Mikhail Khodorkovsky: What comes after Vladimir Putin is one of my biggest concerns

Interview: Once Russia’s richest man, the oligarch-turned-dissident talks to Samuel Lovett about the current state of war in Ukraine, stopping Vladimir Putin’s war machine, and succession in the Kremlin

‘The only way to help Ukraine is through weapons and the education of Ukrainian military,’ says Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of one of Russia’s largest oil companies (Getty)

Mikhail Khodorkovsky isn’t afraid to speak his mind, no matter how disheartening it is to hear. “I’m a pessimist,” he says, straight off the bat. “I think if the war goes on as it is, for now, in a month or so the fight probably will be in Kyiv and in Odesa.”

As someone who has suffered at the hands of the Kremlin, Khodorkovsky knows what the men he rubbed shoulders with are capable of. Once Russia’s richest man, who thrived during the wild west years of the Yeltsin era, Khodorkovsky had his wings clipped for criticising and failing to subscribe to the new regime carved out by Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s.

The attempt to sell a stake in his oil company Yukos to ExxonMobil proved a step too far. His subsequent arrest, on charges of tax fraud, and the dismantling of Yukos, one of Russia’s post-Soviet giants, marked the moment when Putin turned the country away from political and economic integration with the West, instead setting it on a path towards kleptocracy and authoritarianism.