In 2022, 310 natives of the RSFSR or Russia received citizenship of Kyrgyzstan (there were only 24 such people a year earlier). Among them, the Chronicles project, which specializes in anti-corruption investigations in the Northwestern Federal District, found a wife and 33-year-old son of a State Duma deputy from United Russia Yury Petrov , who previously headed the Federal Property Management Agency and was on the board of directors of Rosneft.
Kirill Kaem, senior vice president for innovation at the Skolkovo Foundation, Vladimir Revenkov, son-in-law of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg Igor Metelsky, and Roman Moiseev, a former municipal deputy from the village of Shushary in St. "United Russia".
Among the newly minted citizens of Kyrgyzstan there were also businessmen, for example, two co-owners of the TecForce IT company Vladimir Makarov and Stanislav Sokolov. On the company's website, among its clients are the Ministry of Defense, Roscosmos, Sberbank, Gazprom. The firm also has FSB licenses to work with information constituting a state secret.
Back in March, The Moscow Times wrote that the Kyrgyz passport was also received by a person whose passport details match those of the former governor of the Tver region Dmitry Zelenin, and the full namesakes of Natalia Barshchevskaya, the daughter of Mikhail Barshchevsky, the plenipotentiary representative of the Russian government in the highest judicial instances, and the sons of the owner " Fragrant world "Valery Zadorin – Alexander and Mikhail.
Co-founder of Bitzlato crypto exchange Anton Shkurenko, who was detained in Moscow in February at the request of the French authorities, became a Kyrgyzstani. He is suspected of extortion, data theft and money laundering. Mikhail Zhukhovitsky, a former Moscow financier, also received citizenship of Kyrgyzstan along with his family.
In November last year, Zhukhovitsky wrote on Facebook that he had left Russia, and also said that in 2020 they tried to open a criminal case against him for criticizing the “governor of Crimea”.
“I don’t want to play liberal and fighter against the regime at all. Just because I'm not like that. I am a quiet opportunist, I like to live comfortably. <…> The world and political regimes will always change. Today is good in one place, tomorrow in another. Wasting your life trying to improve something now, in a particular country – why?<…>
I'm in a tiny country where I've been visiting for banking for many years. A dozen of my comrades from the Russian Federation flew to me. These are cheerful morons who were doing well in Russia. They sat on their asses evenly and did not make passports of other countries. Here I corrected this situation for them, now they will have a second passport. Thank you for the connections."
For Russians in Kyrgyzstan, there is a simplified system for obtaining citizenship in accordance with an agreement signed between Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.