In this case, it would be a pretty safe bet. The oil industry was owned by even more sinister plutocrats before it was "nationalized" by the current ones. The reason you're hearing so much more about this now is that the current plutocrats are more into long-term strategy and less into dumping their stolen wealth and retiring in London as soon as possible. This is bad for certain Western interests, hence the "Putin is the Devil" stories you see in every other issue of The Economist.

In fact, investing in Russia paid off well for many Western companies, and the Russian government never got in the way (beyond its natural tendency to get in the way due to widespread petty corruption).