Vladimir Putin will definitely not like it. Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky and Tinkoff founder Oleg Tinkov are two prominent financial entrepreneurs who have renounced their Russian citizenship. They criticize Putin’s war course in no uncertain terms.
Few Russia’s oligarchs and business leaders have publicly backed away from President Vladimir Putin over his war of aggression against Ukraine. Now, two prominent financial entrepreneurs have taken a clear stand against Putin – Oleg Tinkov, founder of Russia’s Tinkoff Bank, and Nikolay Storonsky, head of Britain’s neobank Revolut, have renounced their Russian citizenship.
Tinkov founded Tinkoff Bank in the 2000s, is considered an international pioneer with its digital strategy and went public in London in 2013. This year, Tinkow had to sell his 35 per cent share significantly below value under pressure from the Kremlin after criticizing the war course. Tinkov is going a step further: as he first wrote on Instagram on Monday, he had renounced his citizenship “after Russia invaded Ukraine and started killing innocent people.” He said he could not be “associated with Putin’s fascist regime.”
Also on Monday, Russian-born fintech founder Nikolay Storonsky announced he had renounced his Russian citizenship earlier this year. Storonsky is the founder and CEO of Revolut, a British smartphone bank with global ambitions. Revolut’s long-term goal is to offer all financial services from a single source, preferably “in every single country in the world,” Storonsky told Capital in May.