Thread by @khodorkovsky_en

A messy divorce, a hostile business takeover and a deadly public shootout in the very heart of Moscow.

Here’s how “Russia’s Amazon” may have cost Chechen warlord Kadyrov everything

Wildberries is Russia’s largest online retailer, founded in 2004 by Tatyana Bakalchuk, with help from her husband, IT technician Vladislav. It fast became a billion-dollar business, and during Covid it exploded, valued at $6bn in 2020

Wildberries has drawn comparisons with Amazon, and they aren’t completely unfounded. The company has expanded its business over the years, buying a bank in 2021 and even becoming the kit manufacturer for top Russian football clubs bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Everything changed this summer, when the company announced a planned merger with Russ Group, an advertising company owned by two brothers, Levan and Robert Mirzoyan, with ties to billionaire Suleiman Kerimov

Vladislav Bakalchuk – who formally owned just 1% of Wildberries – called the merger a ‘hostile takeover’. He and his wife filed for divorce in July, and Vladislav sought support in, let’s say, ‘redistributing’ the company more ‘equitably’

Oftentimes, when marriages collapse, spouses will seek comfort among their closest friends. Vladislav Bakalchuk instead went to Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, who vowed to help him ‘reunify his family’ and ‘protect his business’

But Tatyana, too, had sought support – and Kerimov had been able to secure approval for the merger from Putin himself. In Putin’s Russia, his word is law, meaning that, on the face of it, Tatyana had won the dispute with her ex

But Ramzan Kadyrov is nothing if not a man of his word, when it suits him. He vowed his support, so, on September 18, Vladislav Bakalchuk appeared at Wildberries’ Moscow HQ together with several armed unknown individuals
meduza.io/en/feature/202…

What followed was the very definition of a hostile takeover attempt. When the dust settled, two Wildberries security guards lay dead and Vladislav Bakalchuk was under arrest for murder

What does this mean for Kadyrov? Well, he clearly overplayed his hand. He tried to intervene in a deal that had been given the green light by Putin himself, and in doing so, very publicly went against the boss’s wishes – with fatal consequences

Kadyrov has always occupied his seat at the table out of necessity. Putin knew he needed Kadyrov because nobody else would be able to keep Chechnya in line while remaining publicly loyal to Putin himself

But Kadyrov has a lot of powerful enemies. The FSB cannot stand him, because he has a habit of undermining them and even directly challenging what they feel is their unquestionable authority in Russia

Now that he’s acted so publicly against Putin – and with question marks over both his health and his value to the regime – it is very difficult to imagine that he has any way of staying in the position he has carved out for himself

In any normal state, somebody like Kadyrov would have been hauled in front of a court years ago, and would now be sitting in a small, damp prison cell.

But Putin’s Russia is not run like a normal state. It is run like a mafia. All manner of crimes are forgivable — but acting against the boss is deadly

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