Billionaire Melnichenko compared sanctions against himself with a nuclear strike on Hiroshima
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Russian billionaire, founder of the fertilizer manufacturer Evrokhim and the Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK) Andrey Melnichenko in an interview with a British newspaper Financial Times compared the Western sanctions under which he fell, with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
“Honestly, I did not expect (to be included in the sanctions lists.— “b”). I have lived in Switzerland for 14 years. I do not manufacture weapons for war. I create food for people and energy for power plants around the world. I do not promote war, I do not engage in politics. What’s the point?” — said the entrepreneur. At the same time, he perceives sanctions restrictions as a natural disaster, like a hurricane: “What can be done? As it is, so it is.”
According to the businessman, the US nuclear attack on Japan in August 1945 hit not so many military targets, the outcome of the war was already a foregone conclusion, and the suffering was enormous. “The situation with sanctions is exactly the same,” Melnichenko told British journalists.
The billionaire called the military conflict in Ukraine a “global mistake”, but refused to blame it on the leadership of Russia. “All the people who tried to stop it did not do their job,” Mr. Melnichenko believes.
In his opinion, the responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine lies with everyone who “allowed things to come to this.” In particular, according to him, the West allowed the situation to get out of hand when it decided that Russia was a “rusty gas station.” In addition, Andriy Melnichenko is convinced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who “came to power on promises to resolve the situation,” is responsible for the start of full-scale hostilities.
At the same time, he does not feel any personal responsibility for the start of a military conflict in Ukraine. Mr. Melnichenko added that, despite the fact that the beginning of the introduction of Russian troops into Ukraine “caught him by surprise”, on February 24 he went to a meeting of business representatives with Vladimir Putin. “You wake up and see rockets flying on TV and you have the choice to go or not to go. How can you not go? the businessman told FT reporters.
According to Forbes, Mr. Melnichenko is the richest man in Russia, his family’s fortune is estimated by the magazine at $ 25.2 billion. In March last year, EU countries imposed sanctions against him, later Switzerland joined them. Previously, he did not make any public statements about the military conflict in Ukraine.
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