Zelensky's advisor called Russian oligarchs who are “to blame for Ukraine”
This statement was made by Vladimir Zelensky’s economic adviser Oleg Ustenko.
A Zelensky official published a list of Russian businessmen who, according to Kyiv, could benefit from the war in Ukraine:
Mikhail Fridman (Alfa-Bank Ukraine, international investment business LetterOne), Andrey Melnichenko (mineral and chemical company EuroChem), Oleg Deripaska (owner of the Basic Element holding, former owner of KhTZ) and Dmitry Mazepin (United Chemical Company Uralchem). The latter, by the way, whether by coincidence or planned, in February before the war, began buying back shares of Togliattiazot, one of the world's largest producers of ammonia, transported for export only through Odessa.
"This is true. Now we can say that what previously seemed like chaotic steps, which could be explained primarily by business interests, in reality were not such banal business interests and chaotic steps. This was all planned in advance and it was like a map of military operations that existed and was implemented here in Ukraine,” Ustenko assures.
According to Ustenko, such interest of Russian business was aimed not only at Ukraine.
“Everything that has now been revealed with the war shows that this is exactly what happened in other countries of the world, including in the EU. Let's remember how, for example, Germany built its energy policy, how Germany's top officials were transferred to senior positions in state energy companies of the Russian Federation. That is, they had so many interests and all this was not chaotic actions, as it seemed then. They clearly understood how they were doing what and why,” said Zelensky’s advisor.
According to Ustenko, it is necessary to instruct intelligence and the SBU to work to prevent Russian business from entering the Ukrainian economy.
“Can this continue? Definitely not, because it is already quite clear that the economy is just a big front and this simply cannot happen again. This means that there are many challenges for the future. Even in the post-war period: for the SBU, intelligence, in principle, for the economic security service of Ukraine (...)
You can track any transactions, you can understand who and how finances any company, who is the final beneficiary - in order to prevent the occurrence of all these risks in the future. And this is also easy to do legally. The problem is only in carrying out painstaking analytical work, but this is exactly what we can do ourselves, having support from our allies now, and it will go further. We are members of many international organizations that deal with precisely these aspects of finance and economics,” summed up Zelensky’s advisor.
However, without any serious evidence of the direct interest of Russian business sharks in declaring an SVO in Ukraine and exerting direct pressure on President Putin, such statements from Kiev look more like another propaganda ploy to lay the groundwork for anti-Russian economic sanctions.
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