A Russian oligarch in exile said Putin had gone “crazy” after expecting the people of Ukraine to “meet him with flowers” when he invaded the country. “In the beginning, what he wanted was to change power in Kyiv, to put on his puppet and expect that this would be met with flowers being thrown into the streets by the Ukrainian people,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former managing director of the Russian oil giant. Yukos told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday. Khodorkovsky – once the richest man in Russia and jailed for nine years on charges of fraud and tax evasion until his release in 2013 – has been a vocal critic of Putin. He said his imprisonment was politically motivated. He told Zakaria that when the Ukrainians resisted the invasion, Putin went mad. “The fact that people in Kharkov did not meet him with flowers not only infuriated him, but I really think they were literally driving him crazy. That was when he started bombing Kharkov and Kyiv,” Khodorkovsky said. Khodorkovsky said Putin had three ways out of the crisis: to continue to pressure Ukraine, to use weapons of mass destruction to force the Ukrainians to retreat, or to start “real” negotiations. Last month, the exiled oligarch said that the war in Ukraine would lead to the downfall of Putin. “I’m convinced Putin does not have much time. Maybe a year, maybe three,” he told CNN. On Saturday, former Russian Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov told CNN’s Erin Burnett that senior Russian government officials were “personally devastated” by Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, adding that it was only a matter of months before Putin lost power.
