Instability in the vertical of Power Putin Built

For the following few pieces, I will rely heavily on Volyamedia. As you may or may not have heard, Russia continues to have an issue with losing oligarchs with guns, tea, and especially windows. The number of people who have died from window failures in high places is impressive. Yet, what we are seeing is also predictable. Defenestration is a feature, not a bug. And let’s face it, all these people are very well connected. Essay one and essay two:

They fell for their homeland. Part 1

Transneft Vice President Andrei Badalov died in Moscow. The 62-year-old top manager was found around six in the morning under the windows of the house where he lived on the 17th floor with his family.

RIA Novosti claims that the wife of the deceased received a text message from him in which he “apologized and said goodbye”. At the same time, Badalov’s daughter — Marina Drobachevskaya — claims that his father did not leave any messages, everything was fine in his personal life, but in the last few days he looked sad and depressed, perhaps because of some events at work.

It is premature to claim 100% that Badalov was killed, but he has already become the 17th since the beginning of 2022 (and the 24th since 2021) by a high-ranking Russian manager and entrepreneur who died abruptly and unexpectedly for his loved ones.

Most of the dead have worked in state and near-state companies since 2021: Gazprom, Gazprombank, VTB, Lukoil, NOVATEK, now Transneft has been added to the list. At first glance, the exception to the rule was Stanislav Drugalev, the founder of the Garantex crypto exchange, who died in Dubai on February 7, 2021. But if you look at what happened to his company after the death of a traffic accident, he no longer looks like an exception. After the death of Drugalev, the crypto exchange passed to a certain Irina Chernyavskaya, whose common-law husband and actual owner of the company was Pavel Karavatsky, a man who worked (and still works) with Oleg Feoktistov and Igor Sechin. Since then, the Russian security forces have used the crypto exchange in their own interests, including to establish supply channels for a wide variety of goods and technologies from China. Both in the pre-war period and after the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.

But let’s get back to top managers from Gazprom, NOVATEK, Transneft and other companies that directly serve the interests of Putin’s elite and himself.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russian elites withdrew money from Russia, including through the structures of Gazprom, Lukoil, NOVATEK and Transneft. After 2014 and the seizure of Crimea, trustees in these companies created dozens of firms in third countries, through which Russia purchased banned dual-use and direct military goods, including steel for gun barrels, which passed according to documents as steel rods for drilling rigs.

The people responsible for these transactions and for the money included many from the list of “suicides”. These are the former vice president of Gazprombank Vladislav Avaev (who not only “suicided himself”, but also killed his wife and daughter before, and his wife, according to the official version, shot his knees and elbows before the murder), and former deputy chairman of the board of directors of NOVATEK Sergey Protosenya (“hanged himself” during his vacation at a villa in Lloret de Mar, and before that, who killed his sleeping wife and daughter with an ax and a knife). Only four days passed between these two deaths, Avaev and his family “died” on April 18, 2022, and Protosenya and his wife with his daughter — on April 21 of the same year.

As our interlocutors in the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation said then, “the dad is changing the scheme” — Putin took out of the game those who were responsible for the gray schemes with purchases and posting money abroad in the pre-war period in order to replace them with new ones, who will rebuild the whole scheme to increase its security. At the same time, they removed those who wanted to leave the game themselves, but knew too much to live on.

In the summer of 2022, the founder and CEO of Astra-Shipping, whose company was needed by Putin’s environment to “work” on the creation of a shadow tanker and cargo fleet carrying sanctioned oil and goods from Russia and to Russia, “shot himself”.

They fell for their homeland. Part 2

Murder under the guise of suicide is a standard scheme of work for Putin’s (and not only Putin’s) special services. If it is necessary to eliminate unnecessary witnesses, no matter who: women, children, old people, they will be eliminated without hesitation.

The new scheme, according to rumors from the security forces, was successfully built by June 2022. Andrei Badalov, who fell out of the window, again, according to rumors, was built into it at the end of May 2022. He moved to work at Transneft in July 2021 and was responsible for “digital transformation and implementation of information technology” in the company.

Badalov was his own and proven person for the system. Since the 2000s, he has been engaged in similar tasks in structures related to Rosoboronexport, and then with Rostec. Supervised the creation of situational centers for state bodies during the Sochi Olympics. And in 2019, he became the director of the Voskhod Research Institute, almost the main enterprise that provides the activities of the most advanced Russian ministry — the Ministry of Digital Affairs.

This is how the scope of Voskhod’s activities is described on the website of the profile publication CNews: “The organization positions itself as a multi-service partner of the state in the field of information technology and a developer of innovative IT formats of interaction between the authorities and society. The infrastructure of “Voskhod” includes certification centers of electronic signature for various purposes, an interdepartmental backup data processing center, a regime-secret department of information processing with limited access. “Voskhod” is also developed by GAS “Vybory”, GAS “Justice”, systems for the production of biometric passports, the “Independent Registrar” system, which regulates electronic trading, standard cloud solutions for the automation of control and supervision activities, electronic document management systems and other solutions”.

Taking into account this and other previous experience, Badalov was a proven staff with such knowledge of the structure of the system that he should have settled on the ground floor (although this would hardly help).

Whether this death means that Putin and his entourage are starting a new restructuring of their complex financial schemes to work with other countries is not yet clear. If a row of other participants of the big game pulls to the windows behind Badalov, then, perhaps, we are really talking about another restructuring. Candidates for exiting the window, self-drowning in the pool, death in an accident or self-shot can be, for example, top managers of FORA Bank (Armenia is trying to get out of the influence of the Russian Federation, the owner of FORA Samvel Karapetyan was arrested in Yerevan, as well as a number of executives of his own company “Tashir”, the risk that one of them may say too much may make Putin’s people act in advance, clearing the people involved now in the scheme), Zarubezhneft (for the same reasons), ITER, VTB, all the same Gazpromneft, Gazprom, Transneft (there is another interesting vice-president there — Vladimir Kalanda).

This possible restructuring can be explained by the need to clean up the tails before a new round of conflict with Putin’s so unloved “collective West” — new sanctions from Lindsey Graham, a possible invasion of the Baltic countries, loss of influence in Transcaucasia, Syria, a change in the situation in Iran. In order for everything to work, the schemes for under-sanctioned purchases, shadow trade and the sale of oil products bypassing bans need to be changed, especially when the world around changes.

There will be new deaths this summer or not, for everyone who participates in this game it should be obvious that it is impossible to win it, and loss is inevitable. The only question is whether the loser will go to the other world alone or his wife and children will be sent there with him, as it was with Protosena, Avayev and several others.

Verticals need to prune the branches because those branches become a challenge to the head at the top.

Now, Russia has used Defenestration for a long time. It is not something Vladimir Putin invented. Joseph Stalin did this. He also carried out show trials and purges. That may be coming to Russia.

Of course, Defenestration comes in many forms. This is the origin of the meme I used at the top. Poisoning, windows —I swear, they need something like OSHA to conduct major inspections of residential towers for the wealthy. They should include hotels in Dubai and Delhi, because people fall out of windows everywhere.

Which brings me to the other way people are finding their way to an early grave. And this one, well, it goes back to at least Stalin:

The choice between a window and a gun

Yesterday we wrote about Andrei Badalov, Vice President of Transneft, who fell out of the window on the 17th floor, and about a series of deaths of Russian top managers of quasi-state companies, which began a year before the invasion of Ukraine.

We wrote that it is impossible to unequivocally claim that Badalov was killed yet, because there is no direct evidence. However, at least one item, and possibly two at once, has been added to the list of indirect evidence that this is still a murder.

According to one of our sources, who worked with Badalov, the deceased was not only the vice-president of Transneft, but also a personnel officer of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. As a personnel officer, he had a timer pistol, which the deceased loved, appreciated and carefully kept in working condition.

A person who has a gun and knows how to handle it, when choosing a means for suicide, will most likely choose a gun, not a window on the 17th floor. A shot and instant death are much easier to get out than a jump from a height and seconds of horror before colliding with the ground. Seconds that you will feel with every cell of your body and brain.

But Andrei Badalov fell out of the window, the investigation is still trying not to notice the presence of his weapons. As well as belonging to SVR.

That a former SVR officer was not given a choice is a message to others. And that he was not quite untouchable is interesting as well.