Any question answered...

ftfy.
The systematic rapine of the Russian people is ugly, vicious and murderous, but it has not been done by stupid people. The infiltration of the offices of state control by criminal gangs during and immediately after the declining years of the Soviet has allowed them to buy politicians with the same money that politicians have handed over to them for nothing. It's a clever scam, albeit one wide open to exploitation under any totalitarian government.

What aways gets to me, is British media calling them "oligarchs", oil magnates and such.
Fuck off. They're common thieves, the lot of them. There was no private business in the Soviet Union. There was no way you could legally make enough money to buy off privatised companies.
If you compare Russia with other countries of the former "Soviet Bloc" you will see, that everywhere else they've almost dealt with the corrupted way the industry was privatised. Many of those Polish "magnates" from the first wave of privatisation are now in jails. They all build their capitals from smuggling, money laundering and extortion.