Abramovich might be the right conduit to back-channel peace talks
When the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, best known in the United Kingdom as the longtime owner of the Chelsea Football Club, showed up in Istanbul this week at the peace talks taking place between Russia and Ukraine, pro-ukrainian officials effected a public chorus of ignorance and astonishment.
Ukraine’s U.K. ambassador Vadym Prystaiko told the BBC he had “no idea what Mr. Abramovich is claiming or doing” and insisted he was “not a part of the negotiation team,” despite reports that Prystaiko’s boss, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had asked the Americans not to follow the British lead in sanctioning Abramovich, one of the richest men on the planet.
The Biden administration has said strikingly little about what Abramovich may or may not be doing in Istanbul, and the rhetoric of British officials has been centered on criticism of his relationship with Putin. Other Ukrainian officials said his presence at the talks was a complete surprise.
On the other hand, the exiled Russian opposition leader Gennady Gudkov told Al Jazeera that Abramovich “has a fantastic flair for seeing the future, he has a very special ability to predict it.”
Fascinating, for sure. But it’s a good bet that everyone closely involved, including Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy, knows exactly what Abramovich is doing.
There are two long-standing truths about peace negotiations. One is that neither side is likely to come away happy, with resentments potentially lingering for generations, even if the killing stops. The other is that a back channel is required.
And that might well be Abramovich, doing us all a favor.
Something similar happened at the Oslo Accords in 1993, when the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization held top secret talks in Oslo, brokered by an obscure Norwegian diplomat named Terje Rød-larsen and other figures within the Norwegian government. The process, which was later dramatized in the play and movie “Oslo,” required all kinds of subterfuge and plausible deniability.
But Bill Clinton, who would famously go to shake the hand of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, later admitted that he had known about the existence of the back channel and what the Norwegians were trying to achieve.
Abramovich, the most colorful and best known of the Russian oligarchs, hardly resembles the self-effacing Rød-larsen. Nonetheless, he looks like the right person for this job.
He has been close to Putin, although accounts vary as to the current nature of their relationship. And he is trusted to some degree by Zelenskyy, who like Abramovich grew up in a Jewish family that also spoke Russian. In the West, especially Britain, he’s a known quantity and has a far more public face than his peers.
Perhaps Abramovich’s interests are entirely self-serving as he attempts to avoid further sanctions, rehabilitate his reputation in the West and protect his fortune and myriad business interests. It would be naive to think that it is not a part of his personal agenda in showing up in Istanbul. Similarly, there is no guarantee Putin will actually do what he might or might not be promising Abramovich.
But peace arrives only through painful negotiation, and negotiators have to be trusted by both sides. If there is someone better positioned than Abramovich to play that role, his name has yet to emerge.
He might be doing a lot, quickly, to end this war and save lives. Let’s hope so, for the sake of the people of Ukraine and the stability of the world. Even if everyone claims not to have a clue what he is doing.