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Russian President Vladimir V. Putin had his personal assets frozen. The assets he appears to own.
The sanctions against the Russian billionaires are more effective. That isn't necessarily because these billionaires could put pressure on the president to change course. Much of their wealth is held by Mr. Putin, according to William F. Browder.
The Kremlin has become one of Mr. Browder's biggest enemies. Russia has tried several times to get him arrested. He is a thorn in the side of Mr. Putin and he was the one who was targeted by the Russian president during the first official summit with President Donald J. Trump.
What did he do to get the ire? One of the largest hedge funds in Russia was run by Mr. Browder. His expulsion from Russia in 2005 was due to his public battles against corporate corruption.
In 2009, his tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was investigating government money laundered, was arrested and died in a Moscow prison at the age of 37. The lawyer's death with sanctions was punished by the Congress in 2012 with the passage of the Magnitsky Act. Similar laws have been passed around the world.
Mr. Browder knows about the effects of sanctions on Russia's political and business elite. Now that world leaders are imposing sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, he brings a unique perspective on how these actions may affect Mr. Putin's calculations.
DealBook spoke with Mr. Browder about how to end the war in Ukraine and what motivates Mr. Putin. The conversation has been edited.
What do you think is Mr. Putin's next move?
Putin is a dictator. One of the great benefits of dictatorship is that he can take as much money as he wants. He chooses to steal a lot.
After a while, in a country where people think they are in a democracy, they start to see that they are hungry and not being cared for in hospitals and their children aren't being educated. They get angry at the guy in charge. The guy in charge has to do something to make people less angry at him.
He was afraid of being overthrown. Getting everyone to rally around the leader is the best way to do that. There is no endgame when you are talking about it. He is staying in power.
As a long time target of Mr. Putin, what do you think he is thinking?
The problem is that there are some psychological features that feed into this whole thing, which make it a toxic brew. He lives in a world that is very similar to a prison yard. Everybody is looking at each other aggressively, and everybody has to show their strength to each other. In order to keep their power, the most powerful person in the yard has to be the most vicious.
He wanted to destroy Ukraine and then show everyone how powerful he is. He looked stupid because of his misjudgment in how effectively the Ukrainians are fighting back. That is the worst thing that could happen to a person who is in a prison yard.
Do you think he comprehends that?
Absolutely.
Do you think everyone around him is a man?
The people around him are not the only ones. The people in the West are also included. The Ukrainians fought back and showed him disrespect. The war crimes that have been committed are not accidental. This is part of what he does.
He needs to show that he and his people are so vicious. They don't care what people think about them. They want people to think bad things about them because it makes them look brutal.
What is a reasonable way to think about the end result?
There is no way to end this thing. There is only an unreasonable way.
Either he ends up taking over Ukraine and then moving his way toward the Baltic countries to challenge us at NATO or he ends up having the Russian people overthrow him because he was the weak guy.
How do you handicap those options?
I believe each option has a 15 percent chance.
What is the remaining 70 percent probability?
He and the Ukrainians are stuck in a low boil. It is not going to be as bad as it is right now, but it is going to go on and on for a long time.
Do you think the people in power have influence over him? Do you think they have been punished effectively?
There are shortages of essential metals. Russia is the world's largest exporter of the metal and the price of it has gone up as a result. The price of nickel, a key Russian export, has been rising.
Financial turmoil. Russia's access to foreign capital and its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies will be affected by the sanctions. Russia is also on alert for cyberattacks.
It is like a medicine for a disease. The effect of the medicine can be different when you administer it. It would have had a bigger effect on his actions if we had sanctioned the preinvasion and locked our arms with our allies.
He was betting that there would be no serious sanctions because he has done a lot of terrible things over the last 20 years.
Is Mr. Putin interested in what the oligarchs think?
Of him? No.
It is important that we sanction all the oligarchs for a different reason than we hope that the oligarchs will overthrow him. The billionaires are holding his money. Putin is worth $10 billion, when you see a tycoon worth $20 billion. He can't have any money in his name.
To be a holder of these funds, he needs to give it to someone who has the financial ability to act. When we say we want to sanction Putin, the only effective way to do that is to sanction the oligarchs. The reason is not to get him to change his mind, but to prevent him from using this money to execute this war in the future.
It isn't that these people call him and say, "You have to cut this out."
The billionaires couldn't do that. Any person who did that would be killed.
What should American companies be doing? What do you think about people who worry that if they leave they won't be able to come back?
It's the same thing as doing business in Nazi Germany when Hitler started persecuting the Jews after the invasion of Russia. It is the same thing.
No matter what the cost is, every business has a moral obligation to leave Russia. Everyone will be welcomed back in a post-Putin regime, so I don't think anyone should be concerned about returning. I don't think anyone should go back in a Putin regime.
What about China? What influence does it have?
China is the only loophole in this whole thing. China has made it clear that it is not going to join the rest of the world in challenging or punishing Putin for what he is doing. I think that China needs to be careful.
Why? Doesn't China still have leverage over the West?
The answer is that the U.S. will be less likely to sanction China before consumers sanction China.
Do you think consumers will punish China for supporting Russia?
I could see a movement where consumers look at the label. Consumers have as much power as governments do at the end of the day.
Do you think Mr. Putin has people following you?
The way Russia works is that I don't think he's spending a lot of time on me, but he gave an order 10 years ago to his government to go after Bill Browder. There are people who will go after me until the order is revoked. They continue to chase me.
What do you think? Will sanctions against billionaires pressure Putin to end the war? Let us know what you think.
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