December: The USSR collapses.
1991
Russia begins selling state assets. It’s a rigged game: Two-thirds of shares go to company insiders, according to the IMF.
1992
Oligarchs including Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Potanin finance the reelection campaign of President Boris Yeltsin (left) in exchange for valuable energy and commodities assets.
1996
A Moscow bull market produces Russia’s first four billionaires.
1997
Russian financial crisis topples the country’s economy.
1998
December: Yeltsin resigns and appoints little-known acting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as acting president.
1999
2000
May: Putin, with the help of Berezovsky (right), wins a general election, becoming Russia’s president.
June: Putin arrests media oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky after critical coverage, later forcing him to sell his Media Most holdings to state-owned Gazprom.
November: Under investigation by the Kremlin, Berezovsky leaves Russia and vows never to return.
2003
February: British oil giant BP and a consortium of Russian oligarchs combine to create TNK-BP, which overnight becomes one of the 10 largest private oil-and-gas companies in the world.
July: Roman Abramovich buys Chelsea Football Club for $230 million.
October: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s wealthiest man, is arrested. He’s sentenced to nine years for fraud and tax evasion two years later.
2004
July: Paul Klebnikov, editor-in-chief of Forbes Russia, who was known for investigative pieces about the oligarchs, is shot to death leaving his Moscow office. The murder remains officially unsolved.
July: State-owned Gazprom sells insurance giant Sogaz to Putin-associated Rossiya Bank, the first in a series of transactions that turns Putin cronies into billionaires.
2005
October: Abramovich sells a 73% stake in oil company Sibneft to Gazprom for $13.1 billion.
2008
February: Yuri Kovalchuk and Alexey Mordashov establish National Media Group, a holding company for media assets controlled by Putin allies.
May: Constitutionally barred from serving three consecutive presidential terms, Putin assumes the role of prime minister; Dmitry Medvedev (above left) becomes president.
July: Fertilizer billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev buys Maison de L’Amitié, Donald Trump’s oceanfront Palm Beach mansion, for $95 million.
August: Russia invades neighboring Georgia.
Alisher Usmanov invests in Facebook.
2009
Abramovich takes delivery of the 533-foot Eclipse, then the world’s largest yacht.
2010
Mikhail Prokhorov buys the New Jersey Nets NBA franchise.
Moscow is now home to 79 billionaires, more than
any other city in the world.
2011
Putin wins election to a third term as president, receiving over 63% of the vote. Hundreds of protesters are arrested.
2012
March: Berezovsky dies in exile in Berkshire, England, by apparent suicide. The coroner later says he can’t establish the cause of death. The day before he died, Berezovsky spoke to Forbes Russia: “Khodorkovsky saved himself. This doesn’t mean that I have lost myself. But I’ve lived through a lot more of my own reevaluations and disappointments. . . . I lost meaning.”
2013
December: hodorkovsky is released from prison early and moves to Switzerland.
March: Russia annexes Crimea from Ukraine; the U.S. responds by sanctioning Gennady Timchenko, Arkady Rotenberg, Boris Rotenberg and Yuri Kovalchuk.
2014
February: Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician who researched corruption under Putin, is shot dead on a Moscow bridge.
2015
December: Hillary Clinton says Russian hacking helped Donald Trump beat her and win the U.S. presidency.
2016
July: Trump meets Putin in person for the first of five times. The closed-door meeting lasts more than two hours.
2017
April: The U.S. sanctions metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska and six other oligarchs.
2018
March: The Justice Department releases the findings of former FBI director Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
2019
July: Russia’s parliament approves a constitutional
amendment allowing Putin to remain in power until 2036.
2020
February: Russia invades Ukraine.
2022