The Real Russia. Today. Russian mercs in Belarus ahead of the presidential vote

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

• Belarus arrested 33 Russian mercenaries outside of Minsk today. Here’s what we know, so far.
• Investigative journalists at Proekt calculate who won big and came up short in Russia’s coronavirus government contracts
• Opinion and analysis: Roman Popkov and Pavel Luzin on the mercs in Minsk, Tatiana Stanovaya on the hardliners’ supposed big plans for Belarus, and Irina Tumakova looks against at the Furgal case
• News briefs: Sobchak’s incredible luck, Chaika’s daughter-in-law makes a desperate plea, and police say the son of a former Dagestani PM killed a woman

Feature stories

🗳️ Chaos in Belarus

With a presidential election looming on August 9, strange things are afoot in Belarus, where security officials arrested 33 Russian nationals who supposedly belong to the “Wagner” mercenary group. According to Minsk, the combatants were in the country “to destabilize the situation during the election campaign.” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) called an immediate meeting of the Security Council, warning that the presence of Russian mercenaries constituted an “emergency.” Days earlier, the president suggested that “professional soldiers” and “bandits” might try to foment unrest in Belarus.

💰 Pandemic money

The Russian state spent 210 billion rubles ($2.9 billion) to procure the goods and services needed to contain the spread of coronavirus, estimates the investigative news website Proekt. Among Russia’s federal agencies, the Industry and Trade Ministry received the most in subsidies — 18.7 billion rubles ($257.9 million). Regional governments also received 65.5 billion rubles ($903.3 million) to curb the spread of coronavirus. This wasn’t enough money and some regions had to use funds already allocated to budget items like renovations for children’s art schools and surveys of forest areas. More than a fifth of the Russian state’s coronavirus contracts were classified. These agreements were reached with the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and the Presidential Administrative Directorate. “Rostec” has earned more on coronavirus contracts than any other Russian company: 21 billion rubles ($289.1 million). 

Opinion and analysis

🤷 Maybe the mercs were planning a post-Lukashenko intervention after all

In an article for MBK Media and a Telegram post, journalist Roman Popkov rejects a theory promoted by Semyon Pegov’s Telegram channel WarGonzo that the Russian mercenaries arrested in Belarus were merely using Minsk as a transfer hub to reach destinations in Africa. Popkov argues that the “Wagner” PMC has other established routes that generally lead from Rostov to Syria, where militants can depart for any number of hot spots throughout the region. He acknowledges that Evgeny Prigozhin uses his alleged mercenary group to pursue both Russian national interests and personal financial gain (such as gold mining in Sudan), which could have meant that the military refused to make the normal transfer routes available this time.

But Popkov says President Lukashenko wouldn’t have resorted to arresting the Wagner operatives — a drastic step, he says — if he didn’t view them as a direct threat to his rule. In other words, Lukashenko must believe that the mercenaries were in Minsk to plot a course of action, should his regime collapse in the coming presidential election. Popkov says this fear isn’t altogether irrational, given that Moscow could have doubts about Lukashenko’s future, which would necessitate planning for the instability to come. In Crimea, Russia had an entire naval base in Sevastopol. In Belarus, perhaps it sent a few dozen mercenaries to scope out “suitable bases” and “look around,” Popkov guesses.

👨‍🍳 Patrushev and Prigozhin allegedly cook up quite the plan

In a post on her new English-language Telegram channel, R.Politik, political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya cites an anonymous source who claims that Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Evgeny Prigozhin have supposedly cooked up a hardline scheme to integrate Belarus into the Russian Federation. President Lukashenko has reportedly “accepted the general idea” of the plan, but Russia’s elites remain divided and Vladimir Putin himself is hesitant to risk a major backlash in Belarus. Stanovaya also points out that Lukashenko’s apparent willingness to cede Belarusian sovereignty for his own “future security” might be one of his old “foxy-style” tricks. It’s unclear how these rumored machinations play into Wednesday’s reports about Prigozhin’s mercenaries caught outside Minsk.

📡 It’s all a big ‘heads up’ from the Kremlin

In comments to the website Republic, military expert Pavel Luzin says Russia will likely intervene in Belarus if either a revolution takes place or Lukashenko decides to hand over power to someone who doesn’t suit Moscow’s political interests. Luzin also says Russia’s military assets in Belarus are limited, which forces Moscow to rely on “proxy” agents operating under the guise of civic protesters. 

But mercenaries don’t work as sleeper cells, Luzin says, which means the presence of Wagner combatants suggests that the Kremlin already believes the Lukashenko regime is teetering on the edge of collapse. That Belarus clearly isn’t so close to revolution as to warrant such actions means that the Kremlin is actually only “signaling” what it’s prepared to do if the political unrest escalates, says Luzin, speculating that the mercenaries arrested outside Minsk were sent there to “couch surf and get arrested” deliberately.

Luzin also rejects the theory that the Russian mercenaries were merely passing through Belarus en route to Africa, saying that Russia has plenty of discreet airports. Perhaps Lukashenko even invented the entire event as a provocation, much like the FSB periodically “catches Ukrainian saboteurs” in Crimea who are never heard from again.

🔍 Unpacking Sergey Furgal’s supposed high-profile “hit”

In another article for Novaya Gazeta about the Sergey Furgal investigation, Irina Tumakova spoke to an anonymous source who says he knew Evgeny Zorya, the businessman murdered in October 2004, supposedly in a contract killing ordered by Furgal. Identified only as “Viktor,” the source claims to have been friends with Zorya before his death and especially with Mikhail Timofeyev, the local criminal enforcer who allegedly acted as the hitman. 

Viktor denies that Zorya’s business rivalry with Furgal was significant enough to warrant murder and points out that Sergey Furgal wasn’t particularly influential at the time. (Yes, he owned a scrap-metal business, but this wasn’t uncommon.) Viktor says it’s more likely that the husband of one of Zorya’s disgruntled food cart workers killed him. (As it turns out, they were constantly stealing from him and he was constantly firing them.)

Viktor also talks at length about Timofeyev, arguing that Timofeyev never resorted to murder when breaking bones and performing his role as “protection.” He suspects that Timofeyev later testified against Furgal in order to get out of prison sooner. Viktor also guesses that Zorya’s widow is helping to pin her husband’s murder on Furgal because — despite having emigrated to Canada long ago — she still has vulnerable business interests in Khabarovsk.

The news in brief

• 🦀 Thanks, Mom! A regional court in Sakhalin has overturned a lower court’s decision to freeze the assets of two crab companies Ksenia Sobchak recently tried to buy. In early April, Sobchak’s senator mother complained to Russia’s Supreme Court about the decision to freeze the companies’ assets.
• 👰 Trouble in the Chaika clan. Marina Chaika, the wife of former Attorney General Yuri Chaika’s eldest son, Artyom, has released a video message where she asks her husband to return her passport and grant her a divorce. Chaika’s two sons, Artyom and Igor, gained notoriety several years ago when Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation exposed their suspicious business dealings and property holdings.
• 👮 Murder charges for another well-connected figure. Police have arrested Murtazili Medzhidov — the son of former Dagestani Prime Minister Mukhtar Medzhidov — on suspicion of murdering a 21-year-old student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in April 2018. 

👮 This day in history: 46 years ago, on July 29, 1974, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich massacre, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov ordered the creation of the “Alpha Group” — an elite, stand-alone sub-unit of the special forces. Today, it is a dedicated counter-terrorism task force of Russia’s Federal Security Service.