Know your russian oligarch - Yuri Kovalchuk.
The 71yr old corrupt russian billionaire, one of the most influential voices supporting Putin in his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
So who is Kovalchuk?
Kovalchuk could probably be called Number 2 in today's Russia. While self-isolating from COVID-19 in 2020, Putin spent much time with Kovalchuk, and they share the view that the only important factor is to restore Russian greatness. According to some experts, Kovalchuk played a role in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in 2022.
In December 2022, the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article on Kovalchuk, describing him as “one of the most influential voices bolstering Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine belongs to a 71-year-old billionaire who argued that a war could prove Russia’s strength.
Yuri Kovalchuk, for decades a close friend of the Russian leader, shares Mr. Putin’s vision of Russia as a powerful military and cultural counterpoint to the U.S., people who know him say. The billionaire and Mr. Putin have met frequently since the start of the war in February, and also
Since the early 1990s, Kovalchuk has owned a dacha in Solovyovka in the Priozersky District of the Leningrad region, located on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye lake on the Karelian Isthmus near Saint Petersburg. His neighbours there are Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Yakunin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Viktor Myachin, Vladimir Smirnov and Nikolay Shamalov. Together they instituted the co-operative society Ozero (the Lake) which united their properties on 10 November 1996.
A report on Telegram on 22 April, 2025 - divulges some recent activity of Yuri Kovalchuk. This thread is a deep dive into the oligarch, his role in Putin’s regime and the links between him and indicted war criminal Vladimir Putin. The report reads as follows (translated from Russian):
Putin's "personal cashier" and billionaire Yuri Kovalchuk may buy Ozon and Wildberries, the country's two largest marketplaces
According to media reports, the structures of the businessman, whom the US Treasury Department called the Russian president’s “personal cashier,” have already bought 27.7% of Ozon shares for 38.2 billion rubles; he is also considering buying a stake in Wildberries amid the ongoing corporate conflict in the company.
Open sanctions.org characterises the oligarch: “Kovalchuk is a long-time acquaintance of President Putin. He is a co-founder of the so-called Ozero Dacha, a cooperative society bringing together an influential group of individuals around President Putin. He is benefiting from his links with Russian decision-makers. He is the chairman and largest shareholder of Bank Russia, of which he owned around 38% in 2013, and which is considered the personal bank of senior officials of the Russian Federation”.
Since the illegal annexation of Crimea, Bank Rossiya has opened branches across Crimea and Sevastopol, thereby consolidating their integration into the Russian Federation. Through Bank Russia, Mr Kovalchuk also took control of Crimean wineries, vineyards and distilleries. Furthermore, Bank Russia has important stakes in the National Media Group, which in turn controls television stations which actively support the Russian government's policies of destabilization of Ukraine.
In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Yuri Kovalchuk the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree, for his great contribution to the implementation of socially significant projects in the Republic of Crimea.
The Panama Papers leak revealed that Kovalchuk had transferred at least $1 billion to an offshore entity.
Forbes also ran an article on him that provides some useful context:
Kovalchuk and Putin became close in St. Petersburg during the 1990s, when Kovalchuk’s Rossiya Bank supported Putin’s political rise. Then, as now, Kovalchuk operated behind the scenes.
David Lingelbach, a professor at the University of Baltimore, worked in Russia during the 1990s in banking and venture capital. On several occasions, Lingelbach met with Putin in his capacity as first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg to facilitate investments from foreign investors. “I met most of the other people that Putin brought into his inner circle — Igor Sechin, Dimitri Medvedev, Alexey Miller — but I never once saw or had any awareness of Kovalchuk,” Lingelbach says. “In hindsight, Putin was leading a second sort of private economic life, which he was developing with Kovalchuk.”
Once Putin was elected president in 2000, Kovalchuk used Rossiya Bank to build his media empire, powered by Putin’s relentless drive to kill negative press. In 2000, Putin arrested media baron Vladimir Gusinsky on charges of fraud and forced him to sell his media properties, including his crown jewel REN-TV, to state-owned Gazprom. (Gusinsky, who denied all charges, has since disappeared from public view; the European Court of Human Rights declared in 2004 that accusations against Gusinsky were politically motivated.)
Putin then arranged for Gazprom to sell those media assets, as well as its insurance business Sogaz and other financial assets, to Rossiya Bank at a bargain price.
These transactions were part of a larger transfer of wealth taking place during the 2000s, from oligarchs and the Russian state into the pockets of Putin and his cronies. Over $60 billion worth of state-owned assets were funnelled through Gazprom to Kovalchuk’s Rossiya Bank and entities owned by other Putin allies, the Rotenberg brothers and Gennady Timchenko, between 2004 and the end of 2007, according to a 2008 investigation by Russian opposition figures Vladimir Milov and Boris Nemtsov. (Nemtsov was shot to death on a Moscow bridge in 2015.)
Putin’s general in the disinformation war is Yuri Kovalchuk, the 70-year-old oligarch described by the U.S. government as Putin’s “close advisor” and “personal banker” in 2014 U.S. sanctions against him.
The two men have been “almost inseparable” in the last couple of years, according to one Kremlin watcher. Kovalchuk, through his holding company National Media Group, has a grip on what news Russians see and hear. He owns stakes in Channel One and several of Russia’s most influential TV channels. In December 2022, his company acquired a piece of VK, Russia’s largest social media company.
Kovalchuk and Putin are tight. They previously owned homes in the same exclusive Ozero dacha cooperative and Kovalchuk hosted the wedding of Putin’s daughter in 2013, according to the Panama Papers. In the last two years, Kovalchuk has “established himself as the de facto second man in Russia, the most influential among the president’s entourage,” according to Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, author of a book on Putin’s inner circle.
“When people say Russian state television, they really mean Kovalchuk television,” says Anders Åslund, an expert on Russia’s oligarchy. “Putin doesn’t trust the state sufficiently. He wants his closest man to control television.”
Kovalchuk, who Forbes estimates is worth $1.3 billion, created National Media Group in 2008 in partnership with another oligarch, Alexei Mordashov. Alina Kabaeva, widely considered Putin’s girlfriend, is the company’s chair. In addition to Channel One, National Media Group controls popular Russian television channels 5TV, REN-TV (formerly an opposition network to Putin) and entertainment channel CTC, as well as stakes in newspapers, digital media and content studios.
The National Media Group is “one of the two biggest players in the Russian media market” along with state-owned VGTRK.
Since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, media coverage on Russian TV networks have echoed themes in Putin’s speeches. This week, pundits and anchors have pushed conspiracy theories about Ukraine developing biological weapons with U.S. support. Ukraine and the Biden administration have denied those charges.
Kovalchuk is “known for his anti-liberal and anti-Western views” and his “conspiracy” thinking, says Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center and founder of newsite R.Politik. “People like Kovalchuk understand Putin’s priorities and goals,” she said. “They can feel it, and try to adapt media policy to such needs.”
Kovalchuk's son Boris is a former CEO of InterRAO, a large state-owned energy company in Russia. Now he is a chairman of the Accounts Chamber of Russia.
In December 2021, Kovalchuk’s National Media Group acquired a controlling stake in Russian social media giant VK from oligarch Alisher Usmanov. Following the ownership change, VK fired much of its existing management and promoted Kovalchuk relatives, according to independent Russian news site The Bell. Today, VK is being used by the Kremlin to recruit mercenaries for Russia’s war on Ukraine, the BBC reported.
“VK is playing an enormously influential role in keeping the population under control, spreading the narratives that are favorable to the Kremlin and punishing those who use the social network for spreading alternative views,” says Yablokov, the journalism professor. “VK is now as open as it could be to Russian domestic intelligence services.”
Other information:
The Intelligence Gazette has reported in the Kovalchuk clan infighting in the Kremlin too 👇
Please use the links below for source reports, for more reading and great reporting.👇
References and sources:
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/pages/jl23331.aspx
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/opinion/putin-russia-ukraine.html
https://thebell.io/en/kremlin-push-to-increase-control-over-the-internet/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60711211
https://www.putin-itogi.ru/putin-what-10-years-of-putin-have-brought/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Kovalchuk
https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/Q4225547/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-far-do-putins-imperial-ambitions-go-11656085978?mod=article_inline
Kovalchuk is obviously putin's enabler in chief, idealogically aligned and ultra loyal to the demagogic dictator and handsomely rewarded for his fealty. He's at the very top of the oligarchy hierarchy!