Oligarch Oleg Deripaska delivered a speech at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, declaring the inefficiency of state capitalism and the need to attract investors from friendly countries, without which the Russian economy would not survive.
“If there are no foreign investors, there will be no money in the country. There are already serious problems with money in the country, so they started shaking business like crazy,” Deripaska said. obviously, implying messages about the Russian government’s proposal to large businessmen to make one-time contributions to cover the budget deficit in the conditions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The oligarch called for the mitigation of violations for economic misconduct, explaining that this would be an important signal for foreigners wishing to invest money in the Russian Federation. At the same time, Deripaska again indirectly mentioned SVO - the practice of amnesty for prisoners in exchange for participation in hostilities as part of PMCs.
“It’s time to stop these enslaving, Stone Age articles, the practice of planting in a row for unknown reasons. If a person committed an economic offense, he compensated - let him continue working. We made it possible to atone for even serious criminal offenses,” Deripaska said.
The billionaire proposed reducing the number of officials in Russia by two to three times and the number of law enforcement officers “by a couple of times.”
“There is too much of this state apparatus and state capitalism. We need more freedom,” he said.
“For some reason Deripaska forgot to propose reducing the number of oligarchs,” notes political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov.
The oligarch also said that the Russian economy, which has survived the sanctions, is not an achievement of the government, but, first of all, of business.
“We were just lucky. The fact that we fell ten times less than I thought once again showed the importance of private business, which found all the solutions that were later used by state-owned companies. All these decisions on parallel imports, these attempts to fill the vacuum that was created after the departure of European partners. They were gone for a long time. This situation (geopolitical, - approx. journalists) will not be resolved before mid-2025 - until people fight and get tired,” Deripaska said.
Liberal political scientists believe that the oligarch’s speech was programmatic - with an eye to a move into big politics, which will become possible just when the moment of “fatigue” from the SVO, mentioned by Deripaska, arrives.
“The person clearly wants to get involved in big politics. We'll have to wait, but what years he is! He is only 55,” writes political scientist Konstantin Kalachev.
Stanislav Belkovsky echoes him:
“Deripaska continues to dig into the political niche of the “Russian Donald Trump.” His neighbor-partner in the niche could – logically and organically – become Evgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin (“Wagner”),” the liberal believes.