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'Trump has made Putin comfortable' despite massive Ukraine war losses, exiled former oligarch tells LBC
3 April 2025, 18:53
Donald Trump has made Vladimir Putin feel politically "comfortable", a prominent critic of the Russian president has told LBC.
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Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil magnate who was jailed on trumped-up charges and now lives in exile, told LBC's Andrew Marr that Trump's "verbal actions" have put Putin in "a rather comfortable position", along with recent military successes.
Estimates of Russian deaths in the three-year war have ranged from around 160,000 to about 250,000 - not including all the wounded, who number hundreds of thousands more.
This has led to some murmurings of political dissent against the regime - but Mr Khodorkovsky said that Trump's comments about the war, in which he criticised Ukraine, had helped the Russian leader.
Mr Khodorkovsky, 61, said that Trump engaging with Putin had "led to the situation when the Russian population has rallied round and wants to see a victory in this war".
Read more: 'We won't accept Ukraine ceasefire while Zelenskyy remains in power,' Russia warns
He added: "Not enough pressure unfortunately has been put on Putin.
"But we, the Russian anti-war opposition, are trying to do everything we can to kind of get everybody, including Europe, to put more pressure on the regime."
He warned that this was easier said than done - adding that the task of Western countries now was to prevent the current 'cold war' from becoming a 'hot war'.
"Europe is not really ready to confront Putin without the support of the United States," he said. "The United States, on the other hand, appear to be moving away from supporting Europe.
"This is the view from Russia, from inside Russia and this is exactly the view that helps this support for carrying on... until the victorious end".
Asked by Andrew about comments from Trump's envoy to Russia suggesting he was worried about the Kremlin starting a nuclear war, Mr Khodorkovsky urged a degree of caution.
"He's not suicidal, so let's not overplay that," he said.
But he warned that if Putin felt that he could fire nuclear weapons without retaliation from NATO, he would be tempted.
"And in fact he has been tempted several times in the course of this war."
Mr Khodorkovsky became one of the richest men in Russia in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. A company he founded bought Yukos, one of the largest Russian oil producers.
But he fell from favour politically after founding the Open Russia reform organisation, which pushed for greater democracy in the country.
Mr Khodorkovsky was imprisoned for fraud in 2005 and later found guilty of embezzlement. Many onlookers view the charges as politically motivated.
He served ten years in prison before being pardoned, and now lives in London, where he remains a critic of the Kremlin.
