The Real Russia. Today. The rise and fall of media mogul Alexander Mamut

Thursday, March 11, 2021

• Meduza profiles Alexander Mamut, the Russian oligarch who lost his empire when his luck and clout ran out
• Top Moscow police official maintains that no undue force was used against pro-Navalny protesters
• Russia is easing anti-corruption laws for officials in the event of ‘extraordinary and unavoidable circumstances.’ What does this mean?
• News briefs: the Khachaturyan sisters’ father, still a ‘foreign agent,’ the Kadyrovs’ billion, and Eurovision says no

Feature stories

💸 The media mogul who failed (5,480 words)

Alexander Mamut made most of his fortune by mediating complex corporate conflicts, but friends say he always dreamed of being more than a simple billionaire. Mamut apparently wanted to embody Russia’s “rich intelligentsia” and it was in this pursuit that he spearheaded the Strelka Institute “cultural cluster,” supported musicians like Zemfira, and sponsored a flood of art projects. His ambitions extended to the mass media, as well, leading him to buy LiveJournal and Rambler in the hope of creating an Internet holding company with the biggest audience in Russia. For all this zeal, the media business is where Mamut lost his reputation as an “outspoken liberal” and fell into crippling debt. In late 2020, he lost Rambler to Sberbank and the money from the sale went to pay off his holding company’s loans. Today, Mamut teeters on the brink of defaulting on his debts to Trust Bank. Meduza correspondent Anastasia Yakoreva looks at how a media mogul ended up like this and what role urban planning, the mass media, and politics played in his story.

👮 Lawful violence (650 words)

During a city council session on Wednesday, one of Moscow’s top police officials insisted that law enforcement officers didn’t use any excessive force against pro-Navalny protesters in January and February. He also rejected reports that a number of journalists were injured by police while covering the demonstrations. That same day, the State Duma’s information policy committee held a meeting on ensuring journalists’ safety at mass events, during which a top official from the Russian National Guard suggested that the authorities start vetting journalists in advance to determine who’s allowed to cover protests.

🤷 Oops, they did it again (630 words)

The Russian State Duma adopted in its first reading two government draft laws that will allow state officials and the employees of state-owned companies to avoid liability for breaking anti-corruption laws under certain circumstances.

When does this apply? What type of violations will be forgiven? Does this apply to bribe-taking? What are the requirements? Does that mean that in the event of an epidemic or an official being sanctioned they can ignore all these restrictions? Who will determine why an official failed to comply with anti-corruption requirements?

News briefs

• 👮 Russian investigators to launch criminal case against the father of the Khachaturyan sisters, lawyers say (his daughters say he tortured and sexually abused them before they killed him)
• ⚖️ Russian court rejects claim seeking the removal of anti-domestic violence group from ‘foreign agent’ list (dubious police procedure and the ambiguity of “political activity” get a pass)
• 💰 Chechnya’s Kadyrov family has allegedly spent a billion rubles on personal security over the past five years
• 🎻 Eurovision organizers reject Belarusian song entry due to political overtones (no appetite for the band’s pro-government “folk satire”)

🛡️ Tomorrow in history: 22 years ago tomorrow, on March 12, 1999, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. All three territories had previously belonged to the Warsaw Pact, the USSR’s collective defense treaty that was dissolved months ahead of the Soviet Union’s collapse.