HOW PUTIN USES WESTERN SANCTIONS TO CONTROL RUSSIA'S BILLIONAIRES

Sanctions, war profits and repression have transformed Russia's oligarchs into dependent instruments of Kremlin power.

- JOHN DOBSON

The author (right) with Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

(COPYRIGHT: JOHN DOBSON)

On the day Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the early hours of 24 February 2022, he summoned Russia's business elite to the Kremlin. The message was clear and unmistakable: the country was entering a new phase, and its richest citizens were expected to fall into line.

Those present recall a tense scene, one describing the room as filled with billionaires who were “pale and sleep-deprived”, fully aware that sanctions, war and international isolation were about to tear through their fortunes. Putin offered no room for debate: “I hope that in these new conditions, we'll work together just as well and no less effectively,” he told them.

Nearly four years on, that meeting looks like a turning point not only in Russia’s war, but in the relationship between the Kremlin and the country’s ultra-rich. Despite unprecedented Western sanctions Russia now has more billionaires than ever before, and their collective wealth is close to an all-time high. Yet politically, they are quieter, weaker and more dependent on the Kremlin than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This paradox, rising wealth combined with near-total political silence, is one of Vladimir Putin’s greatest domestic successes.