Belarusian berries
THE MYSTERIOUS PARTNER
The Russian online marketplace Wildberries is the most popular e-commerce platform in Belarus. According to data from the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade (MART), over 85% of the country’s residents use its services. Since 2022, Wildberries’ assets in Belarus have been owned by the company IMVBRB. The legal entity was founded by its Russian parent company, Wildberries, which is solely owned by businesswoman Tatiana Kim.
Wildberries is not only the most popular but also the largest marketplace in Belarus. In 2025, IMVBRB’s revenue surpassed 9 billion Belarusian rubles, equivalent to 2.6 billion euros. This represented a 104% increase compared to 2024. Net profit in 2025 was 295 million Belarusian rubles, equivalent to 85.3 million euros. Net profit growth amounted to 368%. In May this year, MART designated Wildberries as one of the dominant players on the market.
Given these results, it’s no surprise that Wildberries caught Aleksandr Lukashenko’s attention. He organised a meeting with private-sector representatives in February 2025. The marketplace also came up in the discussion:
“...If a company has modernised and moved into the future, and Wildberries operates that way, we will support such businesses. But every business must work for Belarus, for the state. Then I will not pick a bone with you,” Lukashenko said at the time.
Coincidentally or not, just two weeks after Lukashenko’s meeting, Belarusian Wildberries gained a new shareholder: ZAO TD Kvadrat. The company acquired a 10% stake in both IMVBRB and Operator WB Taxi, the operator of the WB Taxi transportation service in Belarus.
Buro examined TD Kvadrat’s financials and found that, in 2025, the firm received just over 70,054,000 Belarusian rubles (€20,3 mln) as “income from participation in the charter capital of other organisations.” According to Belarusian Wildberries’ financial statements, the company paid nearly the same amount – 70,053,000 Belarusian rubles – in dividends to its shareholders; more specifically, to one entity: TD Kvadrat.
The documents clearly show the paradox of the situation surrounding TD Kvadrat. Despite its relatively small stake in Wildberries, the firm accumulated nearly a quarter (24%) of the retailer’s total profits. At the same time, a review of the 2025 financial statements reveals that the company existed virtually “on paper only” – it did not engage in any operational or manufacturing activities. Its enormous financial inflows were driven by one factor: its status as a co-owner. Additionally, of that amount, TD Kvadrat paid 26.7 million Belarusian rubles (€7.7 million) in dividends to its own shareholder.
But who is the mysterious owner of TD Kvadrat who became a millionaire overnight? ZAO is equivalent to a Closed Joint-Stock Company. Although its ownership structure does not require the disclosure of ultimate beneficial owners, Buro has uncovered the individuals behind the company.
A CREATIVE MOVE
In 2025, TD Kvadrat became a shareholder not only in Belarusian Wildberries but also bought out a majority stake of 99.42% in the commercial Bank of Growth and Business Development (Bank RRB). At the end of the fiscal year, Bank RRB underwent an audit and was compelled to disclose its new ultimate beneficiary. It turned out that the person was businessman Dmitriy Kurnosenka.
Dmitriy Kurnosenka. Source: auto.onliner.by
Buro contacted Dmitriy Kurnosenka by phone to ask how and why he acquired a stake in the country’s largest online marketplace. The businessman refused to answer our journalist’s questions and dismissed the claim that he owned TD Kvadrat as “unverified information.” We also sent Kurnosenka our questions in writing.
Kurnosenka was born in Polatsk in 1977. He graduated with honours from the Belarusian Military Academy in the late 1990s and, according to media reports, served in various command positions in the armed forces. In the 2000s, he worked at the law firm Kurnosenka Consulting and afterwards went into business.
However, the reason Kurnosenka acquired a stake in Wildberries may have had little to do with market economy. Buro revealed that Kurnosenka has ties to the inner circle of the Lukashenko family, which may have played a role in this deal.
We recently reported on the emergence of a new, major outdoor advertising network in Belarus called Kreativnyi Kod. The company was registered in late October 2025. In less than a year, it acquired nearly 3,000 advertising structures throughout the country.
Three legal entities own Kreativnyi Kod.
Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya owns 15%. It is a full-cycle production company, with Anna Lukashenko, the wife of Dmitry Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus’s second son, serving as executive producer.
The company ANSL Production owns a 10% stake. Andrei Vrubleuski, one of Dmitry Lukashenko’s top managers, is ANSL Production’s majority shareholder, holding a 95% stake.
KorusMedia, a closed joint-stock company, owns the remaining 75% of Kreativnyi Kod. It is impossible to identify the company’s actual owners. However, we have established that Darya Kharuzhka is listed as the company’s director. According to CyberPartisans, Kharuzhka worked at Bezopasnye Dorogi Belarusi, a company controlled by Kurnosenka, for more than a decade.
Anonymous sources in the Belarusian advertising industry told Buro that Kreativnyi Kod links to Wildberries through its founders. The sources state that the marketplace is the country’s largest commercial client.
Here’s another noteworthy detail that highlights Kurnosenka’s significance to the Lukashenko family. Thanks to CyberPartisans, we discovered that the businessman had made several car trips with a man named Dzmitry Kurakevich. We identified five trips they made together to Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine in 2017 and 2019.
Kurakevich previously worked for the Presidential Security Service (PSS). In 2008, he was awarded the Medal for Impeccable Service, 2nd Class, which is given for 15 years of continuous service without reprimands. At that time, he was an operational driver in the First Department of the PSS’s Personal Security Directorate. With the help of the Alliance of Investigators of Belarus, we discovered that Kurakevich was Aleksandr Lukashenko’s personal driver. He worked at Kurnosenko’s Bezopasnye Dorogi Belarusi for at least the period from 2016 to 2024.
This is further evidence that the stake in Wildberries was not acquired by an outside investor, but by someone who enjoys significant trust from the Belarusian authorities.
However, Wildberries’ ties to the Belarusian leadership do not end there.
KEY NEGOTIATOR
Construction of Wildberries’ first logistics hub in the Great Stone industrial park began in 2024. It covers an area of almost 140,000 square metres. The first phase has already been commissioned.
“This is the largest logistics facility in the country, with space for around 5,000 employees,” Tatiana Kim wrote on her Telegram channel.
Tatiana Kim made a working visit to Great Stone in May 2026, during which she toured the warehouse complex.
Tatiana Kim on an inspection visit to the Great Stone park. Source: Wildberries Press Office
A tall, stocky man can be spotted right behind her. His name is Yauheni Vasilyeu, and he holds a unique position as head of Wildberries’ government relations division in Belarus. In essence, he is the official “fixer”, authorised to resolve issues with regulators and advance the marketplace’s interests in Belarus.
He is also the director of TD Kvadrat, which was granted a 10% stake in Wildberries’ Belarusian branch. Vasilyeu’s mobile phone number was also listed during the registration of the legal entity TD Kvadrat. Thanks to the CyberPartisans, we learned that before taking up a key position at Wildberries, Vasilyeu was a small-scale restaurateur. Buro examined his business background in detail and concluded that his rapid career rise could only be explained by his family’s ties to individuals close to Dmitry Lukashenko’s inner circle.
Vasilyeu is married to a woman named Alena Vasilyeva. She is a pastry chef who is developing her own chain of Valenka bakeries. She became a co-owner of Syabry Event in 2023. This company appears to be solely responsible for organising concerts by Belarusian stand-up comedians who perform at the Stand Up Comedy Hall.
Vasilyeu’s wife’s business partner at Syabry Event is Natallia Sadouskaya, a restaurateur. In 2020, she was an invited guest at Lukashenko’s closed-door inauguration and became head of the Belarusian Restaurateurs Association. At the same time, the media started to refer to Yauheni Vasilyeu – the current director of TD Kvadrat and co-owner of Belarusian company Wildberries – as the chairman of the association’s supervisory board.
Sadouskaya is the heiress of the Stolichnaya Restoratsiya restaurant empire. The most significant asset of this group of companies is currently the premium restaurant Fabriq, operated by Podium Star. 75% of Podium Star belongs to the company Stolichnaya Restoratsiya, which Natallia Sadouskaya owns 50-50 with her full brother, Ihar Sadouski. Volodymyr Kulakov, the husband of Anna Lukashenko’s sister (Dmitry Lukashenko’s wife), owns the remaining 25% stake in Fabriq. For a decade, Kulakov led the Tennis Club (UP Klub Tennisa), a subsidiary of the Presidential Sports Club (RGOO Presidentsky Sportivnyi Klub), which Lukashenko’s middle son runs as its permanent director.
Investigative journalists have revealed that the Sadouskis’ partnership with Kulakov coincided with the expansion of their restaurant business. For example, Podium Star received preferential terms when renting space for Fabriq.
A Buro journalist called Yauheni Vasilyeu to ask what role Natallia Sadouskaya had played in his appointment. The Wildberries negotiator declined to answer our journalist’s question and described the information that he was the director of TD Kvadrat as “some kind of mistake.”
We looked at the financial statements of Syabry Event and noticed revenue figures that didn’t seem right for this sector. In 2025, the company reported revenues of 9.7 million Belarusian rubles (equivalent to 2.8 million euros) and a net profit of 1.04 million Belarusian rubles (300,000 euros).
For comparison, Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya, which is linked to Lukashenko’s daughter-in-law and is the largest production company in Belarus, ended 2024 with revenue of 8.1 million Belarusian rubles (€2.3 million) and a net profit of almost 1.3 million Belarusian rubles (€360,000). However, Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya organises state events, manages around a dozen artists and produces music videos and TV shows. Meanwhile, Syabry Event sells tickets to stand-up comedy shows for 30 rubles and doesn’t show up in many Google searches.
SCRATCH MY BACK, AND I WILL SCRATCH YOURS
However you look at it, the evidence suggests the Belarusian stake in Wildberries is controlled by Dmitry Lukashenko’s inner circle.
Dmitriy Kurnosenka, whose business relies on special decrees and public-private partnerships, has secretly become a 10% co-owner of the marketplace. The uncovered connections also suggest that Kurnosenka may be involved in Anna Lukashenko’s advertising business.
TD Kvadrat earned more than 20 million euros in profits in just the first year of owning a stake in Wildberries. Kurnosenka received 7.7 million euros in dividends of that amount. Ownership of his own bank enables him to establish the perfect infrastructure for the secret redistribution of Wildberries’ funds. For example, in the summer of 2026, Bank RRB launched a special Power Seller plan to try and attract thousands of Belarusian Wildberries sellers to its payment and cash management services. Pulling marketplace sellers could increase the amount of money held in customers’ bank accounts. Kurnosenka’s bank generates legal net profit from margins on foreign exchange transactions and commission fees. This profit can then be redirected to entities affiliated with Dmitry Lukashenko in the form of dividends, preferential loans for projects and procurement of services from affiliated contractors.
Yauheni Vasilyeu, director of TD Kvadrat, a co-owner of Wildberries’ Belarusian business, and formerly a small-scale restaurateur, became Natallia Sadouskaya’s right-hand man at the Belarusian Restaurateurs Association. Thanks to Sadouskaya and her joint business venture with Dmitry Lukashenko’s brother-in-law, Vasilyeu rose to the top and became the chief “fixer” who essentially settles matters between the Lukashenko family and the Russian company Wildberries.
Meanwhile, Vasilyeu’s wife runs a business with Sadouskaya that generates abnormally high revenue. It is possible that Vasilyeu’s share of the proceeds from resolving issues with Wildberries in favour of the Lukashenko family ends up at Syabry Event.