Russia's richest businessmen are $23.6bn poorer than they were in January, according to calculations published in Russian media on October 1, based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The US-based index tracks the world's 500 wealthiest people and includes 19 Russian citizens, whose combined net worth stood at $267.8bn as of October 1. The list did not include Russian government officials. 

Severstal (MOEX: CHMF) founder Alexey Mordashov remains the richest Russian with $27.8bn, followed by Novatek (MOEX: NVTK) head Leonid Mikhelson on $22.9bn, Norilsk Nickel (MOEX: GMKN) President Vladimir Potanin on $22.1bn, Lukoil (MOEX: LKOH) founder Vagit Alekperov on $21.3bn and NLMK (MOEX: NLMK) Chairman Vladimir Lisin on $21.1bn.

The losses follow a slide on the Moscow stock market, where the benchmark MOEX Russia Index fell from above 2,900 points in March to around 1,900 points in July, its lowest level since October 2022. Bloomberg values most of these fortunes from the share prices of the companies their owners hold stakes in, so a falling market feeds straight through to the tally.

For some companies it uses multiples such as market capitalisation to Ebitda or price to earnings instead. The figures measure the estimated value of those stakes, not cash in the owners' accounts.

By June 1 the group's combined wealth was up $21.85bn on January, led by Andrey Melnichenko, up $5.63bn, Mikhelson, up $4.15bn, and Mordashov, up $3.66bn, according to figures cited by Vedomosti. By July 1 the total had slipped $1.93bn below its starting level, and by September 1 the loss had widened to $19.77bn.

The biggest losers at that point were Mikhail Prokhorov, down $6.45bn, Potanin, down $3.73bn, and Metalloinvest shareholder Alisher Usmanov, down $2.92bn. Usmanov's fortunes have been better in Brussels, where EU ambassadors agreed on September 22 to remove him from the sanctions list.

American media put the combined wealth of Russian billionaires at $696.5bn in March, more than households hold in term bank deposits, with Mordashov top on a record $37bn.

Wealth analytics firm Altrata counted 151 Russian billionaires at the end of 2025, fourth in the world. The index reaches only the top 500 globally, so it captures a much smaller slice of Russian public wealth.

Over the same nine months of 2023, the index showed Russia's richest gaining $21bn, a partial recovery from the $94bn they lost in 2022, the year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

At the top of the global index, Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk has added $300bn this year to reach $920bn. Google co-founder Larry Page is second at $292bn, ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at $273bn, Google co-founder Sergey Brin at $271bn and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg at $261bn. Page alone is worth more than all 19 Russians on the list put together.