“Operates during wartime” is displayed in large red letters on the website of the online auto parts store fenox.com.ua. Shipping is available to Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Central Asia. Russia is also among the proposed destinations. The online retailer deals in Fenox Automotive Components parts. This manufacturer is part of the Fenox Global Group, an international corporation. We discovered that at least one of its branches supplies products to Russian plants that manufacture military equipment.

Deliveries to Russian plants

According to the owner, Fenox holding’s companies acquired a military license before the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They produced parts for small arms and artillery weapons and cooperated with the Belarusian and Russian military-industrial complexes. When it comes to the Belarusian MIC, axles and suspension components were produced for the Cayman armored vehicle, while a transmission was manufactured for the Aurus Senat as part of Russia’s Kortezh project. Vladimir Putin often travels in this armored limousine. For example, he used it to drive to the 2018 inauguration ceremony.

According to sources at the BIC, this cooperation did not end after February 24, 2022. The Belarus-based Unitary Enterprise Brake Hydraulics (Unitarnaye pradpryemstva Breik khaidroliks), part of the holding, supplied spare parts to Russian factories that produce military equipment.

From October 2024 to August 2025, Brake Hydraulics supplied OOO MZ Tonar (a limited liability company as defined by the laws of the Russian Federation), which is based in the Russian village of Gubino in the Moscow Region, with brake system parts worth $5,500. In December 2024, the plant bragged on social media about its involvement in occupying Ukrainian territories, referring to the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia as “new territories” and “the largest construction sites in the country.”

The Russian company OOO DS-TEK (a limited liability company as defined by the laws of the Russian Federation) is the general distributor of the Fenox brand in the country. The company also sourced cab-lifting components for various modifications of Ural vehicles from Brake Hydraulics. These include the Ural-4320 and Ural-43206 trucks, which Russia deploys and loses in large quantities at war. From June 2022 to July 2025, the Belarus-based company delivered goods worth $2.7 million to DS-TEK.

In April 2022, the UK and the Council of the European Union imposed sanctions on AO AMZ (a joint-stock company as defined by the laws of the Russian Federation), the third client of Brake Hydraulics. This machine-building plant in Arzamas produces armored personnel carriers that are also in service in Belarus.

From January 2022 to February 2023, Brake Hydraulics supplied the plant with two types of parts. The first four digits in the valve name Zolotnik 5910-3430018 indicate that the part is intended for the GAZ-5910 vehicle. This designation applies to the BTR-82/82A family, which is assembled at the Arzamas plant. Another valve was intended for the prototype BTR-90, which was spotted on the battlefield in Ukraine in 2023. The total value of the supplies is $26,000, and they weigh 216 kilograms. The training manual on armored personnel carrier operation says that the Zolotnik is used in the steering system of the military vehicle. According to the Oryx project’s calculations, the Russian side lost at least 890 vehicles of this version during the 20 months of full-scale invasion.

According to military expert Pavel Luzin, the volume of supplies sent to the Arzamas Machine-Building Plant is not as important as the fact that these deliveries happen. This is part of the supply chain for the production of weapons and military equipment.

“If a company manufactures these parts, it knows who it’s supplying them to. But if it’s a firm that only imitates production in Belarus but actually supplies imported parts, then it’s a scheme to circumvent Western sanctions,” said the expert.

The business structure…

Brake Hydraulics is owned by Tollgate Systems Limited, which is based in the United Kingdom. Until 2015, the name of the UK company was part of the name of its Belarusian subsidiary. The UK company was owned by Danish Nastar Trade Invest ApS until September 2025. [*] [*] [*]

Using such an ownership scheme is one way to hide the true owners from Western regulators and Belarusian authorities. Lev Lvovskiy, economist, suggests that it could be a defense against “state racketeering.”

“Therefore, it’s a common practice for some facilities in Belarus to be owned by legal entities... from Cyprus and the Arab Emirates. These are just straw companies. If a Cypriot legal entity owns a facility, the KGB cannot just summon and demand anything from that entity. That’s it. So it’s a very common solution.”

The official fenox.com website’s behavior also indicates an attempt to hide loose ends. It can be accessed from a Belarusian or Russian IP address. If you try to access the site from Europe, either the page will not open, or you will be redirected to the unresponsive germany.fenox.com. However, there is a German website (fenox-autoteile.de) where European customers can order a part by filling out a form. The site represents Fenox Automotive GmbH, and its beneficiary is Belarusian businessman Vitaliy Arbuzov. He is also the ultimate beneficiary of the aforementioned companies. [*]

...failed to shield against pre-trial detention

In 2025, Vitaliy Arbuzov was ranked 41st on the “Top 100” list by the newspaper Belorusy i rynok. He is perhaps most famous among Belarusians as the former owner of the retail chain Preston, which he sold to the Sosedi chain in 2018.

Arbuzov, a native of Krasnapolle in the Mahilou Region, started his business in 1989 during Perestroika. That venture was what would eventually become Fenox Global Group. Initially, the enterprise produced parts for VAZ automobiles. In 1996, the company purchased German equipment and began manufacturing brake system parts for the in-line assembly of Audi and Volkswagen vehicles.

At the time of publication, according to the company’s website, the Fenox production chain included 12 plants in Belarus, Russia, and Germany. The Belarusian company NVTAA Fenox (a limited liability scientific production enterprise, as defined by the laws of Belarus) owns the Ukrainian company TOV Fenox Avtomotiv Ukr. Fenox’s dealer network extends beyond Russia and Belarus to include cities in European countries such as Germany, Poland, Latvia, and Bulgaria.

At the same time, we have reason to believe that the company’s head is close to the Belarusian authorities. According to documents provided by the Rabochy Rukh initiative, Vitaliy Arbuzov  and Viktor Chevtsov, a “wallet” of Aleksandr Lukashenko, were members of the Belarusian delegation to Venezuela in early 2024. As part of the “close cooperation” between the two governments, the businessmen were to hold business meetings with the Venezuelan side. The Belarusian diplomatic mission requested that the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry provide Chevtsov and Arbuzov with access to the VIP lounge at the Simon Bolívar International Airport near Caracas.

Another experience binds the businessmen together: they have both been inmates at a pre-trial detention center in Belarus. Chevtsov was detained in 2011 on charges of large-scale embezzlement. Arbuzov was arrested in April 2017 on charges of tax evasion. The Department of Financial Investigations estimated the damage caused by the founder of Fenox at 120 million Belarusian rubles, which is approximately $63.45 million. A year later, the state newspaper SB called the company a parasite and complained that the key defendant “did not show any willingness to cooperate with the investigation or repay the damages.” Arbuzov appeared to have understood the message: he began “redressing,” and a month later, he was released from jail.

The motivation is to make money

Despite cooperating with the Russian military-industrial complex, including a sanctioned enterprise, no restrictions were imposed on Vitaliy Arbuzov or his companies. Lev Lvovskiy says that sanctions on companies linked to the Russian military industry will only work if there are measures to enforce compliance with the restrictions.

“When certain sanctions are imposed, some individuals are prompt to find ways around them. The motivation to get around is straightforward: you can make money. However, the motivation to prevent people from circumventing them and to check on everyone often comes too late. The resources allocated for this are insufficient,” said the economist.

“Sanctions are intended to "deprive Russia of funds and supplies for its war machine and bring the Kremlin to the negotiating table,"  while failure to enforce sanctions effectively weakens Ukraine's position, noted Ben Cowdock, senior investigations lead at Transparency International UK, in a comment to BIC. We reached out to him because the parent company, Brake Hydraulics, is registered in the UK.

“UK companies and their subsidiaries should not be providing goods and services to sanctioned Russian factories. This activity raises a number of red flags which should be investigated further by UK authorities,” the expert said.

In response to the BIC's request to the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation, a UK government spokesperson did not provide specific answers about the information we had gathered. However, he assured us that London had "put in place one of the most robust sanctions regimes ever imposed" and that "any breach thereof is a serious offence." The authorities expect all UK businesses to comply with the sanctions.

We sent inquiries to all subjects of the investigation. A representative of the Ukrainian auto parts store replied that the online platform is no longer operational. As of publication time, neither Fenox nor Brake Hydraulics had responded, nor had Vitaliy Arbuzov.