The casualties or victims tied to the Russia vs. Ukraine war goes beyond the battlefield. Before the chaos started back in February, there are claims that business oligarchs were tricked into making it look like they were supporting the plans of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As a result, these businesses have paid the price with most being sanctioned for allegedly backing Putin’s plans. However, some are now claiming in a report by the New York Times that they were deceived into making it look that way.
It appears that most oligarchs were not aware of what Putin had truly intended to do. Some allegedly only found out on February 24, the time when the invasion was already underway.
"If everyone around you is telling you for 22 years that you are a super-genius, then you will start to believe that this is who you are," Oleg Tinkov, a former Russian banking mogul who turned on Putin this year, told the outlet. "Russian businesspeople, Russian officials, the Russian people — they saw a czar in him. He just went nuts."
Such left many frustrated, dragged and sanctioned by Western nations for their believed alliance with Putin.
But on the day when the war started, several businessmen were set to meet with Putin. The Russian leader claimed that he didn’t have a choice in invading Ukraine.
This left businessmen like Andrey Melnichenko, in shock. However, he along with several other business moguls had little to no choice since the damage had already been done.
Russian oligarch’s ended up seeing their assets frozen and some were banned from traveling to other countries.
The situation was so bad that some allegedly pleaded with the West, offering Ukrainian money in exchange for being excluded from the heavy sanctions, Business Insider reported.
"What he thinks about obsessively, and quite possibly falsely," has shaped "the biography of the whole world," Konstantin Remchukov, a newspaper editor from Moscow, quipped.
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