The Man Who Works for Two Armies - How Henri Proglio Counts Putin’s Millions and Inspects Kyiv’s Weapons

Weapons There are stories that only the 21st century can write - stories in which absurdity is no longer the exception, but the system. The story of Henri Édouard Proglio is one of them. While France delivers weapons to Ukraine, while Dassault fighter jets defend Kharkiv, it is precisely a man at the control center of the French arms industry who has planted his second foothold deep in the structures of the Kremlin. Not as a marginal figure. But as a central administrator. Henri Proglio is a member of the board of Dassault Aviation, chairman of the audit committee, responsible for risk control and transparency. He oversees supply chains, reviews contracts, approves structures. At the same time, he is part of the management of ABR Management - that structure which manages Russian assets in the darkroom of the Putin system. Proglio sits there side by side with Kirill Kovalchuk, the nephew of Putin’s longtime financial confidant Yuri Kovalchuk, and with Mikhail Klishin, director of Bank Rossiya - both on sanctions lists of the US, the EU, the UK, and Canada. Henri Proglio: not. This trio, officially documented and unchanged since the start of the war, is no coincidence, but function. ABR Management manages stakes in Bank Rossiya, the Kremlin-affiliated insurer SOGAZ, and the media holding NMG - all building blocks of the network that not only secures Putin’s power, but also funds it. From 2022 to 2024, the management team - including Proglio - received over 110 million rubles in compensation. In the language of accounting: “performance fees.” In the language of reality: fees for silence at the right moment.

In parallel, Proglio’s own companies continue to operate: Henri Proglio Consulting, AP Energy Advisory, and Mezhproject remain active in the Russian commercial register. Between 2022 and 2024, they generated a total of 633 million rubles in revenue - more than 7.6 million dollars. What is remarkable is not only the extent of these earnings, but their structure: in several cases, more than 90 percent of the revenue came from “other income,” which was then almost entirely converted into “administrative expenses.” In other words: money that came in - and immediately disappeared. This becomes particularly sensitive when one knows that AP Energy Advisory alone took in 46.1 million rubles in the crisis year 2024 - and recorded 45.2 million of that as “administrative expenses.” During the same period, expenditures of the Akkuyu energy project in Turkey were also processed through these structures, a nuclear power plant under the supervision of Rosatom - where Proglio also sits on the board. A project fully financed by Russia, showing Proglio as a link between French technology and Russian state capital. All of this takes place while Proglio continues to travel regularly to Moscow. Official documents confirm stays even after February 24, 2022, including a trip in June 2025 - in the midst of the war, in the middle of the international sanctions regime. And while Paris condemns Russian aggression in diplomatic statements, the man who co-decides on military contracts with Ukraine leaves French soil for Moscow undisturbed. A consigliere who has the ear of power in both systems.

That he has not long since been removed is a scandal foretold. Because Proglio is not on the sidelines - he is the man at the center. For years, he was CEO of energy giant EDF, later chairman of Thales, and today deeply embedded in the supervisory bodies of Dassault Aviation. The French state holds shares in both corporations, Ukraine is among the clients. And Proglio? Sits on the bridge and controls the course - even when that course leads directly through Putin’s shadow realm. Anyone who wants to understand how political morality collapses does not need to look to Moscow. One only needs to observe how a man with open ties to a sanctioned Russian network is still entrusted with auditing defense projects in France to this day. The question is no longer whether this is a conflict of interest. But how many layers must be placed over it so that it is no longer visible. France may support Ukraine militarily. Henri Proglio supports - demonstrably, systematically, unrestrained - the Kremlin. The language of democracy knows only one word for this: untenable.

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