Bill Browder - Putin’s Kleptocratic System Brought to the Edge of Collapse by Putin's Disastrous War

From 2007-08 Putin came to believe that the West would offer no resistance to his expansionist aims. It’s at that moment he pronounced a more assertive Russia, and started to act accordingly on the world stage, and in relations to neighbouring countries, with the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014. NATO provocation is one excuse given for Russian aggression but it’s unlikely he saw NATO as a threat and must have known they had neither the intent nor capability to directly threaten Russian territory. This series of miscalculations have led Russia into a disastrous war and may have led Putin’s kleptocratic system to the edge of collapse.

William Felix Browder is an American-born British financier and political activist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, which at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. The Hermitage Fund was the best-performing fund in the world, and the primary investment strategy of Browder was shareholder rights activism. Browder took on large Russian companies such as Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems, and Sidanco, but this led to retaliation, and eventually he was refused entry to Russia, deported to the UK, and declared a threat to Russian national security.