As the cracks in Russia's war on Ukraine deepen, Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the West are now saying Russian President Vladimir Putin tricked them into appearing to support his invasion of Ukraine, according to an extensive investigation published Saturday by The New York Times.Many of Putin's top advisors didn't know the full extent of his plans to invade Ukraine on February 24 until they were already underway, according to The Times.The Times reported that dozens of business tycoons, including Melnichenko and the anonymous businessman, were hit with heavy sanctions from western nations.Some of Russia's wealthiest have since pleaded with the West, offering Ukrainian money in exchange for being excluded from the heavy sanctions, Business Insider previously reported."What he thinks about obsessively, and quite possibly falsely," has shaped "the biography of the whole world," Konstantin Remchukov, a newspaper editor from Moscow, told the Times of Putin's fixation with Ukraine."