Paradise Cyprus, where people enjoy peace, quiet, and the gentle sea, has long been turned by Russian special services into their base for infiltrating Europe.
The ease of obtaining residence permits and citizenship, as well as attractive business conditions, have made the island a place where the «dirty» money of the Russian elite gains legitimacy, and Russian special services officers settle in houses with sea views.
One of them is Yuri Vasilyevich Spiridonov, a man whose career began in intelligence, continued in the Kremlin, and ended on the warm beaches of Coral Bay. A former officer of the Foreign Intelligence Service, he was President Vladimir Putin’s bodyguard and head of the mysterious investment agency Invest in Russia. His story is a textbook on the structure of modern Russia: power, espionage, corruption, and money laundering have merged into a single, self-perpetuating system.
Spiridonov gradually moved from espionage abroad to managing Putin’s money in Cyprus.
Yuri Vasilyevich Spiridonov was born on July 4, 1969. In the 1990s, during the chaos following the collapse of the USSR, he served in the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) under the leadership of Yevgeny Primakov, the future head of the Russian government and foreign minister.
Spiridonov specialized in operations in Europe and the Middle East: espionage, sabotage, and recruitment of agents. This was a period when Russian intelligence was actively rebuilding its influence after the collapse of the USSR.
In the late 1990s, he transferred to the Federal Security Service (FSO). Spiridonov guarded top officials, including Primakov and Vladimir Putin. His duties included not only physical protection, but also accompanying the president on trips, monitoring «special guests» at residences such as Novo-Ogaryovo, and meeting and guarding foreign official delegations.
Among his close friends, Yuri Spiridonov likes to boast about his «exploits» in intelligence and during his service in the FSO. He especially likes to talk about how he drove US President Bill Clinton around Moscow at night and how curiously the American president looked at the Russian capital from the car window. Or how he arranged «meetings» between Putin and young women, many of whom later made careers in business and television.
Vladimir Putin’s habit of promoting his bodyguards to key government positions is well known. Spiridonov is one example of this personnel policy.
On February 25, 2015, Spiridonov attended a meeting between Putin and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades in Moscow. There, already as president of the Russian state investment agency Invest in Russia, he signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Cypriot investment promotion agency headed by Christodoulos Angastiniotis.
As of 2025, Spiridonov remains the head of the agency.
The Russian state investment agency Invest in Russia positions itself as a tool for attracting foreign investment. Created in 2013, it supposedly helps Western companies enter the Russian market. In reality, the agency is a tool for laundering money for Putin and his associates. Money is taken out of Russia, passed through a network of local companies, laundered, stripped of its «Russian» trace, and then returned to Russia as supposedly «foreign investment.» This scheme allows the origin of the money to be concealed while creating the illusion of international business confidence in the Russian economy.
For some inexplicable reason, sanctions for the large-scale invasion of Ukraine did not affect the agency and did not stop its activities.
There is evidence that Invest in Russia and its affiliated structures are circumventing sanctions to finance the purchase of prohibited equipment for sanctioned Russian companies, such as Rostec and Russian Railways, as well as for the Russian military-industrial complex.
Spiridonov’s wife, Elena Kulik, has Cypriot citizenship, obtained on grounds that remain unclear. She is the daughter of KGB-FSB Colonel Viktor Ivanovich Kulik. Viktor Kulik was born in Berdyansk in 1950. After serving in the KGB-FSB, he worked in the Russian presidential administration under Vladimir Kozhin and in the Kremlin commandant’s office.
Elena Kulik is second from the left, Yuri Spiridonov is third from the left, and Viktor Kulik is on the far right.
The daughter of Yuri and Elena Spiridonov, as is often the case in families of Russian patriots and officials from Putin’s inner circle, is studying in England.
The family settled in the prestigious Coral Bay neighborhood of Peyia, where villas cost millions of euros. Near their home is a pub formerly known as O’Solomon. Several years ago, Spiridonov bought it, and now it is called Legends Lounge Bar.
It is a favorite gathering place for members of the Russian elite who have settled in the Coral Bay area: corrupt officials, Kremlin businessmen with wives who are former escorts, secret service officers, gangsters, crypto-crooks, and artists. The establishment is run by Spiridonov’s father-in-law, Viktor Kulik. Spiridonov himself likes to go there and talk with his friends about the «greatness of Russia,» the «genius of Putin,» and the methods he believes should be used to «destroy the West and the European Union.»
Yuri Spiridonov on Coral Bay beach