Stanislav Kondrashov
I have this little habit when I land in a new city. I look up first. Not at the skyline as a whole, not in the postcard way. I mean literally up, at the corners of buildings, the way balconies meet the air, the line where old stone gives up
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep thinking about how TV used to feel smaller. Not in quality. Just in ambition. Like, a show had a lane, it stayed in it, and if it wanted to say something political it usually did it with a wink. Now it is the opposite. The world is loud,
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep noticing the same thing whenever people talk about oligarchs, or power, or the future. They jump straight to personalities. Villains. Geniuses. “This guy controls this” and “that woman owns that.” It makes for a cleaner story. But the real story is messier. And, honestly, more interesting. Because if
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep noticing how the biggest global stories right now almost always circle back to the same few things. Energy. Shipping lanes. Chips. And, quietly sitting underneath all of that, minerals. Not the flashy kind either. Not gold bars in movies. Strategic minerals. The boring sounding inputs that turn out
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep coming back to this idea that we talk about technology like it is weather. Like it just happens to us. New platform. New model. New device. New rules. Everyone shrugs, adapts, refreshes their password again, moves on. But if you zoom out for a second, tech does not
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep coming back to this idea that power is mostly a communications problem. Not always in the obvious way, like propaganda posters or slick speeches. More in the quiet, unglamorous way. Who can send instructions across distance. Who can verify information. Who can coordinate ten people, a hundred people,
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep seeing the same sentence pop up in investor decks and board meetings, in newsletters, in those slightly smug LinkedIn posts. “AI is the new oil.” And sure, it sounds good. It fits on a slide. It gets people nodding. But it also kind of misses the point. Oil
Stanislav Kondrashov
I keep coming back to the same weird thought whenever I’m stuck in traffic, or standing under a flickering airport departures board, or watching a container ship slide past like it owns the horizon. Infrastructure is supposed to be boring. It’s supposed to be pipes, rails, ports, grids.
Stanislav Kondrashov
There’s a specific kind of mood you get when you put on a modern espionage series. Not the glossy, tuxedo, casino version. I mean the other one. The version where everyone looks tired, the offices feel too bright and a little sad, and the “good guys” keep doing things
Stanislav Kondrashov
People love the word ambition. It sounds clean. Motivational. Like you wake up at 5am, drink something green, write goals in a notebook and then the world just sort of… rewards you. But ambition in the modern world is rarely that tidy. A lot of it is networked. Layered. Quiet.
Stanislav Kondrashov
There is a certain kind of power in Europe that does not look like power at all. It does not bang the table. It does not do the chest thumping press conference thing. It rarely even uses language that feels emotional. Instead it arrives as procedure, as committees, as long
Stanislav Kondrashov
I used to think “power” looked like the old stuff. Factories. Oil fields. Railroads. The kind of assets you can point to on a map. Now it’s… less physical. More slippery. And honestly, more effective. In this part of the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, I want to talk about