It would seem to be a stressful holiday season for Russia’s ultra-wealthy elite, the gilded class of post-Communist billionaires with a taste for costly things and close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The secretive group, known popularly as the oligarchs, for their control over Russia’s oil, metals, banking, gas, fertilizer, electricity, railways, aviation, defense and telecommunications industries, now has two ugly holiday presents: broad sanctions as punishment for Putin’s Crimean land grab last March, and a burgeoning currency crisis as plummeting prices for oil, the main force behind the Russian economy, send the ruble into a tailspin.
In another major …read more
Source: Newsweek
