Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich could reportedly escape U.S. sanctions

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich may be excluded from U.S. Treasury sanctions at the suggestion of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Zelensky reportedly advised President Biden to hold off sanctioning Abramovich, whose net worth Forbes put at $13.6 billion, because he might prove helpful as a go-between with Russia to help broker an end to the invasion.

“For the negotiations, and in the interest of them succeeding, it is not helpful commenting on the process nor on Mr. Abramovich’s involvement,” a spokesperson for Mr. Abramovich told the Journal in a statement. “As previously stated, based on requests, including from Jewish organizations in Ukraine, he has been doing all he can to support efforts aimed at restoring peace as soon as possible.”

» READ MORE: Philly’s Wilma Theater is returning a donation from a group close to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich

The U.S. and its European allies began issuing sanctions and export controls shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, including travel bans on many of the people in Putin’s inner circle. Those actions have caused the ruble to tumble. Consumers can no longer use bank cards from Visa or Mastercard, which like western companies have suspended operations in the country. And product shortages are beginning to appear from supermarkets to luxury goods retailers, Wharton finance professor Nikolai Roussanov told Penn Today.

United Kingdom issued sanctions on March 10 that included freezing Abramovich’s assets there.

This month, Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre cut ties with an arts foundation backed by Abramovich. The Wilma said it is working to return a $30,000 donation received last year from the MART Foundation. In an earlier email statement sent to The Inquirer, MART said the Wilma approached the group to work together, and that MART found financing from an American donor.

The theater reconsidered the donation as the war has escalated and ahead of its production of The Cherry Orchard, planned since 2018 and set to premiere on April 12. The production’s Russian director Dmitry Krymov spoke out against the war in Ukraine last month.

“After the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, [MART’s] supporter Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the U.K., drawing more attention to areas that he funds,” Wilma managing director Leigh Goldenberg told the Inquirer’s Catherine Dunn by email. “Although MART told us the funding for our project came specifically from U.S. sources, we still decided that the best values-aligned decision was to return the funds.”