19diaspora as “probably the best ever” to have set
up in the capital. “They predominantly follow
the rules and laws,” he says. “The only problem is
Russian ex-wives lying in court!”
British lawmakers are suddenly waking up to
the possibility that they sold Putin the rope with
which to strangle their democracy. Since Johnson
became Prime Minister in 2019, his party has ac-
cepted £2 million in Russian funding. In 2020,
14 members of his government received Russia-
linked donations.
Chichvarkin argues that sanctioning oligarchs
will have little efect on Putin. “Sanctions must
target Putin’s wallet and his real friends ,” he says,
“not people who made money and probably had
to give half to Putin just to keep the other half.”Oliver Bullough, author of Butler
to the World: How Britain Helps the
World’s Worst People Launder Money,
Commit Crimes, and Get Away With
Anything, disagrees. “In general, if you
are wealthy and your business is in-
side Russia, you are only in that posi-
tion because you’ve come to an accom-
modation with the Kremlin,” he says.
“Otherwise, you would have had your
business taken away.”
Chichvarkin’s dramatic light from
Russia is a case in point. He knows only
too well the brutal machinations of Pu-
tin’s “bulldogs,” as he calls them. He
maintains that his own mother, whose
bloodied and bruised body was discov-
ered in her Moscow apartment in April
2010, was murdered by state agents
in an attempt to lure him home for her
funeral. (The Kremlin denies involve-
ment, and the oicial verdict was that
she died of a heart attack.)
That has not cowed Chichvarkin.
In March 2018, in the weeks before
Putin’s widely disputed re-election
landslide, he stood outside the Rus-
sian embassy with a handful of fellow
dissidents, denouncing his regime
through a megaphone. Asked whether
he fears for his own life, he shrugs: “I’m
too tired to be afraid,” he says. “I drive
around with the sunroof open.”
It’s brio that chafes with an in-
creasingly bleak reality. On the day we
met, Russian opposition leader Alexei
Navalny —who narrowly escaped death
after poisoning by suspected Krem-
lin agents in August 2020—had the
sentence for his widely condemned
corruption conviction increased to 13
years at a maximum-security prison.
“When Putin dies he will be free,”
says Chichvarkin, who has funded Na-
valny with over $100,000 of donations
since 2010. “Everybody’s waiting for
Putin to die. The possibility of freedom
only comes after his death.”
Is that the only hope for Russia?
“Well, one of Putin’s friends could bind
him and bring him to the Hague,” he
chuckles. “Russian history is quite dark
with a lot of very strange examples of
changing power.” It’s such a slim glim-
mer that Chichvarkin falls silent. He
twists his mustache contemplatively
and eventually looks up. “Ukraine win-
ning the war would help.” □‘Russians are
not Putin.
He doesn’t
represent us.’
—EVGENY CHICHVARKINSOPHIE GREEN FOR TIME