Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ‘will lead to his demise,’ says exiled oligarch

Exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that President Vladimir Putin’s move to invade Ukraine “is going to lead to his demise.”

“If he wins now in Ukraine, he will, because of domestic problems, start a war with NATO. And eventually he will lose that war,” the billionaire said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“Had it not been for so many casualties, I would have said that I’m actually quite happy, because he has embarked on a route that is going to lead to his demise. But this specific victory in Ukraine depends entirely on the West,” Khodorovsky added.

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In the interview, the exiled oligarch expressed his disagreement with former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who said last month that Ukraine should accept giving up part of its territory to bring back peace to the nation.

“[Kissinger] doesn’t realise that you don’t find agreement with a gangster when you’re talking from a position of weakness. He doesn’t realise that, for Putin, a war is just a normal way of getting his electoral ratings up. He has started wars four times,” Khodorovsky told the Financial Times.

Khodorkovsky, who was Russia’s richest man in 2003, was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion. He believes the proceeding was politically motivated. He now resides in London.

In an interview with CNN in April, the billionaire said Putin became “literally insane” when his invasion of Ukraine wasn’t met with a positive reaction from Ukrainians.

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“At first, what he wanted was to change the power in Kyiv, put in his puppet, and was expecting that this would be met with flowers thrown in the streets by Ukrainian people,” Khodorkovsky said. “When this did not happen, he went crazy. The fact that the people in Kharkiv did not meet him with flowers, it not only just angered him, I really think it drove him literally insane.”

In March, he said that Putin’s defeat is inevitable as long as the West continues to back Ukraine.