It has been almost 20 years since Leonid Nevzlin (62) fled Russia and found a new home in Israel. He publicly renounced his Russian citizenship earlier this year in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine. He describes Russian President Vladimir Putin (69) as a “psychopath” and “criminal”.
In Russia, Nevzlin was accused of several counts of conspiracy to murder. In 2008 he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. Nevzlin was the vice president of the Russian oil company Yukos before it was broken up. He describes the trial once morest him as a show trial staged by Putin. In an interview with «The Times of Israel» he now speaks in detail regarding the situation in Ukraine – and regarding what he thinks Putin wants to achieve.
“Vengeful and cowardly personality”
When Putin massed his troops on the Ukrainian border, Nevzlin initially did not believe an attack was imminent. But then he realized: “This is how a psychopath behaves when someone takes his toy away from him – he starts a war of attrition.” That doesn’t make any sense at first, according to Newslin. “But then you understand that this is not a head of state, but the leader of a mafia with a vengeful and cowardly personality.”
While Ukraine, according to Newslin, can only be satisfied and see itself as a winner with a repair of the 2014 border – i.e. including a return of Crimea – a partial victory is enough for Putin. “If he takes over the entire Donbass region and shows his citizens that he has won and ‘destroyed the Nazis’, enlarged Russian territory, connected the Donbass with the Crimean Peninsula and gained control of the Sea of Azov, the Russian propaganda do the rest.”
And what are Putin’s goals? Nevzlin: «If initially he wanted to renew the Soviet model and annex Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus to Russia, now everything has changed. Putin is trying to destroy Ukraine. We see that in the unbearable violence and cruelty of this war.”
Putin is slaughtering Ukrainians and destroying infrastructure, says Nevzlin. «First there were rumors that he wanted to divide the Ukrainian fortune among the oligarchs close to him. If that were the case, he would not have destroyed Azovstal but would have taken it and later passed it on to his allies.” (noo)
