Alexei Alexeyevich Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station), has been touring the country giving talks and interviews. In them, he says many intelligent things—and one strange thing. For example, here is an interview he gave in Yekaterinburg:
I have no idea which declarations Alexei Alexeyevich was looking at there, but
first, his arithmetic looks rather odd: the latest market price for this house available from public sources is 20 million dollars (yes, we were wrong twice, understating the price), so Tatyana Navka would have had to perform in 4,000 ice shows—without eating, drinking, or buying clothes—to purchase that very house. That comes to 3.6 shows a day over the same three years Venediktov is talking about.
second, let a media outlet no less authoritative than his argue with Alexei Alexeyevich. Today, Forbes published a ranking of the athletes who earned the most over the past 10 years. Among Russians, the only obvious name there is Maria Sharapova, in 18th place.
Navka, with all due respect to her Olympic medal, is nowhere close to being on that list. Sharapova’s final year, recognized as the most financially successful of her career, brought her 29.7 million dollars. It is very hard to imagine that Tatyana Navka could legally have earned even five times less than that during the same period. These athletes’ name recognition and appeal to advertisers (advertising being the main source of income) are simply not comparable.
Besides, it is important to remember that Navka’s Olympic victory was in 2006, nine years earlier. Obviously, the peak of her potential advertising income had long since passed.
So, to answer A. A. Venediktov’s question: you can marry any woman, rich or poor. But you cannot legalize bribes through the “purchases of a wealthy wife.” No one can—and certainly not Dmitry Peskov, a state official with 25 years of service.