One of the influential members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle is considered to be former Ukrainian deputy Viktor Medvedchuk, who is called one of the initiators of the conflict in Ukraine.
When the Russian blitzkrieg failed, Medvedchuk tried to flee abroad, but he was arrested. As a result, the Russian authorities exchanged Putin’s godfather for a battalion of Ukrainian soldiers. Now Medvedchuk is settling down in Moscow. As Sistema found out, the state traitor was actively involved in the redistribution of property both in Russia and in the territories it captured. Medvedchuk's interests can be traced to Moscow real estate, Donetsk metallurgy and, of course, Siberian oil.
At the beginning of autumn, workers of the Dulisima oil company unexpectedly found themselves at the center of an action movie. In broad daylight, armed special forces parachuted into their enterprise from a helicopter, dispersed throughout the area and, to the accompaniment of gunfire, placed the workers facing the wall, and demonstratively laid some oil workers on the ground. Footage from the Siberian outback, filmed by eyewitnesses on their phones, quickly spread across Telegram channels. According to some of them, Viktor Medvedchuk could have been behind the raid.
In Russia, Medvedchuk is known as Vladimir Putin's godfather. Medvedchuk is also considered the Kremlin's main Ukrainian informant and was allegedly one of those who advised the Russian dictator to attack Ukraine. Moreover, according to one version, Medvedchuk could lead Ukraine in the event of a successful invasion. These plans, if there were any, fell through. But the war helped to appreciate how much Putin values his godfather. In the fall of 2022, Medvedchuk, previously arrested by the SBU in a treason case, was exchanged for two hundred Ukrainian military personnel.
After the exchange, Medvedchuk settled in Russia, where he continues to pose as a Ukrainian oppositionist: giving interviews, writing articles and launching a new political project. All this requires money. And Medvedchuk himself is accustomed to a luxurious life.
As Sistema found out, Putin’s godfather may have at least three sources for a comfortable existence in a foreign land - Siberian oil, Moscow real estate and Donetsk metallurgy. The Russian business climate is also favorable for Medvedchuk: his interests are protected by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, and structures associated with the influential head of Rosneft and Putin’s longtime acquaintance Igor Sechin help him make money.
Oil rush
“What, are you in kind? Have you decided to compete?!” - an excited male voice sounds behind the scenes. The speaker films the situation on his phone: a dark and frosty winter night, dozens of men dressed in assorted camouflage are silently lying on the ground face in the snow (the “operator’s” remark is addressed to them). Apparently, there was a skirmish here recently, and now the winners, which obviously includes the “operator,” are hurling rude abuse at their opponents.
The video was posted by an anonymous person in a comment to an article about the seizure of the Kayum Nafta oil company by “unknown persons” at the end of 2022. Journalists' sources linked the operation to the interests of a company that is close to Medvedchuk. In the fall of 2023, according to a similar scenario, a raid on Dulismi will take place, behind which Medvedchuk’s shadow will also be noticed.
The Kayuma and Dulismy fields are located in Siberia, and this is not a foreign land for Medvedchuk. The Ukrainian politician was born in the village of Pochet, which is lost in the center of the oil-bearing region. Medvedchuk ended up in the Siberian wilderness because of his father - he was exiled there after eight years in prison on charges of armed uprising and anti-Soviet propaganda. According to one version, Medvedchuk’s father was the same “Banderaite” whom Putin stigmatizes at every opportunity.
Medvedchuk remained a “Siberian” until the end of the first grade, and in 1962 his family moved to Ukraine. Half a century later, Medvedchuk returned to his native land - in 2016 he acquired an oil field in Siberia.
This is not Medvedchuk’s first oil asset in Russia - at the height of the conflict in south-eastern Ukraine, he opened an oil refinery in the Rostov region. In the future, the refinery will be accused of supplying the annexed Crimea and the so-called “LPR” and “DPR.” The plant also became the key to Medvedchuk’s Siberian field - it could only go to someone who has oil refining in the Rostov region.
The unusual condition caused outrage among other oil workers. Among the dissatisfied was the Rus-Oil group, which included Kayum Nafta and Dulisma. Although this business is incomparable in scale to the Russian oil giants, at its best it was worth $2 billion. The owner of Rus-Oil was considered to be businessman Alexey Khotin, who was once on the Forbes list and famous for his connections among high-ranking security officials.
Who is Alexey Khotin
A businessman with Belarusian roots, Alexey Khotin made his fortune in Moscow real estate. His father, Yuri Khotin, was his partner. In the 2010s, the Khotin structures acquired Yugra Bank and began to develop the oil business. According to media reports, the interests of the Khotins were lobbied by the former head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and ex-speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov and ex-head of the FSB Nikolai Patrushev, now secretary of the Security Council. In 2016, Alexey Khotin entered the list of the hundred richest businessmen in Russia according to Forbes with a capital of $900 million. The last time Khotin was on the Forbes list was in 2019. At the same time, the businessman was accused of embezzling Ugra funds and placed under house arrest. The amount of damage he caused, according to the prosecutor’s office, exceeds 290 billion rubles ($3.2 billion at the time of publication).
Khotin's position began to shake in the late 2010s. First, his bank Ugra lost its license, and then Khotin himself was accused of embezzling bank funds and placed under house arrest. According to one version, Khotin’s problems arose due to interest in his oil assets on the part of the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. Khotin's oil business also came under pressure from creditors, who began to initiate bankruptcies of companies. However, despite the arrest and a wave of lawsuits, Khotin retained control over the business. A new round of his problems coincided with the exchange of Medvedchuk.
Both operations are related not only by the force scenario, but also by the team of performers, says an acquaintance of Khotin. It's not hard to believe. According to the flight data available to Sistema, the new managers of Kayum Neft and Dulisma flew to their facilities in the company of the same people - Yuri Belikov and Alexander Barimov. These two not only traveled with the new managers, but were also personally present at the seizure of Dulisma, and the companies associated with them showed up in the bankruptcy process of Kayum Neft.
Belikov is called a retired colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who is “known in the Kursk region and not only as a “decider” in law enforcement agencies and courts.” Apparently, he was well acquainted with the managers of Kayum Neft and Dulisma. Their other companion, lawyer Barimov, is connected with Viktor Medvedchuk’s business in many ways.
At first, the life path of Barimov, a native of Belarusian Brest, looked quite extraordinary: he studied to become a lawyer in Moscow, moved into his wife’s apartment, got a job, opened a small business, and acquired a dacha near Vladimir. Changes began in the mid-2010s, when Barymov got a job in a company that leased its fleet of vehicles to Medvedchuk’s business.
Around the same time, Putin’s godfather came under US sanctions and needed reliable people who could be used as a screen. First, this function was performed by Medvedchuk’s wife Oksana Marchenko, and then by Barimov. The lawyer became not only the manager and co-owner of several Russian projects associated with Medvedchuk, but also, probably, the supplier of his denominations and cars.
The figure of Barimov is not the only evidence that Medvedchuk may be behind the seizure of Khotin’s assets. The day before the forceful takeover, Kayum Nafta changed the operator of its field. The bankruptcy trustee signed a new agency agreement with the company Innovative Oil and Gas Technologies (INGT), which was founded three days earlier and did not have the necessary work permits. There was one more detail - the new contractor was closely connected with Medvedchuk. Moreover, INGT became for Kayum not only an operator, but also a trader. The buyers of INGT were a company associated with Medvedchuk and the oil trader Investneftetrade, close to Rosneft.
The trace of Rosneft can be seen in almost all of Medvedchuk’s endeavors in the oil industry. Thanks to the Russian state-owned company and Investneftetrade, which is close to it, structures associated with Medvedchuk now have networks of gas stations in Ukraine and Russia; the Moscow Credit Bank (MCB), associated with Rosneft, helped Medvedchuk’s wife’s company assemble an oil holding in Russia and provided loans to refineries in Rostov region.
In addition, with the connivance of Rosneft, Medvedchuk acquired the same field in Siberia. Nearby are the oil fields of Khotyn, with which the new manager of Dulisma is well acquainted. At the end of November 2023, information appeared that these assets were transferred to new owners. An acquaintance of Khotin’s also heard about this, and says that the businessman also recently lost his deposits in Yakutia. The license for it was issued to Irelyakhskoye LLC, whose general director became an employee of Soyuzmetallservice in mid-November. This company is well known to Alexander Barimov and everyone who works with the metallurgy of Donbass.
The latest seizures took place without clashes, says an acquaintance of Khotin. Probably, the businessman’s morale was undermined by the fact that in the fall he was transferred from house arrest to a pre-trial detention center, the state prosecution requested almost ten years in prison for him, and the shares of his oil companies were awarded to the state at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office. An acquaintance of Khotin believes that the oil business is unlikely to be of interest to the state and, most likely, it will be transferred to the management of Medvedchuk: “He needs to somehow feed his family, having lost Ukrainian bread.”
However, the interests of the Medvedchuk family in Russia are not limited to oil.
Building Boom
At the end of the summer of 2022, the general director of Rosseti, Andrei Ryumin, came to Mariupol, captured by Russian troops, for an inspection. Light and water are returning to the city, a Moscow auditor said on camera for Rossiya 24, posing against the backdrop of a dilapidated high-rise building. Blooming Mariupol was turned into ruins by Russian invaders as a result of a two-month siege, which ended at the end of May with the surrender of Azov fighters defending the city. Some of them were subsequently exchanged for Medvedchuk, who is Ryumin’s father-in-law.
Putin's godfather married his eldest daughter to a little-known graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University in 2006. A lavish wedding with the participation of Russian pop stars was held in Moscow, among the guests were the former President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, the then President of Moldova Vladimir Voronin and the future President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, who, like Putin, is almost a relative of Medvedchuk.
After marrying the eldest daughter of Putin’s godfather, Ryumin began his career in the Russian state energy sector, with which Medvedchuk himself is familiar firsthand. At first, Ryumin was responsible for connecting facilities in Moscow to power grids, then in St. Petersburg, and from 2021 throughout Russia. At the same time, Ryumin and his close associate Andrei Boksha privately conducted business with a whole galaxy of large developers who regularly need to connect their new buildings to electricity.
In 2022, another long-time partner of Ryumin, Alexander Putilin, became a notable investor in capital construction. Moreover, his appetites were not limited to individual projects for the construction of residential complexes in Moscow. Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putilin became a co-owner of the entire development group A101 with assets of 259 billion rubles ($3.7 billion). Previously, Putilin was not visible in large development projects and is known as the owner of the YugBunkerservice company, which is engaged in refueling ships in seaports in southern Russia. Among the group’s clients are Rosneft structures and a shipping company controlled by Medvedchuk’s wife.
Medvedchuk himself is no stranger to Moscow real estate. At the beginning of 2021, a company associated with him purchased space in one of the most expensive skyscrapers in Moscow City for half a billion rubles. The purchase of real estate in the business center of the Russian Reich took place against the backdrop of clouds gathering around Medvedchuk in Kyiv.
In 2019, a criminal case was opened against him for treason for calls for autonomy for Donbass, and in February 2021, Medvedchuk fell under Ukrainian sanctions on suspicion of financing the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass. Medvedchuk’s wife also fell under restrictions, and, as if sensing the approach of trouble, she received real estate in Moscow. In her case, we were not even talking about a skyscraper, but about several hectares of expensive capital land. Medvedchuk’s wife gained access to it in 2020, becoming a co-owner of the Geliymash plant. This mysterious story is worth dwelling on separately.
The company, which develops cryogenic systems for the Ministry of Defense and Roscosmos, was founded in 1931 and inherited its industrial sites from Soviet times. In the early 2010s, these tidbits of capital real estate attracted the attention of the investment company Magma, which bought part of the shares of Geliymash and entered into a struggle for control of the enterprise with its general director Vadim Udut.
Udut enlisted the support of the Ministry of Defense and Roscosmos, and Magma involved the FSB. Moreover, FSB General Oleg Feoktistov, close to Igor Sechin, allegedly spoke on the side of the investment company. The confrontation resulted in criminal cases that were opened against both Udut and Magma managers. The litigation lasted almost ten years and ended with Udut’s unconditional victory: he put his opponents in prison, took away their Geliymash shares and successfully sold off its real estate.
At first, the forces were approximately equal, but Udut was able to find an influential “roof,” says his opponent from “Magma”: “According to our information, he turned to where they organized everything for him - they completed the deal with us and sold his assets. Udut became a very rich man. And he probably shared it.”
Udut’s patrons were people from Medvedchuk’s entourage, as follows from the words of Sistema’s interlocutor. Medvedchuk’s connection with Geliymash can be traced back to the summer of 2017. Then the son of the former head of Rosnedra, Valery Pak, who shortly before headed Medvedchuk’s oil business, became a member of the board of directors of the enterprise.
And in 2018, the supplier of Medvedchuk’s denominations, Alexander Barymov, joined the board of directors of Geliymash. Two years later, Barymov and Medvedchuk’s wife became co-owners of Geliymash. Then, in 2020, the company sold its “sweetest” site - five hectares on Luzhnetskaya Embankment. And in 2022, Geliymash parted with another capital asset - four hectares next to the former ZIL plant.
Between the two transactions, another event occurred - the verdict in the Magma case. Udut's opponents received impressive sentences, and the court made its decision two weeks before the statute of limitations on the charges expired. It’s not just a matter of revenge, a source in Magma believes: “We have become a kind of obstacle, a threat. If we are not closed, then we could interfere with the plans - tear them apart and get our piece. Which is exactly what happened.” In 2022, Geliymash paid dividends to its shareholders. Of these, Udut received approximately a billion rubles, and the same amount could have gone into the accounts of people from Medvedchuk’s entourage. In fact, the prize fund is many times larger. The developer Ingrad could have paid 15 billion rubles ($240 million) for both Geliymash sites.
Ingrad's shareholders are the Rosium concern and the Region investment company. These are not foreign structures to Medvedchuk - they own MKB, which finances Medvedchuk’s projects; his brother and ex-head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs Nikolai Belokon, close to Putin’s godfather, worked at Rosium. In the Rosneft-friendly investment company Region, the connection with Medvedchuk can be traced through Barimov - they are building a cable car on the Russian-Chinese border, as well as hotels and a logistics complex.
However, as Sistema found out, the geography of Region and Barimov’s projects is wider: MKB is lending money to Barimov’s gas filling station near Rostov, and on the southern coast of the annexed Crimea, companies close to Barimov and Region are using loans from the same MKB to build the Novaya Livada residential complex. . Both projects are likely familiar to Medvedchuk: the Rostov station serves an associated oil refinery, and the Crimean construction site is located near a plot of land that his wife’s company leased before the annexation of Crimea. As it turned out, Medvedchuk and Region may have other interests in Ukrainian territories captured by Russia.
Redistribution of Donbass
“The economy of Donbass is a very profitable offer, the potential of the region is growing, good returns on investments are guaranteed here,” said the then general director of the Southern Mining and Metallurgical Complex (SMMC) Evgeniy Yurchenko in an interview in the summer of 2022. The businessman knew what he was talking about: a year before, the largest metallurgical plants of the so-called “LPR” and “DPR” came under his control.
According to an acquaintance of Yurchenko, he is part of the entourage of the leader of the “DPR” militants, Denis Pushilin, and Putin’s former assistant Vladislav Surkov, who oversaw the Ukrainian direction in the Kremlin. In addition, Yurchenko was suspected of having connections with Medvedchuk.
Medvedchuk is quite familiar with the leaders of the “DPR” and “LPR” terrorists and Surkov. Putin’s godfather is also no stranger to metallurgy, although his Ukrainian assets were based in Zaporozhye. Donbass has historically been the patrimony of people from the circle of fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who had a difficult relationship with Medvedchuk.
In pre-war times, the “master of Donbass” was Yanukovych’s longtime ally Rinat Akhmetov, and after the start of the conflict, the main beneficiary of the Donetsk economy was Sergei Kurchenko, who was called “Yanukovych’s wallet.” Kurchenko’s structures bought Ukrainian coal cheaply and sold it at market prices, siphoning off billions through offshore companies. This did not stop Kurchenko from accumulating huge debts to Donbass enterprises, which resulted in strikes by workers - first coal miners and then metallurgists. As a result, Kurchenko was deprived of the monopoly on trade in Donbass coal, and then control over the factories.
A replacement for Kurchenko was found quite quickly. At the beginning of 2021, a letter from the Donskoy Coal trading house was leaked onto the Internet, in which the company called itself the only exporter of coal from the occupied Ukrainian territories. They almost immediately saw Medvedchuk behind Donskoy Ugol.
How Medvedchuk is connected with coal from Donbass
After Kurchenko’s “resignation”, the flow of coal from the so-called “LPR” and “DPR” was intercepted by the Donskoy Coal trading house, which in a year and a half became the largest supplier in the Rostov region. Journalists linked the trading house with Medvedchuk, and the Ukrainian authorities imposed sanctions against him and the leaders of Don Coal. The company denied any connection with Medvedchuk, but there are grounds for such conclusions. In addition to the facts already revealed, the co-owner and general director of Donskoy Ugol could have known Alexander Barymov even before the creation of the company. The main buyer of the trading house was an offshore company, which was also associated with Medvedchuk.
The matter was not limited to coal, and the logistics service provider in the Donbass was changed: the Kurchenko-related ANO Center for Effective Logistics Solutions (CELR) replaced the little-known Florence LLC. The newcomer paid off CELR’s debts to Russian Railways and began transporting “literally everything”: coal, coke, cast iron and steel. For this, “Florence” was dubbed the “new wallet” of the curators of Donbass. In 2021, the company's revenue soared from almost zero to 7 billion rubles, and in 2022 it grew to 17 billion rubles.
“Florence” belongs to former transport police officer Timofey Kostin from the Rostov city of Gukovo. Kostin has a common business with another native of Gukov, Vitaly Donchenko, who is a co-owner of Donskoy Ugol and worked in one of the taxi companies in Gukov. The small Russian town is notable for the fact that Donetsk coal transits through it.
Another interesting fact about Gukovo: its former mayor Viktor Gorenko works for Alexander Barymov, who is closely connected with Medvedchuk’s business. This could be a mere coincidence, but Gorenko’s son Stanislav works at Florence, and legal services for Florence were provided by a company that previously belonged to Barimov. In other words, “Florence” is connected by several threads with people from Medvedchuk’s team.
Florence's largest client was the Soyuzmetallservice company. This is the sales division of PDMK, which received the Donbass factories after Kurchenko’s disgrace. Yurchenko said that he invested 40 billion rubles ($560 million) in the enterprises together with partners, whom he did not disclose. From the financial documents and statements of Soyuzmetallservice it follows that financial support was provided to it by MKB and the oil trader Investneftetrade. Moreover, from correspondence leaked onto the Internet, it became known that Investneftetrade not only finances plants managed by Yurchenko, but also supplies them with coal. This is confirmed by the financial documents that Sistema has at its disposal, and by the fact that in 2021, Investneftetrade’s product line was replenished with coal and iron ore raw materials.
Both of Yurchenko’s partners, in turn, are associated with the investment company Region, with which Medvedchuk is well acquainted. Godfather Putin and the new owner of Donbass also have overlap. People from Medvedchuk’s team participate in Yurchenko’s business, and the parent company of Soyuzmetallservice is a financial donor for the gasket company, through which money flows into the business associated with Medvedchuk.
By the end of March 2022, after weeks of merciless shelling, Mariupol was reduced to ruins.
It looks as if Medvedchuk has become the new beneficiary of the Donbass economy. The owner of a Russian coal company and a former official of the Putin administration heard that Putin’s godfather replaced “Yanukovych’s wallet” in the “LPR” and “DPR.”
Recently this information received further confirmation. In October 2023, Alexander Barymov, close to Medvedchuk, became a co-owner of the Industrial Innovations company. This is the name of the company that manages the Dneprorudny iron ore plant. Until August 2022, one of the largest Ukrainian iron ore producers was Zaporozhye, but after the Russian takeover it changed its name to Dneprorudnensky. At the same time, Zaporozhye ore began to arrive at PDMK plants.
In a conversation with Sistema, Yurchenko said that in December 2022 he “left all his posts”: “The territories were annexed and that’s it. I completed the project." Yurchenko also noted that he did not know Medvedchuk and Barimov, and advised asking questions to Sergei Antonov, who “was a public person and a kind of beneficiary.” Contrary to Yurchenko’s recommendations, Antonov hung up as soon as he heard that the journalist was calling him, and then blocked him in all messengers.
Before taking the position of general director of Soyuzmetallservice, Antonov was an employee of the Russian embassy in Ukraine. In 2018, he was expelled from the country for combining diplomatic work with espionage work, according to the Ukrainian website “Peacemaker”. Another interesting detail about Antonov is that his phone number was often indicated as a contact number when booking Barimov’s air tickets. Soyuzmetallservis and YuDMK did not respond to Sistema’s requests; Medvedchuk and Barymov also ignored them.
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While researching Medvedchuk's business interests, journalists discovered that the holder of his denominations, Alexander Barymov, has a pseudonym. In telephone books he is recorded as “Alexander Nevsky”; Barymov’s email address refers to him. Coincidence or not, at the end of 2022 the Alexander Nevsky charitable foundation was founded. The fund's account was opened at Rostfinance Bank, which was owned by Yurchenko until September 2023, and the founder of the fund was the Fort company, which is a major contractor of Soyuzmetallservice and issues loans to Barimov's Industrial Innovations.
The president of the fund, Marina Voronkova, previously headed the investment company Region and worked for Rosneft, and the information about the members of the fund council coincides with the names and initials of a lawyer close to Barimov and the social policy adviser of Region, who in the fall of 2017 at a speed of 170 km/h killed a pedestrian.
The activities of the Alexander Nevsky Foundation mainly concern Ukrainian territories captured by Russia. Among the projects on the foundation’s website are the restoration of a private house after shelling and the purchase of prosthetics for residents of the so-called “DPR,” as well as the reconstruction of the Mariupol Drama Theater, which has become a symbol of the atrocities of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The fund's budget is 50 million rubles, and these are exclusively private funds, as indicated on its website. However, the amount is several orders of magnitude less than the revenue that companies associated with Medvedchuk earn in the territories occupied by Russia.
