Hostages to the Kremlin: Russia’s Billionaires Between War and Nationalization
Russia’s billionaire class has recovered its pre-war collective wealth, but the conditions sustaining that recovery are already exhausted.
Western sanctions have closed off the internationalization that previously gave the oligarchs leverage over the Kremlin, while wartime nationalization has reminded them that domestic property rights remain conditional on political loyalty.
Andrey Melnichenko’s profile in The Economist - a public declaration of fealty to Vladimir Putin wrapped in the language of sovereignty - exemplifies the class’s impotence.
Ilya Matveev argues that the safety valve of exit is gone, organizational capacity has atrophied after twenty-five years of enforced political abstinence, and democratization would threaten oligarchic fortunes as severely as Putinism. Russia’s tycoons are, in his conclusion, Putin’s hostages and will share his regime’s fate. [AN]
Among the eight billionaires removed from the Russian Forbes list in 2026, only four were dropped because their businesses became less valuable. Three others had their assets nationalized by the state: Dmitry Kamenshchik lost Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, Konstantin Strukov his gold-mining operations, and Denis Shtengelov his food conglomerate.
Among the eight billionaires removed from the Russian Forbes list in 2026, only four were dropped because their businesses became less valuable. Three others had their assets nationalized by the state: Dmitry Kamenshchik lost Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, Konstantin Strukov his gold-mining operations, and Denis Shtengelov his food conglomerate.
Finally, one person, Yandex founder Arkady Volozh, was removed from the list following his renunciation of Russian citizenship.
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