The Kremlin’s climate envoy and veteran reformer Anatoly Chubais has quit his position and left Russia over his opposition to the war in Ukraine, as per the reports.
As per the sources, the bombshells departure makes Chubais the highest-profile figure to break with President Vladimir Putin over his decision to invade Ukraine.
As per the statement released by Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, while confirming the news said, “Chubais had resigned from his post, but didn’t specify why.”
Peskov said, “Whether he left or not is his personal matter.”
Chubais is in Turkey and doesn’t plan to return to Russia; two sources have revealed that are close to him.
Some reports have also published a photo purportedly showing Chubais at an ATM in Istanbul.
Chubais had been the Kremlin’s climate envoy, attempting to push Russia to adopt more green policies in the face of fierce domestic opposition, a powerful energy lobby and a president who has previously questioned the man-made nature of climate change.
He was considered as one of the influential figures in the early 1990s, the architect of Russia’s controversial privatization drive and its transition to a market economy. He famously brought Putin into the Kremlin, giving him his first job in Moscow, and had managed to stay in favour through more than two decades of Putin’s rule as many other leading figures from the Boris Yeltsin era were pushed out.
There has been almost no public opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine from the nation’s political elite, and Putin has branded those who oppose his actions “traitors and scum.”