Russia’s richest people added $152 billion to their wealth last year, buoyed by high natural resource prices and the recovery from the huge wealth loss they suffered shortly after the start of the Ukraine war, Forbes Russia said.
Russia has 110 official billionaires on the list, 22 more than last year, according to the Russian edition of Forbes, which said their total wealth has risen to $505 billion in 2022 from $353 billion when the list was announced.
Five billionaires gave up their citizenship
The list would have been even longer were it not for five billionaires — DST Global founder Yuri Milner, Revolut founder Nikolay Storonsky, Freedom Finance founder Timur Turlov, and JetBrains co-founders Sergei Dmitriev and Valentin Kipyatkov — gave up their Russian citizenship, according to Forbes.
“Last year’s rating results were also influenced by apocalyptic predictions about the Russian economy,” Forbes said, adding that the total wealth of Russian billionaires in 2021, before the start of the war, was $606 billion.
After President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine on February 24 last year, the West imposed what it considers the most severe sanctions in modern history on Russia’s economy – and some of its wealthiest people – in an attempt to punish Putin for the war .
RUSSIA’S PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting with government officials in the Kremlin last month. He has claimed that the economy has shaken off the sanctions. (Source: Sputnik/Kremlin/Reuters)
Putin said the West is trying to destroy Russia and has repeatedly touted the failure of Western sanctions to destroy Russia’s economy or even prevent Western luxuries – let alone basic parts – from ending up in Russia.
Russia’s economy shrank by 2.1% in 2022 under pressure from Western sanctions but was able to sell oil, metals and other natural resources to world markets, particularly to China, India and the Middle East.
The International Monetary Fund this month raised its forecast for Russia’s growth in 2023 to 0.7% from 0.3%, but lowered its forecast for 2024 to 1.3% from 2.1% and said it also expects that Labor shortages and the exodus of Western companies would hurt the country’s economy.
The price of Ural oil, the lifeblood of the Russian economy, averaged $76.09 per barrel in 2022, up from $69 in 2021. Fertilizer prices have also been high over the past year.
The three richest Russians
Andrei Melnichenko, who has made a fortune in fertilizers, has been listed by Forbes as Russia’s richest man at an estimated $25.2 billion, more than double what he estimated last year. Melnichenko could not be reached for immediate comment on the Forbes ranking.
Vladimir Potanin, president and largest shareholder of Nornickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and refined nickel, has been ranked the second richest in Russia with a fortune of $23.7 billion. Potanin was not immediately available for comment on the Forbes ranking.
Vladimir Lisin, who controls steelmaker NLMK and was ranked Russia’s richest man last year, ranked third in the Forbes Russia list with a fortune of $22.1 billion. Lisin was not immediately available for comment on the Forbes ranking.
Many Russian billionaires see Western sanctions as an inept and even racist tool.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, a small group of tycoons known as the oligarchs built fortunes and persuaded the Kremlin, under the late President Boris Yeltsin, to give them control of some of the world’s largest oil and metals companies.
The privatization deals often propelled the tycoons into the league of the world’s super-rich and earned them the enduring dislike of millions of impoverished Russians.
But under Putin, some of the original oligarchs, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, were stripped of their fortunes, which eventually fell under the influence of state-owned companies, often run by former spies.
New Russian names in the Forbes list include billionaires who have made their money from snack foods, supermarkets, chemicals, building supplies and pharmaceuticals, suggesting that Russian domestic demand has remained strong despite the sanctions.
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