At the time, Roman Abramovich was living in the south of France, where he owns the Château de la Croë, a large 19-acre beach villa in Antibes. He flew to Moscow on his private jet, but arrived too late for the audience, which was partly televised. Abramovich arranged for a private meeting with Putin. He apologized to the Russian president for his delay, but – according to three people familiar with the debate – also made a strong case for ending the war. Putin listened to him, people said. In the end, he gave his personal blessing to Abramovich to act as a mediator in the peace talks. The unusual intervention was dangerous – Putin has described select Russians sympathizing with the West as “scum and traitors.” But a frantic five-week odyssey began, with Abramovich crossing the border while trying to protect his property from war-torn sanctions while promoting a peace process. The invasion of Ukraine completely overthrew Abramovich’s carefully constructed life in the West, which he had managed to isolate from the controversy over how he made his money after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Roman Abramovic, third from right, listens to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul on Tuesday. © Turkish Presidency / AP UK and EU sanctions have forced him to sell Chelsea Football Club, race two offshore super yachts to Turkey, hand over control of at least two investment vehicles to an associate and reportedly try to withdraws huge sums from global asset managers. Shares of Evraz, the London-listed steel company and its main remaining industrial asset, are suspended after falling 85 percent this year. At the same time, Abramovich is conducting his own back-channel diplomacy. Last month, he traveled between Moscow, Israel and Turkey to help mediate talks – and even went to Kyiv at least twice to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to those familiar with the matter. He also survived a suspected poisoning during the negotiations which made him completely lose his sight for several hours. At the last round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Tuesday, Abramovich joined the Russian delegation and spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – a public acknowledgment of his official role in the referendum. In the process, Abramovich has completely reversed the script he has written so diligently for himself. For two decades, he has downplayed any suspicion that he is a close confidant of Putin, sometimes using the threat of legal action in London courts to defend himself against allegations of financial ties to the president. But at a time when his wealth and lifestyle were threatened, his personal relationship with Putin became Abramovich’s trump card, the source of his leverage as an unlikely peacemaker. Erdogan said Abramovich’s presence in the talks showed that Putin “believes in him, trusts him.” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said Abramovich was not an official member of the Russian delegation, but was assisting in “certain contacts between the Russian and Ukrainian sides.” “They seem to have a much closer relationship than I thought. “He was always closer to Putin than I was, but I did not think he was that close,” said one oligarch who has known both men since the 1990s. “No one else could play that role.” Zelensky called on the United States to stop imposing sanctions on Abramovich so that he could continue to travel, even if the Ukrainian president says he remains skeptical of the oligarch’s motives. “All these people are afraid of sanctions – I’m sure there is not much patriotism in this,” Zelensky said last week. However, he added, “access to the Russian government was unrealistic. [Now] someone catches something “. Abramovich’s critics insist he is using the talks to save his assets abroad. “I’m not sure how real and effective his involvement in this mediation is and how much of a public relations tool it is,” said Vladimir Asurkov, executive director of the Anti – Corruption Foundation, which was founded by imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. “He’s a creative guy and he has creative people working for him, so it might just be a way for the sanctions to relax.” A spokesman for Abramovich declined to comment. Peshkov did not comment on the oligarch’s meeting with Putin, details of which were first reported this week by the Russian independent website Proekt. Those close to the oligarch insist that his only priority is to end the war. “Could it be a double agenda? “Sure, but who else could do that – help Ukraine and stop Russia?” says one of them. “Roman is the only one trying.”
Holding close to the Kremlin
Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky in 1999. Abramovich demonstrated his faith in the Kremlin and benefited from the sale of Sibneft in 2005 © AP / Bloomberg Abramovich has always been one of life’s survivors. Born in 1966 to Jewish parents in Saratov, about 500 miles southeast of Moscow, he was orphaned at the age of three. As a young man, he became involved in business and in the early 1990s engaged in the oil trade. A chance meeting in 1994 with Boris Berezovsky, a tycoon with close ties to then-President Boris Yeltsin, changed his fate forever. With the Russian state close to bankruptcy, the duo took advantage of their connections to buy oil company Sibneft for about $ 200 million at an auction that critics have long claimed was rigged. The Sibneft deal would prove to be one of the most lucrative at a time when the country was pledging its crown jewels. Abramovich and Berezovsky were both part of the group close to Yeltsin, but under Putin, who became president in 2000, their fortunes diversified rapidly. While other oligarchs fled the country when Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Roman Abramovich showed loyalty to the Kremlin, serving eight years as governor of Chukotka. © ITAR-TASS / Alamy Stock Photo Berezovsky publicly clashed with Putin, sold his stake in Russia’s main television channel to Abramovich and fled the country to escape a criminal investigation into his business dealings. Abramovich showed faith in the Kremlin, serving for eight years as governor of Chukotka, a desert region in northeastern Russia with a population of just 50,000. The publicly shy Abramovich and the former KGB officer soon developed a relationship, although even people who know both of them are surprised at how much Putin seems to trust the oligarch. “They are both very closed personalities,” says one of the people. In 2005, Abramovich’s political faith was rewarded. Other wealthy oligarchs in the 1990s faced legal and fiscal challenges – or imprisonment, in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s biggest oil baron when he was arrested in 2003 after publicly challenging Putin. However, Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas giant, has agreed to buy Sibneft for $ 13 billion – providing the source of most of Abramovich’s fortune, valued at $ 8.4 billion by Forbes. “It was a joke for him,” said Roman Borisovich, a former Russian banker who became an anti-corruption activist about Abramovich’s relationship with Putin. “It simply came to our notice then. Everyone close to Yeltsin’s family was at least expelled, and he was the worst of them all. So he would do anything. “
“They will forget who I am”
Roman Abramovich hugs John Terry, then Chelsea captain, after winning the FA Cup in 2012 © Getty Images Even before the Gazprom deal, Abramovich wanted to build a new life in the West. In 2003, he bought Chelsea for. 150 million, a deal that would make him a household name in England. Speaking to a translator at the time of purchase, he told the Financial Times in London: “It’s nice to be here, you feel comfortable and you don’t feel like people are watching you. I’m sure people will focus on me for three or four days, but it will pass. “They will forget who I am and I like that.” Abramovich bought at least 200 200m worth of British property, including a 15-bedroom mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, formerly the Soviet embassy. “He was a shadowy tycoon from Siberia [ . . .] “Then suddenly he is a legitimate British businessman with a fat check from the Russian government,” said Borisovich. “Everyone thought this was the cleanest money you could get from Russia.” He established himself as a patron of the arts and donated half a billion dollars to Jewish purposes. The president of Russia’s main Jewish group said in 2018 that Abramovich deserved praise for “80 percent” of Jewish life in the country. But despite trying to reinvent himself in the West, Abramovich was never able to completely escape the allegations about the route he had taken to get there. In 2001, according to Sergei Kolesnikov, a former business associate of Putin’s friends, Abramovich donated $ 203 million to buy medical equipment for a military hospital in St. Petersburg. The equipment, however, was bought at a discount and 35% of the funds went to offshore companies, which Kolesnikov said were mostly owned by Putin – and were unknowingly spent on projects including a luxurious palace allegedly built for his use. President on the Black Sea coast. Abramovich said at the time that he had donated only $ 180m and that the payment was based on invoices from the company that supplied the equipment. Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea for 150 150 million in 2003, but was forced to put the club up for sale due to …
