Putin’s tactics to retain the support of Russian billionaires

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of major businesses at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 24, 2022. — Photo caption, Putin summoned business leaders to the Kremlin on the day he ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

- author, Vitali Shevchenko
- To roll, Editor-in-chief of BBC Monitoring Russia
December 28, 2025
Reading time: 6 minutes

During the war against Ukraine, the number of billionaires in Russia reached an all-time high. But in the 25 years that Vladimir Putin has been in power, Russia’s rich and powerful – known as oligarchs – have lost almost all their political influence.

All this is good news for the Russian president. Western sanctions have failed to turn the very rich into opponents, and their carrot-and-stick policies have turned them into silent supporters.

Former billionaire banker Oleg Tinkov knows exactly how the rules of the game work.

The day after he called the war “madness” in an Instagram post, his leaders were contacted by the Kremlin. They were told that Tinkoff Bank, Russia’s second largest bank at the time, would be nationalized unless all ties with its founder were severed.

“I couldn’t argue with the price,” Tinkov told the New York Times. “It was like a hostage: you accept what they offered you. I couldn’t negotiate.”

Within a week, a company linked to Vladimir Potanin – currently Russia’s fifth-richest businessman and a supplier of nickel for fighter jet engines – announced it was buying the bank. It was sold for only 3% of its real value, says Tinkov.

Ultimately, Tinkov lost almost $9 billion of his fortune and left Russia.

Banker Oleg Tinkov, wearing a white baseball cap and gray t-shirt, smiles while standing under a tree. — Photo caption, Oleg Tinkov lost billions and left Russia after criticizing the war against Ukraine.

We are a far cry from the situation before Putin became president.

In the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, some Russians became very wealthy by taking over large, formerly state-owned companies and exploiting the opportunities of their country’s burgeoning capitalism.

Their new wealth brought them influence and power during a time of political turmoil, and they became known as oligarchs.

Russia’s most powerful oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, claimed to have orchestrated Putin’s rise to the presidency in 2000 and, years later, apologized for it: “I did not see in him the future greedy and usurping tyrant, the man who would trample freedom and hinder the development of Russia,” he wrote in 2012.

Berezovsky may have exaggerated his role in this story, but it is a fact that Russian oligarchs were more capable of influencing the highest echelons of power.

Just over a year after his apology, Berezovsky was found dead in mysterious circumstances in exile in the United Kingdom. By this time, the Russian oligarchy was also dead.

Boris Berezovsky dressed in black, in front of a house — Photo caption, Boris Berezovsky went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he died under mysterious circumstances in 2013.

So when Putin gathered Russia’s richest people in the Kremlin, hours after ordering the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, there was little they could do to oppose it, even though they knew their fortunes would suffer.

“I hope that in these new conditions we will continue to work together as well and effectively,” Putin told the group.

A reporter at the meeting described the assembled billionaires as “pale and sleep-deprived.”

The period leading up to the invasion was very bad for Russian billionaires, as was its immediate aftermath.

According to Forbes magazine, as of April 2022, the number of billionaires decreased from 117 to 83 due to war, sanctions and the weakening of the ruble. Collectively, they lost US$263 billion (1.4 trillion reais), or 27% of their wealth on average.

But the years since have shown that there are immense benefits to being part of Putin’s war economy.

Generous war spending boosted economic growth by more than 4% per year in Russia in 2023 and 2024. This was a good thing even for Russia’s ultra-rich who did not make billions directly from defense contracts.

By 2024, more than half of Russia’s billionaires have played a role in military procurement or benefited from the invasion, says Forbes magazine’s Giacomo Tognini.

“That doesn’t count those who are not directly involved but need to have some sort of relationship with the Kremlin. And I think it’s fair to say that anyone who has a business in Russia needs to have a relationship with the government,” he told the BBC.

This year, the largest number of Russian billionaires – 140 – appeared on the Forbes list. Their collective wealth (US$580 billion or R$3.2 trillion) was only US$3 billion (R$16.6 billion) less than the all-time high recorded the year before the invasion.

While allowing his supporters to profit, Putin has systematically punished those who refuse to follow his instructions.

Russians vividly remember what happened to oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was once Russia’s richest man and then spent 10 years in prison after founding a pro-democracy organization in 2001.

Russia's richest man and oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is seen in his cell at the — Photo caption, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the richest man in Russia, but he was arrested and his oil company Yukos was nationalized.

Since the invasion, almost all of Russia’s very rich have remained silent, and the few who publicly opposed it have had to abandon their country and much of their wealth.

Russia’s richest are clearly at the heart of Putin’s war effort, and many of them, including the 37 businessmen summoned to the Kremlin on February 24, 2022, have been targets of Western sanctions.

But if the West wanted to impoverish them and turn them against the Kremlin, it failed, given that their wealth remained and there was no dissent among Russian billionaires.

If any of them had considered defecting to the West with their billions, sanctions made that impossible.

“The West did everything in its power to get Russian billionaires to rally behind the flag,” explains Alexander Kolyandr of the Center for European Political Analysis (CEPA).

“There was no plan, no idea, no clear path for any of them to jump ship. Assets were sanctioned, accounts frozen, assets confiscated. All of this helped Putin mobilize the billionaires, their assets and their money, and use them to support the Russian war economy,” he told the BBC.

The exodus of foreign companies following the invasion of Ukraine created a vacuum that was quickly filled by pro-Kremlin businessmen who were allowed to buy highly profitable assets at low prices.

This has created a new “army of influential and active loyalists,” says Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“Their future well-being depends on the continuation of the confrontation between Russia and the West,” while their greatest fear is the return of their former owner, she said.

In 2024 alone, 11 new billionaires will appear in Russia, according to Giacomo Tognini.

The Russian leader has maintained a firm grip on the country’s key influential figures despite the war and Western sanctions – and, in some ways, because of them.