A few weeks ago, Igor Volobuev was vice president of one of the most prestigious banks in the country: Gazprombank, the financial branch of energy giant Gazprom and near the Kremlin. But Igor Volobuev resigned. On March 2nd he left Russia. Not just fleeing, but getting involved: he now lives in Kyiv and says he wants to fight alongside the Territorial Defense Forces.
Because he was born a Ukrainian in Akhtyrka in the northeast of the country, where he spent the first 18 years of his life. “I couldn’t stand by and watch as Russia devastated my motherland,” he says. “The Russians killed my acquaintances, my close friends. People I’ve known since childhood told me they were ashamed of me,” he says in front of the camera.
Russia: Igor Volobuev, vice president of state bank Gazprombank, said he fled Russia to fight alongside the armed forces in Ukraine, becoming at least the fourth known senior leader or official to abruptly leave the country ://t.co/wgccIHELUC pic.twitter.com/961gXPC535
— Rebecca Rambar (@RebeccaRambar) April 27, 2022
“My return is an act of regret. I want to wash away my Russian past.” “I will stay in Ukraine until victory”. This Tuesday, April 26, the top leader confided these heavy words to two independent media outlets: a Ukrainian website, Liga, and a Russian investigative platform, Insider, now working from abroad.
Igor Volobuev is not the first senior Russian leader or official to defect. Three names are already circulating: Lev Khasis from the board of Sberbank, Anatoly Chubais, special official at the Kremlin, and Andrey Panov, deputy general manager of Aeroflot, Russia’s largest airline. All three abruptly left their posts and Russia. Without saying why, but carefully avoided criticizing the Kremlin from abroad. “Life before that is over,” the Aeroflot director simply posted on Facebook on March 12.
Overall, not many senior leaders and oligarchs have openly expressed their opposition to the war in Ukraine. We remember the very harsh words of Vladimir Putin, who called them “traitors” and “5. Column of the West”.
Igor Volobuev is a bit more talkative. He also recalled the wave of suicides that has gripped oligarchs in Russia and abroad in recent weeks. In particular, the death of one of his colleagues, the first vice president of Gazprombank Vladislav Avaev, who was found dead by bullets in his apartment in Moscow with his wife and daughter ten days ago. And also that of Sergey Protosenya, former director of the Russian energy giant Novatek, the next day in Spain, again with his wife and daughter.
Вице-президент Газпромбанка Игорь Волобуев, который уехал из Москвы и вступил в ряды теробороны в Киеве, не верит в самоубийство своего коллеги – первого вице-президента Газпромбанка Владислава Аваева. pic.twitter.com/DT8zjcEdil
— The Insider (@the_ins_ru) April 26, 2022
He didn’t know either of them personally, he has no evidence, but an intimate conviction: “I don’t think they’re suicidal,” he asserts. And without a shudder, with his face uncovered in front of the camera, he judges that Avaev’s death “could have been staged because maybe he knew too much”. bold words. Volobuyev has evidently decided to fight the Kremlin with words as well as with weapons.