MOSCOW — With his droopy eyeglasses and boxy suits, Alisher B. Usmanov is at no risk of being mistaken for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. But the Russian steel tycoon is poised to make billions of dollars from the initial public stock offering of Facebook this week — in the same league as many of that social networking company’s early backers.

Mr. Usmanov, an industrial and media magnate who has demonstrated a keen ability to take advantage of the opportunities that appear in a financial disaster, is reaping the rewards of an ambitious bet on Facebook made amid the global economic recession in 2009.

As other investors were demanding tough terms, he said in an interview this week, he and his Russian business associates were willing to buy almost 10 percent of the company while giving up the voting rights on those shares to Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

Now the Russian-led investments of less than $900 million, made through two entities, Mail.ru and Digital Sky Technologies, will be worth more than $6 billion, based on the midpoint of the $34 to $38 price range that Facebook’s bankers have set for the stock.