Evgeny Chichvarkin knows what it’s like to be on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin. As a young man in Russia in the 1990s, he made a coin in the cell phone business, and because of that, he says, he was effectively expelled from the country.
“Now, the people of the KGB and FSB decide to control different parts of the business and want to have a part of the success,” Chichvarkin told Fox News.
He fled to London in 2008 and reinvented himself just as spectacularly. Chichvarkin opened what it strove to make “the best wine store in the world”. He called it Hedonism and then opened Hide, a restaurant with a Michelin star chef.
The extravagant survivor has a desire for life and for the here and now, but a keen interest in the future of his home country. He is one of the benefactors of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Chichvarkin paid for much of Navalny’s stay in Germany, where he was treated for poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent, something Navalny attributes to the Russian president and which the Kremlin denies. The Russian government does indeed question poisoning and has not even opened an investigation into what made Navalny sick.
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Meanwhile, Navalny languishes in a penal colony for what the European Court of Human Rights has called a case of counterfeit fraud. Chichvarkin calls what his friend is subjected to “moral terrorism”.
And by the time he wrote, after weeks of improbable and humorous messages from prison, Navalny is now begging for medical help. He says he is in pain, wants to see a doctor he trusts and says that deliberate sleep deprivation is torture.
His wife, Yulia, directly appealed to Putin in an Instagram post asking him to stop “violence and revenge against a person who is happening right before our eyes”.
For Chichvarkin, the Navalny saga has some notable results. This shook the Kremlin cage. Navalny won hearts and minds. But the crackdown on Russia’s security forces, including widespread house arrest of activists who took to the streets last winter, prevented the crusade against corruption and outrage over the treatment of a popular opposition figure from turning into a revolution.
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“We are not Ukrainians,” says Chichvarkin. “If that happened in Ukraine, the next day millions would be on the streets of Kiev. Or if it had happened in Paris. Unfortunately, hundreds of years of slavery, real slavery, affects the mentality quite dramatically.”
Chichvarkin talks a lot about what he sees as the devastating impact of the freedom deficit in Russia.
“Unfortunately, freedom and Russia are … fruits of different fields.” (This is a Russian expression for “apples and oranges”.)
He said there was no “adequate” period of freedom in Russia.
“There was a very short time with Yeltsin, but many people understand it more as chaos than freedom. There must be two or three generations of adequate freedom for people to understand freedom. It is as if you and your parents and grandparents were born in prison. … if you were born in North Korea or Cuba, you don’t know what freedom is. You don’t have the knowledge. “
Still, Chichvarkin is convinced that Navalny is Russia’s most popular political figure at the moment.
“If an election is held tomorrow, he will beat Putin. If he is killed and an election is tomorrow, Yulia will win Putin,” said Chichvarkin referring to Navalny and his wife, whose stoicism during his ordeal won his great sympathy and support in Russia.
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And Chichvarkin is convinced that if Navalny is not killed or physically tortured in prison, he will overcome his ordeal. Chichvarkin uses these phrases to describe his friend: “Alpha male. Leader. Adequate leader. He knows 100% what he wants and doesn’t see the walls in the way.”
The problem is that, despite calls from around the world for Navalny’s release, Chichvarkin believes his friend will be in prison for a long time.
When asked what should be the best course of action for Western countries and particularly the United States to achieve results with Russia on issues such as Navalny’s freedom, Chichvarkin replied that only one thing would work: “The only sanction is a warrant of arrest. prison against [Putin] directly. Other sanctions do not work. ”
He also said that cutting Russia off SWIFT (the messaging system on which global financial institutions depend) can solve the problem.
“Or blackmail,” he says, without going into details about what it might involve.
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But, with the exception of such draconian measures, Chichvarkin sees a future of Moscow’s continued denials of actions like Navalny’s poisoning, a behavioral legacy he sees as defeated in the past.
“The Soviet people do not believe the truth at all. Even the truth does not detract from their position, they always lie. Even the North Korean or Cuban Chinese authorities always lie. They cannot speak the truth. It is the Soviet socialist mentality” , Chichvarkin says.
He believes that, despite the property denials, Navalny’s exhibition at the “Putin Palace”, the billion dollars plus the spread of the Black Sea has angered the Russian president. He believes Putin is losing control of his trademark steel over his own reactions to things. His response to President Joe Biden’s comments about Putin being a murderer, says Chichvarkin, was “hysterical”. Putin challenged Biden to a live debate on TV after these comments, a kind of 21st century duel.
“He tried to be passive aggressive, but that is not very passive,” said Chichvarkin.
Still, he thinks this is an omen of danger for Russia and while he was disappointed that the demonstrations in support of Navalny were not greater, the last thing he wants to see is bloodshed on the streets, if any. He fears that it will if the demonstrations restart and gain more strength. In that sense, Chichvarkin is pessimistic. He once told a reporter that he would only return to Russia if Putin was carried on a pitchfork. When asked about this comment, he replies, “I don’t think I’ll be back, to be honest.”
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When asked if it is because he does not foresee changes in his life, he replies: “I will probably be too tired or too old.”
Portraying Chichvarkin as tired or old is not easy. Imagining Navalny’s movement into a whisper is also overkill. But for Navalny, his fate is in the hands of hostile forces and his allies have asked for his cause to appear in all meetings that foreign leaders have with Russian President Vladimir Putin.