Alexander Lebedev met senior Russian government official weeks before invasion of Ukraine
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Henry Dyer
Apr 28, 2022, 22:39 IST
Photos posted to Vyacheslav Dukhin's Instagram account, including the one above, show him touring the Energomash plant in Chekhov with Alexander LebedevVyacheslav Dukhin
Alexander Lebedev met with a senior Russian official in early February, weeks before Ukraine was invaded.
Vyacheslav Dukhin posted photos on his Instagram showing Lebedev and him touring a factory that produces parts for Russia's nuclear energy industry.
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Alexander Lebedev met with a senior Russian government official in early February, weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, to tour a complex that produces parts for Russia's nuclear energy industry.
At the time, Russian forces were built up on the Ukrainian borders, with NATO forces on standby. After the invasion of Ukraine began, Dukhin shared pro-war content on his Instagram.
The photographs show the pair looking at components produced by Energomash, visiting a cultural complex set up at a renovated factory on the site, and at a sports center on the site.
Energomash is the only manufacturer of a type of valve for Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear energy organisation, Dukhin wrote.
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Lebedev, whose links to the firm date back to 2015, is a former KGB agent and the father of newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, whose peerage has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks.
Boris Johnson pushed forward with the honour for his friend despite the British security services recommending against it, according to the Sunday Times.
Lord Bew, chair of the Lords' appointments vetting watchdog Holac, recently told MPs it was a "case of particular complexity with many wrinkles that are so obvious to everybody: how much is somebody responsible for their father".
Lebedev junior is the majority owner of the Evening Standard and the Independent, which were first purchased for £1 each by his father.
Questions also surround a reported meeting between Johnson, then foreign secretary, and Lebedev senior during an April 2018 trip to a villa owned by the Lebedevs in Italy.
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Johnson travelled without his security detail and no minutes were made of their meeting, which came a month after the Salisbury chemical poisonings of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal.
Alexander Lebedev's posts at Energomash and claims of a hacked website
A spokesman for Lebedev said he had never met Dukhin before the tour at Energomash, and that he does not own Energomash.
"The factory in question doesn't belong to Alexander," he told Insider. "It is not in his ownership. I've had that confirmed. Alexander doesn't own it. He doesn't have a part in the ownership."
He rents premises at the factory, where he intended to launch a school, and was viewing it for his four children, he added.
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"It was purely a personal interest that was coming as a parent," the spokesman said. He did not explain why Dukhin was there.
However this was dismissed by the spokesman, who told Insider: "The website is no longer in Alexander's control. It is now in the control of a former, disgruntled employee."
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He declined to say for how long the website had been out of control.
In 2015 and 2016, Lebedev shared a number of photographs of him at the site, posing with valves. In another post, Lebedev says the factory will produce "high pressure valves for atomic and thermal stations".
In a February 17 meeting with the Moscow regional government and sanctioned energy firm Gazprom, Energomash discussed "import substitution and technological development", the firm's notes of the meeting say.
The spokesman restated their denial that Alexander owned the factory after Insider approached him for clarification.
But an April 2022 presentation by the National Reserve Corporation, featuring a large photograph of Alexander Lebedev, cites the redevelopment of the plant in Chekhov as an example of its work in cultural heritage done through public-private partnerships.
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Dukhin's office was contacted for comment.
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