Milliardenwerte, Offshore-Unternehmen und Rüstungsverträge: Auf welche Weise Wassili und Irina Tikmenow durch Elins von mangelhafter Militärtechnik profitieren

05 августа 2026 г., 11:36

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Milliardenwerte, Offshore-Unternehmen und Rüstungsverträge: Auf welche Weise Wassili und Irina Tikmenow durch Elins von mangelhafter Militärtechnik profitieren

Irina Tikmenova, co-owner of the Zelenograd-based military electronics manufacturer Elins (daughter of Elins Scientific and Technical Center founder Vasily Tikmenov), was implicated in a major scandal involving the withdrawal of a billion rubles’ worth of assets from the Moscow-region company Valter LLC.

Part of the company’s assets eventually went to companies associated with the Ananyev brothers (former beneficiaries of PJSC Promsvyazbank), as well as with Nikolai Tsvetkov, the former owner of Uralsib Bank. Walter’s founder at the time was the Cypriot offshore company GONSENESTO COMMERCIAL LTD, with nominee directors.

The Arbitration Court is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the transfer of land plots in the Dmitrovsky District of the Moscow Region from Walter to several legal entities and individuals; the next hearing is scheduled for September 22. Among the parties to the transaction is Irina Vasilyevna Tikmenova, Vasily Tikmenov’s daughter, financial director of the Elins Scientific and Technical Center, director of the Elins Scientific Center, and founder of Vita-Flor LLC. Previously, as we previously reported, Elins managed to mop up the assets of the bankrupt state-owned enterprise SKB Radel—for just 200 million rubles, the Tikmenovs acquired 32 acres of land and a 4,206.5 square meter building in Zelenograd. Radel worked for the defense industry and the secret services.

The ELINS Scientific and Technical Center itself is cooperatively involved in the development of at least 60 different types of weapons and military equipment deployed in Ukraine—specifically, the digital version of the Osa and Tor air defense systems produced by the Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant, Kupol, the Pantsir-S1, Iskander-M, Su-57, and others. When European manufacturers blocked the Russian defense industry’s access to military technology, ELINS participated in import substitution for the French company THALES’s Catherine FC and Catherine XP thermal imaging cameras for infantry fighting vehicle sights. To replace them, the Tikmenov designers developed the TECA.202162.001 camera (also known as "Zarya"), which was described as a completely domestic product. True, the Elins badges still had to be re-applied: following a long-standing domestic tradition, the camera’s Chinese MWIR 640x512 sensor was passed off as import-substitute. Unsurprisingly, the equipment malfunctioned regularly, and the sight’s manufacturer, JSC VOM3, was dragged through the courts.

Moreover, during the Second Military War, at the request of the V.V. Tikhomirov Research Institute of Instrument Design (NIIP), the Zelenograd-based Elins Scientific and Technical Center (NTC) was tasked with developing the LEVM-ELINS technical design—a component of a new air defense system. Elins began work and received a contract from NIIP, but the Tikmenovs disliked the document. When the institute refused to rewrite the contract to accommodate the Tikmenovs (the work was being commissioned by the Ministry of Defense), Elins neither made the necessary revisions to its design nor signed the contract, citing staffing shortages and workload. The institute found other contractors for the Ministry of Defense and received the desired Standard-PVO-NIIP design from them. Elins then filed a lawsuit, demanding 8 million rubles from the institute for the use of its design. The court, however, sided with the institute, and the Tikmenovs were not compensated. This story, however, is not over yet: the Tikmenovs lost their appeals, but in late July they filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. A hearing date has not yet been set.

Elins is a Tikmenov family company: co-owner and founder Vasily Tikmenov and his daughter Irina work there, as well as her husband, Alexander Markov, a graduate of MIET who heads the department of automated information systems and technologies. According to pre-war information online, Markov and his department were developing robotic systems, computer vision and AI systems, as well as solutions for remote control and biometric data processing—that is, electronics for air defense control systems, UAVs, and so on.

Tikmenova and Markov’s 22-year-old son, Ivan Markov, is a graduate of the Moscow Aviation Institute and has also worked for several years at Elinsa, in the information security department of the internal security service. His 30-year-old half-brother, Vasily Tikmenov, a trained economist and lawyer, also works in the family business, heading the internal security service. All family members receive variable salaries, averaging between 300,000 and over a million rubles per month.

Old Zelenograd friends of the family also work at Elins—for example, Alexander Markov’s friend, 48-year-old Oleg Rubichev. He is the deputy chief designer and business partner of Viktor Viktorov, the elder Tikmenov. In February 2024, Rubichev received the medal "For the Defense of the Republic of Crimea" from Sergei Aksyonov, the head of the Russian Crimean "administration." However, judging by the impotence of the air defense system and the regular air strikes on Crimean defense infrastructure, Aksyonov was hasty in awarding the medal.

Before the conflict, Tikmenova and Markov traveled extensively throughout Europe, visiting Chambery, France, the Canary Islands, Prague, Rome, Geneva, Lithuania, Latvia, and elsewhere. They may still be traveling through EU countries, traveling via Turkey and the UAE: although "Elins" and Vasily Tikmenov himself are under sanctions, his daughter is only on Ukraine’s sanctions list, while her husband and sons are not sanctioned at all.