Text version
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A person can lose their way, a person can
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get mixed up. They can end up in someone else’s
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apartment, or, as we know from the
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classic film, even in another
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city. The builders on 3rd Builders Street, Building 25, Apartment 12, too—(a reference to the classic Soviet film *The Irony of Fate*)
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Apartment 12—but only in Moscow.
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But today we’re going to tell an astonishing
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story about how a man mixed up
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the country—and to this day, no one has
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noticed. And this is not just any man, but
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a high-ranking television
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official. He is beside Vladimir
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Vladimirovich Putin at every
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important moment. He conducts all the most
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important interviews. He asks the most
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difficult questions. And all this time, our
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hero, while standing at the very center
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of Kremlin politics, was there simply
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by accident. He simply mixed up the countries.
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[music]
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Our mini-series *Propagandists* continues.
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A legend of Russian political
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journalism, deputy general director of the VGTRK media holding,
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Sergey Brilyov.
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Good evening on Channel One—short
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Saturday evening news. He needs no
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introduction. For the past 17 years, Brilyov
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has worked as a news anchor.
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Besides that, of course, you remember his
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annual live call-in shows with Putin. Brilyov
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has commented on all of Putin’s inaugurations.
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And Putin’s victory immediately in the first round—
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77 percent of voters cast their
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votes for Vladimir Putin. We are concluding
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our live broadcast from the Kremlin of the ceremony
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of Vladimir Putin taking office as
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President of Russia.
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The broadcast was hosted by Ekaterina Andreyeva and
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Sergey Brilyov.
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He hosts all kinds of forums and regularly
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interviews the most
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senior officials. And he also has a special weekly
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weekly
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evening show where he is both the author and the host, and
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for that show, by the way, this year he
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received a TEFI award (a major Russian television prize).
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Suspense, a pause, the envelope—and to a roar of applause, onto
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the stage appears Sergey Brilyov...
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Since 2002, TV propaganda
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from Sergey Brilyov
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has been a far more refined product than what
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we are used to seeing: ‘turn the U.S.
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into radioactive ash,’ ‘powerful stuff,’
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‘two people were burned alive in Lviv because they
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didn’t kneel, and then they took a mother
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and tied her unconscious to a tank and dragged her
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across the square’—Brilyov does not
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cluck on air like that.
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He doesn’t babble, saying one thing and then another—I don’t know.
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He does not spout outright insane nonsense
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like the others from the Moscow circus.
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‘My [__] is Ukrainian, so what?’
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‘Don’t lie to me, or I’ll feed you—’
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‘Look at him shaking... I can’t explain it—’
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‘Such flags... you and him...’
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‘Your... my friend... I already... hid... sit...’
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He works on the audience that
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finds it disgusting to watch Solovyov and Kiselyov,
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those who are tired of such an aggressive
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format.
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The secret of our hero is that in his
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programs there is no bad news at all. In
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his program, there is only good news.
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In Brilyov’s news, Russia is full
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of prospects and positive expectations.
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Officials are delightful people,
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governors are beloved by the people, and of course
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the source of all this light and warmth is
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Putin. A couple of examples—let’s take only the
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biggest stories, the ones that seemingly
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simply could not be ignored. Well then:
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the obvious raising of the retirement age.
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That predatory pension reform, in his case,
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became a ‘transformation of pensions.’ Sitting with an official
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approving the pension budget,
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they discuss growth—growth in pensions, you see.
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We can see now
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that our spending has risen by trillions,
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the Pension Fund’s expenditures are increasing, and this
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is even [__]...
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which have, of course, been approved...
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By the way, I want to say right away so that there are no
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speculations: I said that we are not
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cutting spending and so on. Growth of 9
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point 2 percent is also substantial—that is
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a lot. In this episode, Brilyov’s
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program,
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which aired two days after
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the law raising the retirement
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age was passed, spent less than
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three minutes discussing pensions, and more time in that same
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episode was spent discussing a concert by
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Nikolai Baskov at the Kremlin.
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The protests against the pension reform
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Sergey Brilyov did not see at all. Tens of
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thousands of people took to the streets in all
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the country’s major cities, while in the episodes for
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that week on Brilyov’s show,
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Tatyana Golikova, the author of this pension
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reform, is painting a fence...
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Instead of the crushing defeat
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of United Russia candidates in regional elections, including
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in Primorye, Brilyov, while actually being there
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at that moment in Vladivostok, speaks not
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with the candidates for governor, but with the
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President of Mongolia.
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There are problems between Japan and Korea,
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between Korea and China. And remember, recently
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there was a week packed with events:
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there was the incident on the space station,
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a hole was discovered, the euro rose to 80
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rubles, and there was a constant stream of news about
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brutal torture in Russian penal colonies, while
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on his program Sergey Brilyov spent 12 minutes
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congratulating oligarch
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Usmanov on his birthday. By the way, another unusual detail: in
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Usmanov’s office there is a portrait of his mother.
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One of those October weeks was full of events.
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Putin’s approval rating has fallen by a record amount
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Another GRU officer has been identified, and
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in the scandalous Skripal case, while the head
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of the Constitutional Court, Zorkin, wants
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to rewrite the Constitution, and completely
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unprecedented protests are taking place in
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Ingushetia
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Well, there’s certainly plenty to talk about on *Itogi Nedeli* (*Results of the Week*), but
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that’s right, I’ll now quickly recap for you
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Brilyov’s weekly broadcast instead
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This week, the first segment was: Putin held a Security Council meeting
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The second segment:
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Putin and Lukashenko eat draniki (Belarusian potato pancakes) and blini in
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Belarus, then they drink water from a
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spring
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And the third segment: Putin and Medvedev smell and
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look at apples while discussing agriculture
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which, believe it or not, has “risen from its knees” (a common Russian patriotic phrase meaning a national comeback)
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And so, who would have thought it, but agriculture
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has once again become fashionable in Russia
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If not long ago young people dreamed
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of getting a job either at Gazprom, heaven forbid, or
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in the civil service, now more and more of them
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are going into agricultural holdings. The boom in
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agriculture was discussed for six minutes
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Then another seven minutes were spent discussing Russia’s withdrawal
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from the Council of Europe, and then just as much time
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was spent discussing the resignation of the American
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UN ambassador Nikki Haley
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Her biography was examined in great detail
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Thank you very much
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And squeezed in between those segments was an actual
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news item: Russians can now
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go
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to Suriname without visas, which, according to Brilyov,
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was a sensation: an agreement had been signed under
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which Russians would no longer need
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visas for the South American state of
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Suriname. Propagandist Sergei Brilyov
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simply completely replaces the real
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news agenda
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and offers his own fake version instead
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It’s a kind of journalistic sleight of hand
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a distraction, propaganda all the same
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just a little more elegant
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In Brilyov’s world, planes are not being shot down
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tens of thousands of people are not protesting
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In Brilyov’s world, there is no corruption, no poverty, no
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war. In a long interview with Medvedev
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summing up six years in office, Brilyov
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doesn’t ask him about palaces, and doesn’t even
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hint at the corruption
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allegations; instead, he marvels at the ability
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of Dmitry Anatolyevich to remember lots of
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figures. I remember coming to the interview, and you had
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your questions prepared, and you answered them
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and you had not only
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no computer in front of you—and believe me, there’s
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no teleprompter here
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And yet you still remember all these
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numbers. What is it like, in general,
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to keep this enormous
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economy in your head? Well, it’s
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interesting, a big job, an interesting
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challenge. But what I like most is how
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skillfully Brilyov handles bad
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news—I mean the kind that simply
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cannot be ignored. He does mention them, but
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in a very peculiar way. When
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journalists found out that Putin had lied to
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the whole world and that the Russian citizens
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accused of involvement in the attempted murder in
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Britain were not civilians at all—of course
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they looked into who these people were. They’re
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civilians? We can’t hear you—civilians?
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Civilians? Of course not, they’re career intelligence officers
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At last we see their faces on the screen behind
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the host, and it seems to us that now, right
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now, he’s finally going to talk about it
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We watch: In England, meanwhile,
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new information kept emerging
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in the Petrov and Boshirov case. You can’t
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ignore it. But if we start retelling
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all the newly presented facts and versions
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we’ll simply derail the program. And do you know what the program’s author
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suggests we familiarize ourselves
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with instead?
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Instead of the spy scandal, Brilyov here
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outdid himself. No less of a
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sensation in London, it turned out, was another
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piece of footage: in a moment, stepping out of a car, we’ll see
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American actress Meghan Markle, who
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married Prince Harry, and although she is a
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newly minted duchess, she closes
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the car door herself. A small thing, but by the number of
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views, this footage is a leader: Meghan
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Markle shut the car door herself. Bravo,
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Sergei
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And it was at moments like these that we began
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to understand: Brilyov has simply mixed up the countries
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The real life of our country does not exist in his
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news, because these are not news about
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Russia at all
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And Brilyov isn’t really a Russian TV host—well,
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he must have ended up in that studio by accident
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some absent-minded passerby from the street
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And we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, realizing that
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Sergei Brilyov had gotten lost in this enormous
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world, decided to help him and
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started looking for his true homeland
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a rich country with good infrastructure
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high household incomes and decent
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salaries—in other words, the kind of country
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that Sergei Brilyov is always talking about
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in his news broadcasts. And Duchess Meghan Markle,
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whom this
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Putin TV man loves to follow, gave us a clue
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about what to do
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We enter the surname Brilyov into the public database
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of British legal entities, and there is
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only one match
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a London company belonging to a certain Irina Brilyova
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That is Sergei Brilyov’s wife
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And what luck—right there on the same
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page, places of residence are listed
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in the United Kingdom. Then we simply Google it
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and find that a certain Irina Brilyova
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signed a petition against cuts
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budgets in the London borough of Hound, by the way
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How interesting. So, did you sign the petition?
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about the borough of Archaon, by the way? I didn't, but Irina...
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Brileva is interested in this issue.
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And just as we thought that, actually,
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anyone can sign such a petition, we
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found a photo of the Brilev couple right
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in that very borough, and it has a geotag:
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the Physic district. So now let's simply
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try our luck and type into Google:
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Brileva Physic. And there it is, the second link.
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Irina Brileva, owner of a share in
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the management company of an apartment
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building. I'm deliberately walking you
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through all these steps in such detail so that you
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understand: this wasn't Sherlock Holmes, James
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Bond, or the FSB (Russia's security service) investigating this. Everything
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came from open sources.
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Well, yes, and it was also sitting in the second Google result.
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On Google.
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But it gets more interesting from here. The specific
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Brilevs' apartment in
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London we found simply by going through all the
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apartments in the building managed by the company
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in which she owns a share. Here is the building.
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A nice-looking area, really lovely,
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prosperous West London, with the Thames,
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parks,
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not far from Heathrow Airport. And here
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is the property record for the apartment: the owner is Irina
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Alexandrovna Brileva. Purchase date: 22
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February 2016, on the eve of Defender of the Fatherland Day (a Russian holiday on February 23),
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Defender of the Fatherland Day.
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The price was £700,000
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— about $1 million. The same record
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states that the apartment was bought without loans
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and without a mortgage. That's an important point, guys.
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Brilev never even pretended
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to be in business, unlike,
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for example, Vladimir Solovyov.
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The money all this time in our industry
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came from... Brilev worked only
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as a journalist on state
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television.
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His wife isn't in business either.
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She works in the family NKO—that is,
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she is involved in public or nonprofit work.
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And yet they somehow had $1 million
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in cash, with which they
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managed to buy themselves an apartment in
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London.
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But again, the most interesting part is still
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ahead of us.
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Do you know what those hefty tomes are
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in the picture? Those unremarkable books are a source
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of priceless knowledge for us. They are
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lists of those who have the right to vote in
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UK elections—in other words,
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subjects of the United Kingdom.
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We open the right page. Now, it looks easy,
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as if we're just opening it, but in fact
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to find it, it took us
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several days of nonstop work. And we
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see that already in 2001, one Sergei
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Brilev
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and Irina Konstantinova—that is Brileva's wife's maiden name—
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Brilev's wife,
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were registered as voters in the area of
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Notting Hill. Also in this part of
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Westminster there is, would you look at that,
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St. Petersburg Stables—some strange
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housing annex—and farther along
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there is an Orthodox church. And that is how we
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finally find the true homeland
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of the state TV propagandist
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Sergei Borisovich Brilev. Congratulations:
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the man who for 17 years has sat next to Putin,
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hosted his call-in shows, and every week
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told us how wonderful life is
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in Putin's Russia, is officially
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a subject of Her Majesty the Queen
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of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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Because under British law, the electoral rolls
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can include only British subjects,
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citizens of Commonwealth countries,
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or citizens of the European Union.
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But given the circumstances,
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the Brilevs quite clearly have British
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citizenship. That explains why he was so
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shocked that Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex,
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Meghan Markle,
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closed the car door herself.
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After all, she's his duchess. That's news
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about his royal family. Just take in
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this moment, please: a television
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official, propagandist, deputy director general
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of VGTRK (Russia's state broadcasting company), receiving a salary
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from your taxes, hosts Putin's
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inauguration, and
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it was this very man who took the following
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oath when he accepted British citizenship:
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"I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her
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Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and
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her heirs. I will be loyal to the
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United Kingdom."
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Wonderful. A real Putin patriot,
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truly exemplary: this public figure is a British subject,
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and accountable to voters in
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Britain. In 2016, when Russia was in
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crisis, incomes were falling, and the population was growing poorer,
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he bought himself another apartment there for
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$1 million. But every Saturday he
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comes to Russia to
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tell us how well people live here, that
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pensioners aren't being robbed here, but rather
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their pensions are being raised; that prices aren't rising
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and wages aren't falling, but on the contrary,
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life
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just keeps getting better every day thanks to
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. And Vladimir Vladimirovich himself
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must be pleased: on his payroll he has
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a magnificent liar and hypocrite.
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Is he bothered by the fact that his call-in shows
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are hosted by a British subject?
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We'd have to ask Putin himself, but I think
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not. Putin's entire system of power is built on lies,
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so why would he be upset
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by something so trivial? After all, what does it matter?
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Putin and his inner circle
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they steal money in Russia and then
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take it abroad. That’s Brilev for you.
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What does he do? He lies to you on TV, gets
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paid for it, and then goes home to his
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queen. As for Brilev, well, this is
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a model Putin-era official, which is why he
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hosts all those call-in shows and other
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inaugurations. I think those of you who
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watch my YouTube channel probably don’t often
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watch Sergei Brilev’s program, but there are
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plenty of people who do watch it.
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There are millions consuming this propaganda, and
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you and I can make sure that a great
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many people, every time Brilev
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starts pushing his
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nonexistent good news again, won’t believe
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him. As they said, shut up, sir.
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Share this video with all
17:50
your friends and acquaintances, especially those who
17:52
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17:55
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17:57
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17:59
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