Ukraine has imposed sanctions on Alexander Lebedev – the former KGB intelligence officer whose son Evgeny sits in the House of Lords – in connection with Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
The national security and defence council in Kyiv imposed sanctions on Lebedev Sr last October. The decision – first reported by Tortoise media – emerged on Thursday and follows a decree signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Lebedev, a KGB operative turned media tycoon, owns a hotel and other assets in Crimea, the peninsula Vladimir Putin illegally annexed in 2014. Ukraine accuses Lebedev of actively destabilising its sovereignty by investing in Crimea’s tourist industry.
The designation raises questions as to why the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak has yet to follow suit. Last year Canada sanctioned Lebedev together with 13 other Russian oligarchs for allegedly facilitating Putin’s “senseless” full-scale attack on Ukraine.
Boris Johnson has a longstanding relationship with both Lebedevs. In April 2018, when foreign secretary, he flew to Italy for a weekend at Alexander’s Terranova mansion in Perugia. He took the unusual decision of leaving his security detail behind and was photographed waiting at the airport for a flight home looking hungover and dishevelled.
Johnson was also a frequent attender at Evgeny’s lavish parties in London. He and his then fiancee Carrie Symonds went to the Lebedevs’ Christmas party in December 2019, the day after winning the general election. Johnson talked to Alexander, who was celebrating his 60th birthday.
Months later Johnson controversially submitted Evgeny’s name for a peerage. The House of Lords appointments committee questioned his application following advice from the security services. They raised concerns because of Alexander’s previous career as a KGB spy. The nomination eventually went through, with Evgeny later confirmed as Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia.
Lebedev Sr has made no secret of his KGB past. In a ghost-written memoir, Hunt the Banker, he charts in a few pages his path through his recruitment by the KGB, his posting as an undercover Soviet spy in London in 1988 and his exit from the world of espionage in 1992 with the rank of colonel. He subsequently co-owned a Moscow bank and in 2009 bought the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers.
Lord Lebedev says he has no links to Vladimir Putin’s regime. He accuses critics of anti-Russian “racism” and says he got his peerage for raising millions for charities, and for his role in rescuing “two great UK media titles”.
The government has known about Ukraine’s sanctioning of Lebedev since last October, when Zelenskiy’s decree was shared with the UK and EU member states. The sanctions stop Lebedev from moving funds out of Ukraine and making financial transactions inside the country.
After publication, Lebedev defended his investments in Crimea and said they were made before Russia’s 2014 annexation. He said he paid for the restoration of the Anton Chekhov house-museum and theatre in Yalta, where Chekhov wrote the Three Sisters and the Cherry Orchard. “It was opened in the presence of Tom Stoppard, Kevin Spacey and John Malkovich. You can check,” he wrote in a text.
Lebedev said his other investments included hotels in Alushta, a resort city on the southern coast of Crimea, and an art park. Referring to the years after 2014, he said: “Some maintenance and repairs were carried on afterwards from operating profit, which was pretty low. It remained the same ever since. It’s not the Maldives. The season is short etc.”
Lebedev added: “I saw no reason to make 1000 people redundant and did not close the hotels - probably the only reason for [Ukraine’s] sanctions. One can make his own judgement about the common sense of the Ukrainian decision.”
