A former deputy prime minister who served as Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for sustainable development has quit his post and left Russia in what is reported to be the most high-level resignation over the war in Ukraine. Anatoly Chubais, a veteran reformer who managed Russia’s privatization program in the 1990s and is said to have first recommended Putin for a job in the Kremlin, is the most senior figure to resign over the Ukraine war. Russian news reports suggested that the 66-year-old Chubais and his wife had gone to Istanbul. Reuters cited an unnamed source as saying that Chubais “had no intention of coming back.”
