Kyiv gunning for steel tycoon over exports ‘for the Kremlin’s tanks’
Ukraine demands to know why Vladimir Lisin, the richest man in Russia, has not faced full sanctions
A RUSSIAN steel tycoon who owns a Scottish shooting estate must be sanctioned for supplying one of Vladimir Putin’s largest tank factories, Ukrainian MPS have demanded.
Vladimir Lisin, the head of Russian steel giant Novolipetsk (NLMK), is Russia’s richest man, according to Forbes.
He was placed on Australia’s sanctions list in April but, unlike other prominent Russian tycoons such as Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Fridman, he has so far avoided designation by Britain, the EU or the United States.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP from Odesa, is demanding to know why Mr Lisin, 66, has evaded these sanctions lists. He told The Daily Telegraph: “His company is the main provider of steel to Uralvagonzavod – that is one of Russia’s biggest tank factories.
“So, he is directly supplying the war effort.”
Mr Goncharenko highlighted Mr Lisin as a prime target of a campaign he is leading to consolidate and expand the various sanction lists used by Ukraine’s Western allies. He wrote to Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Josep Borrel, the EU’S foreign policy chief, asking them to sanction Mr Lisin and five other individuals in October. So far, that request has been ignored.
He said he intends to team up with British MPS to write a similar letter to James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary. “We have two problems: first, not everyone who should be sanctioned is, and second, no one is coordinating the sanctions regimes,” he said.
Forbes estimated the wealth of Mr Lisin, who acquired the 3,000-acre Aberuchill estate in Perthshire in 2005, at $18.4billion (£15billion).
Like many of Russia’s richest businessmen, Mr Lisin has generally tried to avoid getting drawn into the debate around the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
He is also known for keeping a lower profile than many other Russian billionaires, and he seldom gives interviews.
However, he did appear to question the morality of the invasion in a letter to employees in March, writing that “the death of people in Ukraine is a tragedy that is hard to justify or explain”. At that time, he also called for a peaceful diplomatic solution.
NLMK, is Russia’s fourth largest producer and controls plants in Belgium and Italy. Its representatives have argued that sanctions on the company or the steel trade in general could lead to job losses.
NLMK denied in a statement that it had ever supplied Uralvagonzavod and said its products were not suitable for military applications such as armour plating. The company added that Mr Lisin has never been connected to Mr Putin or Russian politics.