Clashes in Yekaterinburg: the truth they won’t tell you on TV

I’ve found the most Orthodox family of all.

In Russia, they’re so Orthodox that compared

to them, you will all burn in hell

and they’ll teach you to love dear God, and if

you don’t want to love Him, you’ll get punched

in the face by a representative of the Orthodox

fight club. Why did you even come here?

Let me put this properly. So, here’s what’s going on.

What’s happening in Yekaterinburg right now is something

the entire internet is following,

but the rest of the country isn’t, because

television isn’t saying a single

word about it. In fact, everything is

quite simple.

There is the family of a local oligarch, a very

rich man, ranked 25th on the Forbes

list, with a fortune of $4.3 billion.

dollars.

His name is Igor Altushkin. This Altushkin

started out buying scrap metal,

then bought up privatized Soviet

non-ferrous metallurgy enterprises, and now

has imagined himself as something like the Demidovs

(a famous dynasty of industrialists under Peter the Great). There were these well-known

factory owners from whom the industrial Urals

essentially began. A lot of films have been made

about them. In a sense, they are

symbols of Ural industry altogether.

That’s the kind of thing he seems to be aiming for.

Altushkin is loved by the authorities; Putin awards him.

Putin gives Altushkin honors and warm recognition.

He has excellent informal ties with the authorities, and we can see that

even Igor Sechin sits on the board of directors

of his company. Altushkin’s wife,

Tatyana, has imagined herself a lady of the manor

and a noblewoman. Her mission is to teach and

educate

the unwashed, grimy, illiterate residents

of Russia—Yekaterinburg’s residents first and foremost.

That is not an exaggeration. She has

a school funded

by them, and she talks a great deal about

education. She calls the modern school system

a “liberal bacchanalia,”

and opposes any kind of digitalization. In 2016,

the trendiest and most talked-about

political trend became the digitalization

of all areas of our lives, including

education. Children born in 2018

will never know what

a traditional school is: one teacher,

a schoolbag with textbooks and notebooks—all of that

will be replaced for them by smartphones and tablets. And yet

they believe that in elementary school there should

be lessons in writing with goose quills

and ink. In her school they study from Soviet-era

textbooks, printed on special

yellowish paper

so that it feels like the old days. Tatyana Altushkina

considers it extremely important to train students

to speak clearly. That is, in speech

you should say not “Altushkin is being awarded,”

but “the country is being looted”; not “Altushkin awards,”

but “the whole country is being robbed.”

Why any normal person would need this

is unclear. But it is clear how

this oligarchic family sees ordinary

people: if they are the masters in white garments,

then the rest must be peasants,

just like in films about the Demidovs—

in homespun shirts, bast shoes, with a strip

of birch bark on their heads. And the kind master

will teach us to write with goose quills

and speak properly.

So what is all the fuss in the city about?

Let’s say it plainly: Altushkin and company decided

to build themselves a monument—a huge

church in the center of Yekaterinburg.

Even though Yekaterinburg already has plenty

of churches, including abandoned

and half-ruined ones, and apart from Easter,

hardly anyone actually goes to them.

There aren’t many parishioners. But none of that matters, because

the main point is not faith

but building a personal monument,

so that, you know, on Wikipedia it would say:

“The main church in Yekaterinburg

was built by our noble masters, the Altushkins.”

Altushkin generously funnels money to the local

authorities. He financed Governor Kuyvashev’s

election campaign,

he financed the local United Russia politicians, and

in gratitude for this help,

the authorities gave him land for construction.

But what they gave him was someone else’s—not

an empty lot,

not an industrial zone, not an abandoned building, but

the square in front of the Drama Theater. People walk there,

they like that square, and they’re

not really against a church as such. They just don’t understand

why, in order to

build a church, you have to take away

people’s square. That is a pretty obvious point,

you’ll agree. But Altushkin and Governor

Kuyvashev—

they’re the masters, and we’re the serfs,

and no one listens to the serfs’ opinion. And

when these “serfs” first came out

to protest, they were literally sent

thugs from the martial arts academy

of the Russian Copper Company,

which belongs to Altushkin. And from that moment

the most interesting part begins—the part

that’s why I’m recording this video. Everything

that Kuyvashev, Altushkin, the local

authorities, and these strange people with

crosses, tattoos, and torn shirts on their chests

do is all packaged under the banner of Orthodoxy,

patriotism, and love for the motherland. And everyone who is

against taking the square

is portrayed as somehow not quite

Russian. And of course, we are all told

unequivocally

that this is an attempted Maidan (a reference to the Ukrainian protest movement),

right in the center of Russia—that these are pure Maidan

tactics. Apparently it’s not enough for them to honor native

traditions—they also have to look to the West and fall under

its corrupting influence.

You brought them up to your own detriment, exactly right.

As Tatyana All Pushkina said.

Rejoicing at the appointment of the new minister,

saying that the 25-year era of

“liberal bacchanalia” in schools is finally coming to an end.

Very good. We do not need in Russian schools

any Western liberal bacchanalia. And here,

dear All Pushkin family, I am

forced to quote your favorite

book, the Bible: outwardly you appear

righteous to others, but inside

you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. What I

see in this image is a record showing

that Tatyana All Pushkina holds

British citizenship. This is a record from

a database that copies names and

surnames from official voter lists.

Just to be safe, we

double-checked it against the original sources

and can assure you that from 2011 to

2018,

Tatyana Latushkina regularly

registered her right to vote in

the United Kingdom.

She is a subject of the British Crown

and swore allegiance to it. So,

dear Latushkins, why don’t you

fight for children in London to write

with goose quills?

If education there is such a liberal

bacchanalia, the kind you claim to be

eradicating here in Russia, then why obtain

citizenship of that country? You like

beating people who speak out against

your construction plans, so go ahead

and build a church next to your

London home. It is located in

one of the most elite districts

of the British capital.

In Holland Park, a house like that costs at least

£15–17 million, even assuming

the most modest renovation. The All Pushkins’ home is,

of course, anything but modest. Unlike in

Russia, where Latushkin simply builds

whatever he wants in the middle of the city, in London

they behave completely differently. There

they have to meticulously get approval for every

smallest change from the local authorities,

from altering a fence to planting

a single shrub. Thanks to that, on the website

of the local council you can find

detailed floor-by-floor plans of the mansion

belonging to the All Pushkins. It has five floors, ten or

twelve bedrooms, a home cinema,

an elevator, and on the basement level a swimming pool,

a gym, a spa area, a studio for

dance, and servants’ quarters. You can

study how they asked city hall to allow

them to change the tiles and the garage door,

how they persuaded the authorities that they needed to

slightly alter the fence so the property would be less

visible from the street, and how they waited many

months for approval. As they say,

spot the difference compared with how they behave

in Yekaterinburg.

By the way, on the neighboring street lives the

David Beckham family.

He bought a very similar house for £31 million.

The Beckhams will surely be surprised when

you, All Pushkina, start developing

the neighboring square in Holland Park and guarding

that construction site with your supposedly

Orthodox thugs. But unlike

the Beckhams, one mansion in

Holland Park was not enough for All Pushkina, and we

also discovered a separate apartment

belonging to Tatyana All Pushkina a few

houses down on the same street. A modest

five-room apartment there costs around £1.5

to £2 million. According to the documents, we

can see that at least one of Latushkin’s sons,

David, was also born in London in 2006.

That same year, a certain

Igor Alexandrovich

All Tushkin was born in London as well. Judging by the patronymic, this is

apparently Igor All Pushkin’s grandson. And here is All

Pushkin’s son Timofey:

he flies to London on a private jet, and here

he is showing off his headphones

worth €60,000 — more than 4

million rubles for headphones. And here he

is showing off his Lamborghini,

worth 25 million rubles.

Okay, okay, okay — you, the Latushkins, are very

rich and can afford houses in

London and Lamborghinis, and you can live wherever

you want — that is your business. But if you have

everything, or almost everything, do you really still

have to seize a public square from the residents

of Yekaterinburg? The Latushkin family, as we

can see, lives between two countries, has taken

citizenship and sworn loyalty to two

countries — they have every right to do so. But it is not

a very good look that in one country you,

Latushkin, treat everyone like

your servants, while in the other you politely

obey the law because you know that for

a tenth of what you do in

the Urals, in Yekaterinburg or Chelyabinsk, you would

simply be thrown in jail there immediately.

Want a constructive proposal — for

Governor Kuyvashev,

for the city’s residents, and for Igor Old

Ushkin? Here it is: there are two Orthodox

oligarchs who want this church — All Pushkin and another one,

a man named Kozitsyn. He owns the U

MMC holding company,

and is All Pushkin’s partner. And this

UMMC holding company is the largest

landowner in Yekaterinburg.

That is a legal fact. So you can easily

find another place for

building this church. For example, instead of

putting up yet another shopping mall or

residential complex in a prime location, as you

are planning to do, for example on the site of

the Instrument-Making Plant or

Simanovskaya...

and if you really are such devout Orthodox believers,

then give up your personal gain, all the more so since

it won’t make you any poorer anyway. And come on, you’re

billionaires.

Build a church there on a site that’s no worse,

and put up a school there too, where everyone will

write with goose quills. There too you can

play the gusli (a traditional Russian string instrument), eat turnips, and there, instead of

computer science, there will be lessons in fistfighting.

There you’ll be able to indulge all

your whims and eccentricities with your own money, within

the bounds of the law. But don’t take what belongs to others.

Don’t try to prove to us that you are the most

Russian of Russians and the most Orthodox of the Orthodox,

while everyone else is somehow lesser. And as

your great supporter Vladimir

Solovyov said, this city has once again shown itself to be possessed by demons,

and now the heirs of those demons are once again holding

their sabbath (a witches’ gathering).

Don’t lie, and don’t be hypocritical. If

you really do believe in God,

then He does not like this. And also, subscribe to our channel,

everyone should subscribe and all that.