The drinking buddy: Dmitry Medvedev’s “wallet” profits from Oreshnik missile production while making wine in Italy

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In the mid-1980s, Ilya Eliseev and Dmitry Medvedev studied together at the law faculty of Leningrad State University. “Of course we know each other very well; we meet when possible, and we congratulate each other on our birthdays,” Eliseev once described the nature of his relationship with the chairman of the United Russia party. In fact, Eliseev, now deputy chairman of Gazprombank, owes the rapid rise of his career to none other than his former classmate. He joined the state bank in 2005, when Medvedev was serving as chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors.

Today, Eliseev continues to manage Medvedev’s business assets in Russia and abroad — with help from his secret wife.

A secret wife and her millions

According to data obtained by The Insider, a daughter named Taisiya was born to Ilya Eliseev in 2020. The girl’s mother is listed in civil registry documents as Natalia Malyamina, the managing partner of the law firm Ivanyan and Partners.

“In 2009, we joined forces with Natalia Malyamina and began working as one team and one brand. I knew Natalia from our work together in EPAM’s St. Petersburg office. She left shortly after I did and founded her own law firm in Moscow. At the time of the merger, she had eight or nine lawyers, and we had 12 to 15. I do not remember the exact figures, but I do not think that matters much. We were merging specifically with Natalia,” another partner, Khristofor Ivanyan, explained in a 2017 interview.

Malyamina specializes mainly in lawmaking and government relations. The firm represented Russia’s interests in a case brought by Ukraine at the European Court of Human Rights over the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s violations of the Human Rights Convention on the peninsula.

In 2016, when Medvedev was still serving as prime minister, Malyamina’s law firm received state contracts worth more than 500 million rubles ($7.5 million at the time) for “providing legal services to the Russian Federation.” Lawyers from the firm have represented Russia’s interests in litigation involving the Kremlin’s takeover of oil giant Yukos and of Germany’s refusal to engage in military-technical cooperation with the Russian company Oboronservis. It was lawyers from Ivanyan and Partners who secured the lifting of European sanctions against Maya Tokareva, daughter of the head of Transneft.

Another notable client of Malyamina’s is none other than Gazprombank. Eliseev’s own income at the state-connected financial institution is around 432 million rubles ($5.6 million) a year.

Predictably, The Insider found that an estate on the high-end Rublyovka is registered in Malyamina’s name. She owns a 14,456-square-foot mansion (1,343 sq. m.) and a 1.26-acre plot (5,100 sq. m.) in the Uspensky Les gated community.

Machine tools for Russia’s defense industry

In 2023, Eliseev became a co-owner of Beaver Tech LLC, gradually increasing his stake in the company’s charter capital from 20% to 30%. The Insider learned from Russia’s arbitration case database that the machine-building company is a contractor for the Academician N.A. Pilyugin Scientific and Production Center of Automatics and Instrument-Making (NPTsAP, after its Russian acronym НПЦАП), which is part of the state space corporation Roscosmos.

In February, a statement of claim filed by NPTsAP against Beaver Tech was submitted to the Arbitration Court of the Saratov Region. It shows that the companies concluded a contract in 2024. In the same year, according to accounting statements, year-on-year revenue at Eliseev’s Beaver Tech rose from 64 million ($824,000) to 296 million ($3.8 million).

As was revealed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NPTsAP was involved in creating the guidance system for Russia’s Oreshnik missile, and the company has since come under international sanctions. “Even in the most difficult times, our scientists, inventors, and engineers have directed their knowledge and experience toward strengthening the state’s defense capability,” a Feb. 23 greeting issued in the name of Eliseev’s company read.

As has now become clear, those were not empty words. At the Army-2023 forum, NPTsAP, presented a new laser guidance system for missiles, aimed at improving their accuracy.

At the same time, customs data show that Eliseev’s Beaver Tech firm imports machine tools and components, including Western-made ones. In August 2024, the company imported spare parts into Russia for a milling machine made by SmarAct GmbH of Germany. That same month it imported a grinding machine made by Sunny Machinery of Taiwan and a press brake made by Amada Co. of Japan. Supplies from manufacturers in countries that observe the sanctions regime against Russia are routed through China.

The Italian winery

Ilya Eliseev still has not been placed under EU sanctions, a fact that allows him to directly own a 9% stake in the Italian winery Fattoria della Aiola.

As Alexei Navalny established back in 2017, the winery — nominally registered to Eliseev — in fact belongs to Dmitry Medvedev.

Fattoria della Aiola has continued making shipments to Russia even during the war. In 2025, for example, wine was supplied to the country through the Lithuanian logistics company Vinges Transsphere Logistika.

The remaining shares in the Italian firm are registered to the Cypriot offshore company Dockell Limited (as previously reported by the outlet Tochka), which is nominally owned by Russian Alexei Shvetsov and managed by lawyers from the same Ivanyan and Partners law firm headed by Eliseev’s wife.

Shvetsov, for his part, is linked to other well-known Medvedev assets. He is listed as the CEO of Orzhitskiye Artesian Waters LLC ( ООО «Оржицкие Артезианские Воды») and FKK LLC (ООО «ФКК»), both owned by the Foundation for the Support of Winter Olympic Sports. Medvedev’s winter residence in Psekhako is also registered to that foundation, as revealed by the late Alexei Navalny’s famous investigation into the official.

FKK’s link to Medvedev is also shown by the fact that the firm held a mortgage lien on the land where the Mansurovo agricultural complex is located. Medvedev’s son Ilya is officially employed at Mansurovo, where as of 2025 his monthly salary came in at 117,647 rubles (just over $1,500). The younger Medvedev also works for a subsidiary of the Rostec defense corporation.