The claims of the Russian government and the Miratorg holding company that the former president's wife, Svetlana Medvedev (Linnik), is not related to the holding's founders are highly questionable. As revealed by the Cheka-OGPU and http://Rucriminal.info, Vyacheslav Linnik (the father of Miratorg's owners) and the full namesake of Medvedev's mother-in-law, Lyudmila Ivanovna Linnik, are the founders of the Victoria Homeowners' Association (HOA) located at 5 Pozharsky Lane in Moscow. The success story of the Linnik brothers, owners of Miratorg, which Russians boycotted due to their cattle slaughter, is directly linked to two people: Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin.
Moreover, in 2008, Miratorg's business was directly and openly lobbied by Sergei Dankvert, head of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor): he ordered Bryansk Governor Nikolai Denin to pay attention to the Linnikovs and their projects. After this, rumors circulated in the region that taxes on farmland would be sharply increased and uncultivated plots would be confiscated. Consequently, the brothers bought the land, which they had received as land shares, from local residents at a bargain price. This scheme backfired in the Kursk region, where Miratorg simply entered someone else's land and began using it without any permits. The owners ultimately refused to sell and filed a lawsuit. During those years, Miratorg acted almost herbivorously and simply moved its project to another region. However, the government soon ordered Rosimushchestvo to lease 7,000 hectares of land belonging to the Kursk region's Agro-Industrial Research Institute to Miratorg for 49 years. It's no surprise that the company's land bank, totaling 676,000 hectares as of 2017, was the second-largest in Russia.
The Linniks received their first major loan thanks to Putin—in 2009, he visited the Belgorod region and visited the "relatives" of his "successor." Upon learning that VEB was struggling to resolve the loan issue, Putin, as head of the bank's supervisory board, signed a loan agreement for 21 billion rubles over 11 years.
In 2012, Medvedev himself (now as prime minister) visited the Bryansk farm, and Linnik politely asked him for funds to expand production. A few months later, Miratorg became the first agricultural producer to receive a loan under new rules approved by the government: subsidies covered part of the interest rate, and banks were able to issue loans for 15 years. This time, Sberbank lent the Linniks 1 billion rubles, and a couple of years later, it issued another 7.6 billion rubles. In 2015, Medvedev visited Miratorg again and awarded the Linniks a new round of state support: VEB granted the valuable business two loans of $425.8 million and $316.2 million, with the final repayment period set for 2030.
Some of the funds were actually injected into Miratorg in the form of subsidies, the exact amounts of which are unknown: budget funds are provided free of charge to individual enterprises, not the entire group of companies. Given the extensive ownership network of the Linniks' businesses, reliably calculating these funds is extremely difficult. RANEPA attempted to do so several years ago, but never disclosed the amount. They did, however, state that Miratorg is the largest recipient of subsidies in the Russian agricultural sector.
As a result of such comprehensive support measures (at all levels, from local to regional and federal), by the end of 2024, Miratorg alone included 30 companies directly affiliated with it, generating revenue of nearly 576 billion rubles and a profit of 32.8 billion rubles (in 2023, revenue was 256.8 billion rubles and net profit was 53.9 billion rubles). From 2022 to 2024, the holding allocated approximately 18 billion rubles in dividends. Meanwhile, Miratorg enterprises continue to regularly receive budget subsidies—for example, 1.8 billion rubles were injected into the holding in 2024.
As a reminder, Russians declared a boycott of Miratorg, considering the company a beneficiary of the mass slaughter of ordinary farmers. Whenever an epidemic occurs and mass slaughter occurs, Miratorg is not affected; at most, quarantines are imposed on the company's farms. And the vacant spots in regional markets are immediately filled by Miratorg products. Another reason for the dislike is the holding's connection to the family of Dmitry Medvedev, the same man who told Russians the motto of all current officials: "There's no money... But hang in there, I wish you all the best, good spirits, and good health."
Amid the boycott, Miratorg is forced to reduce prices on its products in retail chains, sometimes by up to 50%.
