The Kremlin's War Against Its Own Farmers

By March, the scale had become impossible to explain. More than 77,000 head of cattle had been destroyed in the Altai region alone. Kazakhstan banned imports of Russian meat. Belarus followed. And with that, a question arose — one that Russia's official channels refuse to ask: what is actually happening here?

The Disease That Cannot Be Named

The head of the Boganovsky rural council in Novosibirsk Oblast, Valentina Zinkova, was asked directly by a journalist whether the real problem was foot-and-mouth disease. Her answer was brief: "We know the situation exists, but this information is not for open discussion."

That was not a slip. That was a confession.

Independent epidemiologist Mikhail Faurov, farmers and lawyers in Novosibirsk Oblast, journalists from Novaya Gazeta Europe, and — most notably — the United States agricultural attaché service in Astana all point to the same conclusion. Under the cover of pasteurellosis and rabies, Russia is fighting a foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Sverdlovsk Oblast Governor Denis Pasler, speaking at a closed meeting with agricultural industry representatives, reportedly named foot-and-mouth directly — adding, inevitably, that it had been "introduced by saboteurs." Kommersant journalists, speaking with regional market participants, heard the same.

The logic of concealment is straightforward. If foot-and-mouth disease is confirmed, the World Organisation for Animal Health must be notified, the affected region — potentially the entire country — goes on the red list, and exports of all animal-origin products cease immediately. China purchased more than 18,000 tonnes of Russian beef in 2025 alone. Kazakhstan, before closing its border, was taking over 80,000 tonnes of Russian dairy products annually. Acknowledging foot-and-mouth would be a catastrophe for a sector Moscow has spent a decade marketing as a triumph of import substitution.

Confirmed FMD also requires years-long quarantine of all affected land. Every pasture, every surface touched by saliva or manure, every road where a truck drove through dust — sterilized and rendered unusable. Admission is politically impossible.

It is simpler to kill the animals, pay the farmers next to nothing, and call it a pasteurellosis response.

Miratorg Is a Red Herring. So Who Gains?

Russian social media rapidly found its villain: Miratorg. The theory is elegant — a major agro-holding engineered an epidemic to eliminate smaller competitors and absorb the market. The problem is elementary: Miratorg has no production facilities in Siberia. There is nothing there for it to absorb.

Miratorg does indeed belong to brothers Viktor and Alexander Linnik, with a combined fortune of around $1.3 billion. The company has long received state subsidies. It owes its breakthrough in the 2000s to Viktor Zubkov — former prime minister, longtime overseer of Russia's agricultural sector — who the Linnik brothers have publicly credited for their rise. Alexander Linnik's first wife worked in Moscow's customs administration until 2004, which presumably helped smooth the company's early business importing beef from Latin America.

The new restaurant Cavaleria on Ostozhenka — a joint venture between the Linniks, restaurateur Arkady Novikov (a member of the public council under Prime Minister Mishustin), and Svetlana Rudskaya, wife of Sergei Bondarchuk (a senior figure in United Russia) — opened in early 2026, when virtually every other Moscow restaurant was closing. This is not coincidence. It is a display of connections.

But Miratorg is not a beneficiary of what is happening in Siberia. It is a convenient target, and the flood of social media hatred directed at the company looks like a well-orchestrated competitor attack. The real interested parties are closer to where the slaughter is happening.

The Owners of Siberian Meat

Russia's largest meat producer by volume is the Cherkizovo Group — over one million tonnes per year. Founder Igor Babayev transferred the business to his heirs, Sergei and Evgeny Mikhailov, roughly a decade ago. The family has since entered the global billionaire rankings. In 2025, Cherkizovo acquired new assets in the Altai region — where, it bears repeating, more than 77,000 head of cattle were destroyed.

Shortly before the livestock scandal broke, a South Korean human rights organization, Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, documented the use of forced North Korean labor at a Cherkizovo processing facility.

The third player in the meat hierarchy is the Resource Group, owned by brothers Vladimir and Viktor Nauruzov — considered the most publicity-averse figures in Russian agribusiness. Vladimir graduated from the Military University of Foreign Languages under the Defense Ministry, historically a recruitment ground for military intelligence, and served in GRU special forces in Rostov. The group is focused almost entirely on trade with Africa — a market that, by one reading, reflects that institutional background.

The founding structure from which today's Resource Group emerged was co-established by Viktor Nauruzov alongside Ekaterina Ignatova — wife of Sergei Chemezov, head of the state corporation Rostec. The Nauruzov family lives in the elite Zhukovka estate outside Moscow, in close proximity to the Chemezov family. Their children drive cars with government registration plates in the 009 series. Vladimir Nauruzov's frequent traveling companion on trips to the UAE was Moscow notary Igor Zagrai, who in 2024 received eleven and a half years in prison for forging the wills of deceased people to seize their apartments.

The German with a Kremlin Godfather

The dairy sector tells its own story. First place belongs to EkoNiva, the group run by Stefan Dürr, a German-Russian entrepreneur who produces 1.3 million tonnes of milk per year under the Hohland Russia brand. Dürr has an unusual biographical detail: his godfather — in an adult baptism — is Alexei Gordeyev, currently Deputy Speaker of the State Duma. Gordeyev previously served as Minister of Agriculture, then Deputy Prime Minister, then Governor of Voronezh Oblast, where Dürr's core assets are located. In 2017, EkoNiva purchased the AK Agro holding — the second-largest grain producer in Ryazan Oblast — from Gordeyev's son Nikita, for a reported minimum of one billion rubles.

EkoNiva's Siberian enterprises are reportedly among those where the first signs of foot-and-mouth appeared. A milk processing plant under construction in Novosibirsk Oblast, intended for export to China, has ended up as collateral at Sovcombank. The parent structure of part of EkoNiva's assets has passed to an obscure Moscow company called Agronica, apparently connected to the same bank. EkoNiva has been refinancing from lender to lender for years — from Alfa-Bank (Fridman's structure) to Moscow Credit Bank, then to Rosselkhozbank, then onward. It is a business permanently teetering on the edge.

Second in dairy is the agro-complex of Aleksandr Tkachev, former governor of Krasnodar Krai and former Minister of Agriculture, now a dollar billionaire. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Tkachev's operation has seized more than 160,000 hectares of farmland in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts — according to the Wall Street Journal, through threats and coercion.

Third is Agrokomplektatsiya, owned by Sergei Novikov, who is connected to the Patrushev family — specifically to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev, son of the former FSB director and current presidential aide. In 2023, Novikov received from Patrushev Jr. the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland," First Class. A month earlier, he had gifted Patrushev a dacha.

Who Failed to Watch, and Why That's Convenient

Formal responsibility for veterinary oversight in Russia belongs to Rosselkhoznadzor. Its chief, Sergei Dankvert, has held the post since 2004. Over those two-plus decades he has assembled his own business portfolio — the Agropllemsoyuz enterprise, construction firms, hunting estates — along with his own connections to Gordeyev and his own history of open conflict with Lukashenko, which says something about his standing.

Dankvert has been enthusiastically supporting the mass culling. Which is understandable: if veterinary surveillance is his job and it has catastrophically failed, projecting decisive action is preferable to acknowledging failure.

But the Kremlin appears to have tired of his autonomy. The agricultural sector is now overseen by Dmitry Patrushev Jr. The Agriculture Ministry has since May 2024 been run by Oksana Lut — Patrushev's loyalist, who traveled with him from VTB through Rosselkhozbank before becoming his deputy minister. They reportedly vacation together in Nice, despite Lut having an official husband — lawyer Andrei Lebedev, whose firm specializes partly in contesting Rosselkhoznadzor inspections. The husband defends companies that the agency inspects, the agency is overseen by the wife. This is not a conflict of interest. It is a self-contained ecosystem.

Dankvert will in all likelihood be removed as the man who "failed to manage the epidemiological situation." Someone from Patrushev's network will take his place. The circle closes.

Small Business: An Obituary

While this plays out at the level of billionaires, ministers, and godfathers, farmers in Siberian villages are losing everything. A farmer whose twenty cows are confiscated is not losing market share. He is losing his livelihood. Compensation is negligible, loans are not forgiven, and rebuilding a herd is practically impossible.

Large agro-holdings insured their livestock. They will receive payouts — sometimes above the animals' actual market value. Small farmers had no insurance. They had no money for insurance, just as they have no money to integrate with the multiple state digital systems required for livestock tracking, grain registration, and transport documentation. Every gap means a fine. Every fine means ineligibility for subsidies. The system is built so that small-scale agricultural business cannot technically survive.

This is not an unintended consequence. It is the architecture.

Russia's power vertical produces consolidation across every economic sector — not because of any single act of malice toward farmers, but because access to subsidies, cheap credit, and legal protection is determined entirely by proximity to power. Cherkizovo, Miratorg, EkoNiva, Resource — these are not merely companies. They are feudal structures, each with its own patron inside the Kremlin or the government.

The farmer from Novosibirsk Oblast who came out with a pitchfork was not fighting an epidemic. He was not fighting an agro-holding. He was fighting a system that had already written him off.

He lost.