In the interview, manager Igor Volobuyev also mentioned his former employer Gazprom, whom he described as Russia’s “gas stick”.
(Photo: Reuters)
Dusseldorf After years of working for the Russian energy company Gazprom, a top manager of the group has switched sides. “I want to cleanse myself of my Russian past,” Gazprombank deputy chief Igor Volobuyev said in a video interview posted on YouTube on Tuesday evening. By Wednesday it had already had around 200,000 views.
Volobuyev justified his flight by saying that he himself was born in Ukraine and condemned Russia’s war of aggression. The manager told the Russian online magazine The Insider: “I couldn’t stay in Russia any longer. As a native Ukrainian born in Akhtyrka, I could no longer stand by and watch what Russia was doing to my homeland. My visit is like a penance. Volobuyev wanted to “remain in Ukraine until victory” and fight alongside the Ukrainian soldiers.
According to him, Volobuyev left Russia on March 2. He had originally wanted to return to Ukraine since 2004, but was unable to do so due to family circumstances.
Volobuyev called Russian aggression against Ukraine a war crime. He and the Russian people are also responsible for it and he is ashamed of it.
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“This is a crime by Putin, the Russian authorities and indeed the Russian people. Because it is not Putin who is killing Ukrainians here, it is not Putin who is stealing toilets, it is not Putin who is raping women. It’s the Russian people. And I, although of Ukrainian nationality, am also responsible for that.”
Gazprom as Russia’s “gas stick”.
In the interview, he also criticized his former employer Gazprom, whom he described as Russia’s “gas stick”. Moscow has always tried to blackmail its neighbors and Europe with the gas.
The Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream pipeline projects have always had the politically motivated goal of eliminating Ukraine as a transit country for Russian gas, Volobuyev said. The Kremlin and Gazprom have always rejected such accusations by Ukraine and the West, stressing that these are purely economic projects.
Volobuyev says he worked for six years as deputy head of Gazprombank, a subsidiary of the energy company Gazprom. Before that, he worked as a PR manager at Gazprom for 16 years. In the interview he also commented on a series of alleged suicides by top managers of Russian energy companies. According to Volobuyev, he doubted that they would have taken their own lives.
Meanwhile, the Russian top manager Leonid Nevslin has condemned the war in the magazine “Spiegel”. Putin’s Russia is a “fascist mafia state,” said the former deputy chief of the oil company Yukos. He warned his adopted country of Israel not to fall for gifts of money from oligarchs.
Recently, the Russian billionaire Oleg Tinkov sharply criticized the Ukraine war on Instagram and insulted Putin’s military.
With DPA
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