Russia’s richest lost billions of dollars in net worth on April 9, as the aftershock from a new round of sanctions announced by the United States at the end of last week hit the Russian markets.
And following the U.S. lead, Ukraine’s Council for National Security and Defense will also consider imposing sanctions against Russian oligarchs, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on April 10 in Berlin at a joint press briefing with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Sanctions will be imposed, and they will be harmonized with the decision of the U.S. administration,” Poroshenko said. “Undoubtedly, (Russian oligarch Oleg) Deripaska and others will be included on the sanctions list.”
Deripaska has suffered the most from Washington’s most recent measures: his EN+ group lost over 40 percent of its value in London, while the value of his aluminum producing company Rusal halved on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
The new set of U.S. economic sanctions against Russia’s wealthy was part of the international reaction to the poisoning of former spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in the United Kingdom in early March.
U.K. officials accuse Moscow of attempting to murder the former Russian intelligence officer-turned-British-spy Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who are believed to have been poisoned by a Soviet-developed Novichok-type nerve agent. The incident sparked a diplomatic scandal that resulted in the mass expulsion of over 150 Russian diplomats from more than 20 countries.
The U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed down the Russian consulate in Seattle. In addition, the Trump administration imposed new sanctions against seven oligarchs, 12 companies they control, and 17 top Russian government officials.
Along with Deripaska, the individuals on the sanctions list include Vladimir Bogdanov, Suleyman Kerimov, Igor Rotenberg, Kirill Shamalov, Andrey Skoch, and Viktor Vekselberg. Among the targeted officials are Andrey Kostin, head of the second largest state-owned bank VTB, and Alexey Miller, head of the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom.
Bloomberg estimated that 26 Russian billionaires lost $16 billion in asset worth in just one day after the sanctions were imposed.
