Abramovic was one of the few oligarchs to survive the post-Yeltsin Russia. He threw his lot in with Putin to survive and he has done so to this day. The economic climate of Russia post USSR was a vacuum, state assets, and land was up for grab and swallowed by what was to become the oligarchs. In the early days the oligarch state was heavily supported by Boris Yeltsin and the USA but when Yeltsin was winding down and KGB supported Putin was gaining power there was a divide in the oligarchs, Abramovic was one that supported Putin, many of the others are dead or exiled, Khodorkovsky and Gusinky are exiled, while Berezovsky was assassinated in London with the assassination having ties to Abramovic. Saying these men or Abramovic having political influence or proximity isn’t simply conjecture, it is a fact and it has been available to see since the Yeltsin era. Abramovic was the very first to endorse Putin for crying out loud. Denying this sort of transparent influence is like denying that Rupert Murdoch controls the papers, or that Comcast doesn’t control the cable networks, or that Amazon doesn’t control the delivery infrastructure.