Moscow radio station deletes broadcast transcript because of insults directed at Putin

The radio station Echo of Moscow has deleted from its website the entire transcript of a program featuring satirist Viktor Shenderovich. The program aired on December 24, and roughly 50,000 people managed to view the transcript before it was deleted.

According to Vitaly Ruvinsky, the website's chief editor, the station decided to remove the text because of the "large number of personal insults" directed at Russian President Vladimir Putin. As an example, Ruvinsky cites Shenderovich's remark that Putin the son of a cleaning woman and a security guard.

On the show, Shenderovich was discussing famed criminal and professional martial artist Leonid Usvyatsov, who is said to have trained Putin and modern-day oligarch Arkady Rotenberg: “This is Leonid Usvyatsov, who spent 20 years in prison. Between his two terms, he managed to take part in raising the future president of Russia. It was Usvyatsov who trained Vladimir Putin from age 16, and it was Usvyatsov who arranged for him, the son of a cleaning woman and a security guard, to get into Leningrad State University on an athletic scholarship.”

Following Echo of Moscow's decision to delete the transcript, journalist and pundit Oleg Kashin republished the text in its entirety on his website, Kashin.guru.

Shenderovich was most likely referring to a popular LiveJournal blog post published on December 21, 2015, where anonymous user “uglich_jj” speculates about the people who surrounded Putin during his life in St. Petersburg. Part of this text addresses Usvyatsov, a criminal said to have trained Putin in judo. According to Usvyatsov's tombstone, he was murdered in 1994.

Viktor Shenderovich writes a column for the opposition magazine The New Times. He also regularly appears on Echo of Moscow.

In early 2014, Shenderovich wrote a scandalous blog post on Echo of Moscow, where he compared the 2014 Sochi Olympics to the 1936 Games held in Nazi Germany. The country's ruling political party, United Russia, accused Shenderovich of fascist speech, and, following a lawsuit, Shenderovich was fined 1 million rubles (more than $14,000, by today's exchange rate).