Ukraine president targets oligarchs amid Russia crisis

Bloomberg

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has downplayed the likelihood of a large-scale invasion as Russia masses troops near the border, he is targeting what he sees as another threat to his country’s sovereignty: oligarchs.
The president in a national address slammed unidentified businesspeople for fleeing the country in the face of a US warning of a potential imminent
assault. Russia has repeatedly denied it is planning to attack.
Zelenskiy, a former comedian who campaigned in 2019 on promises to take back power from oligarchs in the former Soviet republic, has increased pressure on the rich since Russia began building up troop levels in November. Ukraine’s most influential businessmen have less than three months remaining to unload assets that qualify them as oligarchs under a law passed last year.
“It’s like playing chess
simultaneously against
several opponents,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta research institute in Kyiv.
“It’s a peculiarity of Ukraine’s politics. Here external threats never distract the government from combating internal opponents.”
After Zelenskiy’s comments, Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, returned to the country.