this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Vladimir Putin’s government has launched an aggressive campaign to nationalize the assets of Konstantin Strukov, one of Russia’s richest men and the owner of the country’s largest gold mining company. The move marks a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s efforts to extract wealth from within its own elite as the financial toll of the war in Ukraine deepens.

Strukov, whose fortune is estimated at over $3.5 billion, is the founder of Yuzhuralzoloto—a gold empire built over decades with strong ties to the Kremlin. But on July 5, his private jet was grounded by Russian authorities as it prepared to leave for Turkey. His passport was reportedly seized, and the aircraft barred from departing.

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[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 144 points 1 day ago (6 children)

This is a pretty good example of why I say even millinoaires and billionaires should support a functional democractic society with taxation and regulation and social safety nets. Its the old penny wise and pound foolish. Getting a sliver more and a sliver more and then you lose it all because the rule of law was thrown out long ago. It won't necessarily take that long to. At a certain point it could happen at any time. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't.

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 9 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Rich people live under the fear of losing it all. As sharing is synonymous with losing to them, no one wants it and everyone is caught in this loop.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I'm becoming convinced it's an actual mental disease, or at least grossly maladaptive

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's a mental disease in the same sense as drapetomania used to be

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

Drapetomania was a proposed mental illness that […] hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Americans fleeing captivity.

I could make some guesses, but I'm not sure what you meant by this. What did you mean?

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Some adaptation pretty human mechanism which looks unnatural because it's not us who experience it although given the same circumstances we would do the same

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I see right, yeah, it's the conditions social and material that give rise to the "disorder" whereas if we fix the conditions, it just evaporates. Like abolishing slavery or private property.

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 3 points 9 hours ago

Exactly like that 💯

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Smaller scale millionaires perhaps. Once they go multinational, it becomes very difficult to significantly harm them even if one country decides to dispossess their business. This has already happened to large corporations that exist today through nationalization at various places and points in time. E.g. Shell after Venezuelan oil nationalization.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

A billionaire cannot exist in 2 countries at the same time. It doesn't matter if his company is multinational, he isn't.

If you jail that billionaire, which is not hard as a state if said billionaire resides in your country, you can "convince" him to give even assets in foreign countries.

That's why they removed his passport.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Right but how do you make most countries want to arrest them? We currently don't have a setup allowing for this if no international criminal offenses are involved. It only happens if the billionaire resides mostly in an "authoritarian" country where they could get "arbitrarily" arrested. The rest of the world isn't currently setup to do this. I'm not saying it can't be setup or shouldn't be setup like that.

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The comment you replied to originally was talking about why billionaires should support a democratic society.

If the society is not democratic, it would be authoritarian. Therefore what I explained could happen.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yes. Of course what you said could happen. My point is that in the current status quo there's still plenty of non-authoritarian countries and billionaires are still operating on easy-to-jump-ship basis when they destroy one democracy or another for increased profit. So I think that's why this cost isn't factored in. Competition for increased profits dominates. If we're left with only a few democracies that tolerate billionaires, then that calculus could change. It's similar to capitalism's treatment of any finite resource - plunder that bitch till there's nothing left, then deal with the consequences. If we don't, the other guy would do it and we'd lose on the profit, and the other guy gains power over us given by the newly acquired capital.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Not if its the home nation. Shell was a us company in venezuela but if the same thing happened in the US the owners would be lucky to get out of the country with what they could carry and if they worked fast enough maybe they could have a small fraction of what they used to.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 hours ago

Yes, of course.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 5 points 16 hours ago

That requires rule of law to actually work. Putin is well known to murder problematic oligarchs. Combined with some proper blackmail, that tends to work very well.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 65 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This all depends on the people born into wealth being reasonable people.

Most are unhinged psychopaths or nepo babies with too much ego.

Which is why wealth needs to be forcefully redistributed, they won't do it voluntarily.

[–] Triasha@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

Wealth is actually being redistributed quite a bit in Russia right now. The oligarchs are paying for the war and "the people" are getting much higher wages either in the military or because of labor shortages.

It's not great, what with all the death and destruction. But Russians gini coefficient is going down fast.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Or you end being shoot on the street and the entire world celebrates it.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 points 14 hours ago

That was a fun day

[–] burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

a functional democratic society would not have billionaires and hopefully millionaires neither

[–] Tiger666@lemmy.ca -4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A functional society doesn't need money.

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world -2 points 21 hours ago

Money implies poverty.

[–] HailSeitan@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago