‘Ashamed’ Gazprom chief takes up arms against Russia
A SENIOR Gazprom executive has vowed revenge against Russia after fleeing the country to join Ukraine’s territorial defence forces.
Igor Volobuyev, a former vice-president at Gazprombank, is the first executive from the company to speak out against the war in Ukraine, saying he could not stand to live in Moscow any longer.
Ukrainian-born Mr Volobuyev also revealed he was willing to take up arms to defend his native country.
“I couldn’t stay with those people, shake their hands, watch the war on my phone as if this were a horrible film and pretend I didn’t care,” he told Ukrainian media outlet liga.net in Kyiv.
“My father spent a month in a cold basement. People I know from my childhood were telling me they were ashamed of me.”
Asked about the unexpected death of another Gazprombank executive who reportedly killed his wife and child before committing suicide in Moscow earlier this month, Mr Volobuyev said he finds it hard to believe Vladislav Avaev killed himself.
“I don’t believe he could kill his wife and daughter. I think it was staged,” he said.
“Why? It’s hard to say. Maybe he knew something and he was dangerous.”
The 50-year-old executive said he packed a bag and left Russia a week after the war started.
Mr Volobuyev spent 16 years at Gazprombank where he was head of the press office for most of the time.
His hometown of Okhtyrka, which sits on a major road juncture between Kyiv and Kharkiv, suffered extensive shelling in the first month of the war.
“I came to Ukraine to defend Okhtyrka with weapons in my hands,” he said.
“When (Russia) occupied Crimea in 2014, I promised to myself that I will go and fight if Russian tanks rolled into my Okhtyrka.”
The executive said he has already signed up to join territorial defence in Kyiv. The Kremlin has long used Gazprom as a weapon against Ukraine and the West.
Russia halted supplies to Ukraine which used to transit most of its gas into Europe in the dead of winter 2009 amid a pricing dispute which was largely seen as Moscow’s attempt to derail Kyiv’s then-pro-western government.
Mr Volobuyev admitted in the interview in Kyiv that Russia at the time was deliberately discrediting Ukraine as a transit hub in order to push through its new pipeline projects such as Nord Stream.
The businessman who lived in Russia most of his life said he wanted to repent for his past.
“I’m guilty of having worked for the Russian government – twice as guilty as a regular Russian. And twice as guilty because I considered myself Ukrainian all of my life,” he said.
“It’ll be much harder for me to wash off my Russian past.”