Vladimir Putin’s most senior official to quit over Ukraine war and 'plans to move to UK'

The most senior official to quit Vladimir Putin’s regime over the war in Ukraine is reportedly ‘planning to live in Britain after a poisoning scare’.

Anatoly Chubais, 67, is a former Kremlin chief of staff, and ex-Russian deputy prime minister.

He was feared to have been poisoned in the summer – after fleeing Russia – when he was hospitalised in Sardinia.

Chubais became ill with severe numbness in his arms and legs after walking out on Putin and going abroad, resigning his post as the Kremlin president’s envoy to international organisations in March, soon after the illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Reports later said his condition had been diagnosed as the rare neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Yet there were claims that Italian secret services had continued to investigate the case amid alleged poisoning attacks by Putin’s agents on multiple “enemies” in Russia and abroad over many years.

Now Telegram channel VChk-OGPU has reported that the former senior Putin official had “decided to settle in England”.

He was rumoured to be planning to live close to exiled tycoon and philanthropist Boris Mints, 64, a friend, at an elite gated development in Surrey.

“After the story of poisoning in Italy, Chubais has decided that it would be safer in England,” stated VChK-OGPU.

Mints decamped to London in 2018 with his family.

Since leaving Moscow, Chubais and his wife Avdotya Smirnova, 53, a screenwriter, film director, TV host, and literary critic, have both been granted Israeli citizenship, reported independent Russian media outlet ‘We Can Explain’ last month.

A picture appeared showing him in Israel.

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A post from anti-Putin General SVR Telegram channel claimed that Chubais had been named on a draft Russian hit list, while giving no evidence for such an allegation.

The list was supposedly people hostile to Nikolai Patrushev – a close crony of the president who is secretary of the Russian security council.

Chubais was the key figure in privatising the state-owned Russian economy after the fall of the Soviet Union.

For 12 years until 2020, he headed the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation (RUSNANO).

His Jewish roots came through his mother Raisa Sagal, from Lithuania.

Another Russian known to have obtained an Israeli passport since the start of the war is Putin’s ‘goddaughter’ Ksenia Sobchak, 41, a prominent TV personality and former presidential election candidate.

She used the passport to flee via Belarus to EU state Lithuania – but later returned after evident assurances that Putin had not ordered her arrest.

She had known Putin since she was a child when her father – then mayor of St Petersburg – appointed ex-KGB spy Putin as his deputy.

Sobchak first reported in August that Chubais had been suddenly taken ill with acute numbness in his arms and legs.