The war in Ukraine is costing Russian oligarchs billions

The war in Ukraine is not just bombs and battles. One of the European Union's first measures was a commercial embargo of goods and capital of Russian origin in all EU countries.

This measure, which might seem secondary and ineffective, was a severe blow to the Russian oligarchs who saw their real estate, yachts, planes, or funds in European banks frozen and far from their control.

With the war extending for over a year, the losses of these billionaires start to add up to billions of dollars and keep growing each week.

According to the specialized site Visual Capitalist, the ten wealthiest people in Russia lost around 38,000 million dollars in 2022 due to the sanctions and blockades of Europe and its allies.

That is only a third of the total amount of losses. According to the site, the 22 greatest Russian fortunes have lost over 90.4 billion dollars since 2022.

In Russia, power and money have been linked to politics since the end of the 20th century. Russian oligarchs have tight links to the Kremlin.

For example, Vladimir Potanin (in the photo), who had the highest fortune in Russia in 2022 ($27 billion, according to Forbes), was the country's deputy prime minister along with Boris Yeltsin and is close to Vladimir Putin.

According to the Visual Capitalist site, Potanin lost 1.5 billion dollars in 2022 and the beginning of 2023. But he had luck. Some of his peers have lost far more.

Viktor Vekselberg (pictured), the majority shareholder of UC Rusal, the country's largest aluminum company, has lost more than 60% of his assets since the war began: 1.3 billion dollars.

In addition, the EU has seized some of  Vekselberg's properties. According to Forbes, the Spanish police and the FBI blocked his superyacht in Palma de Mallorca in April 2022.

Perhaps the most notorious case was that of Roman Abramovich (in the photo), one of the closest to Vladimir Putin, who saw his fortune go from 14,5 to 6,9 billion dollars during the first year of the war.

The Russian tycoon was forced to sell Chelsea FC, the Premier League team he proudly owned for almost 20 years, from 2003 to 2022.

The loss of assets caused some oligarchs to criticize the situation and rise against Vladimir Putin, asking him to end the war.

Tycoons like Vasily Melnikov, Ravil Maganov (in the photo next to Putin), Mikhail Watford, or Alexander Tyulyakov raised their voices; months later, all of them were found dead.

However, the Russian economy is maintained, among other things, by immense internal consumption, so some officials favor isolation.

Some oligarchs have effectively benefited from the isolation. That is the case for phosphate-based fertilizer tycoon Andrey Guryev, who saw his fortune grow by $2.1 billion to $10.1 billion during the war.