Former Russian oligarch Mihhail Khordorkovsky, 58, once head of Yukos Oil Company and Russia’s richest man, speaks from experience after running afoul with 69-ytear-old Russian President Vladimir Putin. Khordorkovsky spent 10 years in a Siberian gulag for dissident activities, including trying to run against Putin for president back in 2003. Too big for his britches, Khordorkovsky tried to challenge Putin for president, then wound up charged with fraud and tax evasion, eventually spending the best years of his life in prison. Russia’s younger version of Khordorkovsky, 45-year-old dissident Alexi Navalny, also finds himself in a Russian gulag, also charged with various financial crimes. Unlike Khordorkovsky, Navalny ran a clandestine group seeking to oust Putin from power, gaining the support from the U.S. and Western countries also seeking to topple Putin’s government.
Khordorkovsky thinks that using conscripts from Russia’s big cities to fight in Ukraine will create a backlash against Putin all over Russia, leading to mass demonstrations. Khordorkovsky, who’s been exiled in Switzerland and London since Putin pardoned him in 2013, would like to return triumphantly to Russia once Putin is removed from office. Khordordovsky’s well-aware of Biden’s statement in Warsaw March 28 in which he said Putin cannot continue as Russian president. CIA and State Department officials have worked surreptitiously with Khordorvovsky to remove Putin from power. Khordorkovsky responded to an interview with the Atlantic Council what would happen if Putin if he continues to bring in young conscripts to the Ukraine War from Russia’s biggest cities. Khordorkovsky sees at draft of young conscripts as creating a backlash around the Russian Federation.
Khordovosky once ran against Putin on an anti-corruption campaign, accusing Putin, like Navalny more recently, of widespread corruption. Navalny ran an anti-corruption organization that attempted to show the Russian people that Putin enriched himself at the expense of the Russian people. “Especially when we are talking about people who live in the north Caucassus, or people who live in tiny villages and settlements,” Khordorkovsky, said, referring to the amount to resistance to fight Putin’s battle with Ukraine. “Knowing this, Putin is taking his soldiers specifically from those places. And he pays such money for their deaths, forcing their close relatives to keep their mouths shut,” referring to how Putin’s conscript plan works to replenish troops in Ukraine. Khordorkovsky thinks Putin’s conscription plan will create mass demonstration around the country.
Khordorkovsky advised Navalny to not return to Moscow Jan. 17, 2021 from his recovery from Novichok poisoning in Germany. Unlike Navalny, Khordorkovsky didn’t challenge Putin returning to Russia, spending his life in exile as a political dissident. Khordorkovsky knows that the same thing that happened to Navalny would happen to him. Khordorkovsky spent enough time in a Siberian gulag to know to avoid the indignity for a second prison sentence. President Joe Biden, 79, did everything possible to get Navalny out of prison, once demanding in 2021, with the 59-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that Putin release him from prison. Putin understood well that Biden wanted him removed from office. When he heard it from Warsaw March 28, he realized that the Ukraine War was not about sovereignty and territorial integrity, it was a U.S. and NATO battling the Russian Federation.
Khordorkovsky, an astute observer of Russian politics, realized that the Ukraine War was a proxy war against Putin and the Russian Federation. Putin thinks he’s “at war wit the U.S. and NATO,” Khodorkovsky said, the first to admit that it’s not really about preserving Ukraine’s territory. Zelensky has told the U.S. and NATO that the Ukraine War was about preventing Putin to taking over more former Soviet satellites to establish the old Iron Curtain or new Soviet Union. Biden backed Navalny because he promised like no other Russian dissident to evict Putin from power. Navalny, like Khordorkovsky, sits in a high security Russian prison, a kind of martyr to Biden’s cause of democratizing Russia. Khordorkovsky sits on the sidelines, knowing he had his shot back in 2003 but spent 10 years rotting in a Russian gulag. Navalny has zero prospects of getting out of prison to continue his dissident activity.
Khordorkovsky thinks, more wishful thinking, that Biden can eventually get rid of Putin by backing Ukraine with unlimited amounts of arms. But if he looks at Navalny’s clout in prison, he knows that Putin’s state isn’t going to go quietly, including with the unpopular decision to conscript young people to fight in Ukraine from all over Russia. “Without a doubt, such a step, if Putin is forced to take it, is going to be politically extremely heavy for him. And even more, he could call up a million people, but then big cities are going to end up in coffins,” Khordorkovsky said, painting a bleak scenario for Putin. Khordorkovsky sits in his London perch, enjoying freedom. free to speculate about what happens next in Russia. If he looks at his own story, he’d know that it’s not going to end well for Russia dissidents that dare to challenge Putin’s rule. Putin now fights the U.S. for his survival in Ukraine.
