The man behind the Magnitsky Act on Trump, hybrid warfare and fighting the Kremlin. Sir William Browder is an American investor who made a fortune in post-Soviet Russia before falling foul of Vladimir Putin. He’s now a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin - and today he’s in the Ukrainecast studio to discuss why the rouble is tanking, what it’s like to draw the ire of the Russian president and whether an end to the war is near. Today’s episode is presented by Jamie Coomarasamy and Frank Gardner. The producers were Arsenii Sokolov and Ben Carter. The technical producer was Dan Ehrlich. The series producer is Tim Walklate. The senior news editor is Sara Wadeson. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480 You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK BBC Sounds music radio podcasts.
It is 1014 days since Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, we got to hear the thoughts of a man who rarely airs his views publicly, Richard Moore, head of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6.
We have recently uncovered a staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe, even as Putin and his acolytes resort to nuclear saber rattling to sow fear about the consequences of aiding Ukraine and challenge Western resolve in so doing.
Such activity and rhetoric is dangerous and beyond irresponsible.
Now, Frank, you are the BBC's security correspondent.
You follow the words of people like Richard Moore very closely.
So your best place to explain to us what's he getting at here?
Essentially, he's referring to what's known as hybrid warfare or gray zone or sub threshold warfare.
What does that mean?
It means where one country, one state, is damaging the interests of another without necessarily reaching the threshold of an actual kinetic attack.
You know, without lobbing a missile or shooting lots of people or blowing something up in a big way, but nevertheless causing a lot of damage to them.
And what he's referring to here is things like cutting undersea cables.
There've been a number of suspicious fires in what's believed to be incendiary devices that were loaded into the DHL cargo system in Leipzig, in Warsaw and another one near Birmingham in the uk.
There's a lot of these activities going.
On which are, and I guess in some cases, perhaps just the mystery around them is concerning enough.
But as you've hinted, there's a question of what happened if some of those cargo planes were in the air.
Yeah.
So in the last few years, over 750 Russian diplomats and spies have been expelled from Europe.
And that has meant that the Russian intelligence network in Europe has been severely compromised.