An exiled oligarch says sanctions targeting Russia's economy and the country's elite won't persuade Putin to abandon Ukraine ambitions

• Economic and oligarch sanctions won't deter Putin from attacking Ukraine, Mikhail Khodorkovsky said.
• The former Yukos CEO told Bloomberg the US instead needs to show Putin "a consistent policy of force."

Exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said that Western sanctions alone don't scare Russian President Vladimir Putin and targeting the country's oligarchs won't be enough to persuade him to abandon the invasion of Ukraine.

Instead, a "consistent policy of force" needs to be adopted, Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of the Russian oil giant Yukos and an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, told Bloomberg.

Western countries placed heavy financial sanctions on Russia after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine. The measures include banning transactions with Russia's central bank, cutting off access to the SWIFT international payments system, blocking the trade of luxury goods, and freezing assets belonging to the country's elite. The fallout included the ruble dropping to a record low and soaring inflation.

The sanctions are intended to hobble Russia's economy and cut off funding to its military. But some critics say the sanctions haven't gone far enough because they haven't convinced Putin to call off the invasion.

Khodorkovsky's comments appear to contrast with an interview he gave CNN in mid-March, where he said that cutting off cash flows to Russia, blocking Putin's bankers, and sanctioning oligarchs was "the only thing that will stop the war." He said that though oligarchs were "just Putin's footmen," they could be used to influence the West.

Putin sees the current conflict as a war between his country and America and Europe on Ukrainian soil, Khodorkovsky told Bloomberg, echoing his previous remarks. He added that the US and other western nations didn't understand this.

"Putin has said from the very beginning that this war includes them," Khodorkovsky said.

Khodorkovsky told CNN on Sunday that Russia's next step could be the invasion of the Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all Baltic countries and former members of the Soviet Union.

In his interview with Bloomberg, Khodorkovsky said that Putin "thinks NATO is weak and that they will not defend the Baltics" if Russia attacked.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all members of NATO. President Joe Biden has previously said the US would "defend every inch" of the alliance's territory.

Bloomberg reported that Khodorkovsky praised Biden for warning Putin against using weapons of mass destruction against Russia.

"If the US wants to be a moral leader, it has to make a moral statement," he said, adding that the US needs to show Putin "a consistent policy of force."

Khodorkovsky was once Russia's richest person

Khodorkovsky was CEO of Yukos, then Russia's largest oil company, between 1997 and 2004. He was briefly Russia's richest person in 2003, when Forbes put his net worth at $15 billion.

In 2001, he founded Open Russia, an anti-Kremlin political organization focusing on democracy and human rights that was shut down by Russian authorities in 2006. Khodorkovsky was arrested and charged with fraud and tax evasion in 2003 and was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2005.

In 2013, he was pardoned by Putin and released from prison a year early. He was exiled from Russia and now lives in London.