It isn't difficult to identify the main beneficiary of the past two and a half decades of the Kremlin regime. The country’s entire economy and society have been subordinated to the will of a small elite bent on enriching itself.

But the war has changed that elite, making it more vulnerable to a Kremlin that knows Russia’s super-rich bureaucrats have fewer options.

A kleptocracy, by definition, cannot operate under the rule of law but depends on informal arrangements and a dense web of personal relationships. 

This system primarily benefited the regime’s upper tier. Most lower-level officials were content with incomes that significantly improved their standard of living but did not require elaborate global money laundering networks.

Under such conditions, the idea of making elites overly reliant on the Kremlin was seen as a threat to the system itself. Surges of patriotic rhetoric typically triggered capital flight. Even encouraging or pressuring elites to relinquish formal ownership of foreign assets was unthinkable. 

For years, officials, politicians and oligarchs alike earned their money in Russia but parked their wealth abroad. In the late 2010s, arrests of major figures came with lengthy lists of their overseas assets. The true scale of concealed holdings was anyone’s guess.

The war changed the equation. Contrary to expectations, the main blow to Russian oligarchs and corrupt officials came from the West, not the Kremlin. Assets were frozen or subjected to visa restrictions. Yet during the early years of the war, the........

© The Moscow Times