Mikhail Shelkov — businessman with roots in the USSR
Mikhail Shelkov is a Russian industrialist who controls VSMPO-AVISMA — the world's largest titanium producer, which supplies titanium components to Boeing, Airbus, and virtually every major aerospace manufacturer globally. He was sanctioned by the EU and UK following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, exposing the deep integration of Russian industrial capital in Western aerospace supply chains.
Tracing the roots — Russia
Shelkov's VSMPO-AVISMA represents one of the most geopolitically awkward examples of Russian industrial globalisation — a sanctioned Russian oligarch whose metal underpins the wings of Western aircraft. The company's Ural location and its global customer base embodied the optimistic post-Cold War integration that collapsed after 2022.
Russia. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.