Resigned after the start of the war: Ex-Kremlin official is in intensive care

Shortly after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, Kremlin official Anatoly Chubais resigned.

Resigned after the start of the war: Ex-Kremlin official is in intensive care

Shortly after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, Kremlin official Anatoly Chubais resigned. According to reports, he did not agree with the attack on the neighboring country. Months later, he suddenly has to go to the hospital while on vacation. But he himself does not assume poisoning.

According to media reports, prominent Kremlin official Anatoly Chubais, who resigned after the start of the Ukraine war, is being treated in a hospital in Europe with serious health problems. "This is of course sad news, we wish him a speedy recovery," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the Interfax agency in Moscow. According to the Italian daily "La Repubblica", Chubais is being treated in a clinic on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where he is said to have vacationed before.

On Sunday, the prominent Russian moderator and former presidential candidate Xenia Sobchak, citing Chubais' family, wrote that the 67-year-old had been taken to an intensive care unit in an "unstable condition". "He got sick. His arms and legs suddenly went limp." According to Sobchak, the room in which Chubais last stayed was examined by "specialists in protective chemical suits".

These descriptions sparked speculation on social networks that the former confidante of Russian President Vladimir Putin might have been poisoned. The "Repubblica" also wrote that a suspected poisoning was being investigated. A possible cause of his discomfort could also be a rare nervous disease, it said.

Chubais himself assumes that he has Guillain-Barré syndrome, said two people familiar with the matter. The rare autoimmune disease that attacks the nervous system can cause life-threatening problems such as severe breathing difficulties and blood clots. A European secret service is investigating the case, one of the insiders said. So far there are no findings. However, insiders do not assume poisoning.

In the past there have been repeated cases of opponents of the Kremlin being poisoned - including the well-known Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who barely survived an assassination attempt with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020. Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch now commented directly on the sick Chubais: "So that's the Kremlin's reputation: nobody has any major doubts that Chubais was poisoned," she wrote on Twitter.

Chubais resigned from his post as Kremlin special envoy, which he took over in 2020, at the end of March this year - about a month after Russia invaded Ukraine. He is considered the architect of post-communist reforms in Russia. According to media reports, he did not agree with Putin's war. At the time, the Kremlin only said that Chubais had left "at his own request."