Father of Latvia’s Sovereign Power party leader supplied ‘dragon’s teeth’ anti-tank barriers to Russian border region and occupied Donbas, The Insider reports

Filed 1h ago · Via Meduza · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Investigations

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Insider reports that Sergey Fedotov, father of Latvian Sovereign Power party leader Julija Stepanenko, owns companies that supplied anti-tank 'dragon's teeth' obstacles and military stoves to Russia's Belgorod region and Russian-occupied Donetsk. Stepanenko has acknowledged her father lives in Russia and supports her financially but never named him; the outlet identified him through corporate records.

Fedotov's firms, registered near Moscow, publicized their wartime supply work on social media, and convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout visited one of the companies in August while campaigning for Russia's Duma. Fedotov confirmed to The Insider that he transferred his Latvian assets to his daughter once the border closed to Russians, and Stepanenko's own tax filings list an apartment and nearly 240,000 euros received from him; she declined to comment.

Latvia holds parliamentary elections October 3, and polling suggests the Sovereign Power bloc, seen as courting Russian-speaking voters, is likely to win seats, though analysts doubt it could join a governing coalition.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A politician who won't say where the money's really coming from is usually the last person you'd trust to say where the country should go. Nearly a quarter million euros from a man supplying materiel to the same war machine sitting on your neighbor's border is not a family footnote, it's the whole story dressed up as a footnote. Voters get to decide what they think of that, but they can only decide if somebody tells them, which apparently had to be a Russian investigative outlet instead of the candidate herself.

Source: Read the original at Meduza → Scored: Investigations · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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