Russian oligarch: “Iron curtain dropped – Russia on the road to economic disaster”
Oleg Dripska, whose fortune is estimated at $ 9 billion, spoke at an economic conference on Russian soil in which he predicted that the local economy was going to face a “very cruel financial crisis” like it had not known since the collapse of the USSR.
The harsh international sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine will plunge the country into an unprecedented economic crisis, warned billionaire Oleg Dripska.
“I understand this better than the rest.”
“When people ask: Is the West going to lower the ‘Iron Curtain’? ‘So the Iron Curtain’ has already been lowered,” Dripska declared during his speech at an economic forum in the city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia on Thursday.
The ‘Iron Curtain’ is a term from the Cold War period, attributed to Winston Churchill, used to describe the isolation of the Soviet Union and its satellite states from the West.
But Dripska, who was the richest man in Russia in the late 2000s, used it to address the new sanctions imposed on Moscow by the US, the EU and other countries in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Among other things, Russian planes were banned from using American and European airspace; And on some of the largest banks in the country the connection to the global payment network SWIFT; At the same time, large foreign companies such as Apple, Nike and IKEA stopped their operations in Russia.
“The most brutal financial crisis” awaits Russia in the coming years, he insisted.
“Double the 1998 crisis by at least three,” he declared.
In August 1998, Russia faced one of the most severe economic shocks in its modern history. When the value of the ruble plummeted and the state almost went into complete debt default.
Meanwhile, Deripaska has suggested a number of steps Russia must take if it wants to align the Hodgers and “start lifting the Iron Curtain again.”
“The first stage is peace. The second stage is the opening of an honest discussion about where we live, how we live, under what conditions, who is responsible for what and who bears what risks,” suggested the aluminum tycoon, who was granted Cypriot citizenship (like other oligarchs) in 2017.
Russia is known to have sent its troops to Ukraine last Thursday, saying it was the only way to stop the bloodshed in the disintegrating republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and to prevent Ukraine from trying to retaliate by force.
According to Moscow, it did not intend to occupy its neighbor, but sought to carry out “de-Nazification” and prevent an early Ukrainian attack.
Kyiv has denied any plans to launch a large-scale offensive against the two separatist republics, accusing Russia of waging an unprovoked war against it.
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