Viktor Zolotov

Viktor Vasilyevich Zolotov (; born 27 January 1954) is a Russian military officer who is the Director of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya, concurrently serving as National Guard Forces Commander-in-Chief) and a member of the Security Council. Zolotov has served as a bodyguard to former President Boris Yeltsin, former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, and current Russian leader Vladimir Putin. While working for Sobchak, Zolotov became acquainted with Putin, as well as figures in the St. Petersburg criminal underworld. A member of Putin's siloviki inner circle, Zolotov's rise to power and wealth happened after he became a close Putin confidant. Zolotov started his career in 1975 with the KGB Border Troops. After the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, he became part of the newly created Federal Protective Service, responsible for the protection of high-ranking Russian officials. The firm provided protection to high ranking Saint Petersburg officials, including the city mayor Sobchak and his family, as well as vice-mayor Putin. It also served as the central mechanism for the collection of tribute and chorniy nal or "black cash" for Putin's purposes.

A high-ranking SVR defector Sergei Tretyakov asserted that Zolotov and Putin-appointed director of the Federal Protection Service (FSO) General Murov had openly discussed how to kill the former chief of Yeltsin's administration Alexander Voloshin. They also made "a list of politicians and other influential Muscovites whom they would need to assassinate to give Putin unchecked power". However since the list was very long, Zolotov allegedly announced, "There are too many. It's too many to kill - even for us." This made SVR officers who knew about the story "uneasy", since FSO includes twenty thousand troops and controls the "black box" that can be used in the event of global nuclear war.

From 2000 to 2013, he was the Chief of the Security of Putin, while the latter was Prime Minister of Russia and then President of Russia. Zolotov commanded security officers that are known in Russia as "Men in Black" because they wore black sunglasses and dressed in all-black suits. They use a variety of weapons including portable rocket launchers.

In August 2018, Zolotov became a target of an investigation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Alexei Navalny alleged a theft of at least $29m in procurement contracts for the National Guard of Russia. Soon, Navalny was imprisoned, formally for staging protests in January 2018, and Viktor Zolotov published a video message on 11 September, where he called Navalny into a duel and promised to make "good, juicy mincemeat" of him.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, The Moscow Times considered Zolotov to have disappeared from public view since around 13 March 2022, together with other senior siloviki (key Russian security officials), including Sergey Shoigu, Igor Kostyukov and Valery Gerasimov.

On 2 March 2021, the Council of the European Union imposed a set of restrictive measures against Zolotov saying he was "responsible for serious human rights violations in Russia, including arbitrary arrests and detentions and systematic and widespread violations of freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, in particular by violently repressing protests and demonstrations." These relate to the quelling of pro-Navalny protests in early 2021.

He was sanctioned by the UK government on 15 March 2022 in relation to Russo-Ukrainian War. In December 2022 the EU sanctioned Viktor Zolotov in relation to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Personal life and wealth Despite a career in government, Zolotov and his family own approximately $9.8 million worth of real estate in Russia, as well as plots of land that may be worth $22.7 million. According to the OCCRP, Putin gave Zolotov state properties that had been bequeathed by the state to workers and pensioners after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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