#igor kolesnikov

[movienized-com]

Imperatritsy

Imperatritsy (2023) #AndreyKravchuk #YuliyaPeresild #KseniyaUtekhina #AnnaUkolova #IvanKolesnikov #IgorGordin Mehr auf:

Императрицы / EmpressesJahr: 2023 (Oktober) Genre: Drama / History Regie: Andrey Kravchuk Hauptrollen: Yuliya Peresild, Kseniya Utekhina, Anna Ukolova, Ivan Kolesnikov, Igor Gordin, Olga Lerman, Yevgeniy Shvarts … Filmbeschreibung: Nach dem Tod von Peter dem Großen beginnt eine Ära von Hofintrigen, Intrigen und Machtkämpfen. Die kleine Elisabeth weiß bereits, dass die Welt kein…

[mariacallous]

There has been plenty of discussion in Western media about why Russians are not protesting President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the war against Ukraine, whether it’s due to the economy, genuine enthusiasm for the war, or fear. One thing that most experts agree on is that Russia has a severe political apathy problem. That’s true—but it’s also far more pervasive than even Russianists often realize.

This problem is not new; it’s a continuation of Soviet-era cultural norms that have been carefully amplified and curated by Putin’s state propaganda. Russian experts themselves were once able to point out the problem—including Andrey I. Kolesnikov (a member of the “Kremlin pool” of journalists as the deputy CEO of the influential Kommersant newspaper and the editor in chief of Russky Pioner magazine) in an RIA news article from 2006, or academic Marina Podhomutinkova in a 2011 paper.

As statistics on the increasingly low number of people who get involved in politics show, the situation has only gotten worse over time. Apathy, tinged with fear, is the Russian norm. That explains some of the strangeness of public opinion data. Recent polls by the Moscow-based Levada Center show that support for war among the general population remains high, fluctuating around the 75 percent mark. At the same time, 71 percent of respondents would also approve of immediate peace talks. Although part of this can be attributed to the “preference falsification” that researchers find is common in authoritarian states, the apathy that Putin has cultivated goes far deeper than that.

On a personal level, if you ask the average Russian what they actually want from the war or expect to achieve if they win, then the answer is a resounding “nothing.” I’ve asked this question to many Russians—including relatives, friends, and business acquaintances. I’ve also spent a considerable amount of time on various anonymous Russian imageboards and Telegram channels, asking about people’s opinions in situations where anonymity is guaranteed. The result stays the same—the average Russian person just doesn’t care.

As one interviewee told me, “This is a stupid question. I’ve never thought about politics in my life—that’s the smart thing to do. Let politicians do their politics; that’s not for me. Sooner or later, this will be over. Putin will probably figure something out with China and [U.S. President Joe] Biden. I just hope that they don’t start throwing nukes around, but that’s all.”

Unsurprisingly, my interlocutors almost universally asked for anonymity.

Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, stated a similar conclusion in an interview with Radio Liberty in January this year: “This is indifference and being overwhelmed by life, poverty, and lack of rights, and pacifist beliefs, or simply well-being combined with the position ‘politics does not interest me.’”

As Gudkov noted, in some ways, this helps Putin: Active, ideological pro-war supporters, known as turbopatriots, have certain demands that Moscow has largely failed to fulfill. Look at the imprisoned ultranationalist Igor Girkin, who turned on Putin after the war against Ukraine went sour.

Maxim Katz, a Russian opposition politician-turned journalist-responded when I asked him this question during a livestream : “What an American, very Western question. It’s hard for the people in the West to understand that the average Russian wants nothing from this war, he does not see the victory in any way, he completely doesn’t care. For him, this is a question that his superiors are dealing with. The most important thing for him is to ensure that this war doesn’t affect him personally in any way.”

In part, this cynicism is bred by the gap between propaganda and reality. Russian state media takes nationalism to extremes, but ordinary Russians know that this is nonsense, often using the phrase “war between the TV and the refrigerator” to talk about the discrepancies between broadcast propaganda and the reality of empty shelves or failing appliances. The elites also know that the people know. As the old Soviet saying goes, “You pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” That mentality is in full swing here.

This charade was a mainstay of the Soviet system. Elections were faked, with 99 percent of the population always voting for the only available party list. Trade unions nominally existed, but they were directly under the control of the Communist Party, never fulfilling any real functions, and any real expression of people’s political will was nearly nonexistent. But patriotism was compulsory, especially over national holidays. This led to an increase in apathy, nihilism, and disillusionment about the Soviet government.

When Mikhail Gorbachev took power, some nonpolitical interest clubs concerning social issues were finally permitted, such as the green movement. Russia had a brief spurt of real politics, freedom of speech, and open discussion—one that also coincided with economic chaos and a deep sense of disillusionment as Russia’s place in the world plummeted in the 1990s. The combination of all of these factors led to many people losing faith in democracy and liberal ideas, an increase of nostalgia toward the Soviet era, and a neglect of politics in general.

There’s a common Soviet era saying that remains popular among Russian speakers: “The folks up there see better.” What it means is that if you’re not one of the members of the political elite, then you should not be questioning their decisions, because they probably know better than you do—so don’t be curious, just do what you’re told. It’s related to another famous phrase—“I’m not an expert in this matter, but…”—that’s reached a meme status on the Russian speaking internet. Sometimes it’s joking, but often it’s used seriously. The idea that only an authorized few should get to have an opinion is embedded deep into the public mentality.

Another familiar trope that serves political apathy is the idea of “tough Russians.” Putin loves to play on that, portraying himself as a strongman who embodies the traditional Russian virtues of virility and masculinity. He makes macho but hollow boasts, such as his response from 2018 to a question about the potential of foreign nuclear threats against Russia: “We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead.”

But for ordinary people, there’s the commonly used term terpila (“the one who endures” or “endurer” in English). It refers to someone who just suffers through everything that life throws at them, without ever doing anything about it. It’s a negative term—but it describes many Russians.

These are the ideals that are being actively reinforced in Russia today as Putin doubles down on Soviet nostalgia. People are shown that they have a strong, powerful leader, who will bring greatness to the country. That is a promise of stability and prosperity, but because of Russia’s Soviet past, it is also a reminder that you shouldn’t bother with politics or civic engagement, and that only a narrow group of specialists are ever allowed to have an opinion in any given matter. If there are any problems, you should endure them as a so-called real Russian and not have any ideas of change.

What does this mean for the war? Well, it’s been decided by the higher-ups, so it’s not any of your business.

Roughly 20 million Ukrainians have relatives in Russia. One-third of Ukraine’s population stated in a 2011 survey that they have friends there as well. So, when Russians answer polling questions about their support for the war, they say “yes”—because that’s a political issue, and they have enough problems to deal with. At the same time, when they get asked about whether they would support immediate peace talks, they respond “yes” again, because the killing of Ukrainians just seems odd to the vast majority of people—even if they’ve bought into Putin’s propaganda about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government supposedly being full of Satanists and neo-Nazis.

As one of my own distant relatives told me on the phone, “What do you mean, want from the war? How can you even want something from a war? I want the war to end, and I think that every reasonable person has the same opinion!” Her husband added, “We’re just not that political, as a people, you know. Nobody thought this was possible, but now … now we just want this to end, to return to how things were.”

The bloodiness of this war seems to play little role in the average Russian person’s political activity. Casualties in this conflict are very high—current estimates of those killed or wounded in the conflict put the figure at more than 500,000 people, much higher than the casualties suffered during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where approximately 15,000 USSR soldiers were lost, with approximately 35,000 more wounded. The difference lies in who is getting mobilized.

During the Afghanistan war, the Soviet Union sent regular conscripts to fight, as per the mandatory service and zinc coffins were seen in cities all over the USSR. In the Ukrainian war, Putin is careful to preserve the illusion of normalcy for the citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg—it’s the ethnic minorities and convicts that do most of the fighting, as to not provoke the Russian people into caring too much. Especially since he has another political issue with this war that he needs to be careful about.

Putin has described Ukrainians as belonging to the Russian civilization—misled by the West, yes, but brothers nonetheless. My impression from talking to Russians is that at this point, they’ll support whatever Putin declares needs supporting, whatever scheme he has going on, as long as this confusing nightmare ends faster. Then everyone, ideally, could go back to business as usual, pretending that this war never even happened.

There is a silver lining to this though. Putin is 71 and has been in power for nearly 25 years. Anyone who could have given him an honest opinion, much less some constructive criticism, has long been forced into retirement, pushed into exile, imprisoned, or outright killed. He’s visibly lost touch with reality—according to a recently defected Kremlin insider, Putin does not use a smartphone, nor does he know how to use a computer beyond the very basics of functions. He does not use the internet. A video where he, supposedly, is shown logging in to vote via Russia’s online voting platform in the farcical so-called presidential election in March was laughable, as it’s obvious that Putin has no idea what he’s doing.

But the cynicism and apathy of the older generation may not extend to the younger one. The Kremlin has no clue about what to do with the younger generation, who mainly watch YouTube and listen to podcasts. Among this category of Russians aged 25 to 39, the Levada Center’s April polls showed only 23 percent support for the war. Russia’s best attempt at propaganda on YouTube was its failed RuTube project, where various popular Russian content creators were paid large amounts of money—more than they were making via their channels on YouTube—to move all of their content to RuTube and occasionally include pro-Kremlin content among whatever they were posting normally.

As a result, most of the pro-Putin YouTube channels have lost their audience, and the Russian government is wasting money paying for content that nobody watches. It’s also about to launch a state-approved version of Wikipedia, which will steal articles from the original Russian-language wiki and then automatically censor them. The project is equally likely to crash and burn.

Russians won’t be overthrowing their regime anytime soon. But if the war becomes a more personal problem, attitudes could shift fast. This is important, because people reevaluate their risks on a daily basis—when the regime is strong, they would rather lay low and stay on the safer side. But as soon as cracks start to appear, the very same people can suddenly turn fiercely.

Western policymakers should take this into account. Russian people are absolutely fine with the war ending—as long as there’s a plan for them, and not a repeat of the humiliations of the 1990s.

[russianreader]

Thе New Year Spirit

Looking back at the old year and welcoming the new year with Igor Stomakhin, Noise Cabaret, Russian big pharma, Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov, Aaron Schuster, "Anora," Public Sociology Laboratory, and Kommersant's Andrei Kolesnikov.

“Bring back the New Year spirit”: Igor Stomakhin, Moscow, 2024 Faithful to its avant-garde nature, Noise Cabaret premieres the immersive series Dialogues, based on the philosophical works of Plato, on December 25. Alexander Khudyakov turns ancient Greek philosophy into a lively, witty and provocative dialogue with the audience. Along with his partner Ivan Wahlberg, Khudyakov, who not only acts…

[amazingarchitecturewebsite]

Laconic and high-tech apartment in #Moscow, Russia by INRE Design Studio Read more: Link in bio! Photography: Sergey Ananiev, Igor Kolesnikov Laconic and high-tech apartments in the heart of the Moscow City business cluster are designed as a true oasis in the spirit of Singapore. INRE Design Studio has developed a design project and accomplished a complete reconstruction of the apartment for a young student starting his career in the field of IT technologies… #russia #apartment #архитектура www.amazingarchitecture.com ✔ A collection of the best contemporary architecture to inspire you. #design #architecture #amazingarchitecture #architect #arquitectura #luxury #realestate #life #cute #architettura #interiordesign #photooftheday #love #travel #construction #furniture #instagood #fashion #beautiful #archilovers #home #house ‎#amazing #picoftheday #architecturephotography ‎#معماری (at Moscow, Russia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfsGOx_Mmrg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sophiechoir]

Artists I Like

(Listmaking is totally a creative exercise, right? Right? If that’s true then this is the longest running creative exercise I’ve ever indulged in lol)

Gerda Wegener - fashion & lesbian art nouveau/deco

Harry Watrous - enigmatic paintings of sophisticated women

Helen Frankenthaler - abstract expressionist paintings

Sergio Toppi - italian illustrations & comics

Dan Hillier - contemporary spooky angelic ink/print/collage

Mike Binge - 70s sci fi art

Gustave Dore - highly detailed wood-engravings prints, dante

Paul César Helleu - numerous portraits of beautiful society women

Roberto Ferri - making the old masters cool again

Gustav Vigeland - weird figure sculptures

NC Wyeth - one of america’s greatest illustrators

Andrew Wyeth - melancholy realism painter

Frank Frazetta - best fantasy & pulp artist

John Buscema - conan comics artist

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez - wonder woman comics artist

Parker Hagarty - landscapes & figures

Henry Patrick Raleigh - star of golden age of illustration, high society drawings

Paul Lehr - 70s future-fantasy pulp illustrations

Stanley Meltzoff - 50s scifi/pulp cover illustrations

Alphonse Mucha - art nouveau

Kawase Hasui - japanese woodblock prints

Edmund Dulac - delicate detailed book illustrations

Makoto Takahashi - vintage shoujo manga

Harry Clarke - super detailed & dark art nouveau/deco illustrations

Sophie Lecuyer - contemporary spooky illustrations

Wassily Kandinsky - abstract geometry

George F. Kerr - book illustrations

Beatrix Potter - book illustrations

Mary Bauermeister - eclectic sculptures & drawings - geomancy

John William Waterhouse - Pre-Raphaelite paintings

Alexandre de Riquer - gorgeous mucha-esque posters & illustrations

Gianpaolo Pagni - patterned graphic designs

Giovanni Boldini - dynamic paintings/portraits, “Master of Swish”

Erté - art deco fashion ladies (new orleans!)

Cicely Mary Barker - fairy illustrations

Dorothy P. Lathrop - beautiful childrens book black n white illustrations

Kay Nielsen - glittering golden age illustrations

Coles Phillips - “fadeaway girl” golden age illustrations

Gustav Klimt - gold 💋

Koloman Moser - patterned art nouveau

Konstantin Tarasov - contemporary colorful & detailed digital drawings

Carlo Dolci - soft & dramatic chiaroscuro baroque religious portraits

Trung Le Nguyen aka Trungles - deviantart digital artist, colorful golden age mixed with anime illustrations

John Everett Millais - Pre-Raphaelite paintings

Arthur Rackham - English golden age illustrations, muted colors

Syd Mead - industrial & sci fi concept art

Mario Garbuglia - Barbarella set design

Henri Patrice Dillon - dreamy fadeaway muted illustrations/paintings

Frantisek Kupka - later Czech painter who began in representational art and evolved into pure abstraction

John Bauer - classic nordic fairy tale/myth illustrations

Aya Takano - superflat/anime but make it fine art

John Singer Sargent - heavenly portraits

Winslow Homer - masculine largely marine landscapes

George Barbier - art deco illustrations

Edward Okuń - polish art nouveau & symbolist painter

Robert Anning Bell - paintings & illustrations

Thomas Cooper Gotch - sorta preraphaelite paintings, portraits of girls

Jules Chéret - colorful french posters

Kaarina Kaila - dreamy soft children’s illustrations (almost kitsch)

Helen Hyde - japanese woodblock prints but actually they’re american

Melchior Lechter - paintings and book designs. “His hieratic, symbolic, decorative style combined gothic elements with art nouveau”

Jan Mankes - gentle unlined dutch paintings

Amrita Sher-Gil - contemporary indian paintings, mostly of woc

Sydney Long - australian watercolor landscapes

Carlos Schwabe - freaky religious/mythological symbolist paintings

Bob Pepper - groovy 60s-80s pulp illustrations

Frank R. Paul - scifi illustrations

Chéri Hérouard - La Vie Parisienne french illustrations

John Berkey - scifi illustrations/concept art

Aubrey Beardsley - fin de siecle black and white illustrations

Charles Caryl Coleman - pretty still lifes & landscapes, flowers & capri

Erich Schutz - Austrian illustrator of children's books, Schutz was influenced by Art Nouveau, and specialised in painting fairies and mermaids

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - French painter, printmaker, caricaturist and illustrator

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale - lush detailed paintings of richly dressed figures and scenes

Anne Claude de Caylus - not sure if he actually made them but print illustrations of peasantfolk

Friedrich König - Austrian prints & paintings, Klimt contemporary

Georges Barbier - french illustrations like erté

Betty Jiang - contemporary pretty pearly & dark digital art

Stephan Sinding - marble sculptures of lovers

Heikala - contemporary soft & sweet watercolor & ink illustrations anime inspired

Paul-Albert Besnard - french prints & paintings in between academic & impressionist

Henry Ossawa Tanner - biblical realism paintings

Norman Lindsay - etchings with lotsa great figures

Michael O’Toole - colorful landscapes

Caspar David Friedrich - moody Romantic paintings

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - iconic baroque marble sculptures

Francois Schuiten - french detailed architecture comic art

Adrienne Gaha - colorful contemporary half-abstract paintings

Tradd Moore - trippy silver surfer comic art

tono/rt0no (on tumblr) - super cute illustrations of victorian cats ;-;

Nanaco Yashiro - pretty colorful contemporary illustrations

Ramiro Sanchez - contemporary traditional painter, director of painting program at Florence Academy of Art

Isabella Fassler - contemporary colorful illustrations

Florence Harrison - art nouveau childrens book fairy tale illustrations

Shahzia Sikander - contemporary Pakistani-American visual artist

Atelier Heinrichs - trippy colorful collage covers for sci fi pulps

John Macallan Swan - pretty kitties

JC Leyendecker - our fave dapper gents

Frederick Sandys - pre raphaelite paintings

Stepan Kolesnikov - realist yet stylized russian paintings

Okumi Iyo - embroidered illustrations

William Henry Barribal - colorful art deco paintings

Ilya Glazunov - russian historical/orthodox paintings in the time of communism

Igor Karash - spooky illustrations

Daud Ahkriev - his drawings of fishermen

Seiichi Hayashi - pretty, contemporary japanese manga & illustrations ft women

Nola (nolawon.art) - pretty, detailed takashi murakami-esque illustrations

Harrison Fisher - classic american illustrator, pretty women

John Austen - gorgeous black n white detailed hamlet illustrations

Gustave Moreau - fantastical & aesthetic french paintings admired by proust

Ceri Richards - welsh abstract paintings of people indoors

Otto Mueller - highly textured angular colorful paintings with bold lines

Henri Privat-Livemont - Art Nouveau posters

Giovanni di Paolo - prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante's texts

Ben Reeves - contemporary painter, moody & blue-heavy collages of colors

Alex Niño - amazing abstracted comic artist

Ludovic Alleaume - dreamy french paintings

Yoshiko Fukushima - unsettling figures with strange colors, superflat paintings

Zinaida Serebriakova - kind realistic russian paintings of pretty women and children

Harold Robert Millar (H.R. Millar) - famous Scottish graphic artist and illustrator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Alice Marshall - delicate illustrations of fairies on black background

Stanislaw Kamocki - colorful Polish landscape paintings

Bertha Lum - American version of Japanese woodblock prints

Raphael Kirchner - art deco fashion illustrations

Tamara de Lempicka - highly stylized art deco portraits of ladies, polish

Phil Greenwood - bright pop-y floral landscapes

Rose Cecil O'Neill - vintage illustrations & cartoons

John Rush - great use of color in figure drawings

Jean Delville - otherworldly paintings

Paul-albert Besnard - monochromatic prints

Helene Schjerfbeck - modernist subtle portraits

Heinrich Lefler - beautiful detailed narrative paintings/illustrations

Maximilian Liebenwein - art nouveau illustrations

Franklin Booth - detailed pen and ink drawings

Ulla Thynell - dreamy contemporary illustrations

Jun'ichi Nakahara - japanese graphic artist, early manga

K.F.E. von Freyhold - playful German book illustrations

Beth Billups - contemporary abstract painter

William McGregor Paxton - interior scenes of woman like Henry James depicts them

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite - Australian illustrator of children's books. Her work mostly depicted fairies

Ernest Biéler - Swiss painter, draughtsman and printmaker

Junko Ogawa (@junk_junk_junk on ig) - surreal anime style drawings

Marianne Stokes - Austrian painter, one of the leading women artists in Victorian England

Lee Mullican - abstract paintings

Rae Klein - creepy surreal paintings

[king-galaxius]

New 2019 Russian Film Release for December

New 2019 Russian Film Release for December

Movie: Union of Salvation Release: December 26th, 2019 Genre: Historical, War, & Adventure Director: Andrei Kravchuk

Cast: Leonid Bichevin, Maksim Matveyev, Pavel Priluchny, Ivan Yankovsky, Anton Shagin, Ivan Kolesnikov, Igor Petrenko, Aleksei Guskov, Sergey Koltakov, Aleksandr and Ustyugov.

“Based on the historical narrative of the Decembrist Revolt and the Union of Salvation and Viking(film), a…

[klimkovsky]

Concert «Music of Celestial Spheres in Moscow Planetarium» • Composer Andrey Klimkovsky and Friends • Full updated video

10 years ago, this wonderful concert took place, and soon a DVD disc with its full recording was released:

«Music of Celestial Spheres in Moscow Planetarium»

Composer Andrey Klimkovsky and Friends

There were only three friends: Igor Kolesnikov, Olya Zemlyanika and your obedient servant.

But in the concert itself, and around it, a lot of people took part. I can’t remember everyone now, and I didn’t even know someone’s names then. The Moscow Planetarium is a very large organization, and holding concerts under its dome is a very massive event, both in terms of the number of spectators and the number of staff involved.

I'm still trying to remember...

Tamara Stolbova together with us created a full-dome light show - this was done in the planetarium for the first time, because it opened only a year before this concert, and a significant part of the equipment began to be used only at our concert.

Nikita Derbyshev placed a stage light around the perimeter of the hall, connected it into a single system and programmed it for each of our musical numbers - this work was also carried out in the planetarium for the first time.

Yuri Khrustalev led our entire orchestra in real time as a sound engineer - both at the concert and at all rehearsals.

Faina Borisovna Rubleva, scientific director of the Moscow Planetarium, initiated the very idea of a series of my concerts, she was with us at all rehearsals.

Alena Orlova and Elena Kokina - coordinated all the services of the Planetarium and did a great job of informational support for the concert.

Alexander Kulik acted as a producer of the entire project.

Sergey Demyanov and Alexander Fedorov assisted me on stage - they turned something on, turned it off, served it - it was not visible, but it was very important.

Oleg Bunzhukov recorded video and sound, and then edited it all, thanks to which we can now watch the recording of the concert.

Now about the musicians

Igor Kolesnikov went on stage for the first time in his life and fully played an hour and a half concert - it was no doubt a strong jerk and a shake-up. But Igor looked completely calm, imperturbable. In addition to synthesizers and special effects, he was in charge of wind bells. No one noticed how, right during the concert, Igor - while on stage, was recording his own video of the concert - with a hidden camera. But this is okay...

Olya Zemlyanika participated in only two tunes - this is very little (and I would like more), but it was these compositions that became the diamonds of the concert. The sound of her voice under the vaults of the star dome was truly universal, indescribable by any technology - what is heard in the recording only evokes memories of those incomprehensible vibrations that Olya generated in real time and transmitted to the hall - to each viewer - she was perfectly audible without microphone.

Unfortunately, there is almost no dome itself on the video, on which the main cosmic performance was performed. But neither then nor now are video cameras able to capture and convey that elusive starlight, which is perfectly visible to the eyes.

And the very quality of the recording in the dark, as a rule, decreases. Here we must again recall Oleg Bunzhukov, who, being an astronomer and a specialist in night photography and video shooting, did an excellent job of recording a concert in almost complete darkness. The experience of working in the darkest corners of the globe affected.

And yet the format itself - DVD - is very outdated, and now even phones dictate much higher criteria for a video picture. That is why I pulled this recording from the archives and uploaded it to the Internet in a (I think) higher quality than would have been possible 10 years ago.

Look dear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85eJLIvJyU

[redebcn]

Ucranianos em SP relatam angústia ao acompanhar rotina de parentes em meio à guerra: 'Sentimento de impotência sem igual'

Ucranianos em SP relatam angústia ao acompanhar rotina de parentes em meio à guerra: ‘Sentimento de impotência sem igual’

Igor e Kateryna Kolesnikov são ucranianos, mas desde 2010 vivem em Cachoeira Paulista, no interior de São Paulo. A maior parte da família está no leste europeu e tem membros que estão ajudando a Ucrânia na guerra contra a Rússia. Ucranianos falam sobre tensão de familiares em meio a conflito Arquivo Pessoal Mesmo a mais de 10 mil quilômetros de distância da Ucrânia, Igor e Kateryna Kolesnikov…

[mariacallous]

In a two-part investigative report released in Russian and English on Tuesday, February 28, 2023, journalists at Proekt revealed new details about an alleged “slush fund” used to finance Vladimir Putin’s lavish private life and the lives of his closest companions, including retired gymnast Alina Kabaeva, the rumored mother of at least three children with Russia’s president. The investigation focuses first on a Cyprus-based company called Ermira Consultants (including how it profits off vodka merchandized with Putin’s name) and then on a palace constructed outside Valdai. Throughout both stories, readers learn about the enormous entourage of relatives, friends, and acquaintances who serve as nominal owners of Putin’s alleged vast wealth. Meduza summarizes Proekt’s main findings.

Arkady Rotenberg and Ermira Consultants, Putin’s slush fund

Previously, Ermira Consultants was thought to belong more to Arkady Rotenberg than Putin himself, but Proekt argues that the Cypriot company’s personnel patterns and seemingly countless investments say otherwise. For example, the owner until March 2015 was an unremarkable attorney named Vladislav Kopylov who apparently owes his candidacy to serve as a front for Putin’s money to the fact that he met St. Petersburg businessmen Andrey Fursenko and Yuri Kovalchuk — close friends of Russia’s future president — back in the 1990s.

After a company connected to Rotenberg acquired Ermira in 2015, the firm received large loans from offshores linked to Gennady Timchenko, Dmitry Medvedev, Ilya Eliseev, and Igor Antoshin, as well as from Rotenberg’s own Olpon Investments Ltd. Company. Many of Ermira’s senior managers and legal advisers, moreover, have also been linked to other projects involving Putin.

The vodka racket

Proekt devotes significant attention to the alcohol distributor Vinexim, which created the popular Putinka vodka brand, reportedly in close collaboration with Rotenberg to get the president’s permission to use his surname. In March 2004, Vinexim sold the trademark rights to an Ermira subsidiary. After several more transfers, the trademark now belongs to a company reportedly co-owned by Rotenberg and former Russian Judo Federation President Vasily Anisimov.

Proekt calculates that Putinka vodka’s profits between 2004 and 2019 from production, sales, and royalties maybe totaled between $400 and $500 million (considering distributors’ margins, manufacturing income, and royalties). Journalists argue that Putin profiteered from the alcoholism of his own constituents and even lowered the minimum retail price of vodka in early 2015 (purportedly to undermine the sale of bootleg liquor).

Putin’s Gelendzhik palace

In 2010, Ermira Consultants loaned roughly $100 million to a company co-owned by Putin’s then future (now former) son-in-law Nikolai Shamalov and Bank Rossiya shareholder Dmitry Gorelov in a scheme to build a massive palace for the president on the Black Sea near the city of Gelendzhik. After whistleblower Sergey Kolesnikov exposed this arrangement in 2010 in an open letter addressed to then President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s inner circle revamped its property racket, creating a whole mess of new legal entities and transferring the property itself to the offshore Savoyan Investments, a subsidiary of Ermira Consultants.

Years later, following a bombshell investigation by Alexey Navalny’s research team into the Gelendzhik palace, state television correspondent Alexander Rogatkin visited the property to debunk the allegations against the president. But a new piece of evidence supporting the palace story slipped through Rogatkin’s segment: his camera footage showed a security guard in a uniform from the Horizon Company, which receives monthly payments from an Ermira subsidiary called Platinum. (In 2004, Ermira also loaned almost $90 million to Platinum, which it used to buy lucrative shares in Gazprom, Bank Rossiya, and a villa in Sochi seized from the oil company Yukos.)

Property for Putin’s pals and paramour

Proekt highlights numerous examples where Putin apparently instructed his “vassals” to delegate housing to people important to him. In some instances, the president’s imperial tastes are on display, and elsewhere he demonstrates that his benevolence comes with conditions. For example, from 2010–2013, when Putin was no longer living together with his wife, but before they made their divorce public, Mrs. Putin’s lover (and future husband) Artur Ocheretny owned an apartment in Moscow that was suddenly transferred to one of Ermira’s offshore companies after the president’s bachelor status was revealed.

According to Proekt, Putin nevertheless ensured a comfortable life for his ex-wife, given that businesses connected to Ermira and Arkady Rotenberg later sold two commercial properties in the Moscow area to Ocheretny, who soon sold them back to another Rotenberg-connected company at a markup high enough to generate the money needed to buy luxury homes in France and Switzerland.

Ermira Consultants also smiled on Jorrit Faassen when he was married to Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria Vorontsova, transferring several luxury Moscow properties to Berocci Investments, an offshore company created for the couple. (In late 2010, Russia’s Interior Ministry pounced on a banker in the neighborhood whose security guards beat up Faassen after he clipped the man’s car.) The president’s goodwill ended with the marriage, however, and Ermira eventually reclaimed the properties.

“Tsarina” Alina Kabaeva

The second half of Proekt’s investigative report is devoted almost entirely to Kabaeva. Journalists identified roughly $120 million in property registered to nominal owners on her behalf (this includes almost $15 million in real estate under the name of Kabaeva’s own grandmother, who lived in a remote log cabin in the Vladimir region until last year, very much not in the style of a multimillionaire). Alina Kabaeva also reportedly earns an annual salary of $10.6 million as the board chairperson of National Media Group — an investment firm controlled by Yuri Kovalchuk.

After describing a penthouse purchased for Kabaeva in Sochi (registered to a nominal owner named Sergey Rudnov, whose late father also acted as a front for property in Putin’s real-estate empire), Proekt names multiple women who allegedly belong to Kabaeva’s circle of friends and support staff, including a team of Swiss medical workers who exposed their identities by sharing a selfie from the VIP section of the 2019 Victory Day Parade in Red Square. Speaking to friends, analyzing public documents, and even studying leaked medical and travel records, Proekt found a handful of women (relatives and some friends) who apparently follow Kabaeva nearly everywhere, which entails frequent trips to Valdai.

Putin’s Valdai palace(s)

On assignment in the Novgorod region, Proekt’s correspondent learned that the local spa run by the Presidential Affairs Department was closed as of late 2022 and being used instead to quarantine Putin’s personal guests before they met with him. Proekt also found a construction manager who worked on the president’s Valdai residence until 2005. Building the facility began almost as soon as Putin took office, the source said, explaining that the president came to inspect the property in 2003 when it was nearly finished but hated the mansion’s “high-tech,” modern vibe. When asked what he would prefer, Putin reportedly said, “Something more like in Petersburg,” which designers interpreted to mean “like the Hermitage Museum.” Accordingly, the crew gutted the home’s interior and installed boatloads of gold. (Proekt obtained photos taken inside the Valdai palace in collaboration with Alexey Navalny’s research team.)

For years, Putin visited the Valdai residence with his wife, but he’s since reportedly brought Alina Kabaeva and her children. In 2020, construction started nearby on a residence allegedly meant exclusively for Kabaeva and her kids. (The home itself is on land registered to a company owned by Yuri Kovalchuk, says Proekt.)

Journalists recently reported that Vladimir Putin now travels domestically by armored train as often as possible; Proekt’s report further corroborates this story, finding that secret railway construction on preservation lands near Putin’s residence in Valdai began in 2018. In a nearby town, there’s now a “secret train station” (closed to the public) with its own helipad, built specially for the president. Also nearby, the military recently installed a Pantsir air-defense system.

[russianreader]

Olga Romanova: How “Law Enforcement” Works in Russia Michael Calvey in court. Photo by Maxim Shemetov. Courtesy of Reuters and Republic "We Give You Serebrennikov and You Give us Calvey": How Law Enforcement Works…

[molinaramirezzx]

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[wsmith215]

Coronavirus deals ‘powerful blow’ to Putin’s grand plans

Moscow (AFP) – The bombastic military parade through Moscow’s Red Square on Saturday was slated to be the spectacle of the year on the Kremlin’s calendar.

Standing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron, President Vladimir Putin would have overseen a 90-minute procession of Russia’s military might, showcasing 15,000 troops and the latest hardware.

But that was before the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, military jets will roar over an eerily quiet Moscow, spurting red, white and blue smoke to mark 75 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany. Putin will lay flowers at a war memorial near an abandoned Red Square and address a nation growing angry with his handling of the country.

The parade is not the only victim of the coronavirus pandemic, which has crippled Russia’s economy, hospitalised the prime minister and slashed Putin’s approval ratings.

Russians had been due last month to cast their votes on constitutional reforms that would have paved the way for Putin to stay in power until 2036, but those plans too were scuppered by the virus.

What was supposed to be a triumphant spring for Putin has become a political letdown, observers say, one that could be difficult for the president to recover from.

“This is the first time in 20 years that Putin is facing a crisis this serious,” said political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya. “This is a new experience for him.”

The timing of the pandemic, hitting just as Putin was unveiling major constitutional reforms, amounts to “a powerful blow to his plans”, she told AFP.

– Approval at historic low –

After initially reporting fewer cases than in western Europe, Russia has witnessed a grim and steady rise in new coronavirus infections in recent days.

Health officials registered another record increase on Thursday and the country now ranks fifth in the world in overall infections.

Russia’s death rate is low compared to the European countries hardest hit, but some observers say that discrepancy is due to how the death count is calculated.

Story continues

Putin this week praised the government’s response, saying that by implementing mass testing and keeping fatalities low, Russia had become a model for other countries.

“What we did was absolutely right,” he said. “Many foreign countries followed our path.”

Yet many Russians appear to disagree. Unlike other world leaders battling the pandemic, Putin’s approval ratings have not rallied in light of the crisis.

According to independent pollster Levada, they fell to a historic low of 59 percent last month from 63 percent in March.

Already strained by Western sanctions, Russia’s economy is under serious threat from the pandemic, which analysts say could deepen resentment towards the Kremlin.

Since Russia imposed a lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, small businesses have struggled to survive and millions of Russians have been left without wages, despite promises from the government to support companies and employees.

Igor Nikolayev, director of the Institute for Strategic Analysis at FBK Grant Thornton, said the timing of the crisis was unfortunate as it coincided with a steep fall in the price of oil, a key export which balances the Russian budget.

– ‘Distant from the people’ –

He said Russians were not prepared for this dual shock, noting that 60 percent do not have savings and that real incomes have fallen 7.5 percent over the last year.

Russia can weather the storm for around 18 months, he said, thanks to reserves in its sovereign wealth fund of some $150 billion.

But if the crisis persists and “life does not become easier, this will affect the attitude of the people to the authorities,” Nikolayev told AFP.

Putin could well bounce back. He has weathered many crises over 20 years in power and is credited by many Russians for bringing the country out of the chaos of the 1990s and restoring its global prestige.

Officials have said both the parade and the constitutional vote will be held later in 2020, though analyst Andrei Kolesnikov said that alone may not be enough to salvage Putin’s year.

Putin “enjoyed Russians’ approval for many years,” said Kolesnikov, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. “Now he will personally accumulate all their disapproval.”

“In the context of the coronavirus crisis, the vote will not mobilise the nation,” he said, and the military parade alone “will not seriously help support Putin’s falling ratings.”

Stanovaya said that after so many years in power Putin has “distanced himself from the people” and lost the ability to empathise with Russians.

If the Kremlin cannot address economic problems, “social irritation will grow, there will be protests,” she warned.

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[king-galaxius]

New Russian Film Release of the Day

New Russian Film Release of the Day

Movie: The Conquest of Siberia Release: February 21st, 2019 Genre: Historical, Drama Director: Igor Zaitsev

Cast: Ilya Malanin, Dmitri Dyuzhev, Yekaterina Guseva, Dmitry Nazarov, Pavel Tabakov, Ivan Kolesnikov, Andrey Burkovskiy, and Agata Muceniece.

“This film is based on the Russian conquest of Siberia.”

Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_films_of_2019

[klimkovsky]

«Music of Celestial Spheres in the Moscow Planetarium» live album

You can't just talk about concerts at the Optical Theatre, the Museum of Astronautics, the Museum of the History of the Earth, but not talk about concerts at the Moscow Planetarium. There were three of them — in 2012-2013. But only one was recorded qualitatively — the middle one.

Probably, there is no need now to talk about how exciting the light show was on the largest dome-screen in Europe (the dome of the Moscow Planetarium is really the largest in Europe). But I consider it necessary to note the uniqueness of the musical component of that concert — each composition sounded in a completely unexpected playing, and new versions were prepared for some melodies. This became possible thanks to the participation in the concert of my colleague — musician and composer — Igor Kolesnikov, and an absolutely inimitable vocalist — Olga Zemlyanika. And although Olga participated in only two numbers, this concert is worth listening to only for her participation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv1aNTE2iQs

In 2013, the concert was released on CD, and now it has appeared on Youtube — you can listen (or you can watch — there is an indication of the DVD version in the description).

[fuckyeahplattenbau]

Nadym, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Siberia by Igor Kolesnikov

[str9led]

ORPHEUS Making Of from CARBON CORE on Vimeo.

Making of Tim Aminov feat. Cédric Gasaïda /// ORPHEUS Original Video: vimeo.com/261789043

Vfx Art Director | Ilia Rutkovskii CG Supervisor | Denis Kharitonov CG Coordinator | Daria Petrova Water FX | Roman Chevozerov Particle FX | Eugene Kolesnikov 3D Artist | Aleksandr Chukov VFX | CARBONE CORE | carboncore.ru

///Synopsis/// In a world devoid of verbal communication, every man, woman and child emits a constant, unique sound. Those whose sound possesses healing qualities are called Orpheuses. They are hunted down, stripped of their abilities and killed. This is the story of the last living Orpheus.

Written and Directed | Lado Kvataniya Director of Photography | Andrei Maica Producers | Ilya Stewart, Murad Osmann, Alexander Medvedko, Margo Sayapina
 Co-Producers | Lado Kvataniya, Tim Aminov, Andrei Maica Production managers | Dmitry Dimchevskiy, Julia Samoylova, Mikhail Goglov Producers Assistants | Ira Ragozina 
 First Assistant Director | Alexander Eidman
 Production Designers | Margarita Ablaeva, Anna Dominina Costume Designers | Anna Kudevich, Boris Kukolkin
 Location Managers | Vladimir Kravchenko, Denis Iordanov/AcePlace
 Choreography | Irina Glushko
 Make-Up artist | Igor Boyko Camera Assistant | Roman Markin Gaffer | Viktor Ronzhin Montage | Anton Mironenkov | antonmironenkov.com Clean Up | Alexander Kurbanov Font | Andrey Olshevskiy

Hype Production | RUSSIA / 2018