MoD’s Russian contractor in bankruptcy suit

Alexander Lebedev, the businessman whose son, Evgeny, owns i and The Independent newspapers, is planning to launch bankruptcy proceedings against a Russian cargo aircraft operator used by the Ministry of Defence.

Mr Lebedev claims the company, Polet, has run up $5m of unpaid bills over the past six months on two Antonov AN-124 jets that he leases to it. He wrote a number of tweets about the situation yesterday.

A spokesman for the MoD confirmed that it used Polet as a subcontractor with “appropriate security clearance to carry out freight movements”. An MoD source, asked about the use of Russian firms for military work, said Russians “are not the enemy any more”. Polet was founded by Anatoly Karpov in 1988. The company had not responded to requests for comment before i’s print deadline.