Anatoli Chubais, one of the last remaining links between Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin and the West, has stepped down as special adviser to the president and Russia.
The presumed motive is the one-month war in Ukraine, but he could not be reached for comment on the reason for his decision. His departure was confirmed to Russian and foreign media by close friends.
Less than a sign of internal dissent at the top of power, which may be happening, Chubais’s departure symbolizes the end of an era in Russia that had already been emaciated under Putin’s orders for years: that of a country that sought partnership and integration with the West.
Chubais, 66, was the father of the Russian privatization program. An assistant to legendary Leningrad/St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, the man who put Putin into politics, he took over as supervisor of the sale of the Soviet state giant after the end of the Communist empire in 1991.
A staunch liberal, he held several positions in the two governments of Boris Ielstin, who passed the baton to the then premier Putin when he resigned in the New Year 2000. Since then, he has been instrumental in the Kremlin’s attempt to relate to Europe, the USA. and allies.
Privatizations under Ielstin largely failed, as entire sectors of the economy fell into the hands of so-called oligarchs, monopoly businessmen given to gangsterism. The country melted down economically in 1998. Putin was elected president for good in March 2000 and took on the mission of imploding such a scheme.
Instead, it either nationalized or brought into the orbit of the State the strategic areas of the economy. Chubais lost relative importance, not least because he was heavily criticized as a co-author of the social tragedy resulting from the Russian liberal spree of the 1990s, but remained a kind of western Putin talisman.
The president spent the 2000s rehearsing a rapprochement with Western structures, but essentially gave up after 2007, realizing that NATO’s (a US-led military alliance) eastward expansion signaled a mutual distrust — which is now materializing in fighting in Ukraine.
But Chubais won his fair share under Putin, presiding over the state electricity monopoly from 1998 to 2008, then with a sinecure at Russian state-owned nanotechnology until 2020. That year, he became Putin’s special envoy to international bodies. Last year, he took on the role of envoy for sustainable development issues.
Chubais, 66, joins a long list of members of the crooked attempt to turn post-Soviet Russia into a functioning market economy leaving the country. Whether he will become a vocal critic of Putin after so long remains to be seen. The Kremlin has yet to comment on the case.
What is certain is the even greater closure of the regime under Putin, something that some fear could evolve into a pure dictatorship, especially in the event of a military victory against Kiev.
Other opponents abroad are active with the war in Ukraine, although over the years they have enjoyed more popularity in the Western media than among the electorate. This Wednesday (23), eight of them released a video on the internet condemning the war, military censorship and the sentence of nine additional years in prison imposed on Alexei Navalni.
A leader of anti-corruption and anti-Putin protests, Navalni was convicted on Tuesday on charges of fraud, which he rejects as political persecution. He had already served two and a half years since 2021.
“We all represent different political movements. But we created an anti-war committee, because we believe that our country does not need this war,” said one of the group’s members, Mikhail Khodorkovski.
He was an oligarch who broke with Putin in 2000, saw his oil company nationalized and spent ten years in jail, now living in the UK. He was joined by chess player Garri Kasparov and Liubov Sobol, one of Navalni’s main allies, among others.
Within Russia, even due to the law that criminalizes what the Kremlin thinks is fake news about the war and, according to a law passed on Tuesday (22), “Russian institutions”, the initial protests withered – not before seeing about 15 thousand people registered in police stations.
