Just like Russian leader Putin, Redut, founded by Gennady Timchenko, a former KGB agent, has been collecting legionnaires for himself for a long time. They also recruited Wagner's former executives.
Who is Gennady Timchenko?
Gennady Nikolayevich Timchenko was born on November 9, 1952. He specialized in investing in energy, transport, and infrastructure assets and founded the private investment group Volga Group. It is known that he was one of the co-owners of Gunvor Group in previous times.
Gennady Nikolayevich Timchenko (born 9 November 1952) is a Russian oligarch and billionaire businessman. He founded and owns the private investment firm Volga Group. He was previously a co-owner of Gunvor Group.
As of April 15, 2021, Timchenko was ranked 96th on the Billionaires Index with an estimated net worth of $19.5 Billion, making him the 6th richest person in Russia. He is recognized as the Chairman of the Board of the Continental Hockey League and the President of the SKA Saint Petersburg ice hockey club.
In 2007, Timchenko established the Volga Group (Volga Resources Group) private investment fund. The Volga group manages its Russian and international assets in the energy, transport, infrastructure, financial services, and consumer sectors.
Timchenko is married to Elena and they have three children. As of March 2014, Timchenko lives in Moscow, Russia, while his family lives in Switzerland.
The debate is over who will replace the Wagner Group, a mercenary group led by Yevgeni Prigojin, who died in a dubious plane crash two months after rebelling against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
According to the news of the British Daily Telegraph, Redut is the closest group to take over both the mission and current assets of Wagner among many competitors. Today, Redut, which is largely under the control of Russian intelligence, was supported by oligarchs in good relations with the Kremlin and the army. Its founder is Gennady Timchenko, an ice hockey friend of President Vladimir Putin.
According to a former KGB agent speaking to the newspaper, Timchenko, the "godfather" of the Redut project, is himself a former intelligence officer just like Putin. According to Forbes, his fortune two years ago was $22 billion.
According to evidence presented to the British House of Commons last month, Redut was originally set up to protect Timchenko's factories. Initially, it was a very small team and sent two teams of 55 mercenaries, one of 55 and the other 65, to Syria to fight. However, this changed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the Russian military, which wanted to reduce its dependence on Wagner, supported the growth of some organizations such as Redut. At the end of last June, it was announced that Prigojin made peace with Putin after deporting his troops to Moscow, but Redut has since recruited prominent members of Wagner. Already their current leader, Anatoly Karazi, also comes from Wagner's intelligence department.
After the plane crash, it was claimed that Andrei Troshev, who was the top commander in Wagner, also moved to Redut.
“We were just going to the same judo club”
The founder of the organization, Timchenko, is a citizen of Russia, Armenia and Finland. Born in Gyumri, present-day Armenia, during the Soviet Union, Timchenko's father, 70, participated in World War II. He also speaks German, as he spent six years of his childhood with his father in East Germany. But he denies the allegations that he once worked for the KGB in East Germany with Putin. He says he met Putin during a terminal construction job in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s. And that they fought in the same judo club from time to time. At that time, Putin was deputy mayor.
His yacht was confiscated
Again in these years, Timchenko, who was thrown into international trade, got a job in a Finnish company that sold Russian oil to Europe and received Finnish citizenship. After rising to the CEO of this company, he partnered with a Swiss businessman and founded Gunvor, a global commodity sales business. However, in 2014, when Russia's first invasion of Crimea began, he transferred his shares to his partner the day before the U.S. decided to impose sanctions on some oligarchs, including himself. The infrastructure works company Volga Group, which he founded in 2007, is still in business. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the 38-meter superyacht Lena belonging to Timchenko was also seized as part of the sanctions imposed on the oligarchs.