Exclusive: Roman Abramovich, who owns England’s Chelsea soccer club, is now entering his third month serving as mediator between the Kremlin and Kyiv. But so far, the arrangement has worked out better for the billionaire than the people of Ukraine.
The Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where hundreds of Ukrainians have huddled against a Russian siege. As hundreds of Ukrainians faced annihilation in an encircled steel plant, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich sent word last month that he had achieved a possible breakthrough.
So far, that arrangement has worked out better for Abramovich than the people of Ukraine, according to U.S. officials and experts. Peace talks have foundered amid ongoing attacks and mounting evidence of Russian atrocities. And yet Abramovich’s involvement has shielded him from the barrage of sanctions the United States has unleashed on other Russian elites, U.S. officials said.
Abramovich has enlisted support from unlikely sources, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who pressed both President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to refrain from imposing sanctions on Abramovich while he served as a channel to Putin, according to U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the matter.
The Abramovich lobbying effort also reached into the chambers of the British Parliament. In the early days of the war, Labour lawmakers, including Chris Bryant, delivered scathing speeches in the House of Commons calling for Abramovich to be sanctioned and stripped of the Chelsea team. Two days after the invasion, he handed control of his Chelsea soccer team to the club charity, apparently hoping that would end calls for him to be stripped of ownership. When that didn’t work, he pressed ahead with plans to sell the club and pledged to donate net proceeds to war victims.The gesture angered British officials when it became clear that Abramovich intended to give money not only to families in Ukraine but ones in Russia as well.
The European Union has taken similar steps, citing Abramovich’s “long and close ties to Vladimir Putin” and “privileged access to the president.” France seized his $120 million estate in Cap d’Antibes, whose previous occupants included the Duke of Windsor after his 1936 abdication of the British throne.
“We would strongly urge you to consider Roman Abramovich’s standing and importance for the community and Israel,” said the letter, dated Feb. 6. “We would caution that any action against him would not only be unfair, but also have a negative impact on the Jewish world and Israel.” “Abramovich said that because he donated, Yad Vashem should do this. It was quite clear that this was a condition,” said Yehuda Bauer, a 96-year-old Israeli historian who serves as academic adviser to the organization. In an interview, Bauer said he warned Dayan that signing the letter would be “catastrophic,” placing the deliberately apolitical establishment in the middle of a global diplomatic storm.
Even when Abramovich came under sanction by Britain on March 10, Yad Vashem hesitated to cut ties. Later that day, the organization issued a statement saying that it was suspending its “strategic partnership” with Abramovich. But Dayan had initially refused, officials said, and briefly considered resigning.
Born to Jewish parents and orphaned at age 3, Abramovich obtained Israeli citizenship in 2018 when his welcome in Britain was threatened by the country’s response to the alleged Russian poisoning of a former military intelligence officer and his daughter in Salisbury, England. In addition to sanctions against Russia
Abramovich was not initially a member of Putin’s inner circle, but ingratiated himself with the Russian leader by showing deference that other oligarchs failed to demonstrate. Abramovich spent years, for example, serving as governor of a remote Siberian province, an assignment that Russia experts regarded as a loyalty test imposed by Putin.Abramovich wasn’t necessarily Ukraine’s first choice as a conduit to the Kremlin, according to officials involved in negotiations.
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