The billionaires are close to the Russian leader but he doesn’t listen to them. Hitting the elite who advise him would soon spread discontent
Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the western response to Vladimir Putin’s growing list of crimes has been to impose sanctions on his “cronies”. In recent years there have been particularly insistent demands for sanctions on rich Russian oligarchs resident in London.
So the UK government’s response this week to Putin’s recognition of the separatist republics in Ukraine’s Donbas region took the usual form: sanctions against five Russian banks and three oligarchs.
Angus Roxburgh is a former BBC Moscow correspondent and consultant to the Kremlin. He is the author of The Strongman, Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia
