Pod Save the World - How to be a Russian Oligarch

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Tommy and Ben discuss the debate about whether the US and NATO should help supply MiG fighter jets to Ukraine, reports that Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons, the growing risk to journalists covering the war, what President Biden and the US are doing to support Ukraine and how people in Russia are reacting to the invasion. They also cover China’s reaction to the war, the major covid outbreak in parts of China, and how the war is complicating the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. Then Ben talks with author Tom Burgis about the rise and influence of Russian oligarchs. How to Help in Ukraine Ukrainian Congress Committee of America: donate to humanitarian efforts United Help Ukraine: donate to the life-saving medical supplies to Ukraine’s front lines Revived Soldiers Ukraine: donate to treatment of the wounded and the provision of hospitals Razom for Ukraine: donate to tactical medical training and emergency response in Ukraine Nova Ukraine: donate to humanitarian aid for Ukraine Vox: How you can help Ukrainians   

Welcome back to Pots Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Tom Brady is back. That sound you hear is everyone turning off the podcast. It's hard to get that excited about a guy coming out of retirement after like a month. Such a drama queen. Yeah, come on, man. 40 days, 40 nights of retirement.

You couldn't find a better team, so just going back to Tampa. It's weird. Look, I think people, I think he missed the camaraderie, right? You missed the friendship. You miss the guys in the locker room. Or he spent a few weeks with that. this family and decided you didn't want to do that anymore. Or there's something else going on. That is much darker. Speaking of much darker, Ben, this show every week. Yes. We are primarily

focused on Ukraine again. We're going to talk about the latest in the military effort in this big debate over mig fighter jets. We're going to be mig fighter jet experts for the day. Concerns about chemical weapons, very serious risk there. The growing risk to journalists, President Biden is up to in the U.S. and how he's helping the Ukrainian people and the reaction. to the war in Russia itself. We're also going to talk about how China is reacting to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as they go into a big-time COVID lockdown and how this fighting between, you know, the West and Russia as complicating effort to restore the Iran nuclear deal. And then Ben, was today your dream interview?

Yeah, I want people to listen to this interview. I wish you guys could see the smile on Ben's face as he's going to go deep into kleptocracy. Well, I mean, you've heard me like sing the praises of this book, Kleptopia, how dirty money conquered the world. It's kind of the definitive work on the oligarchs and how they hide their money, launder their money, and are serviced by, you know, London law firms and private intelligence. But so I talked to Tom Burgess, the author of Kleptopia, who was speaking to me from the British Parliament where he was giving evidence at a hearing because a libel suit against him that was brought by a bunch of these oligarchs was recently tossed out in the current environment.

But Tom walks us through kind of what's happened to him and other people like him who've been faced with lawfare, as he describes it from the oligarchs. But then he walks us through like, how do you become an oligarch? And we kind of pretended like he was my conciliere. How do you get mining rights? How do you launder money? How do you get all London law firms and PR shops and private intelligence to do your dirty work? And what might the current sanctions accomplish and not accomplish? He's very good on what the holes are.

and the sanctions if we really want to get after this. So check it out. What a cool thing to be an expert on. I mean, unfortunately, quite timely. Super timely, but also, if you do it from London, there's got to be considerable libel law risk, or at least. Well, this what happened to him. He published this book and just, you know,

what these oligarchs do is they hire these really high-priced law firms to just destroy journalists, because journalists are not protected from libel laws like in the U.S. Right. And what I, you know, what we talked about, too, is, in fact, In fact, another recent guest on this podcast, Catherine Belden, who's the author of Putin's people, had the same publishers him in the same lawsuits. And so they were actually hanging out, he said, and getting drinks together and comparing

notes. But, yeah, it's, you know, he talks about, by the way, also, like, political donations to Boris Johnson's party and the various ways that oligarchs have tried to shield themselves. And Tom, you'll like that he's not a Chelsea fan, but he also points out that Newcastle is also owned by an oligarch, in this case, Mahm bin Salman. Yeah, there's a lot of bad money swirling through the English Premier League. That's really cool. I cannot wait to hear that.

And then I'm going to buy the book as soon as the pot is over. I've been reading the new czar, the rise and reign of Vladimir Putin by the guy used to be a New York Times correspondent in Moscow. It's super interesting. Stephen Lee Myers. Yeah. Goes deep on the history of Vlad and how he rose to power. And it's a really interesting story. I mean, he's sort of like a two-bit functionary and just got in with the right people in Yeltsin's orbit and in Rose.

Just amazing. Anyway, right place, right time. Ben, I'm hoping you'll help me with this transition because I got to go from Vladimir Putin's rise to check out the latest episode of offline with John Fabro recorded at South by Southwest. Well, it would have been better for everybody at Putin that stayed offline, I guess. There you go. Thank you for that. John talks with Greg Daniels about his latest show, upload, and what inspired him to write a show about the digital afterlife. Greg was one of the people who adapted the office for the U.S.

So we'd also talk about the lasting impact of that show. You can find offline on its new feed every Sunday. Check out offline with John Vavro. Subscribe if you haven't. Also, check out the latest episode of America Dissected with Dr. Abdul Al-Said. He's talking to Dr. Abdel Rishi, who is the lead author of a position paper from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine about daylight savings time. This is coming to Lovett's lock. Yeah, I don't like David.

So I'm on Team Lovin on this. I felt tired all week, I think, because of daylight savings. I'm going to pissed off about it. I mean, I'd like it more with the daylight. I just wish we didn't have to go through this dumb, you know, a few months of pointless clock changes. Let's just do one minute at a time for a few days. Okay. Update on what's happening.

I start there. So the military campaign. This is based on background briefings by the Pentagon. And then there's a bunch of really great analysts like Rob Lee, Michael Kaufman, Ryan Evans, like people doing this on Twitter that are very helpful. So the military situation is pretty similar to where it was last week with one major exception that I want to get to at the end. The Russians still appear to be making the most progress in the south and the east of Ukraine. They're pushing up from Crimea.

They're trying to encircle and siege cities like Mariupil and cut off the Ukrainian military forces fighting in the east and the Donbass. Russia continues to attack civilian areas. There's reports that about 2,000 cars worth of civilians were able to escape Maripal, but a similar number are stuck and still waiting. that 40-mile convoy that everyone has been talking about in the north is slowly reorganizing and moving towards encircling Kiev, but the key takeaway seems to be that the Russians are now moving slowly. They're more deliberate and they're trying to use drones and other means to protect themselves and improve their targeting and force protection, presumably because the Pentagon estimates

that they have lost 10% of their forces. I saw that quoted by like a bunch of reporters. I assume it means not just casualties, but like stuff. Yeah, I think it's referring also to equipment. Yeah, hardware. Yeah, so big chunk of the military, though. So, Ben, but to me, this was the big new development. On Sunday, Russian long-rage bombers fired several dozen cruise missiles at a Ukrainian

military training facility in the West that's just 10 miles from the Polish border. That strike killed at least 35 people, wounded well over 100. And it's worth pointing out that as recently is February of this year, there were 150 Florida National Guardsmen at this facility conducting a training mission. Those U.S. troops were pulled out before the invasion, but I guess this facility is being used now to train foreigners who were coming into help to Ukrainian. So then Biden approved another 200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine over the weekend. But the debate is focused on this question of whether the U.S. or whether NATO countries should transfer Meg 29 fighter jets to Ukraine. So Poland

offered to fly their planes to U.S. bases in Germany, transfer them to Ukrainian pilots who then fly them back to Ukraine. The Pentagon said no, it's a bad idea. It could risk further escalation. I'm, again, as we've discussed, the further thing from a military expert, but I keep reading analysis from people who are experts who say they think transferring these make fighters wouldn't necessarily help the military campaign that much in the short term. They say that, like, as it stands, Ukraine has lots of these old planes, and they wouldn't really impact the situation. But clearly Zelensky wants them. And in the U.S., I think the MIG issue has become symbolic and sort of a symbol of like, are you committed or not, right? It's a new thing people

want Biden to do. Ben, what do you make of this decision? And like, why do you think that the U.S. thinks that the MIG fighter transfer is escalatory in a way that sending hundreds of billions of military assistance isn't? I genuinely don't really get it. So a couple things here. First of all, on the military update because it also kind of foreshadows the question about Miggs. You know, I think why it's so notable that Putin struck that base, you know, first of all, it's like 10 miles from the Polish border. So close. So that's very close.

But second of all, it's a signal that he's targeting, and they said they were targeting, the supply of the Ukrainian military with arms. Yeah, resupply convoy. Resupply convoys, things like that. Why is that important beyond just the geography? of it because I think we're all considering, well, what might cause a war between NATO and Russia? And I saw that and I thought, if Russia's really determined to strike convoys of equipment and arms coming into Ukraine, you know, what's to say they might not take a shot on the other

side of that border at some point if they're seeing stuff being staged? And so suddenly you can see a situation where they hit something or what's to say they don't hit something at the border that kills the NATO personnel, right? And so you can see a scenario where something like that forces NATO to take a kind of proportional response where they hit the Russians that hit them. And there we are right on the brink of escalation, right? So that stuck in my mind. The other thing, we've talked on this podcast with Chris Miller, who was one of the best reporters on this early, you also have these foreigners flowing in to fight against the Russians. A lot of former American special forces types among them. And so you could start to see people like that be killed.

Or people like that start to kill Russians, right? And that can escalate too. So it just spotlights that this arming of the Ukrainians is obviously both necessary for the defense of the Ukrainians, but also the potential flashpoint for a NATO conflict. Which gets to the Migs. First of all, the whole episode was a little messy. It's happened a few days ago, but I mean, the polls seem to announce this without notifying the Americans. frankly, I didn't think that the American officials had to be quite as, you know. Yes, in the middle of the congressional hearing, Toria Newland, the assistant secretary, was kind of like shut it down hard.

Yeah, but didn't have to take a swing at the polls. Like, let's, you know, but the bottom line is it felt like the polls wanted to do this or be seen to be doing this, but didn't want to take on the risk of doing it themselves. Like the way in which you would get fighter jets across the border, you know, it's probably a little. more difficult than shipping some javelin any tank missiles? For sure. Is someone going to fly those across the border? Someone to drive those across the border. Yeah, I mean, I think what the plan was basically of a Ukrainian pilot fly to Germany,

fly it from Germany to Ukraine. Yeah. But I don't know, you're right. Like, you can get in the air. You get shot down by the Russians. So, I mean, I think there's a, this highlights, and you talk to Derek Jolay about this, but it highlights, this is not a logistically easy thing. The bigger the equipment, the bigger the target, especially of Russia's firing at it.

I understand the impulse. And I, like you said, I don't, we're in, right? I mean, if we're giving the Ukrainians javelin any tank missiles, those are killing Russians and tanks. If we're giving them surface to air missiles, those could kill Russians in aircraft. Like, so I do tend to think that, like, if you're arming a military that's in a war, I think that the bigger question is, there's some risk involved in that. Is it worth the risk of losing the equipment or of potential loss of personnel to make that transfer? It feels to me like the U.S. position is like, yeah, we're open to this, but frankly, we think this is higher risk to get it in there. We're not sure it's as big impact as some of the other things we're providing.

And therefore, we don't want to kind of go out and a limb to take this risk. It feels more to me like that than kind of a dogmatic opposition to us. supplying planes, you know? Yeah, me too. It seems like, you know, look, I don't want to tell Zelensky how to fight his fight. I don't think the U.S. wants to be perceived as doing that either. But does seem like a lot of experts just sort of are scratching their head thinking. There's sort of limited utility to these planes compared to some of the other materials we're able to give the Ukrainians. Ben, it's also, you know, you mentioned this cross-border incident. It's worth noting that this attack in far western Ukraine, 10 miles from the

Polish border, was launched from planes in Russian airspace. So these bombing raids aren't like what you see in the movies. It's not like a plane flies really low over target and they drop the bombs and they whistle and they explode. No, these are cruise missiles that are launched from Russian airspace. Yeah. They travel hundreds of miles and then hit these targets. So I think that just speaks to the capabilities on both sides. And again, like a no fly zone wouldn't impact, wouldn't stop that happening because you're probably not going to shoot down this plane if it's in Russian airspace for us. That is pretty serious escalation. Two other quick things in the military campaign than I noted. there are reports at the head and the number two guys at the FSB,

which is Russia's foreign intelligence branch. Their CIA have been arrested, presumably for, I don't know, things going south in the war effort. And two, Ramzan Khadirav, who's the leader of Chechnya, who, as I think you mentioned on a previous show, is a historical asshole. There's a huge piece of shit. Yes. Horrible guy who wears $1,500 Prada boots while being with his military. He's reportedly in Ukraine and has personally joined the war effort according to because of 2020. I think photos on his Instagram.

So that's a bad update. Yeah. I mean, on the FSB side, like you saw, you know, in the run up to the war, remember the like Potemkin Security Council meeting and where these guys like didn't quite not answer the question. It didn't feel like, you know, I think the alarming thing about it, right, is that the reports are that Putin has been in a. extreme isolation throughout COVID for whatever strange reason. I guess he's a long COVID believer. And that he has basically been listening to some really strange ideologues who've been hitting all these notes about like Russian history in the last thousand years and the restoration of, you know, Russian authority over Ukraine. And so he's like sidelining hardliners who are

not crazy enough. Right. He's importing hardliners. It's not like it's not like the Vee people or like bunch of like moderates, you know, or like, you know, but he's just like, so that's never a good sign, right? And then Kadeirov, you know, yeah, he, I saw the videos he was posting, you can't verify them. He claimed that he was on the outskirts of Kiev with a bunch of Chechen fighters. I think that the reason that's alarming is a couple of levels, right? The first is, as we talked about, these guys are like usually the most brutal fighters in the

kind of proxies of available to Putin. And frankly, you know, if what we're seeing in Ukraine recalls what happened to Groszny, the capital of Chechen, which is leveled, like mass torture and repression, like Kedirov, this is a guy who's tortured people, is assassinated people, you know, who's been a part of real excesses in terms of human rights violations. And again, rumored to be attached to a number of the assassinations that Putin has carried out against opponents. Right. Again, God forbid, but, you know, Zelensky, other senior Ukrainian officials, like these Chechen kind of hit squad type guys, you know, this is part of what they do. This is not to besmirch all Chechens. It's to besmirch Kederov in his circle. But, yeah, it's just a sign of just how ugly this thing is.

Yeah, bad news. And also, like, you know, maybe conscripted Russian soldiers won't commit some mass atrocity against someone they feel like is their brother in Ukraine. But maybe a Chechen will. Maybe someone he imports from Syria and is getting paid a bunch of money. So worrisome signs of escalation. Another one, Ben, is this increased conversation around biological and chemical weapons. So I think there's two parts of this story. The first is that Russian propaganda channels are really pushing hard this idea that there

were U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine that are developing and planning to release some new virus, some new coronavirus, to take down the world. and they're now suggesting that Russia invaded Ukraine to stop this evil plot. This is a lie. It's obviously like their second pretext before it was stopping Nazis. Now it's stopping by a weapon. But you should red pill on this thing because it has ties to kind of other non-Russian far-right conspiracy. Well, that's the interesting thing, right?

So the truth is that the U.S. provides Ukraine in a lot of countries with funding for biosafety. We do infectious disease research. We've also funded efforts. Obama and Senator Dick Lugar, Republican from Indiana, went to Ukraine back in like 2005 and six and looked at facilities that were destroying old chemical and biological weapons from the Soviet Union. That's very important work. But this new theory, like NBC had a great story about this.

This narrative is really blowing up in far right media circles because sinister bio labs are now pretty familiar in their brains, thanks to COVID. And it allows right wingers to blame Dr. Fauci and all their favorite boogeymen. And of course, Tucker Carlson left on this immediately and they've been doing all kinds of reports. And the second part of this is scarier, which is that the U.S. reportedly as intelligence, that the Russians might be preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine and that they might conduct some sort of false flag attack to claim that Ukraine or a Western country actually were the ones who did it. So that's how like part one and part two of this tie together. So Ben, you know, Assad used chemical weapons in Syria. Putin has used chemical weapons to assassinate his political opponents, including most recently in London. Idiots on the far left, idiots on the far right have latched on these. Russian conspiracy theories and propaganda. Now, stipulating that you and I are flawed and humbled participants in this conversation, my question for you is, do you think that now that we're talking about chemical weapons,

that Biden should articulate some kind of red line publicly, privately, that outlines a cost to chemical weapons use in an effort to deter him? or and if so, like what kind of penalty there might be. Again, we know that this didn't go well in Syria with Obama. We're like, there's a question of whether you should try to deter him. Yeah. Well, and that because we revisit the whole Obama-Syrieu thing. First of all, I'd say the point about the disinformation campaign is a telling one because

it speaks to what the Russians are good at, which is they find conspiracy theories that are already out there. And they kind of come in behind those conspiracy. theories. Right. And they amplify them and make them their own. Right. So there are already these conspiracy theories about biological weapons labs and coronavirus. There were conspiracy theories back in 2013 on the far right and the far left about the Syrian chemical weapons attack being a false flag operation. So they kind of come in behind that and say, okay, this is what's happening. And then they kind of build out a narrative from it. And it's worrying because it's both the

justification for their war, but it's also potentially a pretext to either blame the United States or Ukraine for a potential chemical weapons attack or biological weapons attack or, you know, some strange pretext for why they had to launch an attack. Yeah. So that matters. And in case this sounds ridiculous to you, it's highly effective. The Soviets said in the 80s that the U.S. created AIDS, and that conspiracy theory has stuck around for literally decades.

Well, and remember, Pod Save the World listener, you are not the subject. of this conspiracy theory it's the russian public you know sufficiently keeping enough pretext in front of enough of the russian public that's all he really needs and then maybe if he can mess around with some people's heads and other places they get to tucker carlson's head bonus that's then they'll use that more on that's just a bonus further drive it i think on your direct question about red lines um so i'll just take it head on like part of what was interesting about the obama experience is he said that would be a red line um and that would change my calculus he actually did not say I will launch military action response.

But that's what everybody took it as, right? So the first lesson I draw is that if you say there'll be consequences, people are going to think that means you will go to war with Russia over that chemical weapons attack. And by the way, you need congressional authorization. Yeah, exactly. All these same questions come up. So I think it's a hard thing to, unless you really mean that, right, you better mean that you're going to use military force because anything short of that will be seen,

obviously as a climb down. And then in terms of whether you'd use military force, I mean, I think that one of the, this, this, it's funny, like that we've started the conversation with the base. This is the other thing, right? We're starting to see other ways this could escalate. So just as an attack on NATO personnel or equipment going in Ukraine could be the beginning of a NATO-Russia conflict, a kind of mass chemical weapons attack or bio-attack in Ukraine. you could see how that could lead to the imperative for NATO to feel like it has to act militarily. But I don't know that I would spell that out in advance. I mean, I just think that, you know, what Biden has going for him to some extent is a degree of, you know, he's clear about what he won't do.

But there's some ambiguity in between what we're currently doing. and not wanting to get into a direct war with Russia. There's a lot of space to escalate, you know, the types of support you're providing Ukraine, the intel support, the cyber operations you could launch. And then, yes, maybe up to whether or not there's situations that would trigger a military strike. I think that if you start getting into the business of drawing direct causation, if you do this, I'll go to war. well, will you do it for other things too?

Like, you know, why, does that mean you will go to war with Russia over a chemical weapons attack, but maybe not a conventional attack that kills a lot more people than chemical weapons attack? Right. I mean, we saw this in Syria, right? Like sarin gas, VX gas, is that different than chlorine gas? One is banned under the various chemical weapons conventions. One is a chemical that we use in pools, but that could also kill mass amounts of people

and terrorizing. And where it gets so horrifying is that, like, what we went through in Syria is that there were chemical weapons attack before the big one, the sarin attack in 2013, that took us months to figure out what had happened because they were using chemical weapons kind of alongside conventional warfare. And it took literally like a period of weeks to determine what were they using there. Was that a chemical weapon? Was it a banned chemical weapon?

And so look, I think he should introduce him ambiguity here, you know, about, you know, how we'd respond. But I think it's hard to say, unless you really mean it, if we see any use of chemical weapons, we're going to war with Russia. I mean, that's a big decision. And I would imagine Biden wants to leave himself some space.

This all sounds horrifying. They're having this conversation. I know. I mean, look, this is the hardest questions that are going to be facing. And if I was Ukrainian, I would want us to make that assurance. If I was Ukrainian, I'd want us to do no flaw soon.

If I was Ukrainian, I'd want us to give them migs. If I was Ukrainian, I'd want us to say that if we see any chemical weapons use, we go to war with Russia. that's totally fair and that's exactly what I'd be doing if I were them. I do just think that you have to be able to leave yourself when it comes to a potential war with Russia, which could escalate to a nuclear war. I think you do need to leave yourself some decision space based on how events are unfolding.

Yeah, yeah. It certainly was maybe one of the big takeaways for us. And by the way, because I wouldn't rule out, again, if they bomb NATO forces like, I think, You have to take a shot and respond. I mean, I'm not ruling out that there's no. There's no scenarios where you do something. Yeah. So before we move on for this military update section, we want to play you a clip from an 18-year-old

Ukrainian named Vlad. He's from Zepariza. He's home with his mom and grandmother while his dad is fighting on the front lines. And he is talking about a friend of his who he just graduated high school with who was killed in the fighting. Here's a clip. Some of us, including me, lost our friends in battles already. And it's been something that we couldn't have imagined even like three weeks ago,

because it was peace, basically. I started with him in the Ukrainian Leadership Academy. And just imagine a 19-year-old guy who wanted to build a military career. He was very kind and disciplined, and I imagined that if the war didn't start, he would be probably a military of defense in a few years. And what I want to say is that he didn't have fear to sacrifice himself for our country. And it's someone you could see on the street. It's a standard normal high schooler that graduates from the school and goes to be in a military sphere.

And then the war takes place. And he's not scared to defend his country. And then he just suddenly dies. And you can't believe that this happened. You kind of post a story on Instagram with the words. of pain, but you can't believe and you do the fact checking again because you think that someone will text you, oh no, what did you post? He's still alive. And it's just, just imagine your friends. Just imagine that this happens to your country. Putin is trying to invade NATO countries too.

So why do we have to wait until then? Why can't we stop that? So people like your friends, like your colleagues, like people you studied with in high school, like my friends, stop dying and basically me stop dying, because next call, For example, maybe won't even happen. Who knows if the bomb will fall in my house tomorrow? And I'm not pessimistic about it, but it's just the reality of being in war. It just can't happen. And pretty devastating reality for, you know, a lot of people in Ukraine right now.

Your classmates are going to war and dying. Your father is somewhere fighting. You don't know if he's okay. Your mom, sister are trying to get out. I mean, it's just pretty horrific. You know, to state the obvious ban, I mean, I think the conflict is getting more dangerous every day. It's more dangerous for Ukrainian civilians like Vlad and the risk of other countries getting drawn in is going up. There's that strike near the border. There's this threat to hit

supply convoys by the Russians. I saw today, Tuesday, that the Polish Czech and Slovenian prime ministers are in Kiev for meetings with Zelensky. That is brave, but, you know, a little unnerving, right? I mean, they're at risk getting drawn in directly. And the risk to journalists covering the war is also increasing. So, you know, as of today, Tuesday, at least five journalists have been killed. Three Ukrainian, one American, one Irish. Brent Renaud, who's an experienced journalist and filmmaker working for Time magazine. He's an American, was shot and killed this week. Fox News reporter named Benjamin Hall was wounded this week. A Fox News cameraman named Pierre Zekruski and a Ukrainian journalist named Alexandra Kuszvinova were killed all this week. So, you know, Ben, Ben, these are like heroic

experienced accomplished reporters. Many have covered other wars, but that's like a shocking death toll in 20 days. And I was reading a thread from another journalist who's on the ground named Jane Ferguson who said that this war is as difficult to cover and as dangerous as any as she's seen because there's no real front line, right? There's artillery fire everywhere, it stretches for miles. Reporters are not embedded with military units. They're in like cars on their own. And, you know, you have jumpy Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers. You have Russian saboteurs. You have Russian soldiers and mercenaries who seemingly could give two shits about killing

either civilians or the press. They probably want to kill the press. Yeah. we have to get our minds around here. Look, like, there's a fair, you know, what about, it's them about what did the war in Iraq look like to the rest of the world? You know, like, we experienced a war in Iraq in a way that was very different than the rest of the world did in that that was, to the most of the world, a situation of a big country

invading a small one and occupying it illegally. The difference, though, and this is an important difference. for all, like, America, there are civilian casualties in our wars. There are instances of, you know, horrific abuses. But you have to understand that Russia clearly draws, like, no distinction between a civilian and military target in a way that even the U.S. military, like, in its worst, you know, does not deliberately target civilians, journalists, etc. Yeah, I mean, you can see videos of tanks, just drilling shows.

drilling shells into apartment buildings as a strategy, you know. And again, we saw this in Grosny. Like there's a Russian and Putin mastermind-based, yeah, approach that's just like, okay, if you want surrendered to us, we're just going to destroy your cities and terrorized your populations. And that's what we're watching before our eyes. And it puts these journals at risk, I think all the time about people like Christopher Miller and Tanya Kozreva, who we've had on this show who are like in the middle of this. heroic because the information they're bringing to us is so important, right? And so it's such a value in that information. But part of what Russia wants is they want to shut down the information. They don't want the truth getting out. They don't want people reporting on what they're doing. And so we may see this escalating. And again, people always ask me, and if you get this time, you're like, well, how do you think this will end? And this is not look good, you know. And the diplomacy, see like the idea of the Ukrainian surrendering their sovereignty feels less likely. We don't,

and under the current trajectory of events, like you say, it's been three weeks now. Like, this can get a lot worse. It can get a lot worse in terms of the NATO escalation we've talked about in terms of above all the civilian suffering, the risks of journalists. Like the trajectory of this thing is bad. I know that's kind of traumatic to people above all Ukrainians, but I think our obligation is to understand it. as best we can. And in part, because this is going to be with us for a long time in one shape or another. Yeah.

And look, people reference Grosnia a lot. I mean, you know, the Russians fought a war in Chechnya in the early 90s before Putin's time basically lost because they run out of there. And it was a huge affront to their pride and their sovereignty and, you know, collective global ego. And so when Putin had his chance a few years later, he basically doubled the number of troops that went in and decided to scorch the earth. clearly shell everything into rubble. And that's the risk.

I mean, early on, it seemed like they were trying to avoid civilian casualties to topple the government quickly and install a puppet government. Now, who knows what's going to happen? Now, the most optimistic people predict maybe, you know, there will be a collapse of their military. They won't have supplies. Like, I don't, no one knows is the answer. But there's a lot more ways to get worse than better. Yeah. I mean, I do think like there are the end point scenarios, right?

I guess the deal on the table is, you know, the Ukrainians, you know, give up their claim on Crimea, not their claim. It was their territory. Renounce NATO. And then there's this question of the Dombos. But like, again, like the framework. It's a lot. The minds of the Ukrainians to swallow that and, you know, given what Russia's done very hard. So then you're looking at scenarios of Russian defeat or scenarios of kind of kind of like 10-year occupation, insurgency.

And I think part of what is so disconcerting about this situation is that a weak and losing Putin is potentially an even more dangerous Putin, right? Because we've already seen like he couldn't win quickly, so now he's killing more people, right? If he still can't win quickly because frankly the Ukrainians are showing some really stubborn and effective defense of places like Kiev, he'll perhaps try to kill more people or perhaps try to use chemical weapons. Or a tactical nuclear weapon. Or if it all starts collapsing around him, then what does he do, right? And so part of what's so scary about this is a victorious Putin is terrifying because he could kind of continue his aggression and subject Ukrainians. A defeated Putin can be terrifying in that he may lash out with nuclear weapons, right? And everything in between that is not good either.

Yeah. And everyone's like, is he rational? Is he not? I think that's kind of the wrong way to think about it. He's Putin. He's Putin. And he's viewing this war in existential terms for himself. If he loses, he's no longer the strong man and he might get whacked.

So who knows how that goes. I mean, the point you made about how long this could take, the point you made about how the Russians are probably trying to kill journalists and drive them out so that people don't know what's going on, is certainly on the mind of Ukrainians. Haley, our amazing producer here, talked to two Ukrainians over the weekend about this exact anxiety of just being forgotten. And the first voice you're going to hear is Andre, who's a 29-year-old startup founder from Kiev, who is helping with the cyber defenses against Russia. and then you'll hear from Roman, who's a 29-year-old visual engineer from Lutsk. Here's a clip. I'm really worried about, you know, once the next big thing comes, then the flow of attention and the flow of money and the flow of information is going to crumbled.

But that's where the real work starts because we have a lot of ruined cities. We have a lot of dead civilians. We have a lot of stuff that needs to be rebuilt. And that's going to take years. I know that there's a lot of. is going to go back go from the front page from disappear from the front pages because it's going to drag for a long time please don't forget about us and please remember this is our we are fighting for the basic humane values against something that this as close as it can get to

pure evil because they are fighting against the freedom and it's not some extra court it's freedom to express yourself to do the things you want uh in any ways it's like oxygen for us people like ukrainians or or French or Americans. So don't forget about this. This is a very important fight, maybe a historic fight for the whole world. So, you know, the good news is that I think globally, at least in the U.S., this is what's happening in Ukraine is front of mind,

like no other stories since, you know, the pandemic. So your bend is a quick rundown of what's happening in the U.S. So President Zelensky is addressing the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, March 16th, so the day this comes out, he just recently addressed the British and Canadian parliaments. the U.S. military support is now well over a billion dollars. We know that there's this overt arms effort through the Department of Defense. I'm also kind of curious, we'll probably never know, if there's some CIA.

Wait for the books. Yeah, some CIA finding that is allowing them to provide covert support to. I don't know what they could do that the overt side can, but I don't know. It's in my head. President Biden is apparently considering a trip to Europe, maybe to Brussels, just to show solidarity and commitment to NATO. This comes shortly after the vice president's visit to Poland and Romania. Conservatives are making fun of the White House and Jen Saki for holding a briefing about Ukraine for TikTok influencers. I guess these shows that they don't understand how modern

media look. Morons. A lot of people around the world are consuming this war on TikTok. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people. More people are consuming this war on TikTok than watching my MSNBC. Oh my God. It's so it's so funny. Which is not a shot at my own. I'm sorry. Keep in on MNMISD. But yeah, no, it's like you see these like right-wing bloggers being like, oh, what morons briefing TikToks are? I was like, yeah, these people have like millions of followers. Anyway, Ben, there's a suggestion on top of all of this that Biden and Democrats maybe then run on their handling of Ukraine in the midterms. Any thoughts on on all of this? But, you know, I was a little surprised by this suggestion that like Ukraine is a campaign issue. That seems weird

to me. So the first thing we should express after hearing those Ukrainian voices, like, I don't think this is going away. And look, while we have emphasized, you know, the kind of caution around getting into a military conflict of Russia, Russia has just been kicked out of the global economy. Russia has been subjected to sanctions that we've never imposed at this scale. We are pouring weapons in Ukraine. So we are in this thing. Ten percent of their military is apparently blown up. Yeah, like we are in this. This has basically become the purpose of the Democratic world. And I don't think that's going to change. I think that people agree with the Ukrainian analysis that this is kind of the fault line of everything right now. And that's not going to

change even like years from now. And that Ukraine's going to need help on the back end of whatever happens to rebuild. I think in terms of the politics, I would like the Republicans are likely to become cynical. They're constantly going to be demanding you do more or they're going to be blaming you for the consequences of things like high gas prices, we know that. I don't know that you run on the handling of it, though, because the situation is awful. I think they've handled it like, well, definitely. I think they've done everything they can do and they've done it in a smart and deliberate way. But it's not like a quote unquote success. It's not a good outcome. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It sucks. It's horrifying. What I think you can do, though, and this is a

much bigger question that I think we can impact on this podcast in the weeks to come, is this is all connected. And like Putin is the most vicious and evil brand of autocracy and authoritarianism. That is endangering democracy everywhere here. The kleptocracy that he embodies. We get, you know, Tom Burgess brought this up himself in the interview with me. Like Trump is a kleptocrat. Like, like that's just a fact. Like he's cut from the same cloth as the oligarchs around Putin, right? that I think that what Biden can do is say, we have a moral high ground here, you know, in the world, in a way that's important. But that moral high ground is tied to democracy and democratic values and the things, frankly, the Republicans have been undermining and also playing footsie with Putin

over the years. And by the way, the corruption that fuels that autocracy is the corruption that has leaked into our system too. And it's a bigger argument and sometimes a complicated one to make, but it's one that's worth making in its own on the merits. Right. Yeah, and listen, you had a great piece in the Atlantic over the weekend that I think really expands on this point and this sort of inflection point we're out in history that people should read. And I agree. I think this will be like how this cuts, how this changes the entire world will be like the conversation going forward.

And I will say two things that are to their benefit, right? One is, remember all the people who said after Afghanistan that America could never leave the West again? You know, those takes are six months old and they look ridiculous, right? Ludicrous. And actually, I think that we're in a stronger position to deal with this because we're not in Afghanistan. So I think in some ways it changes the perception. Now, the Republicans will say you were weak in Afghanistan.

That's why I invaded Ukraine. That's clearly utter bullshit. Like Putin clearly meant to do this for a long time for a lot of other reasons, you know. So I think they can make their argument and they can and should make the argument like, this is a new era in world history. and it's a dangerous era, and particularly if Trump is the opponent in 2024, but if, you know, some, some blowhard COVID-denier like Ron DeSantis, like, we're back in, like, the Cold War days where, like, you don't want lunatic kleptocrats to have the nuclear codes, you know?

And so I think beyond just saying this is success, it's more like, hey, we got some grown-ups in charge and don't let the unsurious people back in. Yeah, let's hope that works. So, yeah, the problem with all these Republican arguments, they just like, they're rob Russia of any agency. Yes, yeah. So let's talk about what is going on in Russia or with Russian officials, obviously, and they matter here.

So we talked earlier about these reports that the FSB leadership is arrested. We can't confirm that, but it's interesting. There's still these scattered protests and mass arrests. There was this unbelievable video of this brave journalist named Marina of Sainikova, who works at one of the biggest Russian propaganda networks in the country. She ran into a live broadcast of the most watched propaganda. show on Monday, yelling, stop the war while holding a sign that said, they're lying to you here. Unbelievable moment of like the truth seeping into their propaganda. So despite effort to censor

what happened, apparently this clip went really viral. There was a ton of comments on her Facebook page. Oddly been, today I think the Russian prosecutors announced that she's just going to get fined the equivalent of a couple hundred bucks and not go to jail. I don't get how she got off that easy, but I'm glad. There's reports in the journal over the weekend that a bunch of Polish programmers created a website that is allowing users to send messages directly to millions of Russian phone numbers and email addresses that they farmed from someplace. So basically, you go to this website, 1920.in, 1920.in, and you can send images about the war, news, you know, like text in Russian. So that's an interesting way that people are trying to sort of break through this censorship

and propaganda. The Russian government has now blocked access to Instagram. This is sucks because it was a way for Russians to voice opposition to the invasion if they wanted. It's also just going to hurt a bunch of regular people in Russia that have small businesses. On the good news side of the ledger, there's lots of reports of like half a billion yachts being seized by name of government around the world. And the New York Times reported that a $700 million super yacht seized in Italy could be used or could be linked to Putin. It could be like some oligarch carbout owns it for him.

Well, Putin owns all of it in the end. Yeah, exactly right. So let's hope. EU is tightening some sanctions. They haven't cut off oil and gas. Ben, look, I don't think I'd have the guts to run into a Russian state TV set scream and stop the war. But amazing to see that happen. It is. It's a reminder, again, we should not stigmatize all Russians with what Putin's doing. Yes. You know, there are a lot of Russians who disagree. I think it's a reminder, too, that inside these authoritarian systems, it's wrong to assume that everybody who works at the propaganda networks or everybody who works in the military or everybody who works at the FBI.

B agrees with what's happening. They don't. I thought what she said that was really notable, among other things, is something that echoed Navalny, which is she basically said, they can't imprison us all, you know, and very deliberately trying to kind of send out the bat signal to all her compatriots who she knows are there. Like, she knows that a lot of people agree with her. Courage can be contagious. Yeah.

Just like fear can be contagious, right? And part of what Zelensky's done is he punched the bully in the face. And when you do that, the bully loses the capacity. intimidate. I think inside Russia, people are now trying to show, let's all do this together. They can't imprison us all. And frankly, maybe they didn't throw the book at her because they didn't want to make her a martyr, right? And like an instigator for protest. The reality is this Polish thing you mentioned, this is also where this is going. Like it's not just about like migs and no-fly zones. Like the information war into Russia is going to be really critical. And

hey Russia's been really aggressive in pushing social media into our ecosystem. Like, I support any effort to get this information directly to Russia. So I'd love to see a covert finding doing some real work here. Yeah, or just like the combination of American and European resources and like anonymous and tech companies and citizens like like and I know they won't work together because they shouldn't. But like if the combined weight of everybody who has some capacity to drive information starts pushing it at Russians, the capacity of Vladimir Putin.

hide this from his people, I think he can't. The other amazing clip that was going around over the weekend was like someone was filming these little protests. And so basically, you know, someone would unfurl a sign in some town square and immediately 10 Russian, you know, cop thugs would arrest that person. So this person and this, I think it was a woman just being to briefly speak about, you know, why she opposes the war. They arrest her.

Another woman walked up to the camera that's filming and was about to explain why she supports the military effort, a bunch of cops arrest her, right? just speaks to the just absolute insanity of Russian propaganda and state control and totalitarianism. Yeah, you know, there was a woman holding the blank sign, which is a great, like a great protest. It's like, fuck you, you know, but I think I, it's really important to remember that like, you know, you can, the Communist Party was what it was. You know, not great. It was a party, right? It was, it had an ideology behind it, communism, although, you know, they didn't. obviously like implement that exactly like you know marks designed you know but but like there was an ideology and infrastructure around it Putin has no

ideology behind it it's just kleptocracy and strong man nonsense and strong man Russian nonsense and it's not really like it's a system in that he has like cronies and you know he's got people you know embedded all over the power structure but it's kind of a Ponzi scheme you know it's pretty hollow underneath doesn't have decades of intellectual and ideology behind it like communism doesn't have a massive constructed bureaucracy like the soviet state did it's just it's just an empty kleptocracy and so i do think it's not beyond the realm that the thing collapses at some point speaking of communism uh there's a lot of speculation in question about what china will do in in response to what's

happening or how they view this war here's what we know um chinese state run media seems to be either repeating Russian propaganda, including this bio-labs shit. That's probably payback for all the U.S. biolab propaganda. Not propaganda, but you know what I mean? Far right. They're also criticizing the West. They're generally suggesting that China is the big winner in this conflict. No surprise that that's their take. Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, is meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Rome. The U.S. reportedly has intelligence that says that Russia has requested military assistance from China, including drones, armored vehicles, surface air missiles, other stuff.

It sounds like Jake's message to China. What you said this publicly, I think, is basically if you evade sanctions, if you give them arms, there will be severe consequences. It's also worth just noting that China is now in the midst of its worst COVID outbreak since 2020. There's lockdowns and travel bans in several provinces, including financial and industrial hubs. I've seen estimates that between 37 and 51 million people are locked down right now. It's unbelievable scale.

you have Apple, Foxcon, other major manufacturers had to shut down production. Economists are now coming out saying they're pretty worried this is going to exacerbate supply chain issues, exacerbate inflation, just compounded a already major problem. So everything's a mess. Ben, I know you like have been watching China. Everyone is. Everyone's speculating on how they view this. Do you have a sense of how they may be viewing what's happening in Ukraine? And do you feel like it's a mostly a proxy for their aspirations for Taiwan, something bigger. Like, how do you think they view this? So as someone who's pretty cynical about Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party,

I think that, like, on the one hand, they don't like the massive economic instability this is introducing. They don't like to see the scale of sanctions that Russia faced because it's a kind of Yeah, and probably the man of weapons. It's a bit of a warning shot and what they could face over Taiwan, although they have obviously a much, much, much more integrated into the global economy than Russia's. But I think what they like is this is hugely disruptive. The U.S. and Europe are spending all their time on this issue and not on China, not in China policy. And Russia could become this kind of vassal state to China,

where they have to sell everything on the discount to the Chinese. So suddenly got discounted oil pouring in and other natural resources. And then, you know, as we talked about, they become the technology supplier first and last resort for Russia. So they're like wiring this country so that even if someday like Putin's gone, like what's left is like a Russia that is wholly dependent on China, wholly wired by China. China's getting cheap oil and gas maybe. China's getting cheap oil and gas. Like this could, you could see a scenario where they're kind of a strategic winner, albeit with some complications along the way. All that said, I think that like for them to start arming the Russians, like backfilling arms of the Russians, that is a major escalation. That would be,

like a big big now granted we do that to ukrainians we get that but like the chinese don't normally get involved in like wars like you know what they did in like vietnam i guess right that was a while ago but um so i i think that but and frankly the sanctions enforcement's kind of a gray area too because the russians will probably be able to try to find ways to sell oil discount to the chinese in ways to cut around um western sanctions enforcement i think that the the message from jake that I'd be interested. I don't know what exactly would be. It's like, what is going to trigger much more structural sanctions on China vis-a-vis Ukraine? And how much, again, are we willing to back up that threat? How credible is that threat? I think we can probably, hopefully, knock on wood,

back them off from doing things like, you know, significant arming of the Russians. I think it's be much harder to get them to kind of go along with our sanctions, you know, and not backfill some of the losses Russia is going to have. That's going to be a fun meeting, huh? Yeah. You fly all the way to Rome, get yelled at for a couple hours by our counterpart. Yeah. These meetings are always in like these nice places that you don't get to enjoy because you're like, you know, you're arguing with the Chinese. Yeah, yeah, you go into some hotel in Rome and then you construct a fucking blue tent inside it so you can have classified conversations and you never see the light of day. Yeah. It's a cool job still. We're not complaining,

but the other way that Ukraine, I mean, look, the Ukraine conflict is spilling into everything that's happening in the world. I think it was the head of the World Food Program said it could cut the global supply of wheat to the poorest countries in half, right? There's just a million ways this could be a catastrophe. One near-term way is the impact on talks with Iran about the Iran nuclear deal. We haven't talked about this in a while, but as listeners know, the U.S. has been trying to get Iran back into some version of the 2015 JCPOA since Biden took office. We want to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon for obvious reasons now. Russia had apparently demanded that their trade ties with Iran be exempt from U.S. sanctions regarding Ukraine.

some people were worried that this was just Russia's way of blocking the deal entirely from going forward because they know it's a priority for the U.S. but a couple hours before we started recording the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, reportedly said he'd gotten assurances that he needed that they wouldn't be impacted. What the hell do you make of this? Do you have any hope for the Iran deal getting done sometime soon? It was, I mean, it was a pretty big wrenched. It was a big wrench.

I mean, because there's a couple of questions. Like, Russia does have to do certain things to implement the deal as currently constructed, which is the Iranian stockpile that gets shipped out of the country goes to Russia to be dealt with which will be demagogued yeah by everybody we're shipping nuclear material to Russia why they have like 6,000 fucking nuclear weapons more nuclear weapons than we do they don't need the Iranian low enriched uranium stockpile right but then what Russia was demanding was essentially this kind of larger sanctions carve out that didn't have to do with the sanctions really for Iran but had to do with kind of sanctions really for Russia and it was pretty clear that the US and Europe said that's

totally off the table um to me it's a sign that like if the Russians really wanted to spoil this thing they could um which would require the US and Europe then to kind of almost have to cut our own deal with Iran which would make Iran have to choose between their Russian patron and the sanctions relief they want it's it's a sign of like how much this can complicate other things like if I'm Iran I look at like the Trump administration to Biden I'm not thanking on the US as a credible partner well what you saw too is like there there were these um missile attacks on urban Beal, the Kurdish capital, right? I forgot to even bring that up. That were attributed to the Iranian

Revolutionary Guard. That could be about Iraqi politics and Iran wanting to influence that, but it could also be about, you know, hardliners in Iran are close to Russia. Just like, I mean, this war can spread. They said it might be because the Israelis hit targets in Syria, maybe, and it killed some IRC members. But yeah, you're right. I mean, who knows? But someone made it interesting. I get, I'm not trying to be your doomsayer here. But like, world wars tend to start in multiple, you know, like they don't all start in one place, right? And there are these flashpoints, like Ukraine was the biggest one. Iran, Iraq, that's another one, right? Taiwan is another one. Like, there's too many pots right now that are, you know, boiling or beginning to simmer. Like,

and I think as this war escalates, food shortages, famines, conflicts, conflicts, sanctions, economic fallout, supply chain disruptions. Like, we are at the beginning. of something that we don't know how it's going to end. Yeah, I mean, when I saw the reports of all these world leaders going to Kiev, it made me think of Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. What happens if a world leader gets killed? What happens if Zelenskyi? I don't want to be a doomsday either, but that's where my fucked up brain.

No, but it's, it's like, this is just very volatile. And again, like, my God, I hope I'm totally wrong. And two weeks from now, like there's a, you know, ceasefire announced and their holds and it leads to some diplomacy that. But that's not the likely scenario, right? Yeah, it's, you know, might get worse before it gets better. Okay, we're going to take a quick break when we come back. Ben is going to learn how to be an oligarch.

Did you get a boat out of this? I didn't, although I hear there's a $700 million yacht. Real cheap. Do you get a soccer team? You know, I'd like Newcastle to come on the market as well, Chelsea. Yeah, yeah. Chelsea too, yeah. Now I'm very pleased to be joined by Tom Burgess, who is the author of Kleptopia.

how dirty money is conquering the world and a special investigations correspondent at the Financial Times. Tom, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, it's a real pleasure. Thanks for having me. So, Tom, I've told you this, and I've even mentioned this on the show, but I'm just going to say it again. Everybody should read Kleptopia.

If you're curious about Russian oligarchs and Putinism and how corruption has infected our own countries, and if you just want to read a thriller, I mean, this book takes you to Italy and private jets, and Zimbabwe and espionage. It's just a great book.

So congratulations on the book, Tom. That's very kind. I'm glad you enjoyed it. So let's just start with where you are today. You're talking to us from Parliament where you're giving evidence. What are you up to and we'll use that to get into your recent events? Yes. Well, my MP has very kindly let me use corner of his office in Westminster.

I'm here today because we've been giving evidence to the committee of parliament to talk about what they call slaps, these strategic lawsuits against public participation, which might perhaps sound like it's a sort of arcane bit of the law, but it's actually absolutely crucial to these huge questions we're grappling with now, I think, about how dirty money is conquering the world and about how to counter these corrupt dictators like Putin, but also many others elsewhere. But what we were talking about in Parliament today was lawfare, as they call it, right?

So it's the rich and powerful, whether that be Putin's oligarchs or cronies of Southern African dictators or whoever may be using massively expensive legal proceedings in London, the global capital of lawfare, to try to muzzle the press and basically to sort of target reporters, book publishers, newspapers, broadcasters, whenever they try to scrutinize the origins of their clients' wealth, which has been made in these violent kleptocracies of the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. So that's what we're doing today.

The reason I'm in today is because some of the oligarchs who are in my book, once who control big mining interests in Central Asia and Africa, and once had one of the richest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. They threw a London company. They sued me about the book, and this has been going on for many, many months. We've endured surveillance, we've endured all manners of threats and danger of massive costs if it went against us. And then a couple of weeks ago, to my absolute delight,

I was sitting in court not too far from here. in the High Court with my publisher and legal team, thinking about all the sources, tremendously brave sources. You will never obviously receive any recognition because it would be terribly dangerous for them if anyone knew their identity. But it took these risks, whether it be in Central Africa or the former Soviet Union or indeed these days in Washington

to entrust me with this information. I was sitting there thinking, Jesus, if I've screwed this up in some way or, or, or if we get out maneuvered in some way and the book is censored or doubt is cast on these important stories about corruption and the sort of human cost of it, then that will be a terrible thing. They were actually suing specifically claiming that I have said that a holding company they control murdered some people. And I mean, you don't need First Amendment protections to realize how absolutely absurd it is. That a legal case.

can be brought on those grounds. I did write about how witnesses, and a big potential witnesses, the major criminal corruption case have died in suspicious circumstances, but we don't know what befell them. It's just one part of this big story about corruption all over the world.

Anyway, a judge magnificently in a few hours saw through this and threw the case out. But the reason this is so important is that there's cases like mine, and there's another one about Putin's people, another brilliant book. She was, Catherine was on this podcast, actually.

So you're the second author we've had in a month. Yeah, yeah. We're being sued by oligarchs. The same publisher. We're both in Northern England. We meet up for a pie occasionally. In fact, once a few months ago when we were really, you know,

under the gun, we met up in my local in South London. And we sent our publisher a picture saying, this is the single greatest concentration of legal risk around any pub table in England. It certainly was. But the, you know, that Catherine's case, she's a brilliant journalist Catherine.

And this is one of the costs of this kind of thing. You know, she's been tied up on that and not doing a brilliant reporting for a year. So these cases, we're really lucky to have, you know, really strong publishers behind us who stand up and will fight it all the way to court. But the vast majority of this stuff that these law firms do, firms like Carter Rock and shillings, firms that most people never heard of. Day in, day out, they're essentially censoring the public record and deciding what people get to read about some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, generally oligarchs and people like that.

And there's a real energy now behind this for reform, I think, because, you know, people have grasped with the invasion of Ukraine, you know, a kleptocrat's war, the war of a regime that's run on corruption, which has been broadcasting that corruption into poisonously, to democracies, the US, the UK and elsewhere, realizing that this is the big struggle of our time. This is something we've talked about before, the struggle between kleptocracy, you know, the rule of gathering power onto the few through corruption and democracy, the rule of the many, whether that is in Ukraine, putting up a, you know, a hot fight to defend that, or whether it's in the US. And this is something I talk about in the book where Trump is a creature of kleptocracy. I write about this in the book about in Clptopia,

about how he's sustained for so long as a kind of phony businessman, buy money from kleptocracies, Russia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. That's what allowed him to pretend to be this successful tycoon. And then in office, he governs as a kleptocrat, right? He forms a club of cryptocrats, Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, Kim and so on. You know, I used to be a crossbush, in Nigeria. if a Nigerian president had come to office and through his family

had retained the ownership of an attractive seaside resort and a major hotel in the capital and any business executive or despot from anywhere around the world could take a suite in those hotels and those resorts put money pretty much directly in the president's pocket that would have been regarded as a laughable example of outrageous corruption.

Yeah, yeah. If it was in Nigeria, there would be caused to cut off aid and so on. But when this happened in the West, as with like, COVID contracting in the UK. Now, that gets called a chumocracy, not corruption. There's all sorts of euphemisms used in the U.S. about Trump.

But I think this is why this stuff is so important, because it cuts through all the nationalist rhetoric, whether it be Trumps or Putin's or Orban's or Madoros or the Iranian regimes or the Congolese dictated, cut through all the propaganda down to the engine of the stuff, which is theft. Well, I want to go through now, like just kind of the basics. here for people because you've been so deep in this.

Starting with where the wealth is and then we'll get to kind of what the service industry that protects the people and the wealth in places like London. But just to start with like, you know, when people hear terms of oligarchs and they hear, you know, these billionaires, this, and that, you know, you do a great job in your book of demonstrating kind of where wealth that could originate in the former Soviet Union,

right, in things like energy claims, right? mining rights and things like that, how it kind of then spreads out around the world into different places and holding companies and investments. How could you describe to a layperson, what an oligarch is and what kind of investments they make to move their money around, to hide their money and to grow their money? I mean, step one, Ben, let's imagine we are setting you off on a career as an oligarch. Yes, yes. And I am your shifty consulieri. Step one, you've got to get hold of a state asset. You've got to get hold of something that belongs to the people of, let's say we're in Kazakhstan.

Now, typically these countries run on their economies in terms of how you can make serious money. The only options are oil, gas and minerals. Generally speaking, outside Eastern Europe, North America and China, that's the only way to make money in the global economy. So there was the greatest opportunity ever. all the time in Congo and Bolivia and so on. But there was this one in our lifetimes, in the last century really, this seismic opportunity for private individuals to capture state assets. And that was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The wealth of an empire was suddenly available. Capitalism was decreed to exist. So private ownership suddenly started to

exist and there were these privatizations cheered on by kind of business consultants and bankers from the West and so on. And so what we would do in that moment, Ben, is we would say, right, okay, well, we've got to scrabble together a bit of money. We're going to need, and we're going to need contacts with political influence. An oligarch is someone who turns political influence into private wealth. So at that moment, the people who had power with the KGB, the parts of the remnants of the Communist Party, organized crime, and anyone who had any cash.

So there was this enormous free-for-all that created a lot of it violent that used a sort of quasi-legal process to transfer the wealth of the state, mines, factories, physical things, but also things like mobile phone licenses. Yeah. To whoever could make it

worth the powerful's while. So you would, there was this, it was just completely corrupt from top to bottom. Corrupt in the sense of the use of public office for private gain. So let's say you got hold of a mine,

a gold mine somewhere in deepest dark as Russia. Now, that's a great start, but what you need then is to sell that mine or to monetize it somehow. So you might be able to cobbler, get a partner from London or a mining investor to someone to put a bit of money into that, maybe. And what you would really want to do is take the ownership of that asset and move it somewhere safe. The whole point about oligarchs is that they profit from lawlessness.

So they operate in a system that's not controlled by the rule of law. So here we are in Kazakhstan. We've got our couple of mates in one of the main local mafias. We've greased the president's brother and the oil minister. We've put some money in a couple of secret offshore bank accounts. We've got hold of this asset. But now we know that we are vulnerable, right? Because we are perpetuating this lawless, violent system. Anyone who wants to could beat us at our own game and take that mine off us.

So what we do is we say, okay, well, we're going to call this mine a corporate. We're going to list it on the London Stock Exchange. And we're going to get Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and KPMG, let's say, to help us draw up some accounts, put together a sort of shiny prospectus, essentially translate claptocratic free-for-all into kind of MBA bullshit speak. Yeah. and take lawless violent power and turn it into Western legitimate-looking money. And listing on stock exchanges is like the dream way of doing that. And around the sign of it goes the kind of information campaign. It's so telling, actually this came up today in these discussions in Parliament,

it's so telling the resemblance between the tactics of the law firms and the PR agencies that work for these, all the guys and clubsocrats, and the Putin's propaganda on Ukraine. It's essentially destabilize the truth. So what you're trying to do, if you are the information campaign that you, Ben, the up-and-coming young oligarcha putting together, is to erase your past, make it impossible for anyone to write about the facts of how we had a couple of people bumped off and we greased the president's family.

That all has to be kept completely off limits to the media. I wouldn't ask you about this because this is one of the things is so revelatory in your book because you sense it out there but you really tell it. So I'm the oligarch. You've got me in my mining interest. You've got me listed in London Stock Exchange. We've got all these legitimate investors in the West who are kind of helping to kind of wash this money.

Maybe then I'm starting to spread it around and other investments and stuff. But then there's a service industry like you're describing. There's PR firms, there's law firms, the PR firms that can do this information campaign, there's law firms that can sue your opponents, there's even private intelligence agencies that can blockmail or dig up dirt or try to intimidate people that are in their way. That appealed to me as someone who had been spied on by BlockCube, one of those companies. Describe this service industry, if you were my concierge, what is available to me in a place like London or, for that matter, Washington, and how do I make use of it?

London is the place. London is the capital, really. I mean, for various reasons that we can get into if you like, but London is the place you come. Because you can, yeah, you list your company on the stock exchange. Then you go over to Mayfair and you find these, all these private intelligence companies, typically staffed by a combination of ex-special forces people, former intelligence guys, former politicians, former senior law enforcement people. you can get them, they can do things like open doors into the law enforcement agencies if you need to smooth things over with them. Or crucially, if you want to try to manipulate law enforcement agencies to target your own enemies, so kind of hijack the rule of to target your enemies. Sure, your enemy is probably as corrupt as you are, but you are manipulating the system in that way. These agencies can track down people for you. you can you can help maintain favor with the dictator back home by targeting his political enemies, trying to deliver up some of his enemies.

You can, in one extraordinary case that I write about it in the book, private intelligence firms will track down a dissident oligarchs, wife and kid, and then use the interpol system to have the Italian police, they were in Rome to have the Italian police essentially kidnapped them on behalf of a dictator, all within the framework of international law and hand them over to a couple of agents, so the Kazakh dictators shove them on a jet and they flip it, get flown back home. So that's the private intelligence industry you've got. The reputation management industry is it's slightly euphemistically called,

it's these big law firms who essentially intimidate the press through sheer force of costs. In the UK, the libel laws are so generous to the claimant that, and the law firms charge such massive fees, and their oligarch clients have such limitless access to wealth, that increasingly cash-staffed newspapers dare not take them on in court. My mind case is a rare one where the publishers really went the whole way. But usually, often, unfortunately, the media just cave in the face of this. And essentially what this means is these people who have amassed massive influence are off limits.

And then another trick of this is political donations. This is a really scary bit. I've been writing about a story here about big political donations by a man who made a fortune in Russia. You know, there's a whole group of major donors, mainly to the Conservative Party in the UK, but actually really all the parties have this problem. People who've made fortunes in Russia and other big cryptocracies just wrong. rolling up to the UK, they buy this, they burn this a reputation, maybe a bit of money to an art gallery or university, that kind of thing. And then they start pouring money into the political

parties. And what you're essentially creating is a kind of a superior class who have access to things that the rest of the citizenry don't have. They have access to law firms who can shield them from scrutiny. They've got access to ministers up to the prime minister here that they can just buy. And then they do the kind of thing that Patrick Radin Kiefer was so brilliantly an empire of pain about the Sackler family. Yeah. Using donations to art galleries, universities, to the cultural sphere

to create this alternative reality in which they're philanthropists and benefactors and just erase the past. Yeah. Roman Abramovich giving $100 million to Yadbushem and Israel's, you know, prominent example of that. So now we're in this age of sanctions, and I'm curious your thoughts on two things. One is how, from what you've seen, how effective these sanctions might be in actually getting at some of the oligarch resources, and whether or not the kind of public reckoning that is finally happening is going to implicate, like you said, everything from the law firms to the reputation

management industry. Like, do you, what is next to the government? in terms of sanctions enforcement and kind of a cultural change in places like London to dislodge the influence of the oligarchs and to deal a blow, we should say, to the kind of kleptocratic system that Putin himself sits on top of. This does connect obviously to Ukraine. So I was a correspondent in Africa for quite a while for the financial times. And you see it from that side. So for instance, in Zimbabwe under Mugabe, you'd see, more names go on and off sanctions lists. This is targeted.

I'm talking about targeting sanctions rather than broad economic ones. This is like individuals, trying to target individuals to put pressure on a particular dictator. The thing is, really sanctions, in a case like Zimbabwe or Congo, and I fear now in Russia as well, what you're doing is just you're putting your finger on the scales of the internal power struggles of that regime. So life is getting harder for the couple of hundred named individuals who were targeted in various ways by US, EU, UK sanctions. That might lead them to try to put some pressure on Putin, but it seems unlikely given how well he's brought the oligarchs to heal in the last 20 years. But essentially it's meaningless without two things. One is real enforcement.

Like the UK has been absolutely feeble at enforcing sanctions. And London is a clearinghouse for a lot of this dirty money. And obviously, if you can shift an asset out of the US into London, the sanctions are essentially meaningless. The US, I think, has got a bit of a better record on sanctions evasion, although it seems to go for targeting institutions with big fines rather than individuals. So you wonder how much of a deterrent that really is. But the massively much bigger problem, I think, is,

it's sort of so obvious that we miss it which is that over the last what is it a few decades this concept of financial secrecy has emerged which no one ever voted for or legislated for a lot of it comes from the former British Empire and every major corruption scandal whether it's British arms deals in Africa

whether it's KBR, Halliburton in Nigeria. The list is endless. All the big ones. They all involve front companies. It's so obvious. You have to give yourself a little bit of deniability if you're a big Western company in cahoots with corrupt powers. So you use a front company,

a company, let's say, in someone like the British Virgin Islands, that you or your agents can set up and your fingerprints are, and they're on it. So, you know, it's Pod Save America incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Nobody knows who owns that. There is a lawyer somewhere who has a piece of paper which says that someone in Liechtenstein has another piece of paper in the Maldives with another piece of paper in Gibraltar. Behind that, and someone's drawer is maybe a power of attorney that says Ben Roent ultimately controls us. But this is essentially impossible information to get hold of. But POTSave America Incorporators is allowed to go around the world and operate as though it's a human being.

This is so commonplace now that we maybe don't notice the sheer insanity of that. If you or I try to open a bank account tomorrow without giving our name, you can imagine how far we'd get with that. But if you're rich, powerful enough, you can buy the finest properties in the West in anonymity. And that means that you can, okay, you can put a thousand names on a sanctions list. but Putin will find new proxies. Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan will find new proxies. Kabila and Congo will find new proxies. We're essentially sort of quite ostentatiously shutting the front door

and saying you're not going to march into London and buy our football clubs anymore. And that will show you. We're shutting the front door to certain members of one kleptocracy. But leaving out a big sign, it says, actually, if you go around the back, you can still come in. Just put your mask on. Yeah.

So a lot more, a lot more, work obviously to be done. I mean, Roman Abramovich has become kind of the poster boy of this. Are you a Chelsea fan? I'm a Money United fan, actually. The money behind which is less, is less dirty, you must say. But actually, there's an important point here. You know, the weekend, Chelsea played Newcastle United. And there's a huge uproar about the ownership of Chelsea. And this go to the point of what are we saying? Are we calling time on guzzling on kleptocratic money, on our complicity with these monstrous dictatorships? Are we just saying, actually, we've got a problem with Putin? Newcast United, controlled by Saudi money, a regime that

literally dismemberes its opponents. But we're down with that. Yeah. So, I mean, the main point here is that sanctions are not enough. You have to change the laws and enforcement around this kind of invisible economy and you need to be much more consistent in uniform in combating kleptocracy, not just when there's a geopolitical event like this war. Yeah, I mean, yeah, totally. These front companies are the getaway vehicle, right? You basically, if you were really, really serious about this, and if you were awake, I think the US, because of the experience with Trump woke up, because of what people like you

grasped really early, woke up to the extent to his kleptocracy is a national security threat. And the UK is only sort of twigging that now. And if you're really serious about that, then you basically have to make anonymous company ownership impossible. As simple as that. Yeah. That's a good note to add on. Well, look, Tom,

thanks so much for joining us. Thank you to your MP for making his office available. And wish you the best of luck gone forward. Thanks very much for having, man. Cheers. Thanks again to Tom Burgess for joining the show. Thanks again to Tom Brady for giving us the only light moment of this podcast. Oh, wait, I forgot the one dumb thing.

We'll do it at the close. Elon Musk tweeted that he wanted to fight Vladimir Putin in one-on-one combat. If I was viewed as one of the smartest people in the world and I was, I think at the moment the richest person in the world, why do you have to be such a dumb troll

all the time? Yeah, I mean... You have to be the childish view of a war? People are dying. I don't think you have to be like that woke to identify some toxic masculinity in the just the scenario of like Elon Musk. But actually it might

like maybe they could basically you know, take each other out and, you know, and let the rest of us kind of figure out what to do. You're suggesting some sort of win-win scenario. I'm not saying, maybe you can send them the space. Maybe they can go, how about that? Like, they just get on a rocket, they go to space, and they never, you know, they colonize Mars

and leave us alone down here. That might be good. Yeah, just like 10 days ago, two weeks ago, he's tweeting his support for Ukraine. He's helping out Zelensky with satellites. Now he's trolling people who say they care about Ukraine. and threatening to fight Putin in combat. Putin is actually like a well-trained martial artist.

I know he's a little guy, but like you could probably kick your ass, Elon. Yeah, and Nord is I think he gives a shit about, you know. I mean, you almost thinks anything that's happening in the world, he must be the center of the attention around it. And on this one, I just don't think he is. Yeah, like, I realize that Putin's pretty preoccupied right now and busy. I do imagine that Tesla, SpaceX, a lot of these companies are pretty, likely intelligence collection targets for the GRU or the FSB.

They want spaceship designs. They want, you know, compromising info on Elon Musk. Like maybe don't troll this sociopath. Well, yeah, I do. What is interesting about it, I guess, is it kind of speaks to this thing that's happening where, you know, we've talked about how like all these like companies in all these different contexts have wussed out on standing up to autocrats. The Ukraine thing is kind of weirdly broken that seal in a good way.

Like, I'm glad to see people doing it. I just wish it manifested itself in ways other than Elon Musk demanding to fight back in the future. Yeah, I think Charlie Wartzel was a really great colonists. It was like just the need for some people to view even wars through lame internet fandom is depressing. And their own experience. Yeah. Their own experience of it. Yeah.

Like you're not, you're not the story. Log off, Elon. Yeah. That's it for this week. Talk to you guys next week. See ya. POSSI of the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Mews.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seguin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth, who upload our episodes as videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.