There have been, what, 40 oligarchs who have died mysteriously in the past year? That’s a plenty big enough number for good statistics.
Twenty-two listed on this wikipage, although as the cite notes, the list is by nature never going to be complete.
Who can forget the Russian pogrom.
I guess the question is, how many Russian oligarchs are there? Or, better yet, how many Russian oligarchs died annually in the 5 years prior to the invasion?
Right now, every time a Russian oligarch dies, it makes the news outside of Russia. Was that always the case?
There probably are many legitimate suicides. Losing wealth is a powerful factor.
With regards to surface fleets, Russia suffers even more severely than Germany did with a fundamental problem: lack of open access to the Atlantic Ocean. Operating from the landlocked Baltic Sea is strategically an exercise in futility; the arctic port of Murmansk only somewhat better. So they built the one carrier more or less as a throwaway experiment, and botched that.
Isn’t preserving the DNA of the losers dysgenic?
[sarcasm]No, see Russia is fighting against the decadent evil doomed West and only has to hold out until the Nazi-Satan-Transgender Alliance collapses and glorious Mother Russia advances over the ruins to rebuild civilization.[/sarcasm]
The Admiral Kuznetsov was laid down in 1985 and built in Nikolayev (like all Soviet carriers), now in Ukraine. It’s a Soviet carrier in origin, one of several, rather than Russian - it was laid down in the days when all the Black Sea ports were open to it. It wasn’t an experimental one off - another hull was laid down, but after independence was sold by Ukraine to China who completed it as the Liaoning (Ukraine also tried to claim the not yet fully commissioned Kuznetsov, but failed to make the claim stick). It was preceded by the first true Soviet carriers - the Kiev-class (class of four ships, one still in service for India). Those were preceded by the Moskva-class helicopter carriers. Plans had been laid for the first Soviet super-carrier, but that went up in smoke after the USSR went kaput.
What I remember hearing was that the introduction of Stinger missiles made low-level helicopter ground attacks and airborne cavalry operations untenable.
Geez, I didn’t think mods could put anyone on ignore. 
I posted that way back in post 1382. Although I still count 23 dead oligarchs.
Yep, I’d really like to know exactly how many Russian oligarchs there are, inside and outside of Russia. If there were 100, 23 is a big number. If there were 10,000, not quite the same impact, so to speak.
It just seems incredible to me that a so called super power lacks the ability to move significant number of aircraft around the world other than by overflying other countries airspace. Then again, they don’t seem to be making real good use of their home based aircraft right now.
Even if Russia had plentiful good-quality carriers, to get anywhere from their bases they would in wartime have to run a gauntlet of enemy sea, air and even land-based antiship assets. People in the USA and UK take it for granted that there’s nothing blocking their navy from the world’s oceans; that’s NOT the case in much of Europe including Russia.
Which is why you get them away from their bases before a war starts. How long do American aircraft carriers stay in port?
One could say that about marshalling the 1-A core of your population to go and be sacrificed on the field of folly is not a good way to improve the genetic quality of your people – if there were any actual meretorious substance to eugenics.
Plus there’s the factor that Russia, much like Germany in WWs I and II, is/was principally a land power while Great Britain and to a lesser extent, the US were very interested in overseas trade and thus, the means to protect it. Japan was too, and the fact they got the 3:5 short end of the stick in the Washington and London naval treaties rankled with them.
Russian operatives have long been committing assassinations in Western nations. Western leaders usually have excellent security. Russian ex-pats not so much.
This EU press release announcing their sanctions program against Russia and Russians calls out sanctioning 877 individuals, but it can be argued not all of those are the kind of “oligarch” we’re talking about.
Thanks, this is pretty much what I was looking for. I know we’ll never have an exact count. I also learned this number includes Belarussians too. I was thinking the number would be higher.
I wonder if all of the dead folk were on this list.
Like I said, it seems a lot of wealthy and “connected” Russians have been meeting suspicious ends, but I also wonder how scrupulously and consistently the term “oligarch” is being defined.
what makes you think so …?
spending 100s of millions to buy superyachts and flats in Monaco-London-Paris, but not a couple of millions to protect your life and that of your family … wouldn’t make sense to me