Originally published 2022-03-02.
Within a week of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, two of Russia's best-known billionaires, Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska, publicly called for the fighting to stop and for peace talks to begin. Their statements were cautious and did not name Vladimir Putin, but in a country where criticising the war quickly became dangerous, even that much stood out.
Both men spoke as the West imposed the toughest sanctions ever placed on a major economy. Fridman was hit by European Union sanctions on 28 February 2022, the same day the first round of Russian-Ukrainian talks took place in Belarus. Here is who the two men are, what they said, and what followed.
Who are Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska?
Mikhail Fridman was born on 21 April 1964 in Lviv, then part of Soviet Ukraine. In the late 1980s he and partners including German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev built a trading business that grew into Alfa Group, and in 1991 they co-founded Alfa-Bank, which became Russia's largest private bank. Forbes has long ranked him among Russia's richest people, with a fortune it has put at more than $12 billion.
Oleg Deripaska was born on 2 January 1968 in Dzerzhinsk, in what is now Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. He built his wealth in aluminium and in 2000 created Rusal through a merger with assets linked to Roman Abramovich; Rusal became one of the world's largest aluminium producers. The United States sanctioned him personally in April 2018, and although Washington later lifted sanctions on companies he had controlled, the measures against him stayed in place.
Western media often describe both as oligarchs with access to the Kremlin. Both men have disputed claims that they are close to Putin, so the label is better read as shorthand for very wealthy businessmen whose fortunes were built in the post-Soviet economy.
What Fridman said
Fridman set out his view in a letter to staff that was reported by several outlets at the end of February 2022. He wrote about his roots in western Ukraine, where he lived until the age of 17, and about his parents, who were Ukrainian citizens living in Lviv.
He described himself as torn between two countries: I am deeply attached to the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and see the current conflict as a tragedy for them both
. He added that war could never be the answer, that it would damage two nations that had been like brothers for centuries, and that he wanted the bloodshed to end.
He stopped short of blaming the Kremlin by name. According to reports of the letter, he explained that he avoids political statements because he is responsible for many thousands of employees in both Russia and Ukraine.
What Deripaska said
Deripaska reportedly used his Telegram channel to say that peace was very important and that negotiations should start as soon as possible. He also warned of the economic damage the crisis would cause. Wikipedia's biography notes that in 2022 he was one of only a handful of Russian business figures to openly criticise the invasion; he continued to question the war's economic logic in later public remarks.
Neither statement was a protest in the street sense. They were carefully worded appeals from men with huge assets at stake, and critics pointed out that both spoke just as sanctions were closing in.
Other tycoons spoke anonymously
Most of the business elite stayed silent. Some spoke to journalists only on condition that they were not named. Reuters quoted one unnamed billionaire hoping the bloodshed would end, and another who warned of the cost of the war:
It is going to be catastrophic in all senses: for the economy, for relations with the rest of the world, for the political situation.
The same businessman complained that nobody was asking the business community for its opinion. That captures a basic fact of Russian politics after 2000: big business could keep its wealth as long as it stayed out of political decisions.
The sanctions that hit Russia's economy
The statements came during an extraordinary financial squeeze. On 28 February 2022 Western governments blocked Russia's central bank from about $300 billion of its foreign-exchange reserves held abroad, out of roughly $630 billion in total. European countries also agreed to cut many Russian banks off from SWIFT, the messaging network used for international payments.
The rouble fell to record lows against the dollar, the Bank of Russia sharply raised interest rates, and the Moscow stock market kept share trading closed for weeks to prevent a collapse in prices.
Wealthy individuals were targeted directly. The EU added a group of oligarchs and officials to its list on 28 February, including Fridman, freezing his assets in the bloc. The UK followed with sanctions on Deripaska in early March and on Fridman on 15 March 2022.
The pressure exposed a structural weakness. Russia is a vast country, but in nominal dollar terms its economy was roughly the size of Italy's or Canada's, both countries with far fewer people, and its wealth is concentrated in a small number of hands.
Did peace talks go anywhere?
The first round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations took place on 28 February 2022 near the Belarus-Ukraine border. It ended without agreement. Further rounds in Belarus in early March produced a deal on humanitarian corridors, and foreign ministers met in Antalya, Turkey, on 10 March.
The most serious attempt came in Istanbul on 29 March, when negotiators drafted a framework in which Ukraine would become neutral in exchange for security guarantees. Talks stalled over those guarantees, the size of Ukraine's army and other demands, and the discovery of the Bucha massacre in early April hardened positions on both sides.
What happened to the two billionaires
Calling for peace did not lift the sanctions. Fridman remained under EU and UK measures and challenged them in court; in 2024 he sued the government of Luxembourg over his frozen assets. He was reported in October 2023 to be planning a return to Russia. Deripaska stayed under US and UK sanctions.
The episode showed how limited the influence of Russia's richest people had become. Their public appeals were noticed abroad, but they did not change the Kremlin's course, and most of their peers chose silence.
Sources: Wikipedia: Mikhail Fridman; Wikipedia: Oleg Deripaska; Wikipedia: International sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Wikipedia: Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine; original report: Daily Mail, 28 February 2022 (with Reuters quotes).
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