Private military company created by Kremlin-installed Crimea governor reportedly gets funding from VTB Bank and billionaire Arkady Rotenberg

Convoy, the private military company created by the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, is financed in part by Russia’s VTB Bank and by a company owned by businessman Arkady Rotenberg, according to a new investigation from Dossier Center. The mercenary group reportedly has received more than 300 million rubles (or more than $5 million) from these sources.

Journalists from Dossier Center used banking records to determine that in October 2022, a company called Sanatorium Ai-Petri, which is owned by longtime Putin associate Arkady Rotenberg, donated 120 million rubles ($1.9 million) to Convoy. Around the same time, the private military company received a donation of about 200 million rubles ($3.2 million) from the majority state-owned bank VTB Bank’s charity foundation.

According to Dossier Center, donations to the mercenary group go through a St. Petersburg organization of the same name, which purchases military equipment as well as donating a portion of the funds to an LLC called Convoy Military Security Company. The LLC then sends the money in the form of “loans” to one Konstantin Pikalov, who runs the private military company. Pikalov reportedly receives about 60 million rubles ($590,000) of these “loans” per month.

Konstantin Pikalov has close links to Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin; the independent outlet iStories has referred to him as Prigozhin’s “right-hand man.”