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Open thread Feb. 22, 2022

Dan Crawford | February 22, 2022 8:21 am

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted commercial gambling in jurisdictions around the world. Numerous land-based gambling venues such as casinos, bingo halls, horseracing tracks, bars and clubs with electronic gambling machines (EGMs), lottery retailers, betting shops and poker rooms were forced to close leading many to download mega888 games, in particular during the first phase ‘lockdown’ in March and April 2020 [1–4]. Since the initial lockdown, some venues re-opened fully or in a modified fashion, some remain open and others have closed during the second wave restrictions. Like the course of the pandemic itself, the future availability of gambling is unknown and unpredictable. This paper reviews evidence to date on the impact on individuals of these effects.

At the same time that land-based gambling accessibility decreased, online gambling sites continued to operate. Some media reports indicated that business had, in fact, flourished and that the pandemic served to promote this increasingly popular gambling format [5,6]. Online gambling sites typically include the full range of types of gambling, including lottery ticket sales, casino table games such a roulette, blackjack and craps, slot machines, online poker and sports betting. With the exception of sports betting, which was affected by the cessation or reduction of professional sports worldwide, all other types have been continuously available from both legally regulated and unregulated site operators. Some jurisdictions, however, have taken steps such as limiting advertising [7] and imposing a daily betting cap to minimize potential harms during the pandemic

22 Comments

Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:

February 22, 2022 at 9:14 am

[Newly of interest to me since last night’s reveal of my wife’s gambling addiction when she gave me her financial statements for 2021 for me to file our joint tax return.]

https://journals.lww.com/co-psychiatry/fulltext/2021/07000/the_impact_of_covid_19_on_gambling_and_gambling.3.aspx

ADDICTIVE DISORDERS: Edited by John B. Saunders and Linda B. CottlerThe impact of COVID-19 on gambling and gambling disorder: emerging data

Hodgins, David C.a; Stevens, Rhys M.G.b

AbstractPurpose of review

The lockdown response to the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted commercial gambling in many jurisdictions around the world. The goal of this review is to systematically identify and describe the survey data and findings to date examining the effect on individual gambling and gambling disorder.

Recent findings

Of the 17 publications meeting inclusion criteria, the majority reported cross-sectional assessments (n = 11, 65%) and remainder were longitudinal in that they had earlier gambling data for participants (n = 6, 35%). Not surprisingly given the closure of land-based gambling, an overall reduction in gambling frequency and expenditure was reported in all studies. The estimate of the proportion of participants in both the general population and the population that gambles who increased overall gambling or online gambling was variable. The most consistent correlates of increased gambling during the lockdown were increased problem gambling severity, younger age groups, and being male.

Summary

These results suggest that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on gambling and problematic gambling are diverse – possibly causing a reduction in current or future problems in some, but also promoting increased problematic gambling in others. The longer-term implications of both the reduction in overall gambling, and the increase in some vulnerable groups are unclear, and requires assessment in subsequent follow-up studies. However, in the short term, individuals with existing gambling problems should be recognized as a vulnerable group.

INTRODUCTION

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted commercial gambling in jurisdictions around the world. Numerous land-based gambling venues such as casinos, bingo halls, horseracing tracks, bars and clubs with electronic gambling machines (EGMs), lottery retailers, betting shops and poker rooms were forced to close, in particular during the first phase ‘lockdown’ in March and April 2020 [1–4]. Since the initial lockdown, some venues re-opened fully or in a modified fashion, some remain open and others have closed during the second wave restrictions. Like the course of the pandemic itself, the future availability of gambling is unknown and unpredictable. This paper reviews evidence to date on the impact on individuals of these effects.

At the same time that land-based gambling accessibility decreased, online gambling sites continued to operate. Some media reports indicated that business had, in fact, flourished and that the pandemic served to promote this increasingly popular gambling format [5,6]. Online gambling sites typically include the full range of types of gambling, including lottery ticket sales, casino table games such a roulette, blackjack and craps, slot machines, online poker and sports betting. With the exception of sports betting, which was affected by the cessation or reduction of professional sports worldwide, all other types have been continuously available from both legally regulated and unregulated site operators. Some jurisdictions, however, have taken steps such as limiting advertising [7] and imposing a daily betting cap to minimize potential harms during the pandemic [8]…
- Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 9:20 am
  
  [Plethora does not begin to describe how much doc that exists for “pandemic online gambling.” So, I told my wife to not feel alone and that there were going to be a bunch of new job openings for shrinks in addiction therapy after the pandemic recedes. ]
  
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210517083636.htm
  
  Study shows online gambling soared during lockdown, especially among regular gamblers
  
  Date:
  May 17, 2021
  Source:
  University of Bristol
  Summary:
  Regular gamblers were more than six times more likely to gamble online compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research.
  
  Regular gamblers were more than six times more likely to gamble online compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research.
  
  The study, led by the University of Bristol and published today (17 May) in the Journal of Gambling Studies, showed regular male gamblers were particularly prone to gambling more often online during the public lockdown in the UK, compared to their previously reported gambling habits.
  
  Although overall men and women gambled less frequently during lockdown, partly due to betting shops being closed, some forms of gambling increased. For instance, usage of online gambling, including poker, bingo, and casino games, grew six-fold among regular gamblers. Respondents who gambled occasionally were still found to be more than twice as likely than before to gamble online. Those who struggled financially before the pandemic were more likely to report gambling during lockdown.
  
  Lead author Professor Alan Emond, of the University of Bristol’s Medical School, said: “This study provides unique real time insights into how people’s attitudes and gambling behaviour changed during lockdown, when everyone was stuck inside and unable to participate in most social activities. The findings reveal that although many forms of gambling were restricted, a minority of regular gamblers significantly increased their gambling and betting online. As with so many repercussions of the pandemic, inequalities have been exacerbated and particularly vulnerable groups were worse affected.”…
- Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 9:27 am
  
  Fortunately for me that my wife’s credit cards have now all been cancelled by their respective issuers. Her marriage to me and my stellar credit rating probably provided her a longer rope to hang herself with. Whatever damage that she has done my credit is of no accord since in my mind I have been too old to take out any new line of credit for the last fifteen years. OTOH, I can only imagine the damage done to household by the loosening of restrictions on legal gambling in proximity to the pandemic outbreak. This BS is likely to wreck more families and lives than Fentanyl.
  - EMichael says:
    
    February 22, 2022 at 10:24 am
    
    Sorry to hear about this. Sadly, I have some experience with family members and compulsive gambling. The worst part is there seems to be no counseling that works very well. Almost like AA, more people stop because the get tired than because they get counseling.
    - Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
      
      February 22, 2022 at 10:42 am
      
      EMike,
      
      Thanks. I was actually skeptical about loosening up on gambling from the start, but had not commented on it.
      
      My wife’s best friend for over 60 years (since they were 3 YO) died in November 2019. Then the pandemic happened. We have only known each other since 1999. My wife was susceptible with poor financial discipline long before that. Shit happens. Fortunately, I handle all the important stuff and am debt free of my own and she is handling her problems by liquidating retirement savings. Less well off households could be crushed by such behavior.
      
      I just hope she remembers our long standing agreement that those that pay have the say in the choices we make. No problem, I will remind her of that often.
      - EMichael says:
        
        February 22, 2022 at 12:26 pm
        
        Best of luck. And that is not sarcasm.
      - Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
        
        February 22, 2022 at 2:03 pm
        
        EMike,
        
        Thanks. Sure, understood.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 22, 2022 at 10:46 am

<a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-formally-ends-trumps-fight-over-capitol-attack-records-2022-02-22/"<US Supreme Court formally ends Trump's fight over Capitol attack records

Reuters – Feb 22
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 22, 2022 at 10:48 am

US Supreme Court formally ends Trump’s fight over Capitol attack records

Reuters – Feb 22
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 10:52 am
  
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday brought a formal end to former President Donald Trump’s request to block the release of White House records sought by the Democratic-led congressional panel investigating last year’s deadly attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
  
  The court’s decision to formally reject Trump’s appeal follows its Jan. 19 order that led to the documents being handed over to the House of Representatives investigative committee by the federal agency that stores government and historical records.
  
  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Dec. 9 upheld a lower court ruling that Trump had no basis to challenge President Joe Biden’s decision to allow the records to be handed over to the House of Representatives select committee. Trump then appealed to the Supreme Court.
  
  Trump and his allies have waged an ongoing legal battle with the House select committee seeking to block access to documents and witnesses. Trump has sought to invoke a legal principle known as executive privilege, which protects the confidentially of some internal White House communications, a stance rejected by lower courts. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    February 22, 2022 at 5:27 pm
    
    The Supreme Court has denied a request by former president Donald Trump to review his White House records related to the Capitol insurrection on 6 January of last year.
    
    The court made the announcement on Tuesday in a list of orders on pending cases. Mr Trump had requested a writ of writ of certiorari in a case against Rep Bennie Thompson, who serves as chairman of the House select committee investigating the riot.
    
    “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,” the court wrote.
    
    Supreme Court denies Trump bid to review Jan 6 documents
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 22, 2022 at 4:35 pm

Stocks hit correction territory as governments announce sanctions against Russia.

NY Times – Feb 22

Tuesday’s market turmoil included some indications that investors were hopeful that the conflict, and its economic ramifications, could be contained.

Escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine pushed stocks lower on Tuesday, adding to turmoil this year and leaving the S&P 500 more than 10 percent below its January peak.

A drop that large is known on Wall Street as a correction. It’s the kind of big, round number that crystallizes the view that the mood in markets has substantially shifted, and it doesn’t happen often — the last time was February 2020, when investors were in a panic over the emerging coronavirus pandemic. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 4:37 pm
  
  The S&P 500 fell 1 percent on Tuesday after several countries responded to Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to send troops into two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
  
  The measures against Russia included Germany’s decision to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which would create a new link between the country with Russia, and Britain’s decision to impose sanctions on five Russian banks and three individuals. …
  
  A war between Ukraine and Russia is likely to disrupt global supply chains of commodities, causing food and energy costs to rise and increasing the risk of a prolonged period of faster inflation. Russia is the world’s largest supplier of wheat and provides nearly 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas and 25 percent of its oil. An extended conflict could worsen Europe’s already high energy bills.
  
  The high price of oil and gas on global markets could be a problem for Americans, too. Gas prices have risen sharply in the United States, averaging $3.53 a gallon according to AAA.
  
  High fuel prices could weigh on consumer spending on other goods and services as families devote more of their monthly budgets to energy. If the potential for war makes consumers uncertain about the future or sends stock prices plummeting, it could weigh on demand as nervous shoppers retrench. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 22, 2022 at 5:35 pm

The Limits of a Europe Whole and Free

NY Times – Roger Cohen – Feb 22

PARIS — For the prime minister of Lithuania — and Lithuania knows something of life in Moscow’s imperium — President Vladimir V. Putin’s rambling dismissal of Ukrainian statehood, used to justify sending Russian troops into the eastern part of that state, “put Kafka and Orwell to shame.”

There were “no lows too low, no lies too blatant,” the prime minister, Ingrida Simonyte, said of Mr. Putin’s menacing explanation on Monday of his decision to recognize two separatist regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk. But if the speech revived the doublespeak of the Soviet Union, more than 30 years after its demise, did it also rekindle the Soviet threat and the Cold War that went with it? …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 6:18 pm
  
  On many levels, the challenge Mr. Putin’s revanchist Russia presents to the West is different. This Russia has no pretense of a global ideology. The Cold War depended on closed systems; computer technology put an end to that. No Soviet tanks are poised to roll across the Prussian plains and absorb all Europe in a totalitarian empire. Nuclear Armageddon is not on the table.
  
  Yet, perhaps because of the way he prepared the ground for full-scale war, saying Russia has “every right to take retaliatory measures” against what he called a fictive nation led by usurpers who would be responsible for the bloodshed, Mr. Putin’s decision felt like a breaking point that went beyond his annexation of Crimea in 2014. It held up the specter of Europe’s darkest days. He laid down a marker, setting the outer limit of the Europe whole and free of 1989.
  
  The Russian president’s aggressive move was a slap in the face to President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has led efforts to engage with Russia, and it left, at least for now, the idea of some reconfigured European security architecture moribund.
  
  In its place, division and confrontation loomed in a world marked by what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called “President Putin’s flagrant disrespect for international law and norms.” The White House called Russia’s move “the beginning of an invasion.”
  
  China, walking a fine line between its support for Mr. Putin and its support for the territorial integrity of sovereign nations, has declined to criticize Russia, while saying those norms must be upheld. Still, in a month when Russia and China cemented a friendship with “no limits,” Mr. Putin’s order to dispatch troops into Ukraine suggested how Russian military might and Chinese ideological and economic heft might form a potent anti-democratic front.
  
  President Biden has often referred to an “inflection point” between liberal democracy and autocratic systems. For now, that point seems to lie in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of a country whose name means borderland.
  
  How far Mr. Putin is prepared to go remains unclear. A senior French official at the presidency, who insisted on anonymity in line with government practice, described the Russian leader’s speech as at once “rigid and, I would say, paranoid.”
  
  This, he suggested, was in keeping with the man Mr. Macron found at the end of a 20-foot table in the Kremlin earlier this month, and later described to journalists on his plane as more stiff, isolated and ideologically unyielding than at their previous meeting in 2019.
  
  Still, as Polonius put it in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”
  
  Mr. Putin, for all his wild imaginings about Ukraine as the “forward springboard” for some American pre-emptive strike against Russia, has been relentlessly building his case against NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and against Western democracies since the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. The estimated 190,000 Russian and separatist troops on the Ukrainian border and in its breakaway regions are only the latest expression of this obsession. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 22, 2022 at 6:21 pm

The open question is whether Mr. Putin has become weaker or stronger as a result of this drive.

In some respects he has achieved the opposite of his intentions. American officials argue that he has galvanized and united a NATO alliance that was casting around for a raison d’être. He shifted Ukrainian public opinion decisively against Russia and toward an embrace of NATO and the West. He damaged an already vulnerable, undiversified economy, with Germany’s blocking on Tuesday of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline just the latest blow.

One poll this month in Ukraine by the Rating Group organization found support for NATO membership at a record high 62 percent, up from 55 percent in December. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 6:24 pm
  
  … NATO expansion eastward after the fall of the Berlin Wall was designed to secure and safeguard the freedom of 100 million central Europeans who had escaped the Soviet imperium. It worked. One thing Mr. Putin has not done is threaten Poles or Romanians with renewed Russian subjugation.
  
  Its price, however, has been the festering alienation of Russia, which felt it had been betrayed by NATO at its border. This anger was redoubled in 2008 when NATO leaders issued a summit declaration in Bucharest saying that Ukraine and Georgia, once part of the Soviet Union, “will become members of NATO.” They did not say how or when because they did not know — leaving the commitment floating in a sea of treacherous vagueness.
  
  “It was an absolutely disastrous decision,” Mr. Rupnik said. “Either you say you will take Ukraine in by a certain date assuming certain conditions are met, or you say Ukraine’s place is not in NATO and we will devise an alternative strategic framework for the neighborhood between NATO and Russia. This was the worst of both worlds.”
  
  Just how bad is now apparent. Russia’s demand that NATO commit to never admitting Ukraine has been met by the West’s insistence that NATO’s door will remain open, even if nobody is prepared to say how Ukraine would ever squeeze through that door.
  
  The West has complicated its position in other ways, too. As Marko Milanovic, a professor of international law at the University of Nottingham, pointed out in the European Journal of International Law Blog: “No matter how fantastical some Russian claims may be, the credibility of Western allies in responding to Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty remains deeply undermined, on the law and on the facts, by their own previous misadventures, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”
  
  In the end, Mr. Putin did what he did because he thinks he can get away with it in an unanchored world of growing Great Power rivalry, where American power is no longer determinant and the Russian-Chinese alignment is strong. But hubris is always a danger for a leader as isolated as Mr. Putin appears to be today.
  
  The most difficult thing for a communist, it has been observed, is to predict the past. History must be molded to the imperatives of the present. That is what Mr. Putin, the former K.G.B. agent, has tried to do. The coming weeks will tell if Ukrainian anger, rediscovered NATO unity, and American determination can stop his attempt to reverse the consequences of Soviet unraveling.
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    February 22, 2022 at 7:33 pm
    
    MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia demanded Ukraine recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea and relinquish its advanced weapons, declaring what sounded like an ultimatum minutes after Russian state television showed Parliament authorizing the use of military force abroad.
    
    The cascade of developments in Moscow on Tuesday evening offered the clearest signs yet that Mr. Putin was moving toward mounting a military operation against Ukraine. The goals of such an operation remained uncertain. But in setting out his demands on Tuesday, Mr. Putin made it clear that he was seeking to force a drastic political shift in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, as well as to win control of a large area of the country’s east.
    
    Mr. Putin added that he had not decided to send troops into Ukraine “right at this moment.” But asked whether one could resolve issues by force and “remain on the side of the good,” Mr. Putin made it clear he saw military action as a morally defensible course. …
    
    Putin issues demands as Russian lawmakers approve use of military force
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 22, 2022 at 7:11 pm

Trump refers to Russian aggression toward Ukraine as ‘genius.’

NY Times – Feb 22

Former President Donald J. Trump called Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine “genius” and called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “very savvy” for describing the troops aligned on the Ukrainian border as peacekeepers.

Mr. Trump made his remarks on Tuesday on a conservative radio talk show. He praised Mr. Putin — something he did repeatedly as president and during his 2016 campaign — as well as Mr. Putin’s tactics on Ukraine.

“Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace, all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”

Mr. Trump’s favorable remarks toward Mr. Putin’s aggression comes after he broke with decades of American precedent and was deferential toward Russia during his time in the White House.

Since Mr. Trump left office, Republicans have split on how to respond to Russian aggression. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others have called for harsh sanctions against Russia, while Trump supporters such as the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, the Senate candidate in Ohio, have argued that the United States should not punish Russia.

In a statement released Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump said the Russian aggression toward Ukraine would not have happened if he were still president.

During the radio interview, Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Putin discussed a potential invasion of Ukraine when Mr. Trump was in the White House. “I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it,” Mr. Trump said. “I said, ‘You can’t do it. You’re not going to do it.’ ,,,
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  February 22, 2022 at 7:21 pm
  
  Why Trump likes tanks
  
  NY Times – July 4, 2019
  
  … what are we supposed to make of President Trump’s fascination with these hulking relics and his decision to display them in Washington during Thursday’s Fourth of July celebration, flanking himself with M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles as he delivered a tribute to America’s armed forces?
  
  Mr. Trump seems to see tanks as a symbol of military strength, of America’s ability to bend the world to its will by means of brute force and threats of “fire and fury.” Having avoided service in the Vietnam War by way of draft deferments, Mr. Trump has presumably never been closer to warfare than has a child playing on the floor with toy tanks and green plastic army men. …
  
  Mr. Trump’s fondness for tanks is part of the insidious nostalgia that undergirds his entire “Make America Great Again” ideology. It evokes a “simpler” time, when Gen. George Patton’s tanks saved the world from the Nazis, when winning the Cold War meant winning the arms race … Mr. Trump has promised his followers that he can take them back to that time — and they seem ready to believe him. …
  
  Mr. Trump is a wannabe strongman, and no doubt he sees in the tank what all strongmen see in tanks: a weapon to be used against his enemies, foreign or domestic. Though tanks over the past half century have been used only rarely in their strategic combat role, they have been used often to repress popular uprisings — a tool of practical and psychological warfare against unarmed civilians from the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union to Tiananmen Square. …
  
  During Thursday’s Fourth of July celebration, Mr. Trump’s cherished tanks were stationed in a “static display,” because driving them into position would have damaged Washington’s streets. A stationary display was all too fitting, for it is the most common posture of tanks on the modern battlefield. Like President Trump’s false promises, they weren’t going anywhere.
rjs says:

February 22, 2022 at 11:27 pm

here’s the history of U.S. Imports from Russia of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products (by month): https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIM_NUS-NRS_1&f=M it’s now about 8% of our imports, up more than 10% year over year, more than double 2014 and up from almost nothing prior to 1999…

so why are we importing so much Russian oil? briefly and oversimplified: after our domestic supplies starting drying up around 1970, we began to import increasing amounts of oil from producing countries that were close; Mexico, Canada and Venezuela…..for the most part, those countries produce heavy sour oil, so we started configuring our new refineries to handle the type of oil they’d be getting….notably, the Koch Brothers built their refineries to handle Venezuelan crude…then along came Hugo Chavez, and later US sanctions against Venezuela…so US refineries had to look elsewhere for the types of crude they needed to process, and Russian Urals fit the bill for many of them//..if they stop importing Russian crude, they’ll have to find some near equivalent crude elsewhere, go back to Venezuela, or blend a couple different crudes from elsewhere to match what they are configured for…

here’s an interactive periodic table of over 100 different crude grades: https://www.spglobal.com/platts/plattscontent/_assets/_files/downloads/crude_grades_periodic_table/crude_grades_periodic_table.html
play with it a bit; you’ll see almost none of the light sweet grades we are producing (on the far left) matches the medium to heavy sour crude so many of our Gulf coast refineries were built for…some Mexican crude grades could be used, but Mexico is no longer exporting oil…lets see, maybe Iranian heavy…oh wait, not that either….but whatever they go with, i imagine there will be some extra costs involved in tweaking the refineries to use a slightly different mix than what they had been using…
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 23, 2022 at 8:50 am

Russia’s richest lose $32 billion as Ukraine crisis deepens — 8:30 a.m.

By The Washington Post

The fortunes of Russia’s super-rich have tumbled $32 billion this year, with the escalating conflict in Ukraine poised to make that wealth destruction much larger. US President Joe Biden on Tuesday unleashed sanctions targeting Russia’s sale of sovereign debt abroad and the country’s elites, and said he’s sending an unspecified number of additional US troops to the Baltics in a defensive move to defend NATO countries.

Gennady Timchenko heads the list of Russian billionaires who have seen their fortunes drop, with almost a third of his wealth disappearing this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a listing of the world’s 500 richest people. Timchenko, 69, the son of a Soviet military officer who met and befriended Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin during the early 1990s, now has a fortune of about $16 billion, with the bulk of his wealth derived from a stake in Russia gas producer Novatek, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index.

Fellow Novatek shareholder Leonid Mikhelson’s fortune has tumbled $6.2 billion this year, while Lukoil Chairman Vagit Alekperov’s net worth has declined about $3.5 billion in the same period as the energy company’s stock has slid almost 17 percent. The country’s 23 billionaires currently have a net worth of $343 billion, according to the wealth list, down from $375 billion at year-end. Markets slumped further this week after Putin recognized two separatist republics in Ukraine, leading to Germany halting an energy project with Russia and the UK imposing sanctions on five of the country’s banks and three of its wealthy individuals, including Timchenko.

Also on the UK’s sanctions list are Boris Rotenberg, 65, and his nephew, Igor, 48, whose families made their fortune through gas-pipeline construction firm Stroygazmontazh. Igor’s father, Arkady, one of Putin’s former judo sparring partners, sold the pipeline firm in 2019 for about $1.3 billion. He purchased a minority stake from his younger brother Boris five years earlier when both siblings and Timchenko were hit with US sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Additionally, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday he wouldn’t meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week because it “does not make sense” given Russia’s moves in Ukraine.

Russia’s richest lose $32 billion as Ukraine crisis deepens