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and policy wonks in Washington. The Atlantic Council is nominally
a foreign policy think-tank, but it took in $21mn of donations in a year according to its website, receiving significant donations from Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk, two of Ukraine’s biggest oligarchs and the same Akhmetov that is believed to control 100 deputies in the Rada.
The Atlanitic Council also took $100,000 per year for three years from 2016 from Mykola Zlochevsky, who owns energy company Burisma
“This could open an opportunity.
To date Fridman has been extremely stingy,” Aslund said in an email that became public as part of a legal process in a US court case. “I shall tentatively have dinner with Aven in Moscow Sunday night so I might be able to ask him what he wants. As you remember, we hosted him here in November and got nothing.”
While nominally a think-tank, the Atlantic Council has invested heavily in its media profile and actively produces op-eds, webinars and commentary for
is allowed and regulated. It could also be described as “legalised corruption.”
The oligarch problem is not unique
to the new countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU), but is becoming a general problem for the whole world. Following capitalism’s defeat of socialism the West decided the way forward was “more capitalism.”
That lead to things like the US Supreme court’s Citizens United in 2010 that gives explicit political power to corporations. In the US there are constant complaints about “Big Pharma” and “Corporate Media” that are undermining democracy. The NRA’s power to block gun laws, despite the overwhelming public support for those laws, because
it is representing the industry’s interests is another example of explicit political actions by companies.
And the issue was thrown into really stark relief in the last weeks by Twitter and the other social media’s decision to ban Trump – who incidentally
sold himself as an oligarch in all
but name, highlighting as his main qualification for the job of President his ability to make money.
The Trump ban has raised the question: do private companies with commercial interests have the right to block the comments of an elected public official, where social media obviously now
has largely usurped the tradition role of the press as the “fourth estate.”
What has emerged in the US is an oligarch set-up that would look extremely familiar to anyone in Russia: independent businessmen in charge
of vast fortunes, who control the most important media outlets and are actively manipulating the narrative for their own political and commercial ends
that are not beholden to anyone.
At the end of the communist experiment in 1991 the East was supposed to start resembling the West as it increasingly adopted Western liberal democratic values, but what has actually happened is that the West is increasingly
starting to resemble the East.
“Kolomoisky is finally under federal investigation in the US for laundering billions of dollars through companies based in Delaware”
that famously hired US President- Elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter to lobby its interests in the US.
Not surprisingly, the Atlantic Council treads lightly when it comes to criticising its oligarchic sponsors and has taken an extreme anti- Russian position on the showdown between Ukraine and Russia.
Despite this ideological stance, the Atlantic Council has not shied away from approaching Russian oligarchs for money too. It also counts Russian fertlisier producer Eurochem amongst its sponsors, owned by super-wealthy oligarch Andrey Melnichenko, who made his first fortune as a talented banker before switching into the raw materials processing business.
And recently it transpired that Anders Aslund had dinner with Pyotr Aven, the co-owner of the Alfa Group that was set up by Mikhail Fridman, another Yeltsin-era oligarch and
also a business partner of Vekselberg and Blavanik in the TNK BP oil company. Aslund touched Aven for a donation
o the Atlantic Council, despite the fact that Fridman is on the US sanctions list.
mass consumption, as it is as much about influencing the narrative as
it is about doing academic research
on foreign policy goals. For example, during the high of the Belarusian mass protests last summer, it scooped up the two leading social media commentators – journalists Hanna Liubakova and Franak Viacorka – making them associate fellows of the organisation despite the absence of any higher academic qualifications. Viacorka has also become opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s media spokesman.
Aslund also worked for Tymoshenko as an advisor while she was Prime Minister after the Orange Revolution.
None of the oligarchs’ funding of Western politicians or institutions is illegal. The Atlantic Council dismisses the unsightly oligarch funding by saying: “We are transparent about it”, as it does publish all their names on its website.
Moreover, what is bribe paying in Russia is legalised in the West under the term “lobbying”, where cash donations by oligarchs, or employing well connected Americans to change the course of legislation in their favour,
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