You hear a lot recently about Russian Oligarchs but it's important to know where they came from. It began when Ronald Reagan opened the way for Billy Graham to go to pre-glasnost Russia to perform a gospel mission during the mid-1980s and there was a religious revival in the USSR.
Graham's pet project was to convince the USSR to allow its Jewish populations to emigrate to Israel. The Zionist lobby in the USA and Western Europe wholeheartedly endorsed this project and thousands of "jews" emigrated to the USA and the West with the idea they would emigrate to Israel. Pat Boone had an infomercial that ran from midnight to 6 AM on Fox affiliates and this campaign collected millions of dollars from the US evangelical community.
Many of the families that were allowed to emigrate to the West weren't even jews. The Soviet KGB/OGPU stocked the emigre population with agents sent to the West to set up industrial espionage and money laundering schemes with the goal of modernizing Soviet industry and allowing it to catch up with the west. The evangelical community didn't object because they made millions siphoning from the resettlement donations.
The problem is they have become debased by decades of Kremlin propaganda that paints these kleptocrat oligarch criminals as Christian Knights and their ministries have become Russian propaganda outlets. Once in the West the emigres got in contact with ex-patriot family members who were already in the mafia. The message was you cooperate or your mother, brother, father, or cousins get it! The Russian mafia didn't resist because in return for their cooperation they were allowed access to large amounts of money and they were allowed to flood the USSR with counterfeit and black-market goods. But what was INFINITELY MORE IMPORTANT was that the KGB/OGPU now had access to Western bank accounts and lines of credit through the Russian mafia! Their favorite sources of financing were German and Swiss banks.
The Swiss and West German banking authorities weren't dumb, they knew what was going on but the return on investment was so far beyond usury that they couldn't resist! The problem with the USSR's espionage and money laundering scheme is that it didn't achieve its primary objective. The USSR needed money right away so they compromised on their goal of stealing Western technology in return for short-term profits from money laundering.
Party members who used to rely on their party membership, ration cards, and a pension plan were now dazzled by golf courses, resorts, hotels, casinos, and millionaire investors. The problem was these Russian operatives wasted huge amounts of money on poor investments, embezzled on a massive scale, and became too used to fine living.
This is where Donald Trump entered the scene in the mid-1980s with his purchase of the Trump Casino in NJ. The economy was sour and Trump couldn't get domestic loans after his bankruptcies. So his labor contacts put him in contact with the Russian mafia. The Russians were perfect partners because he could wine and dine them and they allowed him unlimited access to European lines of credit that were beyond the scope of US regulations.
This is why Eric Trump was quoted as saying his father's resorts and golf courses were paid for by Russian money and why Dmitri Rybolev saved Trump from declaring bankruptcy for the 4th time in 2008. The Russian investors gained credibility from their association with Trump and they now had a steady stream of laundered money from Trump investments. This access to Russian money allowed Trump's hotels, resorts, and golf courses to boom! However, the game changed in 1989/1990. With the fall of communism, Moscow couldn't retrieve its investment in Western interests.
They also no longer paid tribute to their masters in Moscow.
Worse yet they seized huge parts of the Russian economic infrastructure since there was no plan for the transfer of ownership of state-run industries. This is where the term oligarch came into existence. The oligarchs have very profitable crime rings in the West and they have massively undervalued raw material interests in Russia.
Currently, 181 oligarchs control 40% of the wealth in Russia, 90% of the property and 50% of Russian have a median income below $800. In comparison, the median income of Indians is $1,000. This means that only 10% of the Russian population has a median income above $800 and nowhere near as much as the oligarchs.
Oligarchs have become so ingrained in the West that politicians protect them and the Russians can't remove them without severing major arteries in their economies. These criminal networks are currently funding white supremacist groups in the West and they are being directed by the Russian military and funded by Russian crime rings. This is what Bannon has been doing in Europe since he was fired by Trump.
The GOP desperately needs Putin to win in Ukraine and a quick end to sanctions because they need oligarch campaign donations and they still need Putin's propagandists to spread campaign disinformation this fall.
This is why so many GOP pundits are in lockstep with Putin.