Russia: Strategic developments in Russia
Reuters: in 2026, Russian oligarchs "voluntarily" transferred 471 million rubles to the state budget. This is more than 1% of all state expenditures. The richest Russians in 2026 transferred 471 billion rubles, or more than $5.6 billion, to the Russian budget in the form of so-called "voluntary wartime contributions." This amount covered more than 1% of state expenditures. This is evidenced by state budget data, which Reuters drew attention to. These contributions were discussed in March at a closed meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian entrepreneurs, most of whom are under Western sanctions. As The Bell wrote, citing sources, he proposed to voluntarily participate in financing the war. According to the publication, oligarch and senator Suleiman Kerimov immediately promised to allocate 100 billion rubles, and at least one other major businessman supported the idea. The Financial Times reported that businessman Oleg Deripaska also agreed to donate money. In September, Putin said that after that meeting, oligarchs transferred "hundreds of billions" of rubles to the budget. According to TASS, the meeting was also attended by the founder of USM Holdings Alisher Usmanov, President of Norilsk Nickel Vladimir Potanin, founder of AFK Sistema Vladimir Evtushenkov, head of VTB Andrey Kostin, and head of Gazprom Neft Alexander Dyukov. The Kremlin, however, denies that Putin asked entrepreneurs for funding. According to his press secretary Dmitry Peskov, one of the participants himself proposed to make "a very large sum of money" – allegedly pointing out that many wealthy Russians got rich in the 1990s thanks to ties with the state – and Putin supported this initiative. "It is not true that the money was said to be "for the SMO" [Special Military Operation]. It is not true that Putin asked for such a request. The truth is that one of the meeting participants did indeed talk about the fact that for the state, he considers it necessary to allocate a certain large, very large sum of money – and it was his family decision," he said. Receipts from these contributions, designated in budget documents as "voluntary contributions," have already exceeded receipts from the corporate windfall tax, which was mainly paid by metallurgical companies and fertilizer producers, Reuters notes.
Event details
These categories are assigned by an automated classifier and are not manually verified — they can be inaccurate or mislabelled. See how Newsmap classifies events.
Source
This event was reported on Telegramby @currenttime. The summary above is an automated, neutral description; always consult the original report before relying on it.
Related reports
Other recent reports about the same actors or country: