A former Russian deputy Prime Minister who quit Putin’s government and fled the country over the Ukraine invasion has been pictured in Israel where he has ‘taken citizenship’ after a poisoning scare.
Anatoly Chubais, 67, once also the Kremlin chief of staff, is the most senior official to have walked out on Putin and was pictured for the first time in Tel-Aviv.
He was at the centre of a poisoning scare over the summer after fleeing Russia, which left him hospitalised in Sardinia.
Chubais became ill with severe numbness in his arms and legs after abandoning Putin and going abroad, resigning his post as the Russian leader’s envoy to international organisations in March.
His condition was eventually formally diagnosed as the rare neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome, yet there were claims that Italian secret services continued to investigate the case amid alleged poisoning attacks by Putin’s agents on multiple ‘enemies’.
Independent Russian media outlet ‘We Can Explain’ has now reported that both Chubais and his film-maker wife Avdotya Smirnova, 53, received Israeli passports.
This gives them the right to travel and live in Europe without visas, the report said.
Since leaving Russia, Chubais has been seen in Italy, Turkey and Cyprus. The couple also made an earlier trip to Israel in the spring.
A post from anti-Putin General SVR Telegram channel claimed Chubais was named on Putin’s draft hit list, but gave no evidence for the allegation.
The list was supposedly people hostile to Nikolai Patrushev – a close crony of the president who is secretary of the Russian security council.
Chubais was the key figure in privatising the Russian economy after the fall of the Soviet Union.
For 12 years – until 2020 – he headed the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation (RUSNANO).
Chubais’s Jewish roots came through his mother Raisa Sagal, from Lithuania.
Meanwhile, another Russian known to have obtained an Israeli passport since the start of the war is Putin’s ‘goddaughter’ Ksenia Sobchak, 41, a prominent TV personality and former presidential election candidate.
She used the passport to flee via Belarus to EU state Lithuania – but later returned after evident assurances that Putin had not ordered her arrest.
Ms Sobchak has known Putin since she was a child when her father – then mayor of St Petersburg – appointed ex-KGB spy Putin as his deputy.
She first reported in August that Chubais was suddenly taken ill with acute numbness in his arms and legs.
