Sanction Russian tycoon who owns 3,000-acre Scottish estate, demands Ukraine

Russian steel tycoon who owns a Scottish shooting estate must be sanctioned for supplying one of Vladimir Putin’s largest tank factories, Ukrainian MPs have demanded. 

Vladimir Lisin, the head of Russian steel giant NLMK, is Russia’s richest man according to Forbes magazine.

He was placed on Australia’s sanctions list in April, but unlike other prominent Russian tycoons, such as Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Fridman, has so far avoided designation by the EU, US and Britain.

Olekskiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP from Odesa, is demanding to know why Mr Lisin has evaded sanctions lists in the EU, UK and United States.

“His company is the main provider of steel to Uralvagonzavod,” Mr Goncharenko told The Telegraph in London last week. “That is one of Russia’s biggest tank factories. So he is directly supplying the war effort."  

Mr Goncharenko highlighted Mr Lisin as a prime target of a campaign he is leading to consolidate and expand the various sanctions lists used by Ukraine’s Western allies.

He wrote to Anthony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Josep Borrel, the EU’s foreign policy chief, asking them to sanction Mr Lisin and five other individuals in October. So far, that request has been ignored.

He said he intended to team up with sympathetic British MPs to write a similar letter to James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary.

“We have two problems: first not everyone who should be sanctioned is, and second no one is coordinating the sanctions regimes,” he said.

Mr Lisin is sanctioned by Australia, but not in the EU, US, or UK.

Forbes estimates his wealth at $18.4 billion. He acquired the 3,000-acre Aberuchill estate in Perthshire in 2005.

Like many of Russia’s richest businessmen, Mr Lisin has generally tried to avoid getting drawn into the debate around the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

He is known for keeping a lower profile than many other Russian billionaires, and seldom gives interviews.

However, he did appear to question the morality of the invasion in a letter to employees in March, writing that “the death of people in Ukraine is a tragedy that is hard to justify or explain” and calling for a peaceful diplomatic solution.  

Novolipstetsk steel works, or NLMK, is Russia’s fourth largest steel producer and controls plants in Belgium and Italy.

Its representatives have argued sanctions on the company or the steel trade in general could lead to job losses.

The European Union sanctioned the import of finished steel products from Russia in March. It extended the ban to semi-finished steel products in October.

Uralvagonzavod was founded as a tank factory in the Second World War. It remains Russia’s primary supplier of main battle tanks, but also produces civilian products including railway carriages and agricultural machinery.

Mr Lisin, a shooting sports enthusiast, was president of the International Shooting Sport Federation until last month, when he lost his bid for reelection to Italy’s Luciano Rossi.

He had faced pressure from shooting officials in several member countries including Britain and Germany to stand down following the invasion of Ukraine.

Britain and the EU have imposed travel bans and asset freezes on several of Mr Lisin's peers on the list of richest Russians, including former Chelsea owner Mr Abramovich and Alfa group’s Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, but others have so far avoided designation.  

EU foreign ministers met in Brussels on Monday to discuss a ninth package of sanctions. A draft list which may be subject to change includes 144 names, including several linked to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, the EU Observer reported.

NLMK denied in a statement that it had ever supplied Uralvagonaavod and said its products were not suitable for military applications such as armour plating and that its operations focus solely on producing rolled strip steel intended for general civilian use.  The company added that Mr Lisin has never been connected to Mr Putin or Russian politics.