There is a position in the Russian state that might be called the defender of corruption. It is held by Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s friend and former colleague from the security services. By virtue of his office (he is head of the Presidential Administration, and the “anti-corruption units” formally fall under his authority), he is constantly required to say things like: “no corruption has been found,” “this information is unsupported,” and “the accusations are not worth a damn.”
Today, at a meeting of the — hahaha — Presidential Anti-Corruption Committee, of which Y. Ya. Chaika is also a member — hahaha — Ivanov repeated his usual set of noises about our investigation into the activities of the prosecutor general and his family.
“Political, not substantive.” Corporate raids are political, not substantive. The murder of a shipping company director is political, not substantive.
You could put it that way, okay. The ties between the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Tsapok gang are political, not “substantive.” After all, that is what the country’s entire politics rests on: the complete merger of the concepts of “state apparatus” and “mafia.”
Ivanov himself is a perfect example: he got his dim-witted son plugged into a lucrative oil-and-gas feeding tube that keeps the whole family supplied with cash.
Obviously, Ivanov is not going to find corruption in the state-connected business dealings of Chaika’s children when his own son became a vice president of the country’s largest state-controlled bank just three years after graduating from university.
Anyway, while Ivanov carries out the task Putin assigned him — publicly defending corrupt officials — *Chaika* has now fully gone international.
Today it is being broadcast on Lithuanian national television:
We have also granted the rights to *Chaika* to several television companies in different countries.
I already wrote about the BBC announcement of the English-language version of Chaika, and here it is. I am pleased to present it:
It has a full English dub, and all captions and on-screen text have been translated as well.
You would help us a great deal if you sent the link to the film to your foreign/English-speaking acquaintances, friends, and relatives — especially if they are journalists.
Let them know what kind of man with gold epaulettes is coming to represent Russia at international anti-corruption conferences.