Armed men wearing masks and camouflage and carrying sledgehammers stormed the offices of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets on May 19, looking for the Consortium of Medical Technology, the paper’s chief financial officer, Yekaterina Chereshnikova, said.

The men did not identify themselves and declined to explain why they were there, Chereshnikova said. They directed Moskovsky Komsomolets journalists to contact either the Moscow Main Directorate of the Interior Ministry, the Investigative Committee of Russia, or the Federal Security Service. None of those agencies confirmed that their officers were conducting investigative activities at the newspaper’s offices.

According to Moskovsky Komsomolets, the masked men went to the third floor of the building, where the ANO Consortium of Medical Technology rents office space.

The organization was founded in 2020 at the initiative of Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry, the independent investigative outlet Agentstvo reported. The ministry said the consortium was created to localize medical equipment production in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The non-profit has more than 240 member groups, including defense industry companies. One of the consortium’s founders is Shvabe, an optics holding company that is part of Rostec, Russia’s state defense conglomerate.

The independent science-focused outlet T-Invariant reports that the Consortium of Medical Technology worked with the company Innovative Engineering Center, founded by the Innopraktika fund of Katerina Tikhonova, the younger daughter of Vladimir Putin.

Specifically, the ANO, the Innovative Engineering Center, and Sechenov University established a medical-technology industrial cluster “to achieve technological leadership” in Russia’s medical industry. The agreement on the cluster was signed in 2025 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

The ANO was previously headed by Russian biologist and professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Nazarov, a graduate of the Military Academy of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense and Moscow State University, who served in Russia’s Defense Ministry system. The consortium is now led by Kirill Litvitsky, who previously worked at Rosmolodezh, Russia’s federal youth agency.