Furious Russian elites attack Putin over economy in major revolt

 Furious Russian elites are demanding that Vladimir Putin put an end to the nationalisation of businesses. The last few years have seen a surge in state expropriations of private companies from their owners by the state.

The mass nationalisations have affected factories, plants, ports, and firms worth over 4 trillion rubles (£38 billion). Despite repeated promises by Putin that the Kremlin has no intentions of reversing the privatisations of the turbulent 1990s, data show an accelerating rate of expropriations. By the end of 2022, the end of the first year of Putin's illegal war in Ukraine, the Prosecutor General's Office reported the return of 100 enterprises worth 1.3 trillion rubles to state ownership.

By 2024, this amount had increased to 2.4 trillion, and in 2025, it exceeded 4 trillion.

Fears are growing among Russia's business elite that the confiscations are being driven by the Kremlin's need to drum up funds for its war in Ukraine.

Alexander Shokhin - head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, whose board includes billionaires on the Forbes list - told the Kommersant newspaper that the situation "needs to be resolved".

Shokhin and fellow representatives of big business held their annual meeting with the Kremlin tyrant in December. He said they had aired their concerns and grievances, handing Putin a letter with their demands.

"We're hoping for a decision... We want a clear formula that won't leave room for interpretation by the courts," he said.

The entrepreneur noted that courts were justifying expropriations without compensation by arguing that businesses had been "violating citizens' intangible rights and freedoms".

He said that the Kremlin should ban courts from using this dubious legal justification.

"Because right now, the easiest way to de-privatise is to declare that citizens' rights to a decent life are being violated," he explained.

"This is a public interest that the state can protect, even if no one claims, as they say, personal damages, and so on. And this means that any property can then be converted into state property without compensation."

Some of the major companies returned to state ownership include the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant (CHEMK), Domodedovo Airport and the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal.