As the United Nations presided over the signing of the landmark Black Sea Grain Deal in Istanbul a few months back, a familiar face with a grizzled white beard was spied among the honored invitees: it was Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian oligarch, who has played a discrete, but crucial, behind-the-scenes role in facilitating the deal.
Operating out of Tel Aviv and Istanbul, Abramovich has served as the principal back-channel liaison between the U.N. and Russia, receiving briefings from Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s emergency relief coordinator and chief negotiator for the Black Sea grain corridor, and delivering messages back to the Kremlin, according to three diplomatic sources. U.N. officials and foreign diplomats are convinced he has a direct line to Russian President Vladimir Putin, one diplomat told Devex, countering previous assertions by Abramovich that they are not all that close.
“He is clearly involved and clearly has relevant connections in the Russian system, including the Kremlin,” said another diplomat, who has followed the negotiations for a Western government. “I do know the U.N. believes he has been very useful.”
Abramovich — former owner of the British soccer club, Chelsea FC — is one of a number of controversial Russian figures and entities that have been sanctioned by the United Kingdom and the European Union since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. They include Dmitry Mazepin, onetime owner of chemicals company Uralchem, which has been at the center of U.N.-brokered negotiations to facilitate exports of Russian ammonia, a critical ingredient in fertilizer, to help stabilize the global fertilizer market.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.K. and the European Union imposed a financial freeze on Abramovich’s assets and banned him from traveling on EU territory. They charged that his and other Russian oligarchs’ business dealings had aided Putin and his war effort. The United States, meanwhile, grounded his private Gulfstream Jet Abramovich, along with another 100 Russian aircraft.
The U.S., however, stopped short of sanctioning Ambramovich, while Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Washington and other governments not to sanction him, citing his role in peace efforts.
Over the years, Abramovich and his public relations representative have downplayed reports of a special relationship with Putin. Efforts to reach Abramovich through U.N. officials, Chelsea FC, a Russian diplomat, and an associate who reportedly encouraged a peacemaking role for Abramovich were unsuccessful.
Abramovich's role in peacemaking in Ukraine has been widely reported. But the U.N. has declined to outline its interactions with the Russian billionaire. Still, the oligarch’s interaction with the U.N. provides one of the latest examples of a little-appreciated fact of life for U.N. mediators and humanitarians in resolving crises: They must engage with oligarchs, extremists, terrorists, and dictators to fulfill their work, whether delivering life-saving food in Somalian territory controlled by the al-Shabaab terrorist organization or delivering humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
In Syria, the U.N. provides millions of dollars in contracts to companies, individuals, and entities closely aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a recent report by the Syrian Legal Development Program, SLPD, and the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks.
““I don’t think any of us in the humanitarian movement are served well by humanitarians getting carte blanche. We want to be held accountable.”
— Scott Paul, senior manager for humanitarian policy, Oxfam AmericaTheir report, based on an examination of 100 suppliers, found that nearly half of all the U.N.’s procurement operations in Syria in 2019 and 2020 benefited “risky or highly risky suppliers,” including “individuals who committed human rights abuses.” Nearly a quarter involved entities or individuals already sanctioned by the U.S., the U.K., or the E.U.
The revelations, while disturbing, are hardly surprising.
A similar report, published back in January by the SLDP and Human Rights Watch, triggered little reaction from key donor states, including the U.S., reflecting a grudging, if unacknowledged, acceptance of such practice, according to U.N.-based officials.
“I think this ‘imperfect’ situation has just become acceptable for stakeholders, in large part because there isn’t the senior government attention or investment in Syria that would be necessary to get anything to change,” Charles Lister, director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism programs at the Middle East Institute, told Devex via email. “And the UN knows it too–there’s a reason nothing has been done inside the UN system all these years.”
“So where does that leave us?” he questioned. “In a place where we now know the true extent to which the UN is knowingly abetting the Assad regime’s criminal actions, and it’s still not being challenged.”
Francesco Galtieri, a senior U.N. official in Damascus, told Devex via email that the U.N. “is only bound to screen suppliers” on U.N. or World Bank lists of sanctioned or banned entities or individuals. He suggested it was unfair for the researchers to draw on a list of individuals or businesses sanctioned by Western governments as “evidence that U.N. procurement processes are compromised.”
“This already provides a distorted indication by magnitude of the financial volume potentially exposed to risk,” he said. “These lists are not a legal ground based on which the UN must disengage or disqualify suppliers.”
Playing hardball with rogue groups by cutting off aid altogether in territory under their control can sometimes bear fruit. But it comes with high costs, particularly for humanitarian aid workers who risk being targeted by local armed groups or having their aid programs shuttered by donors.
In 2018, the Syrian terrorist organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, imposed a tax on humanitarian aid entering territory under its control in the country’s northwest, according to Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Donors immediately reacted, put a stop to aid convoy transfers and HTS backed down,” she told Devex. But the shutdown, which lasted for several weeks, “created a chilling effect” on aid agencies.
“It worked,” she added, “but it also reduced any NGOs’ ability or desire to raise instances of interference because it could freeze all of their programming.”
But Hall said that placing the sole burden of negotiating access to aid workers on the ground carries risks. She recalled instances when aid workers were detained or even tortured for pushing back on efforts to skim revenue off aid deliveries.
A State Department spokesperson did not describe any specific action undertaken by the U.S. in response to the findings of the report by SLPD and the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks, but said by email it “takes seriously any allegation of fraud, corruption or abuse of our aid.”
The U.S. requires that all of its humanitarian partners “must have adequate risk mitigation systems in place to ensure that U.S. taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance is reaching those for whom it is intended,” the spokesperson added.
Standing on principle, however, can carry heavy moral and humanitarian costs.
In March 2020, the Trump administration cut off humanitarian aid to Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, in response to restrictions imposed by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, pitching a country that relies on foreign aid for its existence and imports more than 90 percent of its fuel and food, into an existential crisis.
There was little doubt the Houthis were diverting aid. Still, the move — which raised fears of famine — was challenged by the U.N., humanitarian aid agencies, and some U.S. lawmakers, who contended it could deprive civilians of life-saving food and medicines for combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s senior manager for humanitarian policy, said humanitarian aid organizations should be held accountable if they become “complicit in abuses” by bad groups. “I don’t think any of us in the humanitarian movement are served well by humanitarians getting carte blanche. We want to be held accountable.”
At the same time, he said, “we want policymakers to see the world as it is, and not as they wish it were.”
There is no generally recognized policy dictating when aid agencies should turn off the tap, and donor countries are often selective in how much latitude they are willing to give humanitarian aid agencies.
The imposition of sanctions on insurgents or terrorists has also hampered countries like Iran from procuring medical assistance during the pandemic, and complicated efforts by aid workers to effectively operate in countries like Somalia and Yemen.
Over a decade ago, the Obama administration faced accusations that its sanctions policy against the al-Shabaab terrorist movement in Somalia was impeding the U.N. and aid workers from carrying out life-saving activities.
Critics claimed that humanitarians were in a Catch-22 predicament, facing the prospect of violating U.S. law if aid was inadvertently diverted to members of the terrorist group.
In Afghanistan, donor countries have imposed far more restrictive conditions than countries like Syria on how aid is delivered, according to Hardin Lang, vice president for programs and policy at Refugees International.
Still, the aid community in Afghanistan wields considerable influence over the Taliban because the Islamic movement that seized power in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal is desperate for humanitarian assistance.
“The U.N. had some leverage because it was the only game in town. They were the ones with the aid and the money,” Lang said of Afghanistan. “In places like Syria, the regime doesn’t care that much so there isn’t much leverage.”
In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, film producer Alexander Rodnyansky, whose son is an economic adviser to Zelensky, reportedly connected Abramovich to Kyiv in the hopes of exploring prospects for peace.
Rodnyansky declined, through an assistant, to speak to Devex. But Rodnyansky — who has worked with Zelensky, an actor before becoming president, and served on the advisory board of a film fund run by Abramovich — told the Financial Times he had reached out to Abramovich.
“The Ukrainians had been trying to find someone in Russia who could help in finding a peaceful resolution,” Rodnyansky told FT, adding that Abramovich’s influence over Putin was limited. “They reached out for help and Roman is the person who decided to help and to mobilize support for a peaceful resolution.”
It’s hard to say whether Abramovich’s intervention is motivated by a desire to burnish his reputation, protect his assets, and avoid further sanctions, or a genuine interest in bringing about peace. It’s also hard to measure his effectiveness.
Earlier this year, his effort to negotiate the evacuation of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers from a besieged steel plant in Mariupol foundered, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan played the decisive role in persuading Putin to allow the grain deal, originally authorized for a renewable period of 120 days, to be extended for an additional four months, according to a source familiar with the talks.
But the U.N. — still trying to broker a deal that would allow Russia to increase its fertilizer exports to bring down global prices and help farmers — appears to find its interaction with Abramovich worthwhile.
The challenge now is maneuvering through a thicket of international sanctions impeding Russia’s effort to export fertilizers.
“The issue [of] sanctions of individuals was one of the most difficult issues to address,” according to an internal U.N. paper, which cited the difficulties of exporting fertilizer-critical ammonia, controlled by Russia's Uralchem.
The chemical giant was owned by Belarusian-born billionaire Dmitry Mazepin, who resigned his position as CEO and sold his controlling stake to two business partners after the E.U. imposed sanctions against him in March.
Latvia, whose ports served as an export hub for Russian fertilizers, has blocked Uralchem’s exports. A U.N. task force, headed by the Costa Rican economist Rebeca Grynspan, has explored the idea of “ring-fencing” — allowing “a company of a sanctioned individual to continue operating by ensuring no assets or financial flows got to the designated individual,” according to an internal U.N. document. A similar strategy has been used in the past to permit trade in humanitarian goods with Iran.
But so far, no agreement has been reached.