RedState By streiff | Apr 23, 2022
Very few parts of Russian society have drawn more interest than the so-called “oligarchs.” These are incredibly wealthy men with political connections to Putin’s inner circle because, in the totalitarian kleptocracy that is Russia under Vladimir Putin, if you don’t have political ties to Putin’s inner circle, wealth doesn’t bring you power; it brings you a one-way trip to a Siberian labor camp.
The first generation of Russian oligarchs emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, whose state control over the economy began to loosen under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, or restructuring reforms.
Gorbachev’s successor as president, Boris Yeltsin, then ramped up privatization, seeking to transform Russia with its trove of state assets into a free-market economy — and fast. Yeltsin and the other architects of post-Soviet Russia rapidly loosened state control over prices and property, according to David Hoffman, author of “The Oligarchs” and a contributing editor at The Washington Post.
The government sold swaths of state-owned enterprise — from small restaurants to oil giants — in both rigged auctions and through privatization vouchers. A scramble for the spoils ensued.
This group has largely passed from the scene. Behind them comes a new class of oligarchs who owe everything to Vladimir Putin.
But after Putin became president in 2000, the era of the old guard largely came to an end. Russia’s new leader did not embrace the spirit of perestroika or approve of the rise of new capitalist tycoons.
[Putin] moved to rein in the Russian financiers’ power and consolidate his own. Along the way, he ended up creating his own class of influential elite — the new oligarchs.
In contrast with the older generation, this new class has been more rooted in Russia and less interested in ingratiating themselves with the West, said Timothy Frye, a professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University.
They generally fall into three categories, according to Frye.
First, there are those with long-standing ties to Putin. These individuals have built companies largely on immense state contracts that were both profitable and assigned on a noncompetitive basis. In 2018, for example, Putin opened a $4 billion bridge connecting Russia with Crimea. It was built by a billionaire businessman and construction magnate, Arkady Rotenberg, who also happens to be Putin’s childhood friend and former judo sparring partner.
Second are the business executives who “cut their teeth in Russia in the Putin era,” said Frye, and were appointed by the president to run major state companies. This group includes someone like Igor Sechin, a close ally of Putin who was named chairman of Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. France this month seized Sechin’s 281-foot yacht the Amore Vero (or “true love” in Italian). The United States, Britain and the E.U. have all targeted Sechin for sanctions in recent weeks.
Third, there are the national security hawks — elite security and military hard-liners, some of whose relationships with Putin date back to his years as a K.G.B. agent. While not traditional oligarchs, some of them have leveraged their connections in the security services and “cashed them in,” Frye said.
But being a politically connected billionaire is not all superyachts and scantily clad “models.” It is damned stressful, if not downright dangerous. Since January, at least six Russian oligarchs have committed suicide.
List of Russian oligarchs who have been found dead in mysterious circumstance since Jan, per Newsweek
✔️ Sergey Protosenya
✔️ Vladislav Avaev
✔️ Vasily Melnikov
✔️ Mikhail Watford
✔️ Alexander Tyulyakov
✔️ Leonid Shulmanhttps://t.co/amSoDp4xJM#StandWithUkraine️
— Alex Raufoglu (@ralakbar) April 22, 2022
More:
https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/04/23/6-russian-oligarchs-commit-suicide-in-mysterious-outbreak-of-epstein-syndrome-n554915
