Roman Abramovich Thread

[Jase 43,479]

4 minutes ago, milka said:

Bruce Buck and Marina Granovskaia are expected to leave Chelsea as soon as the sale of the club is complete . [Sky]

Fuck...now you gotta wonder what will happen to Tuchel.

[Pizy 17,860]

Seriously, though, Roman is being run out of town for his mere connection to Putin. He is not involved in any government or military capacity. He hasn’t supported or expressed support for this war.
 

So why aren’t the English press and government aggressively going after the other ultra shady owners?

[milka 3,308]

I hope we don't experience this.

[Superblue 6,331]

12 minutes ago, Jase said:

Fuck...now you gotta wonder what will happen to Tuchel.

That was almost always going to happen when they both came in and have worked under Roman for years.

Anyone looking to buy with some common sense would try to convince Marina to stay on, even if it's in the short term.

Regarding Tuchel so long as he wants to stay on I don't see anything happening to him. I think who ever buys the club knows they have an uphill struggle to convince and appease the fanbase and retaining Tuchel surely has to be of the upmost importance.

[Jase 43,479]

1 minute ago, Superblue_1986 said:

Regarding Tuchel so long as he wants to stay on I don't see anything happening to him. I think who ever buys the club knows they have an uphill struggle to convince and appease the fanbase and retaining Tuchel surely has to be of the upmost importance.

True but you never know. There are crazy owners out there. 

[Mário César 816]

21 minutes ago, milka said:

Bruce Buck and Marina Granovskaia are expected to leave Chelsea as soon as the sale of the club is complete . [Sky]

where you find this? I can't find...

[Superblue 6,331]

6 minutes ago, Pizy said:

Seriously, though, Roman is being run out of town for his mere connection to Putin. He is not involved in any government or military capacity. He hasn’t supported or expressed support for this war.

So why aren’t the English press and government aggressively going after the other ultra shady owners?

Before the game tonight on BBC, Lineker read out Roman's statement. The parts relating to donating money were pretty much brushed aside and Alan Shearer was still moaning he still hasn't made a condemnation of what Russia has done.

The front of someone who probably would have accepted Putin himself taking over Newcastle from Mike Ashley, but I suppose settling for a regime with similar question marks hanging over them is quite frankly the height of hypocrisy but that's this country to a tee to be honest.

[Jase 43,479]

1 minute ago, Superblue_1986 said:

Before the game tonight on BBC, Lineker read out Roman's statement. The parts relating to donating money were pretty much brushed aside and Alan Shearer was still moaning he still hasn't made a condemnation of what Russia has done.

The front of someone who probably would have accepted Putin himself taking over Newcastle from Mike Ashley, but I suppose settling for a regime with similar question marks hanging over them is quite frankly the height of hypocrisy but that's this country to a tee to be honest.

Saw someone tweet this...

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,411]

Arsenal oligog has his boat nicked

The prized, 512-foot yacht of Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has been seized by German officials today following sanctions imposed by the EU

[DDA 9,570]

6 minutes ago, Superblue_1986 said:

Before the game tonight on BBC, Lineker read out Roman's statement. The parts relating to donating money were pretty much brushed aside and Alan Shearer was still moaning he still hasn't made a condemnation of what Russia has done.

The front of someone who probably would have accepted Putin himself taking over Newcastle from Mike Ashley, but I suppose settling for a regime with similar question marks hanging over them is quite frankly the height of hypocrisy but that's this country to a tee to be honest.

Shearer was passing me off something chronic tonight. He has a nerve after who just took over Newcastle. Cheeky cunt.

[Jase 43,479]

5 minutes ago, Hermione said:

I don't think it's just about the sanctions but Roman himself being well aware our brand and sponsors might take a dip due to him being Russian, he is well aware this thing won't be solved now when the whole world has some propaganda again Russian people.

Yes but it's still daft. There's so much external pressure on Roman because of what someone else is doing while the Saudi owners have been allowed to weasel their way to become a Premier League club owner. If they want to punish Roman for political reasons due to his relationship to Putin, then they should be doing the same with other owners for the shit things that they're doing to other countries/innocent lives. 

[Jase 43,479]

20 minutes ago, Mário César said:

where you find this? I can't find...

Don't know about Sky but it's stated here in the Guardian...

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/mar/02/Chelsea-swiss-billionaire-hansjorg-wyss-says-offered-chance-buy-club-roman-abramovich

[Superblue 6,331]

2 minutes ago, Jase said:

Yes but it's still daft. There's so much external pressure on Roman because of what someone else is doing while the Saudi owners have been allowed to weasel their way to become a Premier League club owner. If they want to punish Roman for political reasons due to his relationship to Putin, then they should be doing the same with other owners for the shit things that they're doing to other countries/innocent lives. 

How will this ever happen when we can't even accept our role in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc in recent years?

As has been brought up a lot recently, the west is happy to turn a blind eye to things that don't really have an effect or hold no real threat to themselves (Palestine, Yemen, etc). 

What Putin has done is nothing short of horrific and I hope he pays a heavy price for the decisions he has made but it's nothing short of embarrassing when the likes of the UK and US take the moral high ground with these things.

[Jase 43,479]

3 minutes ago, Hermione said:

They simply want to punish all Russians right now not just for political reasons and ties to Putin but in hope they end up going against Putin and end his reign, this is becoming pretty obvious. In tennis there was discussion last days about Russian players being banned altogether from competing but escaped for now with just the flags being banned.

Yes and that whole thing with punishing tennis players - among other Russian athletes - is daft. A lot of these sanctions are just for PR purposes only. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,411]

11 minutes ago, Hermione said:

Maybe I'm ignorant and don't know the law but I really wonder how in the actual world can you seize someone assets without a real process and actual reasons behind it.

Yeah seems weird to just be able to seize an 'individuals' stuff. 

I was at university Phd in politics when Soviet system collapsed. The permanently drunk Yeltsin, accepting capitalism, had 12 blokes hanging round, Abramovich one of them and the whole of Russias assets was carved up between them. So those assets are inextricably linked to the Russian state. He also made an ex KGB agent Putin in charge of the country. 

[Henrique 9,133]

Devastated by the news. Success of past 20 years wasn't only a product of Roman's money, but also of his direct involvement with the club major decisions. His ruthless decisions will be missed in coming seasons, because I'm afraid whoever buy the club would be more interested in profits than in results on the pitch. The worst case scenario would be the club being bought by Americans, who would run the club like American franchises (results won't matter as long as financial situation is great), so its basically Arsenal and United way.

Roman will be forever missed, and despite the initial british press negative reception (who used to said Roman was buying the club to be his toy, and after 3 years he would get bored and leave, so Chelsea would become the new Leeds), Roman turned Chelsea into a european powerhouse with global appeal. He invested heavily on the academy. If not for silly british regulators, right now there would be a brand new stadium as well. 20 years later he is selling a self sustainable club, who is the current Champion League champion, and won more major trophies than any english club in past 2 decades. 

Those news also made me thought about this forum since I joined it 12 year ago. Many things changed since them, many great members left, and just like most forums nowadays, this place isn't crowded as it used to be. I myself don't have the free time as I used in the past, and I barely visit it, but I still feel like this place is some kind of family. This is a moment of uncertainty, and nobody knows what's going to happen with the club in the future, but I really hope the next 20 years will be full fo great moments like the ones from past 20 years. 

[Vesper 27,352]

15 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Yeah seems weird to just be able to seize an 'individuals' stuff. 

I was at university Phd in politics when Soviet system collapsed. The permanently drunk Yeltsin, accepting capitalism, had 12 blokes hanging round, Abramovich one of them and the whole of Russias assets was carved up between them. So those assets are inextricably linked to the Russian state. He also made an ex KGB agent Putin in charge of the country. 

From shock therapy to Putin’s war

Putin is alone responsible for the war in Ukraine but prominent westerners played a key role in Russia’s post-Soviet trajectory.

https://socialeurope.eu/from-shock-therapy-to-putins-war

As Russian tanks battle through Ukraine on the orders of an authoritarian president, it is worth noting that Ukrainians are not the only ones who crave democracy. Russians, too, have taken to the streets—at great personal risk—to protest against Vladimir Putin’s outrageous act of aggression. But they are fighting an uphill battle in a country which has never been given a chance to become democratic.

When such an opportunity was available, it was subverted not by Putin and his kleptocratic milieu but by the west. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, American economic advisers convinced Russia’s leaders to focus on economic reforms and put democracy on the back burner—where Putin could easily extinguish it when the time came.

This is no trivial historical contingency. Had Russia become a democracy, there would have been no need to talk about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its eastward expansion, no invasion of Ukraine and no debates about whether the west owed Russia’s civilisation greater respect. (As a German, I recoil at that last proposition, which has clear echoes of Adolf Hitler and his self-proclaimed leadership over a ‘civilization’.)

Extraordinary powers

Let us recount the sequence of events. In November 1991, the Russian Supreme Soviet (parliament) gave the then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, extraordinary powers and a 13-month mandate to launch reforms. Then, in December 1991, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved by the Belovezh accords, which created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine declared respect for one another’s independence.

Surrounded by a small group of Russian reformers and western advisers, Yeltsin used this unique historical moment to launch an unprecedented programme of economic ‘shock therapy’. Prices were liberalised, borders were opened and rapid privatisation began—all by presidential decree.

Nobody in Yeltsin’s circle bothered to ask whether this was what Russia’s citizens wanted. And nobody paused to consider that Russians might first want a chance to develop a sound constitutional foundation for their country, or to express through an election their preference for who should govern them.

The reformers and their western advisers simply decided—and then insisted—that market reforms should precede constitutional reforms. Democratic niceties would delay or even undermine economic policy-making. Only by moving fast—cutting the dog’s tail with one blow of the axe—would Russia be put on a path to economic prosperity and the Communists be kept out of power for good. With radical market reforms, the Russian people would see tangible returns and become enamoured of democracy automatically.

Unmitigated disaster

It was not to be. The Yeltsin presidency turned out to be an unmitigated disaster—economically, socially, legally and politically. Overhauling a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy in the space of just 13 months proved to be impossible. Price and trade liberalisation on their own did not create markets. That would have required legal institutions but there was no time to establish them.

Yes, extreme shortages disappeared and street markets sprang up everywhere. But that is a far cry from nurturing the kind of markets needed to facilitate the allocation of resources on which companies and households rely.

Moreover, the shock therapy unleashed such severe and sudden social and economic disruptions that it turned the public against the reforms and the reformers. The Supreme Soviet refused to extend Yeltsin’s extraordinary powers and what happened next would set the stage for the rise of authoritarian presidentialism in Russia.

Yeltsin and his allies refused to give up. They declared the existing Russian constitution of 1977 illegitimate and Yeltsin proceeded to assume power unilaterally, while calling for a referendum to legitimise the move. But the constitutional court and the parliament refused to budge and a deep political crisis ensued. In the end, the standoff was resolved by tanks, which Yeltsin called in to dissolve the Russian parliament in October 1993, leaving 147 people dead.

To be sure, many members of parliament were opponents of Yeltsin and his team and perhaps wanted to turn back the clock. But it was Yeltsin who set a dangerous new precedent for how disputes over the country’s future would be resolved. Tanks, not votes, would decide. And Yeltsin and his team didn’t stop there. They also rammed through a constitution which enshrined a powerful president with strong decree and veto powers, and with no serious checks and balances.

Revealing conversation

I still recall a revealing conversation that I, a student of Russia’s reforms at the time, had with Dmitry Vasiliev, a top member of Yeltsin’s privatisation team. When I pointed out the shortcomings of the draft constitution, he said they would simply fix it if the wrong person ascended to power. They never did, of course—nor could they have. Vasiliev’s statement fully encapsulated how the economic reformers thought about constitutional democracy.

In December 1993, the new constitution was adopted through a referendum, which was held jointly with elections to the new parliament. Yeltsin’s candidates suffered a stunning defeat, but with the president’s new constitutional powers secured the economic reforms continued. Yeltsin was ‘re-elected’ in 1996 through a manipulated process which had been planned in Davos and orchestrated by the newly-minted Russian oligarchs. Three years later, Yeltsin made Putin prime minister and anointed him as his successor.

Democratising Russia may always have been a long shot, given the country’s history of centralised power. But it would have been worth a try. The ill-advised prioritisation of economic goals over democratic processes holds lessons well beyond Russia. By choosing capitalism over democracy as the foundation for the post-cold-war world, the west jeopardised stability, prosperity and, as we now see again in Ukraine, peace and democracy—and not only in eastern Europe.

 

[Vesper 27,352]

Germany seizes Oligarchs $600 million mega-yacht

https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/03/02/germans-seize-russian-billionaire-alisher-usmanovs-mega-yacht/

Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov was sanctioned by the European Union on Monday. Two days later, Forbes has learned from three sources in the yacht industry that one of his prized possessions—the 512-foot yacht Dilbar, valued at nearly $600 million—has been seized by German authorities in the northern city of Hamburg.

Usmanov purchased Dilbar in 2016 for a reported cost of $600 million from German shipbuilder Lürssen, which custom-built it for him over 52 months. The firm calls it "one of the most complex and challenging yachts ever built, in terms of both dimensions and technology." At 15,917 tons, it's the world's largest motor yacht by gross tonnage, and is typically manned by a crew of 96 people. Dilbar boasts the largest swimming pool ever installed on a yacht as well as two helicopter pads, a sauna, a beauty salon, and a gym. Its plush interiors have more than 1,000 sofa cushions and it can host up to 24 people in 12 suites.