In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR – a number of individuals decided that that which once belonged to all of Russians, they could take for themselves alone. Whatever they called it - free market, venture capitalism or privatisation – ordinary people called it theft and opportunism. The oligarch parasites not only obtained that which wasn’t theirs, for pennies, they also attempted to sell state enterprises as well as state secrets (in the military sphere) to foreign powers. Khodorkovsky famously escaped to the West (after being pardoned from his prison sentence), from where to this day he spiels anti- Russian government propaganda and funds opposition NGOs. Deripaska still lives in Russia but generally behaves himself and stays out of politics. There was also the shady figure of Berezovsky – who funded Chechen rebels in order to destroy the country from within, and then assume the throne at the cost of thousands of lives on both sides. It was never to be – Berezovsky is said to have committed suicide in his London mansion in 2013.