to The Buzz every week. Our team tackles the issues that are important and brings you thoughtful conversations. Check out The Buzz from AZPM, part of the NPR Network. Bill Browder, welcome back to the program. Great to be here. I want to first issue a congratulations. You had an eventful Thanksgiving. Tell us what happened.

Well, I was invited to Buckingham Palace. I live in London, and I've been living in London for 35 years. And I was invited to Buckingham Palace to be knighted by the Princess Royal, Princess Anne. I was given the title of Knight Commander of the Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, which is—I think I must be the only guy from the south side of Chicago to ever get this title. But it was really—

as unbelievably pomp and circumstance as you could get in Buckingham Palace. I mean, it exceeded my and my family's expectations. So should we still call you Bill or do you prefer Sir William now? You can call me Bill. Well, you argue there's an immediate way to help Ukraine through this winter and to prepare for what's likely to be a different policy approach in the new administration from the White House, right?

What is it you think should be done now? So what we're looking at right now is a situation where Ukraine is doing everything it can to try to ward off an aggressive, murderous, evil invader, Vladimir Putin and Russia. And in order to do that, Ukraine is a much smaller country. They're a much less resourced country. They didn't have a big military stockpile. Russia's got all that stuff.

And for the last three years, the United States and the UK and the EU have all worked together to give Ukraine the ammunition they need and other military hardware they need so that they don't get run over by Vladimir Putin. And of course, all that stuff wasn't free. And this narrative has emerged over the last two years coming from certain quarters of the U.S. political spectrum.

That's to say, why are we spending any money on Ukraine? You know, why aren't we spending that money on something else? And that narrative has fed its way into Trump's campaign. And Trump has now pretty much said it outright that he wants to cut off military aid for Ukraine. And so after he's inaugurated, then the big question is, does he follow through on that threat or that promise?

And if he does, what happens to Ukraine? The United States provides half of the Ukrainians military aid. And what will happen is they will run out of ammunition. They will be unable to prevent the Russians coming across their border. Russians will occupy various places across their border.

When the Russians do occupy towns and cities in Ukraine, we've seen the aftermath. We saw at Bucha and Irpin, you remember those terrible images of men with their hands tied behind their backs, shot in the head, and then buried in shallow graves. We've heard the testimony of women gang raped by Russian soldiers. And we've heard the stories of children then being taken away and kidnapped and sent into Russia.

And so that's what will happen. And of course, the Ukrainians know about this because they've all heard of what happened in Bucha and Irpin. And so what do the Ukrainians do in a situation like that?

They flee. And so I would predict that there will be 15 million Ukrainian refugees fleeing across Europe. Will the Europeans have room for them? I mean, the Europeans have their own migrant crises, just like the United States does. I want to talk a little bit more about that potential humanitarian crisis. But if there's less of an appetite in the U.S. for sending more money to support Ukraine, where can that money come from?

Well, so this is the thing which is so interesting is that there's – when the war started, about a week after the war started –

The United States, the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Japan froze $300 billion of Russian government central bank reserves. And that money continues to be frozen. And so there's an easy solution to this whole thing. Russia has caused a trillion dollars of damage to Ukraine. We have custody of their money. When I say we, I mean the allies. And one very simple solution to all this complaining about spending money is that we confiscate that money, which is

were legally entitled to do. There was a law passed in the United States called the Repo Act, which entitles the government to do that. And there are similar laws in the UK and the EU. And we could confiscate that money. And then we could give that money to Ukraine for their defense. And then they don't run out of money. And then the Russians don't come across their borders and they don't occupy their towns and they don't create this humanitarian disaster.

Even simple solutions sometimes face obstacles. Do you see obstacles, whether it's a matter of political will or international political will?

Well, so here's the thing. One country can't do this without all countries doing it. So the United States would have to do it with the EU and UK, etc. Because if one country did it and the other countries didn't, then people might say, my money is safer in the countries that didn't do it than did, and that could cause financial disruptions. However, if everyone did it together, then there's no financial disruptions. But how do you get all these countries to do it together?

And the answer is it requires real leadership. And the world is lacking that right now. The French government has basically collapsed. Germany is having an election. The U.S. has got a new president coming in. And so it's very difficult to get everybody to act together on such a potentially...

I would say controversial issue because it's kind of straightforward, but it's something that requires like real leadership to get done. And it's kind of hard for me to picture this happening before the inauguration of Trump. And it's kind of hard for me to picture Trump, who seems to want to be the one in the driver's seat on this thing, to allow that to happen after he's president. If he allows this to happen, then who determines the outcome of Ukraine?

Does he? By threatening to cut off funding for Ukraine wouldn't have any impact because Ukraine would say, well, look, we got our 300 billion. You know, we're going to continue to fight and defend ourselves. It would be, you know, the German chancellor or the French president who would be determining the outcome, not Donald Trump. So obviously he doesn't want to lose that leverage, that power, that ability to, you know, play God. Bill, what are the risks, though, of seizing Russian assets?

Is there the possibility that that could backfire and impact both the international financial markets, diplomatic relations, or further escalate a leader who feels he's being backed into a corner? Well, Putin is a person who we shouldn't worry about his reaction. He's not going to start a nuclear war over taking his money. He'll thump his chest and he'll scream bloody murder and all that kind of stuff, but I'm not worried about him. Why are you confident of that?

just because it's not an appropriate response to a financial sanction to do anything like that. I mean, he'll be angry, but the thing about it is that we spend so much time trying to appease Putin, we should be putting a boot on the throat. That's what he respects. And by the way, if we do this, then that is a boot on the throat. And that's the kind of thing where he says, oh my God, these guys are really serious now. But coming back to your question, what are the other obstacles? There are some people...

that are saying, well, this is going to totally disrupt the financial system because countries like Saudi Arabia and China won't keep their money in dollars or euros anymore. Well, I come from the world of finance. That was my, before I became a political activist, I was a fund manager. And what I can tell you with 100% certainty is that if you're Saudi Arabia and you've generated a bunch of money from the sale of oil, are you going to put that money into China? Are you going to buy oil?

you know, Brazilian reals or Argentine pesos, because those are your alternatives. And of course, you're not going to. You have to own dollars, euros, because those are reserve currencies. And as much as you may find this distasteful that the West has penalized a country that invaded another country, you know, that will come and that will go and that will be the end of it. And I think anyone who's arguing otherwise doesn't really understand how the options that are available to countries and people who have cash.

You said we shouldn't be concerned about Putin's threats to use a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine. But we should also note he recently lowered the threshold for using a nuclear weapon. That's after the Biden administration changed its policy and reversed a ban that prevented Ukraine from using long-range missiles to strike targets within Russia. So for people listening, that sounds like not a threat,

but inching closer to a threshold that we can't move back from. And there are many people who are concerned. And the idea that Putin would act in a way that is reasonable doesn't seem like a reasonable assumption. So again, help us better understand why this isn't a concern for you.

Well, it's not just not a concern for me. It's not a concern for the people who provided those missiles to Ukraine. But the simple answer is this, that Putin, he uses all these threats as a way to generate appeasement so that we are so scared that we don't want to.

Do whatever it is that he's trying to prevent us from doing. And for what it's worth, he made all these threats when we were thinking about providing tanks. We provided tanks. Was there a nuclear war? No. He made the threats when we were talking about long-range missiles. Was there a nuclear war? No. Same thing with F-16s. No.

No. And the reason—so he goes around making these threats, but the reason that he doesn't actually follow through on them is because he understands that if he were to launch a tactical nuclear warhead, that would probably be the end of Vladimir Putin. Not because we're going to go and destroy him, but because all of a sudden, all of his allies, you know, the Chinese who are standing behind him and the Indians and all these people who are sort of giving him different types of support, they're not going to want to have anything to do with him anymore. Right.

And of course, NATO would then have to have some type of response. Would it be a nuclear response? No, but NATO would have to do something. We can't just let a nuclear power launch a nuclear weapon without a response because that would then unleash total chaos if everyone else thought they could do the same without a response. And so Putin is looking at all this and saying, am I strong enough to...

to do this and live through the consequences. And I think he understands very clearly that he's not. And so the people who have made these decisions to provide more or to provide ATAKAM missiles to be fired into Russia did so looking at all the factors. And they understood that basically Putin is what I call nuclear saber-rattling. He's bluffing. But how might that calculation change?

under the new administration, which has expressed less of an appetite to support Ukraine? Well, we don't know what's going to happen next. You know, on one hand, Trump says he wants to solve, he said he was going to solve the Ukraine situation in 24 hours after he was elected. Well, it's been a few weeks since he was elected and the Ukraine conflict has not been resolved.

He promised that Mexico would build the wall. There's no Mexico and no building any walls. This is a complicated story. If it was so easy to solve, somebody else might have solved it before. Putin made a decision to invade Ukraine. In my opinion, the reason he made this decision is that the easy way to stay in power as a dictator is to create a foreign enemy. And that's why he went into Ukraine, not for any other reason. And in order to stay in power,

He needs to continue to have this war in Ukraine because he wants the Russians to have a foreign enemy. And so it's not clear to me that there's any terms that Putin would negotiate which would be acceptable to us or acceptable to the Ukrainians to end the war. And so who knows what's going to happen, but I can't imagine a scenario where there's some simple fix to this thing where everyone sits down at a table and says, okay, here, we're going to all hash it out. I'm Jen White. You're listening to 1A.

Well, I want us to hear from NATO's new Secretary General Mark Ruda. He says Ukraine needs to be put in a, quote, position of strength instead of being pushed toward peace talks. Here's what he told reporters ahead of NATO's foreign ministers meeting last week. He is using Ukraine as a testing ground for experimental missiles and is deploying North Korean soldiers in this illegal war. Putin is not interested in peace. He is pressing on, trying to take more territory.

because he thinks he can break Ukraine's resolve and ours. But he is wrong. President-elect Donald Trump's pick for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia is retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg. Kellogg has said that further U.S. aid to Ukraine should be conditional on Ukraine's willingness to participate in peace.

Do you agree? Well, I mean, Ukraine has already agreed to that. The president's special advisor, Yermak, was here and he said, we're ready to participate in peace talks. I don't think there's any question that they're ready to participate in peace talks. So Putin, is he ready to participate in peace talks? So let's say he shows up to peace talks and he says, my only condition for peace is total capitulation of Ukraine.

Then what do we do? Do we say, OK, Vladimir, you can have Ukraine in the same way as Neville Chamberlain from the UK gave up the Sudetenland to Hitler? You know, I don't think we would accept that. And certainly the Ukrainians wouldn't accept that. And so, you know, there's no sort of snap your fingers quick solution to this whole thing. And by the way, what is Putin seeing right now?

Putin is seeing that the Ukrainians are running out of men. They're having a hard time recruiting new soldiers. He's seeing all these people questioning whether there should be more money spent on Ukraine. And so why would – if his original objectives were total capitulation of Ukraine in a situation where he's lost three-quarters of a million men and untold amount of riches to do this, why would he back down now?

Last month, the Washington Post cited a number of diplomatic sources who are on board with a, quote, land for security deal. Former French ambassador to Washington, Gerard Arroto, at the Post, quote, I think everybody has more or less reached this conclusion. It's hard to say publicly because it would be a way of saying we are going to reward aggression. Among the global community, what is your read on whether there is enough political willingness to

to support Ukraine in holding the line and not agree to a deal that requires the country to give up its land and territory. I don't think that land and territory is the key issue here. I think the key issue is basically...

Why is Putin doing this? Is Putin doing this for a bunch of burned out villages in eastern Ukraine? I don't think so. Why do you think he's doing it? I think that Putin is a man who has been in power now for 24 years. He understands that if he ever loses power, he's committed so many terrible crimes against his people that he will go to jail.

He'll lose all the money he stole, and he'll die. That's why he's doing this, is to avoid that. He wants to stay in power, and he understands that a good war helps the leader stay in power. And so I don't think that he particularly cares about this particular piece of land. I think what he cares about is his own personal survival. We're going to take a quick pause here. We'll be back with more from Bill Browder and hear from him about what life is like, knowing you're high on the Kremlin's hit list. Stay with us.

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Let's get back to the conversation. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump weighed in on the war in Ukraine recently. Hours after his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris, Trump called for an immediate ceasefire with Russia. And speaking to NBC's Meet the Press, he suggested the U.S. might leave the military alliance if European countries don't meet their defense spending targets. Should Ukraine prepare for less aid from the United States after you're sworn into office? Probably. Probably.

Sure. You said you can end the war in 24 hours. You've even said you want to try to end it before you're sworn into office. I'm trying to. You're actively trying to? I am. Have you talked to President Putin? No, I have not. I don't want to do anything that could impede the negotiation. Sir, will the United States stay in NATO while you're in office?

Again, they have to pay their bills. If they pay their bills, absolutely. But not if they don't pay their bills. But NATO's taking advantage of us because we were, look, I was able to get hundreds of billions of dollars put into NATO just by a tough attitude. I said to the countries, I'm not going to protect you unless you pay. And they started paying. If they're paying their bills and if I think they're doing a fair, they're treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely. I'd stay with NATO. But if not, you would consider the possibility. Absolutely.

how would you encourage the incoming Trump administration and allies to best support Ukraine? Because what I'm hearing you saying, correct me if I'm wrong, Putin's endgame is survival. It's personal survival. Ukraine says, yes, we're ready to come to the table. We're willing to engage in peace talks. But if Putin's outcome, if he's connected, if he's, pardon me, if Putin's endgame is something that peace talks won't solve,

What happens? What do we do? We give the Ukrainians whatever they need to finish this off and to expel the Russians from their territory. Because two things happen then. One is they regain their territory. And two, the Russian people are not going to allow a loser to continue to be running their country. And we get rid of Vladimir Putin. Is money enough, though? We mentioned this $300 billion that's been seized from Russia through sanctions. Yes.

Is it just money or is something else needed as well? Well, at the end of the day, wars are all about resources. And if Ukraine has the money, they'll figure out how to finish this off. But without the money, they will lose. Does the international community have any diplomatic leverage when it comes to Russia?

None. The diplomacy is so long gone at this point. It's purely about hard power, either military power or financial sanctions. And we could do more on the military side to help Ukraine, and we could do more on the sanction side to help Ukraine.

You've chosen to remain one of Putin's most outspoken critics, knowing what's happened to others who've not been quiet with their criticisms. How has your life changed since your time in Russia? Well, I'm now probably the number one foreign enemy of Vladimir Putin. He's issued death threats, kidnapping threats. I've been the subject of eight Interpol arrest warrants.

I live in London. They've tried to have me extradited from London lawsuits. They made movies about me. You know, my, my life is one where I'm sort of constantly vigilant, constantly on guard, constantly having to protect myself. But, um,

This all started a long time ago, 15 years ago, when my lawyer, his name was Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in Russian police custody after being tortured for 358 days. And I made a vow to his memory, to his family, and to myself that I was going to put aside my life as a businessman and use all of my time, energy, and resources going after the people who killed him.

And I've been doing that, and my struggle and my fight has now widened out. It's not just about Sergei Magnitsky. It's also about helping the Ukrainians and helping other victims of the Putin regime. And I'm not going to be intimidated to back off, and I will continue this fight in spite of the risks. I would imagine that in a moment like this, when you see, I'll say, softening support for Ukraine, that might bring up some complex feelings for you as someone who has...

his resources and time to pushing back against Putin's regime. Yeah, it's horrifying. I mean, I'm absolutely terrified of what the world is going to look like because...

As you played that clip at the very beginning, that was 2018, long before the war started. And I said, everyone needs to get tough on Russia. We need to contain Putin. And we didn't. And now look. And let me tell you that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he'll then make a move on the Baltics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. And those countries are NATO allies. And then the question is, do we defend them as part of our joint defense treaty on NATO? No.

Or do we abandon them? And either one is terrifying. If we defend them, we're at war with Russia directly. And if we abandon them, then it's just like 1930s Europe where Putin will take whatever he wants. And then it just escalates into an even bigger problem. I think we're sort of sleepwalking into potentially World War III by cutting off Ukraine. Everyone's saying, by helping Ukraine, that's World War III. No, it's just the opposite. If we abandon them, that's World War III. Are you finding support?

Absolutely. I mean, what's interesting is that, you know, the traditional support to be tough on Russia comes from Republicans. And most of the members of Congress, I was just testifying at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee speaking to Democrats and Republicans, and they were all saying, you know, we're going to have to do this.

Everybody is sort of one side with the Ukrainians. Everybody wants to be tough on Russia. There's some sort of new strain of Republicans that wants to capitulate, but that's not the conventional wisdom of the Republican Party. How have you seen that support translate into policy, if at all?

Well, I mean, so we saw up until today, the United States has supported Ukraine, and that's required on a bipartisan basis to vote for very large military aid packages, which have been voted with an overwhelming majority. I want us to hear right now from incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune. He's previously expressed his support for ongoing aid to Kyiv. Here he is speaking to PBS NewsHour earlier this year. I'm

American cannot retreat from the world stage. And we need to make sure that Ukraine has the weaponry and the resources that it needs to defeat the Russians. Because if we're not sending them American weapons and they succeed in Ukraine and they go into a role into a NATO country, then we're going to be sending American sons and daughters. So you have the incoming Senate majority leader speaking there in support of Ukraine. How do you hope

to perhaps appeal to the incoming administration? Well, I think that the reality will dictate the policy of the incoming administration. And the reality is that the problem is not going to be solved by any kind of, you know, sitting down at the table with Putin because it's an unsolvable problem. People ask me when the war started, you know, how long is this war going to last? Thinking that, you know, maximum two or three months.

And I said, this war is going to go on and on and on because there's nothing that we can offer Putin that will make him want to stop. And by showing weakness, that just only gives him, encourages him to be

more awful. And so the administration is not going to be getting any result that they want. And I hope that when they see that Putin is not backing off, that they say, okay, you know, we understand too that we need to give the Ukrainians what they need. You spend a good amount of time in London. How has the war in Ukraine felt differently in Europe than it is here in the U.S.? What's very interesting is that we just had an election in the U.K. And in the U.K., there is no

between any political party. Everybody supports Ukraine. And it would be political suicide to say anything otherwise. And so the moment that anyone becomes prime minister, the first trip they take is to Ukraine. And they want to show their constituents and they want to show everybody else that the UK is on the side of Ukraine. It's sort of so interesting for us. And the conversations we have is...

What do we have to tell on the other side of the Atlantic? What do we have to tell them so they understand that this is in everybody's security interest not to let Ukraine go? So there's a sense there that perhaps there's not a deep understanding on this side of the pond about what's at risk?

I think that that's people's perception. And more than that, I guess what people think in the UK is that, you know, America thinks it's far away from all this stuff and that there can be a sort of isolationist policy. But it never works that way. You know, eventually America will get dragged into the war as it did in the Second World War. There was isolationist policy until Pearl Harbor that everyone understood that, you

If you allow murderous dictators who are expanding around the world, they're eventually going to come to America as well. But when you look at the result of the U.S. election, is it your sense that Americans are supportive of sending tax dollars to Ukraine? We have a president-elect who has a populist agenda, more of an isolationist approach to global affairs. He was elected, a Republican-majority Senate and House, as you said, that

has stepped back from its support of the country? What is your read of where the American people are? I don't think the American people cared one way or another about foreign policy. When I saw surveys of what people cared about, they cared about inflation, they cared about some of the cultural issues. Foreign policy wasn't even on the list. And for what it's worth, we're not talking about it. I mean, the numbers sound large when you talk about them, but in the total scheme of things, we're talking about 5% of the U.S. military's budget

to destroy our largest adversary. That's a pretty great deal every day of the week. Why would anyone even complain about it when you compare it to money wasted in all sorts of other areas? I don't know why that's even an issue, why everyone's so laser-focused on the money spent on Ukraine when it serves its purpose. And there's so many other places where you could probably get that savings if you wanted to, as opposed to allowing the world war to erupt.

Ukraine wants to join NATO, and the military alliance's newest members, Sweden and Finland, signed up, citing their concerns about a more territorially aggressive Russia. What are the long-term implications for NATO if the U.S. backs off? Well, NATO doesn't exist without the U.S. The U.S. is the whole basis of NATO. Without the U.S., all these countries are defenseless.

And hopefully, if that were to happen, then it's sort of kind of necessity is the mother of invention that hopefully the Europeans learn how to take some of their own responsibility and take leadership and learn how to protect themselves because they can't rely on America if that's what happens. Now, there is a $50 billion loan being proposed by G7 nations to Ukraine in support of their war efforts. Tell us more about that.

So what originally happened with all this frozen money that we discussed, the $300 billion, was that it seemed like too radical a step to confiscate all that money. And so they came up with sort of a half-step, a compromise, a sort of internally negotiated compromise, sort of negotiating with themselves. And they said, we don't want to take all the money, but let's take the interest on that money. And then let's take the interest and sort of add it all up over the next few years and

and then give the Ukrainians the money, lend them the money, secure it against the interest on this frozen money. And I say $50 billion is not enough. They can burn through that pretty quickly. They need the full $300 billion. And so by doing that, it just prolongs the pain and doesn't solve the problem. Inevitably, there will be a day when there is no longer a President Putin.

How do you reflect on that future and what it means for Russia and the rest of the world? Well, it all depends on how Putin comes to disappear. So if he were to die in his sleep tonight, all the people around him, the oligarchs and the apparatchiks, would all get together because they've got a ton of money that they stole from the country. And they don't want that to get taken away by some future unfriendly leader. And so they would all congregate in the Kremlin and

hash it out behind blackened windows and then puffs of smoke would come out of the chimney, making a joke comparing it to the Vatican. And they would say, here's our newly appointed leader who would be a status quo leader who would do the same thing so that they don't lose their money. That's what happens if he dies in his sleep. There could be a scenario where some general decides to march on Moscow. You remember a year ago in June, Yevgeny Prokhorin, the head of the Wagner group, did that.

And it was really interesting because when he was marching towards Moscow, people were not objecting. They were putting flowers on his tanks and taking selfies with the soldiers. And everyone just wanted to know, who's the boss going to be? And nobody was coming out in defense of Putin. They were just saying, who's the boss? Who's the tough guy now? And so there's some chance that some general or some securities official steps in. Would that be better than Putin? I think anything would be better than Putin.

Putin has proven himself to be truly the most nightmarish of all world leaders. And then there's a scenario where, for one reason or another, the people of Russia rise up. And Putin can assassinate Yevgeny Prokofiev from the Wagner Group. He can assassinate Putin.

Alexei Navalny, you know, these are individuals. But if two million people march on the Kremlin, there's nothing Putin can do. And I guess that's what we're hoping is that the Russians kind of take matters into their own hands at some point. Ukraine is one conflict of many in the world right now. You shared with us your specific goals.

why you stepped back from a world of finance to focus on Russia, bringing justice for your friend. When would that work be complete for you? When would you say...

I've kept my promise. Well, you know, the thing is that my promise is mutated into many other promises. When you become a human rights activist, as I have, people come to you with their problems, and those problems are heartbreaking. And I can't imagine that the job is ever done because it just sucks you right in and you can't, you know, if you have a

If you have a moral compass and you hear some of these stories, you have to do something about it. And that's what I do, and that's what I'll continue to do. And that's what I derive meaning in life doing, is helping people stand up to these dictators and autocrats, not just in Russia, but elsewhere. Well, Bill Prouder, thank you for coming back to speak with us on the show. We appreciate it. Thank you.

That was Bill Browder. He joined us in studio hours after testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about strengthening the Global Magnitsky Act. The act was named after Browder's lawyer and friend who was beaten to death in a Russian prison in 2009. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening. Let's talk more soon. This is 1A.

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