Just as some Western companies that continue doing business in Russia try to blue-and-yellow-wash their reputations by funding the reconstruction of what Russia’s military has destroyed in Ukraine, some of the West’s most influential publications sometimes help whitewash Russia by handing their covers and pages to Russian oligarchs eager to launder their reputations and regain access to Western capital, markets, and political influence.
Last week, The Economist devoted sixty hours of editorial attention to billionaire Andrey Melnichenko — a textbook product of Putin’s kleptocracy whose fortune could never have existed without the Kremlin’s blessing — and elevated him into a supposed statesman offering a vision for Russia’s future.
While Ukrainian forces are striking military targets deep inside Russia, The Economist’s Kremlin emissary warns Western readers that weakening Russia risks nuclear catastrophe. This is one of the oldest tricks in Moscow’s playbook: intimidate the West into paralysis by invoking nuclear Armageddon every time Russia faces meaningful pressure. It is not analysis. It is strategic blackmail dressed up as geopolitical realism.
When Melnichenko declares that “whatever the differences, this has gone too far,” and The Economist repeats the phrase without challenge, it does far more than quote an interview subject. It equates the aggressor with its victim. It reduces Russia’s illegal armed aggression against Ukraine to “the tragedy of peoples” and “a conflict between Russia and the West.” It relegates the prohibition on genocidal war, the massacre of civilians, and the destruction of an independent state to the status of “differences.” That is not neutrality. It is moral collapse. And on The Economist’s part, this isn’t journalism. It’s the normalization of Kremlin messaging in one of the world’s most respected magazines.
Melnichenko’s assignment is obvious: create the illusion that change is brewing inside Russia; shift the Western conversation away from justice, accountability, and victory toward negotiations on Moscow’s terms; and buy time for a regime that has no intention of ending its war of conquest.
There is one sentence that would have changed the entire article, and The Economist deliberately chose not to write it: It is impossible to build and sustain a multi-billion-dollar business empire in Putin’s Russia without serving the interests of the FSB.
Not difficult. Not unlikely. Impossible. This is not an interpretation. It is the defining fact of Russia’s political economy.
The West must stop searching for the mythical “good Russia.” There isn’t one. The imperial state did not begin with Putin, and it will not end with him. For centuries Russia has been governed through repression at home and expansion abroad. Putin did not invent this system; he perfected it. Melnichenko does not represent an alternative or opposition to it. He is one of its beneficiaries.
Russia will rebuild, rearm, and return unless the West systematically deprives it of the money, technology, and industrial capacity that sustain its war machine. The West should not fear a “broken Russia.” It should fear an unbroken one.
That requires action, not wishful thinking.
First, Ukraine’s partners must finally sever Russia’s fossil-fuel lifeline: abandon the failed oil price cap, impose a complete EU ban on maritime services for Russian oil and LNG exports, dismantle the shadow fleet, kill Russia’s Arctic energy ambitions, and sanction the country’s oil and gas giants without loopholes.
Second, governments must stop rewarding companies that continue financing the Kremlin. Businesses operating in Russia should face targeted sanctions, and no company still paying taxes into Putin’s war budget should be eligible for Western public contracts.
Third, sanctions and export controls must be fully enforced. Create a permanent G7-EU export-control authority. Punish companies that fail to prevent diversion. Hold third countries accountable when they become hubs for sanctions evasion.
The greatest victory Russian propaganda can achieve is not convincing the West that Putin is right or that Moscow “has its arguments.” It is convincing the West that Russia deserves another chance before it has paid for the last one.
The Economist has just helped make that argument respectable. That should alarm everyone who still believes journalism is supposed to expose power — not rehabilitate it.