Russia's Billionaires in 2026: Figures, Industries, Strategies
More billionaires than ever before: Russia’s latest list of the wealthy
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index is a daily updated ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, based on estimates of assets such as corporate holdings, stock prices, and public financial data. As of the cutoff date of January 25, the ten richest Russian citizens are ranked between 82nd and 297th place. All assets listed have been converted from U.S. dollars to euros at the current exchange rate.
The group is led by Vladimir Potanin, a metals and commodities investor and major shareholder of Norilsk Nickel, with an estimated fortune of 25.2 billion euros. He is followed by Alexei Mordashov, steel magnate and majority shareholder of the Severstal Group, with €23.4 billion; Leonid Mikhelson, co-owner of Novatek, with €21.1 billion; Vladimir Lisin, a steel and logistics entrepreneur, with €20.6 billion, and Vagit Alekperov, former Lukoil CEO and oil magnate, with €20.0 billion.
Other listed fortunes include Andrey Melnichenko, an entrepreneur in the fertilizer and energy sectors, with €17.7 billion, Alisher Usmanov, a metals, telecoms, and tech investor, with €17.1 billion, Gennady Timchenko, an energy and financial investor, with €12.7 billion, Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, with €12.2 billion, and Viktor Vekselberg, founder of the Renova Group, with €9.9 billion.
The sectoral composition of this group is striking. Commodities, metals, energy, and raw materials continue to dominate. Pavel Durov’s presence marks an exception within an otherwise heavily commodity-driven top tier.
Another feature of the current snapshot is the trend since the beginning of 2026. In the Bloomberg Index, not a single one of the listed Russian billionaires has a negative balance. Potanin recorded a gain of around 3.5 billion euros, Mordashov +1.5 billion, Mikhelson +1.3 billion, Lisin +650 million, Alekperov +1.1 billion, Usmanov +1.0 billion, Melnichenko +2.0 billion, and Vekselberg +1.0 billion.
However, a comparison with the world’s wealthiest man puts the Russian gains into perspective: Elon Musk’s fortune is currently estimated at around 650 billion euros, with an increase of approximately 65 billion euros since the start of the year alone. The gap between Elon Musk and the second-ranked Google co-founder Larry Page is nearly 400 billion euros—almost as much money as all Russian billionaires combined.
HSE Study: Russia’s Billionaires Adapt to Sanctions
A recent study by Elena A. Shvetsova of Moscow’s elite Higher School of Economics provides a systematic analysis of Russian billionaires’ responses to Western sanctions since 2022. The study covers the period from February 2022 to January 2025 and is based on the Forbes Russia ranking of the 125 richest businesspeople in 2024. Open sources are supplemented by registry data (SPARK-Interfax).
The study’s key finding is:
“Despite massive sanctions, the core composition of the Russian elite remained remarkably stable: the retention rate in the ranking was 89% between 2022 and 2023, and as high as 91% from 2023 to 2024. This means that only a few billionaires disappeared permanently from the list—suggesting that sanctions had a limited impact on the composition of the elite.”
The study quantitatively differentiates the Russian magnates’ adaptation strategies in response to the sanctions. Around 50% of the billionaires examined increased their domestic investments. About one-third complicated ownership and holding structures. Around 25% sold off individual assets. About one-sixth repatriated capital to Russia or divested foreign assets. A similar proportion acquired assets from Western companies that were withdrawing from Russia. Foreign acquisitions remained limited but continued to occur among about 15 to 20% of the billionaires.
“The top 20 Forbes billionaires were almost universally targeted by Western sanctions: since 2022, three-quarters of them have been on Western sanctions lists, while only 42% of the remaining billionaires were sanctioned. The top 20 were suddenly subjected to large-scale sanctions, whereas the remaining billionaires were added to the lists gradually. Nevertheless, this intense persecution has barely shaken the top 20’s leading positions in Russia—they continued to set the tone domestically.”
Shvetsova identifies renouncing Russian citizenship as a rare but analytically relevant adaptation strategy. For the period from 2022 to 2024, she documents ten billionaires who took this step. Among those who have renounced their Russian citizenship are Timur Turlov, founder of the Freedom Finance financial group; technology investor Yuri Milner; Nikolai Storonsky, founder of the financial services provider Revolut; Oleg Tinkov, founder of Tinkoff Bank (now known as T-Bank), Vladimir Potanin, and Vasily Anisimov, a former business partner of Alisher Usmanov. Also included is Arkady Volozh, co-founder of the internet company Yandex. The sectoral concentration is striking: seven of the ten cases involve entrepreneurs from IT, financial services, and venture capital. Shvetsova explains this with the “lightness” of their asset structure, the lack of location-bound tangible assets, as well as stronger global integration and lower dependence on the Russian state.
In recent years, many Russian billionaires have been forced to make a strategic decision: either permanently relocate their assets and business activities abroad—or bring them back under the Kremlin’s supervision.
Commodities, Consumer Goods, Tech: Who Won, Who Lost
Commodities, metals, energy, and fertilizers continue to form the core of the largest fortunes. In the 2025 Forbes ranking, several representatives of these sectors recorded significant growth.
Alisher Usmanov increased his fortune by approximately $5.3 billion to $18.5 billion, Viktor Vekselberg by about $3.0 billion, Iskander Makhmudov by about $4.4 billion—all three are key players in Russia’s commodities sector, whose wealth growth stems primarily from stakes in metal, mining, and energy-intensive companies.
The drivers are twofold: on the one hand, high prices and stable export revenues; on the other, acquisition opportunities arising from the withdrawal of Western companies. At the same time, new billionaire fortunes emerged in domestically oriented sectors such as retail, agriculture, housing construction, and e-commerce.
In contrast, the losers are sectors with high dependence on the West, particularly technology and financial services. Here, sanctions are having an impact through restricted access to capital, market isolation, brain drain, and more complex regulatory requirements.
Germany vs. Russia: Tycoons versus Family Entrepreneurs
A comparison of billionaires in Germany and Russia reveals significant structural differences in the creation and composition of large fortunes. According to current Forbes data, Germany topped the list of European countries with the most billionaires in 2025 and ranked fourth globally, with 171 citizens in the ranking whose combined wealth is estimated at around $793 billion.
In the German context, family entrepreneurs and heirs to large medium-sized or global corporations dominate the top ranks. Family networks and cross-generational ownership structures shape wealth accumulation: For many of the richest Germans, their fortunes stem from long-standing entrepreneurial activity within a family network or from the transfer of significant corporate stakes across several generations. For example, Susanne Klatten is wealthy due to her shares in BMW and Altana, which she holds as part of the Quandt family, and is considered “Germany’s richest woman.” About 75% of Germany’s ultra-wealthy have inherited their wealth, according to a data analysis based on Forbes statistics.
In contrast, about 97% of Russian billionaires are classified as self-made, indicating that wealth in Russia has, in the recent past, been generated predominantly through individual business start-ups and expansions, often linked to export-oriented raw materials and industrial businesses. This distinguishes the Russian elite from the German one: while the latter often derives its top positions from family businesses developed over the long term, the Russian billionaire class is predominantly based on assets acquired since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Another difference is evident in the ratio of billionaire wealth to economic output. In Germany, the wealth of the richest individuals is estimated to account for about 12% to 18% of GDP, indicating a relatively broad capital base that is strongly anchored in productive economic sectors such as industry, trade, and mechanical engineering. In Russia, by contrast, the wealth of billionaires is estimated to account for about 27% of GDP.
The 1990s and the “Golden Age” of the Magnates
In the 1990s, Russia’s new wealth elite emerged in an environment of radical privatization, weak institutions, and high political permeability between the state and big business. Historians and observers point in particular to programs in which strategic state assets were pledged against short-term loans to the state and subsequently acquired at low prices; this process is seen as symbolic of politically driven wealth accumulation in the late Yeltsin era. It was during this phase that the term “oligarch” gained its significance: it refers not only to extremely wealthy entrepreneurship but to a constellation in which wealth and political influence are simultaneously concentrated.
Forbes describes the origins of the Russian billionaire class as the result of a “gigantic and brutal redistribution of property” in the 1990s. The profile of the “typical Forbes list character” in the golden 2000s read:
“The authors of the first Forbes ranking in 2004 created a profile of the ‘typical Forbes list character’: a 47-year-old man, born outside Moscow but with a technical degree from a Moscow university. He traded in computers before moving into banking and commodity exports. He owns a significant stake in a commodity producer and spends much of his life in Europe or North America, where he moved with his family in the late 1990s.”
The description of this group continues:
“They all managed to survive the cutthroat Russian business world of the 1990s and defend their fortunes when the focus was not on acquiring but on retaining assets. They are tenacious, intelligent, highly rational, and extremely ambitious people who are willing to compromise and can reach agreements with both the authorities and their business partners. While this combination of traits did not guarantee success, it certainly made it possible.”
Forbes refers to the years from 2000 to 2008 as the “golden years.” Symbolic of this era is Oleg Deripaska, who, according to Forbes in 2008, was “the wealthiest Russian and the ninth-richest person on the planet, with a fortune of $28 billion.” The 2008–2009 financial crisis brought these “golden years” to an end, and Deripaska’s net worth currently stands at only around 4 billion euros.
The reason why, in the context of Russia’s super-rich, the term “magnates” rather than “oligarchs” is linked to the changing political economy since the 2000s, during which the super-rich have amassed more wealth than ever before, yet their political influence is merely a shadow of what it was in the 1990s.
This article first appeared in the exclusive newsletter of the German-Russian Chamber of Foreign Trade
