Wednesday, December 28, 2022 – Russia’s all-out invasion drastically reduced the net worth of Ukraine’s wealthiest, according to a new report by Forbes magazine as Russia destroyed plants and factories shrinking Ukriane’s economy by a third.
Altogether, Ukraine’s 20 richest people are worth $22.5 billion, down by over $20 billion from February 2022, Forbes Ukraine reported on Dec. 27.
In recent years, the oligarchs who control vital industries such as machinery, raw material, banking, agriculture, and chemical, invariably found themselves at the top of annual financial ratings but 2022 has been made different due to the Russian invasion.
Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov kept first place in the ranking, just like last year.
However, Akhmetov who owns DTEK energy company and Metinvest steel and mining conglomerate lost $9.3 billion due to Russia’s all-out war in his native Donbas.
His net worth is now estimated at $4.4 billion.
The tycoon’s long list of painful business losses includes the Mariupol-based Azovstal steel plant, one of the largest in Europe, and Ukraine’s second-largest metallurgical enterprise Ilyich Iron and Steel Works.
Many of Akhmetov’s possessions were turned into warzones and were eventually destroyed by the Russians.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK, which controls a third of the energy market and is responsible for mining the majority of the country’s coal, is a part of Akhmetov’s SCM Group.
As of early December, the company said its enterprises were attacked 18 times, 20 people were injured, and three were killed, according to Forbes.
In June Akhmetov (pictured above) filed a lawsuit against Moscow in the European Court of Human Rights, with the total amount of the claim may reach $20 billion.
As Ukraine’s established tycoons faced substantial losses, tech entrepreneurs have gained positions among the country’s wealthiest.
Maksym Lytvyn and Oleksii Shevchenko, co-founders of the popular grammar-checking tool Grammarly, Ukraine’s most expensive tech startup, have entered Forbes’ list of Ukraines richest people in second and third place.
The assets of each are now worth $2.3 billion. The Ukraine-born techies became billionaires after a $200 million investment deal catapulted Grammarly’s value to $13 billion.
Forbes noted that the change in the rating shows the primary trend in Ukraine’s economy that “the days of old-school businessmen are passing.”
“Their losses are disproportionately larger than their assets. There are already six entrepreneurs in the top 20 who made their fortunes in the knowledge economy almost without intersecting with the Ukrainian state,” the magazine said.
Grammarly co-founders are followed in the list by oligarchs Victor Pinchuk and Kostyantyn Zhevago, whose net worth is estimated at $2.2 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively.
Last year, Pinchuk, who holds massive assets in the ironworks industry and media, was ranked second-richest Ukrainian, and Zhevago, the majority owner of London-listed Ferrexpo ore mining group, was named third.
In total, Forbes analyzed the net worth of 129 Ukrainian businessmen who were included among the top 100 richest in the past two years.
The magazine noted that some of the billionaires could have gotten into the 2022 ranking based on their net worth but were excluded from the list due to loss of citizenship.
For example, Ihor Kolomoiskyi, who last year ranked fourth in the ranking valued at $1.8 billion, was allegedly stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by President Volodymyr Zelensky in July.
The list of the 20 richest Ukrainians include:
Top-20 in 2022
Rinat Akhmetov
Main asset: SCM, Metinvest, DTEK
Networth: $4.4 billion
Maksym Lytvyn
Main asset: Grammarly
Networth: $2.3 billion
Oleksii Shevchenko
Main asset: Grammarly
Networth: $2.3 billion
Networth: $2.3 billion
Victor Pinchuk
Main asset: Interpipe Group
Networth; $2.2 billion
Kostyantyn Zhevago
Ferrexpo
$1.4 billion
Oleksandr and Halyna Hereha
Epicenter-K
$1.2 billion
Vlad Yatsenko
Revolut
$1.1 billion
Vadym Novinsky
Metinvest (24%)
$1 billion
Hennadii Boholiubov
Privat Group
$1 billion
Serhii Tihipko
TAS, CreditMarket, Universal Bank
$870 million.
Maks Poliakov
IT, space, dating
$800 million
Petro Poroshenko
Roshen
$730 million
Yurii Kosiuk
MHP
$520 million
Mykola Zlochevskyi
Burisma
$500 million
Vitalii Khomutynnyk
Ukrnaftoburinnya
$490 million
Andrii Verevskyi
Kernel
$400 million
Taras Kytsmei
SoftServe $360 million
Stepan Chernovetskyi
IT, real estate
$350 million
Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi
DCH
$340 million
Oleksandr Konotopskyi
Ajax Systems
$320 million
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