United Russia gets people’s last dime: sponsors linked to the Rotenbergs and Russian Railways donate more than they earn, and one was deemed a sponsor of the Kyrgyz mafia...

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United Russia gets people’s last dime: sponsors linked to the Rotenbergs and Russian Railways donate more than they earn. One of them was deemed a sponsor of the Kyrgyz mafia

Having received the No. 1 spot on the ballot, United Russia immediately also became No. 1 in filling its coffers ahead of the elections: in just a few days its election fund reached the maximum level of 700 million rubles (for comparison, Yabloko currently has 5.6 thousand rubles). The investigative project MO Explainer studied the party’s financial reporting and found unusual altruism among its benefactors.

✅ Some major sponsors donated sums exceeding their annual profit. Belgorod-based LLC NPP Stalenergo (part of the orbit of Arkady Rotenberg and Alexey Krapivin) transferred 43.3 million rubles to the party last year, even though its net profit for the year was only 38.35 million. In other words, the plant gave politics 113% of its earnings, subsidizing the contribution from working capital or reserves.

✅ VELNA, a company linked to Capital Group head Pavel Tyo, donated the same 43.3 million rubles. The net profit of this firm, which has a staff of just 2 people, amounted to 601 thousand rubles for the year. Thus, the micro-company gave the party 72 times more than it earned itself.

✅ A year earlier, Pavel Tyo became embroiled in a criminal scandal: Kyrgyzstan declared him wanted and arrested him in absentia on suspicion of sponsoring a major local organized crime group. The suspicions were later dropped. His wife, KM20 concept store owner Olga Karput (pictured), remains a fixture in the front rows at Paris fashion weeks. On social media, she harshly criticized Paris City Hall over traffic jams, calling the previous mayor a “complete idiot.”

✅ The financial foundation of United Russia is a pool of contractors of Russian Railways (RZD): in 2025 it provided more than 56% of all private donations to the party (3.2 billion rubles). Direct financing from state companies is prohibited by law, so the money is funneled through their private partners. But businesses are not giving away their profits: these millions are built into the price of state contracts in advance and are effectively paid out of the budget, says Vadim Ternovoy, an expert with the project Party Gold.

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