Browder: I became Russia’s largest foreign investor, with $4.5B under management.
Then I found the companies I owned were being robbed blind by oligarchs. We exposed it through the FT and WSJ and became a major headache for Putin’s regime. 1/
Browder: After Russia expelled me, we sold everything and paid $230M in taxes.
Criminals and officials then stole that money from the Russian state. Sergei Magnitsky discovered it, exposed it, was arrested, tortured for 358 days and killed at 37. 2/
Browder: Sergei refused to leave Russia. He said: I did nothing wrong, this is not Stalin’s 1938 Russia, the law will protect me.
He was killed for believing in a Russia that did not exist, a better Russia than the one actually there. 3/
Russia's May 24 strike drained Ukrainian Patriot stocks. Zelenskyy went straight to Trump and Congress for resupply. A US senator flew to Kyiv and said yes.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal: It is literally about saving lives, — United24. 1/
Blumenthal framed the response as continuity. The US has armed Ukraine for three years of full-scale war, and a Patriot resupply fits the same pattern.
Blumenthal: "I hope and expect America will respond positively. We have already done it before. We must do it again." 2/
Zelenskyy asked for Patriot PAC-3 interceptors and additional air defense gear. PAC-3 is the only Ukrainian-fielded missile that reliably stops Russian Iskander-M and Kinzhal ballistic strikes.
Without resupply, Ukrainian cities lose top ballistic protection within weeks. 3/
Chief of Estonian Intelligence, Kaupo Rosin: Pressure is mounting inside Russia.
There is no real battlefield success despite the extremely high cost, economic and financial problems are mounting, and the internal mood is changing. 1/
Rosin: Time is absolutely not on Putin’s side, if the West keeps the current trajectory on sanctions and support for Ukraine.
The West must keep giving Ukraine everything needed, and Ukraine should continue long-range strikes on Russian oil infrastructure. 2/
Rosin: If Ukraine gave up the Donbas territory Russia demands, I see no guarantee Moscow would stop.
Russia would probably come with new demands and start negotiations again from zero. I would not fall into that trap. 3/
Sen. Blumenthal: America is not leaving Ukraine. Our diplomats are here to stay, and we stand behind Ukraine as we have from the outset.
We will not be cowed by Russian threats or bullying — and neither should the people of Ukraine in any way. 1/
Blumenthal: Russia is not winning. Ukraine will prevail if it has the means to finish the job: long-range attack, artillery, HIMARS, ATACMS, tanks, F-16s and munitions.
Most urgent now is air defense, because Putin’s cruelty keeps escalating. 2/
Blumenthal: Putin’s escalating cruelty is in the attacks on apartment houses, malls, hospitals and schools.
This criminal conduct ought to outrage the world — and so should the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, who will be the face and voice of Ukraine’s freedom fight. 3/
Bolton: Ukraine now has the best army in Europe, better than any NATO member there except the U.S.
It has enormous combat experience and has developed drone and counter-drone technology that America should use, learn from, and take advantage of. 1/
Bolton: Ukrainians have brought Russia to a halt. Putin does not get serious about negotiations until Russian forces are really moving backward.
If you want to defeat aggression and tell others it is not in their interest, Ukraine is the model. 2/
Bolton: Ukrainians are a moral example for the world.
A free people, largely abandoned, confronted one of the world’s largest armies and refused to give in. Congress should be unabashedly pro-Ukraine — it is a tragedy America is not doing more. 3X
Bolton: Trump is driven mainly by gasoline prices, not any coherent analysis of U.S. strategic interests.
Iran poses nuclear, terrorist and world-economy extortion threats — and the only real answer is eliminating the regime. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do. 1/
Bolton: Open the Strait militarily, keep the blockade on Iran, do not let Iranian oil out, and get as much Arab oil into global markets as possible.
That would show the U.S. can secure commerce, ease the threat to the world economy, and keep starving Iran. 2/
Bolton: Iran’s missile caves and storage sites are being opened again. Since Tehran has been gracious enough to reopen them, that is the reason to go back in and finish the job.
Every day that passes makes opening Hormuz and suppressing Iran harder. 3/