3min chapter

Stay Tuned with Preet cover image

In Brief: Putin's Prisoners (with Bill Browder)

Stay Tuned with Preet

CHAPTER

The Russians' Decision to Imprison Vladimir Putin

"When he's in their custody, it becomes more obvious what's happening," Magnitsky says. "I'm trying to figure out how to avoid another Sergei Magnitsky by doing anything I can from the outside" The most important thing at this point is for Putin to understand that we care about him in the West, she adds.

00:00
Speaker 2
Do you have any hypothesis as to why, and I'm glad that he's alive, although unfortunately, incarcerated for political reasons, but do you have any understanding as to why having poisoned him twice on this occasion, they decided to imprison him instead?
Speaker 1
Well, when he's in their custody, it becomes more obvious what's happening. So when he was poisoned, it's all very vague. Even vague for us. Like, when did the poison happen? Who administered it? Is he poisoned? All this stuff, it takes a while to figure out, and it's hard to figure out. It's plausibly deniable. When he's in their custody, it's much less plausibly deniable. At the moment, on one hand, there are complete barbaric killers, as we see in Ukraine. On the other hand, they kind of want to pretend that they're playing by some set of rules, and I think it's just a little bit too much. Now,
Speaker 4
that doesn't mean that they won't
Speaker 1
poison him, or even beat him to death. This is what happened to Sergei Magnitsky. He was slowly tortured for 358 days, and in the last day of his life, they beat him to death. And so anything is possible, and I don't rule it out. And so all I'm trying to do now is just trying to figure out how to avoid another Sergei Magnitsky by doing anything I can from the outside, which is pretty limited, but there are things I can do. Like what? Well, the most important thing I can do at this point in time is to create awareness in the governments around the world, and interest in the governments around the world about Vladimir, so that the Russians realized that he's a valuable hostage. And so, you know, Vladimir was responsible for getting the Magnitsky Act passed. And so what could be more appropriate than to have the Magnitsky Act used against the people involved in his false arrest and prosecution? And so we've gotten now the United States, Canada, the UK, and the EU to all sanction his persecutors. And the message is, to Putin, is that Vladimir's a valuable hostage. Don't kill him. You know, at some point you could use him for something like releasing him in exchange for something in the future when there's some lull in the anger, and then Putin wants something. But the main idea at this point is just to try to keep him alive, and the best way to do that is for Putin to understand that we care about him in the
Speaker 2
West.

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