Two Russian Billionaires Who Wanted To ‘Trade Favors’ With Hunter Manage To Evade Biden Admin Sanctions

It will come as no surprise that the pair were also pretty cozy with Hunter Biden and went property shopping with him back when his business was real estate.

What are the odds?

Don’t let anyone forget that Hunter’s Laptop Matters. ClashDaily’s online merch store can help with that.

The sanctions placed on Russia after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have inspired sports organizations and the entertainment industry to blacklist ordinary Russian citizens — but a pair of Russian billionaires are living their lives pretty much as usual.

The New York Post reports that Yelena Baturina, the widow of Moscow’s corrupt Mayor, who had sent a $3.5 million wire transfer in 2014 to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, a company connected to Hunter, and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, an engineer who made billions in Russia’s banking and telecoms industries, have managed to somehow repeatedly skirt the sanctions.

New details of Joe and Hunter Biden’s association with Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov flesh out tantalizing clues from the first son’s abandoned laptop. The sources spoke with The Post this week after the duo was yet again spared a fresh batch of sanctions announced by the Treasury Department Friday.
“I think it’s very fishy,” said one source who had firsthand knowledge of the business relationship between Hunter Biden and Yevtushenkov — who is sanctioned by the UK and Australia but not by the US.
“I think he should be sanctioned,” Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, told The Post of Yevtushenkov — estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.7 billion. “I don’t understand why he has not been.”
Source: New York Post

Baturina may be a familiar name for ClashDaily readers — she’s been mentioned several times in articles about Hunter’s questionable business dealings.

• WATCH: House GOP Announces Probe Into Biden Crime Family Corruption — ‘This Is An Investigation Of Joe Biden’
• Hunter’s Real Estate Company Received $40M Investment From Corrupt Moscow Mayor’s Widow
• REPORT: Hunter Biden Tried To Profiteer From Russian Oligarchs During 2014 War In Ukraine
• BOMBSHELL: Senate Report On Hunter Biden Corruption Is DEVASTATING–Ties To Ukraine, China, Moscow, And Suspected Human Trafficking Ring

Two months after the $3.5 million wire transfer to Rosemount, Baturina met with Hunter and his now-jailed business partner, Devon Archer, for drinks in Italy.

Hunter’s abandoned laptop revealed that despite protestations by the Biden family, Rosemount was actively trying to partner with Baturina in a business venture.

Baturina would have been familiar with Hunter Biden, having met with him and his then-business partner Devon Archer for a drink in April 2014 at the Villa d’Este — a well-known haunt of Russian oligarchs overlooking Italy’s Lake Como. On the same trip, Hunter also met the Ukrainian-Russian oligarch owner of Burisma, Mykolai Zlochevsky…
…Biden allies previously sought to downplay his association with Baturina and the $3.5 million. An anonymous source told the Washington Post last year that Archer was supposed to dissolve the corporate entity that received the funds, but secretly kept it in existence for his own use.
However, emails from Hunter’s laptop show he was actively engaged in courting Baturina. About a month after the transfer, Archer wrote to Hunter to say he was “[w]ith Yelena” and an April 26, 2014, email from Hunter to Archer said “we should ask Yelena to fund a short-term development team to scope projects” after an attempted real estate deal in Manhattan fell through.
Source: NY Post

The NY Post adds that one of their sources remembers spotting Baturina, Hunter Biden, and a few notable others at an “intimate dinner” in the private “Garden Room” at D.C.’s famous Café Milano in April 2015. Joe Biden, who was then Vice President, also made an appearance.

“It was an odd dinner because there was [then-Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim] Massimov, Luzhkov and his wife, and it was not a big table and then there was somebody there from some food charity making a pitch for support,” they added. “I mean, it was, was — it was a little odd, the whole thing.”
In an email at the time, Hunter wrote that the meal would be “ostensibly” about his role a chairman of the World Food Program (WFP) USA.
His father, the sitting vice president, arrived at the dinner and stayed for about 40 minutes, the second source told The Post, even sitting down to eat and then posing for a photo with the Kazakhstani group.
The gathering also featured Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014 while his VP dad controlled the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Pozharskyi emailed Hunter the next day to thank him for “giving an opportunity to meet your father” — forming the basis of The Post’s first October 2020 bombshell from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Source: NY Post

When the laptop story broke, Team Biden denied the meeting.

“[W]e have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” said the Biden Campaign in a statement. However, after Biden won the presidency, the former president of the World Food Program USA, Rick Leach, admitted to the Washington Post that Joe Biden was in attendance — but only meet with Greek Orthodox leader Alex Karloutsos.

Last year, Yevtushenkov admitted to meeting with Hunter for breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton in NYC back in 2012.

The NY Post’s source recounts a conversation with Yevtushenkov about the meeting.

“I asked [Yevtushenkov], ‘Why are you doing this?’ on the front end — before I understood that they were going to buy some real estate,” the source told The Post. “‘Why are you even doing this? Why would you be paying the son of the vice president to meet at a public restaurant in New York City?’
“He made it very clear to me that, you know … ‘I think it would be good to have a good relationship with this guy … maybe he can do a favor for us and we can do a favor for him,’” the source continued. “It was a complete quid pro quo that he was going in for.”
“I told him that’s not the way it works in America, [but] he basically laughed at me and told me I was so naïve,” the source recalled of Yevtushenkov, whose holdings also include Russia’s largest cellphone provider, MTS — which faced a long-running investigation into nearly $1 billion in bribes paid to Uzbekistani officials between 2004 and 2012.
Source: NY Post

Yevtushenkov denied meeting with Hunter after that. That’s where the Laptop From Hell comes in again.

The NY Post reports, “emails and calendar entries from Hunter’s former laptop show that they were set to meet again on Jan. 27, 2013, for dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano before looking at a commercial real estate development the next day near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.”

According to the NY Post, Yevtushenkov’s Sistema business empire “included Russian rocket and radar-maker RTI and drone-maker Kronstadt” until recently. This is relevant because the new U.S. sanctions imposed a few days ago on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine include Russia’s defense and technology industries.

The Treasury and State departments will implement sweeping additional sanctions aimed at further degrading the Russian economy, the White House said in a news release. The new sanctions will target more than 200 individuals and entities — including both Russians and third-party actors across Europe — as well as Russian officials, proxy authorities illegitimately operating in Ukraine and a dozen Russian financial institutions…
…The sanctions will target actors tied to Russia’s defense and technology industry, the country’s future energy capabilities and its metals and mining sector. The White House also announced it will restrict exports to the country and raise tariffs on Russian products.
Source: Politico

Back in April 2022, Yevtushenkov reduced his shares in Sistema by transferring 10% of his shares to his son.

Russian billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov gave up formal shareholder control of the Sistema conglomerate which he founded three decades ago by transferring a 10% stake to his son after Britain imposed sanctions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Source: Reuters

How very Biden-like to keep it in the family — in this case, it’s “10% for the Little Guy.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who is leading investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings said, “It’s alarming that Hunter Biden’s Russian oligarch pals are missing from the Treasury Department’s public sanctions list of Russian elites and oligarchs.”

What does the White House have to say? So far nothing.

A Post reporter asked President Biden Wednesday on the White House lawn for an explanation of the non-sanctioning of his son’s Russian oligarch associates, but Biden didn’t reply and it’s unclear if he heard the question as he walked to his Marine One helicopter.
Source: New York Post

It doesn’t just pay to be a Biden, it seems to pay to be within the Bidens’ circle of influence.

Doesn’t that prove Yevtushenkov right?

Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.

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This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.

Sources:

1. Nelson, Steven. “Russian billionaires who shopped for US property with Hunter Biden and dined with Joe dodge sanctions.” New York Post. March 2, 2023. https://nypost.com/2023/03/02/unsanctioned-russians-shopped-us-land-with-hunter-biden-dined-with-joe/

2. Hooper, Kelly. “White House announces new sanctions against Russia on invasion anniversary.” Politico. February 24, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/24/white-house-announces-sanctions-against-russia-ukraine-anniversary-00084308

3. Reuters Staff. “Russian billionaire Yevtushenkov cedes control of Sistema after UK sanctions.” Reuters. April 13, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-sistema-idUKKCN2M51LS