Vladimir Putin’s government has launched an aggressive campaign to nationalize the assets of Konstantin Strukov, one of Russia’s richest men and the owner of the country’s largest gold mining company. The move marks a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s efforts to extract wealth from within its own elite as the financial toll of the war in Ukraine deepens.
Strukov, whose fortune is estimated at over $3.5 billion, is the founder of Yuzhuralzoloto—a gold empire built over decades with strong ties to the Kremlin. But on July 5, his private jet was grounded by Russian authorities as it prepared to leave for Turkey. His passport was reportedly seized, and the aircraft barred from departing.
Soon these oligarchs won’t even own a window to jump out of
What a great way to show the inefficiency of sanctions! /s
He’ll soon be struck off.
And let this be a lesson to US Billionaires.
Somebody didn’t watch Rules for Rulers, keep your elite happy or they’ll come together and turn on you.
Fingers crossed.
You remember those old “In Soviet Russia” backwards jokes? It’s like that, but unironically.
Putin has consolidated power to the point that he doesn’t serve at the behest of Russian billionaires; they only exist due to his whims - and they can cease to exist just as quickly.
‘Blowout’ by Rachel Maddow touches on this, it’s an interesting read/listen.
Not if you have a loyal, competent police apparatus to round up anyone who dares to step out of line.
Strukov is about to suffer the effects of defenestration.
It’s giving Elon-Trump vibes
This is a pretty good example of why I say even millinoaires and billionaires should support a functional democractic society with taxation and regulation and social safety nets. Its the old penny wise and pound foolish. Getting a sliver more and a sliver more and then you lose it all because the rule of law was thrown out long ago. It won’t necessarily take that long to. At a certain point it could happen at any time. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.
Rich people live under the fear of losing it all. As sharing is synonymous with losing to them, no one wants it and everyone is caught in this loop.
Smaller scale millionaires perhaps. Once they go multinational, it becomes very difficult to significantly harm them even if one country decides to dispossess their business. This has already happened to large corporations that exist today through nationalization at various places and points in time. E.g. Shell after Venezuelan oil nationalization.
That requires rule of law to actually work. Putin is well known to murder problematic oligarchs. Combined with some proper blackmail, that tends to work very well.
Or you end being shoot on the street and the entire world celebrates it.
Hamilton Nolan has made a similar argument
This all depends on the people born into wealth being reasonable people.
Most are unhinged psychopaths or nepo babies with too much ego.
Which is why wealth needs to be forcefully redistributed, they won’t do it voluntarily.
Wealth is actually being redistributed quite a bit in Russia right now. The oligarchs are paying for the war and “the people” are getting much higher wages either in the military or because of labor shortages.
It’s not great, what with all the death and destruction. But Russians gini coefficient is going down fast.
a functional democratic society would not have billionaires and hopefully millionaires neither
A functional society doesn’t need money.
Money implies poverty.
Strukov’s company has denied the incident entirely, stating that he was in Moscow on the day in question and calling the reports “disinformation.” But court documents confirm that a judge had already banned him and his family from leaving the country, and government agencies moved quickly to enforce it.
I will now recommend the Sad Oligarch podcast. Short series on the mysterious deaths of Russian oligarchs in the last few years.
A friend of a friend is the daughter of a Russian oligarch. It was a messy situation in which she was at risk of being drawn into the politics, even though her dad was an asshole who she would’ve been glad to see defenestrated. I only know the surface level info, but it sounds like a fucked up situation in many ways
defenestration podcast.
Billionaires siding with dictators thinking they’ll be protected?
It’s funny to me that they think they’ll be special, every single time. “They won’t throw me out the window for my fortune!”
Well, in the case of Nazi Germany it worked spectacularly well. Many of Germanys most rich people are inheritors to industrial fortunes that got unimaginably rich with selling weapons to the Nazi army and using forced labor from the concentration camps. The families Quandt/Klatten (BMW) and Porsche/Piech (Porsche,VW, Audi…) come to mind directly. The Krupps are also still in the game although they have gambled a lot of money away over the past decades
Never ask Mr. Kühne where his family’s fortune came from, or what their most popular cargo was in the 40s.
It is worth mentioning that in the case of krupps they made a lot of money selling arms in WWI and they purchased newspapers to sell the war to increase profits.
Own all the newspapers… Propaganda… Seems familiar.
Hitler didn’t stay in power long enough to take everything though. (my bad, it was longer than I thought). Also, they probably toed the line and didn’t piss him off so they could make lots of money. They weren’t special either.
Leopards Throwing Out Of Windows Party
defenestration
Window Inspectors Against Workplace Safety party
Some folks became billionaires in Russia simply because they were friends of Putin though.
These may truly be protected class. Everyone else though - out the window as soon as they outlive their usefulness.
russian oligarchs are only useful as a personal piggy bank for putin, he distributes the wealth around and then siezes it back down the line.
Nah. They all play this game; they all know the risk. It’s all about gaining leverage and the correct alignment at the right time.
He probably knows it’s happening and sacrifices himself for his family and assets.
Usually they are. Dictators typically gain and keep power by appeasing the wealthy and powerful.
Not keep power, just to get it. Then they dump them once they’ve got it. See Giuliani, Musk, My Pillow guy, Herman Cain, etc.
I mean… No - to keep it. “No man rules alone.” They need key supporters. However simply “being rich” is not enough.
Ooooh, gringo broligarchs, cast your eyes upon all the fucks left to give, and see that $Trump wallet may also be empty.
This is the oligarchy that American technocrats want to recreate at home. Owning things is dependent on being alive. Maybe paying a couple percent extra on taxes is worth it.
The USA elite should take notice. It’ll happen to them too. Trump will ruin them if things get between himself and them.
It’s all ready happening between him and Musk unless that’s all kayfabe
Neither of them has the chops to pull off such an act. They’re genuinely horrible idiots.
I’m really excited for Zuckerfuck to get Trump’d. Unlike Musk, he’ll do it in the most pathetic way… Raging like a little nerd by writing private temper tantrum emails and everyone in his circle comforts him because he pays them 7-figures.
Tbf, musk’s way is also pretty pathetic.
You mean covfefe?
Trump Admin using national security as a pre-tense to take control over X/Twitter away from Musk, and effectively killing it in favour of Truth Social
If Trump takes Facebook from Zuck i will lmfao and simultaneously weep for humanity.
it’s so much better when you take from the rich, rather than taking from the poor like we do in the united states.
putin is a trillionaire just reclaiming his ill gotten gains from his oligarchs.
They take from the poor in Russia too though. The rich aren’t the ones being fed into the meat grinder in Ukraine.
specifically the poors of ethnic russians, not the white ones from moscow and st petersberg.
the difference is that the united states ONLY takes from the poor, while the russians take from both rich AND poor.
Call me crazy, but people might take ML users stand against fascism more seriously if they did literally anything with it besides just rooting for a different Imperial kleptocracy built on violence.
the only thing that’s crazy is westerners refusing to learn from the large body of independent evidence that defines marxists/leninists in a similar manner that climate deniers refuse to learn from the large body of climate science evidence.
Did you have a stroke writing this??? Wtf
Defending a violent, Imperial, kleptoctacy is not Marxism. Lying about how you are being criticized is not a genius plan to avoid the consequences of what you said. Can you communicate in anything other than buzz words or am I talking to a chat bot?
That’s not what I said.
I would recommend that you reread the comment before it gets deleted by the liberal mods in this community; but I already know that your ilk doesn’t respond well to reality.
How do you not get exhausted from being so incredibly wrong all the time?
I’m powered by the fact that liberals like you get it wrong SIGNIFICANTLY more often. Lol
the difference is that the united states ONLY takes from the poor
Takes as in seizes; nevertheless I admire how you twisted to the point to better comport w your world view. Lol
Trust me the US will start taking from wealthy Americans as well soon enough. Once authoritarian groups burn enough Bridges and goodwill. They always have to scapegoat another group.
It’s pretty hilarious how so many people think that the boot isn’t the problem. The flavor of it is all that matters.
It’s funny because $3.5bln is nothing when trying to cover the war effort, but it’ll spark a massive distrust in the Kremlin’s inner circle, which is basically the only group of people that can realistically threaten Putin’s very life.
I’m still waiting for these fuckers to finally grow some balls.
Nah. Russia will implode itself on its own even without resistance. As if Russia never learned anything that autocratic control over economy never works, because their political culture is too corrupt to function effectively.
Francis Fukuyama, as wrong as he was about the end of history, is still correct that dictatorships eventually collapse because they surround themselves with yes men who are too detached from reality. The invasion of Ukraine is the beginning of the end for Putin. It is only a matter of time.
the beginning of the end for Putin. It is only a matter of time.
With his age, he has all biological means to fuck around and never find out. I believe the legacy talk captures him, but the fact he himself would never meet any pushback makes many of his decisions way easier than if he was 40yo and had another 40+ to his rule. Any other minute of him fucking up foreign countries with a weaponised influence, not to say direct warfare, is a minute too much.
He could’ve tried to revive the country, and he got an easy start in the 00s, but he chosed to gamble it instead.
early on the war, and probably now he looked like he was on corticosteroids because of the moon face in many photos, hes probably hiding some health condition,.
He could’ve tried to revive the country, and he got an easy start in the 00s, but he chosed to gamble it instead.
That’s not why people become dictators. Not to mention that in autocratic environments heads of states don’t really feel the consequences of their actions, and don’t really mind throwing millions of their own people under the bus to bring some ephemeral former glory back.
If you nationalize your industry, you should be doing it to reform and re-gear it to support your country.
Clearly, Putin here is not interested in making it good for the country, but that his petty war has him cash-strapped and needs to forcibly ‘borrow’ his billionaire friends’ assets.
