Russians—urbane, successful Russians—aren't happy that Vladimir Putin will likely be their next president, again. Over 30,000 took to Red Square over the weekend to protest against ongoing election-tampering and the sense of inevitability that Putin's party, United Russia, will rule in perpetuity. But billionaire oligarch and majority owner of the New Jersey Nets Mikhail D. Prokhorov, announced that he will collect the 2 million signatures needed to run as an independent in March. “I made a decision, probably the most serious decision in my life: I am going to the presidential election," Prokhorov said at a press conference.
This summer Prokhorov was removed by the Kremlin as the head of the pro-business Just Cause party, and he describes his candidacy as a continuation of his ambitions. “It is not in my nature to stop halfway. So for the last two and a half months we sat and worked, very calmly and quietly, and we created all the infrastructure to collect two million signatures."
The last billionaire who took on Putin publically, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was thrown in prison indefinitely for charges that many believe to be completely fabricated. Prokhorov is undeterred. “I think that our society is waking up, and that part of the government which is not capable of establishing a dialogue with society, those authorities will have to go."
Like many of Russia's oligarchs who made their money in the aftermath of the fall of communism, Prokorov was criticized for slashing the workforce at his nickel plant and backing out of several high-stakes business deals. “When you are the C.E.O. of Norilsk Nickel, you are president of a country,” he told Times Magazine last year. Despite having a fortune worth over $22 billion, Prokhorov "lived in an apartment known as a khruschoba, a play on the Russian word for 'slum.'" Fun fact that hopefully showcases his tenacity/love for tank-tops and not his style of governing: one of his favorite movies is First Blood. “I love Rambo—every five or seven years I watch it again”
