The prisoners ended up in PMCs long before the war in Ukraine and mass recruitment in the colonies. Famous crime bosses from St. Petersburg Vladimir Borisov and Vitaly Kuzmin back in 2013 they established – in close cooperation with the GRU – private military company Longifolia.
The GRU probably needed Longifolia, to represent the interests of the intelligence service abroad — establish contacts with Western PMCs, including from NATO countries, and negotiate in the Middle East. However, in fact, the PMC did not exist: in the presentations it claimed that she was part of the same group of companies with the well-known PMC Moran Security Group And took credit for her many years of experience. However, real traces of activity “Longifolia” could not be foundand the head of Moran, Alexey Badikov, told Dossier that I’ve never heard of such a company. Nevertheless, she almost signed a contract with the famous German PMC Asgaard – they confirmed that they were negotiating with Longifolia on the opening of a branch of Asgaard in Russiabut the project was canceled suspecting a connection with the intelligence services.
Kuzmin and Borisov considered their gangster past a plus: in the Longifolia documents they openly wrote that connections in criminal circles help them “resolve disputes” where ordinary law enforcement agencies are unable to cope. True, now both of them are in prison again: Kuzmin is serving a sentence in a fraud case, Borisov is awaiting trial.
The Dossier Center was able to learn about the connection between Longifolia and the GRU from the documents of intelligence service Colonel Denis Smolyaninov. In 2014, the “authorities” from this PMC sent him a “list of tourists to the collective farm” – candidates to be sent to Donbass.
Read about how Longifolia was organized and what it did in the Dossier Center’s investigation.
https://dossier.center/longifolia/ (with VPN)
The story of a mysterious PMC created by bandits under the control of the GRU
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