Exiled Russian businessman Mykhailo Khodorkovsky has called on Russians still in the country to launch a wave of “sabotage” against government structures to prevent Vladimir Putin from waging war in Ukraine and destabilizing his government, The Guardian reports.

Mykhailo KhodorkovskyPhoto: Agerpres

Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years in prison between 2003 and 2013 and now lives in London, said Putin’s invasion had completely changed the agenda of Russia’s political opposition and said “armed resistance” could play a role at some point in in the future

“We need to explain to people what they can do, convince them that they should do it, and also help people if they end up in a dangerous situation,” Khodorkovsky told The Guardian.

He said the potential actions should depend on each individual’s risk appetite and could range from painting anti-war graffiti on the streets to sabotaging war-related rail transport or setting fire to recruiting stations.

“But we are very clearly against terrorist methods that harm unarmed people,” he said, criticizing the killing of Daria Dugina, the daughter of a Russian imperialist ideologue, last month, which was claimed without any evidence by a previously unknown Russian guerrilla group.

In his first interview, Khodorkovsky talked about his new book, The Russia Conundrum, which will be released later this week. Part memoir and part analysis of Putin’s years in office, the book presents a model for Western countries on how to deal with Moscow.

Khodorkovsky has one of the most remarkable personal stories in post-Soviet Russia: he rose from his economic beginnings in the Communist Youth League during Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the late 1980s to become Russia’s richest businessman, heading Yukos.

In the book, Khodorkovsky describes his first meetings with Putin, from which he came away convinced that the new Russian president was an ideological ally. “His technique is to look at you and mirror what you say… He’s a chameleon who lets everyone think he’s on their side,” he writes.

Looking back, he admits that he completely misunderstood Putin. “I was in no hurry to see him. He has the professional ability of the KGB to adapt to his interlocutor, but he also has a personal flair for this … At that time, he did not feel stable in his position and did not “want to make enemies who would unite against him. Of course , he never held liberal views,” he says.

Read also: opponents of the Kremlin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Harry Kasparov, warning for the European Union

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