Russian Oligarchs Still Assume They can Avoid Choosing Sides but They are Wrong, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – Russian oligarchs now living in the West assume that they can survive there “using the skills they acquired in Putin’s Russia,” skills that allowed them to do very well without having to give up their Western lifestyles and their Russian wealth, Vladimir Pastukhov says.  

But “that doesn’t work anymore,” and those who don’t recognize this and take sides are going to pay dearly. “Politics has become too public for the backroom deals their approach relied upon. Now. “enormous masses of armed people have come on stage, blood has been shed, and it can’t be dissolved” easily (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=623DF35062358).

Those who have prospered by keeping a foot in both camps must now decide which side they are on. They need to remember the slogan from a Soviet film of the stagnation era: “to betray in time is not to betray but to foresee.” Up to now, Pastukhov says, “no one is interested” and “not a single major business figure in Russia has dared to dissociate himself from the war.”

“But,” the London-based Russian scholar says, “this reflects not so much the cowardice of the Russian business elite but its indestructible swagger and self-confidence.” Those qualities have led its members to lose the ability to “soberly assess their situation. They don’t seem to really understand what is going on now, and so they will pay.”