Recently, the occupiers’ propaganda machine decided to revisit the topic of Nicaragua, highlighting yet another staged event at “Sokolov School No. 45” in Sevastopol, an institution with an “in-depth focus on the Spanish language”, which, in August, “signed a cooperation agreement” with the Colegio Público Rubén Darío in the Nicaraguan town of Matagalpa.
The primary spokesperson for this spectacle was, once again, Natalia Golovina, a Russian operative acting under the cover of the “Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots in Nicaragua.”
It is worth recalling that these sham “cooperation agreements” between Sevastopol—along with other occupied regions of Ukraine, and the pro-Russian regime in Nicaragua were signed in Moscow last year.
Regarding the August provocation, which involved “Russian diplomats,” the only notable detail was the absence of Oleg Belaventsev, previously designated by the aggressor state as the “Honorary consul of Nicaragua in Crimea.”
Belaventsev was also absent from this latest “telebridge between schools,” though other significant details did emerge.
This includes the fact that Gustavo Porras Cortés, the head of Nicaragua’s puppet parliament, took the opportunity to promote “Nicaraguan rum, one of the best in the world”, directly to the schoolchildren.
Even more noteworthy, however, were the remarks made by Laureano Ortega Murillo, the Nicaraguan dictator’s special representative for relations with Russia. This individual stated that “the commencement of operations at the Mechnikov Institute in Nicaragua has been a great blessing for the Nicaraguan people,” promoting the entity as a hub for “educational initiatives.”
It should be noted that the Latin American Institute of Biotechnology Mechnikov (Instituto Latinoamericano de Biotecnologia Mechnikov, S.A.) was established “by agreement” between the dictators of Russia and Nicaragua. It was ostensibly “launched” back in 2019, with the stated objective of “vaccine development.”
We have previously written on several occasions about the aggressor’s provocations in Crimea involving biological weapons, carried out under similar cover.
It is also worth noting that this “institute” in Managua is a subsidiary of the “St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums and Bacterial Preparations Plant” which operates under the Russian Federal Biomedical Agency, and has been headed by Stanislav Uyba since its inception.
His father, Vladimir Uyba, the former head of that same Russian Federal Biomedical Agencyand former Governor of the Komi Republic, has served as the First Deputy Chief of the Main Military-Medical Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense since November 2024.
In 2022, the elder Uyba was implicated in the disappearance of 2.2 billion rubles, intended for the “procurement of subsidized medicines” for the population of Komi, through accomplices at the “North-West Medical-Pharmaceutical Holding.”
Earlier, during his tenure as head of the aforementioned federal agency, Vladimir Uyba, in collaboration with the then-minister Tatyana Golikova, was involved in laundering billions under the guise of “modernizing the Blood Service.”
Furthermore, Uiba Sr. facilitated the siphoning off of 12 billion during the “construction of the Almazov National Medical Research Centre in St. Petersburg”. This was carried out via the firm “Grm,” owned by Natalya Gart, with the assistance of Igor Bulatov, a representative for the developer and a relative of the “oligarch-developer” Samvel Karapetyan.
It is, therefore, hardly surprising that upon becoming the Komi Governor, Uiba Sr. brought this “useful operative,” Bulatov, into his administration as a regional Deputy Prime Minister, even as Bulatov’s own family resides in that quintessential “northern Russian city” known as Miami.
Against this backdrop, the scheme involving Uiba Jr. and his mother, Irina Uiba, previously reported in the Russian “press” concerning the privatization of a Moscow apartment, provided by “Rosatom”, and valued at 40 million, appears rather insignificant.
Also of interest in this context are the activities of Viktor Trukhin, the former head of the St. Petersburg institute and the former formal superior of Uiba Jr.
In September 2023, Trukhin was arrested for embezzlement; he was subsequently reported to have been convicted of attempted bribery. The case later expanded to include an episode involving the “institute” in Managua, Nicaragua, through which 482 million “vanished.” Trukhin was also accused of placing two of his relatives in positions at the institute that carried a “draft exemption”, thereby shielding them from mandatory military service, while simultaneously authorizing the payment of fictitious salaries to them.
The Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) served as the counterparty in this money-laundering operation, and it was alleged during the proceedings that Trukhin, previously referred to as the Russian dictator’s “chief physician,” holds Nicaraguan citizenship.
However, in August 2026, at the conclusion of this saga, Trukhin was released in the courtroom, having effectively served his sentence while in custody during the investigation. Yet, by September, he was detained once again, this time in connection with various fraudulent schemes involving the “Rusbiopharm” entity, which were unrelated to the Nicaragua affair.
These episodes involving Trukhin unfolded against the backdrop of his long-standing ties to Mikhail Silantyev. Just prior to the onset of the saga surrounding Trukhin’s arrests, Silantyev had served as the CEO of “Promsyryeimport”, an entity under the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade that was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2018 for facilitating the shipment of Iranian oil to Syria.
It is therefore evident that a significant source of funding for the Russian intelligence services’ “friendship with Nicaragua” has been the billions in state budget funds laundered by the Uiba family, a fact that ensures both the stability of this scheme and the “untouchability” of its key figures.
