Girl, 18, would like to meet oligarch

The publication this week by the Russian magazine Finans of a definitive list of the country's 101 dollar billionaires - the most in any country other than the US - could not have come at a better time for Moscow's beautiful young women. The season for oligarch hunting - 'Okhota na oligarkhov' - is open.

The national sport is supported by the daily paper Kosmolskaya Pravda which has been carrying a series of columns entitled 'School of Seduction: How to force him to marry you'.

Oligarchs everywhere are being targeted, says Tatyana Ogorodnikova in the political weekly Argumenty i Fakty. Ogorodnikova, the pseudonym for the wife of a wealthy businessman, says: "These women study everything about these men: their star sign, their family set-up, what type of woman they like, how they like their women to dress. Then they engineer a chance meeting in a restaurant, at a party, in a shop.

"These women don't care exactly who will be financing their future - ­ they just want to make sure someone does. And the richer the better."

Nor is marriage or a steady girlfriend any obstacle to the oligarch hunters: Ogorodnikova sees young women trying to inveigle themselves into her husband's circle all the time.

Among the billionaires most ruthlessly targeted by gold-diggers are the country's richest man Oleg Deripaska, happily married to Polina, who is best friends with Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of the second richest oligarch, Roman Abramovich. The Chelsea FC owner is reckoned to be a "much-coveted bachelor" despite regular coverage in the Russian magazines of his relationship with the former model.

And you don't have to be an oil painting to be targeted - Arsenal's Alisher Usmanov is high on the list - though being an oil magnate certainly helps - vis Vladimir Bogdanov, another prize oligarch. "These young women study the profiles of these men religiously," I was told. "No one on the Finans rich list is safe."

One wife of a minor league oligarch I know, a career woman wealthy in her own right, considers herself in the danger zone: she is in her early forties. When she goes out to dinner with her husband in Moscow she arms herself with accessories like an Hermes Kelly bag, Cartier watch and Graff diamonds to signal her unassailable status to other women. These "don't even think about it" tokens can apparently be enough to make younger rivals back off.

The problem is, says Ogorodnikova, that the men usually welcome the interest: "They take the attitude that once you own something pretty you soon get tired of it and need to find a new model." When these girls are successful and manage to secure a match, she adds, they often find themselves replaced in the same way further down the line.

"I know a girl who targeted a married oligarch from the age of 16," says Ogorodnikova. "He got divorced and married her when she turned 18. Now she's 25, depressed and alcoholic, because he's chasing 18-year-old girls who look like she did seven years ago." In this situation a woman's misery and paranoia only make the husband even more likely to stray, she adds.

Getting men to commit and remain married to you is an eternal conundrum in modern Russia - especially when the man concerned has money. Russia is in the grip of a demographic crisis with male life expectancy at an all-time low.

In this climate, says Olga Mamonova, a twice-married businesswoman, women have to behave in a predatory way: "Women really want men to notice them, so you have to make yourself stand out. That's why Russian women are so glamorous."

Oligarchs - and mere males alike: you have been warned. Oligarchs' wives: Kelly bags at the ready. ·