Renat Karchaa, one of the Russian officials who accompanied the delegation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Zaporizhia NPP, has an interesting story before becoming a “nuclear man”, his professional path raises many questions.

Investigative journalists from Mediazona, a Russian website that, like the better-known Meduza, operates outside the country to avoid censorship imposed by Moscow authorities, reconstructed Karchaa’s biography after he explained to IAEA officials in slaughterhouse that “when they fall, the projectiles make a 180-degree rotation”, and therefore it seems that only the Russians fired, not the Ukrainian armed forces.

A video of a bald man wearing sunglasses and a blue suit giving nonsensical explanations to international experts has gone viral on social media.

Russian state media call him a “nuclear expert” and adviser to the head of Rosatom, although contradictory and fragmentary references in public sources give as much reason to consider Karchaa a primatologist from Sukhumi, a political consultant from Pskov, or an official from Murmansk.

A primatologist born in Ufa became a politician in Abkhazia

Apparently, recently Renat Karchaa has become famous as a “nuclear man”. In 2014, Russian journalists introduced him as an “expert from the North Caucasus and Abkhazia” when he talked about the political situation in the region on the Dozhdi TV channel, also known as “Dozhd TV”.

The Moscow authorities banned this TV channel, which was considered the last independent one in Russia, on March 1, a week after the start of the “special operation” in Ukraine.

In the biographical information about Karchaa on the Abkhazia-Inform website, it is stated that he was born on July 17, 1966 in Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia, graduated from school with a gold medal, and served in the Soviet army in Tallinn. .

In the late 1980s, Karchaa moved to Abkhazia in the Caucasus region, where he received a degree in biology and geography from the state university of the region, which became part of Georgia immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At the age of 25, Karchaa became the youngest member of the first Abkhaz parliament. During this period, in addition to his parliamentary activities, he also held the position of director of the Research Institute of Primatology and Experimental Therapy, which conducted research on monkeys from a well-known farm in Sukhum, the largest city and capital of Abkhazia. .

PHOTO: Dmytro Deshevych / Alamy / Profimedia Images

Then Renat Karchaa’s career took him to the far north of Russia

In 1994, the “scientist” who became a “political technologist” was accused of embezzling the property of the Research Institute, the most serious charge being that he sold its scientific archive. Commenting on the allegations years later, Karchaa said “the old story brings a smile to his face”.

10 years later, he will be involved in another criminal case, this time for a fatal road accident. In the meantime, he arrived from Abkhazia in the city of Murmansk in the Russian Arctic zone, where he headed the representation of the region under the federal government in Moscow.

Russian investigative journalists could not find out how Karchaa got from a political and scientific career in the Caucasus to the far north of Russia.

But Izvestia, Russia’s oldest daily newspaper, reported after the accident that the official hit a 16-year-old boy with his car, who died on impact. The accident happened in the town of Pustoshka, Pskov region, where Karchaa came to give advice on the upcoming regional governor elections.

As “Izvestia” reports, the official fled from the scene of the accident, but was detained according to eyewitnesses who remember the number of the car he was driving.

Commenting on the incident, the deputy head of the investigative department of the State Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Pskov region, Valery Ostobaev, said that the driver was released on bail, and whether he could have avoided the collision should be determined by the investigation.

“At the moment, he has not yet been charged, but everything is moving towards that,” said Ostobaev, quoted by “Izvestia”. The Russian newspaper also wrote that the Russian official faces up to five years in prison. However, Mediazona journalists could not find a reference to a possible trial in the court archives of the Russian state.

FSB headquarters in Moscow (PHOTO: Dreamstime.com)

A career path worthy of an FSB officer

It is known that in 2014 Karchaa returned to Abkhazia, where he was appointed as an observer of the Central Committee of Russia. He returned to the attention of the Russian media after, in August of the same year, during the presidential election campaign in Abkhazia, he was attacked during a fight between supporters of different candidates, which took place near the headquarters of the election commission.

A local newspaper reported that Carcaa, now described as a “political technologist”, was hospitalized with serious injuries.

He was later appointed as an adviser to the president of Abkhazia, leading disinformation expert Maria Avdeeva to call him a “sociologist” on Friday after he accompanied an IAEA team to Zaporizhzhia. The Russian press presented him as a “nuclear man”. At the same time, Karchaa was dismissed from the post of presidential adviser last January.

Ukraine imposed sanctions against Karchaa and another 700 individuals and legal entities associated with the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom, following the visit of international experts to Zaporizhzhia.

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