The VS Energy company, associated with the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, one of the leaders of the Just Russia – For Truth party, Alexander Babakov, who supports the Russian war in Ukraine, finances the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This is reported by the Scanner project in a joint investigation with the authors of the Ukrainian program “Schemes” (“Radio Liberty”).
The “Babakov group” that journalists talk about includes his business partners: the president of FC CSKA Evgeny Giner, who owns the Technopromexport company together with Rostec, and Mikhail Voevodin, a native of Ryazan, better known as “criminal authority Misha Luzhnetsky”. According to Radio Liberty sources , the latter is now wanted by Interpol.
The journalists found out that Babakov and his comrades privatized a significant part of the Ukrainian thermal power plants long ago, and after 2014 hid the fact of their control over the nominal values. In the hands of the "Babakov group" were regional energy companies in Kyiv, Odessa, Kherson, Sevastopol, Rivne, Kropyvnytskyi, Chernivtsi and Zhytomyr. Now there are companies in five regions, all of them operate under the banner of the Latvian company VS Energy. At the same time, the company condemns the war and finances the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After the start of the war in Ukraine, VS Energy began to claim that Giner ceased to be its shareholder back in 2014. But among the shareholders of the Latvian VS Energy there are still three citizens of Latvia and two citizens of Germany. Investigators claim that the company is personally owned by Yevgeny Giner's wife and people who worked for Babakov, as well as for his partners Voevodin and Giner.
Babakov himself supports the war in Ukraine and speaks in the State Duma with a badge in the form of the Z symbol from the St. George ribbon on his jacket.
In addition, in 2014 he supported the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.
Babakov was added to the sanctions list of Ukraine in 2018. In May of this year, the State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine announced the start of a pre-trial investigation into activities against the Babakov group.