Post-Soviet oligarchic violence: How transnational elite conflicts fuel systemic instability in Ukraine’s shadow economy

This event echoes historical patterns of elite violence in transitional economies, from the *Regime of Terror* in post-revolutionary Russia (1918–1922), where Bolsheviks and Whites used targeted assassinations to destabilize rivals, to the *Salvador Allende* era in Chile, where economic elites colluded with the military to remove a democratically elected leader. In Ukraine’s case, the 1990s saw a wave of oligarchic violence, including the 1996 murder of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, which foreshadowed the current climate. These precedents reveal that such conflicts are not spontaneous but are embedded in the power structures of post-authoritarian capitalism, where the state is either complicit or too weak to intervene.