Anatoly Chubais, one of the people close to the Russian president, has resigned and left the country, TARS reports.
According to CNN, his release is due to disagreement with the war in Ukraine. This has not been officially confirmed. Television reports that if this information is confirmed, Chubais will become the highest-ranking official who resigned due to military actions led by the Kremlin. According to an unnamed source, he is not going to return to Russia.
Anatoly Chubais has been a former finance minister in Boris Yeltsin’s government since 1990. He is called the main ideologue of the executor of privatization in Russia. Chubais was one of the first to work for Vladimir Putin’s political career.
Prior to his resignation, he was the president’s special envoy for relations with international organizations, according to Reuters. Many Russians accuse Chubais of allowing a small group of tycoons to get rich during privatization in the 1990s, when millions of Russians plunged into poverty amid economic collapse and crisis.
In recent years, he has continued to call for economic reform and has been one of the top liberals in the Russian government. In 2010, Chubais warned that the rise of fascism was the most serious threat to Russia and could lead to the country’s disintegration.