Let me start right away with a request: please help spread this video. When I saw THOSE GEESE, my first thought was: damn, everyone needs to see this. This is the very essence of the Russian bureaucracy. So I’m asking you very strongly: send it to everyone you can, post it wherever you can.
Who does Russia exist for?
We’re in the final stretch before the elections, and I decided not to think small and to tell you about this particular man today. This story has geese, penthouses, and Mercedeses—read to the end, because this is the main story about our country.
Our hero is from Moscow, but wherever you live, there’s a version of him there too, working in the same field. He is the embodiment of Putin’s system of power.
Putin is the president of people like him. And he, in turn, is the foundation and support of Putin’s rule. Unsinkable. Omnipresent. A pillar, a base, a binding force.
This is exactly the man I was saving for the final days before the election, so I could simply shout at you: look at this, and go vote with Smart Voting, otherwise we will never get rid of him and his clones.
The deputy in charge of housing and utilities and urban improvement. He exists everywhere. In every region, every city, every town, every village. And everywhere, out of this black hole of leaking pipes, crooked curbs, hot water shutoffs, and rising utility rates, they somehow manage to build themselves astonishingly rich lives. And “astonishingly” is not an exaggeration.
The master of Russia is Pyotr Pavlovich Biryukov, a typical official of the “tough, practical manager” type.
He has spent his entire life in government service. Mayors changed, presidents changed, even countries changed, but he was always working for the state.
Promyslov, Saykin, Gavriil Popov, Yuri Luzhkov, Sergei Sobyanin. From the USSR to democracy, and from democracy to United Russia, Pyotr Pavlovich Biryukov moved right along and always passionately supported whatever power was in charge.
I’m giving you only hard facts about his family, based on documents, and you can decide for yourselves whether you want the masters of our country to be men like Pyotr Pavlovich Biryukov.
The independent outlet Meduza had already reported on the giant penthouses in the city center belonging to the Biryukov family.
This is one of Moscow’s most elite neighborhoods, where a square meter costs 1.1 million rubles. In this building, even the “journalist” Dmitry Kiselyov has an apartment. The residential complex was promoted by supermodel Naomi Campbell.
The Biryukov family penthouse occupies the top two floors—14 and 15. On the 14th floor, which consists of five apartments, four belong to Biryukov’s daughter Irina. On the 15th floor, all five apartments are divided between Biryukov’s son Alexander and his wife Ekaterina. So the penthouse consists of 9 apartments in total. Its total area is 1,608 square meters, and its market value is 1.769 billion rubles.
Almost 2 billion rubles. The family of Sobyanin’s deputy. A man who has spent his whole life in public service. Not bad, right? But this is only the beginning. After Tsvetnoy Boulevard, we move on to an even more expensive location—Patriarch’s Ponds.
Here on Yermolayevsky Lane is Pyotr Biryukov’s only officially declared apartment. Its area is 173.8 square meters, and he owns it jointly with his wife, Antonida Alexandrovna. The apartment is now worth 146.5 million rubles. Let’s add that to the total value of the Biryukovs’ real estate.
That apartment is on the 4th floor. But Pyotr Biryukov wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t add another one to it. In the same building there is also a two-level apartment occupying the 5th floor and the attic, directly above Pyotr Biryukov’s apartment. This apartment belongs to his daughter Irina and his grandson Nikita. He received a share in it at the age of six. An apartment like this, with an area of 330 square meters, is now worth 275.5 million rubles.
That same grandson of Pyotr Biryukov, Nikita, bought a 307-square-meter apartment in the ultra-elite Sytynsky residential complex at the age of 19.
2 million rubles per square meter. The families of billionaires Vladimir Gruzdev and Vladimir Potanin live here. But their apartments are far more modest. There was no housing here that matched the needs of a Moscow official’s grandson, since the largest apartment in the building is only 223 square meters, so to avoid living in such laughably small quarters by Biryukov standards, two apartments had to be combined into one. Nikita Biryukov’s home is now worth 616 million rubles. That is his grandfather’s official salary as Moscow’s top municipal manager for 100 years.
You’re probably confused and tired by now. But that’s all right—the Biryukovs probably have a hard time keeping track of their apartments too. You’ll manage.
Just 500 meters away from grandson Nikita’s apartment, we find the apartment of his mother Irina—that is, the daughter of our Pyotr Palych. Leontyevsky Lane, inside the Boulevard Ring. This 236-square-meter apartment was bought in 2008, and it is now worth 244.5 million rubles. And this is the Biryukov family’s 13th apartment.
It’s nothing but hundreds of square meters and hundreds of millions—it feels like we’re telling the story of an oligarch, not the family of a Moscow official. You could bet that even someone like Abramovich doesn’t have this much real estate in Moscow. And so far we’ve only talked about the property of the official’s daughter and grandson. Biryukov also has a son, Alexander. His square meters are in the House on Smolenskaya Embankment residential complex.
The windows of this building offer a stunning view of the Moskva River. In 2008, Alexander Petrovich Biryukov bought a 203-square-meter apartment here. The value of this apartment—the 14th in the Biryukovs’ collection—is 285 million rubles.
Whew. Well, it seems we’ve gone through all the children of our deputy mayor and counted everything up. Time to relax and think it over. Or is it still too early? I’m afraid it’s much too early. Because our official also has a brother, and that brother has a daughter. And that daughter—the deputy mayor’s niece—also owns extremely luxurious apartments in the Imperial House residential complex in Yakimanka.
The description says: “A club-style building with just 65 apartments, offering impressive views of the Moskva River, the Kremlin, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and Sparrow Hills.” Here, two apartments—(one, the other)—are owned by Anzhelika Alexeyevna Biryukova, the deputy mayor’s niece. The apartments, on the fifth and sixth floors, have a combined area of 513 square meters and are now worth 635 million rubles.
And there is also another apartment belonging to Anzhelika on Zoologicheskaya Street—modest by this family’s standards at 150 square meters. It is worth 52 million rubles. That brings the total to 17 apartments.
All right, now we are definitely done with the apartments. We’ll save the Biryukov family’s cars and their grand country estate for later, but first let me tell you about this interesting legal entity: Venta LLC. This company alone won tenders worth 316 million rubles from various Moscow agencies to provide them with special equipment—trucks and tractor units. And, just so you know, it belongs to Ekaterina Vladimirovna Biryukova and Irina Petrovna Biryukova—that is, the daughter-in-law and daughter of Pyotr Biryukov. We found a 516-square-meter office owned by this company in one of the Moscow City skyscrapers, and an office like that is worth 263 million rubles. Let’s add that to our running total.
And with this company begins our journey into the astonishing world of the Biryukov family’s cars. From open sources alone, we found 11 luxury vehicles. All registered to Venta LLC. Two Maybachs, two Toyota Land Cruisers, two Mercedes-Benzes, a Porsche Cayenne, a Range Rover, a G-Wagen, and two BMW X6s. Total value: 92 million rubles.
Now for the family members’ cars—we found those too. Daughter Irina: a Toyota Land Cruiser, a Range Rover, and a BMW 750, with a total value of 25 million rubles. Son’s wife Ekaterina: a Mercedes-Benz CL 63 AMG worth 11.5 million rubles. Grandson Nikita: a Lexus LX570 and a Mercedes-Benz GLE450 worth 14.3 million rubles. Brother’s wife Nina Fyodorovna: a Mercedes-Benz S500 and a BMW 740Li worth 15.5 million rubles. Niece Anzhelika: a Lexus LX 570, a Toyota Land Cruiser, and a BMW X6 worth 17 million rubles.
In total, we found 22 cars belonging to the Biryukov family, worth 176 million rubles. It’s frightening to imagine how many we didn’t find. This is the most expensive vehicle fleet we’ve ever seen.
We’ve had apartments, we’ve had cars. What else does a major “practical manager” and pillar of the regime need? That’s right—a country estate. And you’re going to like this one. We look at the property records: 50 land plots with a total area of more than 10 hectares (about 25 acres). Then we look at satellite maps and, hmm, what we see looks like an industrial zone.
It really does look like some kind of industrial site of unclear purpose—how could this possibly be a country house? You’d expect warehouses there, maybe a printing plant. But the investigations team pulled itself together and flew out to film it. And I honestly don’t know how to describe it to you—we have never seen “household management” on this scale. Better to just see it for yourselves.
Everything looks like some kind of city-building simulator gone out of control. Like SimCity. Here and there are houses of unclear purpose, loading equipment sits next to neat lawns, there’s a playground, and right beside it cows tied to stakes are trampling circles into the ground. None of it makes any sense.
Let’s take a closer look. What we have here is a full-fledged farm. On the left are bird enclosures; a little farther on there are some other animals too. In fact, every one-story building you see seems to be used for breeding some kind of livestock or poultry. We fly a little farther and find a real pond, with something swimming in it. We look closer and see geese and ducks everywhere—on the pond, on the shore, beyond the pond. There are hundreds of them, if not thousands. And all of them live here, right next to Pyotr Biryukov. Why does he need them? What does he do with them? Give them to colleagues as gifts?
We fly on past the bird sheds. And we see stables, with a dirt paddock for horses beside them. Nearby there’s construction equipment; to the left there’s another horse area, much larger. We turn aroooound. And we see vegetable beds, greenhouses, a tennis court, and a neat little pasture for cows. As you can see, Biryukov’s milk is home-produced too. Let’s speed up and keep going. We’re over the enclosures again; you can see people walking nearby, and once more there’s construction equipment. Then we come to two-story houses, apparently meant for staff. But where is the manor house? In fact, there are several. One is farther off to the left, with an area of 1,800 square meters. And here’s another one. Behind the trampoline and yet another playground. With neat lawns, paths, a fountain, and an alpine rock garden.
There’s even a golf cart for getting around the estate in comfort. This house has an area of 1,500 square meters. We estimate the value of this grand farming estate with its luxury houses at **1 billion rubles**.
Why did I call Biryukov a symbol and a master of Russia? Because his country estate is a perfect model of the Putin-era official mentality. Steal everything. Drag everything behind your own fence. Give every relative a little house. Wall yourself off. Put chests of gold in the basement. Make sure there are serfs and outbuildings in the yard. Keep cows and geese. And drink your own fresh milk. No chemicals, of course.
And the best part is that everything—from the geese to the Mercedeses—was paid for by you and me. In our housing and utilities bills. The monthly utility statement might as well spell it out: 17 kopecks from every Muscovite for a goose. 1.30 rubles for fuel for the vehicle fleet, and 2.5 rubles for penthouse upkeep. And those of you who don’t live in Moscow—don’t laugh. You’re paying in exactly the same way, just for your own local Pyotr Palych. Thanks to Putin and United Russia, there is a Pyotr Palych everywhere.
Look. Based on open sources, we counted 4.3 billion rubles’ worth of apartments and offices, 176 million rubles’ worth of cars, and a country estate worth 1 billion belonging to the family of official Biryukov.
That comes to a total of 5.5 billion rubles.
And everyone knows about it. The Interior Ministry, the Investigative Committee, the FSB, Sobyanin, Putin. He isn’t even hiding it. He collects an official’s salary and lives openly like a billionaire.
Because they are all like this. And we have to fight all of them, because they will never let us go on their own.
After all, who would pay to feed the geese if we were gone?
September 8 is a great chance to tell Putin, Biryukov, and United Russia that we are not going to pay for all this. That is why we propose Smart Voting: through it, all at once, across the whole country, we tell EVERY United Russia candidate: get lost. Not a single vote. We’ll vote for anyone at all—just not for you. This is our common message: we do not trust you, you have failed at everything and looted everything in sight.
If you like, this is an electoral uprising against Putin’s party and its Pyotr Pavloviches. One day, the whole country will simply turn out and vote against United Russia. On September 8, we will take the first step toward that. The more of us there are, the better and more visible the result will be.
Smart Voting. Bring as many people there as you can. Everyone you know—relatives, friends, all of them. And if you don’t want to—well then, go on voluntarily feeding the geese of Russia’s nationwide Pyotr Pavlovich.