Who are the oligarchs?

Business tycoons in the former Soviet republics who had acquired immense riches and influence during the transition from a commu­nist to a capitalist economy came to be known as oligarchs (oligarkhi in Russian, oliharkhy in Ukrainian).

The oligarchs came from various backgrounds. Many had pre­vious experience in industry or trade as Red directors or were dy­namic, younger communist functionaries, while others started from scratch by opening casinos or serving as bankers to the mafia. Yet, all of them had two things in common. At some point, all had managed to establish close links with the state apparatus, which allowed them to benefit from insider deals. Also, all of them to some degree took advantage of the fire sale of state assets in the late 1990s, when they acquired major enterprises for symbolic sums, usually paid for with state-issued privatization certificates, obtained for a pittance from workers who did not understand their value.

For as long as Russia was selling gas to Ukraine at a highly dis­counted price, the most lucrative business in Ukraine was reselling it in Europe at world prices, a trick that brought instant riches but required the connivance of both Russian and Ukrainian govern­ment figures.

Ukrainian oligarchs have tended to get involved in politics very closely, if sometimes covertly. The country's richest person, Rinat Akhmetov (worth an estimated US$15 billion as of 2013) started out in coal trading and banking in the Donbas before expanding nation­ally and internationally into metallurgy, machine building, and com­munications, among other things. However, for years he retained close links with the Donbas political machine and especially with Viktor Yanukovych, the former governor from this region, who went on to serve as prime minister and president. Akhmetov also reportedly bankrolled Yanukovych's Party of the Regions, which cultivated its electoral base in southeastern Ukraine. Still, after the disintegration of the Yanukovych regime and the start of the Donbas war, Akhmetov came out forcefully on the side of Ukraine's territo­rial integrity.

So, too, did Ihor Kolomoisky, reputedly the third-richest person in Ukraine, with a fortune of US$3 billion (as of 2013) made in the banking, steel, chemical, and airline industries. Following the EuroMaidan Revolution, Kolomoisky agreed to serve as the gov­ernor of Dnipropetrovsk province, which borders on the trouble­some region near the Russian border. He also funded volunteer Ukrainian battalions fighting in the Donbas. In contrast, the second- richest Ukrainian, Viktor Pinchuk, who started out in pipe pro­duction and is now worth an estimated US$4.6 billion, kept a low profile throughout the conflict. Indeed, ever since the 2004 Orange Revolution against the regime of his father-in-law, President Leonid Kuchma, he has stayed out of big politics, preferring to make a name for himself as a philanthropist and patron of the arts.

The war in the Donbas and the loss of the Crimea undermined Ukraine's economic growth and resulted in a decrease in the estimated fortunes of Ukrainian oligarchs. In May 2020 Forbes ranked the three richest persons in Ukraine in the following order: Akhmetov (US$2.8 billion), Pinchuk (US$1.4 billion), and Poroshenko (US$1.4 billion).