More Russian Billionaires Speak Out Against Putin’s War On Ukraine

Additional reporting by Forbes Russia

As the U.S. and Europe ratchet up sanctions on Russia’s wealthiest—including a promise to “hunt down” their yachts and mansions—oligarchs who amassed their fortunes by remaining loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin are beginning to speak out against his invasion of Ukraine.

None have directly implicated Putin, but the public declarations calling for peace are an unprecedented hint of dissent against the autocratic leader. 

Ukrainian native Mikhail Fridman, the founder of Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, became the first oligarch to speak out – apparently inadvertently – against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion orders, according to the Financial Times. “I do not make political statements, I am a businessman with responsibilities to my many thousands of employees in Russia and Ukraine. I am convinced however that war can never be the answer. This crisis will cost lives and damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years,” he wrote in an email to staffers of his private equity firm LetterOne that later became public. In it, he cited his own background—Fridman lived in Western Ukraine until he was 17. Both of his parents are Ukrainian citizens, who live in Lviv, which he called his “favorite city.” Lviv is one of the cities targeted by the Russian military.

The European Union placed sanctions on Fridman personally Monday, which included freezing his assets and a travel ban. His business partner, Alexey Kuzmichev, told Forbes Russia in an interview that he agrees with Fridman, but added “I am not going to make any political statements.”

Oleg Deripaska, who built his fortune on Russian raw materials and is Boris Yeltsin’s former son-in-law, similarly called for an end to the war in a Sunday Telegram post, asking for peace. “The world is very important! Negotiations need to start as soon as possible!,” he wrote. On Monday, he called the rapidly deteriorating economic situation in Russia a “real crisis” and urged greater economic reforms. “It is necessary to change the economic policy, to end all this state capitalism,” he wrote.

Then on Monday, the same day he was hit with EU sanctions,  Russia’s richest person, steel baron Alexei Mordashov,  called the fighting a “tragedy of two fraternal peoples” and said that they must do everything necessary to get out of the conflict to stop the bloodshed. “It is terrible that Ukrainians and Russians are dying, people are suffering hardships, the economy is collapsing. We must do everything necessary so that a way out of this conflict is found in the very near future and the bloodshed stops in order to help the affected people restore normal life,” the billionaire said.

“I have absolutely nothing to do with the current geopolitical tensions. I don’t understand why sanctions have been imposed against us,” he added.

Other Russian billionaires have also called for an end to the war. Billionaire Oleg Tinkov, the founder of Tinkoff Bank who is currently undergoing cancer treatment, said that his illness has brought him some perspective about the fragility of human life. “Innocent people are dying in Ukraine now, every day, this is unthinkable and unacceptable! States should spend money on treating people, on research to defeat cancer, and not on war,” he said.

Dmitry and Igor Bukhman, the brothers behind video game developer Playrix, which makes free mobile-app games such as Homescapes and Fishdom, said they would give each of their 4,000 employees an extra paycheck and emphasized that violence “can never be the solution to a problem.”

“It is difficult to remain silent in the current situation, because what is happening is a great tragedy for everyone, including our company. It was hard to even imagine,” the brothers wrote in a Facebook post.

Igor Rybakov, the billionaire co-owner of roofing and insulation producer Technonicol, said on his YouTube channel last week that he understands “the point of no return has been passed and this will be a big story that will touch the lives of millions of people. It’s sad.” At the same time, he told viewers not to panic and to buy depreciated securities of Russian companies. “All this pisses me off. I want all this uncertainty to end,” he added, according to Forbes Russia.

The significance of these statements is great. It’s been nearly two decades since Putin critic, and then Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was thrown in jail for alleged tax evasion after he funded opposition parties against Putin, and his fortune seized. (He denied all charges). Since then few if any oligarchs have dared oppose Putin. Khodorkovsky himself has been urging Russians to take to the streets, saying on Instagram that “the war against Ukraine must be stopped at any cost.”

It’s impossible to know whether these billionaires are  sincere in their pleas to end the fighting, or if they’re a response to impending sanctions or simply a collapsing economy that is in freefall. 

Still there are many who have yet to speak out.  Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of English soccer team Chelsea, handed “stewardship” (but not ownership)  of the team to a charitable foundation–a largely meaningless gesture– and hasn’t taken a side publicly, but was reportedly involved in peace talks in Belarus on Monday after the Ukrainian government asked for his help. (His daughter Sofia Abramovich reportedly put an anti-war post on social media, according to U.K. journalist Carole Cadwalladr).  The rest of the dozens of Russian billionaires, including several sanctioned by the EU on Monday including Facebook’s early investor Alisher Usmanov, remain silent. 

With reporting from Forbes Russia, a licensed publication of Forbes Media.