Who is Anatolij Chubais, the ex-Putin loyalist who fell ill in Sardinia – Corriere.it

Anatolij Chubais surely a man of many souls, Who knows many things. But the designation of a hero, a dissident or an opponent that was assigned to him after he fled Russia is very broad. Let’s start from the beginning, from the identity card that in itself summarizes the complexity of the Russian issue.

Born in 1955 in Belarus, between 1962 and 1967, he lives in Ukraine, first in Odessa and then in Lviv. When the family moved to the future Saint Petersburg, he organized a circle of liberal economists and libertarians who soon allied with the Muscovite Igor Gagdar, the future head of government with Yeltsin and head of the reforms of what was to become post-communist Russia. In the early 1990s he became the main collaborator of the then Saint Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, He is best known as the political godfather of Vladimir Putin. Since then, she has become part of the so-called extended family from which the vertical strength of Putin’s power was born.

It’s no coincidence Status alert It was launched by the presenter Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Anatolij who to this day is still considered the current chief benefactor. family company. Also for this reason, many argue that his escape in late March was in fact authorized by the Kremlin, the last service of an elderly and sick man. Chubais is an integral part of modern Russian history. It was he, who put himself at the head of the State Heritage Committee, who prepared the privatization program that sold the main Russian public companies to a few people.

That is why he is considered the father, or godfather, of every oligarch. During the Yeltsin era, he was deputy prime minister several times, as well as head of the Kremlin administration. In 1999 he was among the first to realize that Russia’s liberal transformation would remain a mirage under Putin. With the rising star Boris Nemtsov, he founded the Union of Right Forces, which entered the State Duma with 32 deputies. But he never agreed between the two, because Chubais insisted on soft opposition within the regime. In March 2005, he was attacked, and he saved himself thanks to his armored car. One episode is never spelled out, which many attribute to the extracurricular activities of Chubais, a man who always showed a certain penchant for personal enrichment. Shortly before the 2008 elections, which are perhaps the most controversial of the past 20 years due to the expiration of Putin’s second presidential term, Nemstovs ruined his political career by abruptly dissolving their party and joining the Causa Giusta, an organization controlled by the Kremlin.

The new president, Dmitry Medvedev, immediately appointed him head of the Rosnano Agency, the government agency for the development of Russian nanotechnologies. It should be remembered that Nemstov was killed on February 27, 2015 while walking on the bridge to the Kremlin. In recent years, Chubais has lived on the edge of true strength, and contented himself with a few pre-shows. When he fled to Italy, he was the assistant president for international relations in the field of sustainable development. Not quite Putin’s first interest and concern.