Now Lebedev turns on Putin

Looks like this war isn’t going terribly well for Vladimir Putin. The Russian dictator now finds himself something of an international pariah, with barely half-a-dozen countries lining up behind him. By contrast, the charmless Kremlin autocrat seems to have done what no-one thought possible: unite Europe in opposition, drag Germany from its Ostpolitik slumber and even force neutral Sweden to dispatch thousands of missile launchers to his foes. Well done Vlad.

It’s not just in the international arena where Putin finds himself unloved: there’s clearly cracks in the previously unshakeable support which he enjoyed from the plutocratic oligarchs his regime has helped enrich. First, Mikhail Fridman, one of the country’s richest men, said yesterday that the war in Ukraine was a ‘tragedy’ and called on the ‘bloodshed’ to end, in a letter sent to staff at his London-based private equity firm LetterOne.

And today, another millionaire mogul has attacked Putin publicly. Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia, the son of a KGB officer, has today broken ranks and criticised Putin’s war on the front page of his newspaper.