Oleg Tinkov is 54 years old and not just anyone. In 2006, he founded Tinkoff Bank, which quickly became Russia’s third-largest bank and the country’s largest credit card issuer, serving 20 million customers. He chose the Instagram social network to deliver the harshest criticism of the war in Ukraine ever made by a Russian oligarch since its inception.
The words are blunt: “I don’t see the slightest benefit from this insane war,” writes Tinkov. Then the Russian oligarch continues in the same key: “Innocent people and soldiers are dying. The Russian generals realized they have a crappy army. This country is stuck in nepotism and obsequiousness (…) 90% of Russians are against the war”. Tinkov is a colorful character, quite iconoclastic and suffering from leukemia. If he allows himself such freedom of expression, it is because he lives abroad. He is also the target of British financial sanctions because he is often in London. He had criticized the invasion from the start, but this time the accusation is much harsher. He also urges the West to “give Putin a way out to save face and stop the slaughter.”
Not many Russian billionaires have openly opposed the conflict. They did it less vehemently than Tinkov. We can quote Mikhail Fridman, another billionaire, owner of financial fund Letter One. From the end of February he wrote to his staff to express his opposition to the war: “This bloodshed must stop, writes Fridmann, this crisis will devastate two sister nations.” Others simply called for peace or criticized the economic situation. Oleg Deripaska, also a billionaire and founder of aluminum giant Rusal, denounced “state capitalism in Russia”. He called for a change in economic policy. And then there is the particular case of Roman Abramovich, the former Chelsea football club boss, who was once approached by Ukraine to play a mediator. But the Russian oligarchs mostly remain discreet or show solidarity with the Kremlin.
As for the sanctions against all these Russian oligarchs, they are increasing as the weeks go by. Between the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, more than 2,000 names have been identified and are subject to various sanctions. But as a recent study by Radio Frances Cellule Investigation has shown, sanctions regimes are somewhat troubling. Westerners attack the most conspicuous, like mansions and yachts, which are confiscated or immobilized. We have seen it with Igor Setchine’s yacht in La Ciotat in France or that of the extremely wealthy Alicher Ousmanov in Hamburg in Germany. Your private property is therefore targeted. On the other hand, their companies are often spared, perhaps for fear of chain effects in certain markets, such as those for iron or aluminum. And then, of course, there are all the cases of evasion or flight: capital shifts to tax havens, exile to the Persian Gulf, particularly the United Arab Emirates, which has become the oligarchs’ favorite haven.