Until the end of last year, LTG Cargo, the freight subsidiary of Lithuania’s state-owned railway group Lietuvos Geležinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG), had a contract with the business of the Russian Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov’s spouse.
Elena Milskaya’s business cargo, including cement, ceramics, and petroleum products, was transported via Lithuania to Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad. The collected data shows that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuanian Railways received 11.5 million euros for services provided to the Kaliningrad company Balt-Magistral.
Representatives of Lithuanian Railways claim that the contract with the Kaliningrad company was terminated on December 31, 2022, but the cargo was only transported until mid-June last year. However, data collected by LRT and its partner Proekt Media show that transactions continued to take place until the end of July.
Lithuanian Railways may have been unaware of Milskaya’s close ties with the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The fact that she is the spouse of Kurenkov was only revealed by Proekt Media in August of this year. The Russian emergency situations minister was added to the EU sanctions lists in December last year.
Ukrainian child abductor
Milskaya, 42, has long been known in Russia as the head of several non-profit organisations.
In 2018, she was pictured shaking hands with Vladimir Putin at his fourth presidential inauguration. In the same year, she attended a meeting of the Russian delegation with the former pro-Russian Moldovan President Igor Dodon. In 2021, she also met Chechen leader and Putin’s protégé Ramzan Kadyrov.
Milskaya is president of the St Michael the Archangel Foundation in Russia. She is also head of the St Basil the Great Foundation, which was sanctioned by Ukraine in 2018 for “helping” critically ill children in Crimea.
The woman also heads the National Centre for Assistance to Missing and Injured Children, which transported children from Crimea’s Simferopol to Moscow. This centre was also involved in the “evacuation” operation of Ukrainian children last October when they were transported from the Kherson region to the occupied Crimea and Russia’s Krasnodar.
Minister’s secret wife
Kurenkov was appointed emergency situations minister by Putin at the end of May last year after Russia had launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Commenting on the appointment, Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin knows Kurenkov “very well personally”.
He is a former Putin’s bodyguard. He also worked for Russia’s security agency (FSB) until 2002 and later for the Federal Protective Service, responsible for the security of the country’s most powerful people.
The EU added Kurenkov to its sanctions list in mid-December 2022. He is also sanctioned by Ukraine, Australia, Switzerland, the US, and New Zealand.
He is known as “the man without a face” because very little is known about him. His marriage to Milskaya has also been kept secret until recently.
However, Proekt Media journalists have found a document which proves the fact of the marriage between Kurenkov and Milskaya. This information was also confirmed by a source who worked in one of the Russian state-owned companies.
The data gathered suggests that the marriage, which took place in 2019, has opened significant material and political prospects for Milskaya. Before the wedding, the woman, who had no business before, started to succeed in obtaining lucrative deals.
In 2018, she became the owner of a plot of land in Rublyovka, a wealthy neighbourhood in a Moscow suburb. Here, a house of almost 1000 square metres was built in two years, which, according to Proekt Media, could be worth up to 600 million roubles (almost 6 million euros).
The couple also boasts a luxury car park, worth 764,000 euros and featuring luxury Lexus, Mercedes Benz, Bentley, and Porche cars.
Milskaya is associated with three companies operating in Kaliningrad: PozitivInfo, Kaliningrad Baltrans, and Balt-Magistral. She was a co-owner of the companies until spring 2021 when she transferred the shares to her mother, who shares the same name and surname.
PozitivInfo was involved in a project initiated by Putin in 2018 to build cultural, educational, and museum complexes in Vladivostok, Kaliningrad, Sevastopol, and Kemerovo.
Freight via Lithuania
Balt-Magistral, which is linked to Milskaya, reportedly entered a contract with LTG Cargo as early as 2019. This contract was still valid after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Data shared with LRT by Proekt Media show that Balt-Magistral’s payments to LTG Cargo took place until July 19, 2022.
Lithuanian Railways replied in writing that the Russian company’s cargo was in reality transported until mid-June 2022. During the first half of that year, 110,000 tonnes of cement, chemical products, ceramics, and petroleum were transported.
“The vast majority of the cargo was in transit between the Russian Federation and the Kaliningrad region. A small part (about 22,000 tonnes) of cargo was transported via Kaliningrad to Poland before the start of the Russian war in Ukraine. The contract with the company expired on December 31, 2022, but the services were actually discontinued as early as June last year,” Lithuanian Railways said.
“LTG Cargo has and will continue to take a principled stance by continuing to work consistently with the authorities responsible for sanctions control to prevent any attempts to circumvent the restrictions, and by reacting to any possible attempts to circumvent the international sanctions,” it added.
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