He was Russia’s richest. Now the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (58) warns against believing that Putin will stop at Ukraine’s borders.
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Mikhail Khodorkovsky (58) was Russia’s richest oligarch, and his position as head of the country’s largest oil company gave him direct access to President Putin.
It ended abruptly when Khodorkovsky spoke loudly about corruption in Russia.
The oligarch served ten years in prison for what human rights organizations describe as a punishment for criticizing the Kremlin. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is one of those who knows best what Putin is capable of.
When VG talks to him on video line from the Russian’s self-imposed exile in London, he has a clear message about Russia’s war in Ukraine: Do not think you can negotiate with Putin.
To this day, I see no other way than to show Putin clearly that he is losing. Until Putin disappears, Europe will have big and serious problems, he says.
–The West’s misunderstanding
Khodorkovsky was known in the 1990s and early 2000s as both uncompromising and cynical. Like many other oligarchs, he has been criticized for unscrupulously exploiting Russia’s vulnerable economic situation during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He, who is now a 58-year-old businessman, has since he was released from prison in 2013, worked from London to try to change the board in Russia through the organization Open Russia.
Khodorkovsky believes the West has misunderstood something significant about Putin’s war.
– You think that Putin still has not crossed the borders of the western countries. But for Putin, he already has it.
It is crystal clear from Putin’s propaganda that he is already at war with NATO and the United States, Khodorkovsky believes.
– The choice you now have to make is either to defeat Putin on the territory of Ukraine, or you have to fight against him on the territory of a NATO country. Then we are facing something much worse, he says to VG.
–The West’s ‘serious mistakes’
Khodorkovsky is well aware of the innermost times of power in his home country, because he owned the oil producer Yukos, which made him Russia’s richest in 2003 with a fortune of a staggering 120 billion kroner.
Oil is also the key word when the former oligarch talks about the serious mistake he believes Western countries made ten years ago, namely to become dependent on Russian oil and gas.
Even then, Western countries should have seen which way Putin took Russia, and started a shift to secure energy from other sources. Well, better late than never. Today, the West pays for being late, the Russian believes.
The West is now dependent on an authoritarian regime, and Putin uses this as a means of pressure, the regime critic sums up for VG.
If Europe completely stopped buying oil and gas from Russia, how quickly would the country’s economy collapse, Khodorkovsky was recently asked in the program Hard Talk.
– If Putin has to redirect oil and gas to the Asian market, he will lose half of his income. That is half of the state budget. Would he be able to continue the war in such circumstances? It’s hard for me to say, I’m not a military expert. But in my view it would be a serious setback, Khodorkovsky replied.
–“Was himself deceived” by Putin
A video of President Putin’s immediate reaction to the corruption allegations Khodokovsky made in 2003 has been used in the 2019 documentary Citizen K.
It shows Putin’s immediate, condescending response to the allegations. Ten years in prison in Siberia did not stop Khodorkovsky.
The former oligarch tells VG that he does not want to punish Western leaders for not seeing what danger Putin was, because he “was himself deceived” when he met the president many times in the years from the late 90s to 2003.
– Putin is able to adapt to what people want to see in him. I know that because I experienced it myself. I would like to see a young, democratic leader of the new Russia, and he gladly demonstrated this. Has he changed? I really think he was just good at pretending, he says to VG.
He has previously told the BBC that he “regrets every day” that he may have been an aide to Putin to come to power.
–Khodorkovsky nevertheless allows himself a small stab at Western leaders for their approach to the man who has now invaded a neighboring country.
– Now it is almost 20 years since I realized that he was someone else, while the West realized this three months ago. Of course, they could have realized this in 2014, but then, for some reason, they saw a different path. I hope this opens the eyes to the fact that we are dealing here with a dictator, with whom it is only possible to interact through the exercise of power.
He draws a small anecdote for VG’s reporter, as a small prick to Europe’s leaders.
– You know such garden rakes? It hurts a lot if you step on the rake head, and get the rod melted right in the face. But when it happens – not once, or twice, but three, maybe four times – then it is legitimate to ask if you like it, he says, and smiles heartily at his own joke.
–Russia has now lived for three months under the sanctions that Europe and the United States have introduced to affect those in power, the defense, and the financial market in Russia.
Do you think the sanctions hit those they are meant to hit, VG asks.
“In a long perspective, of course, the Russian economy is hit extremely hard by the sanctions, especially considering that the sanctions slow down the ability to produce weapons, and thus the Kremlin’s opportunity for aggression,” Khodorkovsky said.
The sanctions are also meant to affect oligarchs, which was a term that Khodorkovsky, perhaps above all, carried for many years.
– Oligarchs are Putin’s agents and he uses them, or at least tries to use them to influence Western political systems. This means that Putin has a firm grip on them and that they are doing what he tells them to do. And from this point of view, blocking bank accounts and preventing their influence on Western policies and the Western economic system is crucial, yes, says the businessman.
–20 years of «personal war»
Mikhail Khodorkovsky has now spent almost twenty years on what he describes as a “personal war against Putin.”
Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov told VG in 2018 that he thought Khodorkovsky was “the biggest threat Putin has”.
The fight against Putin has cost a lot, not only for the man himself, but also for Khodorkovsky’s children and wife, who lost him for ten years while serving time in Siberia.
Does he regret what he did in 2003, when he challenged Putin in front of TV cameras and the audience? Khodorkovsky thinks about it.
– Of course, if I had known what Putin was really capable of, I would probably have been less public and confrontational in my criticism. Would I then, to this day, be positioned as my former colleagues are, around Putin? I do not know, he says. I would like to say absolutely not, but I do not know. Then he adds “we are probably made in such a way that we convince ourselves that we are good people, even when we are not”.
The Russian businessman pauses a bit.
– But I still have to say, that when I look back 20 years in time, I’m happy. Of course not happy that I spent 10 years in prison, but that I got out of that system. I can, without hesitation, look my children and my friends in the eye. And I have nothing to be ashamed of now.
–No good tsar
Despite almost ten years in London, Khodorkovsky still only does interviews in Russian. He describes himself as a “guest” in the UK, and would like to return to Russia.
To VG in 2018, he said that he hoped it could happen soon, that four to five years from now, he hoped Russia would be a democracy similar to the West.
But the war in Ukraine has changed a lot, he says to VG.
– Today I believe that what I dreamed of, that Russia would become a democratic republic, is not possible. Now I think one must share power among regional authorities, and create a parliamentary republic.
It will be a heavy process, partly because Russian propaganda has a great impact on the Russian people, says the Russian, but he believes it is Russia’s best chance now.
Could he envisage becoming Russia’s next president?
Khodorkovsky smiles with brown eyes behind the discreet glasses.
– Am I ready to contribute where I can, if desired? Yes. But, and this I want to emphasize most strongly: the West seems to think that one can replace an “evil tsar” with a “good tsar” who will come and save the country. In Russia there are no good tsars. An accumulation of power is always an evil for our vast country.
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