Vladislav Baumgertner, one of Russia’s most prominent senior executives in the 2010s, has gone missing in Cyprus. As the CEO of Uralkali, Baumgertner famously dissolved a partnership with Belaruskali, subsequently becoming a “hostage” of Alexander Lukashenko during the ensuing “Potash War.” Meduza looks back at that conflict, examines Baumgertner’s career before and after the crisis, and details what is currently known about his disappearance.

‘An ideal manager’

On January 11, Cypriot police reported the disappearance of 53-year-old Russian national Vladislav Baumgertner. He left his home in Limassol on January 7, dressed in black shorts and a black t-shirt. He has not answered calls or returned home since. Search efforts began on January 10, involving search-and-rescue teams, police, and volunteers, aided by a police helicopter and drones. The search centered on the rugged terrain near the village of Pissouri, where his mobile phone signal was last detected.

A graduate of Ural Technical University, Baumgertner began his career at the energy-sales firm Uralenergo. In the early 2000s, he earned master’s degrees in business administration and financial management in Britain. He was subsequently hired by Uralkali, then owned by the businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev. Baumgertner rose to the position of commercial director in 2003, and by 2005, he was serving as the company’s CEO and president. Former colleagues say Rybolovlev tapped him for the role because he was well-liked by investors and maintained a reputation for personal integrity.

At Uralkali, Baumgertner modernized operations by introducing digital workflows and key performance indicators. He eventually guided the company to a listing on the London Stock Exchange and oversaw its merger with Silvinit, another producer of potash (mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form). “Baumgertner is blunt and rational,” Mark Rozin, head of Ecopsy Consulting, told Forbes in 2013. “He’s all about the business, very cut and dry. It gets results, but he can be a bit tone-deaf when it comes to people’s feelings, which rubs some the wrong way. He’s basically the ideal manager, perhaps to a fault.”

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The ‘Potash War’

In 2005, Uralkali joined forces with Belaruskali to establish the Belarus Potash Company (BPC), a unified trading arm designed to coordinate production levels and sales volumes. At its peak, the BPC controlled more than 40 percent of the global potash export market. But by 2013, as global prices softened, the partnership began to fray. The two sides found themselves deadlocked over a fundamental strategy — whether to shore up prices by restricting supply or to protect revenues by increasing volume — leading to mutual accusations of side-trading.

In late July 2013, Baumgertner announced that Uralkali would withdraw from the BPC. As the company was one of the world’s two largest potash cartels, its dissolution triggered a market-wide downturn. “It is as if Saudi Arabia decided to leave OPEC,” Dmitry Ryzhkov, a trader at Renaissance Capital, told Reuters when explaining the market’s reaction. “Oil prices would fall immediately.”

Uralkali’s withdrawal from the BPC was a painful blow to Alexander Lukashenko. “The strike by the Russian side severely undermined Belaruskali, the treasury’s primary source of foreign currency,” Alexander Klaskovsky, a Belarusian political analyst, told the BBC. “Consequently, this was an assault on the economic stability and prosperity that Lukashenko had long championed. And so, Lukashenko took the bull by the horns.”

In late August 2013, one month after Uralkali’s withdrawal from the BPC, Baumgertner arrived in Minsk for negotiations with Mikhail Myasnikovich, then the Belarusian prime minister. After the negotiations failed, the police detained Baumgertner at the airport as he was leaving the country. It was widely believed that President Lukashenko personally ordered the arrest.

“This kid shows up, invited by the prime minister. He sits cross-legged and starts making demands: ‘We won’t do this; we won’t do that.’ He left, spat on the seat of government, and laughed his way to the airport. And that’s where [they got him],” Lukashenko later recalled. Speaking to Forbes, Mark Rozin noted that the conduct that outraged Lukashenko was “classic” behavior for Baumgertner. Rozin explained: “He often stumbled because his rational approach failed to account for unpredictable factors. He shouldn’t have been sent to such negotiations, especially with government officials.”

Lukashenko’s anger extended beyond Baumgertner to his boss, Uralkali owner Suleiman Kerimov, who bought the company from Dmitry Rybolovlev. Lukashenko complained that Kerimov “does whatever he pleases” and suggested that Russian officials use force to make him sell the company. “If it were me, I’d toss Kerimov and his partners in a cell together, and they’d be tripping over each other to sell off all the assets at top dollar. I’d even find them a buyer.”

Belarusian security forces charged Baumgertner with abuse of office and transferred him to a KGB detention center. His arrest triggered a major diplomatic rift, with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov characterizing the incident as “weird, unprofessional, and inappropriate for partners.” In response, Russia banned imports of Belarusian pork and reduced oil supplies to the country. However, the dispute did not escalate into a direct confrontation between the two presidents. Lukashenko stated that he and Putin agreed that “Baumy and Kerimov aren’t worth trashing our relationship over.”

Baumgertner spent a month in custody, held in solitary confinement. Forbes reported that he initially remained in the same suit he had worn to his meeting with Prime Minister Myasnikovich. According to the outlet’s sources, Baumgertner “significantly re-evaluated his outlook on life” while in custody. In late September 2013, he was moved to house arrest in a rented Minsk apartment. To facilitate Baumgertner’s extradition in late November, Russia staged its own “abuse of office” case against him, according to one anonymous official.

The aftermath

The split between Uralkali and Belaruskali proved manageable for both companies. After the initial shocks — Uralkali shares plunged 19 percent in a single day, while Belaruskali idled half its mines to secure new sales channels — both enterprises increased production the following year. As demanded by Lukashenko, Kerimov divested from Uralkali. According to reporting by Proekt, Putin shielded Kerimov from criminal prosecution. In exchange, Kerimov reportedly donated $100 million to the Sirius Educational Center, the president’s pet project outside Sochi.

The criminal investigation into Baumgertner was eventually dropped, and he returned to the corporate sector. He served as the head of Global Ports and led the battery firm Alevo, a venture backed by Dmitry Rybolovlev. Baumgertner is currently listed as the director of HeadOffice, a family-office management company established in Cyprus in 2020.

One day after Vladislav Baumgertner’s disappearance, Alexey Panov, a third secretary at the Russian embassy in Cyprus, was found dead. According to the news outlet SigmaLive, embassy officials handed his body over to local police, characterizing the death as a suicide and claiming Panov had left a note. However, they refused to release the document to the Cypriot police, saying it would be forwarded to Moscow. Embassy officials also prevented local police from examining the office where Panov was found. It is currently unknown if Panov’s death is related to Baumgertner’s disappearance.