The war in Ukraine is being fought on two fronts. One is the visible, bloody war of attrition waged in the frozen trenches of the east. The other is a quiet, ruthless war of survival played out in executive offices, closed courtrooms, and secure government bunkers in Kyiv. For three decades, a small club of billionaire oligarchs held Ukraine captive. They bought parliaments, controlled prime ministers, managed national television networks like personal fiefdoms, and carved up the state's industrial heartland. Today, that old guard is being systematically dismantled.
Some are in jail. Others have been stripped of their citizenship, their media empires, and their crown-jewel factories. In the most extreme cases, exiled tycoons are making sensational claims from the safety of Western Europe, accusing the Ukrainian state of attempting to physically liquidate them through targeted bombings and covert operations. For a different look, check out: this related article.
While these explosive claims of state-sponsored hits make for dramatic headlines, they mask a much deeper, more complex structural shift. The old post-Soviet oligarchic system is dead. In its place, a new, highly centralized state apparatus is emerging under the pressure of total war. To understand why billionaires are suddenly claiming they are the targets of state assassins, one must look past the sensationalism of car bombs and examine the cold, financial mechanics of wartime survival.
The Collapse of the Industrial Fiefdoms
The physical basis of oligarchic power in Ukraine was heavy industry, coal, and steel. Much of this infrastructure was located in the east, directly in the path of the Russian invasion. Related coverage regarding this has been shared by The Guardian.
The destruction of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol did not just represent a heroic military stand. It also represented the vaporization of billions of dollars of private wealth belonging to Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man. Across the country, deep-water ports, chemical plants, and oil refineries have been shelled into uselessness or captured.
The war did what thirty years of weak anti-monopoly laws could never do. It broke the financial spine of the elite.
With their cash cows destroyed, these tycoons lost the ability to subsidize their political influence. In the old days, an oligarch maintained power by funding a political party, buying a television station to protect that party, and using the party to secure state subsidies for their factories. This circular flow of influence has been shattered. The factories are gone, the money has run out, and the political parties have been banned or marginalized under martial law.
Wartime Nationalization or Strategic Settlement
The legal weapon of choice for the state has been the wartime expropriation of assets. Under martial law, the government has the power to seize private property deemed critical for national defense. Kyiv has not hesitated to use this power.
In late 2022, the state took control of stakes in several major strategic enterprises, including the oil company Ukrnafta and the aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich. The official justification was national security. Motor Sich’s long-time president, Vyacheslav Boguslayev, was arrested on charges of treason for allegedly supplying helicopter parts to Russia even after the invasion began.
For the oligarchic class, these nationalizations sent a chilling message. Private property rights, long protected by corrupt judges and political connections, are no longer sacrosanct.
The state has also weaponized citizenship. In a highly unusual move, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed decrees stripping several prominent figures of their Ukrainian citizenship. Among them was Ihor Kolomoisky, the eccentric billionaire who once backed Zelenskyy's comedy career and presidential campaign. Deprived of his citizenship and facing a barrage of fraud and money laundering charges, Kolomoisky now sits in a Kyiv detention center.
This is not a temporary wartime measure. It is a permanent restructuring of the Ukrainian economy. By the time the war ends, the state will control the vast majority of the country's strategic industrial assets, leaving little room for the return of the private monopolies that defined the post-Soviet era.
The Muddy Waters of Wartime Assassinations
When a marginalized tycoon or an exiled businessman claims that Kyiv tried to kill him in a spectacular bomb blast, the claims must be viewed through a highly cynical lens. In the grey zone of wartime security, the line between state security, corporate warfare, and geopolitical posturing is non-existent.
There are three distinct possibilities behind these assassination claims, and none of them point to a simple narrative.
First, there is the strategy of the legal shield. For an oligarch facing extradition to Ukraine on embezzlement or treason charges, a credible claim that the Ukrainian state is actively trying to assassinate them is the ultimate legal defense. If a tycoon's legal team can convince a court in London, Vienna, or Monaco that their client’s life is in danger from state-sponsored hit squads, no Western judge will greenlight an extradition. Under European human rights law, extradition cannot proceed if there is a real risk of extrajudicial killing or torture. An assassination claim, true or false, is a highly effective way to secure permanent political asylum in the West.
Second, there is the reality of internal underworld score-settling. The economic pie in Ukraine has shrunk dramatically. With billions of dollars in state subsidies, grain export revenues, and reconstruction funds on the line, the competition among the remaining elites has become desperate. When a bomb goes off under a businessman's car, it is often the result of commercial disputes or mafia-style turf wars over dwindling resources, easily blamed on the state security services to deflect attention from the actual perpetrators.
Third, there is the genuine capability of the Ukrainian security services. Organizations like the SBU and the military intelligence agency, the GUR, have demonstrated a highly sophisticated capability for targeted assassinations behind enemy lines and inside Russia itself. They have successfully targeted Russian propagandists, military officers, and Ukrainian collaborators in occupied territories.
However, using these assets to liquidate domestic business rivals inside or outside Ukraine carries immense risks for Kyiv. If a Western government discovered that Ukrainian state agents were detonating bombs on European soil to settle domestic political or financial scores, the flow of military and financial aid from the West could dry up overnight.
Kyiv knows this. The risk-reward calculation makes state-sanctioned assassinations of domestic oligarchs in Western Europe highly improbable, though not entirely impossible in the chaotic margins of a brutal war.
The Death of Private Media Empires
The most underestimated blow to the oligarchic class was not the seizure of their factories, but the loss of their television screens.
For decades, the real power of Ukrainian billionaires lay in their media holdings. Every major oligarch owned at least one national television channel. These channels were not profitable businesses; they were expensive defense systems. If the government attempted to investigate a tycoon’s business practices, the tycoon’s TV channel would launch a devastating smear campaign against the responsible ministers or the president.
Martial law changed everything. Following the 2022 invasion, the government consolidated all major national television stations into a single, state-controlled news broadcast known as the "United News" telemarathon.
This move effectively disarmed the oligarchs. Overnight, they lost their primary tool of political blackmail.
The Financial Cost of Silence
Maintaining these idle media empires quickly became a massive financial liability. Under the "anti-oligarch" law passed shortly before the war, individuals designated as oligarchs were required to sell their media assets or face severe restrictions. With no political leverage left to gain from owning them, several tycoons simply handed their media licenses back to the state.
- Rinat Akhmetov closed his entire media group, which included some of the most popular channels in the country, citing the anti-oligarch law and the impossibility of operating under wartime conditions.
- Other tycoons quietly transferred ownership to employees or shell companies to escape the official "oligarch" designation, effectively ending their direct control over public opinion.
Without their media megaphones, these men have been reduced to spectators in the political life of the country. They can no longer threaten governments or dictate policy.
The Western Eyes Watching the Clean Up
Kyiv’s campaign against the oligarchs is not merely a domestic power struggle. It is a performance directed at an audience of Western donors.
Ukraine’s economic survival depends entirely on financial aid from the United States, the European Union, the IMF, and the World Bank. These institutions have made it clear that postwar reconstruction funds will not be disbursed if the money is destined to end up in the offshore accounts of the old elite. The fight against corruption and the dismantling of the oligarchic system are explicit conditions for Ukraine’s future integration into the European Union.
This external pressure has forced the government's hand. Every high-profile arrest, asset seizure, and anti-corruption raid is widely publicized to demonstrate to Washington and Brussels that Ukraine is serious about reform.
But this process carries a profound systemic risk.
By dismantling the old oligarchic monopolies, the state is consolidating an unprecedented amount of power in the executive branch. The security services, the prosecutors, and the state-owned holding companies are all answerable to a highly centralized authority.
The critical question for Ukraine’s post-war future is whether this concentrated power will be used to build a transparent, market-driven democracy, or whether it will simply replace the old private oligarchy with a new system of state capitalism dominated by government bureaucrats and security officials.
The old billionaires are losing their empire, but the battle for who will control the spoils of the post-war economy is only just beginning. The explosions and the dramatic claims of assassination are not the story itself; they are the violent death rattles of a dying system.
