He told the Dossier Center group that he was able to defect on October 14 after a business trip to Kazakhstan on which his wife and daughter accompanied him. On the last day of the trip, the trio flew to Istanbul with no intention of ever returning to Russia. The Dossier Center, which is funded by Russian opposition figure and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, shared more than 10 hours of recordings and transcripts of several interviews it had conducted with Karakulov since his defection with media outlets and for the first time published details on April 4 revealing his comments. “Our president has become a war criminal,” he said.
