Parasites

The scabies mite, when it gets onto the skin,

burrows something like a tunnel into it and

lives there quite happily, feeding on you.

A roundworm gets inside you along with

unwashed fruit, settles in the intestines,

and feeds on your blood cells.

A fungus called cordyceps is, generally speaking,

an amazing parasite: it gets inside

an ant and turns it into a zombie,

forcing the ant to climb higher, onto

some plant, latch onto a leaf, and

die. After that, the fungus grows

through the ant’s body in a convenient spot

from which it can further spread its

spores.

But the two characters we want

to talk about today

have climbed much, much higher up the

evolutionary chain than fungi and worms, and

instead of suckers, they have the internet and

television. You can’t say they’re at

the very top of the parasite kingdom — there,

of course, you’ll find Vladimir Putin and his

closest friends. They successfully latched on

to our country as far back as 20 years ago and

splendidly appropriated for themselves almost all

the national wealth. They all became

billionaires, and their children became billionaires too.

But most importantly,

they somehow managed to convince the host organism,

that is, all of Russia and its people, that

they are not parasites at all, but some very

important organ — the brain, or perhaps the heart —

something without which life is impossible. And in this,

the key role is played by parasites of the kind

we’re about to discuss:

television ones. You’re watching this video,

which means you’re somewhere on the internet, and it’s quite

likely that you ended up on the internet

to get away from these faces. Twenty

years of total state control

have turned the TV airwaves into an endless

marathon of shameful propaganda, lies, and

censorship.

Endless low-grade, embarrassing

programs — it’s unbearable to watch. You

stopped turning on your TV and

think that at least you, at any rate, won’t

let them profit from

showing you ads. I have to

disappoint you: they’ve found

the most inventive ways to take

money out of your pocket. And the most

amazing thing is that even here, at the bottom, where

those whom you can’t even

look at without disgust reside, there is also

its own internal ranking. For example,

Kiselyov (Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent Russian state TV propagandist).

He doesn’t say a single truthful word, but

when you compare him with Solovyov, you realize

that Kiselyov seems a little better.

And then you compare Solovyov

with the talk shows on Channel One and realize that

even Solovyov is probably not the worst

person in the world. And if you do

draw up a ranking, then at the bottom of the bottom

— below rock bottom — sits the most disgusting,

vile show on earth:

*International Sawmill* — the perfect

instrument of parasitism.

[music]

And

our pair, whom people are used to

laughing at somewhat condescendingly, are actually

superb operators,

millionaire parasites of a new generation.

So let’s, as in the best

Discovery Channel films, descend to the very

lowest depths where our heroes live and

see how everything works down there.

Come on, Russia, fight back — the main thing is not to get

constipated. A heterosexual man in

Britain is like our Amur tiger — there are

only two specimens left.

This week at the White House they were shoving

it between the buns. Looking at their slimness, it was easy

to believe that it’s not only the

trade turnover that can collapse. As soon as the American

envoy flew out of the embassy in Moscow, he

immediately got a hurricane in his stomach — that was Erdogan farting

in the neighboring country. The beast has been

president for almost five years, and not once

has anyone finished him off.

And leave the protocol contour, and here, as usual,

they do it the old-fashioned way — by screwing.

After Putin’s first military throw,

don’t tempt fate in Estonia while Shойгу was playing

for points; the defense ministers of all

the other countries were losing points too, by

a fraction of Jesus.

[__] didn’t win, not by memory, in

all the languages of the world.

He wrote: just who the hell’s Juan are

you to stick your nose into someone else’s business?

Everyone.

What, put Putin in black stockings

front and center and busty — either it stands

or it doesn’t. You probably think that

*International Sawmill* is a third-rate

program that nobody watches,

and that they keep it there out of pity and

respect for the name of his father, the famous

Soviet director Edmond Keosayan. But no,

it is most likely the most profitable

show on Russian television.

Urgant, Galkin, and Malakhov would envy

the fees they’ve carved out of this

sawmill.

Our resourceful spouses — the author and host of

*International Sawmill*, Tigran Edmundovich

Keosayan,

used to be known as a mediocre

director from a famous family.

Today he is famous as the husband of

Margarita Simonyan.

She, in turn, is now the television liar

most favored by the authorities.

She heads the RT channel (Russia Today) with an annual

budget of 20 billion rubles (about $220 million), plus

the Rossiya Segodnya agency, plus the

Sputnik agency.

And on top of that, surprise: she is the creative

director of the program

*International Sawmill*—something that, until this

moment, no one knew about. The spouses

have concealed this with the utmost care, and now

you’ll understand why. As the saying goes, there used

to be different times: once he stood up like a wall, and now

it’s a strain to watch *International Sawmill*.

NTV offers *International Sawmill* in Saturday prime time. By

design, it is an evening show about world

events.

News, commentary, satire. I suspect

the creators heard that such

political formats exist and

are popular abroad, and made something

similar—only to the extent allowed by their

intellectual abilities. But while visually

there may be some resemblance—say,

a couch, a mug—the content is

far worse. In Russian

there simply are no words

to describe the degree of squalor and

talentlessness of *International Sawmill*. It

demeans human dignity. It is

a stream of diseased consciousness, toilet humor,

insults, mugging, grimacing, racism,

chauvinism, and above all an unending

boundless love for Putin. The KamAZ truck

that Putin rode across the Crimean Bridge on

would win a competition even without

a driver. The Kazan beauties already knew

that no defense could withstand the president’s

charisma, so, briefly gasping, they let

their eyes speak for themselves. I like this one:

Putin can lower mortgage rates

with a single glance. The Boss pressed a button and

half the world breathed a sigh of relief. When

it saw Putin, the puppy behaved the way

everyone does the first time they see Putin:

it flattened its ears and went into puppy ecstasy.

With a glance, the Boss drove coronavirus

away from the country’s borders. At the sight of Putin,

vacationers rejoiced as if

they had just elected him to a fifth and sixth term.

Every episode is structured the same way. I’ll say

more:

the jokes are the same too—very, very

bad jokes. Keosayan talks about

what happened during the week involving several

world leaders—Merkel, Johnson, Macron,

Erdoğan. Everything revolves around how

they are stupid and pathetic. Trump stands apart,

or “Donya,” as they call him on the show: he

may be a bit dumb, but at least he’s a Russian agent. And

then Putin appears—or “the Boss,” as

he himself calls him—and brilliantly

outplays everyone, because he is the best.

Boss boss boss boss not

cabbage key they started [__] boss

boss boss boss boss

collar meaning kettle [__] from the kettle

kettle boss boss of the kettle

kettle boss burn initial

boss boss boss boss

in kettles boss of the boss complete

[__] oceanic boss

kettle boss boss boss

kettle boss boss of the kettle

kettle by kettle leg [__] boss

boss boss boss boss

population to boss boss

boss kettle boss boss

[__] with a handle boss of the boss

person boss boss boss

You can’t surprise him with “boss” anymore. Since

we decided to be scientific zoologists, we

ran an experiment: we dissected this

show literally word by word.

We took 138 episodes, downloaded them, and fed them

into special speech-to-text

algorithms,

because no human being could

have endured it. Then from the transcripts we selected

the words and sorted them by

how often they are used in

*Sawmill*.

The most frequently mentioned person—there is

no suspense here—is Putin. His name was said

2,874 times, or on average 21 times per

episode. Over the last six months, 426 times he

was referred to as “the Boss.” Trump

is mentioned 1,211 times, Macron 222 times. As for Macron,

the fixation on him is generally very strange and

suspicious. Keosayan is simply

obsessed with the idea that the president of France, and

indeed all French people, are gay. He never

mentions Macron without some kind of sexual

context. “Hey, rooster, for a meeting with

Putin, Macron didn’t even put on makeup.” “Macron

dreamed of chocolate mulatto men after

a chocolate body wrap.”

“Macron came out to meet Putin with

a fresh manicure and an aging wife.”

“At the meeting with Putin, Macron wanted

to cry with happiness, but he was afraid

his mascara would run.” When will someone finally

step in, huh?

Or at least—

this Macron stuff, for Margarita and Tigran, is

something they came up with, and they find it hilarious.

You want the ground to swallow you up;

they roar with laughter.

They absolutely crack up. Those are the emotions—what can you do.

Keosayan is simply thrilled with what a

great show they are making together with his

wife. While Europe suffers heartburn from

democracy, and the U.S. is irradiated by

tolerance,

*International Sawmill*, no prescription needed,

dispenses healing doses of humor and

mixtures of satire.

But if we look at the financial side

of the matter, that delight becomes much more

understandable.

The NTV television channel is de facto state-controlled.

But formally, it belongs to the group

Gazprom-Media.

NTV buys *International Sawmill*.

From Keosayan's production studio, which

is called Gold Vision. This is absolutely

standard practice: a TV channel buys

ready-made, fully packaged content and

doesn't spend time and resources on

producing it in-house. The idea is

that Simonyan and Keosayan, by investing their own

money,

rent a studio, hire actors and writers,

rent lighting, sound, and cameras, make the show, and

then sell it to NTV, naturally making

some profit. But that's in theory.

So what happens in practice? Well, let's

start by looking at where our

married couple rented a studio for their

commercial program. To

understand how and where *International Sawmill* is actually filmed,

we sent

an undercover agent there. It wasn't easy

to choose someone: everyone understood that

they would have to go and listen to

Tigran Keosayan's trademark jokes live.

Vitaly drew the short straw.

Kolesnikov.

Thank you, Alexei. So, I needed

to somehow get onto the set of

Tigran Keosayan's show. Where they

find audience extras wasn't very clear,

because the last public

announcement had been several years ago.

So I decided to write directly

to the editor-in-chief of the program *International

Sawmill*. I introduced myself as a student

in directing who was literally burning

with the desire to get onto their show. The show's creators

were so flattered that they

invited me without hesitation. However,

they didn't invite me to some private

studio. To my surprise, they invited me to the main office

the RT television channel,

They gave me a real tour. I

spoke with everyone, interviewed

the editor-in-chief, and even sat in

the control room during the recording. After

my visit, they did figure me out,

despite my excellent disguise, but

never mind. So what are the conclusions? First,

after hearing Tigran Keosayan's jokes live, the next

month I'll be spending with a psychotherapist.

Second, the entire show, from start to finish, is made

by the state-run RT.

The channel owns absolutely everything here:

the staff,

the equipment, the studio, and even the desk at which

Keosayan sits was hauled in

from another show. What an efficient

business model: you and I are funding

the RT television channel,

allocating 20 billion rubles a year to it

($220 million at a rough current rate) — more than the budget

of Vladivostok — and this channel is run by

Margarita Simonyan.

And she quietly uses the studio

of a state channel for her commercial

program.

And the employees of this state channel, who

are supposedly meant to defend Russia's interests

abroad, are filming these delightful

sketches.

"Let's just leave only LGBT stuff and remove all that

physics from the curriculum." "Physics is an important

subject."

"Why? Well, remember how the teacher

rubs your... little stick."

"Let's make it bigger then — I won't object."

Now we do the main thing: we take all the

official accounting records for the show

*International Sawmill* and, kopeck by

kopeck,

entry by entry, we work out

how much it costs and how much is

being earned from it. These aren't exactly public

data,

but they do exist in a few places: in banks, in the Accounts

Chamber, in the financial monitoring service, and in the company

itself.

They were sent to us by a person who worked

inside the married couple's corrupt scheme.

We carefully verified everything and

are one hundred percent convinced of the accuracy

of every figure we cite. In the

description of this video there is a link to

a special website dedicated specifically

to this investigation. So, let's begin

looking — and immediately we find a huge

sum.

NTV buys each episode for 3.4

million rubles. On average, in a year

there are 35 episodes, so that comes to

almost 120 million rubles a year.

"Aha," any television

producer will tell you, "what a generous price tag." At the same time,

let me remind you that the equipment and premises

are taken from the state, which means the production costs

aren't all that high. But I didn't call the Keosayan-

Simonyan family

parasites of a new generation for nothing. It's not enough for them

to make a program cheaply

on one state channel and sell

it for big money to another state channel.

They sold it a second time — and don't even

doubt who paid for it again:

you do. And every time you buy

a plane ticket, here comes a procurement contract

from Aeroflot, our state-owned

air carrier. It buys television

advertising. Let's look at the contract.

The procurement item is rather curious:

placement of advertising information in

the program *International Sawmill* and in

the English-language show of TV host Larry

King on RT.

A strange pairing, but it is explained by the fact

that the RT channel buys from Larry

King’s TV show and broadcast it on their own

platform with their logo added, that is,

it links Larry King and *The International Sawmill*

Margarita Simonyan

The value of Aeroflot’s contract for one year is in

the range of 200 to 300 million rubles

So the next time you ask

yourself, why are things in Russia so

expensive when it comes to plane tickets?

People fly around Europe for next to nothing, while we

have to pay a lot. Of course we do.

We have to—because Margarita Simonyan needs

money, and built into the price of your plane ticket is the

cost of that advertising contract in 2017,

2018, 2019, and the 2020s. In other words, Aeroflot

is spending more than a billion rubles on

placing ads in the most disgraceful show in

the history of television, *The International*

*Sawmill*

and in Larry King’s show, which airs

only in America, and judging by the views on

YouTube,

hardly anyone watches it. So, are you confused already?

Aeroflot, NTV, Larry King—what

is even going on? What’s going on is what

usually happens in Russia: everything was stolen. It’ll become

clear now. Look: Aeroflot spent

more than a billion rubles, and each time

it bought advertising in *The Sawmill* through the

advertising agency

Invent A. Don’t google it, don’t waste your time.

Such an agency does not exist in the traditional sense.

Invent A

is a pocket advertising agency

belonging to Margarita Simonyan. It exists only

to funnel money to Simonyan

and Keosayan.

That the company belongs to them is easy

to prove. Look at this шикарный

luxury Mercedes sports convertible

worth 10 million rubles—it is registered

to the advertising agency

Invent A. Oh, and who do you think drives it?

The car is so luxurious that people simply

photograph it on the street and

post it online. And here it is against a backdrop of

palm trees in Adler (a resort district near Sochi)

where our heroes’ home is located. And here it is already

in Moscow. I’m sure you’d recognize them even

with their faces blurred. But really, what other kind of

car should Putin’s

propagandists be driving if not a convertible?

Margarita Simonyan is in the passenger seat

and Tigran Keosayan is at the wheel.

Besides the convertible, Invent A also offers

a long list of beautiful cars for

beautiful rides. There’s a Land Cruiser

200,

an Audi Q7, a sporty Chevrolet Camaro,

and of course a Maybach. Where would we be without a Maybach? How

could anyone work on state

television without a Maybach?

Vladimir Solovyov has one just like it.

In total, they bought cars worth 45 million

rubles. By the way, right in the public procurement documents

we find that

the contact person Aeroflot

is supposed to reach out to regarding its advertising

issues is not someone from the agency

Invent A, but a former employee of RT (Russia Today),

Anastasia Ulybkina. So we understand

that Invent A

belongs to our parasites through

a front person. And if we dig into the accounting

records of this company to

see where they transfer the money

they received from Aeroflot for advertising,

then if everything were honest, we would see

a simple scheme: the agency keeps

its commission, and all the remaining money

is transferred to NTV, where *The Sawmill* airs,

and to the American host Larry King.

But what we actually see is this: over three years, through

state contracts, 660 million rubles came in,

and 163 million rubles went to

the National Advertising Alliance—that’s NTV,

understandable. Another 93 million went to the American division

of RT—well, that’s where Larry King is shown,

also understandable. And finally—oh, oh, oh, oh, oh—

Margarita and Tigran, for this you could even end up in

prison.

It’s called fraud. The largest share

of the money, 361 million rubles, goes to

the studio we already know, called

Gold Vision, which belongs to Tigran Keosayan.

Its formal founder is his own

brother David. And by the way, this is the first time we

see how these parasites are already starting to siphon

money into their family’s personal accounts. So far

not much: Invent A transfers to Tigran

Keosayan, to Margarita Simonyan,

and to her sister Alisa Simonyan—21 million

rubles. It turns into a strange

situation: the state company Aeroflot could have

bought advertising directly from the almost

state-run NTV and paid three

times less. But instead it buys through a middleman

in order to feed our state

parasites. After the financially difficult

year of 2015, in 2016 Aeroflot

began showing steady growth, and

that growth became especially noticeable from September

2016, practically from the moment when

it became a partner of the program

*The International Sawmill*.

I see a very clear connection here, don’t

you?

Tigran, you shouldn’t have said that. Why? That was

our secret. Well, okay.

Since we’ve started digging through the accounting,

let’s drop any

delicacy and get into the affairs of Keosayan’s company,

About Vision—we’re interested

in where they spent such a fat chunk of money.

Maybe the production costs are really high

and for every joke the writers and

actors are paid a million rubles each.

[music]

Sadly, everyone gets peanuts—literal pennies.

These amazing actors and writers,

from *International Sawmill* (a Russian satirical TV show), for example—their

lead actress and resident joker gets 10,000

rubles per episode, and her contribution was valued

at even less than the role of the girl whose job is

to appear at the beginning of the program and

powder the host’s face.

That’s 15,000 rubles per episode. But now

look—finally, finally, we’ve found

someone with a genuinely big salary. That is,

of course, the host. For his services,

Tigran Keosayan transfers to himself, into

his personal account, 74 million rubles a

year. But he is not the highest-paid

employee on this show. The biggest earner on

*International Sawmill* is the

artistic director—a person

of indisputable genius, with simply no equal

on the market. Really, who else could come up with something like this?

Her creative and artistic genius is worth 77 million rubles.

More precisely,

the show’s artistic director is named

Margarita Simonyan.

How could anyone not fall in love with her? And her role in

this project is a closely guarded secret.

She is not mentioned in the credits, and she has never

publicly admitted it. But the fact that

payments were made into her personal account

at Sberbank, with a clear description of the type of services,

cannot be denied.

Margarita Simonyan, artistic

director of this show. Don’t growl at

my wife.

It’s interesting how much free time this person has.

The state—that is, we—made her editor-in-chief of

RT (Russia Today),

RT (Russia Today),

then editor-in-chief of the agency

Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today media group),

and then editor-in-chief of the agency

Sputnik. She receives state money everywhere there.

And on top of that, she writes

books, she makes films,

and, by the way, she is one of the leaders of

United Russia, where she heads a

human rights project. She’s also a young

mother, and yet she still somehow finds time for

the family business, where the money is also

state money. And the family hasn’t been forgotten either: 9

million rubles were earned from *International Sawmill* by

Tigran Keosayan’s brother, David, and another nearly 7

million rubles over two years were earned by

his son’s wife.

Edmond Keosayan, and Yunona Glotova—she is the

executive producer of *International Sawmill*.

So now, to make this completely

clear, I’ll draw you a pizza chart. Let’s take one

year—for example, 2017. In total, *International Sawmill* received from

all sources 223

million rubles.

The writers, actors, announcers, administrators,

and everyone else got 12 percent

of that amount. The state-owned RT got

just 7 percent for the entire

production, studio, and so on.

Another 18 percent went to the state

in the form of taxes. And this much—63 percent—

was taken by our parasites and their

relatives. That is what was transferred into

their personal accounts and is confirmed by

accounting documents. And this is what they have been doing

for four years. By our calculations,

to the accounts of Margarita and Tigran alone,

for work on the program *International

Sawmill*, 480 million rubles have already been paid,

and another 160 million will be paid this year. That means

for each episode they receive

at least 4.6 million rubles every

week, out of our pockets. All for this.

This top-notch drunken dance.

Do you think that’s all? Do you think that was enough for them? I

laugh at that assumption just as loudly

as Tigran Keosayan laughs at

the word and [__].

The advertising money in *International

Sawmill* is far from all that comes into

the advertising agency Invent A. After all, they are

advertising geniuses, and the agency’s second most important

client is, once again,

Aeroflot. Only this time, the advertising

services—or rather, informational

support—takes place not within the framework of

the entertainment show *International Sawmill*, but in the news. From

2017 to 2019, Aeroflot paid

Invent A another 398

million rubles for this kind of

“informational support.” Let’s look

to understand what that actually is.

It turns out these are simply paid-for news segments

that air in the news. So, in order for paid content to appear on air

disguised as news,

you have to pay.

1.85 million rubles

for one little segment. For example, a piece about an award

for Aeroflot: “Aeroflot recognized as the

world’s leading aviation brand,” or

something like this about a public council, and

there in the frame is the beloved husband, on Putin-era

state television. Paid-for

segments in the news—yet this is an absolute

norm. Simonyan’s Invent A places

paid-for segments about Aeroflot on

the Rossiya TV channel as well, but they do it

through a certain Center for Political Strategy.

And here another wonderful

parasite appears: this firm, which used to

belong to—and is now associated with a partner of—

the first deputy director general of VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcasting company),

a host and head of the Directorate of the program

*Vesti*, and press secretary of Putin’s

election campaign headquarters, Andrei Kondrashov,

a close friend of Margarita Simonyan. So

this Kondrashov was selling segments

literally in programs that he personally

oversaw, except the money did not go to

the state channel, but to his personal company. In total, we

counted more than 80 million rubles for this.

and it supposedly ended up on the Aeroflot menu

Tula gingerbread (a famous traditional Russian spiced cookie from Tula)

the answer, the eye, the work, the famous one will appear

Tula gingerbread (a famous traditional Russian spiced cookie from Tula)

the press secretary, so that Putin would receive

more than 2 million rubles here, and I would like

to take a second to step away from

this family of parasites and address

Aeroflot CEO Vitaly Savelyev

Now, I’m reading the news about Aeroflot

You have so little money that on many domestic

flights you are giving up cleaning companies

and the planes will be cleaned by

flight attendants. There’s no money for crews

to stay in single rooms in hotels if

they have to spend the night in the arrival city

You have constant conflicts with the union

because of low wages. Please tell me

how, against this backdrop, it is possible

to pay more than a billion rubles to Simonyan and

Keosayan

for advertising. Meanwhile, for charity

for orphans you give 17 million rubles a year, while one PR

firm of Simonyan’s alone, in that same

year,

received 400 million rubles, and you know perfectly well

that the lion’s share of this advertising money

the parasitic spouses simply pocket for themselves

Please explain what is going on. Do you

by any chance not know the difference there between baggage, a suitcase, and

kickbacks? It’s an outrageous, outrageous infestation

of corruption. Shocking. So, they are brilliant

TV people, they are brilliant humorists

but that’s not enough — they are also brilliant

PR specialists, and in order to parasitize state

PR spending

they built an entire scheme with front

companies. The money is sent through a special

network of interconnected companies

each of which provides certain

services to another

issues and repays loans, transfers funds into

deposits, and so on. All this money

gets mixed many times over; to it are added

funds from other clients

the money is shuffled around through accounts, but in

the end it still winds up

in banks, in the accounts of our main characters

their relatives, and their friends. The scheme

is not simple, but we’ll explain it. Watch.

Besides Inventor, the two key firms

in Simonyan’s enrichment system are

two more advertising agencies. They

receive money both from Inventor

and from other clients who decided

to use Simonyan’s services. These two

advertising agencies are Morskie OS and

Collision

The agency Mars Kios, dear viewers — more

s-kios — a rebus puzzle at preschool level

They disguised it, really disguised it. This is

yet another agency of Margarita Simonyan

newly registered under a front person

and the beneficiary, as you can see, is encoded in

the name. With the second agency, Collision,

everything is very simple

it belongs directly to Tigran Keosayan

But where does the money flowing into this system come from?

Let’s give a few real examples.

The main client of Elysium is

the Russia 2018 Organizing Committee

This is the organizing committee for the FIFA

World Cup that was recently held in Russia

Simonyan’s agency provided it with certain

PR services worth 209 million rubles. Everyone who

took part in this

did the job not just with top marks

but as if they scored 100 out of 100 on the Unified State Exam (Russia’s standardized school-leaving exam) in every

subject, especially those who took part in

the PR for this process. Many of them I

know — it was done brilliantly. The chairmen

of this committee were members

of the government: Vitaly Mutko and Arkady

Dvorkovich. The head of the supervisory board was

Vladimir Putin

They allowed Margarita Simonyan and her family

to parasitize even the preparations for

such an important football event at home

Of course, we can see that Coliseum did

some work related to the championship

for example, it purchased fans’ hats

for 290,000 rubles, but much more noticeable

is the fact that Coliseum bought for Margarita

Simonyan a Cadillac Escalade

she got herself a flashy Escalade

with security like the president’s. In it she

goes to work every day, while at the same time

leasing it out

to her own channel. To me, in this

small episode lies the whole essence of these

people, their entire parasitic nature

She has already stolen hundreds of millions, yet still

she makes a gas-funded channel under her control

pay her money so that she can

be driven around in her Cadillac Escalade with

a driver. Nagano has more money than he knows what to do with, and

so everything gets handed to him. The second-largest

client of Coliseum is

oligarch Viktor Feliksovich Vekselberg

not Renova, and not as the owner

of some business, but personally, as a private

individual, he paid 70.5 million

rubles. And rounding out the top three is the

Skolkovo Foundation. For unspecified services related to

supporting the foundation’s activities

they paid Coliseum 50 million rubles

in investments — not exactly impressive, considering Skolkovo’s reputation

Now let’s move on to the second agency

inside Simonyan’s setup: Sky City Mars Skills

Here it gets even more entertaining. Their main, and apparently

for now only, client

is the FSB charitable foundation. According to

the chairman of the Public Council

under the FSB

this foundation was created in order to

provide support to veterans, as well as

to the family members of employees who died

while protecting their compatriots from

terrorist threats—what a noble cause.

The goal, fallen employees—except that

Margarita Simonyan, thank God, is very much

alive.

She clearly has an excellent appetite, but it was specifically her

company that the FSB charitable foundation transferred

175 million rubles (about $2.8 million at the time) for ongoing

PR support for the activities of Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).

Seriously, that is exactly how it is written. Every month since

January 2018, 8.3

million rubles (about $130,000) has been transferred for this. What exactly

these services consist of remains a mystery to us, but

apparently some fragments of these services were found on Twitter,

but that is hardly

worth 175 million. At this point I want

to pause deliberately in order to make

an appeal to MVD employees.

When they tell you that printer paper for work

is something you have to buy with

your own money, or that there is no fuel for

the service vehicle, please remember

that you are serving

those parasites who received 175

million rubles for PR support for the MVD. Do not

forget that, please, when you are once again

sent

to break down the door of our office.

There is one more thing that both agencies—

Simonyan’s Coliseum and Morskie LS—do

together. And now we are no longer talking about hundreds

of millions

but only about three. Still, these are very important

millions—political millions. So

tell me, why is Simonyan able to

so openly rob state companies, so

brazenly feed off them? Who

is in charge of all television in the country?

Obviously, Putin. But directly under him, who? There is

a special First Deputy

Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration

who oversees all issues related to television

and propaganda. His name is Alexei Gromov. He is

Putin’s former press secretary. It is

this man who is Russia’s chief censor and

the boss of all liars.

He literally regularly

gathers all media executives in his office and

explains to them what they need to lie about that

week. Quite a lot has been written about this in the

media. Gromov is effectively the boss

over RT (formerly Russia Today), over NTV, and over VGTRK (the state broadcasting company), and

now look who we see in the

documents. Why, it is the younger son

of our Kremlin TV boss—Danila

Gromov. The companies of our parasites pay

a salary to the younger son of the First

Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration,

Alexei Gromov—Danila Gromov. Danila

is a very young man, and even before

he turned 24, he had already received

3.1 million rubles (about $50,000 at the time) from Simonyan and Keosayan.

It has long been known that Gromov’s older son,

Alexei, also worked at RT

(Russia Today).

And they even specially created

a separate micro-media outlet for him there, which was supposed to

compete with Meduza (an independent Russian media outlet). But now we

know that Simonyan supports both children

of Putin aide Alexei Gromov.

Alexei Gromov occupies a special place in the heart

of Margarita Simonyan. According to the outlet

Proekt, it was he who got the then 25-year-old

Margarita Simonyan

appointed to the post of head of RT (Russia Today), and Gromov

continues to supervise this so-called

television.

According to Margarita herself, yes, they really do

indeed

drink together, and excuse the

intimate detail, but she almost gave birth in

his office.

I do not know whether it was the first or the second one,

definitely not the third child, but

her water broke in Alexei Gromov’s office.

That shows that you are well informed about

it.

The gossip of Moscow high society, if that is indeed

how it was.

Mandelbaum, from the two advertising

agencies Morskie OS and Coliseum, belonging to Margarita

Simonyan and Tigran Keosayan, personally received

another 57 million rubles (about $900,000 at the time).

Margarita’s sister Alisa received another 47

million rubles. Our counter is already now at

the fantastic sum of 600 million

rubles (roughly $9.5 million at the time). But even that is not the full picture. In

the universe of Simonyan’s PR empire, there are

two more firms

through which they enrich themselves. These are

the auditing firm Korsakov and Partners

and the HR company

Personnel Center Prov Personal Resource.

They belong to the same person.

At first glance, the payments to the auditors do not

raise many questions, but the

auditors do provide services, they help with accounting. But

the size of the payments immediately puts everything

in its proper place: Simonyan and Keosayan simply

channel part of the money from their

contracts there, and then take it back out

from the accounts of the two firms, Korsakov and PPR, into the

personal account of Margarita Simonyan—48

million rubles; to her spouse’s account,

the same amount, 48 million rubles; and to the account of her

sister,

19 million rubles. You have heard the expression money laundering a million times—

this is exactly

what it looks like. Simonyan transfers

a pile of money

to the auditors, and they return a good share of it to her

as nice, clean, laundered rubles, directly into her

personal account. Now you understand why

our parasites love Putin so much: because

under any other government they would

almost certainly be in prison.

That is exactly how it all works: 100

million here, 10 there, another 50 somewhere else, and from

another place—enough to buy a car here.

It’s very easy to transfer money to your sister here.

It’s easy to get confused, but we spent a long time figuring this out.

We worked through it and figured it out through three

advertising

agencies: one studio and two firms for

laundering money. State propagandist

and United Russia party member Margarita Simonyan, together with

her husband, earned 720 million rubles

over three years. I began by saying

that they are not just thieves

but parasites, specifically. After all, they have done nothing

useful. Simonyan is the perfect

representative of Putinism: absolutely

talentless, a washed-up thief; even

the views on her YouTube channel—even those

are inflated.

The whole world laughs at the RT (Russia Today) channel, which she

has headed for 15 years. The whole world laughs. You

work uphill,

and they won’t let them through the door

of a single respectable place, so all

they have left is to make fake

stories about the “Putin Burger” and Putin

being recognized.

But in reality, before this video, the wider

public knew Simonyan for two things.

First, she once wrote on Twitter

that she likes eating boiled beaver heads. And

second,

on her RT channel she produced

a completely fabricated story claiming that in

America, everyone loves Putin so much

that they name burgers after him. But despite that,

talentless or not,

they siphoned almost

a billion rubles out of our pockets and found cushy jobs for all

their relatives at the public trough. All their clients are

state-owned. They effectively invented

a new industry within the PR industry:

taking money from state companies, providing them

with some vague services, and raking in

money from it.

They adapted RT for this purpose,

using RT employees and her studio.

And on top of that, they very brazenly, very aggressively

teach us to love Russia. But for us, Russia is our homeland,

whereas they live and parasitize at

our expense.

And they want to boss us around. What

hypocrites they are.

Just go to the RT website and you’ll see it again:

help a sick girl,

send 100 rubles; help a sick boy,

send 300 rubles. And in every

interview Simonyan says, “I donate

my salary to charity.” Oh really?

You give your salary to charity?

Do you?

She says, “It seems improper to me, but I give all

my salary to charity.”

What a noble woman. Of course,

she just stole a billion rubles from those children,

but then transferred them her salary.

Do not submit to the power of parasites. Do not let them

silently devour you. Their party is United

Russia.

Simonyan, in essence, is United

Russia. “Our regime is vegetarian, but if

I were the sultan, there would be a real

dictatorship here.” She heads a party

project. The more votes this

party gets, the more they will steal from us. So

let’s destroy it in the next

election. Let’s not give them a single vote.

For this, we created a broad public

project called Smart Voting. There is a link in the description.

link.

Register right now. You will help a lot

if you share this video.

Our office is constantly being raided.

They seize our equipment, freeze

our accounts, and try to silence us. But as long as

you support us, we will not be silent. You

learned this in school biology: if

you do not fight parasites,

they will not stop and will not be satisfied until

they kill

the host organism. And you and I have only one

country. Let’s fight for it.

Subscribe to our channel.

This is where the truth is told.

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