Former Yukos Oil Vice President Ponomarev predicts Putin’s downfall

Former Russian Duma deputy, former Yukos Oil Vice President and Putin’s opponent Ilya Ponomarev, who has lived in Ukraine since 2016, where he decided to stay, told the French newspaper Le Figaro that Ukraine is in right side of the story, as opposed to Putin on the wrong side.

“We are engaged in a war of the forces of good against the forces of evil and we are going to win. I chose Ukraine because it is the best place to overthrow the Putin regime,” which, as Ponomarev points out, “has already lost” after “His whole military strategy is a huge fiasco.”

He could have remained in power until his death. But he started this war and it will be fatal for him, because he will not survive. “I will be surprised if he is still in the Kremlin next year,” Ponomarev said.

He also praised the Ukrainian president’s transformation since the start of the war, saying: “He was not good at running the country on a daily basis in peacetime. He had good intentions but the roads to hell are paved with good intentions. “From the beginning of the conflict, he is tired, but he is smart, courageous and his voice is right. He is the right person for the situation.”

On the other hand, Ponomarev considers that the West has adopted a “treacherous and cowardly attitude” towards Zelensky, “bending”, as he puts it, “in the face of Putin’s threats and thus paving the way for war.”

He described Putin as “sick, with a nuclear button!” a no-fly zone, which he sees as “a lesser evil that will reduce the risk of escalation, rather than increase it,” as he puts it, “Putin will see that the West is no longer afraid of him.”