Current state of the Russia-Ukraine forever war

In recent interviews, Sir Bill Browder and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse addressed the state of the Russia-Ukraine War, on which both of them are emphatically pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia in their positioning.

Whitehouse addresses the war around 19:30, emphasizing that the front lines are very much a war-of-attrition situation, in which Ukraine is experiencing small losses but in the process is exacting a large price in Russian casualties. (1)



The financier Bill Browder is one of Vladimir Putin’s least favorite people because of his high-profile campaigns for accountability for Russian state-ordered assassination. He was a leading promoter of the Magnitsky Act (2) that the US Congress passed in 2012, and there was an expanded version enacted in 2016. Meidas Touch recently interviewed Browder: (3)



Now that Trump has gone full Roy Cohn and is calling everybody he doesn’t like “Communist,” it’s worth noting the Browder has an interesting family background, especially for a high-roller financier. His grandfather was Earl Browder (1891-1973), who was Chairman of the US Communist Party (CPUSA) from 1930 to 1944. I posted about this family connection a few years ago.

But apart from that entertaining aside, it was notable to me that Whitehouse, despite being emphatic in his support for Ukraine, described in a matter-of-fact way without holding out any hope for an immediate breakthrough by the Ukrainians.

Browder goes even further and says the most likely outcome is a frozen conflict. With an eventual settlement like that over North and South Korea. And there are lots of reasons to think this is the best solution that is all reasonable or practical for both sides and for other nations affected as well. That doesn’t mean that it’s what will happen. Wars are complicated and very messy.

Notes:

(1) Trump aides ‘don’t see a way out’ of Iran war: Senator Whitehouse. Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 07/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/iVoEJ49MXgc?si=hSiHKVZeW0qJe-3p> (Accessed: 2026-26-07).

(2) The US Global Magnitsky Act: Questions and Answers. Human Rights Watch 09/13/2017. <https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/us-global-magnitsky-act> (Accessed: 2026-26-07).

Bill Browder: Investment fund CEO who promoted the Magnitsky Act and his interesting family background

The current methods used for targeting sanctions toward individuals, unusually "oligarchs" of some kind - was heavily based on amethod promoted by Bill Browder, currently CEO of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, which he co-founded. He also has a surprising family background.

Browder in this interview talks about the Magnitsky Act, which was a major model for today's targeted sanctions approach, Ukraine small taste of what's to come from Putin: Bill Browder Financial Post 04/05/2022:

Bill Browder is also the grandson of Earl Browder (1891-1973), who was Chairman of the US Communist Party from 1930 to 1944. Here's grandad striking a Sherlock Holmes-ish pose on the cover a 1944 book of his:

It's safe to say that he had an interesting career. That book was a statement reflecting the wartime alliance between the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union that offered a vision of longterm cooperation between the wartime alliance. That's not how the world developed immediately after the war, of course. As the Britannica article linked above puts it:

In 1944 Browder was removed from his position as party secretary for declaring that capitalism and socialism could peacefully coexist. He was expelled from the Communist Party in 1946 and three years later was named in “treason trials” in Budapest and Prague as originator of the heresy of “Browderism.” [my emphasis]

Denis MacShane wrote about Earl and grandson Bill in The Browder Family and Russia's Leaders Newsweek 12/03/2010:

Earl Browder was the leader of the Communist Party USA in the 1930s and during World War II. A Stalin worshiper, he wielded immense influence in the trade-union movement, which grew in power as America's war machine sucked in millions of industrial workers. During the years of the Hitler-Stalin pact, Browder was a class warrior opposing the "imperialist" war between Britain and Germany. With the Soviet and American entry into the war in 1941, he used his communist machine to lash U.S. workers into heroic feats of output. But as the wartime love-in between Stalin and Roosevelt turned into U.S.-Soviet rivalry and the Cold War, Browder was dismissed by Stalin for not understanding quickly enough the change in line. Instead he and his son, Felix, a brilliant mathematician, fell victim to McCarthyism, living shrunken lives in the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s.

Earl Browder's grandson Bill grew up as an all-American boy with a head for figures and a fascination for the Russia of his grandmother's birth. After a Stanford M.B.A. he went to Salomon Brothers at the start of the great privatization bonanza of the 1990s, when nearly half of Russia's wealth was transferred to two dozen oligarchs. He went into business for himself and built a $4.5 billion investment fund. Such money was too tempting for the kleptocrats around Putin, who had no qualms squeezing the super-rich with threats of jail or exile. What happened to Bill Browder is a cautionary tale for European leaders like President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who have decided to embrace Russia despite its human-rights record, and to President Obama, whose reset strategy is meant to inspire Russia to cooperate with the West on Iran and Afghanistan.

A cigarette-puffing Mike Wallace interviewed Earl Browder in 1957, available here: Interview with Earl Browder (Harry Ransom Center).

Another grandchild of Earl's, Laura Browder, talks about Earl in this lecture from 2014, Laura Browder - "Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism," or the Odyssey of Earl Browder UNE Center for Global Humanities:

Real history is, among other things, full of surprises.