A leading
Russian general
purged by Russian President
Vladimir Putin is dead.
It's the second untimely death
of a Russian general this week.
Army general cannot easy,
though, died, quote,
after a long illness.
This is according to the state news
agency TASS.
He was 58 years old.
Zico reportedly
led the invasion of Ukraine
as commander
of the southern grouping of forces
before being ousted from his role
after he failed to grab the key
city of Khatib.
No official announcement of Zarqawi's
death has been released,
but his biography published on task
doesn't even mention his time
serving as commander in Ukraine.
Joining me now
is someone who was targeted by Putin
for more than a decade, Bill Browder.
He's the CEO of Hermitage Capital.
Also author of several books,
including Freezing Order
A True Story of Money
Laundering, Murder and Surviving
Vladimir Putin's Wrath.
Bill, I appreciate your time.
So here we are.
Another untimely death of a senior
military commander.
Do you think it's possible
that this wasn't simply a, quote,
long illness
Well, in most other countries,
if you were to hear this headline,
you would say,
you know,
the guy
died of heart attack
or cancer or whatever.
But in Russia,
there have been so many murders,
poisonings, people thrown off buildings,
mysterious deaths that you have to
apply some probability
that this guy was killed, particularly
since he was somebody
who was effectively sidelined and ousted
for his performance
on the war in Ukraine.
And remember that
there was just
oligarch after oligarchs who were dying
in these mysterious situations
who were clearly murdered
and Jika was the second Russian general
just to die this week.
The other one was Putin's
personal bodyguard
and overseeing the building
of his Black Sea palace.
He was in prison,
had just become eligible for parole and
suddenly is dead.
His death came out of nowhere,
and it does raise some suspicions of
foul play.
Since the start of the war.
As you point out,
there have been many suspicious at best
build deaths of prominent Russians,
including some of the oligarchs.
You reference, others in
the inner circle of Putin.
Are you surprised
that this keeps happening
and that no one does anything about it?
No one starts to murmur and talk and
turn on him.
I'm not surprised at all.
And I'm 100%
sure that many of these deaths
are the result of murder.
And when you put it into the context
of what's happening with the war,
it makes complete sense.
Russia has lost
more than 250,000 soldiers
since the start of this war.
That's based on the Ukrainian estimates.
That would be 17 times more people killed
in this war
in Ukraine and 533 days
than were killed over ten years.
In the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Life has no meaning in Putin's Russia.
Death is is death
and murder are par for the course
It's part of their
life, part of their culture
and an everyday occurrence in Russia.
Well, the Belarusian president
today, Alexander
Lukashenko, is one of Putin's
closest allies Gave an interview
and he talked about Putin
quite extensively.
And one of the things he said
was that Putin
was not weakened
by Wagner's Mutiny and promotions mutiny.
He said in fact,
and I wanted to quote it.
He is no longer his old self.
He is now wiser and more cunning.
If someone thinks that Putin
has been weakened
by promotions, mutiny, it's
total nonsense.
Putin is now more mobilized, more cunning
and wiser.
Bill, I
mean, obviously,
Lukashenko is going to say
what Putin wants to hear,
but is Putin more cunning,
more mobilized, post-Ferguson?
So Lukashenko is like Putin's assistant
and he's going to say anything
he can possibly say to butter up
his boss.
Putin is is totally humiliated.
He's humiliated by Prigozhin.
Remember, Prigozhin was on a march
towards Moscow to take over the country.
Putin called him a traitor, called him
an enemy of the state.
And then a week later,
promotions, having tea at the Kremlin
with Putin.
And a week after that, he's welcoming
African dictators
with the Russian province.
And so the whole thing sounds ridiculous.
Putin has not been
he's not wiser or stronger.
He's humiliated.
And and there's no way to humiliate him.
From this complete
fiasco that happened on the 24th of June.
So one way that Russia's
continuing to fight
this war is
that they're still
have the money to do it. Right.
The ruble has tanked, but they still are.
They're getting the money right.
We looked earlier at German exports
to Russia, as an example,
have plunged,
but they've more
than doubled to other countries
like Kazakhstan.
I mean,
they're getting what they need somehow.
And a new investigative report
about Switzerland
says that Russia is funneling
a lot of money through there right now.
Bill, we know
Putin's long term girlfriend
and their children
took refuge there at one point,
along with many oligarchs
and others in Putin's inner circle.
How instrumental is Switzerland to Putin?
Right now?
Well, Switzerland is really
a terrible place
as far as the Western
alliance is concerned.
We won't put sanctions on Russia
We've frozen Russian assets.
We've gone after oligarchs.
We've done
everything we possibly can
to start looking
at this natural resources.
What's your price apprehensive way along.
But in fact, what Switzerland is doing
is continuing to allow Russia
to keep all their dirty money there.
Out of the 200 billion of Russian money
that's in Switzerland,
only 7.8 billion has been frozen.
We're the 95% of it's still there
and available to the Russians.
And so Switzerland really has to
kind of get serious about this.
Otherwise, it's a major
sort of
loophole in the whole sanctions program
where we're trying to starve Putin
of his financial resources All right.
Well, Bill, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.