Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime 7d ago

Russia has just issued an international arrest warrant for an obscure 64-year-old crime boss and that single document tells you a lot about the current state of the Russian underworld. In the first episode of BRATVA, Mark Galeotti unpacks who Merab Jangveladze is, why the Kremlin wants him now, and what one warrant reveals about a criminal order being torn apart by Russia's war. This is the launch of BRATVA, a new monthly series from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, looking at organized crime in Russia and across the wider Eurasian space. Each episode takes one specific case, be it an arrest warrant, a killing, a name in the news, and then asks what it actually tells us about the underworld behind the headlines. Who. Why. And, of course, so what. In this episode: - Why Russia issued international arrest warrant for a 64-year-old man? - The world of the vory v zakone: Russia's "thieves-in-law" - How the invasion of Ukraine severed the smuggling routes that tied Russian and Ukrainian gangsters together for decades - Who's getting rich on the new routes and who's losing everything - Why the Kremlin is terrified of a fresh round of underworld turf wars in the middle of a war CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro/Welcome to Bratva 01:10 Who is Merab Jangveladze aka Merab Sokumskii? 02:13 Why being a part of the Voroveskoe Mir (the thieves world) is illegal in Russia 02:59 Why is Russia hunting a 64-year-old man? 03:46 How the war shattered the Russian–Ukrainian underworld 04:14 The balance of power is shifting 05:15 Blood, brothers and assassinations 07:04 What the Russian state actually wants 08:37 Outro Presented by Mark Galeotti, honorary professor at UCL, director of Mayak Intelligence and a member of the Global Initiative Network. He has spent decades working on Russian and post-Soviet organized crime: drinking with gangsters, visiting them in prison, and - only once - getting shot at. New episode every month. Subscribe for more organized crime analysis. #bratva #russianmafia #organizedcrime