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By Harry Wise

Updated: 07:51 EDT, 14 September 2023

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Hunter Biden‘s business partner helped supply military vehicles to Putin-backed forces that invaded Ukraine, a report by transparency activists claims.

Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev, who sent Hunter $142,300 to buy a Porsche in 2014, hired him as a consultant to invest millions in the US, and was even photographed at an intimate meeting with Joe Biden, according to emails, records and their friend Devon Archer’s congressional testimony.

Rakishev, 44, is allegedly co-owner of Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering (KPE), which makes Arlan mine-resistant armored platform (MRAP) vehicles, according to a new report by transparency group the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery (KIAR), based on Rakishev’s leaked emails.

The tank-like armored trucks were spotted on the streets of Mariupol in April 2022, driven by Chechen troops that invaded Ukraine alongside Russian forces.

Hunter’s former business partner Rakishev has entered the spotlight of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s shady business dealings, with his payments to Hunter and meetings with Joe detailed in a new memo released by the Committee Wednesday, supported by subpoenaed bank records.

KIAR’s report says Rakishev has co-owned the company since 2015 with a South African defense contractor, Paramount Group. 

His alleged ownership has previously been obfuscated behind a complex corporate structure, but has now been revealed after his emails were leaked.

The Kazakh businessman, reportedly worth over $300 million, has close ties to his country’s military. His father-in-law Imangali Tasmagambetov was the former Defense Secretary, and was on the board of another firm that supplied military trucks to Russia, the report said.

The armored Arlan truck manufacturer KPE has denied a close relationship with Russia’s military, saying they gave one Arlan vehicle to Putin’s National Guard in 2019 but that ‘further cooperation with Russians did not continue.’

They also claimed that ‘Kenes Rakishev and Imangali Tasmagambetov have nothing to do with the enterprise.’

But KIAR’s report, based on corporate records and Rakishev’s leaked emails, says he controlled two companies that own KPE: KazPetroMash and InterTechAudit. 

Emails in Cyrillic allegedly show Rakishev approving transactions by the two firms. 

Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who is under US sanctions for his involvement in Putin’s Ukraine invasion, was quoted gushing about ‘my dear brother Kenes Rakishev who has always been a patron of our important projects,’ in a July 2016 article on Russian-language news site Grozny-Inform. 

On March 17, 2022, Kadyrov posted a video on Russian social media site VKontakte showing the storming of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which included a shot of an Arlan armored car allegedly sold by Rakishev’s company.

A November 2022 report by military news site Oryx claimed that Chechen forces ‘include a small number of Arlan MRAPs (South African designed Marauder MRAPs) from Kazakhstan’.

A photo obtained by KIAR shows Joe, Hunter, Rakishev and then-Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov at an intimate meeting. 

Hunter’s business partner and former ‘best friend in business’ Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee that Rakishev met with Joe and his son at Washington DC restaurant Café Milano in Spring 2014.

In April, Rakishev sent $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company equally co-owned by Hunter and Archer, the former friend of the First Son said.

Archer claimed Hunter was selling the Biden ‘brand’ to his foreign business partners, flexing his political influence by having Joe talk to Hunter’s business partners on speakerphone during meetings.

In a press release Wednesday along with the House Oversight Committee’s memo on Rakishev’s payments to the First Son, Republican committee chairman James Comer said Hunter was selling access to the president.

‘During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine,’ Comer said.

‘It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered. This is made clear by meals at Café Milano where then-Vice President Joe Biden dined with oligarchs from around the world who had sent money to his son.

‘It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings and allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Biden family while he was Vice President of the United States. The House Oversight Committee will continue to follow the money trail and obtain witness testimony to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Bidens, President Biden is compromised or corrupt, and our national security is threatened.’

Russian soldiers will be ‘shaking with fear’ at the UK’s decision to supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles amid Kyiv‘s upcoming counteroffensive, a retired US Army Colonel said today. 

Gian Gentile, who served two tours in Iraq, said the deadly missiles may be catastrophic for Russia‘s war efforts as they will allow Ukrainian troops to hit Russian soldiers and command centres deep into Moscow-held territory in eastern Ukraine.

Gentile, the associate director of think tank RAND’s Arroyo Centre in the US, said the delivery of Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine will have a huge psychological impact on Russian soldiers, whose levels of morale are already at ‘rock bottom’ amid heavy losses on the battlefield.

In the face of the Storm Shadow missiles, US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems and armoured fighting vehicles that can destroy tanks, Russian troops will be ‘shaking in their boots’ with fear ahead of Ukraine’s upcoming counteroffensive, Gentile said.

‘Discounting all of the bluff and bravado of Russian political leadership and senior generals who are far, far away from the front line, the Russian troops fighting there will be shaking in their boots about the prospect of this likely upcoming counteroffensive,’ Gentile told MailOnline.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, 197,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, according to Kyiv’s estimates. And Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive could prove deadly for thousands more – especially with the weapons supplied by Western allies including the UK and US.

Yesterday, UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace confirmed that Britain is sending the Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, a decision that prompted a furious response from the Kremlin.

‘We see this decision as an extremely hostile step from London, aimed at further pumping weapons into Ukraine and leading to a serious escalation of the situation,’ Russia’s foreign ministry said on Friday. 

Gentile, also a senior historian at RAND, said the move to provide the weapons is significant for Ukraine’s counteroffensive. 

The Storm Shadow missiles, which have a firing range of more than 155 miles, will give the Ukrainian troops the ability to strike ‘high-end targets like command and control nodes, logistic supply points, and potentially troop concentration areas deep in Russian held territory in Ukraine,’ Gentile said.

The retired colonel said this is ‘significant’ as it extends the striking range of US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems currently in use and frees up the HIMARs for other missions.

He pointed to how, in the past, if Ukrainian troops had wanted to strike a Russian logistics base in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, they would have to move the HIMARS very close to the embattled city. 

‘But now, with the Storm Shadow cruise missiles, they have the capability to strike this kind of target but from a distance,’ Gentile said.

‘This is a big deal. It will help Ukraine and it will further complicate Russian defensive measures as they will now have two longer range strike missiles to worry about and defend against.’

Gentile added: ‘And let’s not forget the psychological effect the introduction of the Storm Shadow cruise missile can have on the Russian military in Ukraine whose levels of morale are at rock bottom.’

The Storm Shadow is an air-launched long-range missile, designed for attacks against high-value targets such as hardened bunkers and key infrastructure. 

The missile, jointly developed by the UK and France, has a firing range of more than 155 miles (250km) which means Kyiv would be able to strike deep into Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine where the fiercest battles are ongoing.

Dr Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the think tank Henry Jackson Society, told MailOnline: ‘Providing Ukraine with Storm Shadow Missiles gives Kyiv the long-range striking capabilities it needs in advance of a highly anticipated rise in the Russian offensive.

‘The precision-guided weapons would allow Ukraine to strike targets anywhere in the country. 

‘This is a critical kit and an essential boost in our support allowing Ukrainian forces to reach behind enemy lines and giving them the best chance of defending themselves against Putin’s aggression.’

Announcing the decision to supply Ukraine with the Storm Shadow missiles, Wallace told the Houses of Parliament yesterday: ‘The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality, especially with the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, which is against international law. 

‘Ukraine has a right to be able to defend itself.’

Britain has received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles would be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia, multiple senior Western officials said. 

Wallace said the missiles would be used to push back Russian forces in ‘Ukrainian sovereign territory’, while adding that the UK’s support for Ukraine is ‘responsible, calibrated, coordinated and agile’.

‘We simply will not stand back while Russia kills civilians,’ Wallace said.

Wallace did not say how many cruise missiles were being sent to Ukraine, but said they are ‘now going into or are in the country itself’. 

Britain and other Western countries have scaled up their military aid for Ukraine this year, with Britain saying in January it would send 14 of its main Challenger 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, a pledge that was followed by other nations including the United States and Germany.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the Munich Security Conference in February that Britain would be the first country to provide Ukraine with longer range weapons. 

The United States said in February it would provide the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), which has a range of about 151 km.

The war in Ukraine is at a turning point. Kyiv is expected to unleash its new counteroffensive after six months of keeping its forces on the defensive, while Russia mounted a huge winter offensive that failed to capture significant territory.

Moscow’s main target for months has been Bakhmut, which it has come close to capturing but not quite taken in what would be its sole prize after months of the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two. 

Kyiv says it has pushed Russian forces back over the past two days near Bakhmut in small-scale local assaults, but a counteroffensive involving tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of new Western tanks has yet to begin.

Today, the chief of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted that Ukrainian forces have counter-attacked Russian positions around Bakhmut – as the warlord mocked Kremlin defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

‘The situation on the flanks is shaping up according to the worst predicted scenario,’ Prigozhin said, signalling fresh misery for Putin‘s troops.  

‘Those territories, which were taken with the blood and lives of our comrades-in-arms for many months, every day, by tens or hundreds of metres are now being thrown almost without a fight by those [Russian army soldiers] who are supposed to hold our flanks.’

Prigozhin then directly addressed the long-suffering Shoigu.

‘Given your super long experience, please can you come to Bakhmut?’ he asked sarcastically, poking fun at the defence minister’s civilian background in engineering.

President Volodymyr Zelensky sought to manage expectations around the pushback in Bakhmut, telling reporters the long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive was yet to begin in earnest and declaring: ‘We still need a bit more time.’

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maylar added later Friday: ‘The enemy has suffered great losses of manpower. Our defence forces advanced two kilometres (around one mile) near Bakhmut. We did not lose a single position in Bakhmut this week.’ 

Moscow has since denied the reports of Ukrainian counter-offensives in Bakhmut and said the frontline is under control.

‘Statements circulated by individual Telegram channels about ”defence breakthroughs” that took place in different areas along the line of military contact do not correspond to reality,’ the Russian defence ministry said in a Telegram post.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov meanwhile told Russian news service TASS that the military operation in the east of Ukraine was ‘very difficult’ but ‘certain goals have been achieved’. 

Ukrainian forces have been training a new contingent of forces and stockpiling Western-supplied munitions and hardware that analysts say will be key to reclaiming territory captured by Russia.

The timing of Kyiv’s effort to claw back ground in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, remains a question.

Russia today threatened Britain with ‘an adequate response from our military’ after the UK agreed to supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow long-range missiles.

The missiles, which cost about £2.2million, will allow Ukraine to hit Russian troops and logistics hubs deep behind the front line in a major blow to Vladimir Putin. 

Britain had received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles would be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia, multiple senior Western officials said.

Ukraine has been asking for months for long-range missiles, but support provided by Britain and other allies such as the United States has previously been limited to shorter range weapons.

But UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace today confirmed that Britain is sending the Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, a decision that prompted a furious response from the Kremlin.

‘The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality especially with the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, which is against international law,’ Wallace told the House of Commons. ‘Ukraine has a right to be able to defend itself.’

Wallace said the missiles would be used to push back Russian forces in ‘Ukrainian sovereign territory’, while adding that the UK’s support for Ukraine is ‘responsible, calibrated, coordinated and agile’.

‘We simply will not stand back while Russia kills civilians,’ Wallace said.

Wallace did not say how many cruise missiles were being sent to Ukraine, but said they are ‘now going into or are in the country itself’.  

Earlier, a Western official had told CNN about the decision to supply Ukraine with the missiles, saying: ‘The UK has previously said that it will supply Ukraine with long-range weapons, this will now include a number of Storm Shadow missiles.

‘The British government has been clear that this is only in response to Russia’s deliberate targeting of civilian national infrastructure and is a proportionate response.’ 

The Kremlin said the reports would require ‘an adequate response from our military’.

The Storm Shadow is an air-launched long-range missile, designed for attacks against high value targets such as hardened bunkers and key infrastructure.

The missiles, jointly developed by the UK and France, has a firing range of more than 155 miles (250km) which means Kyiv would be able to strike deep into Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine where the fiercest battles are ongoing.

The missile is ‘a real game changer from a range perspective,’ a senior US military official said. At the moment, Ukraine’s current maximum range on US-provided weapons is around 49 miles.

The UK’s decision to supply the missiles comes as Wallace and the foreign minister James Cleverly have been in the United States for talks on supporting Ukraine in recent weeks.

Britain and other Western countries have scaled up their military aid for Ukraine this year, with Britain saying in January it would send 14 of its main Challenger 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, a pledge that was followed by other nations including the United States and Germany.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the Munich Security Conference in February that Britain would be the first country to provide Ukraine with longer range weapons.

The United States said in February it would provide the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), which has a range of about 151 km.

Asked on Tuesday about supplying long range missiles, Cleverly declined to detail specific plans but he said it was important to keep looking at ways to ‘enhance and speed up the support we give to Ukraine’.

The war in Ukraine is at a turning point, with Kyiv expected to unleash its new counteroffensive after six months of keeping its forces on the defensive, while Russia mounted a huge winter offensive that failed to capture significant territory.

Moscow’s main target for months has been the small eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which it has come close to capturing but not quite taken in what would be its sole prize after months of the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

Kyiv says it has pushed Russian forces back over the past two days near Bakhmut in small-scale local assaults, but a counteroffensive involving tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of new Western tanks has yet to begin.  

‘We still need a bit more time,’ President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.

Ukrainian forces had already received enough equipment from Western allies for their campaign, but were waiting for the full complement to arrive to reduce casualties, Zelensky said.

‘With [what we have] we can go forward and be successful,’ he said. ‘But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.’

Ukrainian forces have been training a new contingent of forces and stockpiling Western-supplied munitions and hardware that analysts say will be key to reclaiming territory captured by Russia.

The timing of Kyiv’s effort to claw back ground in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, remains a question.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said late last month that Kyiv’s preparations were ‘coming to an end’ and his forces were ready ‘in a global sense’.

But he also said that Abrams tanks promised by the US would not be able to take part in the offensive because they would not arrive in Ukraine until the end of this year.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin meanwhile accused Zelensky of being ‘dishonest’ in his BBC interview saying that Ukraine’s counter-offensive ‘is in full swing’. 

A senior Ukrainian military official said earlier this week that Russian forces had dropped back from some areas near Bakhmut after limited counter-attacks by Kyiv’s forces around the eastern city. 

Prigozhin, whose forces are on the front line of the battle for Bakhmut, admitted that some Ukrainian units were successfully breaking through in some areas.

‘The Ukrainian army’s plan is in action… All the units which have been trained, which have received weapons, tanks and everything they need are already fully engaged,’ he said.

Prigozhin is involved in a long-running dispute with Russian military chiefs over ammunition supplies for his fighters and he has threatened to pull them out of Bakhmut.

The mercenary force chief appeared to brand Putin a ‘complete a**hole’ and mock him as a ‘happy grandfather’ in a scathing video yesterday. 

Prigozhin trashed his troops’ lack of ammunition and threatened to strangle those who are preventing shells from reaching the frontline.

‘They’re collecting [artillery shells] in warehouses – why, no one knows.

‘Instead of spending a shell to kill the enemy and save the lives of our soldiers, they let our soldiers die – and the ‘happy grandfather’ thinks this is good for him.

‘If he turns out to be right, then God bless everybody… but how will we win the war, if, by chance – and I’m just speculating – it turns out that this grandfather is a complete a**hole?

Prigozhin concluded: ‘The shells give freedom. And if they don’t give freedom with the shells… if they keep holding onto them then first we need to shove it up their a*** and then throw them in jail.’

Though the Wagner chief did not refer to Putin by name, he has never shied away from criticising other senior Russian defence figures – and Putin is often referred to as ‘grandfather’ or even ‘the bunker grandfather’ in opposition circles, suggesting his rant was almost certainly aimed at the President.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia has resumed air strikes on Ukraine over the past two weeks after a lull of nearly two months. Moscow says Ukraine has used drones to strike occupied areas and Russian territory near the border. 

Russian politicians and commentators in turn warned the Storm Shadow missiles could be used to launch attacks on targets in Russia, and lead to an escalation of the war in Ukraine. 

War hawk Colonel Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of Russia’s National Defence magazine and a leading military TV propagandist, suggested the Ukrainian government would break his promises to Britain by targeting Russian cities. 

‘Do not have any illusions – the West is ready to supply Ukraine with everything except nuclear weapons, and Kiev will not keep its promises and will use these missiles to strike Russian cities,’ Mr Korotchenko said. 

Vadim Kozyulin, of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, said Britain’s decision to supply Ukraine with the weaponry marked a ‘new round of escalation on the part of the Western countries.’

He said it is no surprise that the UK had led the supply of the Storm Shadow missiles, as he claimed Britain has ‘historically’ been ‘one of the most Russophobic countries, which always tries to be one step ahead of other ‘partners’ in activities against Moscow.’

Mr Kozyulin argued that while Kiev has vowed not to attack targets outside Ukraine’s territorial borders, the missiles may be used to hit Crimea, which was annexed by the Russian Federation in March 2014. 

‘Crimea and the new regions of the Russian Federation are recognised by Western countries as lands of Ukraine,’ he said. ‘Therefore, I think the [Ukrainian army] will attack these very regions.’ 

‘Ukraine is indeed being prepared for a counter-attack and strikes on Crimea, and we need to take this seriously,’ Mr Kozyulin added. 

Commentators in Russia were split as the extent the missiles pose a threat, as they noted Russia’s air defences had previously successfully intercepted Storm Shadow missiles in Syria. 

Dr Konstantin Sivkov, deputy president of Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, said: ‘Storm Shadow poses a serious threat to our army and the country, as this missile can go around the air defence zone and the actions of long-range radar aircraft.’

Diplomacy expert Mr Kozyulin said it ‘is not very clear yet’ the extent to which Ukraine will be able to ‘successfully’ use the Storm Shadow missiles. 

Military expert Yury Knutov said Russia’s will ‘adapt’ to ‘neutralise completely the actions of these strike weapons.’ He also claimed the Storm Shadow missiles are ‘nothing new’ as he described them as ‘an analogue of the Tomahawk cruise missiles, but with a much shorter range’ 

Dmitry Belik, an MP for occupied Sevastopol, said Storm Shadow would not be a ‘miracle weapon’ for Ukraine, as he claimed Russia is ‘strengthening its shield and, of course, is preparing a longer-range response capability.’