It seemed impossible to imagine just over 10 days ago, but the horror inflicted on Ukraine has plunged the country into a biblical Armageddon with an end too frightening to imagine. If indeed there ever is an end to the suffering of the wretched of the earth when titans unleash their wrath.
In 10 days the stakes escalated exponentially. The danger streaked into the stratosphere after a fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine after it was shelled and then seized by Russian troops. Zaporizhzhia is Europe's largest nuclear plant.
World leaders accused Russia of endangering the safety of an entire continent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the nuclear plant attack could cause catastrophe for all of Europe: “You know the word Chernobyl.”
Ironically, Mikhail Gorbachev believed it was the Soviet state’s attempts to cover up the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that caused the most fundamental crack in the Soviet Union and led to its dissolution. As the Soviet president who oversaw the collapse of the red empire he would know.
Your country will pay dearly because it will end up as an isolated country, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time
— Emmanuel Macron to Vladimir Putin
Despite having launched perestroika the year before, Soviet authorities initially went into default mode, attempting a cover-up. It was only when Scandinavia detected worryingly high levels of radiation that the Soviets were forced to reveal the scale of the Chernobyl disaster.
On the first day of their 2022 invasion, Russian forces took control of Chernobyl, situated in northern Ukraine. Will the reckless opacity of the 1980s be repeated in some form 36 years later?
After one of his seemingly futile calls with President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron warned “the worst is yet to come” and said Putin aimed to take control of all of Ukraine.
“Your country will pay dearly because it will end up as an isolated country, weakened and under sanctions for a very long time,” Macron told Putin, according to a French official, who added that Macron “called on Vladimir Putin to not lie to himself”. The 90-minute exchange failed to deliver a diplomatic breakthrough.
Sanctions by the US and European nations against Putin personally are “exceedingly rare”, in the words of the US Treasury, and put him in the company of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and another execrable chum, Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko was the only legislator in Soviet Belarus to vote against his nation’s independence from Russia in 1991.
In May last year he ordered a fighter jet to intercept a commercial airliner bound for Lithuania that was carrying one of his self-exiled opponents, journalist Raman Pratasevich. The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, carrying some 170 passengers, was forced to divert to Minsk and Pratasevich was arrested.
Meanwhile the International Criminal Court (ICC) is investigating possible crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine after an unprecedented number of countries backed the move. One accusation is that Russia has been using “vacuum bombs” in dense areas with many civilians. The bomb sucks oxygen from the air to trigger a huge explosion and is known as “a poor man’s nuclear weapon”.
This does beg the question of why the international community was not similarly galvanised into action in the aftermath of the Iraq war
Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, said he would begin work “as rapidly as possible” to look for possible crimes against humanity or genocide committed in Ukraine.
This does beg the question of why the international community was not similarly galvanised into action in the aftermath of the Iraq war, launched with the chimera of righteousness and a conjuror’s bag of tricks.
Why have there been no sanction, no condemnation or consequences for the puppet-masters-in-chief of that invasion, which was based on a cynical, orchestrated lie?
War correspondent Martin Woollacott, who covered the fall of Saigon, called the Vietnam war a mistake and a crime — “because it was undertaken so lightly, pursued so brutally and abandoned so perfidiously”.
The same could be said about the invasion of Ukraine. As bombs pound cities and Ukrainians are forced to flee, Russian oligarchs have become the human faces of Russia’s morally bankrupt regime, suppurating with decay and corruption. The world bays for justice.
In a darkly satirical sketch this week Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin wrote that it wasn't the children killed in war or starving refugees that were keeping oligarchs awake at night. It was the prospect of having their superyachts confiscated as countries moved to seize their assets and freeze their dollars that terrified them.
The gaudy, oversized floating bauble has become a requisite accessory for any oligarch worth his salt mine.
The oligarchs, wrote Levin, were “petrified about what might happen to said yachts as a result of Russia invading Ukraine, in the same way that a normal person might be terrified about what might happen to their actual human children during war. But in this case, we’re talking about inanimate objects. Shiny, expensive inanimate objects, but inanimate objects nevertheless!”
Russian billionaires have lost tens of billions of dollars since the invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many of their assets, yachts can be sailed to friendly waters.
Vagit Alekperov, the billionaire chair of Russian energy giant Lukoil, promptly sailed his yacht from Barcelona to Montenegro which has no extradition treaty with the US. The Galactica Super Nova reportedly features a 6m glass-bottomed swimming pool with a waterfall, a touch-and-go helipad, an elevator and a large beach club.
The price? If you have to ask you'll never be able to afford it, tovarish.
Russian billionaire and raw-materials magnate Oleg Deripaska, who has called for a peace deal to end the Ukraine war, wasn't taking any chances with his yacht, Clio. It reportedly departed Sri Lanka weeks ago for the Maldives, which also does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
France this week seized a yacht linked to the CEO of Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, in the Mediterranean port of La Ciotat. Sechin has been described in Russian media as “Darth Vader”. The 85m Amore Vero has a swimming pool that converts into a helicopter pad among other “F**k you, I’m rich” features.
Meanwhile, Putin’s reported own superyacht “abruptly” left Hamburg earlier last month before finishing repairs. US Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted: “Putin, a multibillionaire, is the poster boy for greed and oligarchy. Maybe, before starting a war that could kill thousands and displace millions, he might worry more about the people of Ukraine and Russia and less about his precious superyacht.”
Figuring out Putin's net worth is 'probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting'
— Forbes magazine
Although Putin is believed to hold billions of dollars in personal wealth, Forbes magazine says figuring out his net worth is “probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting”.
There is no paper trail of his assets — mostly property — which are hidden behind complex financial schemes organised by his confidantes, according to a 2016 “Panama Papers” report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
These include such friends as Sergei Roldugin, a concert cellist from St Petersburg who, as a young man, introduced Putin to his former wife, Lydmilla, and became godfather to their first daughter, Maria.
On paper, the Russian leader looks like an ordinary bureaucrat. In 2018, Putin submitted an official income declaration that shows he owns a 74m² apartment in St Petersburg, along with two Soviet-era cars and an off-road truck. The Kremlin says his annual income is about $140,000 (R2.1m).
“Putin's visible watch collection is worth multiples of his official salary,” Bill Browder, an investor in Russia who became a fierce critic of Putin, told CNN in 2018. “The wealth came as a result of extortion and massive theft from state funds.”
Putin is rumoured to be the owner of a beautiful 17,650m² mansion atop a cliff overlooking the Black Sea. This coastal property is reputed as the largest private residence in the country and serves as his private palace, called “Putin’s Country Cottage”.
According to Fortune magazine the estate is Putin’s playland, boasting frescoed ceilings, a marble swimming pool surrounded by statues of Greek gods, a 2,500m² guest house, spas with traditional steam baths, an amphitheatre, ice hockey rink, a Vegas-style casino, a nightclub equipped with stripper poles, and much more.
The Kremlin denies Putin’s ownership of the palace, saying it belongs to a wealthy businessman. But, according to Fortune, Russian analysts say no private businessman could have a property that is guarded by Russia's federal security service and has a no-fly zone over it.
Some of the claims almost sound too fanciful to be true and there is no independent verification of his wealth. Apart from the Black Sea mansion, Putin supposedly has 19 other houses and 700 cars. Also a collection of 58 aircraft and helicopters including a $716m dollar plane called “The Flying Kremlin” that has a toilet made of gold. (Seriously, comrade?)
Browder, in testimony to the US Senate judiciary committee in 2017, said Putin was worth $200bn, a fortune amassed mostly after a Moscow court jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 for fraud and tax evasion.
“After Khodorkovsky's conviction, the other oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin's answer was, '50%'. He wasn't saying 50% for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50% for Putin,” he claimed.
Economic sanctions have made at least some of the oligarchs uncomfortable enough to demand Putin stop the war immediately. “Peace is the priority. Negotiations must start ASAP,” Deripaska tweeted last Sunday.
Mikhail Fridman, whose Alfa Bank was slapped with US sanctions, said in a letter: “This crisis will cost lives and damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years. While a solution seems frighteningly far off, I can only join those whose fervent desire is for the bloodshed to end.”
The US justice department has announced the creation of a team, “Task Force KleptoCapture”, to go after oligarchs who have aided Putin in his invasion of Ukraine.
London, also known as Londongrad, has become notorious as the rainy place for shady people
London, also known as Londongrad, has become notorious as the rainy place for shady people, a city that has long tolerated foreigners with vast wealth and dodgy origins.
Oligarch Roman Abramovich announced this week he was selling Chelsea Football Club, which he’s owned for almost two decades, and his London properties are up for sale.
Igor Shuvalov, a former Russian deputy prime minister who chairs Russia’s state development bank, is also said to be a London property owner. He was named in the British House of Commons as owning two flats in Westminster, bought for an estimated £11m (R224m).
On Wednesday Labour leader Keir Starmer said the only reason Shuvalov was known to be the real owner of the flats was because it had been revealed by the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Experts say enforcing sanctions on the tycoons won't be simple.
“If you're a Russian oligarch floating on your yacht in the Indian Ocean, most of your money's already going to not be in your own name,” Alison Jimenez, president of litigation consulting firm Dynamic Securities Analytics told The Guardian.
“You're going to have the opaque layering of shell corporations with dummy people standing in for you. You can seize the boat, you can seize the plane, but they have money stashed all over the globe. If you manage to capture 75% of it, they're still going to be more wealthy than everyone else in the world.”
Meanwhile in Ukraine people bleed.
• Sources: The Guardian, CNN Business, Fortune , Forbes magazine, Vanity Fair, New York Times
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.