According to the Russian edition of Forbes, Russia’s wealthy added $152 billion to their wealth last year, and Forbes Russia said they recovered from the huge wealth losses they suffered after the Ukrainian uprising, due to rising natural resource prices. The war was supported by rising prices of natural resources.
According to the latest statistics, Russia officially has 110 billionaires on the list, an increase of 22 from last year, which saw their total assets rise from $353 billion to $505 billion when the 2022 list was announced.
The list would not have been so long if it were not for DST Global founder Yuri Milner, Revolut founder Nikolai Storonsky, Freedom Finance founders Timo Tolarev and Sergey Dmitriev and five billionaires, Forbes said in its report. JetBrains founder Valentin Kipiatkov renounced his Russian citizenship.
“Last year’s ranking results were also affected by poor forecasts for the Russian economy,” Forbes said, adding that the total wealth of Russian billionaires in 2021 before the start of the war was $606 billion.
Russia’s economy contracted by 2.1 percent in 2022 under pressure from Western sanctions, but it was able to sell oil, minerals and other natural resources to global markets, particularly China, India and the Middle East.
The International Monetary Fund this month raised its forecast for Russian growth in 2023 to 0.7 percent from 0.3 percent, but cut its forecast for 2024 to 1.3 percent from 2.1 percent, expecting labor shortages and the exodus of Western firms to hurt the country’s economy.
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