Coming from Viareggio in Italy the superyacht Polaris sailed into Malta's Grand Harbour in early March 2021. The Russian oligarch Maxim Shubarev, who bought Maltese citizenship in 2018, bought the Malta-flagged Polaris in 2021 (details here). Some 10 people were on board but we do not know whether Shubarev was on the vessel. A few days later The superyacht left Malta destined for Turkey.

FinTelegram reports that Italian law enforcement has seized villas and yachts worth at least €140m from four Russian oligarchs because the EU placed them on the sanctions list. They forfeited a villa owned by the billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on Sardinia and a villa on Lake Como owned by Vladimir Soloviev. The agents also seized superyachts belonging to Russia's richest man, Alexei Mordashov and Gennady Timchenko.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a war on the EU's doorstep. The opponents Vladimir Putin and the Western allies are at odds over how it came about. For Putin, the NATO expansion and the threat it posed to Russia forced the invasion. The Western allies are currently taking massive action against the Russian oligarchs accused of corruption. They would have made their money only with the help of the Russian kleptocracy. However, we must not forget that Ukraine was a highly corrupt state looted by politicians and oligarchs. With the help of the Western allies!

As Russia’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, Vladimir Putin gathered the country’s top businessmen in the Kremlin’s ornate Hall of the Order of St Catherine to discuss their response to sanctions. The Russian president seated about 20ft away in a conspicuous social-distancing measure. Putin told them he would have no other choice but to invade Ukraine and if they wanted to keep their businesses, neither did they.

The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is the owner of Chelsea, a UK Premier League football club. He has invested more than £1B into the Stamford Bridge club since purchasing it in 2003. Abramovich will not be asking the club to repay the loans it owes him. Thus, the long-term future of the club remains secure. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich has handed "stewardship and care" of Chelsea to the club's charitable foundation following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

On 22 Feb 2022, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced sanctions on three of Russia’s wealthiest individuals as part of the British government’s response to the escalating conflict in Ukraine - Boris Rotenberg, Igor Rotenberg, and Gennady Timchenko.

Of course, officially it is not an invasion. Russia recognized to so-called Ukraine rebel regions Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. Consequently, Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to “maintain peace” in these two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine. In two official decrees, Putin on Monday instructed the country’s defense ministry to assume “the function of maintaining peace” in the eastern regions.

It is no secret that Russian President Vladimir Putin feels provoked by NATO. A partnership of the Russian neighboring state Ukraine with NATO would be an act of aggression. In doing so, Putin likes to remind people of the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s under then-U.S. President J.F. Kennedy. In his latest video on TikTok, Putin once again emphasizes that NATO's geographic advance toward Russia would be an act of aggression. And Russia's own troop deployment is only a reaction.