Why’d Ukraine Sanction Russian Tycoon Mikhail Fridman’s Pro-Kiev Son?

It's unimportant to its representatives that Ozhelskiy’s father was born in what’s nowadays Western Ukraine nor that his son considers himself Ukrainian and even participated in multiple rallies against his own country. Kiev will always consider that young man to be Russian, their attitude towards which can be described as ”Russo-contempt” or “Russo-odiousness” in the infamous words of Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk that he recently shared on Twitter.

Those Russians who don’t support their country’s special operation in Ukraine have hitherto naively thought that the US-led West’s Golden Billion has some level of sympathy with them even though many EU countries have aggressively moved to bar them from entering their borders purely on the basis of their national origins. That presumably caught many of them by surprise since they assumed that this neighboring bloc of all places would welcome them with open arms if they decided to move there in self-imposed exile. Now a lot of these same Russians must once again be scratching their heads and wondering why one of their most symbolic peers was just sanctioned on the basis of his family relations.

Alexander Ozhelskiy is the only son of Ukrainian-born multibillionaire Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman, who’s among the most prominent people to be sanctioned by the Golden Billion over Moscow’s special operation since it began in late February. As it turns out, Ozhelskiy himself was just sanctioned by the Ukrainian authorities on 20 October in their extensive list of Russian businessmen and their families who that crumbling former Soviet Republic wants to punish as part of their retributive reaction to the conflict. The 22-year-old was disgusted by this since he revealed in a video that he just recorded that he’s passionately supported Kiev from the get-go and even considers himself to be Ukrainian.

The naivete of youth blinded this young man with idealism to the point where he never imagined it possible that the same side that he sympathizes with would hate him just as passionately as he supports them. In Ozhelskiy’s mind, his symbolic role as a pro-Kiev activist in spite of his wealthy father’s alleged ties with the Kremlin should have made him a hero in that war-torn country, not a literal enemy of the state. He sincerely can’t understand why they want to punish him just because of his ties with another person, but therein lies the dark reality that Ozhelskiy would do well to realize: Kiev is run by a fascist regime whose leaders are literally spewing ethno-nationalist hate speech against Russians like himself.

It's unimportant to its representatives that Ozhelskiy’s father was born in what’s nowadays Western Ukraine nor that his son considers himself Ukrainian and even participated in multiple rallies against his own country. Kiev will always consider that young man to be Russian, their attitude towards which can be described as ”Russo-contempt” or “Russo-odiousness” in the infamous words of Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk that he recently shared on Twitter. As that influential figure himself put it in his same tweet, “Everyone despises you and you make us feel disgusted.” Coincidentally or not, Stefanchuk spewed his hate speech on the same day as Kiev sanctioned Ozhelskiy.

There should no longer be any doubt in all Russians’ minds, especially those who naively think that they can earn the Golden Billion’s “mercy” by publicly opposing their country’s special operation, that this New Cold War bloc fiercely hates them purely on the basis of their ethno-national origins. If that wasn’t the case and these misguided activists were actually correct, then Ozhelskiy of all people wouldn’t ever have been sanctioned by their proxies in Kiev. Even if they lift their restrictions against him to relieve some of the soft power pressure that he just put on them by casting their decision in an extremely negative light, the very fact that he was sanctioned in the first place shows that they truly do hate him.