Oligarch at risk: Roman Abramovich’s slide from power player to poisoning target

Weeks after a suspected poisoning attempt as he interceded to end a war that Vladimir Putin seems determined to continue, Roman Abramovich — the Russian-Jewish oligarch with strong backroom ties to the Russian president — has apparently disappeared off the grid.

Early in March, Abramovich suffered from symptoms of what appeared to be poisoning, including losing his eyesight for several hours, after meeting with Ukrainians in Kyiv in an effort to mediate peace. Two Ukrainians with whom he met suffered similar symptoms.

Russian is notorious for its efforts to poison its opponents, but Abramovich is known to be close to Putin, and is even currently the target of heavy sanctions by the European Union and Britain because of these close ties. How is it possible that he was the victim of such a mysterious attack, with the apparent warning fingerprints of the Russians?

While media outlets, and later confidants of Abramovich, claimed that the Kremlin did not like the fact that he was trying to make peace with Ukraine, Moscow, of course, denied any attempts to poison him. In fact, it’s thought that Putin was the one who unofficially sent him in the first place.

According to Russian insiders, after a secret private meeting with several oligarchs at the start of the war, Putin gave his personal blessing for Abramovich to act as a mediator in peace talks, even though Putin has referred to elite Russians who sympathize with the West as “scum and traitors.”

While UK and EU sanctions forced Abramovich to put his Chelsea soccer club up for sale, race two super yachts across open seas to refuge in Turkey, and transfer control of investments and assets, it seems that at the same time, he’d been conducting his own back-channel, shuttle diplomacy. Throughout the month of March, he jetted between Moscow, Israel, and Turkey, helping to broker the talks, and even went to Kyiv on at least two occasions to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, at Zelensky’s invitation — where he survived the poisoning attempt.

And during talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, Abramovich sat with the Russian delegation and chatted with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — a public recognition of his formal role in the negotiations. In the process, Abramovich, without much choice, flipped the script that he’d carefully written that played down suggestions of his being a close confidant of Putin. Last month, Putin had become an embroiled Abramovich’s trump card, the source of his leverage as an unlikely peacemaker at most, securing humanitarian measures such as humanitarian corridors in the combat areas of Ukraine at least.

But those talks never panned out. And so, with international sanctions against him, people are asking: Where is Roman Abramovich today? Moscow? Dubai? While the Russian billionaire’s current whereabouts aren’t publicly known, he was spotted (together with several other oligarchs) house hunting on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, the man-made, palm-shaped island dotted with luxury residences. Several weeks ago, specialist aviation sites identified Abramovich’s jet coming to the city, and while the UK and European Union have placed sanctions on him, the UAE hasn’t imposed any.

But the current crisis notwithstanding, the 55-year old Russian oligarch with an estimated wealth of $8.3 billion has always preferred to stay in the shadows, often sending unknown spokespeople to respond in his name. Most of the things publicized about him go without any response. “I have never given a public statement,” he once boasted. Now, though, he has more people guessing than ever.