After the fall of Communism, Russia ushered in capitalism by selling off billions of dollars in state assets.
Now, 30 years later, the Russian government is stepping up a wartime campaign to do the opposite: seizing private businesses, this time in the name of national security.
In the last month, courts have ordered Russia’s largest warehouse owner to be taken over by the state and also directed the nationalization of a major grain exporter. And in the most stunning case, prosecutors filed a lawsuit in January to seize Moscow’s second-largest airport.
The new spate of expropriation expands on the seizures of Western-owned businesses in Russia after President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began three years ago. But in these latest cases, the owners are Russian, a sign of how the Kremlin’s push to seize control of the economy amid the war in Ukraine is reaching into ever more industries.
Critics say the asset seizures are also undermining the last vestiges of Russia’s rule of law. They have become “chaotic” and “out of control,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
By seizing lucrative private enterprises, the Kremlin can put large sections of the economy either in state hands or under indirect control of Mr. Putin’s associates, allowing the government to tailor industrial output to the needs of the war effort and also be in a position to introduce price controls. It also aligns with the Russian leader’s goal of tightening his grip on domestic policy.
Researchers at the London School of Economics have identified more than 200 Russian court rulings to nationalize private companies since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The courts, they said, mostly used claims that the companies violated 1990s privatization laws to seize them from businesses deemed “unfriendly to the Kremlin regime.”
Taken together, those seizures amount to “the largest redistribution of property in Russia since the privatization drive” in the 1990s, said Alexander Kolyandr, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
In Tuesday’s talks with a U.S. delegation in Saudi Arabia, Russian officials appealed to the Trump administration’s desire to find economic opportunities, arguing that American companies stand to make billions if they re-enter Russia. The Russian official at the talks in charge of the business ties, however, made no mention of court rulings that have eroded property rights in Russia.
In a sign that the Kremlin was anticipating an influx of foreign businesses as part of the rapprochement with the United States, Mr. Putin on Friday ordered his government to lay down rules for the return of Western companies that left Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. While Mr. Putin indicated that Moscow would welcome them back, he also made it clear that he wanted Russian companies to have “certain advantages” over the foreign competitors as a payback for the Western sanctions that spurred the 2022 exodus.
Mr. Putin personally spearheaded a campaign to take over landmark assets from foreign owners in the first months of the war. He signed several decrees in 2022 and 2023, first barring the foreign owners from selling their assets, then allowing the state to “temporarily take over” Russian companies owned by individuals from “hostile nations.” But he has since taken a back seat as property seizures became widespread across different sectors of the economy.
The attempt to seize the Moscow airport, Domodedovo, is the latest salvo in a long-running feud with the majority owner, Dmitry Kamenshchik, a reclusive businessman who has not openly supported or opposed the government, and an indication that the Kremlin is serious about stepping up nationalization.
Domodedovo — which handled about as many passengers as Newark Liberty International Airport did in 2022 — is Russia’s largest airport still in private hands. The Russian government has tried multiple times over the past two decades to take control of the airport, but this time it seems determined to succeed.
The justification prosecutors are now using is that Mr. Kamenshchik is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
Russian law bars foreign investors in what are considered “strategic sectors” without special government permission.
Mr. Kamenshchik has controlled the airport since privatizing it in the 1990s — in recent years through a Cypriot company — and authorities did not previously raise any concern about his citizenship.
Mr. Kamenshchik and an associate, prosecutors claimed, are “pursuing the aggressive policies of Western countries aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation by damaging its economy,” according to an excerpt from last month’s lawsuit quoted by Russian business daily Vedomosti. It accused him of “sabotaging” efforts to modernize the airport. Prosecutors also claimed the two businessmen siphoned off more than $180 million, at the current exchange rate, from Domodedovo’s profits between 2021 and 2023.
It was not immediately clear if authorities were pursuing separate charges on those allegations.
Mr. Kamenshchik’s whereabouts were unclear; he is not reported to have left Russia. Efforts to reach him for comment through intermediaries and the airport’s press office went unanswered.
The court quickly froze the Russian assets of the company and of Mr. Kamenshchik and warned him and his partner against “destabilizing” the operations at Domodedovo.
The lucrative airport has long been in the cross hairs of law enforcement and powerful business interests with ties to the Kremlin. In 2011, Russian news media reported that Arkady Rotenberg, a childhood friend of Mr. Putin, was eyeing Mr. Kamenshchik’s assets.
Whatever high-level patronage Domodedovo’s owner enjoyed in the past to stave off attacks from his competitors, the war in Ukraine clearly canceled it out, analysts said.
“Domodedovo used to be too big to swallow — and now it’s not,” said Mr. Kolyandr, the analyst. “Before the war, there probably were people in the government or close to the government who advocated against monopolizing the ownership of airport infrastructure. Now, state interests trump it all.”
The attempt to seize the airport is only the most prominent example of the nationalization effort. In a case that shook another sector of the economy, a Moscow court last month ordered that the assets of Raven Russia, the country’s largest warehouse owner, be handed over to the state.
It said Raven’s $1 billion logistics terminals were “strategic assets” bought without special government permission.
Russian prosecutors are required to assert that the assets they are seizing are strategic, even if they were never considered as such previously.
Raven Russia called the ruling “unlawful and unfounded” and pledged to appeal.
Last week, the court gave the green light to the seizure, citing the company owner’s foreign residency.
And in a third recent case, a court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don seized one of Russia’s biggest grain exporters, a company called Rodnye Polya, from its billionaire owner Pyotr Khodykin. The court said that Mr. Khodykin’s residency in the United Arab Emirates placed a “strategic enterprise” in foreign hands.
Rodnye Polya, which posted some $3 billion in revenues in 2023, runs a port in the city of Azov, on the Azov Sea, featuring 17 ships and hundreds of freight train cars. It was estimated to be worth some $600 million at the end of 2023.
Troubles started for Rodnye Polya a few months earlier: In the spring, Russia’s agriculture oversight agency started blocking the company’s shipments, saying they were failing quality control. Dozens of ships were stranded in ports, and some 80 percent of Rodnye Polya’s exports were halted, according to the agency.
Mr. Khodykin, the company’s owner, did not respond to a request for comment. He said the court had made a “political decision” to seize his company in an interview with local news media.
“Is there any point investing in a country where any asset can be expropriated years later?” Mr. Khodykin asked in the interview. “Then no other business can feel safe anymore.”
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