Russian Billionaire Deripaska Deleted Posts About Putin's 'crazy' War

Other publications criticizing the Kremlin have also disappeared.

The founder of the largest metallurgical holding Rusal O Oleg Deripaska has cleaned his Telegram channel of posts criticizing the war and the Russian authorities. As "Important Stories" pointed out, this affected publications made before November 1, 2025. This included removing a post that called the invasion of Ukraine "madness" that "needs to end now." Also gone was a comment about additional export duties on companies. Deripaska called the government's measures "extortion/expropriation" and ironically said that the "growth of prosperity" of Russians, as declared by the authorities, can only be seen in Moscow and on TV.

In addition, a post calling for a quarter cut in the staff of security agencies, including the Defense Ministry, and for their employees to work a six-day work week with a 12-hour schedule was deleted. The billionaire noted that otherwise taxes would have to be raised "to feed all this horde." In addition, the publications where Deripaska compared Russian entrepreneurs to burlaks on the Volga, forced to pull "the unsinkable rook of our banking system," and called for the ruble exchange rate to collapse to 105 per dollar have disappeared.

The businessman also edited later posts. For example, on January 12, he wrote about the threat of bankruptcy of "thousands" of Russian enterprises due to the actions of officials in charge of the economy. "We are just stupidly wasting everything that we managed to mobilize in 2022-2023 by such hard and hard work. There is some kind of prohibitively primitive experiment that will end ignominiously," Deripaska was indignant. Now, instead of sharp criticism, there is a formal question about the need to coordinate the actions of the authorities and business in the fight against inflation.

Deripaska is among the top 40 richest people in Russia with a fortune of $4.1 billion, according to Forbes. The US imposed sanctions against him back in 2018: among other things, the US Treasury Department accused the billionaire of money laundering in the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In 2022, after the war in Ukraine began, the businessman was blacklisted by the European Union. The justification stated that Deripaska owns the Russian Machines conglomerate, which includes the Military-Industrial Company, a major supplier of arms and military equipment to Russia's army. The EU also pointed out that the businessman's assets include the Arzamas Machine Building Plant, which produces BTR-80 amphibious armored personnel carriers.

While seeking the lifting of sanctions, Deripaska has repeatedly spoken out against the war in Ukraine, criticizing excessive military spending and calling for a ceasefire without preconditions. He argued that neither side was capable of achieving the "stated goal."

The Kremlin has on at least two occasions demanded that the billionaire stop criticizing the war, the Financial Times wrote. Amid the criticism, Deripaska's company lost a yacht port and the Imeretinsky hotel complex in Sochi, on which he spent $1 billion. They also decided to seize almost 31 hectares of land in the Ordzhonikidzevsky district of Khakassia.

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