The Ukrainian Oligarchs: Dead, Dormant or Waiting?
By Matthew Parish
Wednesday 14 October 2026
One of the more remarkable consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has been the apparent disappearance of a political class that once appeared virtually indestructible. Ukraine’s oligarchs, those fabulously wealthy businessmen who accumulated industrial empires during the chaotic privatisations of the 1990s and subsequently converted their economic fortunes into political influence, have largely vanished from the public stage. Their television channels no longer dominate the national political conversation. Their parliamentary factions have lost much of their former significance. Their industrial assets have been destroyed, occupied, nationalised or rendered commercially unviable by the exigencies of war. Some have faced criminal proceedings, while others have retreated into philanthropy, international business or discreet political silence.
To the casual observer, the Ukrainian oligarchs might appear to be an endangered species, finally eliminated by the very Russian aggression that many of them once believed they could accommodate through their commercial relationships and political connections. Yet appearances can be deceptive, particularly in Ukraine, where the distinction between formal political authority and informal economic influence has historically been exceedingly difficult to discern. The disappearance of oligarchs from the television screens does not necessarily imply the disappearance of oligarchy from the political system. Indeed, the war may have achieved something considerably more ambiguous: the destruction of one generation of oligarchic power while creating the economic and institutional conditions for another to emerge.
The question is therefore not merely whether Ukraine’s oligarchs have survived the war. It is whether the underlying political economy that produced them has been fundamentally transformed, or whether the extraordinary circumstances of wartime government have merely interrupted a political tradition that may reassert itself when peace eventually returns.
The origins of Ukrainian oligarchy
To understand the contemporary predicament of Ukraine’s oligarchs, it is necessary to recall the circumstances in which they originally acquired their extraordinary influence. Following Ukrainian independence in 1991, the country inherited an enormous Soviet industrial infrastructure, including steelworks, coal mines, chemical factories, energy installations, agricultural enterprises and transport networks. These assets were theoretically owned by the newly independent Ukrainian state, but the institutions necessary to manage them within a functioning market economy scarcely existed.
Privatisation consequently proceeded in an environment characterised by weak property rights, inadequate commercial regulation, political patronage and an almost complete absence of effective competition policy. Those businessmen who possessed the necessary combination of commercial ruthlessness, political connections and access to capital were able to acquire vast industrial enterprises at prices frequently bearing little relationship to their underlying economic value. The result was not capitalism in the conventional Western European sense, in which independent businesses compete under predictable legal rules. Instead Ukraine developed a form of political capitalism in which commercial success depended substantially upon access to government officials, favourable regulatory decisions, privileged procurement arrangements and the selective enforcement of taxation and commercial legislation.
The oligarchs were therefore never merely wealthy businessmen. They were participants in an elaborate system of reciprocal political obligations, in which economic resources purchased political influence and political influence protected economic resources. The distinction between the state and the private sector became blurred, because the principal beneficiaries of privatisation also possessed the financial means to influence the institutions supposedly responsible for regulating their conduct.
This system developed regional characteristics. The industrial heartlands of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk produced particularly powerful business groups, while Kyiv became the principal marketplace in which economic resources were exchanged for political favours. Parliamentary deputies could be financed, ministers cultivated, judges influenced and television stations acquired to shape public opinion. Political parties frequently functioned less as organisations representing coherent ideological positions than as temporary coalitions of commercial interests.
The extraordinary resilience of this arrangement derived from its adaptability. Ukrainian oligarchs survived changes of president, constitutional crises, economic recessions and even the revolutionary upheavals of 2004 and 2014. They were adept at adjusting their allegiances to whichever political forces appeared ascendant, while maintaining sufficient connections across the political spectrum to protect themselves against unexpected electoral outcomes. Oligarchy was not an aberration within Ukrainian politics; for much of the country’s post-independence history, it was one of the principal mechanisms through which politics operated.
The oligarchs before the war
By the time Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President in 2019, several individuals had become almost synonymous with Ukraine’s oligarchic system. Rinat Akhmetov, whose business empire was historically centred upon the Donbas, controlled enormous interests in steel production, mining and energy. Ihor Kolomoisky possessed substantial interests in banking, petroleum and the media. Viktor Pinchuk had established an international industrial and philanthropic network, while Dmytro Firtash had long occupied a prominent position within the country’s gas and chemical industries.
These individuals were not politically interchangeable. Their relationships with successive Ukrainian governments differed considerably, as did their commercial interests, international connections and attitudes towards Russia. Some maintained relatively stable political allegiances, while others became notorious for their willingness to finance competing political projects simultaneously. Nevertheless, their collective influence rested upon a recognisable institutional structure: wealth generated through concentrated ownership of strategic industries could be deployed to acquire media outlets, finance political parties, cultivate officials and protect commercial privileges. In return, political influence helped preserve the economic concentration upon which the entire arrangement depended.
President Zelenskyy entered office promising to dismantle this system. His administration subsequently introduced legislation intended to identify individuals possessing excessive economic and political influence and subject them to special restrictions. Yet the legislation was controversial because it concentrated substantial discretion within the executive branch over determining who qualified as an oligarch.
The underlying difficulty was that oligarchy could not necessarily be abolished simply by declaring certain individuals to be oligarchs. A political economy characterised by weak institutions, concentrated ownership and discretionary government decision-making would continue to generate oligarchic relationships even if the original participants were removed. The war was to test this proposition in circumstances nobody could have anticipated.
Vladimir Putin: the accidental de-oligarchiser
Russia’s invasion inflicted catastrophic damage upon the economic foundations of Ukrainian oligarchy. Some of the country’s most valuable industrial assets were located in precisely those regions that became principal theatres of military operations. The destruction of Mariupol, including the Azovstal steelworks and the Illich metallurgical complex, represented an enormous financial blow to Akhmetov’s industrial empire. Other enterprises in the Donbas were destroyed, occupied or rendered commercially inaccessible.
The economic consequences extended far beyond the physical destruction of factories. Disrupted transport infrastructure, restrictions upon maritime exports, energy shortages, labour displacement and the collapse of established commercial relationships substantially reduced the profitability of major industrial groups. A system of political influence built upon the concentration of industrial wealth inevitably weakened when the underlying industrial wealth itself disappeared.
Yet the economic destruction was only part of the story. The invasion also transformed the institutional environment in which oligarchic politics had traditionally flourished. Before February 2022, Ukrainian politics was characterised by intense competition between political factions, competing media organisations and regional business interests. The full-scale invasion produced an extraordinary concentration of national political authority around the presidency and the institutions responsible for national defence.
Martial law restricted electoral competition, while the demands of national survival subordinated many ordinary political disputes to the overriding necessity of defeating Russian aggression. Wartime television broadcasting arrangements further reduced the ability of individual media proprietors to determine the national political agenda. The oligarchs consequently lost not only substantial portions of their wealth but also many of the institutional instruments through which that wealth had traditionally been converted into political influence.
In November 2022, the Ukrainian state assumed ownership of shares in several strategically important enterprises, including Ukrnafta, Ukrtatnafta and Motor Sich, under wartime legislation. The legal arrangements nevertheless left unresolved questions about eventual restitution or compensation and therefore about the postwar economic settlement. President Putin had achieved, entirely unintentionally, a substantial part of what successive Ukrainian governments had promised but failed to accomplish: the dismantling of the economic and political structures upon which oligarchic influence had traditionally depended. Unfortunately, the mechanism was the destruction of Ukrainian industry rather than the construction of a more equitable and competitive economic order.
The curious case of Ihor Kolomoisky
Perhaps no individual better illustrates the changing fortunes of Ukrainian oligarchy than Ihor Kolomoisky. For many years he was regarded as one of the country’s most formidable businessmen, possessing substantial financial resources, extensive media interests and a reputation for conducting political and commercial disputes with exceptional determination. His relationship with Zelenskyy attracted particular attention because the television network associated with his business interests had broadcast the programme that helped establish Zelenskyy’s public reputation before his election to the presidency.
Critics consequently questioned whether the new President would possess either the independence or the determination necessary to confront one of the businessmen most closely associated with his political ascent. The subsequent deterioration of Kolomoisky’s position demonstrated that wartime political realities could overturn even apparently entrenched relationships. His economic influence was severely weakened, while criminal proceedings and detention placed him in a position dramatically different from that which he had occupied during the earlier years of Ukrainian independence.
It would nevertheless be a mistake to interpret the difficulties of one oligarch as conclusive evidence that oligarchy itself has disappeared. The fate of Kolomoisky may illustrate the increasing power of the Ukrainian state relative to individual businessmen, rather than the establishment of an economic system in which private wealth can no longer purchase political influence. There is an important distinction between a government becoming sufficiently powerful to discipline oligarchs and a political system becoming sufficiently transparent that oligarchic relationships cease to be profitable. The former may be achieved through centralisation of executive authority; the latter requires institutional reforms that prevent the arbitrary exercise of that authority.
The rise of the wartime state
The most significant transformation in Ukraine’s political economy since February 2022 may be the extraordinary expansion of the state’s role in allocating economic resources. War requires governments to exercise powers that would ordinarily be regarded as exceptional, including directing industrial production, controlling strategic infrastructure, regulating international trade and determining the allocation of enormous public expenditures.
Ukraine’s defence procurement requirements have created vast markets for military equipment, technology, logistics, construction and associated services. International financial assistance has introduced additional flows of public resources, while the reconstruction of damaged infrastructure has already generated substantial commercial opportunities. These developments create an economic environment in which access to government decision-makers can become exceptionally valuable.
The traditional Ukrainian oligarch acquired political influence by controlling established industrial assets and using the proceeds to cultivate political connections. The emerging wartime entrepreneur may follow the reverse trajectory, acquiring substantial wealth through privileged access to government contracts, strategic procurement decisions or the distribution of reconstruction funds. This distinction is important because it suggests that the decline of the old oligarchs may coincide with the emergence of a different form of politically connected capitalism.
Instead of industrial magnates financing political parties, Ukraine may witness the development of business networks whose commercial success depends upon proximity to the presidential administration, senior ministries, regional authorities or defence procurement institutions. Such arrangements need not always involve illegality. Governments inevitably exercise discretion when awarding contracts, particularly during wartime emergencies. Yet where public procurement lacks sufficient transparency, competitive safeguards and independent scrutiny, the opportunities for corruption and political favouritism become considerable.
The danger is therefore not simply that the old oligarchs will return. It is that a new generation may emerge without the public even recognising them as oligarchs until their economic and political influence has become firmly established.
The problem of centralisation
There is a further paradox within Ukraine’s wartime transformation. The concentration of political authority that has weakened the traditional oligarchs may itself create conditions favourable to the development of new oligarchic relationships. Historically, Ukrainian oligarchy depended upon the fragmentation of political power. Different businessmen cultivated different politicians, media organisations, regional administrations and parliamentary factions. This fragmentation created numerous opportunities for corruption, but it also prevented any single economic or political group from exercising complete control over the state.
Wartime centralisation has altered this balance. The presidency and central executive institutions possess considerably greater practical authority over national economic priorities, strategic appointments and the allocation of resources than they did before the invasion. This concentration may be justified by military necessity. A country fighting for its survival cannot always afford the delays and compromises associated with ordinary peacetime politics.
Nevertheless, centralisation also reduces the number of political relationships that ambitious businessmen must cultivate to obtain privileged access to public resources. Where economic opportunities depend upon a relatively narrow circle of decision-makers, the temptation to develop exclusive relationships with those individuals becomes particularly strong. The resulting system may be less visibly oligarchic than its predecessor while remaining vulnerable to precisely the same underlying problem: the conversion of political access into private economic advantage.
The political controversies surrounding Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions have illustrated the persistence of these tensions. Public resistance to efforts perceived as weakening independent scrutiny demonstrated that Ukrainian society remains acutely sensitive to the possibility that political centralisation might undermine accountability. This may ultimately prove more important than the disappearance of any particular oligarch.
The oligarchs who remained patriotic
It would be unfair to discuss Ukraine’s oligarchs without acknowledging that several of them have made substantial contributions to the national war effort. Some have financed humanitarian assistance, supported military personnel, provided essential supplies and maintained employment under extraordinarily difficult commercial conditions. Akhmetov and Pinchuk, among others, have committed significant resources to Ukrainian humanitarian and defence-related initiatives.
Their activities demonstrate that wealthy businessmen cannot simply be divided into categories of patriotic citizens and corrupt oligarchs. An individual may have accumulated considerable wealth through an economic system characterised by political privilege while nevertheless making genuine sacrifices in defence of his country. Indeed, the Russian invasion created powerful incentives for Ukrainian industrialists to identify their commercial interests with the survival of the Ukrainian state. A Russian victory would have threatened not only their personal fortunes but also the legal and political environment in which their businesses operated.
Their patriotic activities should therefore be recognised without necessarily being regarded as evidence that their previous political relationships have disappeared. There is a difference between philanthropy and political influence, although the two can sometimes overlap. A businessman who finances hospitals, supports displaced families or provides equipment to soldiers may acquire substantial public goodwill, and that goodwill may subsequently translate into political legitimacy, access to decision-makers or influence over national reconstruction priorities.
None of this renders the philanthropy insincere. It merely illustrates that economic and political influence are rarely separated by impermeable boundaries. The real test will arise when the war ends and the country must decide how to recognise wartime contributions without allowing them to become claims to privileged economic treatment.
Reconstruction: the great temptation
The reconstruction of Ukraine will constitute one of the largest economic undertakings in modern European history. Entire cities require rebuilding, industrial infrastructure must be restored, transport networks repaired, housing reconstructed and energy systems modernised. The scale of these requirements creates extraordinary opportunities for legitimate entrepreneurship. Ukraine will need domestic and international businesses capable of mobilising capital, technology, labour and organisational expertise on an unprecedented scale.
Yet reconstruction also presents precisely the circumstances in which oligarchic political economies have historically flourished. Large public contracts, substantial international funding, urgent construction requirements and discretionary government decisions create powerful incentives for politically connected businessmen to seek privileged access to economic opportunities. There will be difficult questions concerning the ownership of destroyed industrial assets, compensation for wartime losses, the restitution of nationalised property and the allocation of development rights over reconstructed infrastructure.
These questions are particularly significant because many of Ukraine’s former oligarchs retain extensive commercial knowledge, international relationships, financial resources and experience managing large industrial enterprises. Even where their domestic assets have been severely diminished, their networks may remain valuable. A businessman who has lost a steelworks may nevertheless retain the expertise and international connections necessary to participate in rebuilding one. A former media proprietor may no longer control a national television station but may still possess extensive relationships with politicians, financiers and regional business leaders.
It is therefore entirely conceivable that some of Ukraine’s traditional oligarchs will seek to re-establish their influence through participation in reconstruction. Whether this would constitute a return to oligarchy depends upon the institutional arrangements governing their participation. There is nothing inherently objectionable about wealthy Ukrainians investing in their country’s recovery. Indeed, excluding domestic capital from reconstruction merely because its owners were previously politically influential could be economically counterproductive and legally questionable.
The essential issue is whether contracts are awarded competitively, ownership structures are transparent, conflicts of interest are properly regulated and commercial disputes are resolved by independent courts. If these conditions are satisfied, former oligarchs may become ordinary participants in a competitive market economy. If they are not, reconstruction may provide the foundation for a renewed system of political capitalism.
Europe and the possibility of a different future
Ukraine’s aspirations towards European Union membership introduce an important external constraint upon the revival of oligarchic politics. European integration requires reforms in competition policy, public procurement, judicial independence, corporate governance and the regulation of political finance. These requirements address the institutional foundations of oligarchy rather than merely the identities of individual businessmen.
The distinction is particularly important because Ukraine’s earlier anti-oligarch legislation attracted criticism from the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission. The criticism reflected an important lesson from the experience of post-communist European states: oligarchy is not eliminated by identifying a list of wealthy individuals and restricting their activities. It is eliminated, insofar as it can be eliminated at all, by constructing institutions that prevent wealth from purchasing arbitrary political privileges.
A genuinely independent judiciary makes it more difficult for businessmen to obtain favourable judgments through political connections. Effective competition authorities prevent dominant enterprises from excluding commercial rivals. Transparent procurement procedures reduce opportunities for allocating public contracts according to personal relationships. Independent media institutions expose abuses of power, while effective regulation of political financing limits the ability of wealthy individuals to acquire disproportionate influence over elected representatives.
These reforms are demanding precisely because they constrain politicians as well as businessmen. A government that wishes to eliminate oligarchy must accept limitations upon its own discretionary authority. It cannot simply replace the private influence of powerful industrialists with an equally opaque system of political patronage controlled by the executive.
The European integration process therefore offers Ukraine something more valuable than a collection of technical regulatory obligations. It provides an opportunity to transform the relationship between political authority and economic wealth. Whether Ukraine takes that opportunity will depend upon the determination of its political institutions and the continuing vigilance of its civil society.
The return of electoral politics
An additional uncertainty concerns the eventual restoration of ordinary electoral competition. Wartime conditions have substantially altered the political environment, but they cannot permanently eliminate the fundamental requirements of democratic politics. When elections resume, political parties will require financing, candidates will seek media exposure and competing political movements will attempt to establish national organisational structures. These are precisely the activities through which oligarchs historically acquired influence.
The danger is not necessarily that familiar businessmen will openly purchase political parties or television stations. The political culture of Ukraine has changed considerably since February 2022, and overt associations with the oligarchic practices of the past may carry substantial reputational costs. More subtle arrangements are conceivable. Political movements may receive financial support through networks of intermediaries. Media influence may be exercised through digital platforms rather than traditional television ownership. Commercial interests may cultivate relationships with prominent veterans, regional administrators or emerging political figures whose wartime reputations provide them with considerable public legitimacy.
The political class that emerges after the war will also differ from its predecessor. Military veterans, volunteers, humanitarian organisers, technological entrepreneurs and representatives of civil society will possess forms of public credibility that cannot simply be purchased. This transformation could make Ukraine less susceptible to traditional oligarchic influence. Politicians whose legitimacy derives from military service or wartime sacrifice may be less dependent upon wealthy sponsors than the political entrepreneurs who dominated earlier decades.
Yet political independence requires more than personal integrity. Electoral campaigns are expensive, political organisations require permanent administrative structures and independent media institutions need sustainable sources of revenue. Unless Ukraine develops transparent mechanisms for financing these activities, private wealth will continue to seek opportunities to influence political outcomes. The return of elections will therefore provide an important test of whether wartime de-oligarchisation has produced lasting institutional change or merely suspended the commercialisation of political competition.
The problem of the new oligarchs
Perhaps the greatest danger is that Ukrainians will devote too much attention to the familiar oligarchs of the past while overlooking the emergence of their successors. The original oligarchs accumulated wealth primarily through the privatisation of Soviet industrial assets. Their successors may accumulate wealth through defence technology, military procurement, infrastructure reconstruction, energy distribution, agricultural consolidation or the management of strategically important public enterprises.
The sectors will differ, but the underlying political incentives may remain remarkably similar. Where government decisions determine access to valuable economic opportunities, businessmen will seek to influence those decisions. Where political institutions lack effective transparency, such influence may be exercised through personal relationships rather than formal procedures. Where regulatory authorities are vulnerable to political pressure, successful businessmen may seek to exclude competitors by cultivating those responsible for enforcing the law.
A new oligarchy need not resemble the old one. Its members may be younger, technologically sophisticated, internationally educated and outwardly committed to European values. They may speak excellent English, attend international conferences and present themselves as representatives of Ukraine’s modern entrepreneurial economy. None of these characteristics necessarily prevents them from developing the same relationships between private wealth and public authority that characterised their predecessors.
Indeed, a modernised oligarchy might prove more difficult to identify precisely because it lacks the conspicuous industrial empires and television stations that made the earlier generation so visible. The decisive question is not whether a businessman owns a steelworks, a software company or a defence manufacturing enterprise. It is whether his commercial success depends upon competitive economic performance or privileged access to political power. This distinction should become the organising principle of Ukraine’s postwar economic reforms.
Civil society as the principal safeguard
There is nevertheless an important reason for optimism. Ukrainian society has changed profoundly since the era in which oligarchic politics first developed. The Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2014 demonstrated the capacity of Ukrainians to mobilise against political abuses. The experience of resisting Russian aggression since February 2022 has strengthened networks of civic organisation, voluntary cooperation and public accountability that extend throughout the country.
These developments have created a society in which political legitimacy increasingly derives from public service rather than merely economic power. The Ukrainian volunteer movement provides a particularly striking example. Countless individuals have organised humanitarian assistance, supported military personnel, evacuated civilians and maintained essential services without possessing substantial personal fortunes or privileged political connections. Their activities have demonstrated that the capacity to organise collective action does not belong exclusively to wealthy businessmen or established political institutions.
Independent journalists and anti-corruption campaigners have likewise continued to scrutinise public officials and politically connected commercial interests despite the pressures and dangers of wartime reporting. This civic resilience may prove to be the most significant long-term obstacle to the restoration of oligarchic politics. Oligarchy flourishes when citizens regard political institutions as remote structures controlled by wealthy and powerful individuals. It becomes more difficult to sustain when citizens believe that they possess both the right and the practical capacity to hold those institutions accountable.
Ukraine’s wartime experience has reinforced a powerful sense of collective ownership of the state. Millions of Ukrainians have made sacrifices for national independence that vastly exceed anything demanded of ordinary citizens during peacetime. It would be politically extraordinary if those citizens subsequently accepted without protest the re-establishment of a system in which a small number of wealthy businessmen exercised disproportionate influence over the institutions for which so many people had fought. Nevertheless, civic vigilance must be translated into durable institutional arrangements. Public indignation can expose corruption, but only effective legal institutions can prevent its recurrence.
Dead, dormant or waiting?
The answer to our original question is therefore necessarily complex. The traditional Ukrainian oligarchic system has suffered damage so extensive that it is difficult to imagine its complete restoration. The destruction of industrial assets, the weakening of privately controlled television networks, the centralisation of wartime authority and the transformation of Ukrainian political culture have fundamentally altered the environment in which the original oligarchs accumulated their influence.
Some individual oligarchs may never recover their former positions. Others may successfully reinvent themselves as international investors, philanthropists or participants in national reconstruction. A few may retain sufficient economic resources and political relationships to exercise considerable influence when ordinary electoral competition resumes. Yet the disappearance of particular oligarchs does not establish that oligarchy as a political phenomenon has been eliminated.
The essential characteristics of oligarchic politics are structural rather than personal. They arise when economic concentration combines with weak legal institutions, discretionary political authority and inadequate transparency to permit private wealth and public power to reinforce one another. Ukraine’s war has disrupted many of these relationships, but it has not automatically abolished the incentives that produced them.
Indeed, the extraordinary concentration of public resources associated with defence procurement and reconstruction may create new opportunities for precisely the kind of politically connected entrepreneurship that characterised the country’s earlier development. The central question is whether Ukraine will use the extraordinary disruption caused by the war to construct institutions capable of preventing the re-emergence of oligarchic influence.
This requires something considerably more ambitious than prosecuting prominent businessmen, nationalising strategic enterprises or restricting the ownership of television stations. It requires a political economy in which government contracts are awarded transparently, commercial disputes are resolved independently, political parties are financed openly and regulatory decisions cannot be purchased through personal connections. It also requires political leaders willing to surrender some of the discretionary powers that make oligarchic relationships attractive in the first place.
There is an irony in all this. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine partly because he imagined that the country was a fragile construction, dominated by competing elites whose loyalties could be manipulated and whose institutions would collapse under military pressure. Instead, Russian aggression has contributed to the destruction of much of the economic foundation of the oligarchic system that had previously made Ukraine vulnerable to such manipulation. Yet Putin’s invasion has not created a modern European political economy. It has merely opened an opportunity for Ukrainians to construct one.
Whether that opportunity is seized will depend less upon the fate of Akhmetov, Kolomoisky, Pinchuk or any other familiar figure than upon the institutions that emerge from the war. The old oligarchs are certainly diminished. Some may be politically finished, others are dormant, and still others are undoubtedly considering the opportunities that eventual reconstruction and electoral competition may present.
But the most important oligarchs in Ukraine’s future may be individuals whose names are not yet widely known. They may presently be accumulating fortunes in industries that scarcely existed before the full-scale invasion. They may be cultivating relationships within institutions whose wartime authority has expanded beyond anything contemplated during the country’s earlier democratic development. They may eventually discover that the reconstruction of Ukraine offers commercial opportunities comparable in scale to the privatisation of Soviet industry three decades earlier.
If Ukraine succeeds in establishing transparent markets, independent courts and genuinely accountable political institutions, these individuals may become the legitimate entrepreneurs of a prosperous European democracy. If it fails, they may become the oligarchs of tomorrow.
The Ukrainian oligarchs, then, are not quite dead. The old generation is weakened, and the system that sustained it is in a state of profound disruption, but oligarchy itself remains a possibility wherever private wealth can purchase public power. The ultimate achievement of Ukraine’s struggle for independence would be to ensure that the country’s future is determined neither by the oligarchs of yesterday nor by those who may be waiting to replace them.
It would be to establish a state in which being rich is neither a qualification for political authority nor a guarantee of immunity from the law. That would constitute a revolution considerably more enduring than the destruction of any particular industrial empire, and perhaps one of the most important political consequences of Ukraine’s long and terrible war.
