Team Navalny: General Surovikin ‘liberated’ profitable phosphate mines in Syria

Team Navalny has published a new investigation, about General Sergey Surovikin and his Syrian campaign, which involved securing Russia’s access to two profitable phosphate mining sites, al-Sharqiya and Khneifis. The investigators trace Surovikin’s “tips” for his military assistance in phosphate extraction to a business co-founded by his wife, Anna Surovikina.

General Sergey Surovikin (sometimes jokingly called “General Armageddon”) is first in command of the invading Russian forces in Ukraine. Earlier, he led the Russian military in Syria, where he was appointed head of command in the spring of 2017. In 2021, Surovikin was promoted to the rank of Army General, which made him the de facto highest-ranking officer in the Russian military, since no person currently has the rank of Marshal, the only army rank above Surovikin’s.

Surovikin’s wife, Anna Surovikina, is one of the co-founders of the lumber producer Argus SFK. Among her business partners at the time of Argus’s formation was Anastasia Misharina — the daughter of Alexander Misharin, then Deputy Transportation Minister and later the Sverdlovsk regional governor. In 2011, Leonid Volkov, one of Alexey Navalny’s closest associates, who was at the time a deputy in Ekaterinburg’s municipal Duma, accused Argus SFK of receiving illegal subsidies. Later, a court ordered Volkov to withdraw his statements.

Team Navalny reports that Argus SFK is still operating. Since no later than 2018, its profits have been negative, but in 2020–2021 it received a number of “loans” from another corporate entity, STG Logistika. The loans totaled 104 million rubles (up to $1.7 million, depending on the exchange rate at the time of those transactions), and have not been repaid to date. The lender, STG Logistika, happens to be a subsidiary of Stroytransgaz, a company that belongs to the billionaire and close friend of Vladimir Putin’s Gennady Timchenko.

In the summer of 2017, Stroytransgaz began extracting phosphates from two Syrian mining sites, al-Sharqiya and Khneifis. Surovikin personally reported to Putin on having liberated the two locations in October 2017. Team Navalny investigators think that Surovikin’s army may have taken part in securing the export of phosphates from Syria.

According to Alexey Navalny, Anna Surovikina’s Argus was nothing but a front for channelling “tips” for Surovikin’s military backing of Timchenko’s profitable mining operation.

• Sergey Surovikin is known as a proponent of indiscriminate massive shelling of the opponent’s infrastructure. He took command of the Russian forces in Ukraine on October 8, following the Crimean Bridge explosion. On October 10, the Russian army launched a campaign of massive missile strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

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