Russian billionaire calls for ‘cowards’ in Moscow elite to oppose invasion

Receive free Oleg Tinkov updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Oleg Tinkov news every morning.

The first Russian billionaire to have western sanctions against him removed has said he hopes the decision will encourage the “cowards” within Moscow’s elite to speak out against Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Oleg Tinkov, who successfully challenged UK sanctions against him this week, told the Financial Times that Russian oligarchs would be inspired to oppose the war if the west was willing to lift the restrictions.

“A mistake was made. Now they’ve fixed it,” Tinkov said in an interview on Friday. “But that’s good for them, because they can show other Russian businessmen — who are united around Putin thanks to sanctions — that you can make a statement and leave Russia for the civilised world.”

A rare self-made billionaire who styled himself after Richard Branson and secured a statement of support from the Virgin founder for his sanctions challenge, Tinkov has long been an outlier in the Kremlin-dominated Russian business world.

Alone among his peers, Tinkov had denounced Putin, Russia’s president, for starting a “crazy war” in Ukraine, rued the country was sinking into “fascism”, and gave up his Russian citizenship in protest.

The anti-war comments, he said, cost him friendships with several other Russian billionaires. “Lots of them stopped talking to me because they’re scared. I stopped talking to others because they are cowards,” he said.

In the interview, Tinkov said he hoped to inspire Russia’s oligarchs to take sides. “They need to pick a chair and sit on it. Sitting between two chairs like they did for the last 30 years, with a house in Belgravia and being friends with Putin, doesn’t work anymore.” The other Russians challenging the sanctions “want to get them removed and keep doing business in Russia. I don’t see how they can do that.”

The UK foreign office said it agreed to lift the sanctions against Tinkov, 55, in March last year after taking into account factors including his actions “following his sanctions designation”.

Tinkov, who lives in Switzerland and has not visited Russia since being diagnosed with leukaemia in 2019, claims the Kremlin forced him into a “fire sale” of his stake in his bank Tinkoff last year because of his anti-war statements.

Most other Russian tycoons have only made guarded statements saying they hoped for peace — but avoided criticising Putin directly for fear of losing their remaining wealth at home.

Several of them have told the FT they would be prepared to oppose the war more directly if the west showed them a clear route to lifting the sanctions — and cited the example of Tinkov to illustrate the potential pitfalls of speaking out against the Kremlin.

Though dozens more Russian businessmen have filed legal challenges to sanctions designations, very few of them have mentioned their opposition to the war in court proceedings, instead choosing to focus on technicalities. Tinkov said that his success might change the calculus. “Before that [other Russian businessmen] might have said, what’s the point?”

A year and a half into the war, the Kremlin has bought the oligarchs’ loyalty with the promises of more riches from a drive to take over western companies in Russia — the biggest asset transfer since the onset of capitalism in the 1990s.

That pathway to sustaining their lavish lifestyles, Tinkov said, would be fraught with risk as long as Putin remains in power. “My Siberian intuition shows that their assets will be nationalised too. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Who’s to say that they won’t take them away in five years?” he added. “I don’t believe Russia has a long-term future under Putin, because those assets will be constantly shuffled around. There’s no law, no courts. Today you win, tomorrow you lose — it’s Russian roulette.”

Tinkov said the UK’s decision to lift the sanctions showed there was more hope for Russian businessmen who left for the west rather than staying in Moscow. “In democracies society fixes mistakes eventually. In dictatorships like Putin’s, one person decides everything.”

Tinkov complained that the sanctions had made life harder for him than for businessmen who remain in Russia, many of whom, he said, were still visiting Europe. “The Tinkoff senior management and others are all on holiday in St Tropez. And I suffered for nothing.

“Instead of being a hero for England and Europe, I faced risks, and I still do. I don’t know if Putin wants to kill me for this or not. And these people are sitting in St Tropez, running the bank and travelling the world. That’s not fair.”