Russian Oligarchs is an independent English-language website about Russia’s wealthiest businessmen: how they made their fortunes, what they own, where they live and which governments have sanctioned them.
What we cover
- Profiles of individual businessmen. Each profile opens with a fact box: a net worth estimate with its source and date, and the person’s sanctions status as checked against the US, UK and EU lists. A sanctions table in the profile adds other countries, such as Canada, Switzerland, Australia and Ukraine.
- Topics: sanctions and politics, where oligarchs live, yachts, jets and other assets, families and trusts, the Western firms that served this wealth, and the deaths and disappearances reported since 2022.
- Explainers on what the word “oligarch” means and how the class emerged from the privatizations of the 1990s.
How we work
Every article is held to our editorial policy. In short: we rely on primary sources such as official sanctions lists, court records and company filings; we date figures that change over time; we attribute allegations to their source and say when something is unproven; and we quote people word for word only when we have checked the wording against the original.
The archive and its 2026 review
Russian Oligarchs has published since 2022, and most of its articles first appeared in September and October of that year. In 2026 we reviewed the archive against primary sources. We corrected factual errors, replaced quotations we could not verify with attributed paraphrase, merged articles that covered the same ground and took one article offline. In October 2026 we rewrote all 37 profiles from primary sources; each one ends with a section explaining what changed.
The original 2022 articles were written with the help of automated writing tools. How we use software and AI tools today is set out in our editorial policy.
Who publishes this site
Russian Oligarchs is published under its own name. Articles carry the byline “Russian Oligarchs Editorial” rather than the name of an individual writer.
The site is not affiliated with any person it writes about, with any government or sanctions authority, or with the publishers of the net worth estimates it cites, such as Forbes and Bloomberg. We do not accept payment from the people or companies we cover. The site currently carries no advertising, sponsored content or affiliate links.
Contact and corrections
If you believe something on this site is wrong, please tell us. Our corrections policy explains what to include, and our contact page lists how to reach us.