During the war with Ukraine, the number of billionaires in Russia has reached an all-time high. But in the 25 years Vladimir Putin has been in power, Russia's rich and powerful - known as oligarchs - have lost almost all their political influence.
All this is good news for the Russian president. Western sanctions have failed to turn the uber-rich into his opponents, and his carrot-and-stick policies have turned them into silent backers.
Former banking billionaire Oleg Tinkov knows exactly how the sticks work.
The day after he criticised the war as "crazy" in an Instagram post, his executives were contacted by the Kremlin. They were told his Tinkoff Bank, Russia's second-largest at the time, would be nationalised unless all ties to its founder were cut.
"I couldn't discuss the price," Tinkov told the New York Times. "It was like a hostage - you take what you are offered. I couldn't negotiate."
