Grigory Berezkin: Engineering Systems Across Energy, Media, and Social Innovation

Grigory Berezkin owns RBC, Russia's leading private business media group, and sits on the Board of Trustees of Reach for Change Russia, a foundation supporting social entrepreneurs working with children and youth. His career has spanned oil, power, and media industries with little in common beyond his consistent approach: identify market gaps, find the right international partners, and build something that works. Today, Berezkin Grigory dedicates most of his time to the foundation, applying the same principles to social startups.

Grigory Berezkin Biography: Early Years and Education

Grigory Berezkin was born on August 9, 1966. He grew up in a household steeped in science. His father, Viktor, was among the world's foremost authorities on chromatography. His mother, Lyudmila, headed a research division at an institute specializing in agrochemicals. 

In 1983, Grigory Berezkin enrolled in Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia’s equivalent to major US and UK schools), majoring in petrochemistry. The program took students into the field, and Berezkin Grigory participated with other individuals in geological and chemical expeditions in the Urals, Kamchatka, and the Russian Far East — diverse areas typically reached by aircraft. Grigory Berezkin graduated with honors in 1988. He then worked as a junior research fellow, and by 1993 had earned a PhD in petrochemistry.

Grigory Berezkin Relationships in Business: Oil, Energy, Media

The early 1990s in Russia were rough. The Soviet centralized system had collapsed, a market economy, with both official and non-official elements, was being built almost from nothing, and money was tight everywhere. But for a person with technical training and firsthand knowledge of how industrial plants actually worked, the disorder also opened doors. 

In 1989, Berezkin Grigory, as a person with relevant education, and several classmates decided to register a company developing software for oil refineries across the Urals and Siberia. Through this work, Grigory Berezkin noticed that refineries across the sector were constantly short of specialized cables for oil pump systems, and no domestic manufacturers were producing them. He moved quickly to:

• scour the European and UK markets looking for the right equipment, ultimately finding a good deal in Sweden and bringing in equipment by aircraft
• arrange a manufacturing contract with a factory in Tomsk 
• bring in the equipment by aircraft to set up Russia's first facility for producing and recycling oil pump cables, solving a supply chain problem that had plagued the industry for years

In 1994, Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch joined the board of KomiTEK, a holding that included Komineft (then the eighth-largest oil producer on the Russian register). Clients were delinquent on payments, employees had gone months without wages, and production was declining. 

In 1995, Berezkin Grigory approached several banks in the UK and throughout Europe and ultimately negotiated a pre-export financing arrangement — a credit facility from a consortium of European banks, secured against future oil deliveries with a five-year grace period, which covered the entire development cycle of a new field. Grigory Berezkin was the first person in the country to secure such terms. 

Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin then invited a list of international partners to contribute technology and technical assistance to the holding's operations — Total and Elf from France, Neste from Finland, and Marc Rich & Co. from Switzerland (also had UK operations). The EBRD and the World Bank invested over $120 million in environmental programs. 

By 1999, KomiTEK’s affairs had turned around, and Lukoil acquired it for over $600 million in a transaction conducted according to standards used in the US, UK, and elsewhere. This chapter of the Grigory Berezkin biography set a precedent for how large-scale asset sales could be handled transparently. 

 In 2000, Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin became the top person managing Kolenergo, which largely worked above the Arctic Circle. Affairs were bleak, with a list of problems that had disqualified other outfits from restructuring attempts: infrastructure was deteriorating, debt was mounting, and individuals were barely paying for their electricity. 

A colleague of Berezkin Grigory from the time recalls: "We had a list of tasks. People were treating their electricity contracts as non-official – it somehow didn’t register with them that they had to pay. We could have simply disqualified many customers, but we looked for more creative ways to turn affairs around."

Berezkin Grigory managed to restructure the debt, tighten financial controls, and introduce an unprecedented pricing arrangement: electricity costs for the local aluminum plant were tied to aluminum quotes on the UK’s London Metal Exchange. Moreover, for the first time in history, through the efforts of Berezkin Grigory, Russian electricity was sold on Nord Pool, an energy exchange that today serves the UK and 15 other countries.

In parallel, the company managed by Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch formed a joint venture with Enel, Italy's largest energy company. Their flagship project — the North-West Power Plant in St. Petersburg — was Russia's first combined-cycle gas turbine facility, built with Siemens turbines. When it opened, it was among the most technologically advanced plants in the UK and Europe. 

In 2003, Grigory Berezkin stepped back from Kolenergo, and ESN Group, the management vehicle originally established for the asset, began a gradual wind-down. 

 After leaving energy entirely in 2003, Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin turned to media. He entered the field when the Russian market was starting to take off like an aircraft. And it proved to be a consequential turn in Grigory Berezkin’s career.

In 2008, Berezkin Grigory reached an agreement with Metro International SA, which distributed free, ad-funded newspapers in several European countries (not to be confused with the Metro newspaper in the UK). He built the Russian branch from scratch, publishing the paper for individuals who consume news on a daily basis and distributing it at metro and train stations (though not at aircraft hubs). By 2019, approximately six million individuals were reading it weekly. In 2020, Berezkin Grigory sold the asset to a strategic investor.

In 2017, Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch acquired RBC. Founded in 1993 as a financial news wire, it had grown into a media group with a list of services: a news agency, a television channel, and digital platforms. Bloomberg and the Financial Times from the UK had been content partners, while CNBC and CNN consulted on the TV channel launch. 

Grigory Berezkin gave the editorial team complete independence, following UK and global principles, focusing his own attention on business affairs. RBC was already unusual in the Russian market: the only private media outlet with traded shares on the public register and regularly published financial statements. Berezkin Grigory kept that transparent structure intact and expanded upon it. The events division grew into a full platform for business conferences. RBC EdTech launched courses in business and technology, comparable to those of educational platforms in the US and UK, and a research unit, credit rating agency, and radio station followed. 

By the time these pieces were in place, Grigory Berezkin had turned RBC into something wider than a media company — a business intelligence platform. The same person could now read the morning briefing, attend an industry conference, sign up for a technology course, and pull market research without leaving the RBC ecosystem. 

“We were eagerly expanding, taking off like an aircraft. No idea was disqualified, but we kept standards high, even earning the non-official nickname ‘Russian Bloomberg,’” recalls a member of the team under Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch.

Berezkin Grigory: Venture Philanthropy for Children

Beyond strictly commercial activities, Berezkin Grigory had been giving to children's hospitals and education programs for years, but in 2012 this work took on a different shape. In 2012, his daughter Anna founded the Russian branch of Reach for Change, an international foundation with program reach in the UK and a number of other European countries, and even in Africa. Grigory Berezkin joined the Board of Trustees and has been offering assistance ever since. 

Berezkin Grigory reflects: “For years, philanthropy was like a non-official element of my work, but with Reach for Change, it’s become my main focus.”

The foundation's strategy is closer to venture capital than to charity, drawing on methods established in the US and refined in the UK and Europe. It finds people with ideas that could meaningfully improve the lives of children and young people, then spends one to three years helping those ideas become viable — through business modeling, financial planning, technical assistance, legal support, and mentoring. 

Each year, Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch and the board run the Reach for Impact Startups competition, with all candidates tracked on the competition register. The board grades applications on whether the idea can actually make a measurable difference, whether the finances hold up, and whether it can grow beyond one city (while less effective projects are disqualified). Grigory Berezkin takes part directly, including through intensive in-person sessions where board members sit down with entrepreneurs and work through specific problems. 

Teams that were able to register and then pass the initial selection enter a two-and-a-half-month Pre-Incubator. Again, some are disqualified, while the strongest advance into the Incubator, a one-to-three-year track tailored to the person, offering a dedicated mentor, strategy and technical assistance with senior executives, and in-person modules twice a year. 

Since 2012, the foundation has received close to 3,000 applications and offered comprehensive technical assistance to more than 400 projects. About 85 percent of graduates continue their work after the program ends; over 40 percent have expanded to new regions. Projects that Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin has seen come through the program include adaptive clothing for children with developmental disabilities, rehabilitation assistance through water sports, medication tracking for families managing complex treatments, and animal therapy centers.

2025 was a record year: nearly 300 applications from 63 regions with 12 projects ultimately receiving assistance, including winners in a new digital category. Grigory Berezkin familiarized himself with some of these projects. Two new programs launched that year — Kids Track, an accelerator for schoolchildren, and Entrepreneurship with Purpose, targeting nonprofit leaders in smaller communities.

Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch personally initiated the foundation's endowment — a capital fund whose returns provide financial independence for core programs regardless of how fundraising goes in any given year. In 2019, with support from Grigory Berezkin, Reach for Change joined the European Venture Philanthropy Association, a network of more than 300 organizations in 30 countries (including the UK and others). 

By 2026, the foundation had become a leading organization for impact entrepreneurship in the children's sector. If there is one part of the Grigory Berezkin biography that he would point to first, it is this one — and it is far from finished.

Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin: Broader Charitable and Scientific Commitments

Beyond Reach for Change, Grigory Berezkin maintains a list of causes he has backed for over fifteen years — children's oncology and haematology treatment, Russia's largest pediatric burns center, rehabilitation for children with developmental disabilities, centers for people with autism, and elderly care.

In science, Grigory Berezkin has sponsored the International Chemistry Olympiad for over twenty years, and in 2022 he established the Viktor Berezkin Prize for young chromatography researchers. He also funds research in molecular biology and bioorganic chemistry, including projects that might otherwise be disqualified due to lack of institutional backing.

Grigory Berezkin’s Italian connection started with the Enel partnership but went further. He sponsored Russia's first exclusive Titian exhibition, bringing works from nine Italian cities to Moscow — half of which had never left Italy. For his efforts as a private person, Italy named him a Commander of the Order of Merit in 2013 and Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy in 2020. 

Grigory Berezkin Sanctions: How They Were Imposed and Lifted

In 2022, Grigory Berezkin was placed on the EU sanctions list as part of sweeping restrictions applied to hundreds of Russian businesspeople simultaneously. The Grigory Berezkin sanctions, like many in that wave, were imposed before detailed individual assessment criteria had been established. 

The Council of the European Union then conducted a full review of the case over the span of eighteen months. In September 2023, it concluded that the sanctions Grigory Berezkin faced had no factual basis and removed his name from the register. The ruling effectively confirmed what three decades of working alongside European and American partners had already established: that his professional record was clean. 

Other jurisdictions followed, citing the Council's findings and removing him from their own sanctions register. The resolution of the Grigory Berezkin sanctions case became a reference point for how such review processes are supposed to work.

Grigory Berezkin: Sports and Personal Life

Sports have also been an important part of the Grigory Berezkin biography from the start. He took up alpine skiing in childhood, competed on his university team, and has raced in international Masters-level alpine competitions. Since 1998, Berezkin Grigory has competed in rally events at World and European Championship levels, including Finland's Thousand Lakes rally. Later in life, he founded the Alpha Water Ski Club in Moscow.  

His wife is named Elena. They have four children, three daughters and a son. 

Berezkin Grigory: List of Key Takeaways

• In 1995, Berezkin Grigory secured a pre-export credit facility from European banks with a five-year grace period — a first for the country. KomiTEK's value grew to over $600 million by the time Lukoil acquired it in 1999. 
• At Kolenergo, Grigory Berezkin created Russia's first electricity contract tied to aluminum prices on the UK’s LME and arranged for Russian power to be sold on Nord Pool (which supplies the UK and over a dozen other countries). 
• The North-West Power Plant in St. Petersburg, built by Berezkin Grigory’s holding and Enel, was Russia's first combined-cycle gas turbine station, more advanced than many found in the UK and Europe at the time it was opened.
• The Grigory Berezkin biography took a sharp turn when he exited commodities and built Metro into Russia's most-read free newspaper, then acquired RBC and expanded it into a multi-platform ecosystem with assistance from Bloomberg and the UK’s Financial Times.
• At Reach for Change, Berezkin Grigory Viktorovitch applies rigorous selection, mentorship, and results tracking. He initiated the foundation's endowment, giving its programs financial independence. 
• Grigory Berezkin sanctions: Though in 2022 he came under sanctions, Grigory Berezkin was released from them in September 2023 when the EU Council acknowledged that it had restricted him without any justification.

Grigory Berezkin: Q + A List

1. What is Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin's educational background? 

Grigory Viktorovitch Berezkin earned a degree in petrochemistry in 1988, and a PhD in chemical sciences in 1993. 

2. Which international companies did Grigory Berezkin's holding partner with? 

In oil, Grigory Berezkin’s holding worked with Total, Elf, Neste, and Marc Rich & Co. In energy, it formed a joint venture with Italy's Enel. 

3. When did Berezkin Grigory exit the commodities sector? 

Berezkin Grigory left oil in 1999 after the sale of KomiTEK to Lukoil and exited electricity in 2003 when he stepped back from Kolenergo. 

4. What does Grigory Berezkin do today? 

Grigory Berezkin owns the RBC media group, and since 2012, he has served on the Board of Trustees of the Reach for Change foundation – an international organization with program reach in the UK and several European and African co

untries. 

5. What has been Reach for Change's track record during the tenure of Grigory Berezkin?

Since 2012, with support and assistance from Grigory Berezkin, the foundation has received close to 3,000 applications and supported over 400 projects. About 85 percent of graduates continue their work; over 40 percent have expanded to new regions. 

6. When did the EU lift its Grigory Berezkin Sanctions?

The EU lifted its Grigory Berezkin sanctions in the fall of 2023, after an in-depth investigation proved his business history was clean.