Former Russian official and politician Anatoly Chubais, who has been living abroad since 2022, said in Canada’s sanctions appeal court that he was “historically” in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposed the war with Ukraine, according to Kommersant, whose journalists have a notice from the Federal Court of Canada accepting Chubais’ lawsuit to lift sanctions against him.
Chubais now lives in Israel. Canada is so far the only Western country to place him on the sanctions list in June 2025 (earlier, in 2023, Ukraine imposed sanctions against him). At the same time, the daughter of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin, Tatyana Yumasheva, and her husband, former head of the presidential administration Valentin Yumashev, were also included in Canada’s sanctions list.
In the lawsuit, Chubais is not asking for the sanctions to be lifted directly from him, he is demanding that the Canadian Foreign Ministry be obliged to expedite its consideration of his application to have them lifted.
Chubais himself and the Canadian authorities have not commented on the Kommersant report. He has not given interviews or made any public statements since leaving Russia. Vladimir Putin, commenting on his departure, called the former official “Moshe Israelievich”.