Vladimir Putin’s government has launched an aggressive campaign to nationalize the assets of Konstantin Strukov, one of Russia’s richest men and the owner of the country’s largest gold mining company. The move marks a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s efforts to extract wealth from within its own elite as the financial toll of the war in Ukraine deepens.

Strukov, whose fortune is estimated at over $3.5 billion, is the founder of Yuzhuralzoloto—a gold empire built over decades with strong ties to the Kremlin. But on July 5, his private jet was grounded by Russian authorities as it prepared to leave for Turkey. His passport was reportedly seized, and the aircraft barred from departing.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 hours ago

    tax the rich! (slight /s)

    what i’m wondering is:

    who exactly wanted this war? i.e., i guess it was not a single-person decision. probably a number of oligarchs are behind it because they think they can profit from either the conflict or the outcome of it.

    everybody knows that wars are hella expensive. i guess most wars are decided by economic factors, i.e. who can stay solvent longer. what did the oligarchs think would happen to their wealth due to the war?

    • Tryenjer@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      If most of them are as smart and lucid as Musk, they won’t learn anything.

      US billionaires think they can control Trump, and that’s very likely true. The worst is yet to come for these rich guys when someone who can truly reverse the power dynamics and thus rule them with an iron fist, as well as the common people, takes the throne.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Trump cannot be controlled, everything is purely transactional with him. The moment he gains more from taking businesses by force, thats what he will do.

        Trust and deals have no meaning to him. This is a theif without honor.

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          He can be controlled for as long as you have access. He bends to the will of the nearest person like a weed blowing in the wind.

  • oppy1984@lemdro.id
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    12 hours ago

    Somebody didn’t watch Rules for Rulers, keep your elite happy or they’ll come together and turn on you.

    Fingers crossed.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    This is a pretty good example of why I say even millinoaires and billionaires should support a functional democractic society with taxation and regulation and social safety nets. Its the old penny wise and pound foolish. Getting a sliver more and a sliver more and then you lose it all because the rule of law was thrown out long ago. It won’t necessarily take that long to. At a certain point it could happen at any time. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t.

    • vivalapivo@lemmy.today
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      11 hours ago

      Rich people live under the fear of losing it all. As sharing is synonymous with losing to them, no one wants it and everyone is caught in this loop.

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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        8 hours ago

        I’m becoming convinced it’s an actual mental disease, or at least grossly maladaptive

            • vivalapivo@lemmy.today
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              5 hours ago

              Some adaptation pretty human mechanism which looks unnatural because it’s not us who experience it although given the same circumstances we would do the same

              • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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                3 hours ago

                I see right, yeah, it’s the conditions social and material that give rise to the “disorder” whereas if we fix the conditions, it just evaporates. Like abolishing slavery or private property.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      12 hours ago

      Smaller scale millionaires perhaps. Once they go multinational, it becomes very difficult to significantly harm them even if one country decides to dispossess their business. This has already happened to large corporations that exist today through nationalization at various places and points in time. E.g. Shell after Venezuelan oil nationalization.

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        A billionaire cannot exist in 2 countries at the same time. It doesn’t matter if his company is multinational, he isn’t.

        If you jail that billionaire, which is not hard as a state if said billionaire resides in your country, you can “convince” him to give even assets in foreign countries.

        That’s why they removed his passport.

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          4 hours ago

          Right but how do you make most countries want to arrest them? We currently don’t have a setup allowing for this if no international criminal offenses are involved. It only happens if the billionaire resides mostly in an “authoritarian” country where they could get “arbitrarily” arrested. The rest of the world isn’t currently setup to do this. I’m not saying it can’t be setup or shouldn’t be setup like that.

          • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            The comment you replied to originally was talking about why billionaires should support a democratic society.

            If the society is not democratic, it would be authoritarian. Therefore what I explained could happen.

            • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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              3 minutes ago

              Yes. Of course what you said could happen. My point is that in the current status quo there’s still plenty of non-authoritarian countries and billionaires are still operating on easy-to-jump-ship basis when they destroy one democracy or another for increased profit.

      • HubertManne@piefed.social
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        5 hours ago

        Not if its the home nation. Shell was a us company in venezuela but if the same thing happened in the US the owners would be lucky to get out of the country with what they could carry and if they worked fast enough maybe they could have a small fraction of what they used to.

      • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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        10 hours ago

        That requires rule of law to actually work. Putin is well known to murder problematic oligarchs. Combined with some proper blackmail, that tends to work very well.

    • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      This all depends on the people born into wealth being reasonable people.

      Most are unhinged psychopaths or nepo babies with too much ego.

      Which is why wealth needs to be forcefully redistributed, they won’t do it voluntarily.

      • Triasha@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Wealth is actually being redistributed quite a bit in Russia right now. The oligarchs are paying for the war and “the people” are getting much higher wages either in the military or because of labor shortages.

        It’s not great, what with all the death and destruction. But Russians gini coefficient is going down fast.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      It’s funny to me that they think they’ll be special, every single time. “They won’t throw me out the window for my fortune!”

      • Saleh@feddit.org
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        23 hours ago

        Well, in the case of Nazi Germany it worked spectacularly well. Many of Germanys most rich people are inheritors to industrial fortunes that got unimaginably rich with selling weapons to the Nazi army and using forced labor from the concentration camps. The families Quandt/Klatten (BMW) and Porsche/Piech (Porsche,VW, Audi…) come to mind directly. The Krupps are also still in the game although they have gambled a lot of money away over the past decades

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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          10 hours ago

          Never ask Mr. Kühne where his family’s fortune came from, or what their most popular cargo was in the 40s.

        • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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          17 hours ago

          It is worth mentioning that in the case of krupps they made a lot of money selling arms in WWI and they purchased newspapers to sell the war to increase profits.

          Own all the newspapers… Propaganda… Seems familiar.

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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          23 hours ago

          Hitler didn’t stay in power long enough to take everything though. (my bad, it was longer than I thought). Also, they probably toed the line and didn’t piss him off so they could make lots of money. They weren’t special either.

    • dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Nah. They all play this game; they all know the risk. It’s all about gaining leverage and the correct alignment at the right time.

      He probably knows it’s happening and sacrifices himself for his family and assets.

    • mgnome@piefed.social
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      22 hours ago

      Some folks became billionaires in Russia simply because they were friends of Putin though.

      These may truly be protected class. Everyone else though - out the window as soon as they outlive their usefulness.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        15 hours ago

        russian oligarchs are only useful as a personal piggy bank for putin, he distributes the wealth around and then siezes it back down the line.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Usually they are. Dictators typically gain and keep power by appeasing the wealthy and powerful.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Not keep power, just to get it. Then they dump them once they’ve got it. See Giuliani, Musk, My Pillow guy, Herman Cain, etc.

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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          24 hours ago

          I mean… No - to keep it. “No man rules alone.” They need key supporters. However simply “being rich” is not enough.