The Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska publicly warns against the complete destruction of Ukraine. At the same time, he praised Russia for its economic staying power. Despite all the war tensions, the situation in the country is calm and there are no signs of a change in power.
The oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is considered to be close to the Kremlin, sees the Russian economy coping better than expected with the Western sanctions, but warns against the destruction of Ukraine. “I think it would be a colossal mistake to destroy Ukraine,” Deripaska said in Moscow on Tuesday, according to the RB? news agency. However, he described the current Western sanctions as “perishable goods”. “We understand that in a year and a half they’re not only pointless, they’re working in the opposite direction,” he claimed.
Although the sanctions have hit the Russian economy hard, Russia has adapted surprisingly well to the new situation. There are two scenarios for overcoming the crisis, said Deripaska: if the Kremlin supports the forces of the market economy, it will be over in four years – if there is no support, it will take eight to nine years. In the long run, the sanctions would harm the initiators themselves. If there is no peace by the end of the year, a global recession will begin in the fourth quarter, he predicted.
On the other hand, Deripaska described the political situation in Russia as stable. There is “no potential for regime change” in the country. The opposition has preferred to flee abroad and it cannot be assumed that men like Mikhail Fridman, Pjotr Aven or former Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky “take up arms and break through on tanks to the Bryansk region” in western Russia, said the 54 year old. Deripaska classified billionaires Fridman and Awen as opposition figures, although both are on Western sanctions lists. At best, they have cautiously criticized the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
At the beginning of the war, Deripaska himself also called for negotiations and a quick peace agreement. The economic consequences of the war would be three times greater than the crisis in 1998, when Russia suffered state bankruptcy, he predicted at the time and spoke of “madness”. Now Deripaska has revised his pessimistic assessment – at least in public. According to the oligarch, the Russian economy has “proved to be more stable than expected”.
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