RUSSIA: Chukotka's governor plots how to see off his Kremlin enemies . . . and a good season for Chelsea FC. Chris Stephen met him in Anadyr, eastern Siberia
Roman Abramovich looks silently out of the windows of the Chukotka governor's mansion, down towards where a school of white-bellied beluga whales are frolicking in the cold blue waters of Anadyr Bay.
Summoning a little sigh, he explains the link between his love for this far-flung province and that of London's frenetic Chelsea Football Club, 8,000 miles and 12 hours away.
"In Chukotka people are always coming and going. Strangers feel at home here," he said. And the same goes for London.
"I love the lifestyle in England, you feel very comfortable. It doesn't matter if you are from Lebanon, or Russia or Australia, everyone can feel comfortable."
And that is as near as you will get with this famously enigmatic, fabulously wealthy Russian tycoon to understanding why he is apparently selling up in Moscow to run two very different operations - a far eastern Russian province and a west London football club.
This is the first full interview Abramovich has given since he was catapulted on to the world stage with his decision to use what amounts to small change to buy Chelsea Football Club.
He refused to do this interview in Moscow. Instead, I had to travel to the ends of the earth - another 50 miles and I would have crossed the international dateline and fallen into yesterday.
Here in the bleak tundra of Chukotka Abramovich feels safe from the pressures of Chelsea and from a Kremlin which seems ever closer to smashing his business empire.
In Russia he is envied for being rich while most of the rest of the country is mired in poverty.
But here he is loved. Before he came, Chukotka was one of the grimmest spots on earth, abandoned by the Russian mother state, a land without hope.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, aid to this province had dried up and the population, in a country the size of France, had halved to 70,000. Even one of its main industries - the Gulags that dotted its northern coasts - vanished with Glasnost, the policy of openness introduced in Russia in the late 1980s by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Since winning election here in 2000, Abramovich has showered millions on this land of tundra, lakes and fish. In return, the people - a mixture of ethnic Russians, Chukotis and Eskimos - have anointed him Tsar, Father Christmas and the Sun King, and Chukotka, his kingdom, has become one of the most bizarre places on earth.
The magic begins at the airport. Here, amid the junk of cannibalised old Soviet-era jets with red stars on their tails, is a gleaming new yellow and white Boeing airliner. No markings. No need. Abramovich does not believe in half measures. Why have a private Lear Jet when you can buy an entire Boeing as your private conveyance?
A ferry takes you across the sparkling bay, white whales on one side of the boat and black-bellied seals on the other.
Then there is Anadyr city, the regional capital, a collection of boxy crumbling concrete apartment blocks and fish canneries.
But dotted among them, incongruous in their spanking new paintwork, are dazzling new structures: a brand new hospital, the region's first supermarket, a museum, the best dentist complex for 2,000 miles, and a sprawling high-school and university complex.
Riveters flown in from Turkey - all the local builders have their hands full - are busy on the steel structure of the town's geology museum.
Teachers proudly show off a concept kindergarten packed with state-of-the-art wooden learning toys. Crayons are out. Instead, there are orange and blue and red and brown pots each holding clusters of orange and blue and red and brown pens.
"We need our oligarch," admits one teacher, glamorous in a purple dress.
Even the children look Benetton - pretty blonde ethnic Russians play with their dark-haired Chukotka and Eskimo neighbours.
Because there was money to burn the kindergarten has a greenhouse on top, so the children can grow cacti in the winter.
And from here you can look down to the modest harbour, dominated by a handsome stone statue showing a man marching in triumph and being saluted by a crowd.
It is not Abramovich, but the last man to arrive bearing great news - a Communist official who arrived in Chukotka in 1991 to tell the people that from now on they would be Soviet citizens. The statue is also a memorial - the Chukotis murdered him on the spot.
But this Moscow messenger is treated differently.
Abramovich arrived three years ago, with cynics believing he came only for the oil. But the local oil is too costly to pump, so Abramovich went the extra mile. Anadyr is no Potemkin Village, it now has a proper structure, paid for with £60 million of Abramovich's cash.
The cherry on the cake is Anadyr's first nightclub, graced tonight by Abramovich - with the wife and five children many times zones away.
But true to form, the club reflects his own sensible, modest, low-key approach. The waitresses are buxom, but move slowly, casually, delivering mineral water to him and his press officer as they sit, talking shop, on a large black sofa.
And now Abramovich wants to perform the same noble service for the long-suffering men and women in west London - producing a team that at last they can be proud of.
"There are plans for more players but I cannot comment on it," he says, padding around his office in faded jeans and a blue bomber jacket. "We will manage to sign lots of players. Seven will be good."
Asked about David Beckham, he can't resist: "If he considers the possibility of going back to England, if he doesn't make it in Spain, I like him as a player." And why not? The rumour is he's set to cash in his massive fortune, estimated at £3.5 billion, by selling his oil, aluminium and airline businesses.
Of course, even with Chelsea, there is his trademark caution. He is sure they will win nothing this year. Nothing at all.
"Even the best players don't immediately make a team. Time is needed to make a team, then you hope for a result," he said. "The supporters understand. The other day I received a letter from a 10-year-old boy, he described the situation in the team perfectly. This 10- year-old boy named three of the five players we were thinking of buying."
Abramovich will soon be requiring his players to perform a charitable work of their own, with a tour to play a series of friendly games against Russia's leading teams.
"I think that it would be a good idea to have informal friendly games with Russian teams," he said. "This would help Russian football teams to realise what actual position they have in football."
Cynics say the Chelsea deal is, like the Chukotka governorship, a move calculated to make him popular in the coming battle with the Moscow authorities.
The Kremlin recently declared open season on Abramovich's fellow tycoons. A senior auditor has already accused him of withholding hundreds of millions of pounds of tax. Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has accused Abramovich of being unpatriotic for buying a western, rather than a local, football club.
At the heart of the dispute is how Abramovich managed to persuade the government to sell him an oil field at about one tenth of its real value back in 1995.
That deal saw him form Sibneft, Russia's fourth largest oil company, and join the ranks of the super rich, but he insisted yesterday that he had done nothing wrong.
"It's important to realise that everybody who was willing to take the risk took the risk," he said, explaining why he paid the state $200 million for oil assets that overnight jumped to $2 billion. "In 1995 $200 million dollars was more than anyone could imagine."
He says the Kremlin's attack on the tycoons, which includes probes against Russia's richest man, oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is blatantly unfair.
"It is unclear what you have to do to avoid what Mr Khodorkovsky is going through now," he says. "You can be recognised as a good businessman and nothing guarantees you won't face the same problem."
But although he has decided to stand again for election to Chukotka - the weather gets him down - he insists he will not follow other tycoons who leave Russia with their fortunes. "I like the seasons," he says, his eyes resting on Chukotka's distant mountains, already snow speckled as the short summer draws to a close.
"I cannot spend all my time on the Côte d'Azur."