Putin’s advisor, former boss and top aide Anatoly Chubais quits over Ukraine invasion, flees Russia

Anatoly Chubais, a high-ranking Russian official who led the country’s post-Soviet economic reforms, has resigned from his post and fled the country in opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Russian state media outlet TASS.

Anatoly Chubais, who served as Putin’s climate change envoy and gave Putin his first government job in the 90s, quit in protest over the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported.

Chubais has been an influential reformer in Russia’s government since the fall of the Soviet Union. The oligarch is the highest-level Kremlin official to break ties with Russia after Putin launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine, according to Bloomberg.

Chubais was one of the principal architects of Boris Yeltsin’s economic reforms of the 1990s and held senior business and political roles under President Vladimir Putin. He had been Putin’s special envoy to international organisations since 2020.

Last week, Arkady Dvorkovich, who formerly served as former deputy prime minister under Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, resigned from his position as chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, and openly denounced the war against Ukraine, which has resulted in thousands of fatalities.

“My thoughts are with Ukrainian civilians,” Dvorkovich said in an interview with Mother Jones. “Wars do not just kill priceless lives. Wars kill hopes and aspirations, freeze or destroy relationships and connections.”

During a televised speech last week, Putin lambasted citizens who don't support Russia in Ukraine, according to Aljazeera.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden will be in Europe for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine, where invading Russian troops are stalled, cities are under bombardment and the besieged port of Mariupol is in flames.

Four weeks into a war that has driven a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes, Russia has failed to capture a single major Ukrainian city, while Western sanctions have ostracised it from the world economy.

• Anatoly Chubais
• Putin
• Ukraine invasion
• advisor
• flees Russia
• former boss
• quits
• top aide