The BBC reports that Russia has declared it curated 140 billionaires this year. The article calls them “oligarchs” by mistake, as it also admits “Russian oligarchy was well and truly dead.”
They’re not oligarchs. Oligarch means rule by the few. These men rule nothing. They’re useless. Just empty vessels. At best, they are Putin’s pets.
Putin didn’t buy the silence of these non-personas. No, he redistributed their identities away by entangling them in his corruption.
The mechanism is brutal: seize assets from dissidents, hand them to loyalists at fire-sale prices. Tinkoff Bank, as Russia’s second largest, was forcibly sold to a nobody for 3% of value. Fleeing Western companies were snapped up for pennies and given to eager nobodies. State contracts flow to the compliant, those most devoid of thought.
The “gift” of absolute loyalty costs Putin nothing because he gives away other people’s things. And accepting stolen property makes recipients complicit. Complicity makes defection impossible. Western sanctions sealed it—freezing assets abroad while billionaires remained trapped inside. No exit ramp.
On Ukraine invasion day, Putin summoned all his nobodys to the Kremlin. They sat “pale and sleep-deprived” while he told them how things would be as they had no choice.
They didn’t resist. They couldn’t conceive of resisting. Because if they did, they’d be killed and replaced by another nobody. Sign here to be a billionaire and cease existing.
That’s the real operation. Not silencing oligarchs—erasing them. They don’t remember having political power. They don’t remember shaping policy, controlling media, pulling strings. Berezovsky claimed he made Putin president. Now they wait to be told what they’ll do next.
The narcissist’s prize isn’t compliance. It’s the moment victims internalize powerlessness so completely they stop conceiving of alternatives.
140 billionaires. Zero political identity. Just wealth and obedience.
Pets.