Army without Putin: as the president’s restaurateur lost the contracts of the Ministry of Defense

Businessman Evgeny Prigozhin received multibillion -dollar military contracts for years, but everything suddenly changed

Photo: Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

The structures of businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin last year lost most of the orders of the Ministry of Defense, The Bell found out, analyzing the procurement of the department. Six of the nine large contractors who were associated with the businessman are liquidated or in the liquidation stage.

• To understand the scale of losses, it is enough to know that since 2010 Prigozhin was considered the main suppliers of cleaning services and food to the army. As a St. Petersburg restaurateur, who is called the personal cook of Vladimir Putin, managed to achieve this here .
• Back in 2015, Prigozhin companies received almost 30 billion rubles from the Ministry of Defense, last year - 1 billion rubles were not gained. And the former favorite contractors of the ministry are now fighting with him in the courts (in detailhere ).
• What happened is unclear, but the soldiers now wash the barracks themselves. According to Fontanka, Prigozhin’s conflict from the Ministry of Defense could be associated with Wagner's PMC, whose fighters fought in eastern Ukraine, and now in Syria. Prigozhin is also considered a PMC sponsor.
• Now he is looking for sources of income in Syria-we recently wrote that one of the structures of Prigozhin signed binding agreements on the work in the oil and gas sector in Syria shortly before the PMC attack on the American base in Deir-EZ-Zor. The attack ended for PMC with large human losses.

What am I to me?

The little that manages to learn about the business of Evgeny Prigozhin gives us an idea of ​​how much business with the state is tied to geopolitics in Russia, and it is on business. Keep this in mind if you decide to compete for a large state contract.

Signals

Putin's nuclear speech: reactions and evaluation

At night in Moscow, Vladimir Putin commented on his speech in an interview with NBC and assured that we were not talking about a new Cold War - but this, of course, did not convince experts and American media. The US authorities responded harshly to the speech, the Pentagon announced its "complete readiness." Military experts, meanwhile, appreciated which part of the weapon, which Putin spoke of, could be really deployed in the near future.

How the United States reacted

• A representative of the White House said that Russia has been developing “destabilizing weapons complexes” for decades in violation of international treaties. She called the defense capacity of the United States unsurpassed and recalled that the country is now modernizing its own nuclear arsenal.
• In the Pentagon, the questions of journalists about Russian weapons answered that the United States is “completely ready”, the American missile defense system is not a threat to Russia, but a restraint tool, and Putin’s statements will not change the US nuclear policy.
• The State Department accused Russia of violating the contract on small and medium -range missiles (RSMD) and called the showing of animation with the bombing of Florida (by the way, here is the analysis of why it is she - although we know that this is just the old graph of the Channel One). The Russian Ambassador to the United States has already answered accusations of violation of the contract.

What was clear about the new weapon

• All projects listed by Putin have already been included in the state program for 2018-2027, Kommersant learned .
• The closest to the real deployment - the Sarmat missile system, the Avangard warhead and the Dagger Aviation hypersonic missile, follows from the analysis of Kommersant and Vedomosti .
• The status-6 underwater drone will not be put into service soon, and in the real existence of cruise missiles with a nuclear engine, both Russian and American military experts doubt.

MONEY

The latter was detained

The German police detained Andrei Kovalchuk, the alleged organizer of the supply of cocaine from Argentina. This was told by his lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov. While the German authorities will resolve the issue of issuance, the case will grow all with new details, and all of them are clearly not at Kovalchuk's hands. From the testimony of the already detained employee of the embassy, ​​Ali Abyanov follows that he several times since 2012, at the request of Kovalchuk, to send his suitcases packed as diplomatic mail. For each suitcase, he received, according to him, $ 1 thousand, and he himself thought that inside - wine, coffee or semiprecious stones.

New gas war

The decision of the Stockholm arbitration in the long dispute of Gazprom with Naftogaz under a transit contract on the supply of Russian gas through Ukraine was supposed to put an end to these proceedings. But it wasn’t there: Gazprom did not agree with the decision and promises to defend his position by any legal ways, and to begin with the concern refused , as agreed, to start gas supply to Ukraine in March and returned Naftogaz money.

PRACTICE

China against VPN

The war with the VPN in a rigidly regulated Chinese Internet began for a long time - Apple deleted all such services from the AppStore in the summer. However, from March 31, local authorities will be able to prohibit or simply “disconnect” any company providing any VPN services-thousands of specialists are hired for this. In 2015, the censors simultaneously blocked all the servers of the famous Golden Frog VPN provider. Now such attacks have become more frequent and occur several times a month. But on the other hand, they also do not sit idle - the sale of surviving paid VPN over the past six months has grown by “hundreds of percent”, and the remaining providers are even ready to unite so that ordinary Chinese have access to Facebook and YouTube. Bloomberg tells what opponents have.

Uber will lead to a doctor

In the near future, the new Uber service will work in the United States - Uber Health, designed to book traveling to private clinics and medical centers for patients who need help with transportation. The clinic (she also pays for the trip) can cause transport immediately, in a few hours or even a few weeks before the trip. It is not necessary to have an account in Uber for the use of the service to the patient - he will be warned by SMS. The company claims that the service will be cheaper and more reliable than any other method of medical transportation. This market itself in the United States is estimated at $ 3 billion.

Peter Mironenko