Russian-American Confessions: Jamison Firestone on Putin’s Russia and a Criminal American Dad

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. I'm just back from Poland where I did a series of interviews about how Poland or Polish intellectuals, Polish writers are falling out of love with America. One distinguished journalist told me that we no longer dream of The United States. Others talk about the best and the worst things about America, and another Polish academic talks about how we can save democracy using the Polish example from what he calls deplorables. Falling out of love with America, of course, is not unique to Poland. We're talking today about another big country in Eastern Europe and another kind of love affair, although it doesn't really centrally involve The United States. Jamison Firestone is a very well known activist lawyer who showed up, in the then Soviet Union in the nineteen nineties. He's written a book about his experience, Rule of Lies, My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin's Russia. And Jamison is joining us from London where he lives. Jamison, congratulations on the new book. Is it a kind of speaking of love stories, is it a kind of love story about how you fell in and out of love, with Russia or with Putin or with the promise of Russia?

00:01:56 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. I would say, I never fell out of love with Russia, but I certainly fell out of love with Vladimir Putin, and I'm horrified at what he's doing to the Russian people. It was this country of incredible opportunity, and look at what it's become. It's it's awful.

00:02:14 Andrew Keen: Well, tell me more, Jamison. How has it become awful?

00:02:18 Jamison Firestone: So look. When I went over there in the nineteen nineties, it was the very end of the Gorbachev days, and it was all about let's, let's have greater openness and do business. And it really seemed like, you know, the place to be. Now, unfortunately, when I arrived, in Russia within, within days, hardliners rolled tanks into the streets, kidnapped Gorbachev, and said the reform reforms are over.

00:02:44 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You write in the book, euphoria was in the air. I couldn't believe what happened nor could anyone else. The people had stood up. Soviet tanks had backed down.

00:02:53 Jamison Firestone: That's exactly it. And it was just amazing. People Russian people couldn't believe they had they had actually forced the government to back down. But the interesting thing was that when they released Gorbachev, the hero of the day was Yeltsin. Gorbachev and the whole Soviet Union became, irrelevant, and it and the Soviet Union, in fact, dissolved within months. And so I was living in this what was supposed to be a hopeful atmosphere, during this transition, to a free market. And what happened was democracy somehow got lost in all of that. We were so concentrated on making money, and the business opportunities that when the, when the government had a standoff with its own congress, it was resolved by Yeltsin shelling his congress. I mean, the equivalent would be rolling up tanks to the capital and shelling it. And when that was over not

00:03:48 Andrew Keen: So far from unimaginable as it used to be.

00:03:52 Jamison Firestone: Unfortunately, not. And, unfortunately, when this was over, everybody, including myself and the US government, we all saw this as a great, triumph for the free market that these reforms would continue, but we didn't really recognize what an undemocratic move that had been. And for the next several years, Russia tried to it's more or less a disorderly democracy, which became so dysfunctional that the people were kind of just left to the wolves and all these mafia groups were running around. And it was only, the end of the nineties when, Yeltsin realized he was never gonna get reelected, that he did something spectacular. He got on nationwide TV, on New Year's, eve And, wished everybody a happy New Year's and resigned and gave the country to Vladimir Putin in exchange for a pardon. That's how we got, Vladimir Putin for a pardon. And if you think it was downhill I think it was bad before. At least before under the Yeltsin years, you knew who the bad guys were. I mean, there were there was the government, which basically left you alone and was corrupt, and there were mafia groups running around. I mean, guys, thugs with head shaved flat wearing gold chains with guns, making everybody pay protection. And that was a hairy period. I mean, I used to, I used to fire protection rackets for my for my clients.

00:05:18 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You came over as a lawyer. We're talking with Jamison R. Firestone. For those of you who are curious, the r stands for Reid. That's his middle name, and it perhaps rather ironic given that, another very famous American called Reid, John Reed, went to Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, wrote his famous ten days that shook the world, the book behind the movie Reds. Did you go to Russia, Jamison like John Reed, looking for drama, for romance? Were you in the mood to fall in love when you went when you were a young man in the nineties?

00:05:57 Jamison Firestone: I you know, I really went there to be this part of history, right, to be a part of the opening up of the Soviet Union, both in a business way and a political way. And instead, I found myself almost back where I started from. I mean, I one thing I haven't told you, but you've read is that, my father was a crook. My father was a criminal.

00:06:17 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I wanted to get to that. You don't name your father in the book, but tell me about your father. It reminds me of John le Carré's father, another crook and who inspired le Carré's career in a different kind of way.

00:06:29 Jamison Firestone: So my dad was this charming, fun guy who had a lot of money, and I never knew what he did for a living, until I was 15, and the police showed up at the door and handcuffed him to take him to his indictment. And, apparently, it

00:06:42 Andrew Keen: Was his first name?

00:06:44 Jamison Firestone: Richard. So, so he had basically been defrauding investors in the IRS of tens of millions of dollars. And when they indicted him, he went a little crazy because people, you know, who have been indicted awaiting trial aren't at their best. And so he started doing drugs. He became a crack addict. And now I'm, like, 15, 16 years old. He bought New York's most expensive brothel, and he started hanging out with loan sharks and contract killers. And so I spent the later part of my high school years trying to figure out how not to get into business with contract killers. All of them had great ideas about how they were gonna use me to front, like, their dry cleaning businesses or whatever. And I could talk to them in a way that was respectful and make them laugh and say no and not get killed. And that was a great skill that I took with me to Russia because in the nineties, it became all mafia groups, and being able to deal with them was key to stand up.

00:07:38 Andrew Keen: And I assume, that one of the reasons you went to I know you went to law school in New Orleans at Tulane. But one of the reasons you must have gone to law school, this was before your Russian adventure or your Russian life, was because of your experience with your father. What did that experience teach you about the value or lack of value of the law?

00:08:01 Jamison Firestone: Well, I mean, we were still in America, and, I mean, other than running a look. One thing it really taught me was, don't do this. Right? I mean, my father was a brilliant man, and he could have made money all sorts of ways, and he chose in a legal way. And don't play with the IRS. I mean, they have infinite time and infinite resources, and they're gonna get you. Right? So it taught me very, I was taught crime doesn't pay. And all these people he was hanging out, all these all these mafia types, you know, some of them were in and out of jail. So I really had a crime doesn't pay education from day one. I knew exactly what I didn't want, and it was the Well,

00:08:43 Andrew Keen: In a way, it's funny. There's a curious, maybe ironic, maybe inevitable symmetry about your life. You grew up with this experience of your father in your teens, breaking the law when it came to tax and fraud. And then you've spent your career involved in this, and in fact, that's how you acquired such a prominent name. And we'll get to the Magnitsky stuff later. Is that coincidental, Jamison, that these two things sort of coexist in parallel?

00:09:15 Jamison Firestone: I think, you know, I think parents teach their children by example, but it's not always an example a child wants to follow. So sometimes you're lucky, and you get great parents, and you wanna be like them. And sometimes you get parents like mine. My brothers are very, religious Christians, and they always think, what would Jesus do? And they do that. I think, what would dad do? And I do the opposite.

00:09:37 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Although, you must have been in a way, I wouldn't say impressed with him, but recognize his own genius for fraud.

00:09:46 Jamison Firestone: Well, I again, I only found out about the fraud when I was 15. What I recognized was there was a very, fun, loving guy there, but he had one really bad spot, which I speak about in the book, which is if anybody got in his way, including his own kids, he was prepared to hurt them, physically hurt them. And, I mean, we and we've unfortunately, the worst decision I made of my life or not or not the worst of my life, but one of the worst was to go into business with my father after he got out of jail in Russia. And the first thing he did, which was a import

00:10:23 Andrew Keen: He was in jail in you know, when you were in Russia, was obviously, he

00:10:26 Jamison Firestone: Was in jail

00:10:27 Andrew Keen: In Russia.

00:10:27 Jamison Firestone: So he was in jail in The US. Right. And I he got out when I when I was in Russia, and he proposed we go into the car business and that, I pitch his friends to raise finance to import buy American cars and take them to Russia, which we did. But he brought the mafia in Russian mafia into that business, and I had to get out. They eventually chased him out of Russia, but it was the most unpleasant experience where my dad went completely crazy. I mean, there's there's this part which I describe in the book where he actually sends his mafia group after a Russian babushka. You can read what happened in the book, but I'll tell you this. Don't mess with the babushka.

00:11:08 Andrew Keen: Yeah. So, in a way, going to Russia was probably less traumatic for you than for others, given your experience with your father and your you've the subtitle of your book is my wild ride through chaos, corruption, and murder in Putin's Russia. It could be the story of your life with your father might have been my wild ride through chaos, corruption, and at least the threat of physical violence in, in Firestone's America.

00:11:36 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. Very true. And because of that, as I said, I was particularly prepared for Russia. I mean, I had I had crazy times when I had to hire, like, private SWAT teams to raid my own law offices to take them to take them back under my control when people tried to steal my business from me or I at one time, I bugged the offices of corrupt Russian police. And you gotta be a little nuts and from a little nutsy background. So the my life has been a wild ride start to finish.

00:12:05 Andrew Keen: You made a name for yourself. You're not just an adventurer. You became involved in one of the best known business moral scandals in, in the early history of Russia. Tell me about this Magnitsky character who, who I know you were friendly with and, who, perhaps marks the beginning of the West's falling out of love with Vladimir Putin. Not sure that everybody was in love, but there was a there was a flirtation, shall we say, and it was the end of the flirtation.

00:12:40 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. So I, when the car business when I left the car business because I had this experience setting up a business in Russia, I thought, well, hey. Wait a minute. I could, be a lawyer in Russia setting helping people set up their businesses. So I set I set up a law firm. And after ten years, my little law firm that had been started with a few $100 and a computer was really quite an operation. And we and we had a side operation, where we were helping hedge funds, investment funds that were buying Russian shares, kind of do all their admin, pay all their taxes. And we were running $3,500,000,000.

00:13:20 Andrew Keen: And this is how you know Bill Browder. Absolutely. From the Tish Capital [as spoken — likely "Hermitage Capital"]. Right?

00:13:25 Jamison Firestone: Right. So Bill was the foreign the largest foreign investor, in Russia, and he was buying all these shares and making all this money. But one of the things he would do is he would expose corruption, force the corrupt management out, and then the share price would go up. And that worked until he started attacking Putin's people who were stealing, and then Putin forced him out of the country. So once Bill was forced out of the country, he said, I'm selling everything. Jamie, shut my companies. And the guy we had running all the tax calculations for how much Bill had to pay, was a guy named Sergei Magnitsky. And Sergei Magnitsky, calculated all the payments, and Bill paid, about half $1,000,000,000 tax. And at some point, after Bill was out of the country, after all his taxes had been paid, everything had been sold, and he had empty companies, My offices were raided by the police. They took all Bill's documents, and they were looking for companies that paid a lot of tax. And we couldn't figure out, why do you have a police raid looking for companies that pay tax? Right? And the next thing you knew, we found out that those companies, empty companies now, were hijacked, were sued for a billion dollars. And we're like, why does anybody sue companies for a billion dollars? So Sergei, who worked for me, was trying to figure out this riddle. Why are these empty companies being sued? And then he figured out that the three companies that were sued for a billion dollars that didn't have any money were companies that had made a billion dollars and had paid a quarter of $1,000,000,000 in taxes. So Sergei figured out that, really, what the Russian government did was radar offices to take control of Bill's dead companies to refund a quarter billion dollars that Bill had paid. And Sergei said, hey. Wait a minute. You know? So you've got these Russian officials. They've stolen a quarter billion dollars from their own company country. He turned them in. I mean, if somebody stole a quarter billion dollars from the IRS, right, and turned them in, the guy would be a hero.

00:15:21 Andrew Keen: Right. You're you're presenting this, Jamison in a somewhat matter of effect way because it's history now. But at the time, it must have been incredibly dramatic.

00:15:34 Jamison Firestone: Well, it was. So we couldn't figure out, we couldn't figure out why these thing these acts were happening. Why would anybody? Why would 30 people rate our offices to find companies that paid their taxes? Right? And why would people sue these companies for a billion dollars? And as we pushed, it started to get really scary. And I said to Sergei, I said, look. Now that you found out that somebody stole a quarter billion dollars from the government, maybe we should get you a visa to get out of Russia. And he said, look. No. You know? I don't think I didn't do anything wrong. I and I said, well, you know, people get killed for a million dollars. Maybe, you know, this is this is a quarter billion dollars.

00:16:17 Andrew Keen: Did you literally say that? People get killed.

00:16:19 Jamison Firestone: I literally said that. And he said, you're right. I'll think about it. But at the time, we had president Medvedev, who was a lawyer president, seemed more liberal than Putin. And Sergei put his faith in rule of law and president Medvedev, and, it was misplaced face. The whole government was in on this scam, and they arrested Sergei. And I was I thought we'd get him out. Right? I it's Bill Browder, who was already out of the country, called me and said, get everybody out of the country now. And I said, no. No. No. You know, I'm I think we can deal with this. And then the next day, they came for three more of my lawyers. And that was terrifying.

00:16:58 Andrew Keen: So you were the eye of the storm

00:17:00 Jamison Firestone: At this point? Absolutely. And two of them weren't home when the police came, but one of them was. And she I told her pretend not to be home. Don't open your door. And I had to run as soon as they left, I had to grab her and run over the Ukrainian border at 02:00 in the morning and then fly to London. It was really terrifying.

00:17:19 Andrew Keen: Were you living the life in this early period? I mean, were you in that champagne lifestyle that marks the early period of post communist Russia?

00:17:35 Jamison Firestone: I was living pretty well in the in the nineties, and very well in the 2000. Look. In the in the early two thousands, after Putin, took power or was given power, money just because of the price of energy rate rose. Money flooded Russia, and it wasn't like Putin ever made war on the mafia. There was no government crackdown on mafia. What happened was so much money flooded Russia from high energy prices. The mafia just kind of assimilated and disappeared. And I was living the good life. I mean, I was walking into the office at 10:00 in the morning after going to the gym, walking out at seven, taking six months off a year for vacations, and, you know, it was great. And everybody I knew was

00:18:16 Andrew Keen: Up until this Magnitsky affair, you were relatively left alone by the by the state?

00:18:27 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. Because one of the things under one under Yeltsin, the state didn't bother anybody. Your problems were mafia groups. The state was just almost nonexistent and irrelevant. And under Putin, Putin very slowly

00:18:39 Andrew Keen: Early Putin, that is.

00:18:41 Jamison Firestone: Right. So under early Putin, first, he put in he kind of put in some laws that were good, and there was all this money flooding in. So a lot of people thought that a lot of people attributed the mafia disappearing to Putin when it was really kind of economics. But what Putin did, in 2004 was he attacked the largest oligarch in the in the country, brought a garbage criminal case against him and put him in prison and took all his stuff. And as soon as he did that, once he had that override button where he could just push it and push a lawsuit, when the president of a country can weaponize the justice system and get anybody he wants no matter how ridiculous the charge is. That's the beginning of the end. And so that's nobody was bothered by the government until after that. And it was at the same time that Putin started to make the FSB, which was the old KGB, a reality again. Before that, nobody cared anymore who you were.

00:19:38 Andrew Keen: Private security when you went out, or you where did you live in Moscow?

00:19:44 Jamison Firestone: So I never needed security. Moscow was Moscow was one of the safest cities in the world. The only thing that ever made Moscow dangerous is if you were making money or opposed to the government. If you make a lot of money in Moscow and I mean, you know, I was doing well, but I wasn't making meaningful money. But if you make really meaningful money, or if you oppose the government, you become a target.

00:20:06 Andrew Keen: So Jamison, the so to speak, the shit pits the fan with mad Magnitsky. He gets arrested and then, what, dies in prison. Is that the case?

00:20:20 Jamison Firestone: Well, I think that's the case that's the short story as the government of Russia would tell it, but I'd like to use the word murdered in prison. I mean, he was he was, really putting torture as conditions, and they were saying, look, withdraw your testimony that Russian officials did this. Say that your client Bill Browder did this, and he refused to do it. And look, you know, Bill, who was safe in London, would have, you know, would have been fine with Sergei saying anything to get out of there. I mean, he should have just said, you know, said anything you want. Bill Browder did it with a candlestick, you know, with Colonel Mustard in the study. But Sergei wasn't that kind of guy. I mean, Sergei would continue to testify against these officials, from prison. And finally, they killed him. I mean, essentially, they denied him medical care. They made his conditions impossible. And when his health broke and he needed an operation, they put him in a straight jacket. They beat the hell out of him and left him to die.

00:21:17 Andrew Keen: But that's not the end of the story, of course. It ultimately results in the mad the Magnitsky act, which marks a new chapter, I guess, in American or Western relations with Putin. What was your role in this? What happened after the death of Magnitsky, as you say, as he was murdered in prison by Putin's thugs?

00:21:36 Jamison Firestone: So Bill and I decided to kinda go like dirty Harry and go after everybody who killed Sergei. So the first thing we did was try and get justice in Russia by exposing them. So I started making YouTube videos, showing every single official, who went after Sergei and prosecuted him and stole the money. And I would show what they did to Sergei and how much money they had. All these people who are on salaries of $6,000 a year or $15,000 a year with millions in property. And so we were showing just how incredibly rich they were. And I and I found a blogger who wasn't very know well known at the time, named Alexei Navalny.

00:22:14 Andrew Keen: And

00:22:14 Jamison Firestone: I showed him my movies, and he was like, this is so cool. I wanna distribute your movies. So he started distributing our movies so that hundreds of thousands of Russia's, Russians were watching them. And the government just kept covering it up. And by the way, I should say that Navalny then started making his own anti corruption movies. And, you know, if I got a million 5 for one of mine, I thought that was great. Navalny was eventually getting a 115,000,000 views on a video. So, but when we didn't get any traction in Russia, we took a different track than Navalny who,

00:22:47 Andrew Keen: And how as you began to become a vocal critic of the state, What was did your life change in Moscow?

00:22:57 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. Well, first of all, I didn't become very vocal. I left shortly after, they arrested Sergei.

00:23:05 Andrew Keen: So you followed Brouder to London, basically.

00:23:08 Jamison Firestone: I did. And then I was vocal, and I went back. And I went back into Russia, and I was in Russia for about, three months. And then it was made very clear, that I was gonna get arrested if I continue to stay in Russia. And so I they tried to make it look like I was stealing taxes or about to steal taxes or whatever. Did you leave for good? 2009.

00:23:32 Andrew Keen: Okay. Rather like, your our co friend, Tom Firestone, another Firestone who got thrown out. So they're I bet the, I bet the regime aren't keen on Firestone's. There must be a whole filing cabinet full of references to the Firestone's in Moscow somewhere.

00:23:50 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. This is true. So Tom Firestone was the Department of Justice liaison at the US Embassy.

00:23:55 Andrew Keen: Who made news, yeah, in, in February, what, '13 when he got thrown out.

00:24:01 Jamison Firestone: Right. So he was helping us expose the Magnitsky, murder, and he was going with the ambassador of the, of The United States to complain to the Russians and try and get justice. And, eventually, he got himself thrown out of Russia.

00:24:15 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Yeah. He's a very good friend of mine too, so he's told me all the stories of life at the airport. So all this ultimately results in the Magnitsky act. What was your role in this? Did you take it back to The US? Did you and Bill Browder speaking of becoming going rogue, you became dirty Harry in political terms too?

00:24:37 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. So what so what happened was we when we didn't get any traction in Russia exposing them, Bill got this idea, which was let's let's ban them from The United States. Let's create this whole legal framework that just bans crooks, and people who attack human rights, activists, from coming to America and freezes all their stuff. And so, I became part of that lobbying effort. As a matter of fact, it was on a trip to America to lobby for that when I met Alexei Navalny.

00:25:08 Andrew Keen: Do you think that was wise in retrospect this attempt to essentially make the regime illegal at least in business terms? Did it work?

00:25:20 Jamison Firestone: Well, I think it did work, but we did more than that. What we were really trying to do at the time was set up a general rule to give Sergei a legacy right there that, people who don't, people who are unwilling to respect the rules of civilized society should be excluded from civilized society. And not just Russians who don't play by the rules, but just from everywhere. Right? And so that's what we eventually built, the Magnitsky Acts, which have been adopted now by The United States, by Canada, by The United Kingdom, by the European Union, by Australia. Here you have, you know, a good chunk of the civilized world saying if you're not gonna play by the rules of the civilized world, you're not welcome in it. And that's a great thing.

00:26:05 Andrew Keen: Could one argue, though, that it might have triggered more anger and ultimately even Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

00:26:16 Jamison Firestone: I doubt it. I mean, I think that, it triggered anger. But at if you look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is just because Putin thinks that, you know, he should own every territory where Russian is speak spoken. That's what he thinks. I think the Magnitsky act and our group in particular were some of the earliest people who really understood, and we understood the regime for what it was. And when we were trying to tell people initially, we met a lot of resistance. Now you don't have to convince anybody what Vladimir Putin is like. I mean, everybody understands that. But I don't think we sent him in that in that direction. We were the first people to show that he that he that he could be held accountable in some way.

00:27:01 Andrew Keen: Your book, Rule of Lies, which is more autobiographical, I guess, than analytical about, Putin's Russia, nonetheless, comes with excellent blurbs from all sorts of people who've all been on the show, actually. Peter Pomerantsev, an old friend of the show. Bill Browder, he hasn't been on the show, but his son has. Catherine Belton, who was sued by the Putin people who wrote a financial expert expose, the FT journalist of, of Putin's Russia. Oliver Bullough, who's written about dirty money in Russia, and Fiona Hill, another very distinguished diplomat. What's your take standing back, Jamison, on Putin's Russia? Was it inevitable that he would go from this mildly progressive, perhaps ex security agent that people wanted at least to believe in when he first came to power to this monster now?

00:27:59 Jamison Firestone: You know, I don't I don't know, but I think probably I again, it's not I don't think it was inevitable that Russia followed this path, but I think that to have gotten Russia off this path, it had to be done in the nineties before Putin. I think Putin really is this KGB paranoid mentality that believes that the West is out to get Russia. I mean, we're certainly out to contain it and keep it out of our backyard, but there's nothing wrong with that. But he really yeah. He believes the these things that he says that the world wants to keep Russia down and that Russia is the, the savior of the church and conservative whatever. But, yeah, he's all I think he's always been a dictator at heart.

00:28:46 Andrew Keen: Jamison, what do you make of some people who suggest that Donald Trump is, maybe not literally, but metaphorically, has been in bed with Putin, that Putin was somehow involved in his twenty sixteen election victory and that Trump is indifferent, it would seem mostly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Given your relations with your father, your father doesn't sound entirely different in some ways, maybe from Donald Trump. Maybe they knew one another.

00:29:13 Jamison Firestone: Sure. I think what happened look. There's no question that Putin inter interfered with the US election in an attempt to help Donald Trump, the first one. That doesn't mean that Donald Trump's win would it wouldn't have happened without Putin. But Donald Trump is so insecure, when it comes to that topic. You know? He can't say, oh, the Russians tried to help me, that he that he's gone the opposite way and denied it, which is very, very dangerous for America. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the Russians do not wish us well. They are not our friends. And so I find Trump's, policy towards Russian Russia very mistaken. I don't think it's because they have something on him. I think he hates Zelensky. I think that, you know, Zelensky kind of led to his first impeachment. And, and he just for whatever reason, Trump doesn't like Zelensky. He likes, he likes Putin. And while that may be fine as his personal choice, it's not a really good choice for America.

00:30:23 Andrew Keen: Do you think that the Americans sold out or have are selling out Ukraine in the same way perhaps as FDR sold out Poland at your altar?

00:30:34 Jamison Firestone: We are selling out Ukraine at the moment or it's not a total sellout, but it's bad. For look. If you think about this, the strangest thing is that America is involved in the peace negotiations. We no longer provide any of the money for Ukraine's defense. And Donald Trump has said that Ukraine is not our problem. We have a big ocean between us. It's Europe's problem. So, really, what should be happening at this point is it should be Europe with Ukraine negotiating settlements and paying America for its weapon systems if America isn't going to contribute some money. But that's really, I think, where we are right now. It's not a complete sellout because we do provide intelligence, and that's very important for Ukraine. But it's just it's I think we've misplaced our priorities, and we've we've forgotten who our friends are. Our friends are the European Union and Ukraine. They are not the Russian Federation.

00:31:29 Andrew Keen: You had a front seat, Jamison, to all this. Remarkable front seat. You're friends with Navalny, Bill Browder. You Magnitsky worked for you. Is there an alternative narrative? I mean, your namesake, John Reed, imagined by this an alternative narrative to the Bolshevik revolution. Could one rewrite history and come out with a more promising Russia over the last twenty five years?

00:31:54 Jamison Firestone: I think during the Yeltsin years, there were real opportunities for the West to help greater financially. And, we lent Russia a lot of money, and we squeezed every last penny out of them to the point where their economy collapsed in '2 in 1998. And if you actually look at what Russians say about Putin, they look back at the nineties and they say, well, Putin ended all that. I mean, I think it was more economics and high energy prices that ended that, but it doesn't matter. Putin stays in power because everybody looks at the disorder of the nineties and says, we don't wanna go back to that. And we gave bad advice. We were the people telling the Russians, just make the transition, to capitalism immediately. Privatize everything. It doesn't matter if you bankrupt every person in the streets. Poland took a different route. Poland took a very controlled privatization, to make sure that their population just didn't all go bankrupt overnight. The Russians threw their the Russians with our advice and blessing threw all their people to the streets and to the wolves bankrupt in the nineties and let all hell break out. And I think that could have been handled differently.

00:33:07 Andrew Keen: Is there an argument to be made, Jamison, that nobody likes Putin? I'm the last person to like him. But one could argue that he was in his own way prescient, that he understood the end of the rules based international order. He played a role in its destruction as well, and that he was the first to undermine it. Now, of course, Trump seems to be doing it. Xi in China does the same thing. And then in a way, Putin, while we might not like him, was ahead of his time.

00:33:43 Jamison Firestone: I would hate to say ahead of his time because ahead of his time would be almost an admission of failure that this is what we're all gonna be. And there are those of us who, you know, fight very hard for democracy, whether it be in Russia or America. So I don't think Putin's ahead of his time. Putin is pushing to go in a certain direction that I and many other people don't wanna go.

00:34:10 Andrew Keen: You've, you've given a lot of interviews about Putin's Russia these days. You said in a couple of these interviews and speeches that Putin's Russia has never been or Putin's never been less powerful, more secure, or more insecure. Explain why. What's the current situation? I mean, the daily beast, as we speak, ran a piece about a potential coup of his troops against him, which seems in some ways conceivable. What's your take?

00:34:46 Jamison Firestone: Yeah. So Putin's deal with the Russian people, especially when it comes to this war, is this war is never going to affect you. You can party and pop your champagne corks, and don't worry about it. And that's not what's happened. Right? What's happened, is that things are getting blown up in Moscow. Things are getting blown up in Saint Petersburg, and there are over a million casualties wounded and dead. And Putin's been very careful not to force people to serve. He did a draft, a mobilization at the beginning of the war. 700,000 people left, and he quickly cut that off. He realized how damaging that was. And instead, what he started doing was emptying out the prisons, forming prisoner armies. Prisoner army marched on Moscow. That wasn't very good. So then he went to paying people huge amounts of money to enlist. And now we've gotten to today where even with huge amounts of money, people aren't enlisting. They're losing more troops than they than they can enlist. And so he's gotta make this really big and we've broken his economy, by with through sanctions. We through sanctions, we've used up all the reserve cash. It took us four years to do it, but all their hundreds of billions of dollars have been burnt through. And now they owe hundreds of billions of dollars instead of having 600,000,000,000 in the bank. So Putin's gotta make a choice. Right? Is he going to close his borders and start drafting people for his war? And if he does, he's gonna get very unpopular very fast. And he doesn't have the financial might that he used to have, so that's why he's precarious right now.

00:36:21 Andrew Keen: Should we be a little concerned? After all, from Gorbachev, we got Yeltsin. Many people see as a step down from Yeltsin. We got Putin, which was a step down. Is it conceivable that if, Putin does indeed get replaced, maybe if there's a military coup against him, that the people that would come to power in Russia would actually make Putin seem more attractive.

00:36:46 Jamison Firestone: It is possible, but, attractive to who? Now I Attractive

00:36:50 Andrew Keen: To the West. If you've got some, super xenophobic, paranoid regime, army colonels, or fanatics who, of course, have a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, it would be I mean, not that Putin's a walk in the park, but that might make Putin seem a little bit more of an adult.

00:37:15 Jamison Firestone: First of all, I think if anybody takes power from Putin, it's going to be to take Russia out of the war because it will be that unpopularity that forces the issue. And taking Russia out of the war is great. So you're either gonna get someone who's just like him but no longer continuing the war or worse than him but not continuing the war or better. But all of those three variants are better for us because nobody's out there pushing the pushing the atomic button, and nobody really wants to.

00:37:44 Andrew Keen: So finally, where's the promise in Russia? You're you've you've got this remarkable story. As I said, you're at a front row. You knew you knew Navalny before he was Navalny. You crossed swords with Putin. You, employed Sergei Magnitsky. You're very influential in the Magnitsky act. Why should we still have a degree of faith in Russia? Why should we care?

00:38:11 Jamison Firestone: Well, first of all, you shouldn't have a degree of faith. I have a degree of faith in Russia because people don't like to live under dictatorships. But those things take a long time to end. I mean, if you look at what Hitler did, in Germany, the mentality that he fostered took a very long it took a world war to end, and it and it and it took a generation to end. So I have long term hopes for Russia, but short term, I'm more concerned with the West and with Ukraine and with America and Europe. And short term, what the West needs is for Russia to be stopped where it is, and not to go any further.

00:38:47 Andrew Keen: You mean in Ukraine?

00:38:49 Jamison Firestone: Absolutely. Because if we don't stop it if we don't stop him in Ukraine, we're going to be fighting him, we're gonna be fighting a Russia when it when it takes a chunk of, of Europe that used to be part of the Soviet Union. So I so I feel personally, long term, I feel optimistic that the Russians will eventually throw this regime out because nobody likes to live under a dictatorship, but it may take a long time. But I'm not waiting around for that. Right now, my work is my work is dedicated to making sure that Russia does not achieve its war aims in Ukraine.

00:39:22 Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it. Fascinating story, remarkable story. Jamison Firestone's rule of lies, not rule of law. It's out, Jamison, it's out both in The UK and The US. Right?

00:39:35 Jamison Firestone: That's correct. Worldwide now.

00:39:37 Andrew Keen: And it was gonna be movie. Who's gonna be in the movie? You can't get Warren Beatty to play yourself. Who's gonna play Jamison Firestone in the movie?

00:39:44 Jamison Firestone: I don't know. I don't know. But, hopefully, that movie is getting made. It's a fun it's a crazy fun book because it's not academic. It's just following my footsteps.

00:39:52 Andrew Keen: Ride, and that's why, I think, that's why there'll certainly be a TV series, won't there? Who's gonna play Bill Browder?

00:40:00 Jamison Firestone: I don't know. I mean, I've you know, Tom I would have been played by Tom Cruise, except we've both gotten old, and I need somebody to play 24 year old me in the book and 27 year old me.

00:40:09 Andrew Keen: Well, I think Tom Cruise still thinks he's 24 years old.

00:40:12 Jamison Firestone: He gets away with it.

00:40:13 Andrew Keen: Well, maybe, if Tom Cruise is watching, he'll he'll pick it up. Jamison Firestone, lovely to have you on the show, and congratulations of not just about the book, but about a remarkable life.

00:40:23 Jamison Firestone: Thank you so much. Have a good day.