Oligarch and founder of Rusal Oleg Deripaska said in an interview with the Financial Times that he was “surprised” by the resilience of the Russian economy amid Western sanctions due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The businessman also expressed the opinion that the war needs to be stopped “on both sides.”
According to Deripaska, Russian private business turned out to be much more “flexible” than he expected. The businessman assumed that because of the sanctions, “up to 30% of the economy would collapse, but it turned out that much less.”
“I always doubted it, as the Germans said, Wunderwaffe— using the financial system as a negotiating tool. We have made so much effort to make the world global in terms of trade, investment, information flows. <…> Sanctions are a kind of tool of the 19th century. We don’t see it being effective in the 21st century,” Deripaska said.
“I see no reason why this (the war in Ukraine — MZ) should not be stopped on both sides. I don’t see that anyone will achieve the stated goal,” Deripaska added. In his opinion, the transfer of F-16 and F-35 fighters to Ukraine will only bring “great suffering, more lives lost and more wounded.”
Continuing the war, the oligarch emphasized, would mean “another 50,000 dead on both sides, and perhaps 150,000 wounded” by next year: “Do you really think it’s reasonable to make another 200,000 people suffer within 12 months?”
“The belief that sanctions will stop (the war — MZ), lead to regime change, or somehow bring us closer to ending the conflict… No. We need another solution,” Deripaska concluded.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, Australia, Great Britain and the European Union imposed sanctions against the billionaire. The United States introduced restrictions against Deripaska back in 2018. In March 2022, Deripaska wrote: “We need peace as soon as possible, since we have already passed the point of no return.” The Rusal company he founded called for an investigation into the murders in Bucha and an “early” end to the war.
In the spring of this year, Deripaska, during a speech at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, focused on economic problems in Russia due to the refusal of foreign investors from cooperation. Then the businessman said that “there are already serious problems with money in the country,” and by next year “there will be no money.”