We’ve invented a new sport. Or a game of chance. Or maybe it’s a quest? One where it’s pretty hard to lose, even if you really try.
Take any leader on United Russia’s party list and look for a billion.
Can you even picture a billion? It’s definitely not a suitcase full of cash — it’s much more than that. A bundle of 5,000-ruble notes worth 500,000 rubles weighs just 100 grams, and you’d need 2,000 such bundles. That’s 200 kilograms of cash. You’re not carrying that on your back in one trip, or even two. You’d need an entire container. Even the Bank of Russia once showed what a billion rubles looks like so ordinary mortals could see it too. A monster like that wouldn’t even fit in a car trunk.
With a billion, you can buy anything you want: a giant mansion on Rublyovka (an ultra-elite area outside Moscow), a private jet, a yacht. Or you could build a school for 1,000 students or pay for treatment for 18,000 cancer patients. In short, a billion is a lot.
At first glance, this new sport seems pretty difficult — how do you find a billion belonging to some random person? More precisely, not just a random person, but a public official, not a businessman. Someone who reports their income every year in an official disclosure. And of course, you won’t see any billion there.
It looks complicated, but in fact it’s simpler than it seems.
Open United Russia’s list, find the leader of a regional slate, and begin our experiment. Voronezh Region. Alexei Gordeyev.
Online, he’s known above all for this photo.
Naturally, he has spent his whole life in public office. His official biography is as plain as can be: 10 years as agriculture minister, then 8 years as governor of a major farming region — Voronezh Region — then a couple of months as the president’s envoy to the Volga Federal District, then promoted to deputy prime minister, where he oversaw agriculture and served for two years. Since early 2020, he has been a State Duma deputy and deputy speaker — in other words, one of Vyacheslav Volodin’s deputies.
The election campaign is now in full swing, and the candidates are working at full capacity. Gordeyev is working too, in his own way. For example, he proposed cleaning up the banks of the Don River. Meaning, he just said, “Why don’t we clean it up?” Staff from Rosprirodnadzor (Russia’s environmental watchdog), students, and some women who looked like public-sector employees took part in the cleanup. Local businesses provided the food. And that’s it — now they can report what a great job Gordeyev is doing cleaning up the Don.
Or take this — we’re delighted by this innovation from the deputy speaker of the State Duma. He has become a professional congratulator. His main campaign activity is congratulating the residents of Voronezh Region on literally every holiday in the calendar. In the five months since the campaign began, he congratulated the region’s residents 16 times. In the previous three and a half years, he had done it only five times. He congratulated the people of Voronezh on Navy Day, Trade Worker’s Day, Family, Love, and Fidelity Day, Voronezh Region Coat of Arms and Flag Day, Youth Day, and so on without end. In August, congratulator Gordeyev became especially active, and Voronezh residents received his greetings for Railway Worker’s Day, Airborne Forces Day, Builder’s Day, Russian Air Force Day; he congratulated farmers on their third million tons of grain and on State Flag Day of the Russian Federation.
In other words, Gordeyev just takes a calendar, checks what holiday it is today, has someone write a greeting in his name, gets it posted on the government website, then local media reprint it, and Gordeyev walks around pleased with himself — his campaign is underway, and the people of Voronezh can feel his love.
We’ve looked at the official part of Gordeyev’s biography — the part fed to voters in the hope that someone will believe it and vote for him. But there’s also an unofficial one. And what won’t be written on the State Duma website or posted at a local polling station is far more interesting.
How might the entire family of a man who spent many years as agriculture minister be making money? Maybe they own a chain of hookah lounges? Or an art studio painting in the traditional Gzhel style? Or a fine-dining restaurant serving haute Voronezh cuisine? No — by an incredible coincidence, his family naturally decided to try its hand in the agricultural business. The whole family, every last one of them. Every single person. And each of them, many thanks to them, will help us in our search for United Russia’s billion.
Let’s start with the wife. Tatyana Gordeyeva is involved in… agriculture.
For many years she was a founder of a company with the straightforward name “Agrobusiness,” and recently she transferred her stake to another official’s wife — Inna Dankvert, the spouse of Sergey Dankvert, the man who has headed Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s agricultural watchdog, for nearly 20 years.
We can see her income in the disclosure, and it’s not especially impressive. But what is impressive is a 252-square-meter apartment. To put it mildly, a very substantial apartment. Especially for someone who, if the disclosure is to be believed, is nowhere near being a dollar millionaire.
This apartment is not in Voronezh but in Yakimanka, an elite district in central Moscow. The building is in a quiet pedestrian area, directly opposite the Tretyakov Gallery.
It’s a premium residential complex, just a stone’s throw from the Kremlin walls. In 2007, when the family acquired this property, Gordeyev had already been agriculture minister for eight years.
Today, an apartment like this costs around 260 million rubles. Even if we imagine that it cost half as much at the time of purchase, the Gordeyev family still could not have had that kind of money. In short, it’s an excellent find, one that brings us at least a little closer to the billion we’re looking for.
The Gordeyevs have two children. Let’s start with the daughter. Varvara Maslova teaches at Moscow State University, giving courses on consumer law and contract work.
But scholarship is one thing, and someone still has to hold the shares. A stake in the company Agropromservice was registered in her name.
We found two apartments in Moscow belonging to Varvara Maslova (Gordeyeva). One is on Trekhgorny Val and measures 136 square meters.
An apartment like that is worth 59 million rubles. Her second home, much more luxurious, is in Khamovniki, in the Sadovye Kvartaly residential complex. There, Gordeyev’s daughter — the daughter of the State Duma’s deputy speaker — owns a 152-square-meter apartment.
Let’s read the description.
And here, among 350,000 shrubs of various species beneath the windows of her 185-million-ruble apartment, wanders the daughter of United Russia politician Gordeyev.
Add up the wife’s apartment and the daughter’s two apartments, and we’re already at 504 million. Whew — the first half-billion is always the hardest.
Now the son.
This is an especially splendid story. He showed remarkable talent in agriculture. And political talent too. Just like his father. He headed an agricultural holding company.
At 24, he became the owner of a company that cultivates 45,000 hectares of land — about 450 square kilometers, roughly the size of the country of Andorra. Asked where the money came from, the younger Gordeyev said he had earned enough for the agricultural holding while working as a hired manager at other companies.
His political career began at around the same time he became the owner of the agricultural holding. Nikita was elected to the Ryazan Regional Duma from United Russia.
He ran precisely in the districts where his company operated. The younger Gordeyev didn’t just become a deputy at 24 — he became the youngest member of the Ryazan Regional Duma, and a member of the committees on budget, taxes, and state structure.
In September 2018, Gordeyev’s 32-year-old son, like every self-respecting United Russia politician, apparently decided that life without a house on Rublyovka isn’t really life at all. So off we go to the village of Zhukovka outside Moscow. Though “village” is just a name at this point, since land there costs 5 million rubles per sotka (100 square meters). The younger Gordeyev bought a 975-square-meter house, a 250-square-meter guest house, and the 4,400-square-meter plot beneath them.
An identical property in the same area is for sale for 480 million rubles. Add this country house to our estimate of the Gordeyev family’s assets and... we’re very close to a billion, but not quite over the line yet. 984 million. Just a little more to go.
So let’s head to the Gordeyev family’s ancestral homeland — there’s bound to be something there. We open the official biography. It says that Alexei Gordeyev spent his childhood in the village of Uryadino in the Kasimovsky District of Ryazan Region.
Now let’s look for that very village on a satellite map.
So far, nothing special — just a blur of tiny houses. Wait. What’s that?
Some enormous plot, 80 sotkas — 8,000 square meters — and with a pond too. The house is at least 600 to 700 square meters.
Let’s quickly order a property record. We’d like to say we’re surprised, but no — no surprise at all. It’s the family estate! The owner is Gordeyev’s son.
He bought it in 2009, at age 23. Well, of course, the proper way to put it is not that he bought it, but that it was registered in his name. Because the real owner of this entire estate is the prominent United Russia politician Alexei Gordeyev. We estimate its value at 80 million rubles.
Ta-da! We’ve gone past a billion. Congratulations are in order! But you can’t just stop there — that’s not how our sport works. It pulls you in.
We return from Ryazan to central Moscow, to the Khamovniki district, which by now feels like home to regular readers of this blog. And here, on Vrazhsky Lane, we find another enormous Gordeyev apartment. With a complicated backstory.
In this beautiful building, in 2008, a 22-year-old woman named Arina Gordeyeva bought herself a 181-square-meter apartment.
This woman is the younger Gordeyev’s wife. She owned the property for two years, until something terrible happened — her husband decided to run for office. And our young 24-year-old United Russia politician clearly didn’t want the residents of rural Ryazan districts seeing his apartment in Khamovniki. So he turned to the holy of holies of all Putin-era officials, the sacred repository of any United Russia politician’s wealth, and said: “Grandma, can I transfer the apartment into your name?” And that’s exactly what he did, re-registering it to a woman named Valentina Safronova.
She is the mother-in-law of Alexei Gordeyev, the head of United Russia’s Voronezh list. The apartment’s market value, by the way, is 217 million rubles.
Thanks, Nikita — you helped us find the mother-in-law. And therefore even more property. In May 2011, when the elder Gordeyev had already spent two years warming the governor’s chair in Voronezh Region, his mother-in-law bought two plots of land (one, two) with a total area of 3,700 square meters in the elite cottage community of Zelyony Mys near Moscow on the Pestovskoye Reservoir.
The settlement is notable above all for its own shoreline — 1.5 kilometers long and fully developed for beach recreation, fishing, and water sports.
On Safronova’s land stand two residential houses — 806 and 111 square meters.
How much could a country house like that cost? Let’s find a comparable listing — here’s a house in the same settlement that’s one and a half times smaller.
Its price is 147 million rubles, which means we can, with a clear conscience, value the 87-year-old mother-in-law’s house at 220 million rubles.
Add the apartment and the mother-in-law’s country house to the tally, and we’re no longer at just one billion, but one and a half. And this is the family of a man who has spent his entire life in public service.
In fact, Gordeyev is a “locomotive” candidate — the very best United Russia can offer the people of Voronezh. The idea is that they vote for him, and then, on the strength of his name recognition, he drags a whole lot of other trash into the State Duma. Candidates no one would ever vote for on their own, but who are very much needed in parliament. To approve even more laws dreamed up by Putin, ban the internet, ban foreign medicines, introduce mandatory public readings of Putin’s articles and compulsory viewing of Alina Kabaeva’s appearances as part of patriotic education. And very soon, it will be they who are assigned a particularly humiliating role — begging Putin to make use of the option to reset his presidential term count and become Russia’s president “for the first time” again in 2024.
Here, for example, are some of the people Gordeyev is dragging into the State Duma:
Arkady Ponomaryov, a businessman known in the region as the “Milk King”. The richest deputy from Voronezh Region.
His wife has been placed in the Civic Chamber. Open the disclosure, and there are three apartments in Spain — a patriot, clearly. Straight to the State Duma.
Or this one. Yevgeny Revenko.
He has absolutely no connection to Voronezh Region, yet he was elected to the State Duma from it in 2016 and plans to do so again. A big shot, deputy secretary general of United Russia, former deputy director of VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcasting company). Apparently a big fan of ours. He said our film “He Is Not Dimon to You” contained no facts, only neurolinguistic programming. He called the film about Putin’s palace a cartoon. Within United Russia, Revenko heads the ethics committee; he also refused to investigate fellow party member Andrei Metelsky, whose mother we found to own hotels in Austria and property worth billions of rubles. When we found 15 million rubles’ worth of clothes and diamonds on Anastasia Rakova, a deputy to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (two coats costing nearly a million, earrings worth 1.5 million, Graff jewelry worth 8.4 million rubles), Revenko said that didn’t interest him either. Because Anastasia Rakova, to quote, adheres to “personal modesty and restraint.”
We also really liked this comrade — Igor Kastyukevich.
The guy is almost 45 and is a member of the Coordinating Council of the Russian Movement of Schoolchildren and the head of the youth wing of the All-Russia People’s Front. He has no connection to Voronezh Region, which he even honestly admits. But he’s a major functionary in Putin’s Popular Front, and loyal cadres like that are needed in the State Duma.
Just think about it: how are you supposed to drag THIS into the State Duma? Are the people of Voronezh crazy enough to vote for them? Not even the magic and broom of Ella Pamfilova (head of Russia’s Central Election Commission) would be enough to sweep them into parliament. So they foist Gordeyev on voters instead — at least he’s someone people in the region have actually seen. As for the fact that the former governor and top name on the list is a secret billionaire, voters won’t find that out. Or rather, they weren’t supposed to.
The conclusions are very simple. Don’t vote for United Russia yourselves, and tell everyone else not to vote for them either. They do not deserve a single vote. They have been stealing for decades and making Russians’ lives worse, and now they dream of being re-elected to the State Duma so they can keep doing exactly the same thing.
Your main sharp stick in the fight against United Russia is Smart Voting. They hate it, they fear it, and they want to ban it. Nothing is stopping you right now from following the link to the website and registering. A couple of days before the election, you’ll receive a recommendation on whom to vote for so that United Russia candidates miss out on the State Duma. Or you can install our app (for Apple Store or Google Play). It doesn’t need any of your personal data at all — just enter your address, get a voting recommendation, and vote smart for the strongest candidate who can beat the United Russia nominee.
And help spread this video. We have to make sure that as many people as possible learn who Putin is really urging them to vote for. Who really runs the country and writes our laws. How they rob their own people first, and then ask those same people to vote for them. So they can steal even more.
Freedom for Alexei Navalny.