Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an unusually harsh critic of the war in Ukraine despite his closeness to President Vladimir Putin, now says Russia has resisted Western sanctions because it is too “attractive” to the rest of the world, Reuters reports.

His comments come as Putin prepares the Russian economy for a protracted war in Ukraine, with Russia’s GDP expected to grow by 2.8% this year and 2.3% in 2024, despite multiple sanctions packages enacted against Moscow by the West and its partners.

“I was surprised that private business was so flexible. I was more or less certain that up to 30% of the economy would collapse, but it was much less,” Deripaska told the Financial Times on Tuesday.

The 55-year-old oligarch explains the situation by the fact that the vast natural resources of Russia are too attractive for many countries of the world, including China, to refuse trade relations with him.

“To think that the sanctions will stop [războiul] or change the regime, or something that would bring us closer to ending the conflict… No. We have to have another solution,” he also told the FT.

Oleg Deripaska, one of the first critics of the war in Ukraine

His comments are now surprising, especially since only a few months ago, in March 2023, Deripaska said at an economic forum organized in Siberia that the Russian state could run out of money as early as next year and would need foreign investment.

Deripaska and Mykhailo Fridman were the first Russian oligarchs to criticize the start of the war in Ukraine, Deripaska since February 27 last year emphasizing that “peace is very important” for the business environment.

In early March 2022, Deripaska issued a new call for peace, adding that after the conflict in Ukraine, “the whole world will be different, and Russia will be different.”

Then, last June, the oligarch made rare statements for a representative of the Russian elite, calling Putin’s war against Ukraine a “colossal mistake.”

“Is it in Russia’s interest to destroy Ukraine? Of course not, it would be a colossal mistake,” Deripaska said at a press conference in Moscow. He repeated the phrase “colossal mistake” several times and spoke of a “war” in Ukraine, the conduct of which was completely prohibited in Russia at the time.

The Russian oligarch is close to the Kremlin

His comments were all the more surprising because Deripaska is considered close to the Kremlin, and many Russian political analysts say he is President Vladimir Putin’s most trusted industrialist.

Deripaska, the founder of Russian aluminum giant Rusal, was once Russia’s richest man but lost that title during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when his business suffered more than those of other Russian oligarchs.

Despite his earlier comments, he now told the Financial Times that he had always doubted that sanctions, which he describes as a “19th century tool”, could work as a “miracle weapon” in a globalized world.

Russian aluminum tycoon says sanctions are not ‘wunderwaffe’

“I’ve always had my doubts about this Wunderwaffe, as the Germans used to say, of sanctions — the weaponization of the financial system to be used as a kind of negotiating tool,” he declared.

“Yes, there’s war spending and all these government subsidies and handouts, but it’s still a surprisingly slow slowdown [a economiei ruse]. The private economy has found a way to work and how to do it successfully,” he added.

The United States has imposed sanctions on him since 2018 over suspicions that he and other Russian tycoons financed attempts to influence the 2016 US election.

The European Union, Great Britain, Canada and Australia took turns putting him on the list of sanctions after the war in Ukraine began.

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