The sanctions that the US is seeking to impose on Russia are targeting Russian leader Vladimir Putin personally. Speculation is that Putin's wealth is worth around $40 to $70 billion. This has been an object of a search for over a decade. The problem is that the portrayal of Putin that has emerged is similar to the Koch Brothers -- able to move billions of dollars around, yet difficult to pin down.
Now, as the Obama administration prepares to announce another round of sanctions as early as Monday targeting Russians it considers part of Mr. Putin’s financial circle, it is sending a not-very-subtle message that it thinks it knows where the Russian leader has his money, and that he could ultimately be targeted directly or indirectly.
“It’s something that could be done that would send a very clear signal of taking the gloves off and not just dance around it,” said Juan C. Zarate, a White House counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush who helped pioneer the government’s modern financial campaign techniques to choke off terrorist money.
Besides seriously escalating the conflict, sanctions on Putin personally would not have any effect since he could simply move money around through sources that conceal his fingerprints. The other purpose of the sanctions is to identify and target those elements within Russia who are fermenting the conflict in Ukraine.
Allegedly, much of Putin's wealth is tied into shares in Russia's oil companies.
Mr. Belkovsky told European newspapers in December 2007 that Mr. Putin had amassed a fortune of “at least” $40 billion through sizable shares of some of Russia’s largest energy companies. Mr. Putin secretly controlled “at least 75 percent” of Gunvor, 4.5 percent of Gazprom and 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz, Mr. Belkovsky said, citing only unnamed Kremlin insiders.
If that is true, then that creates a serious conflict of interest and an appearance of impropriety, given that any decisions that Putin makes would be perceived as benefiting him personally. It is one thing to suggest that someone secretly has billions of dollars stashed in some secret vault; the next thing is to actually prove it. The Treasury Department and CIA have secret reports about what they know about Putin's wealth, or lack thereof. If Russia's provocations against Ukraine continue, the next step might be for them to publicly release their assessments of Putin's wealth and let the world see how corrupt he is if he is as corrupt as they say he is.
But if he is as wealthy as certain people say he is, all the money in the world will not hide the fact that Russia is currently on a shaky foundation. Rashit Akhmetov of Zvezda Povolzhya explains, as quoted in Interpreter:
But “what does this term include and where are the borders of this beautiful new ‘Russian world’?” Akhmetov says there are three, none of which is without serious problems and all of which both separately and in conjunction with each other mean that “the Russian world” is an ideological construct without the basis in the real world that will allow it to survive for long.
The first basis for defining Putin’s world, of course, is “the genetically Russian,” but that is anything but unproblematic, the Kazan editor says. As ethno-genetic studies have shown, “95 percent” of those called ethnic Russians now are “a conglomerate of Finno-Ugric tribes” and remain internally divided even in ethno-national terms.
He goes on to say that this is a "television cartoon" that Putin is allegedly trying to stuff onto a "procrustean bed." Some extreme nationalists in Russia go even further and claim that humanity is evolving into a world in which racial identity matters more and more and that people will go back to their ethnic roots. In other words, so the twisted thinking goes, Americans are not really a nation since we are a collection of many different races. Under this thinking, people will start looking more and more to their roots and that the land really belongs to the Native Americans. The problem is that this ethnic purity is a myth; Hitler, for instance, had Jewish and Berber blood. This world is becoming more and more of a melting pot similar to what this country already is; for extreme nationalists like this, it is a basic denial of reality.
The second criteria that Putin has employed in advancing his idea is that the Russian world is based on the Russian language, that “the zones of the dominance of the Russian language are to be understood as the zone of ‘the Russian world.’” But that understanding, with its roots in tsarist and Soviet times, is no firmer a foundation, Akhmetov says.
“If the Russian language is accepted as the definition of ‘the Russian world,’” he continues, “then one can predict the next conflict in Northern Kazakhstan where three million ethnic Russians live.”
The absurdity of this thinking is best illustrated by our example. Are we the rightful rulers of Canada, UK, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand just because they speak English?
And third, Akhmetov says, “it is possible to identify ‘the Russian world’ with the Russian Orthodox Church.” But that is a very “narrow” world, given that at least half of the population of the Russian Federation today is either non-Orthodox by faith or atheist. Any attempt to make Orthodoxy the state ideology will inevitably provoke a reaction among them.
I would argue that Putin is seeking to extend that to Orthodox churches around the world. That explains in part why he is protecting Assad, for instance.
Akhmetov concludes:
For all these reasons, Akhmetov concludes, Putin’s “Russian world” is really “a phantom … on the basis of which it is impossible to build a state.” Nationalism of course is a product of the romantic era, he continues, but for it to take off, there must be “a passionate impulse.” That doesn’t exist in Russia today.
Where that impulse doesn’t exist, he continues, “the narcotic of imperialism” only hides the forces leading to decay and disintegration. That may distract some for a time, Akhmetov suggests, but even if the Kremlin makes use of increasing doses of this drug, that will not be enough to maintain the state or anything like “the Russian world” for the long term.