(LONDON) – Ukrainian deep strikes on Russian energy, petrochemical and logistics targets, some more than 2,000 kilometres from the border and reaching into Siberia, are imposing severe economic costs that threaten the Kremlin’s ability to sustain its war effort, according to Sir William Browder, chief executive of Hermitage Capital and head of the global Magnitsky Justice Campaign.
Speaking on the Frontline podcast produced by Times Radio, Browder said Ukraine has identified critical nodes in the Russian economy, oil exports, refining and general trade, and is systematically attacking them. Shadow tanker ships, oil terminals and refineries have been hit by drones. Warehouses belonging to Wildberries, described as the Amazon of Russia, have also been struck, with estimates suggesting 30 to 40 percent of the network has been destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has characterised the campaign as Ukraine imposing its own sanctions while Western partners delay. Browder endorsed the approach, noting that the destruction of refining capacity, export infrastructure and commercial warehouses delivers a serious economic penalty. He argued that while the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may be prepared to endure extreme economic pain, the reduced funds available to pay soldiers already force the regime into an uncomfortable position. With voluntary recruitment drying up and money running short, a general conscription of around 500,000 men is increasingly discussed as necessary if the war is to continue.
Such a draft would require closing borders to young men to prevent an exodus, further alienating the population. Browder observed that the war was originally sold to Russians as a distant “special military operation” that left daily life in Moscow and St Petersburg largely untouched. Attacks on consumer logistics and fuel supplies are now making the conflict personal through inconvenience, empty shelves and longer queues. Ukrainian statistics cited in the discussion put Russian casualties at approximately 1.5 million. When ordinary citizens can no longer obtain everyday goods or travel freely, support that previously rested on cynicism and personal comfort begins to erode.
The same pressure is felt internationally. Browder said Putin’s projection of power has been exposed as hollow after the collapse of support for former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, the seizure of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and setbacks in Africa and Armenia. China has shown reluctance to fund major projects such as a new Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, preferring to buy gas only if Russia bears the construction risk. The assessment is that an inability to secure even the capital and major cities undermines confidence in any long-term Russian investment guarantees. Russia increasingly appears a corrupt mid-level failed state rather than a superpower.
Oligarchs whose business empires are being damaged remain silent. Browder explained that Russian wealth is dependent rather than independent: assets, freedom and life itself can be removed at the dictator’s discretion. These figures will be among the last to challenge the regime. Power instead rests with the military and internal security structures, the FSB, Interior Ministry and prosecutors, which keep the system intact and whose senior ranks have become the most lucrative career path for ambitious Russians.
Recent shifts in Kremlin language, from “special military operation” to open references to war, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s framing of the conflict as an existential struggle against NATO, are read by Browder as preparation for the political justification of mass conscription after the predetermined September process that will confirm Putin’s continued hold on power. If the dictator refuses to back down, he has little choice but to compel service. To make that demand acceptable to the public, the narrative may need to expand beyond Ukraine.
Browder assessed that one option under consideration is a limited, ambiguous provocation against a NATO member, possibly in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland, designed to test Article 5 without a clear conventional invasion. The calculation would be that the United States under Donald Trump would not respond militarily, leaving European allies weaker and more willing to cut support for Ukraine in exchange for an end to the confrontation. He noted that the same logic once led him to dismiss the idea of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine as idiocy; the invasion still occurred. Plausible deniability and grey-zone actions remain the preferred method.
Hybrid operations are already under way across Europe: drones near Leipzig airport in Germany, over Danish, German, Swedish and British military and critical infrastructure sites, shadow fleet vessels damaging Baltic pipelines, the spy ship Yantar surveying undersea cables, information operations, and reported tunnel activity near the Belarus border. Browder stated that these actions already constitute real war rather than mere hybrid activity. The open question for NATO governments is where the threshold for collective response lies and whether the alliance will allow itself to be manoeuvred into a position of apparent weakness.
The interview was conducted by Philip Ingram on Frontline, Times Radio, on the 1,630th day of the full-scale invasion that the Russian dictator originally expected to last only a few days.
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