Cold War II is inevitable, gloomy Putin foe warns Europe

BRUSSELS — Top Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky warned Europe to get ready for a long-term confrontation with Russia regardless of how Moscow’s war on Ukraine unfolds.

“We should expect a kind of Cold War to last at least ten years,” former oil tycoon Khodorkovsky predicted this week at a private event in Brussels.

According to the exiled businessman, the only deterrent against further Russian aggression against Europe during that period will be President Vladimir Putin’s belief that the West poses a credible military threat.

During the Cold War, which lasted almost half a century, the Soviet Union and the West worked to undermine each other without risking open conflict in Europe and potential nuclear war. Top European and NATO officials currently argue that Russia is reviving its policy of attrition, using hybrid warfare tactics to destabilize the West and sow division.

Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years behind bars in Putin’s prison system and now lives in London, downplayed the effectiveness of Western sanctions in swaying the Kremlin, saying they were “creating some pressure on the Russian economy, but nothing dramatic.”

He was similarly skeptical that Ukraine’s long-running drone campaign against Russian oil refineries would cripple the Kremlin’s war machine. 

“Even the most powerful drone, even a Tomahawk missile, can hit about two hectares at most,” Khodorkovsky, the former owner of oil giant Yukos and once Russia’s richest man, explained.

“A typical facility in Siberia typically spans 1,500 hectares. The damage being done is the equivalent of stepping on someone’s foot,” he said.

In reality, Khodorkovsky argued, the only moment when Putin’s grip on power could realistically have been broken was during the first two years after his full-scale invasion began — if Russia had suffered a decisive military defeat in Ukraine.

That window, he said, has now closed.

But, he added wryly, “we have a tradition [in Russia] that our dictators tend to depart somewhere between the ages of 70 and 80.”

Putin turned 73 this October.

Pressure from Putin

Last month, Russian authorities opened a new criminal case against Khodorkovsky, accusing him of leading a “terrorist organization” and plotting a violent takeover with the help of Ukrainian paramilitaries.

In its statement, the Federal Security Service (FSB) also listed 22 others connected to Khodorkovsky’s Russian Antiwar Committee, a group of opposition-minded Russians in exile. 

Putin turned 73 this October. | Contributor/Getty Images

Some of those named have already served prison time in Russia or faced the threat of prosecution for their political activities. But the list also includes academics and businesspeople. 

Khodorkovsky himself spent a decade in a Siberian penal colony before being pardoned in 2013, in a landmark case widely seen as the opening act of Putin’s campaign to crush dissent. Although the case focused on tax evasion and other financial charges, and resulted in the expropriation of Yukos, it was primarily considered a political warning to Kremlin critics.

The fresh charges against Khodorkovsky and his allies came just two weeks after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared it would create a “platform for dialogue” with Russian democratic opposition forces.

Speaking in Brussels, Khodorkovsky said the Kremlin’s strong reaction showed “how troubled Putin is by the idea of Russian democratic forces gaining legitimacy, even symbolically.”

Although those named by the FSB already live abroad and are beyond the Kremlin’s immediate legal reach, several have reported experiencing problems with European banks and say the terrorism charges could complicate travel for fear of being extradited to Russia. 

Khodorkovsky told POLITICO he was confident he would one day return to a post-Putin Russia, but warned it would take decades longer for the country to free itself from the “imperialist-military narrative” that portrays Russia as encircled by enemies and justifies invading its neighbors.

“My generation won’t live to see the day when Russian society returns to a state of normality,” he said.

Asked whether he found that prospect discouraging, Khodorkovsky smiled.

“When you work in heavy industry, you get used to starting processes that will outlast you. From exploration of an oil field to production might take 15 years or more,” he answered.

“The future is as real to me as the present, and it motivates me.”