Winter is Here

Leopoldo Lopez is one of the most prominent Venezuelan opposition leaders. For openly challenging dictators like Chávez and Maduro, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. He famously turned himself in and ended up spending 3 years in a military prison, and 2 under house arrest. During the 2019 uprising against Maduro’s regime, Lopez escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the Spanish Embassy, where he remained for over a year. In 2020, he escaped from Venezuela in disguise over the border into Colombia.

He joins Uriel Epshtein to discuss how he developed the resilience to survive 3 years of solitary confinement, what inspires him about American democracy, and why the Venezuelan opposition chose to hang the Ukrainian flag outside of the Venezuelan Embassy in D.C. Our conversation hinges on why all the sacrifices he has made in his now-global fight against dictatorship are worth it.

Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the investment adviser to the largest foreign investment fund in Russia until 2005, when Bill was denied entry to the country and declared a “threat to national security” as a result of his battle against corporate corruption. His colleague, tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, was detained and murdered by Putin’s regime in 2009 for uncovering state corruption. In 2012, Browder successfully lobbied the US Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan bill to punish those in Russia responsible for Magnitsky’s death. Bill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Red Notice, and the upcoming book Freezing Order, available April 12th.

This week he joins Garry Kasparov and Uriel Epshtein for a discussion on corruption in Russia, how sanctions can weaken Putin along with his propaganda and war machines, and what it would take to make sanctions effective.

On this episode of Winter is Here, we welcome former poker world champion and decision scientist Annie Duke. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has all of us wondering how you can make good decisions when the stakes are astronomical. We dive into the psychology of decision making with lessons that apply as much to daily life as to geopolitics. And with a poker world champion and chess grandmaster on the podcast, we had to ask—is Putin playing poker or chess?

Also released today is this week’s Democracy Brief on the unlikely coalition forming to blame the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Read the full piece here.

Last, we want to offer you a final reminder to sign up for our Briefing with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba happening live Tomorrow at 11am ET! Foreign Minister Kuleba will almost certainly be joined by soldiers who can offer testimony directly from the frontlines. Also on the panel will be Garry Kasparov, Alexander Vindman, Céline Boustani, and Uriel Epshtein. Please sign up here for this truly unique opportunity.

We’re bringing you a special episode of Winter is Here this week where Uriel speaks with Ukrainian Colonel Oleksandr Gain out of Kyiv. Colonel Gain offers a more personal take on Russia’s invasion of his country and insight on Ukraine’s response based on his 20+ years in the Ukrainian military.

As this conflict rages on, RDI is committed to bringing you voices from the front and working to galvanize the Free World to come to the defense of democracy. Consider donating to RDI here.

World War III is upon us—in fact, it has already begun. We are doing our best to keep you informed by launching a new podcast, moving our newsletter onto Substack, and offering guest contributions from experts such as my partners on RDI’s Board.

For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has waged war on the civilized world of international law, democracy, and any threat to his power. The Cold War didn’t end; the West quit. 

Ukrainians are fighting on the frontlines of this global war. They battle against a dictator emboldened by two decades of friendly treatment and concessions from the West. With each death, the Ukrainian people pay a debt that the US and EU accrued every time they chose to appease Putin. 

The advance of Putin’s army didn’t start with Ukraine, and he has no plans to stop it there. If you fear that NATO will come into direct conflict with Russia’s army, you should. Putin intends it. He will march his army west past the Dnieper onto the border of Poland. He will order it north toward the Baltic states, which he has demanded lose their full NATO status. He will do all of this because he can, and he can because we let him.

Putin’s battle is in Ukraine, but his war is against democracy. Peaceful and prosperous democracies are proof to the Russian people that Putin’s reign is a catastrophic mistake. As his dictatorship could never deliver for the Russian people like a democracy could, he must degrade democracy wherever it exists. In Western Europe and the United States, that has meant meddling in elections, financing extremist parties, and funding troll farms to drive hateful division. In Ukraine, it means war.

I joined other leaders, activists, journalists, and academics to found RDI on the belief that the fight to achieve democracy in oppressive countries and the struggle to defend it in America are connected. When Putin marches into a neighboring country to prop up its dictator or destroy its fairly-elected government, his target is democracy everywhere. When democracy falters in the United States, it strengthens Putin and other dictators like him. The crisis in Ukraine is throwing this fact into sharp relief, and our work is as important as ever before.

This crisis is demanding, and as it unfolds we want to offer you as much as we can. As an organization, we are transitioning some of our content onto Substack, where we can expand into new media, host guest contributions from experts such as my partners on RDI’s Board, and encourage comments and conversation among our community.

As the first new offering, I’m launching Winter is Here, a podcast with RDI’s executive director, Uriel Epshtein. Each Friday, we’ll release an episode discussing the global war between freedom and tyranny. Our inaugural episode launches today, and you can find it at the top of this post. We spoke with Lt. Col (Ret) Alexander Vindman, whose expertise and personal bravery have never been more relevant.

Our weekly Democracy Brief newsletter, written by our brilliant Content & Strategy Manager, James Lewis, will continue to arrive in your inboxes on Thursday mornings as usual. It will look a bit different and the author won’t be anonymous any longer, but you can expect the same wide-ranging analysis of topics related to democracy in the US and abroad.

With this change, we’ll also be able to offer you exclusive content from the RDI network, with guest pieces landing in your inbox either in place of the regular newsletter or as additional op-eds, videos, or podcasts. 

Lastly, we want to build a community together. While we’ll keep offering our analysis of the pressing stories in democracy in the US and around the world, we want you to be able to discuss them, ask questions, and offer your thoughts as well. On Substack, our comments will be open where we encourage you to react to our work, share your opinion, and discuss what needs to be done to defend democracy. In the future, we intend to create more opportunities for you to engage with us in Q&A’s, happy hours, and open conversations.

The tragedy in Ukraine demands our attention, and we will do our best to answer that call. All the while, we won’t ignore the crisis in democracy in America that is both aiding Putin’s aggression and is exacerbated by it. As we embark on this next phase in RDI’s history with you, we encourage you to share this post with your friends and colleagues and invite them to join our community. 

Garry Kasparov

RDI Founder & Chairman

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