Members of the Russian elite distance themselves from Putin and his invasion after seeing their fortunes affected by sanctions
The war in Ukraine has lasted more than two months and everything indicates that the large-scale conflict will stall to fight smaller fights for years. The decisions of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who still denies that he is carrying out an invasion in the neighboring country, are leading him to be left alone. As he continues in his zeal to destroy, his circle of worshipers shrinks. Since the offensive began on February 24, more and more members of the Russian elite have challenged the Kremlin chief after seeing his fortunes affected as a result of international sanctions.
They are oligarchs who grew rich in the shadowy process of privatization that followed the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Western punishments have frozen tens of billions of dollars, seized yachts and mansions, and banned flying to foreign countries. This situation, added to the fact that the ruble is rock bottom, has led several tycoons to disassociate themselves from Moscow. Some go further and dare to criticize the invasion, which is prohibited in Russia. That is why many cases prefer to confront Putin keeping their distance and through anonymity.
“In one day they destroyed what was built for many years. It’s a catastrophe,” laments a businessman who, along with many of Russia’s richest men, was summoned to a meeting with Putin on the day the full-scale war broke out. Despite the stance against him, none dared to issue any protest. They knew the retaliation they could receive. The president assured everyone that the country would continue to be part of global markets, a promise that soon fell on deaf ears after Western sanctions.
As they quietly discussed the consequences of the conflict, some of the oligarchs realized that it was all over for the business empires they had been building since the transition to the Russian market began more than three decades ago. “Some of them said: ‘We have lost everything,'” said one of the participants in the meeting.
serious economic crisis
Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum tycoon who made his initial fortune during the Boris Yeltsin era, has stepped back from anonymity, calling the war in Ukraine a “madness of which we will be ashamed for a long time.” He attacked Putin, stating that his state policies of the last 14 years have not favored “neither economic growth nor that of the population’s income.” In fact, he mentioned the cost of the invasion. In this sense, he stressed that the economic crack resulting from the sanctions would be “three times worse” than the financial crisis that shook the Russian economy in 1998.
The tensions are also reflected in the leadership of the Army, which is beginning to disassociate itself from Putin after the arrest of two members of the Federal Security Service and the dismissal of the deputy chief of the National Guard. In addition, low morale and dissidence are growing at the front. According to the ‘Financial Times’, more than a thousand soldiers have refused to fight.
In a country where being against the government is punishable by jail -or worse, many anti-war oligarchs have ended up committing suicide under mysterious circumstances-, there are those who choose to flee. Nearly a dozen top officials have resigned and left the country, including Anatoly Chubais, the Kremlin’s special envoy for sustainable development. Others, even if they want to, have not been able to leave. Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian Central Bank, submitted her resignation but Putin refused to let her go, according to five people familiar with the situation.
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