Anatoly Chubais: Top Russian envoy steps down and leaves the country after criticising war in Ukraine
A senior and respected Russian official has stepped down from his role of climate envoy and left the country, after opposing Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Anatoly Chubais quit Moscow this week according to Bloomberg, becoming the highest-ranking person to get out since the start of the war last month.
This comes after Russia was made subject to international sanctions and isolation, with major international firms ending trade there, and Kremlin-linked companies and individuals having been blacklisted.
The 66-year-old, known for being a key shaper of the economic reforms of the 1990s, had close ties with the west, but remained in Putin’s inner circle.
Chubais reportedly escaped the country after President Putin warned of a crackdown against critics of the war, threatening he’d rid the country of “scum and traitors”.
He is the second key official to quit after Arkady Dvorkovich, a former adviser to ex prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, stepped down from a state-run technology firm.
According to The Times, Kira Yarmysh, a spokesperson for jailed critic Alexei Navalny, said: “They write that Chubais resigned and left Russia ‘in protest against the war with Ukraine’. Anatoly Chubais left Russia only out of fear for his own skin and his own money.”