After the fall of communism, Russia brought to capitalism by selling billions of dollars in state assets.
Now, 30 years later, the Russian government is raising a war campaign to do the opposite: capturing private businesses, this time in the name of national security.
In the last month, the courts have ordered that the largest owner of Russia’s warehouses be taken over by the state and also led the nationalization of a large wheat exporter. And in the most stunning case, prosecutors filed a lawsuit in January to capture Moscow’s second largest airport.
The new expropriation spat expands in the seizures of Western -owned businesses in Russia after the conquest of President Vladimir V. Putin in Ukraine began three years ago. But in these latter cases, the owners are Russian, a sign of how the Kremlin’s push to capture the control of the economy between the war in Ukraine is reaching the industry.
Critics say wealth seizures are also undermining the latest rule of rule of Russia’s law. They have become “chaotic” and “out of control,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, an associate at Carnegie Russia Eurasia in Berlin.
By capturing profitable private enterprises, the Kremlin can place large sections of the economy either in the hands of the state or under the indirect control of Mr. Putin’s associates, allowing the government to adapt industrial results for the needs of war and also be able Present price controls. It also matches the intention of the Russian leader to tighten his control in domestic politics.
Researchers at the London School of Economics have identified more than 200 Russian court rulings to nationalize private companies since the beginning of the occupation of Ukraine in 2022 businesses considered “non -friendly to the Kremlin regime”.
Received together, those seizures are in the “biggest redistribution of fortunes in Russia since the privatization machine” in the 1990s, said Alexander Kolyandr, a collaborator at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
In Tuesday’s talks with an American delegation in Saudi Arabia, Russian officials appealed to the Trump administration’s desire to find economic opportunities, arguing that US companies have to do billions if they entered Russia again. The Russian official in the talks responsible for business links, however, did not mention court decisions that have destroyed property rights in Russia.
In a sign that the Kremlin was anticipating an influx of foreign businesses as part of the approach to the United States, Mr. Putin, on Friday ordered his government to set rules for the return of Western companies that left Russia after the 2022 invasion of 2022 Ukraine. While Mr. Putin indicated that Moscow would welcome them, he also made it clear that he wanted Russian companies to have “certain advantages” to foreign competitors as a payback for Western sanctions that promoted the 2022 exodus.
Mr. Putin personally led a campaign to take over historic assets from foreign owners in the first months of the war. He signed several decrees in 2022 and 2023, first banning foreign owners from selling their assets, then allowing the state to “temporarily take over” Russian companies owned by “hostile nations”. But it has since occupied a backward place as property seizures spread to various sectors of the economy.
Attempting to capture Moscow’s airport, Domodedovo, is the latest Salvo in a long quarrel with the majority owner, Dmitry Kamenshchik, an attractive businessman who has not openly supported or opposed the government, and an indicator that the Kremlin is serious growing up nationalization.
Domodedovo – who treated as many passengers as possible as the Newark Liberty International Airport did in 2022 – is Russia’s largest airport still in private hands. Russian government has tried several times over the past two decades To take control of the airport, but this time it seems determined to succeed.
The reasoning prosecutors are now using it is that Mr. Kamenshchik is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
Russian law prohibits foreign investors in those considered “strategic sectors” without the special permission of the government.
Mr. Kamenshchik has searched the airport since its privatization in the 1990s – in recent years through a Cypriot company – and authorities have not previously raised any concerns about its citizenship.
Mr. Kamenshchik and a collaborator, prosecutors claimed, “are pursuing aggressive Western policies that aim to cause a strategic loss in the Russian Federation by damaging its economy”, according to a passage from last month’s lawsuit quoted by Russian business Vdomos . He accused him of “sabotaging” attempts to modernize the airport. Prosecutors also claimed that both businessmen left more than $ 180 million, with the current exchange rate, from Domodedovo’s profits between 2021 and 2023.
It was not clear immediately if the authorities were pursuing special allegations of those claims.
Mr. Kamenshchik’s location was unclear; He is not reported to have left Russia. Attempts to achieve it to comment through the intermediaries and the airport press office went unanswered.
The court soon raised the Russian assets of the company and Mr. Kamenshchik and warned him and his partner against “destabilizing” operations in Domodedovo.
The profitable airport has long been in the cross -law enforcement hairs and powerful business interests with the Kremlin links. In 2011, Russian news media reported that Arkady Rotenberg, a childhood friend of Mr. Putin, was looking at Mr. Kamenshchik.
Whatever the owner of the high -level patronage Domodedovo rejoiced in the past to remove the attacks from his competitors, the war in Ukraine clearly canceled it, analysts said.
“Domodedovo was once too big to swallow – and now it’s not,” Mr. Kolyandr, the analyst. “Before the war, there are likely to have people in the government or near the government defending against monopolizing ownership of airport infrastructure. Now, state interests violate them all.”
Trying to capture the airport is just the most prominent example of the nationalization effort. In a case that shocked another sector of the economy, a court in Moscow last month ordered that Raven Russia’s assets, the largest owner of the country’s warehouses, to be handed over to the state.
He said Raven’s $ 1 billion logistics terminals were “strategic assets” purchased without the special government permission.
Russian prosecutors are required to claim that the assets they are capturing are strategic, even if they were never considered before.
Raven Russia called the ruling “unlawful and unfounded” and pledged to appeal.
Last week, the court gave the green light confiscation, citing the foreign attitude of the company owner.
And in a last third case, a court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don caught one of Russia’s biggest wheat exporters, a company called Rodnye Polya, from its owner of billionaire Pyotr Khodinkin. The court said Mr. Khodinkin’s residence in the United Arab Emirates imposed a “strategic enterprise” in foreign hands.
Rodnye Polya, who posted about $ 3 billion in revenue in 2023, runs a port in the city of Azov, Azov Sea, showing 17 ships and hundreds of freight train cars. It was estimated to apply about $ 600 million in the end of 2023.
Problems began for Rodnye Polya a few months ago: in the spring, the Russian agricultural surveillance agency began blocking the company’s deliveries, saying they are failing quality control. Dozens of ships were blocked in the ports, and about 80 percent of Rodnye Polya’s exports were banned, according to the agency.
Mr. Khodinkin, the owner of the company, did not respond to a comment request. He said the court had made a “political decision” to capture his company in an interview with local news media.
“Is there a point that invests in a place where any asset can be expropriated years later?” Mr. Khodinkin asked in the interview. “Then no other business can feel more secure.”