Nobody Seems to Know This Oligarch's Role in Peace Talks

One of the people spotted at the Russian-Ukraine peace talks on Tuesday was Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, which turns out to be interesting on a few fronts. For one thing, reports emerged Monday that Abramovich had been poisoned along with Ukrainian diplomats during peace talks in early March. All of the men reportedly suffered the telltale signs, including peeling skin, but all recovered. Abramovich appeared to be fine on Tuesday, with the BBC reporting that he was chatting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mediator of the talks. Another notable thing: Nobody seems to be quite sure what role Abramovich is playing in the talks, because he is not a member of the Russian delegation, reports Reuters.

"I have no idea what Mr. Abramovich is claiming or doing," is how Ukrainian ambassador to Britain Vadym Prystaiko put it. "He is not a part of the negotiation team." But he's doing something, apparently. Abramovich has so far traveled to Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and Israel since the war began. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has acknowledged his pseudo-official role, saying only that Abramovich helped to "enable certain contacts" between the two sides. Peskov, for the record, also dismissed reports that Russia, or Russian-allied actors bent on torpedoing peace talks, poisoned Abramovich and the Ukrainian diplomats.

In the wake of all this intrigue, the BBC has a separate profile of the 55-year-old billionaire, who owns the Chelsea soccer team in the UK and has been hit by sanctions there since the war began. The story traces his rise from humble roots—he grew up poor after being orphaned as a child—to his accumulation of vast wealth. He has long ties to Vladimir Putin, having reportedly backed Putin as the one to succeed Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. The Guardian assesses all of the above, including the allegations of poisoning, a specialty of Russian intelligence. The full picture here is tough to ferret out, writes Dan Sabbagh. "It's a murky business all around." (More Roman Abramovich stories.)