NICE AIRPORT YOU’VE GOT THERE, BE A SHAME IF ANYTHING HAPPENED TO IT: ‘All kinds of scavengers’: Russia speeds up asset grab.

Russian billionaire Dmitry Kamenshchik last year was approached by people close to the government and security services with an offer they hoped he could not refuse.

But when Kamenshchik balked at gifting the state 25 per cent in Moscow’s second-largest airport, a person close to him recalled, he was met with the full force of the Russian legal system.

In January, the Russian prosecutor-general asked a Moscow court to order the nationalisation of Domodedovo airport, claiming that Kamenshchik and his business associate were part of western efforts to undermine the Russian economy because they held foreign passports. The case, which is being heard in closed-door hearings, is ongoing.

The episode is part of a string of nationalisations that have accelerated since Vladimir Putin started his full-scale war in Ukraine, even as he is also making overtures to western companies lured by the prospect of Donald Trump rekindling economic ties with Russia.

Strongarming billionaire oligarchs to feed the war machine doesn’t seem like a sustainable business model.