Architect of Russia’s Privatization Survives Ambush

Anatoly B. Chubais, one of Russia’s most prominent business and political leaders, survived an apparent assassination attempt unscathed Thursday when assailants detonated a roadside bomb and then fired at his armored car as he commuted to work on a forested highway.

Chubais was the architect of Russia’s controversial post-Soviet privatizations of state assets and now is a leader of the pro-market Union of Right Forces party. He also heads the state-controlled electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems, the nation’s seventh-largest company, with annual revenue of $21.6 billion. A few hours after the attack, the 49-year-old businessman said at a news conference that he had been aware of a plan to kill him. But Chubais declined to reveal whom he suspected.

“I have an idea of who could have taken out a contract on me,” he said. “I had reason to expect something like this and had taken measures to strengthen security.... I need to have him caught, so don’t ask me to say who he is.”

Police quickly located a green Saab believed to have been a getaway car. Thursday evening, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted unnamed police sources as saying that the husband of the car’s owner had been arrested and that explosives had been found in his home. He was identified as a retired military sabotage specialist.

Chubais also issued a written statement pledging to continue his work in business and politics. He has been part of an effort by pro-democracy leaders to form a unified movement to contest parliamentary elections in 2007 and presidential balloting in 2008. “The main thing I can say today is that I will work twice as hard on everything I have been doing to reform the nation’s electricity industry and consolidate the democratic forces,” he said in the statement.

Politicians and analysts offered a variety of possible motives for the attack. Some linked it to Chubais’ leading role in planned economic reforms aimed at introducing competition to the power industry. Others thought it was more likely related to politics.

The Union of Right Forces, a party he helped found, issued a statement saying that in all of his posts, Chubais has worked to make Russia “a truly free and powerful democratic country.” It implied that his attackers opposed that goal.

“We cannot name the organizers or perpetrators of the crime, but we understand perfectly well which forces in the country find Chubais a hindrance,” it said.

There also were suggestions that because he was known to travel in a specially strengthened car able to resist the impact of bombs and bullets, the incident may have been meant as a warning rather than an assassination.

Chubais said he and his aides had viewed the forested stretch of highway between his country home and Moscow as potentially dangerous.

“I was following my usual route to work, just as I do every day,” Chubais said. “We heard an explosion. After that, a fragment hit the windshield, and we saw bullet marks on the hood.”

Police said a bomb exploded near Chubais’ armored BMW, and two attackers wearing combat fatigues fired automatic weapons. His car sped away as the assailants exchanged shots with bodyguards who were following in a second vehicle, police said. The attackers fled into the nearby forest. No injuries were reported.

The bomb contained the equivalent of about 2 pounds of TNT, investigators said.

It was the latest in a string of attacks on leading businesspeople and politicians since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Many of the crimes have not been solved, but those aimed at business leaders generally have been considered the result of extortion attempts or battles over assets.

Chubais’ political enemies offered him little sympathy.

Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, an extreme nationalist and deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament who has a reputation for buffoonish behavior, told reporters that the attack was “a signal to the pro-Western ‘democratic forces’ of Russia to return their capital to the country, to return the money they stole.”

Mikhail Delyagin, chairman of the Institute of Globalization Studies in Moscow, said he believed the incident was a warning most likely related to reform of the electric energy industry.

“In a nutshell, the whole reform is about breaking the vast state-owned national energy system into components which will be sold or privatized,” he explained. “It appears that recently Chubais began to realize that the model of energy market he envisioned is not really working in Russia and he started to slow down the entire reform. This could affect quite a few business obligations and promises.”

That means figures who expect to benefit from privatization of the electricity monopoly’s assets “might have decided to issue such a simple and clear warning to Chubais ... to deliver on his promises,” Delyagin said.

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.