One of the closest Russian officials to Vladimir Putin, Anatoly Chubais, has resigned as the president’s special envoy for relations with international organizations, Reuters reported.
Chubais has left Russia and has no plans to return, the agency said, citing a source.
The reformer is the highest-ranking figure to step down after Russia launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Chubais, who years ago was the head of President Boris Yeltsin’s cabinet, was appointed Putin’s special envoy in 2020 after resigning as head of the state-owned nanotechnology development company Rusnano, which he has run since 2008.
Chubais is the man believed to have first given Putin a post in the Kremlin in the 1990s, and then welcomed his appointment as president.
Chubais, also known as “Red Tolya”, is the main ideologue of privatization in Russia.
Many Russians accuse him of allowing a small group of oligarchs to get rich during privatization in the 1990s, when millions of people lived in poverty and in the midst of economic collapse and crisis, BNR recalls.
In recent years, Chubais has continued to call for economic reform and has been one of Russia’s top liberals.
Chubais warned in 2010 that the rise of fascism was the biggest threat to Russia that could lead to the country’s collapse.
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