Welcome to the Malofeev Multiverse

Prigozhin's patron. Donald Fredovich Trump. Vlasovites and Fox News. Orthodox Monarchism or Trojan Horse fifth columnism? Strelkov, Chubais, Akhmetov. Vanguard Group and the Franklin Templeton fund

I think I’m enjoying the show.

But I’ll be honest - I find it hard to write about the current news cycle. Not because it’s particularly repulsive, but because it’s somewhat hard to follow.

I don’t have the heart to think deeply about how serious Trump is when he says the things he says. Maybe he’ll bring peace to the warring Slavic tribes, though I’ve written here before about my skepticism. And if I’m proven wrong, I’ll be the first to self-criticize and praise Donald Fredovich (the slavs take the name of the father as the patronymic middle name).

But given the incoherence of the present, I prefer to look to the past for clues. Last week, I released an article on renowned restauranter and warlord ex-con Evgeny Prigozhin. We found that he had a number of links with transnational Ukro-Russian neo-nazis and spooks, thereby lending credence to the hypothesis that his June 2023 ‘March for Justice’ didn’t happen at the peak of Ukraine’s counter-offensive coincidentally.

I promised I’d look deeper, at the forces supporting Prigozhin inside Russia. Now it’s time to do that. It’s quite the sprawling affair. Hence, I’ve decided that instead of breaking up the maze of names, institutions, and connections into a series of articles, I’ll start off today with a more readable piece that outlines the logic of this world. Lighter on the names, today’s article will try to explain to the reader why exactly I am interested in this matter.

There are two main characters, so to speak - Konstantin Malofeev and Donald Trump. I know I just said I was tired writing about the latter, and in fact the series won’t be about him at all. But the network of American rightwing Fox News veterans that this series will describe is more than relevant enough to President Trump. He’s the figure lurking in the background, so to speak. Or rather, one assumes that many of the Americans I will describe in this series are lurking in Trump’s corridors.

But this series is most directly about Konstantin Malofeev. It is he who is the ultimate sponsor - at least inside Russia - of figures like Prigozhin and other Russian ultra-nationalists. Just like Prigozhin did, Malofeev positions himself as the most ultra-nationalist, the most extra-imperialist Russian patriot out there. And just like Prigozhin, there are reasons to believe that this is all part of a much deeper game.

Malofeev, the ‘Orthodox oligarch’

The strange constellation of mystical ultramonarchist, hitlerian Vlasovite, and nefarious anglosaxon figures that this series will describe all revolves around Malofeev. For the Russians, Malofeev is their employer, but for the Americans, Malofeev is a business partner, probably a relatively subordinate one.

Andrey Vlasov is in glasses. A Soviet Red Army general who was captured and defected to the Nazis in 1942, he led the Third Reich’s ‘Russian Liberation Army’ (ROA). Executed by the Soviets, Vlasov and Vlasovites became tightly integrated into cold war and post-cold war US-sponsored anti-communist networks. Radio Free Europe regularly writes articles defending Vlasov as an anti-communist freedom fighter democrat, which is also how he tried to portray himself. As we will see, both anti-Putin, pro-Ukraine Russian hitlerites and nominally pro-Putin ultranationalists are positive towards Vlasov.

Now let’s cut straight to the chase. The reason why this entire story is interesting relates to the ongoing talk of peace under a Trump administration. But what’s the Orange Man’s quid pro quo? The usual idea is that Trump wants to organize a sort of Kissinger triangle redux, except instead of allying with China against the Russians, with the Russians against China. I’ve written here about my skepticism on such a ‘global north’ alliance, as it was described by former Russian grey eminence Vladislav Surkov (whose competition with Malofeev we’ll also go into).

Surkogv, left, is credited and credits himself as having created the Russian political system in the 2000s. But from 2013 to 2020, his influence gradually waned.

But the Malofeev network certainly seems to hint at the formation of a Global North alliance. In bed from the start of his business career with a dark alliance of American private equity firms, Fox News commentators and anglosaxon Christian identitarians, Malofeev is uniquely positioned to accomplish his oft-stated goal of totally destroying all remnants of the Soviet project in Russia, both in socio-economic and geopolitical terms.

All this is why Russian Senator Oleg Matveichev, who I wrote about in the Prigozhin piece, constantly claims that Malofeev’s ultimate aim is to establish a ‘pro-western marionette monarchy’ in Russia. My Prigozhin article analyzed one such attempt to do so, and this series will analyze in detail the other (so-far) failed such operations, from Donbass 2014 to Nyasha Poklonskaya.

Now with Trump in power, surrounded by a thriving ecosystem of just such evangelical capitalists, what better time to dive deep into the Malofeev network.

In search of clues - back to 2014

How did I stumble into this world? For anyone acquainted with Malofeev and allies like Igor Strelkov or Alexander Borodai, it might seem absurd to accuse these professed ultra-nationalists of being fifth columnists.

Strelkov (centre) is a Russian ex-FSB agent and military adventurer who played a major role in the eruption of war in eastern Ukraine in 2014. He clamed to have worked for Malofeev in security while transporting Othodox artefacts. More on that in future installments.

I’d encountered allusions to the theory of Malofeev’s dark designs in strana.ua, the Ukrainian ‘pro-Russian’ (quite an exaggeration) media publication I often read. But strana, for whatever reason, doesn’t like to cite its sources. Imperialist search engines like google and bing were no help, and I wasn’t able to find the 2014 Russian articles strana invoked that supposedly accused Malofeev of working for the Americans. But with the help of Yandex, I did manage to find an entertaining article by Russian senator Oleg Matveichev titled:

WHO IS BEHIND NYASHA – restorers of the puppet pro-Western monarchy in Russia: Malofeev and the ANGLO-SAXONS

And from there, everything came together. You’ll find out about the perfidious Nyasha in future installments. For now, a face to job the memory:

From what I can tell, the main figure in the Russian elite with suspicions described by strana is this very Oleg Matveichev, the senator I wrote about in my Prigozhin article. As strana argued, the main strategy, plan A of the Russian elite had been to stick to the peaceful Crimean annexation and turn that into a positive model to increase pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine.

But Malofeev - through his long-standing employee Igor Strelkov, ‘Girkin’, who famously boasted of having ‘pulled the trigger of war’ in the Donbass in mid-2014 - managed to drag Russia into Ukraine’s Donbass. Russia was dragged into Ukraine, at this point at a covert military and financial level. Malofeev and the forces he represented seemed to have accomplished their goal of weakening Russia. The idea, strana hypothesizes, was for the Malofeev clique and whoever stood behind them to use this as an opportunity to come to power. And also to break Russia off from the EU economically, leaving the latter sutured to US capital.

the Minsk II agreements. Left to right: Belarussian president Lukashenko, Putin, Merkel, Hollande, and Ukraine’s president Poroshenko. 2015. Malofeev and Strelkov were fanatically opposed to the Minsk agreements, just like Ukrainian nationalists, as I wrote in my Minsk series.

Unfortunately, getting a truly destructive conflict rolling would take time. The Russian government officially wanted the separatist republics to reintegrate into Ukraine, to the chagrin of Malofeevites - and the broader population, given the undesirability of being a ‘grey’ parastate. The Russian government would only revoke this stance in February 2022, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements.

It was in shared opposition to the Minsk agreements that Malofeevite Russian nationalists and Ukrainian nationalists have always been united. They always preferred full-scale war and openly fantasized about nuclear apocalypse instead of much-dreaded multinational coexistence.

The way that strana and Matveichev see it, Malofeev represents a devious fifth column in the Russian elite who wish to transform the country into a pro-western monarchy under the cover of ultranationalist super-patriotism. But with the end result of a geopolitically docile white Saudi Arabia, if you will. Or maybe, more accurately, a white Pakistan.

Unable to challenge Putin directly - or whatever Kremlin tower ‘Putin’ represents -, their chosen political technology is Malofeev: mystical monarchist ultranationalism in theory, enswampment in debilitating wars in practice. Pulling Russia into wars it cannot win, with the end goal of humiliating Putin and making it possible to perform a coup d’etat with the right people, such as Prigozhin. Euromaidan with Russian characteristics, as one Donetsk analyst I will cite puts it.

Or perhaps just with the aim of pushing the country into a situation of ‘manageable’ anarchy, ripe for enterprising warlords. The favored analogy is the Time of Troubles in the early 17th century, when Polish mercenaries and allied local warlords took Moscow.

Ernst Lissner - Prince Pozharsky retakes the Kremlin from the Polish invaders, 1612

Alternatively, endless war could simply force the Russian government into agreement with western demands. I’m not saying that this is actually what’s happening, but this could have been what some may have hoped.

Quite an exciting theory, is it not? In future installments, we’ll get acquainted with a vast web of people in Russia, Ukraine and the USA, who, besides all the aforementioned, are united in their attempts to foment Christian-Muslim conflict/race war in Russia, push absurd theories on Tsar Nicholas II’s status as a martyr of the order of Jesus Christ, and rehabilitate fascist philosophers like Ivan Ilyin. For now, let’s stick to the main characters - those with money.

Russo-Ukrainian oligarch war

Russian senator Matveichev published a quite important intervention to his blog on Ukraine and Malofeev in March 2015, right after the final version of the Minsk agreements were signed. In it, he argues that the USA is the main winner in the Ukraine situation, with Russia the only actor interested in peace. As I mentioned, at this point in time Russia refused to recognize the pro-Russian separatist republics.

Matveichev titled his interview as ‘the mini-oligarchs in the service of the USA: The actions of Malofeev, Evtyuschenko and Yanukovych work in American favour’. According to him, systemic economic crisis in the USA is pushing it to foment war in Europe. The end goal is to push European capital to flee to a relatively more peaceful US. This, by the way, is also a reason often brought up by strana.ua as to why the post-2022 war in Ukraine has represented an overall victory for US interests.

Arguing that the Donbass is merely the ‘power keg’ used by US interests to economically destroy Europe and Russia, Matveichev goes on to castigate the main actors involved in the events of the 2014 ‘Russian spring’ in eastern Ukraine:

Interviewer – Last week, former Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) Igor Strelkov visited Yekaterinburg. His visit went relatively unnoticed, although perhaps six months ago his arrival would have drawn a full house. Nevertheless, the role of participants in the events of 2014 seems to be fading. Starting with Strelkov, all of them claimed to act in the interests of Russia in this situation. But is that really the case? It seems that the deepening of the conflict now serves the interests of America.

Matveichev – The appearance of Girkin (Strelkov) in Novorossiya was not our initiative. For three months, the Kremlin worked on trying to pull Strelkov and Borodai out of there to avoid giving grounds for accusations that "Russians and terrorists came there and started the war." But what was the point, when everything had already started? By then, the volunteers could no longer be stopped.

However, certain connections should be traced. Konstantin Malofeev (who previously stated his direct involvement in organizing aid for the militias) is a relative of Igor Shchyogolev (an aide to President Vladimir Putin since May 21, 2012, and formerly Russia's Minister of Communications). Further connections lead to the chief communications figure, Vladimir Yevtushenkov (co-owner of AFK Sistema, which transferred Bashneft to the state after its privatization was deemed illegal – editor’s note).

Yevtushenkov was jailed in 2017 after a series of lawsuits by Russia’s second-largest state-owned company, Rosneft

He is connected to the American mutual fund Vanguard Group. There are also other Americans – for example, Viktor Yanukovych [EIU - president of Ukraine until the euromaidan coup/revolution in 2014, he then fled to Russia] received help from the Franklin Templeton fund. Yanukovych himself is connected to Vladimir Yevtushenkov and is currently living with him. Konstantin Malofeev used to work for Boris Jordan, who is a friend of Anatoly Chubais, the architect of privatization. There are, in fact, many potential connections and links to American corporations.

Chubais is one of the most infamous and reviled ‘shock therapists’ of the 90s. But despite his status in Russia as a common target by everyone from rightwing patriots to communists, he continued working in the Russian government for decades later. He only left in 2022 in opposition to the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. There is probably no one in Russia who represents western liberalism as much as he does - one of many strange friends for Malofeev, the anti-western monarchist who views liberalism to be satanic

There are several layers of interests – the Americans and transnational corporations who want to start a war and may be pushing Russian players to work toward escalation. The second layer is Yanukovych, who wouldn’t want to lose his assets. The third layer includes our mini-oligarchs like Malofeev, who wouldn’t mind taking over assets, for example, from Rinat Akhmetov, amidst the general chaos. The fourth layer consists of people who genuinely want to help the brotherly people in the Donbass, like Strelkov. Naturally, none of them realize the objectives of those operating at higher levels.

Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man. I wrote about this Donbass billionaire’s own role in the 2014 conflict here

We’ve only begun

Future instalments will go into the names, networks, places and years. For now, I hope I’ve managed to convince the reader of the relevance of such an investigation. If you want to understand what’s in common between paranoia about Muslim migrants in Moscow and Orthodox debates on the heresy of declaring the last Tsar to be a martyr - as opposed to a passion bearer - make sure to become a paid subscriber. Here’s a preliminary plan of the coming deep dives:

Part I: Malofeev’s business origins in the 90s, his shady rightwing American private equity partners, what their grandparents were up to during WW2

Part II: Malofeev and the war in Ukraine, 2014-15. Strelkov and Borodai, Malofeev vs Surkov. The Plan

Part III: Was Tsar Nicholas II a Martyr or a Passion Bearer? Natalia ‘Nyasha’ Poklonskaya as a deep Malofeevite operation. Orthodox Christian terrorism against heretical movies. Ortho-Monarchism morphs into Satanism. Theological debates. Navalny

Part IV: Ivan Ilyin and the war with Muslim migrants. The ten commandments of the Christian terrorist. Chaoticizing society. Uganda and Russia. Dugin. Malofeev’s Z-telegram media empire and Russian war-dooming. Kursk