Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko has laid out four possible futures for Russia after the war in Ukraine, in an essay and nearly 60 hours of interviews with The Economist.
Melnichenko is one of Russia’s richest men and built his fortune partly on fertilizer. DR reported on August 20, 2026 that he set out the scenarios in the British magazine The Economist.
His essay, titled “Why a broken Russia is bad for the world,” was published by The Economist on July 9, 2026. Per DR, his companies employ more than 100,000 people, and he was long almost unknown outside business circles. He returned to Russia in 2023 after coming under Western sanctions.
Four scenarios
The first scenario is a humiliated Russia on the periphery of the West, which Melnichenko warns could trigger new revanchism. The second is a Russia that becomes economically dependent on China.
The third and most dramatic is a fragmented Russia, where competition over nuclear weapons, territory and resources leads to chaos and civil war. The fourth is a fortress Russia, isolated, militarized and in permanent conflict with the West. According to DR’s Russia and Ukraine correspondent Mathilde Kimer, all four options are bad, and the West faces no good choice.
Melnichenko does not criticize President Vladimir Putin or the war itself. Instead he argues that Russia should influence Europe’s security architecture and remain a sovereign great power. As stated by Edward Carr, an editor at The Economist, Melnichenko is not anti-Putin and not against the war, and his companies have supported the war economy.
Poul Funder Larsen, a former Moscow and Kyiv correspondent and now an analyst at Jyllands-Posten, sees political motives in the statements. He says it cannot be ruled out that Melnichenko was sent out by forces around the Kremlin, noting that no Russian oligarch is fully independent of the state.
Russian outlets also covered the essay. RBC summarized the same four post-war scenarios on July 9, 2026. The Moscow Times described five possible futures, including a sovereign Russia, and placed him among the country’s ten richest people.
The backdrop
DR reports that Melnichenko is speaking as Ukrainian drones bring the war into everyday Russian life and Russian losses grow. Russians also face new mobilizations this autumn, part of a pattern of deep strikes reaching Russian territory.
The Russian economy is weakening, and DR reports that people are withdrawing billions in cash from banks over concerns about their savings. One month after the essay appeared, chief economist André Klephak was dismissed from the state-owned Vnesheconombank, after warning of major economic difficulties and social unrest.
Mette Skak, associate professor emerita at Aarhus University, says the Putin regime presents the war to Russians as a confrontation with the West. She describes this as a KGB mentality, repeated regardless of Western actions.
