Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire and former owner of Chelsea FC, these days mostly splits his time between a luxury waterfront home in Istanbul and sailing his superyachts along the Aegean Coast.
But this glamorous lifestyle is restricted by strict sanctions imposed by the UK and other countries following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with the 59-year-old locked in expensive legal battles over his frozen assets, including funds from the Chelsea sale in that same year.
Abramovich – a close confidant of Vladimir Putin, who reportedly recommended him to Boris Yeltsin as a successor and helped select his cabinet – has now re-entered the spotlight in a key role as middleman in negotiations between the Russian president and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Shorts
The oligarch visited Kyiv last month at Zelensky’s invitation to discuss the possibility of direct peace talks, according to Ukraine’s leader, and Putin confirmed at an economic conference in St Petersburg that he’d met with “one of the representatives of our business circles” who had been in the Ukrainian capital. Abramovich delivered the message from Zelensky to Putin that Ukraine was ready to talk, but without conceding territory it still possesses in the Donbas. Putin dismissed the offer.
