Quo vadis, Anatoly Chubais? It is with morbid fascination that I observe the tenacity and staying power of this politician’s career, somehow surviving, sometimes laying low, and then thriving yet again throughout all the dramatic reversals of fortunes and seismic shifts in Russia’s political landscape in recent years. Although he hails from Belarus and cut his teeth as an economic adviser in the administration of St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak alongside Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, he also was for a short period a co-leader of the Union of Right Forces, Boris Nemtsov’s liberal political party. Chubais has always displayed a very rare ability to survive, even after bruising confrontations with a variety of opponents, ranging from Boris Berezovsky, Gennady Zyuganov, and even Vladimir Putin himself (he was one of the first to publicly demand that the president explain what was happening to Mikhail Khodorkovsky after the arrest on live TV). But if Chubais is Russia’s ultimate political survivor, then the latest opponent he has in his sights, Igor Sechin, chairman of Rosneft and the highest ranking silovik hawk, must be the country’s #1 cancer … and a very dangerous man to pick a fight with. Has Anatoly used up his nine lives?