The number of Russian millionaires has risen to an all-time high during the conflict with Ukraine. However, during Vladimir Putin’s 25 years in office, Russia’s wealthy and influential, referred to as oligarchs, have virtually completely lost their political clout.
The Russian president will benefit from all of this. His carrot-and-stick measures have transformed the ultra-wealthy into quiet supporters, while Western sanctions have failed to turn them against him.
The Kremlin contacted his executives the day after he called the war “crazy” in an Instagram post. They were informed that unless all ties to its founder were severed, his Tinkoff Bank, then the second-largest in Russia, would be nationalized.
Some Russians became extraordinarily wealthy in the years after the Soviet Union broke up by seizing control of large businesses that had previously belonged to the government and by taking advantage of opportunities created by the nation’s emerging capitalism. During a time of political unrest, their newly acquired wealth gave them power and influence, earning them the moniker “oligarchs.
Didn’t see the future greedy tyrant and usurper in him, the man who would trample freedom and stop Russia’s development,” wrote Boris Berezovsky, Russia’s most powerful oligarch, in a 2012 letter pleading for forgiveness for his alleged role in orchestrating Putin’s rise to power in 2000.
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