Eurasia Press & News
Familiar to Vladimir Putin on the Leningrad KGB Vladimir Strzhalkovsky in the 90-ies was engaged in the tourist industry and organization of prostitution. After Putin came to power, he was first in the government, and then in the chair of the general director of Norilsk Nickel. Now the KGB-schnik, together with his son, who graduated from the Academy of the Foreign Intelligence Service, settled in Europe, which created an entire holding, which includes alcoholic producers in Italy, France and the Czech Republic, five luxury spa hotels in Italy and Greece, a pub in Austria and half a dozen restaurants in Moscow. Contrary to huge turnovers, a significant part of these assets either does not bring profit or unprofitable, which causes suspicion of money laundering. The Strzhalkovsky not only avoided sanctions, but also closely became close to European aristocrats.
Pustoon from the KGB
Vladimir Strzhalkovsky was born in Leningrad in 1954, in 1977 he graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute and soon began work in the Department of the KGB of the USSR in the Leningrad region, where he worked until the collapse of the Soviet Union. During his service at the KGB, he met Nikolai Patrushev and Vladimir Putin, and these acquaintances played a crucial role in his future career.
Putin and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky
When in 1991, Vladimir Putin became chairman of the St. Petersburg City Hall Committee on Foreign Relations, Strjlkovsky founded the Neva travel agency, becoming its CEO, and headed it until 1999. In addition to the actual tourist cruises, one of the activities of the company was the organization of prostitution. This became known from the case No. 633 “On Protesting”, which was considered in December 1998 in the County Court of the Finnish city of Kouvola.
According to the court decision, the travel agency “Neva” from January 1996 to October 1997 organized more than 2,000 trips of Russian sex workers to Valkeala and Lapinärvi. Among the defendants “for the organization of openly practiced prostitution, women coming to the motel from Russia” involved Deputy Strzhalkovsky Timraliev and the representative of the “Neva” Natalia Oks. And although the court confirmed that the company was engaged in the organization of prostitution, the defendants avoided responsibility: Oks allegedly only “limited the preparation of visas for tourists according to pre-provided lists”, and Timraliyev “does not bear criminal responsibility for the act of another person.”
Three months after Vladimir Putin’s appointment as chairman of the government, his former KGB colleague received the post of Deputy Minister for Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism. At the same time, judging by the reports of the Finnish press, Strzhalkovsky retained contact with the brothel business, already being in the ministerial chair. In May 2000, he appointed Oksa as a freelance representative of the Ministry of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Russian Federation in Finland and by the same order transferred the ownership of the Ministry in Finland to its administration. According to the investigation of the publication Yle, at least two of the apartments owned by the ministry began to be used as brothels.
Strzhalkovsky retained communication with the brothel business, already being in the ministerial chairAfter Putin took the presidency, Strzhalkovsky’s career continued to take off. In June 2000, he was appointed Chairman of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism, and in July became Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Russia Herman Gref. In Vladimir Putin’s second term, Strzhalkovsky was appointed head of the Federal Agency for Tourism, having managed during this time to get the rank of a real state adviser of class 1.
Not too effective manager and “golden parachute” at $ 100 million
The most profitable work of Strzhalkovsky was the position of Chairman of the Board of OJSC MMC “Norilsk Nickel”, which he held from August 2008 to December 2012. As analysts noted, its main function was not the management of the company, but lobbying in the Kremlin interests of Vladimir Potanin. The latter first shared the asset with Mikhail Prokhorov, and then with Oleg Deripaska, who bought a blocking stake from Prokhorov. Strzhkovsky himself at the enterprises of Norilsk Nickel was called “tourist” by the eyes. And not only because of the past work in the tourism sector, but also because he preferred to lead one of the largest industrial enterprises of the country, without leaving Moscow and practically without affecting operational activities.
Potanin and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky
The remuneration of the “tourist” was not only generous, but also one of the highest in Russia. Strzhalkovsky received $ 400 thousand monthly, as well as two types of bonuses. The first is in the amount of $ 3 million per year in the absence of losses, and the second was considered from the annual increase in the value of the phantom shares of Norilsk Nickel recorded on Strzhalkovsky.
Vedomosti’s sources estimated these bonuses to $25 million a year, RBC also gave a similar estimate, which determined the range of Srzhalkovsky’s total income for 2009 between $ 17 million and $ 25 million. While Strzhalkovsky received record payments, the authorities of the single-industry of Norilsk refused to repair the worn-out infrastructure in order to reduce the budget deficit in this way.
According to the weighted average rate of 2009, Strzhalkovsky could receive about half a billion rubles per year at Norilsk Nickel. At the same time, the mayor of Norilsk refused to repair two worn-out collectors and lighting of the streets of Krasnoyarsk and Ordzhonikidze to save 99.6 million rubles of the city budget.
Contrary to record payments to top management, the development of Norilsk Nickel lagged behind other Russian enterprises. Analysts interviewed by Vedomosti pointed out that for four years, under the leadership of Strzhalkovsky, the company rose by 11.6%, while the MICEX index for the same period added 42%. But despite modest successes, Strzhalkovsky received the largest payment in the history of Russia when terminated the contract. His “golden parachute” was $ 100 million, which was only slightly less than 10% of Norilsk Nickel’s dividend payments during this period.
How the Bank in Cyprus Linked the Chekist with Trump’s entourage
The hundreds of millions of dollars received at Norilsk Nickel led Strzhalkovsky to the chair of the deputy chairman of the board of directors of the Bank of Cyprus, against his will. At least half of the payment received, the former Chekist posted on a family account in Cyprus Popular Bank (Laiki). But in his future plans intervened in the banking crisis of 2013.
In May, by the decision of the Cypriot authorities, most of the assets and loans of Laiki Bank were transferred to the Bank of Cyprus. Soon, this bank was restructured as part of a Cyprus-recapitulation agreement with international creditors. More than 20 thousand customers of the bank, who had deposits of more than 100 thousand euros, became owners of 81.4% of its shares, after 47.5% of their uninsured savings were converted into a share capital at the rate of one euro per share.
So Strzhalkovsky became Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Bank and the head of the risk committee. Coincident or not, among the other largest shareholders of the bank were four defendants in the investigations directly or indirectly associated with Donald Trump.
Among the other largest shareholders of the bank were four defendants in the investigations directly or indirectly related to Donald TrumpOne of them is the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, the defendant in the investigation of special prosecutor Robert Mueller in connection with a suspicious transaction on the purchase of the mansion. In 2004, Trump bought a Florida-based site for $41 million. When in the midst of the 2008 crisis he urgently needed money, Rybolovlev bought this mansion from him, but not with a discount, which would be logical in the peak of the crisis, but on the contrary – twice as expensive, for $ 95 million. Thus, Rybolovlev saved Trump from bankruptcy (later the Russian businessman resold a site at a loss of $ 30 million).
Another major shareholder of the bank, which included Strzhalkovsky in the board of directors, is the American billionaire Wilbur Ross. He worked with Russia in the 90’s as a member of the board of the American-Russian investment fund, promoting the interests of American business in the Russian Federation. He specialized in transactions with problem assets, one of which was the Cypriot bank.
There are many scandalous stories with Ross, and he was very close to Trump. Wilbur was his economic adviser during his first election campaign, and after winning, Trump made him a secretary of trade (which for a trade war enthusiast is one of the key positions).
Another member of the director was Maxim Goldman, representing Renova Vekselberg. Subsequently, Vekselberg was one of the donors of the Trump campaign. The FBI investigated numerous suspicious connections between Vekselberg and Trump: for example, it turned out that Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wekselberg’s firms for “consultative services”.
The board of directors was headed by another person associated with Vekselberg, Director of Renova Management AG, Josef Ackermann. He is interesting not only as a person of Vekselberg, but also as a former director of Deutsche Bank. During Akerman’s tenure as CEO from 2002 to 2012, Deutsche Bank committed a number of financial irregularities, the largest of which was the laundering of 10 billion Russian money through offices in New York, Moscow and Cyprus. For these violations, the bank was fined in 2017 for more than $ 670 million. One of the bank’s biggest clients was… Donald Trump: His 2016 financial statements showed that he had loans from Deutsche Bank for a total of $364 million, which came in 2024.
There are no Chekists Exists
Subsequent appointments of Strzhalkovsky showed that he maintains ties with both Putin and another colleague in the Leningrad KGB – Nikolai Patrushev. In 2015, Strzhalkovsky became a member of the Supervisory Board of the Rosselkhozbank. Sources of “Kommersant” explained this by his acquaintance with Patrushev Sr., whose son Dmitry was the chairman of the board of the bank. Also from the documents of the candidate for the post of Supervisory Board it became known that he held the position of special representative of Rosatom for the development of nuclear technologies in Africa.
In 2019, PASMI drew attention to the fact that the children of Patrushev and Strzhalkovsky own neighboring cottages in Gelendzhik. The neighbor Patrushev and the owner of a three-story cottage of 449 square meters. m with a cadastral price of more than 20 million rubles was a junior schoolgirl Wandda Vladimirovna Strzhalkovskaya, who at that time was 9 years old.
In 2016-2019, Strzhalkovsky headed the All-Russian Physical Culture and Sports Society (VFSO) Dynamo. Since the founding of Felix Dzerzhinsky in 1923, Dynamo has remained a club of Soviet and then Russian law enforcement agencies. At its competitions, teams of employees of the FSO, the FSB, the SVR and the Ministry of Internal Affairs perform, and the regional companies “Dynamo” are headed by the heads of the FSB or the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The board of trustees of the Dynamo Society includes Nikolai Patrushev.
Son of a spy with a Nazi bias
The son of Strzhalkovsky and the important holder of his assets, Yevgeny Strzhalkovsky, is also a professional scout. He was born in 1980, in 2001 graduated from the Academy of the Foreign Intelligence Service (military unit 21247), received a military certificate No. 007203 and began work under the guise of Vnesheconombank (which is typical for SVR employees).
As can be seen from the base of air travel, in 2007, several other employees of the SVR – Svyatoslav Kobyakov flew with him with him, who worked first under the cover of RIA Novosti, and then a trade representative office of the Ministry of Economy of the Russian Federation in Argentina, and Evgeny Sokolov (in / h 33949), also working as a VEB cover, and then in the SVR/FSB-controlled company.
Strzhalkovsky Jr
In his free time from espionage, Strjlkovsky Jr. was fond of historical reconstructions, and did it in a very perverted form: he headed the “alco-Nazi-Fanthical-Holigan-role-role team” “Morgil”. The term “Nazi” is not an exaggeration: the ideology of the group was expressed in the “nastorism theory” and implied the division into full-fledged, or “normal,” people and “holims”, which were, for example, torrentialists and against whom the use of violence was encouraged.
Popular blogger from the environment of reenactors Klim Zhukov describes his acquaintance with Strzhalkovsky as follows: “… It all began on the unfinished maneuvers of the ancient Romans on the Karelian Isthmus, where we were going to beat the Romans and the role-players who joined them… Zhenya headed Morgil, who knew, if not all, then very, very many: this cheerful club traded in the fact that he drove into the roles of scooters and beat people. ”
Morgil trainings were like paramilitary classes, where team members trained fencing and combined it with hand-to-hand combat techniques using improvised means. Probably, it was thanks to the connections of Strzhalkovsky’s eldest friends that his son’s friends could use these skills with impunity both at festival and outside of them.
Thanks to the connections of Strzhalkovsky, his son’s friends could use hand-to-hand combat skills both in festival and outside of them with impunityThe most famous criminal episode with the participation of “Morgil” was the beating of the participants of the role-playing festival “Blink-3”, which occurred in December 2002 at the school of the Vasileostrov district of St. Petersburg. Morgil members beat two members, and shot at point-blank range from a pneumatic gun, so the bullets were stuck in his skull. According to the victims, Morgli members threatened them with murder if they were sent to the police. Even after the application, the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to open a criminal case, which was initiated only after the appeal of employees of the City Center for the Prevention of Neglect and Drug Addiction to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Alcoholic Empire in Europe
The “golden parachute” of Strzhalkovsky Sr. and tens of millions of dollars earned while working at Norilsk Nickel eventually turned into a whole alcoholic holding in Europe, recorded on their son. Evgeny Strzhkovsky became a citizen of Monaco and the main holder of foreign assets of the family. The key link in this system was the anonymous Monacian company Thesauro Praeitor SAM, the name of which is translated from Latin as “treasury”. The president and majoritarian beneficiary of this company is Strzhkovsky Jr.: this is confirmed by documents on the registration of the French company Maison Eugene Rene and the British firm The Leeward Rum Company Limited. Through Thesauro Praetor SAM Strzhalkovsky owns a number of companies in Austria, Great Britain, Italy and France.
In the UK, Strzhalkovsky owns Maison Eugène René UK Ltd, through which he owned two other British firms, liquidated in 2024: Northern Seas Trading Ltd, registered in Glasgow, and Sandbank Distillery Ltd. The latter intended to revive the mischienate in Holy Loch in Argyle, Scotland, and even registered the Lamont brand, but was dissolved in 2024 without releasing a single bottle.
The name of whiskey refers to another British possession of the Stralzhkovsky Jr. In 2017, he purchased a 12-room Knockdow mansion on the Koval Peninsula in Scotland, owned by the Lamont clan. The purchase cost was £ 4 million, it included decorative gardens and 250 acres of forest. As British journalists pointed out, the property is located near the little-known but strategically important for the British and American fleets in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans of the Loch-Stireven gas station.
Until recently, Evgeniy’s business partner in the alcohol business was one of the most promising wine experts in the UK, Liam Stevenson. Liam is the youngest expert to pass the exam for the Master of Wine degree, which only 425 people in the world have. In 2024, he won two business awards at once: O2 Entrepreneur of the Year Award and IWC Regional Merchant of the Year. Liam’s businesses include Global Wine Solutions , one of the world’s leading suppliers of elite alcohol for superyachts.
Until December 2024, a quarter of the company’s capital belonged to Evgeny Drozdov, Strzhalkovsky’s nominee, and the owner of another 6% and also the director of the company was Caroline Anne Madeleine Aldrin, Strzhalkovsky’s authorized representative in the Monegasque company. In October 2024, these shares returned to Stevenson, and Aldrin left her post. Strzhalkovsky and Stevenson also jointly owned the Half Moon Bay Rum brand, under which premium gins and vodka were produced in California . In an Instagram post dated February 14, 2025, Liam mentioned that, in addition to foreign businesses, he consulted on projects for a certain vineyard and an unnamed retailer in Russia itself, but was forced to cease cooperation (after The Insider contacted him, he deleted the post).
And if in Great Britain the family of the former Chekist had to get rid of the acquired property, in continental Europe their business is flourishing. A notable alcohol asset of Strzhalkovsky is the French company Maison Eugene Rene France: he owns it through the same Monegasque firm Thesauro Praetor. This company produces vermouths under the Monte Carlo brand . The firm itself is registered in Burgundy, and its production is located in Monaco, where Italian wine from Piedmont is combined with “distillates of aromatic plants from the city of Grasse, the world capital of perfumery.”
Another French company of Strzałkowski, Gundibald Vignobles SCEA, is also registered in Burgundy, the region with the most expensive vineyards in France. Gundibald Vignobles is co-owned by the Boillot father and son, who own one of the famous Burgundy wineries, Domaine Henri Boillot.
But Evgeniy’s most valuable foreign asset is in Italy, in Piedmont. Through the Maltese Winocracy Holdings Ltd, he owns the La Scarpa winery . This is a historic winery, founded in 1854, which for a century and a half produced wine from a nearby 25-hectare vineyard. After the purchase, the new owners invested in both the winery itself and new vineyards, which were acquired in 2018.
Their total area of 5 hectares is relatively small, but their reputation is known to sommeliers all over the world. These are individual plots in some of the most prestigious crus (classified vineyards distinguished by the high quality of the wines produced) of Barolo and Barbaresco: Roncaglie, Monvigliero and Canova. With an average cost of a hectare of vineyard of “ordinary” Barolo of €73 thousand, the price of a hectare of individual crus can reach €3 million. According to financial statements, La Scarpa’s assets at the end of 2022 were valued at €20.52 million.
The only thing missing from a cocktail of elite wines, vermouth and gin is beer. And Strzhalkovsky also has a brewery. Until 2017, the Monegasque company owned 100% of the capital of the Czech craft brewery Svabin . Although representatives of the brewery, in response to a request from The Insider, denied continuing ties with Thesauro Praetor, there is reason to believe that subsequent transactions were only intended to hide the real beneficiary. The brewery is currently owned by Romanian citizen Ivan Marchiuch, born on April 6, 1975. Judging by the statutory documents of the related company Taiseiko Operations sro, Ivan recently had the surname Marchuk, had Russian citizenship and was registered on Nakhimovsky Prospekt in Moscow.
Like Strzhalkovsky, Marchuk is passionate about military-historical reconstruction. From 1998 to 2011, Ivan headed the military-historical clubs “Put Sword” and “Iwakiri” and is one of the co-founders of “Sengoku”, an association of reenactors of Japanese culture. Dozens of Marchuk’s friends on the social network “Vkontakte” are directly connected with Strzhalkovsky.
For example, Ksenia Oya is the administrator of the Historical Medieval Battle Association (HMBIA), which is affiliated with Evgeny Strzhalkovsky. And Vitaly Gryzlov was the captain of the Bear Paw team, which competed in the Buhurt Prime group tournament in Monaco, and received awards from Strzhalkovsky. In 2020, the Sengoku Jizai Association, of which Marchuk is a member, received a diploma from the Valor of the Ages organization, whose vice president is the same Evgeny Strzhalkovsky.
In addition to Ivan Marchuk, until 2022, Svabin’s management included another reenactor with a Russian passport, Ivan Borovikov, as well as his mother Natalia. Evgeny Strzhalkovsky himself, registered on Instagram under the nickname duguay__trouin, remains a subscriber to the Czech brewery.
Bars and restaurants of Strzhalkovsky
Through the same Thesauro Praetor, Evgeny Strzhalkovsky owns the pub and speakeasy bar Trinity Irish Bar near Karlsplatz.
Assets in Russia are registered in the name of Evgeny’s mother and Vladimir Strzhalkovsky’s first wife, Natalia Ivanovna Strzhalkovskaya. Until May 2018, Natalia owned a share in a St. Petersburg yacht club: she owned 30% of Russian Yachting LLC. Strzhalkovskaya’s participation came at a time when two other co-owners of the yacht club – vice-president of the All-Russian Sailing Federation Vladimir Loginov and founder of the XXXX restaurant chain Dmitry Sokolov – complained to various authorities about an attempt at a raider takeover of their business.
Now Natalia Strzhalkovskaya is a restaurateur who owns establishments in some of the most luxurious locations in Moscow. Through the company “Fitz”, she owns the beer restaurant The Michael Collins on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, the pubs Sean O’Neill on Kuznetsky Most and Dublinets on Nikolskaya, the bars De Torino on Myasnitskaya and Tomi Negroni on Malaya Bronnaya, as well as the bistro Fiorentini on Leo Tolstoy Street.
Strange hotels of the Strzhalkovskys
But the most important figure in the structure of the Strzhalkovsky family’s foreign property is the second wife, Irina Vladimirovna Strzhalkovskaya, née Kochergina. In 2003, she worked at the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Network of Presidential Hotels and Health Resorts of Rus”, which was later transformed into the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “President-Service” of the Presidential Property Management Department of the Russian Federation.
Her current life is also connected with hotels, but in a fundamentally different capacity. She is the owner of the hotel group V-hotels Group , presumably named after the first letter of Vladimir’s name. The parent company V-Hotels Group Limited, which Irina herself owns and manages, is registered in Cyprus, and the luxury hotels are located in Italy and Greece. Irina is also a citizen of Cyprus and the holder of a “golden passport” of Montenegro.
In Italy, Irina owns three luxury spa hotels in the resort area of Abano Terme, 10 km from Padua: Premiere Abano, President Terme and Terme Antoniano. The five-star Premiere Abano has 112 rooms, the building was completely renovated in 2021 to “create a new impression of luxury”. Ten minutes away is another five-star hotel, President Terme , with spa areas, a swimming pool and two restaurants. The more modest four-star Terme Antoniano boasts only 165 rooms and a thermal park with five pools.
Since 2016, through the already mentioned companies Terme Antoniano SPA and President SRL, Irina has owned an undisclosed share of up to 50% in the capital of the Italian company Abano In Benessere . This company owns three spa hotels in the same resort town of Abano Terme: Hotel Quisisana Terme, Hotel Terme Salus and Hotel Atlantic Terme.
Publicly, V Hotels calls itself an international company, whose shareholders are Russians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Cypriots, Swiss and Italians. But in practice, the owner of the group’s hotels is Irina Strzhalkovskaya. For example, in Premiere Abano SRL, Strzhalkovskaya directly owns 89%, and she owns another 11% through the Cypriot company Namtok Limited. In President SRL, Irina owns 23% directly, and the remaining 77% belongs to her through another Cypriot company, Vocis Investments Limited.
In Greece, the V-Hotels chain owns two hotels on the island of Corfu. They are owned by the Cypriot company Bolentaco Limited, whose sole shareholder is Irina. Panorama Sidari is located a ten-minute walk from the Ionian coast. The hotel complex has three stars and has 180 rooms in 12 buildings. Almyros Beach Resort & Spa has the usual five stars, luxury level and location on the first line, and it also has 12 buildings with 180 rooms. It is difficult to estimate the value of these assets, but we are talking about tens of millions of euros. Irina is the director of four Cypriot companies.
The tangled ownership structure is designed to hide suspicious financial transactions between Strzhalkovskaya’s companies. Based on the financial statements found by The Insider alone, it can be stated that some of these companies received loans of more than 66 million euros directly from Irina and companies associated with her. In 2020, V-Hotels Group Litd received loans of 22.670 million euros from its shareholders and another 8.192 million euros from Amberg Enterprises Ltd, Nessan Associates Ltd and Vocis Investments Ltd. In addition to Irina herself, a major donor to her companies is Bolerstone Trading Limited from the British Virgin Islands. In its 2020 reporting, this company reflected information on loans of $54 million issued to a certain Roman Buzinski and three of Strzhalkovskaya’s companies.
It may seem surprising, but five luxury hotels and the companies that manage them demonstrate extremely modest financial results, receiving either losses or small profits of hundreds of thousands of euros. At the same time, the main financial operations of the management companies are related to receiving and repaying loans. The accounts of the Cypriot companies are opened in the Bank of Cyprus – the same bank on whose board of directors Strzhalkovsky was recently a member. These schemes cannot but arouse suspicions that the true purpose of these hotels is money laundering and legalization.
These schemes cannot help but raise suspicions that the true purpose of the hotels is money laundering and legalization.
Chekists in the nobility
At one time, congratulating FSB employees on Chekist Day, Nikolai Patrushev called them the new nobility. A bold statement, but for his colleagues Vladimir and Yevgeny Strzhalkovsky, it really wasn’t that hard to enter the circles of the real European aristocracy.
Evgeny used the Historical Medieval Combat Sports Association (HMBIA) for this. It organizes and promotes historical medieval combat, a full-contact sport in which participants fight in authentic medieval armor using unsharpened steel weapons. The sport combines athletic competition with historical reenactment, aiming to recreate historical accuracy in equipment and fighting styles. The Monegasque chapter of the HMBSA plays an important role in this, organizing the international Buhurt Prime tournament, which is called the “Champions League” of medieval combat.
The Russian presence in the international organization is noticeable even in the management of HMBIA: the vice-president of the organization is Evgeny Galushin, Irina Kamaeva is responsible for PR, and Ksenia Oya is in charge of administrative issues. The former coach of Evgeny Strzhalkovsky Sergey Myasishchev, whose students are known for their unsportsmanlike fighting styles and rule violations, became the head of the marshals committee and monitors the fighters’ compliance with the regulations.
Strzhalkovsky himself is content with the modest role of head of the Monegasque organization. Its honorary representative is Evgeny Drozdov, head of the investment department of Strzhalkovsky’s Thesauro Praetor piggy bank. Control over both organizations is only an intermediate goal: HMBIA intends to join the Non-Olympic Sports Federation (GAISF) by 2026.
Probably, participation in the historical sport helped Strzhalkovsky to become close to Albert II, the Prince and head of state of Monaco, who personally presented prizes to the winners of the tournaments. Among those accepting the award was, for example, the deputy head of the specialized department of the Federal Bailiff Service of Russia for the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Alexander Nikitin, who played for the Nizhny Novgorod club “Bern”.
Perhaps the acquaintance from the sports and historical club influenced the ease with which Strzhalkovsky was issued a passport of Monaco, and his vermouth production received the right to a trademark of alcohol. The Monte Carlo brand is actively protected by the state and is managed by a specially created public company, Monaco Brands.
Strzhalkovsky Jr.’s love for costumes and armor is expressed not only in fencing, but also in cinema. Evgeny is one of the producers of the Russian fantasy series “Eterna”. This is a screen adaptation of the book “Reflections of Eterna” by the writer Vera Kamsha, which is scheduled for release in July 2025. The filming of “Eterna” brought together a stellar cast , which includes Anton Rogachev (“Heavenly Command”, “Abnormal”, “End of the World”), Viktor Verzhbitsky (“12”, “Night Watch”, “Turkish Gambit”), Viktor Dobronravov (“Soldier”, “Eugene Onegin”, “World Champion”) and many others. One of the producers of the film is Mikhail Kitaev , a partner of Artem Gabrelyanov, the son of propagandist Aram Gabrelyanov. Kitaev and Gabrelyanov Jr. are co-founders of the Bubble studio, which released a series of films about Major Grom, who glorified the image of Soviet law enforcement officers – in a word, suitable partners for the son of a Chekist.
To be fair, the Strzhalkovskys do have noble roots, although not Russian ones. Their family belonged to the Polish gentry and was mentioned in the list of families of the “Highest Approved Armorial” of the Kingdom of Poland. Vladimir even sponsored the publication of the book “Strzhalkovsky Coat of Arms of Pulkozits. Ten Centuries of a Knightly Family”, which was written for him by Professor Oleg Naumov of the Moscow State Regional University.
But Vladimir’s passion for aristocratic titles goes beyond pride in his ancestors: like Patrushev, he sees himself among the aristocracy. In September 2005, the recent KGB officer received “hereditary nobility” from Maria Vladimirovna Romanova of the Hohenzollern-Romanov family. And in May 2009, he was elevated to the dignity of Knight of the Order of St. Anne, First Class. The order was presented to the former Chekist by Alexander Zakatov, the personal secretary of the imperial family and director of the chancery of the head of the Russian imperial house.
Past the sanctions
Neither Strzhalkovsky himself nor his family members were subject to sanctions, nor did they avoid the restrictions that apply to ordinary Russians. Former employee of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise of the Presidential Property Management Department Natalia became a citizen of Cyprus and continues to own hotels in Italy and Greece. Svrshchik Evgeny became a citizen of Monaco and retained his alcohol assets in Austria, Italy, Monaco, France and the Czech Republic.
The only exception to the sanctions regime is Ukraine’s sanctions against Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, but they do not prevent him from living a luxurious life in Europe. For example, he sold his superyacht Ragnar without any complications. At one time, the 68-meter vessel, capable of passing through ice, had a cozy interior in the style of a British pub, water sports equipment, an amphibious quad bike, heli-skiing equipment and a giant slide. In July 2023, Strzhalkovsky sold the yacht to billionaire Roy E. Carroll for an estimated price of 69.5 million euros . Carroll named it Q and planned to use it as a support vessel for his main superyacht.
The Strzhalkovskys’ European assets are not only a matter of money laundering suspicions, but also a matter of security. The Insider has written many times about how Russian intelligence agencies use commercial structures abroad for their own purposes. GRU agent Bulat Yanborisov created a sports rally in the interests of Russian intelligence (after The Insider’s publication, he was sanctioned). GRU agent Viktor Labin, having settled in Brussels, used his companies to make deliveries for the Ministry of Defense (and was also sanctioned after the publication of an investigation about him).
There is no need to explain how the Russian special services can benefit from an active network of European hotels, connections in the circles of the European aristocracy, a ready-made infrastructure for money laundering and an experienced organizer of the escort business. But despite all sorts of “red flags”, the family of Russian spies feels extremely comfortable in Europe.
The Insider thanks the RuPEP website , whose data was used in the investigation.
