Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

What 'Oligarchs Close to Putin' Really Means

Some wealthy Russians are as close to the president as hostages to their taker.

May 9, 2018 at 1:10 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Always looking over his shoulder.
Photograph: Epsilon/Getty Images Europe

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Thanks to Stormy Daniels’s lawyer Michael Avenatti, the cliche “Russian oligarch close (or ‘closely linked’) to Vladimir Putin” is making the rounds again. A word of warning: Many wealthy Russians’ closeness to Putin is not at all what it seems. Viktor Vekselberg, whose name came up in Avenatti’s revelations, is a case in point.

The latest story of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen allegedly taking payments from companies seeking an insight into the administration should stand on its merits, not on a tenuous “Putin connection.” Russian hierarchies aren’t straightforward.