He admitted under oath in court that he paid billions of dollars of bribes to government officials and gangsters to acquire and protect his assets.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/chelsea-owner-ad...

and if I had been born into his circumstances, perhaps I might have done the same. Living in a time/place where bribery is not necessary to get ahead is a historically rare privilege.

That's fair, and we should judge him for it. Doesn't mean we should blame him for the war in Ukraine.

Well blame is a tricky word, and I'm sure he did not personally authorize the attack or had any say in it, but it is quite indisputable that he has been a huge factor in propping up Putin for the last 20+ years.

Is it? My understanding is that he completely peaced out of Russia shortly after Putin came to power and has been uninvolved in Russian affairs for ~15 years.

Putin literally became president under his recommendation to Yeltsin. When Putin was warring with the oligarch class and billionaires like Berezovsky, Gusinsky, and Khodorkovsky were imprisoned/killed and their assets seized, Abramovich kept hold of his wealth and influence. He was the one who hand picked Medvedev as Putin's successor in 2008. There are regular articles in the news about his meetings with Putin and exchange of lavish gifts. They are said to still maintain a close friendship.

It's hilarious that people are buying his PR transformation into some kind of philanthropist. Guy was and is rotten to the core.

Might as well say entire Brits prop teflon PM to kill Libyans and Syrians. Let's be honest here, you just don't assign guilt simply by association. Hitler did that. We all are better than that.

Also, while he grew up in Russia and made his fortune there, he's lived in the West for almost 20 years now. The amount of influence he has over war-peace decisions in Russia is zero. He's not Timchenko or Rotenberg.

He is giving money to charity, but through what means did he acquire this money? The fact that the charities have to exist in the first place is a huge failure of global economy and thanks in large part to the oligarch class for it.

He's always been a strong supporter of Putin, and is selling his property only because there was serious risk that it would have been seized. He, among other billionaires, contributed to keep Putin in power, so albeit not directly involved, he has his share of responsibilities.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-60506563

Well, he's got 7 billion and change left so I don't think he's going to be crying all that much about it.

Half your net-worth is quite a significant chunk.

Please. Half of infinity is still infinity.

GP's argument assumes

>he's got 7 billion and change left

So, I don't get you point, honestly.

Humans only need a couple of million to live happily ever after. Anything more than that is....well...."infinite".

He's got 7 billion left. That tells me he did not in any way shape or form bleed. He suffered nothing. Hence, no sacrifice was made. He still can live prosperously until forever.

That Roman’s wealth is (still) effectively infinite, I thought OP’s point was very clear.

> Nice gesture I say as he didn’t start the war.

At this point anybody close to Putin might have a presumption of guilt. It's not good to support decades of growing autocracy, benefit from it and when it started to crumble in agony, step aside and say "I didn't do this last step".

> It's not good to support decades of growing autocracy, benefit from it.

It is almost as if the Western democracies and companies didn't enrich the Russian government by purchasing energy from them...

Oh, they absolutely did. And the list of faults is unfortunately growing. However we're not in a position of choosing how exactly this particular set of problems will be solved; we have to get what we can sometimes.

Witch hunts. A concept as old as cave men.

Or something else, which just happens to be - for some people - similar to witch hunt. If, for example, an action needed to be done for quite some time, and then suddenly is done, somebody can ask why it's done, since it wasn't done before. And the reason is - some other events triggered the action, not that the action suddenly became necessary while it wasn't before. It's just similar to witch hunt, but not the witch hunt by itself.

How would you distinguish witch hunt from a legitimate action?

At this point, I believe a lot of "economic warfare" the West is engaging in is just optics, populist measures, just for the memes, and very hypocritical and shallow, especially given that in a post globalised World, almost every other major business is connected to other major businesses.

Diplomacy is the need of the hour. The US/NATO really botched this, or purposefully enraged Russia, for avoidable reasons. Ukraine is facing the brunt, just like Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen continue to. The warfare (both on-ground and the economic one) is so destructive that I fail to understand people who prefer it, at all, over any number of available compromises.

I have lived through war, sanctions, and rioting all under the pretense of freedom, nationalism, pride, religion, democracy, righteousness and what not, and I don't prefer it one bit.

> The guy is giving away £3 billion+ to charity and writing off a £1.5 billion loan

Don't forget that all his wealth he obtained through stealing and corruption in the early days of russian robber capitalism (for a while he was a close associate of notorious Boris Berezovsky). Abramovitch is also rumored to be one of the putin's "purses" [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/21/is-abramovich-...

From an article on Sky News:

>It is not clear if his reference to "all victims" means just Ukrainians, or Russians as well.

I don't want to be cynical but this could be donated to "victims" in Russia. The Aggressor. Also the elephant in the room is why does he have 30 days to sell assets before sanctions. It should be frozen immediately.

A common person in Russia isn't the aggressor. That's like blaming entire western population for the shit their government does. Russian ruble has tanked significantly, which means things in Russia are gonna cost way more for an average person.

Who else to blame? The Russian people allows this man to be their leader

So all Americans are to be blamed for Iraq, Libya et all right. Add in UK as well for good measure. Heck majority of Americans wanted Hilary to be president in 2016 after she voted for a war that was based on a lie. Look where Iraq is right now as a country.

No, but Americans did have to the face the consequences of the war including paying for it. Likewise ordinary Russians will pay for this war.

Reminds of Osama bin Laden's Letter to America:

> The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.

Blaming ordinary people of Russian for the actions of the Putin regime is the same.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

True: One man's terrorism is another man's war on terror. As a matter of fact, this kind of self-referentialness is why political debates go to shit.