Jurby Watertech, an engineering company founded in Kaunas in the wake of Lithuanian independence, wins public tenders in the country but its biggest clients are in Russia, where it works with firms under the Kremlin influence.
According to data collected by the LRT Investigation Team, the company’s founder is involved in the Russian Paratroopers’ Union under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Defence. This organisation publicly declared its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the wake of his invasion of Ukraine.
“The criminal actions of a handful of aggressive nationalists who profess open fascism against the Russian population, open Russophobia, which has long since become the official ideology and policy of the Kyiv junta, have prompted the President of the Russian Federation to take serious and urgent measures to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine and to put an end to the hostilities in Donbass,” the union said in a statement on February 28, four days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
A list of the members of the Supervisory Board, which oversees the fulfilment of the objectives of the organisation’s statutes is available on its website. Victor Redko is among 23 names on the list. He is a Russian citizen but has had a residence permit in Lithuania since 1995. This retired paratrooper captain is the president of Jurby Watertech International.
Redko founded Jurby Watertech in Lithuania 30 years ago after leaving the Soviet army. The company is still working with strategic firms in Lithuania but its largest customers are in Russia.
In August 2014, a few months after the annexation of Crimea, Jurby Watertech International made a public appeal to its customers and partners, announcing that the company was ready “to work in the Russian market amid the tightening external economic situation”.
On February 14, ten days before Russia attacked Ukraine, the company announced its latest project in Russia in cooperation with Razrez Berezovsky mining company, owned by the Siberian coal-mining group SUEK, which is co-owned by Russian oligarch Andrei Melnichenko.
Projects in Russia
According to data collected by LRT Investigation Team, since 2010, Jurby Watertech has won public tenders in Lithuania worth 2.97 million euros. Its clients include state-owned and regional energy companies Ignitis Gamyba, LITESKO, Toksika, Vilnius County Waste Management Centre, and others.
Jurby Watertech is not among the members of the Confederation of Industrialists, which unites the major Lithuanian manufacturers. However, the company is active in Russia and Kazakhstan.
In Russia, the company has been successfully winning government contracts to work with the state giants, such as Gazprom, Rosneft, Lukoil, Inter RAO, and Enel Russia. Among Jurby Watertech clients is Ural Steel, part of Metalloinvest, the metallurgical plant owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
Jurby Watertech also works on special-purpose sites in Russia. In September 2020, the company announced that it will continue its cooperation with the plant Zvezda, where it also worked in 2014. The plant, located in the Primorsk region, specialises in the repair of nuclear submarines.
According to the company's website, the Zvezda shipbuilding complex is a strategically important project for Russia. It is being carried out by a consortium of Rosneftegaz, Rosneft, and Gazprombank on behalf of the Russian president and government. Back in 2018, it was announced that Zvezda would receive orders from the Russian Ministry of Defence until 2029.
Just before Christmas last year, Jurby Watertech announced that it had won a project at the Omsk refinery owned by Gazprom Neft. The former, like many other companies under the influence of the Kremlin, is already on the West’s list of sanctioned companies due to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In 2020, it was also announced that work would continue at the Kaliningradskaya CHPP-2 plant, operated by Russian energy giant Inter RAO.
“This is one of the most modern power plants in Russia. The plant was designed and built to ensure the energy independence of the Kaliningrad region, with the prospect of entering the Lithuanian energy market,” Jurby Watertech International said in a statement.
According to an international relations and security analyst Marius Laurinavičius, the term “public procurement” in Russia is misleading.
“There is simply no such thing as public procurement […]. It is a completely different process, called by that name to mislead. Russia is about sharing between people close to the regime,” Laurinavičius said.
“The answer is quite obvious – if you do not belong to one of the parts of the regime, it is practically and theoretically impossible to win any tenders, especially the big ones,” he added.
Recognition
Data gathered by LRT Investigation Team shows that Jurby Watertech International is also linked to the Russian government through its own people.
Since 2004, the company’s Supervisory Board has been chaired by Vladimir Yelagin, former Governor of Orenburg and, during the Soviet era, First Secretary of the Russian Komsomol. From 2000 to 2002, he was the Russian Minister of State for the social and economic development of the Republic of Chechnya.
In 2015, Victor Redko, president and chairman of the company’s board, participated in the business conference “Russia-Iran. Cooperation in oil and gas production, refining, petrochemicals, and technology”. It was attended by the heads of the previously long-sanctioned Iranian Oil Ministry, major petrochemical companies, senior Russian energy officials, and influential businessmen.
In March 2015, Jurby Watertech International announced that it was forming a consortium with Russia’s Rusneftegaz, with the promise of jointly seeking new contracts in Iraq.
In the summer of 2014, a few months after the annexation of Crimea, the company announced its intensive expansion in Russia. In August of that year, it issued an appeal to customers and partners, stating that it had adopted a new investment programme to modernise and expand its production facilities in the Russian Federation in the context of the “tightening external economic situation”. It was announced that the production of chemical reagents and water treatment equipment will be carried out in Russia.
In 2013, Redko was also honoured by the Kremlin-backed Russian Paratroopers’ Union with the highest award of Public Recognition. The ceremony was attended by former Russian foreign intelligence chief and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.
According to the website of the Russian Paratroopers’ Union, Redko, president and CEO of Jurby Watertech International, member of the Supervisory Board of the Russian Paratroopers’ Union, and retired captain of the Airborne Forces, was honoured “for his active participation in the implementation of the objectives set out in the statutes of the Russian Paratroopers’ Union, taking care of the social protection of veterans, paratroopers, and the defenders of the homeland”.
The Jurby Watertech website states that the Public Recognition award is given to Russian and foreign citizens “for their special contribution to strengthening the defence capabilities of the Russian Federation and increasing the combat capability of the paratrooper forces”.
The Russian Paratroopers’ Union was founded in December 2002. The organisation has as its main objectives the promotion of the paratroopers’ fighting traditions and the mobilisation of veterans. Its website thanks Russian President Putin and the presidential administration for their support and names the Russian Defence Ministry as its patron.
The union is headed by a Central Council and has a Supervisory Board that monitors the organisation’s activities. It is stated that it is composed of “commanders of airborne and coastal forces, their deputies, and other persons”.
The Honorary Chairman of the Supervisory Board is Sergey Mironov, a former paratrooper and head of the Right Russia faction in the Russian Duma. On February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine, he declared that Putin “took the only possible decision to defend not only the people of Donbass but also Russia as a whole” because “otherwise, Russia could have been targeted by NATO”.
Among the members of the Supervisory Board of the Russian Paratrooper’s Union is the founder of Jurby Watertech.
As Redko told the publication Voinskoye Bratstvo (Military Brotherhood), he became a paratrooper in 1985, after graduating from the officers’ school in Russia’s Ulyanovsk. He served in the Caucasus and was later transferred to Kaunas, where he was promoted to the rank of captain.
“The mood in the new place was completely different. It was at that time that I firmly decided to leave [the army] because I saw no further prospects,” said Redko, who left the Soviet army in 1990. At that time, he started a business in Kaunas.
In the same interview, Redko said that his service in the paratroopers was very important to him and that his whole family celebrates Paratroopers’ Day every year.
Relations
In Lithuania, Jurby Watertech is located next to the former military airfield of Kaunas Aviation Factory. The company has 49 employees. It manufactures water treatment systems.
Several other companies related to Jurby Watertech through shareholders are also registered in Kaunas. One of them is Nowadays Technologies, which says it is an international start-up engaged in engineering solutions for new technologies.
In 2017, a firm called 14 Deltų (14 Deltas) was also founded and is led by Redko’s daughter Evgenya Redko, who is a well-known singer in Lithuania. She is the company’s only employee.
The singer was unable to explain the activities of her company. To the LRT Investigation Team, she said “no comments” and hung up the phone.
14 Deltas was established at a time when Jurby Watertech and Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba (Lithuanian Power Generation, now Ignitis Gamyba) were involved in legal disputes over the rectification of deficiencies and delays in the works. In 2017, Lithuanian Power Generation unsuccessfully sought in court to have Jurby Watertech’s assets seized.
A Lithuanian state-owned company sued Jurby Watetech for allegedly unfair practices. The company’s real estate activities were transferred to 14 Deltas after the company was founded. Lithuanian Power Generation argued at the time that this reduced Jurby Watertech’s financial capacity to comply with the court’s decision.
Representatives of Jurby Watertech did not want to meet the journalists or talk to them on the phone. Questions were sent to the company and its shareholder Victor Redko a week ago. No answers have been received yet.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
