How Chemezov’s friend is making his grandson governor

VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have learned about the meteoric political career of the grandson of Lipetsk oligarch Vladimir Arkhipenko, who greatly increased his fortune during the war. Vladimir Serikov, whose grandfather owned a factory producing batteries for drones, torpedoes, missiles, and submarines, became a deputy, then chairman of the regional council of deputies (essentially the second-ranking official in the region). Now Arkhipenko is trying to lobby his beloved relative for the regional governor’s seat, as the current head of the Lipetsk region, Igor Artamonov, with the support of his longtime boss and friend, German Gref, plans to move to a federal leadership position this fall. But this scenario has a long history.

Vladimir Arkhipenko himself became the director and owner of the OAO Energia plant in Yelets in the 1990s. His only daughter married local bodybuilder Vitaly Serikov. The couple named their son after their grandfather. When Vladimir grew up, Arkhipenko sent his beloved grandson to study at MGIMO. Incidentally, Arkhipenko had previously provided his son-in-law, Vitaly, with an MGIMO diploma. Upon graduation, he gifted him a mineral water factory, Eco Balance. The factory operates primarily on government contracts, supplying water to state agencies, including the local administration.

Back in the 1990s, OAO Energia transformed itself from a manufacturer of power sources to a manufacturer of wooden spatulas for frying pans, Kuznetsov applicators, cash registers, and so on. But this continued until Sergey Chemezov, a longtime and close friend of Arkhipenko, became the head of Rostec. As a result, the spatula manufacturer began receiving enormous sums of money from state defense procurement. How did they manage to restructure the factory so quickly? Not really. Arkhipenko began purchasing raw materials in bulk from China, manufacturing batteries from them, and then reselling them as his own products.

Vladimir Arkhipenko himself once attempted to pursue a political career. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he ran for mayor of Yelets. But then-governor Oleg Korolev favored his protégé, Viktor Sokovykh, who won the election.

A conflict arose between Arkhipenko and Korolev; the former even ran the newspaper "Fakty s Argumentami," which decried Sokovykh and Korolev in every issue.

When Artamonov became head of the region, Arkhipenko found favor. The oligarch was assigned to finance regional elections and the local branch of United Russia. Arkhipenko had more than enough money for this. Defense contracts were only increasing year after year. In 2021 (before the war), the plant’s revenue was 2.1 billion rubles. By 2024, it had reached 17 billion rubles.

The grandfather decided to fulfill his own unfulfilled political ambitions through his grandson. He appointed Vladimir Serikov to his plant. Serikov brought a number of his MGIMO friends with him to JSC Energia. Arkhipenko literally made one of them, Vyacheslav Zhabin, mayor of Yelets in 2025 at the age of 30. He had prepared a more ambitious career for his grandson. At 28, he became a deputy and then chairman of the regional council. Now Arkhipenko wants to push him, primarily with the support of his friend Chemezov, into the governor’s office. As our project has previously reported, Senator Evgenia Uvarkina is considered his main competitor.