On June 30, the occupiers-controlled Crimean “media” announced that the collaborator Ruslan Balbek, whom we have described many times, “is wanted” and that he is “suspected of fraud” and that he is “presumably hiding in Turkey”.
Let us recall that Balbek was born in Uzbekistan, in the places of deportation of the Crimean Tatars, but he finished school in Sudak and then “creatively developed” under the wing of Boris Deich and Yukhym Zvyahilsky, as key “controllers” of a number of Sudak sanatoriums and other property “trifles”.
Collaborator Balbek in his “political adolescence” supported the Socialist Party of Ukraine and unsuccessfully ran for office.
He constantly had problems with the Ukrainian law, including for attacking police officers. Among other things, Balbek was the director of the Turkish-Ukrainian company “Tez Tour”, and in 2006 he was arrested on suspicion of stealing one and a half million hryvnia from them, the case was later closed.
There are also court decisions that in 2006 Balbek participated in a “showdown” with a knife and allegedly a traumatic pistol in the “Ufuk” cooperative in Sudak, after which he received, “on the second try”, a suspended sentence in 2013.
Also, in 2007, Balbek was put on the wanted list for resisting a law enforcement officer and causing bodily harm, and for this episode he was even arrested in Kyiv in 2011, but then everything died down and he, as “respected people” stated, was allegedly released “under amnesty”, but in fact the case died down.
Before the occupation, Balbek was used by Russian intelligence as an “alternative Crimean Tatar politician” and fiercely criticized not only Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, but also tried to split the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and discredit it on international platforms.
At that time, he was an assistant to Dmitry Shentsev, a Kharkov people’s deputy of the sixth convocation from the “Party of Regions”, and was involved in “sports clubs”, with their obvious connection to organized crime.
Balbek was appointed by the occupiers as a fake “Duma deputy” when it was advantageous for the Kremlin to find traitors among the Crimean Tatars. And he ceased to be a “deputy” as soon as the Russians decided to “level out the Crimean Tatar factor, to remove them from the political sphere”.
In 2019, Balbek illegally broke through the borders to speak at a UN forum in Switzerland, where he was safely and shamefully “removed from the stage” for Russian “diplomats”, although his face flashed several times during provocations of Russian special services in Turkey.
In 2016, the Ukrainian authorities opened a criminal case against Balbek for treason, and he has been on many sanctions lists since 2016, including the United States and the European Union. Ruslan Balbek was also declared wanted by Ukraine in 2018 under Article 191 of the Criminal Code, for embezzlement or misappropriation of property. Sources reported that this was an “economic crime committed in Kyiv”.
In 2022, Balbek voiced the criminal idea of holding a “parade” of Ukrainian prisoners in Sevastopol, and tried in every possible way to “reincarnate” himself in “Crimean politics” through other anti-Ukrainian and xenophobic statements.
It should be noted that one of Balbek’s patrons was Marat Kabaev, the president of the International Assembly of Islamic Business of Marat and the father of Putin’s concubine Alina Kabaeva, who had previously actively participated in the processes of the occupation of Crimea, speculating on the “Crimean Tatar roots” of his father Vazih Kabaev, and also patronized the now infamous Marat Khusnullin in the Kremlin.
We have previously written many times about the conflict between two groups of Crimean Tatar collaborators: Emirali Ablaev, a “muftiate” of the criminal Aksyonov, and the “group of comrades” of Ruslan Balbek, including Eyvaz Umerov, who ended up in the occupiers’ prison for some time as a result of this “storm in a teacup”.
Balbek also tried to establish “political ties” with the “head of administration” of the village of Uyutne (Otar Moinaq), Elena Osadchaya, the sister of the infamous Natalya Poklonskaya, his former “accomplice” in “being a deputy in the State Duma”.
Among other things, Eyvaz Umerov, who spoke about the mass theft of funds by “competitors” during the construction and decoration of the so-called “Cathedral Mosque”, was accused in the Aksyonov clan of having ties with the “opposition” Balbek.
It is still unclear how exactly and in what the occupiers want to “expose” Balbek, but it is obvious that they will definitely not let him into “Crimean politics”. It is extremely likely that Balbek will have to play a certain role in new provocations by the aggressor’s special services in Turkey, and his current role as a “suspect” makes him the most elastic reusable latex material in the hands of the Kremlin.
