In December of last year, the Russian government privatized 19.5 percent of the oil giant Rosneft, an act hailed by some Western writers as a “personal triumph” of Vladimir Putin. It took less then a month for Russian media to more or less confirm the healthy skepticism of those familiar with how Putin’s regime operates: the so-called privatization was anything but a transparent sale to a private buyer. Yesterday RBC reported that the cash paid to the Russian budget—€10.2 billion—was wholly financed by VTB, a bank in which the Russian government has a 60.9 percent ownership stake.On the surface, the …read more
Source: The American Interest
