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By watching this video, you confirm that you are an adult. If this is not the case, do not watch it. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or is intended to promote anything.
Andrey Movchan discusses war, economics, investing, and freedom, linking historical events to modern geopolitical and environmental issues.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- In wartime, unconventional strategies often yield the greatest advantage.
- Investing is a process of risk management and shared decision-making rather than simple consulting.
- Freedom encompasses various dimensions beyond money, including knowledge, relationships, and political context.
- Environmental damage from wars is a long-term, often overlooked problem requiring urgent attention.
- Economic and political factors are deeply intertwined in historical and modern conflicts.
What the video covers
- The video opens with reflections on war, highlighting that those who do not play by the rules gain advantage in wartime.
- Andrey Movchan explains his investment approach, emphasizing fund management over consulting and shared risk with investors.
- Movchan discusses the multifaceted nature of freedom, including money, knowledge, skills, and living in a free country.
- The transcript includes a personal account of experiencing war escalation in Israel and the environmental impact of wartime munitions.
- Movchan highlights the economic causes of World War I, focusing on the importance of arable land and colonial resources for food production.
- The discussion touches on the limitations of the gold standard and the agrarian nature of 19th-century economies.
- The video critiques historical and current political-economic dynamics, including the influence of military power and sanctions.
- Movchan reflects on the challenges of navigating politics versus business and the impact of sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
- The transcript references the role of independent media like Kedr-Media in environmental reporting despite governmental pressure.
- The conversation includes historical context about World War I, economic prerequisites, and the consequences for global and European stability.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and War Reflections
- 05:47Economic Causes of World War I
- 11:07Investment Philosophy and Wealth
- 16:21Personal War Experience and Environmental Concerns
- 22:03Historical Economic Context and Consequences
- 32:03Modern Political and Economic Analysis
- 42:35Sanctions, Politics, and Business Challenges
- 52:46Concluding Thoughts on Freedom and Society
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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This material (information) was produced, distributed by foreign agent Katerina Vladimirovna Gordeeva, or related to the activities of foreign agent Katerina Vladimirovna Gordeeva.
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The world kept moving, moving, moving, moving. Boom — woke up, the war had started.
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Everyone had to strike first, so the other wouldn’t strike them. In wartime, the real advantage goes to those who don't play by the rules.
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Millions of people got a license for brutality. Step aside, so to speak — “Holy Cross.” Sprinkled with holy water.
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War sends hungry young men to go do something. Earned, stole, fled, stayed. Slaughter babies, or don’t slaughter babies.
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The struggle for political influence began with economics. When the military gains informal power through war, they don’t give it up easily afterwards.
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Everything will be reduced to zero — you don’t understand what kind of machine this is.
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Once they start, they’ll destroy everything to the end. There is no one in this world who is interested in seeing him released from prison.
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In wars, the winners are those who don’t participate. I’ve done much more for Russia than it has done for me.
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I failed to convince. Russians chose to live differently. Andrey Movchan, financier and investment manager. Andrey, you're one of the most well-known top-level investment consultants.
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You're the owner of your own investment advisory company that bears your name. Did I say that right? - Not quite.
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We don't do consulting. In general, consulting is a shaky business. Because investing isn't a process of finding the perfect solution that you can offer someone during a consultation.
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Investing is a process of trial, error, risk diversification, balancing different portfolios. So we don’t tell people how to invest.
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We manage a family of investment funds. If an investor wants to join us, they invest money in the fund, and then we make the decisions ourselves.
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And the investor, so to speak, takes that journey with us. And my own money is invested in the same funds.
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In that sense, we're in the same boat. Are you a wealthy person yourself? That depends on what you consider a wealthy person.
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And what do you consider wealthy? I don’t know. A person always needs three times more than they have.
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And in that sense, I also need three times more than I have. I can afford everything I need, without thinking whether it will ruin me or not.
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In that sense, I am a wealthy person. Is money freedom? It's one of the components, of course.
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What else? A great many things. Knowledge is freedom, skills are freedom, having connections, friends, love, family.
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There are so many dimensions to it. The ability to live in a free country is freedom.
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Although, with a lot of money, you can still be a terrible slave. A short conversation about important things. Not long ago, I ended up stranded in Israel at the moment of critical escalation of the war between Iran and Israel.
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Like many others, I woke up several times a night to the sound of sirens, sitting in a bomb shelter under the roar of explosions, and in the morning I would look at the destruction that the latest shelling had brought to the street where I lived.
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This is Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. A week later, like many others, I managed to get out by boat, but by coincidence, at night our boat was in open sea opposite the city of Haifa, which at that moment was under the heaviest shelling.
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Paralyzed with fear, people watched as deadly rockets lit up the sky and burst into flames when intercepted by air defense systems.
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One piece of a downed missile fell just a few dozen meters from us, raising a fountain of spray.
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It was quite frightening, but I suddenly thought about how many such fragments from ongoing wars are scattered everywhere around us, on land or underwater.
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What irreversible harm this causes to the environment, and even if all these wars stop someday, in what unforgivable condition we will leave our planet to our children and grandchildren.
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According to Kedr-Media, an independent environmental publication, just cleaning up the Baltic Sea from World War II munitions will take until 2040 — and that's only with consistent funding.
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Kedr writes that munitions in oceans across the world pose a critical threat to the environment, to human safety, and to marine infrastructure.
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This problem, still invisible today, may become a very serious one in the future, and I’m grateful to Kedr for telling people about it.
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If you didn’t know, Kedr-Media is currently the most authoritative independent Russian-language publication about the environment — and one of the few media outlets that I read regularly and trust completely.
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In their mission, Kedr’s journalists say they aim to help people solve environmental problems and spread knowledge about how our world works and how we impact it.
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It’s no surprise that Kedr, like almost all independent environmental projects and movements in Russia, has been labeled a foreign agent.
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The authorities are clearly afraid of those who honestly report on environmental problems and disasters, because those happen not by themselves, as a rule, but with the permission or will of those in power.
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If you remember, the social protests in the late USSR — and in many other dictatorships — often began when people realized that the authorities were destroying nature for profit and stood up to defend it.
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But that’s a whole different story and I truly recommend subscribing to Kedr through the link in the description.
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Tell Gordeeva. Andrey Movchan. We are in Belgrade, in the Balkans. And this place is famous because, basically, it’s probably where World War I began.
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In Soviet history textbooks, it was written that it began “due to irreconcilable economic contradictions between imperialist predators.” Were there economic prerequisites for World War I?
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You want the short answer? Yes. You want the long answer? Not quite. Remember Yeltsin, when he was asked to describe the situation in Russia in one word?
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He said, “Good.” And in two words? He said, “Not good.” If we start going into depth now, we’ll be here until winter, and we’ll finish when the first snow falls.
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To keep it short, let’s briefly touch on the economies of the countries at that time.
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So, there is Europe. Europe is a territory of the gold standard. Monetary methods essentially don’t work.
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What now works wonderfully for balancing the economy didn’t work at all back then. Europe was in what’s called the colonial period of development, when a number of European countries with good access to the world’s oceans had the opportunity to grow
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extensively through overseas colonies. Several countries that are not near such seas were forced to develop differently.
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And that’s a big problem — access to seas. The economy of the late 19th century was a very weak one, which could collapse into crisis or catastrophe at any moment.
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It was a very agrarian economy. Thirty to forty percent of GDP came from agriculture. What does that mean?
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GDP is the sum of profits. It means that a large portion of all your income goes to food in such a system.
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And food must be produced. Today, we produce a lot of food — a huge amount globally thanks to nitrogen fertilizers.
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Nitrogen fertilizers were discovered in 1913. Yes, and later became the same mustard gas that killed a huge number of soldiers during World War I.
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That’s collateral damage. And in reality, before 1913, the main fertilizer was manure. In those conditions, land that produces food, when food accounts for such a share of GDP, is a crucial, fundamental resource that your country must have in order to function.
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It must have arable land with which you can simply feed your people. If you don’t have enough arable land, you need colonies that supply you with resources that you can trade for food.
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When you have neither of the two, life becomes difficult. Each of the countries in th
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— each of them was formulating their strategy in this situation. England had the sea and colonies.
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England was fine in that regard. France had enough colonies and enough arable land to feed itself.
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Germany — it didn’t have proper access to the seas. And remember the Schleswig-Holstein wars with Denmark, the struggle with Russia, including direct opposition.
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What for? Why would you want that little piece on the peninsula? To dig a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic.
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Because otherwise, they couldn’t even transport their goods by sea. Yes, wars are fought even with small countries over maritime transportation.
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To the south you’ve got the Mediterranean Sea, but you also need access to it.
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Austria-Hungary had access at that time, because Austria-Hungary was a beneficiary of the Berlin agreements.
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It had acquired Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also what would become Croatia — access to the sea from the Turks.
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The Turkish Empire at that time looked like the Soviet Union in the ’90s. Germany had to make a move.
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Russia was expanding with colonies in a different direction. It had resources, it was doing fine, and didn’t need overseas colonies.
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It had unlimited expansion to the east. But as a power that needed to trade, Russia needed access to the Mediterranean Sea.
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And access to the Mediterranean was controlled by Turkey through the straits. Turkey was pushed back as much as possible — but not completely.
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Access to the Mediterranean could only be achieved through friendly Slavic countries. If you picture the Balkan Peninsula, Serbia is landlocked, and Austria-Hungary stands behind it, blocking that access to the sea.
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For Germany, Austria-Hungary was a friendly country. After the Austro-Prussian War, after Germany’s unification, this was its route to the Mediterranean — a very important line.
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For Russia, that same line was also crucial, but not with Austria-Hungary in control. Russia needed Slavs to control that route, in one way or another.
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England and France were interested in maintaining a balance of power, so that neither Russia nor Germany became too strong, and interfered with their influence in the region.
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That’s the picture on the eve of World War I. But the countries had unequal starting points, and unequal rates of gaining altitude — economic altitude.
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Each country progressed differently. People often say, for example, that Russia was rapidly moving forward, and had the fastest growth rate.
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Yes, Russia was growing at the fastest pace, but from the lowest starting point. By 1913, Russia was one of the most backward European countries in that sense, despite its very high growth rates, undoubtedly.
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Technologically and structurally, it was behind, logistically it was underdeveloped, and so on. But Russia had access to Caucasian oil, and in this way, the new oil era entered Russia quite well.
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And for Europe, for Eastern Europe, for Germany, the main source of oil was Romanian.
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Standing in the way to Romania was Serbia. So one way or another, despite the different growth rates and different starting points, it still seemed as if they were on the same line.
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They were more or less leveled out. And what else is worth understanding, I think?
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There was, in Europe of that time — including Russia — one unique economic resource.
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It was always in surplus and was only really useful for one thing — for war.
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That resource was people. By the late 19th century, a person in Europe was expensive — feeding him was costly.
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There were too many people, and no clear idea what to do with them. Too many people who were expensive to feed meant instability for every regime.
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The only way to level it out was war. War levels the population, war sends hungry young men off to do something, and war gives you the opportunity to feed them — if you’ve captured new territory.
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War also brings trophy opportunities, and war brings social consolidation. War creates an external enemy, and so on.
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War is a very convenient extension of economics. That’s why the second half of the 19th century was full of endless small wars.
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Preparation. Just small wars. I don’t think anyone was preparing for anything. They say now it was a warm-up.
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No no. Each war had its own meaning for everyone. And each war was a question of what to do with the resource you have, which is expensive, and for the most part, has no use.
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Plus, importantly, all countries kept an eye on maintaining the balance of power. Because in their model of interaction, in their concept of dividing the pie, they believed that if someone grew too strong, stronger than the others, they would simply swallow the rest.
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They would become the dominant player, and the local elites would lose control. I think that was a Napoleonic-era phobia.
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That’s why, whenever Russia poked its head out just a little, the Crimean War would begin.
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An alliance of all countries would rise up against Russia. When the Habsburgs stick their necks out a bit, everyone goes to war with Austria-Hungary.
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When little Prussia fights France, no one stops it from taking Alsace-Lorraine, because it's small, it’s not scary.
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But when Germany unifies, the approach immediately changes entirely. And naturally, as soon as there’s a sense that someone might rise up, the others form an alliance and start pushing back to stop them.
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They have to be crushed by military means. And that’s exactly why there were no major wars until something unlikely but still possible happened.
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Two alliances formed and opposed each other. And they formed at the moment when distrust reached its peak.
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Primarily between Germany and Russia. For Germany, which had no overseas colonies — they missed that chance...
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Bismarck had once kept halting that colonial expansion, because he was a smart man, he understood they were late to the division of the pie, and it would only bring losses.
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Eventually, they got a few colonies in Africa and the ocean, but they weren't resource-rich.
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They needed to expand internally, to expand in Europe somehow. Just like Russia to the east, they also needed...
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“Lebensraum” wasn't invented by Hitler — it was an obvious concept to preserve the viability of the German Empire at the time.
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To expand primarily into territories that would provide access to seas, and land suitable for agriculture.
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Where has the arable land been since the 11th–13th centuries? The main breadbasket of Europe was Poland.
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So the obvious idea was to expand eastward, toward Poland. And Poland was under Russian control.
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Poland had been partitioned several times — why not do it again? That’s the thinking in Berlin, and possibly in St. Petersburg too, because since 1913, after the Balkan Wars, when Russia ultimately, even as a result of those Balkan Wars, failed to gain
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direct access to the sea, an intensive rearmament program began in Russia. It was carried out under the guise of a general technological rise, but from Berlin it was clear: this was military rearmament.
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The rearmament timeline was 4 to 5 years. By 1917–18, Russia would be ready to attack Germany.
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Why attack Germany? Because Germany, Austria, and Hungary were a single alliance with access to the Mediterranean Sea.
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Russia needed access to the Mediterranean. How would it do that? It would do it by using a foothold — first and foremost, Serbia, where after the coup the Karađorđevićs came to power, nominally — but in reality, a military junta seized control.
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A military junta obsessed with pan-Serbian nationalist ideas, with the ambition to build another empire — a Serbian empire, the future Yugoslavia.
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In this situation, Berlin doesn’t trust Moscow. And they understand that by 1918, they’ll be helpless.
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They don’t have the same resources, the same chance to rearm so quickly, because they don’t have direct access to oil.
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The Russians are blocking that corridor. They didn’t have those natural resources — metals, coal, even that same Polish wheat, and so on.
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They had no ability to compete on the Western Front, because they had no real access to the seas or normal trade.
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You have to do something with the wealth from colonies. So really, we can deliberate all we want that the war started because of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, because of Serbia, because of Austria-Hungary.
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By a Bosnian Serb. Yes, because of Austria-Hungary, and so on. The war started because of Germany.
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Germany was the one that actually started the war. The Austrians hesitated to start the war for two months.
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They sent threatening notes to everyone: “We’re about to begin, we’re already firing, we’re loading the cannon,” — and did nothing.
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Because they were resisting until the very end. There was a shared idea of marching to Belgrade.
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“We need to punish Serbia.” But Belgrade, you understand, was right on Serbia’s northern border.
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It pressed directly against Austria-Hungary’s border. So the idea was to stop at Belgrade — because punishment was needed, but still, “We don’t want a big war.” The British put tremendous effort into trying to negotiate to prevent war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia.
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And they were quite successful. Completely unaware that the war wouldn’t start there. That the war was beginning on an entirely different front.
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That Germany would try to prevent Russia's rearmament. The Germans quite reasonably understood that they first needed to attack not Russia, but France.
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Because if they attacked Russia and France supported and struck from the rear, then they would have a problem.
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That’s how the Western Front was born, with no change, and the Eastern Front, where Germany was quite successful.
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Of course, of course. But the initial idea was to quickly defeat France, reach an agreement with Britain, and attack Russia.
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To force Russia to declare war or attack, whatever worked. In order to ultimately expand territory here, permanently settle the issue with Serbia so that it would never have access to the sea.
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And, as we now understand as adults, to gain some space for development for a while.
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I’m not justifying this logic. Like in the old joke, where the boy asks his dad, “Is it true that Jesus was a Jew?” He says, “Well, it's true, what can you do?” “And were the apostles all Jews too?”
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“Yes, the apostles were all Jews too.” “But how come?” asks the boy. “Well, you see, son, it was just that time.” Back then it was that time, that logic.
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Everyone had to strike first, so that no one else would strike second. Oh, that reminds me of something.
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Yes absolutely. Very weak economies that constantly needed support. Weak, of course, weak. Late 19th century — famine.
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Tolstoy was helping hungry people. That’s in Russia, where there's plenty of bread. Russia had to export that bread to get what it didn’t have.
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The economy depended heavily on trade. And that’s where the war came from. It’s fair to say that in the end, this war ended pretty ingloriously for almost everyone because they ran out of money, and the economies of these countries
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couldn’t handle such a long war. I don’t really understand what a glorious end to a war is.
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The Allies defeated Hitler in World War II. It was glorious? 27 million killed in Russia.
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A devastated Russian economy. A nightmare that lingered for another 7 years under Stalin. Is there much glory in that?
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We won, thank God, but war never ends gloriously. If you look at Western democracies, no one there celebrates victory.
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It’s more of a somber day when people remember their losses. Not because they didn’t win — but because it’s a terrible tragedy.
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In pre-Brezhnev times and in the Soviet Union they didn’t really celebrate either, as far as I know.
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Of course. Celebrating military victories, in my view, is a somewhat twisted logic. Military victories may be necessary, unavoidable.
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You may have no choice. But still — what kind of holiday is that? It’s a tragedy.
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Any war is a tragedy. That’s the point. At least two or three countries — the Russian Empire and the German Empire — emerged from the war economically destroyed.
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They simply couldn’t cope economically with these wars. England suffered both economically and socially — enormously.
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And in many ways, England still hasn’t recovered from those losses. Both socially and structurally.
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Some of England’s phobias and social changes are tied to the consequences of World War I.
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For example? Right now, cities in the English Midlands are suffering badly. Because during World War I, the real, strong working class was wiped out — the very class that could’ve kept working, raised new generations, and so on.
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And the large influx of various immigrants to England is largely due to the demographic losses of World War I.
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World War II showed that France, even after 20 years, had not recovered from World War I.
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It’s clear that the real winner of World War I was the U.S., which ended up with access to additional markets.
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And really, in wars, the winners are those who don’t take part. Especially nowadays. But to say it was glorious for some and inglorious for others — no.
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It ended ingloriously for everyone. No one needed that war in the end. It was flawed logic.
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And one more important thing is that the generation involved in World War I was a generation of dreamers.
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If you remember, in 1913, Kellermann’s novel "The Tunnel" was published — about how a tunnel could be built between Europe and America.
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And all those ideas of some new and astonishing future. How many of those dreams were cut short, and what a blow was dealt to economic development overall by World War I?
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Can it be measured? It’s very hard for us to truly assess the scale of the blow that was dealt.
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Just like the well-known claim that the man who created a universal cure for cancer died in Auschwitz — it’s as plausible as it is speculative.
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But the death of tens of millions of people is a tremendous blow to economies.
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The destruction of two countries that were relatively content was a massive hit to the global economy, because they were partially or entirely removed from the global system of interaction. And the consequences of World War I destroyed the idea of a unified Europe, pushing it back
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by maybe 50 years. Yes, maybe even more. It seriously distorted the idea. And yes, it distorted it quite heavily.
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Plus, I think it’s important to understand that this war caused serious erosion of economic systems in general.
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A structural erosion. You probably know that Russian industrialists, for example, actively used the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary activists — the Socialist Revolutionaries — to profit during World War I.
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They would take government contracts to produce, say, shells, not produce a single one, then hire Bolsheviks to blow up an empty warehouse.
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The Bolsheviks would carry out the sabotage, blow up the empty warehouse, and then it was claimed that the warehouse was full — and they profited this way.
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And war-related corruption is usually an order of magnitude greater than peacetime corruption. Didn’t something like that also happen in England, where they hired Irish separatists to blow up empty warehouses, and the Irish just took all the weapons?
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Of course — that’s not unique to Russia. People are the same everywhere. That whole system greatly erodes morals.
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War in general greatly erodes morals. So the economies emerged from it either deeply corrupted or utterly destroyed — like in Russia, where everything was wiped out, and everything had to be rebuilt from scratch.
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And the morals, so to speak, of Russia in the 1920s–40s, which gave rise to repression, to total theft, and to monstrous banditry — these morals were largely laid down by World War I, because millions of people were effectively given a license for barbarity at the time.
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And when they came back, they spread this theft across the entire country, and then they lived for decades in that state of theft.
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So war cannot heal an economy. No, an economy can become enriched through war, but it cannot be healed by war.
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Imagine that you went and conquered a country that supposedly had a lot of gold.
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That was the case a few centuries ago, but now everything has changed. Today, there is no country that’s sitting on a pile of gold.
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There’s basically nothing left to conquer. You’ll destroy more than you’ll gain through conquest. Yes, of course, some part of the elite does profit from war.
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But it’s the elites — not the state economies, not the average people in the country who get richer.
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I don’t believe people can get rich from it. There’s no resource there. It’s only redistribution.
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But where do the resources come from? Moreover, everything you spend on war has no multiplier effect.
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That is, roughly speaking, a combine harvester will eventually bring in the wheat, but a tank will just sit rusting in that field, getting in the way of the harvester.
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In other words, a single tank produced requires you to produce 15 more tanks for it to become efficient.
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But that’s not even my point. Even a single tank — not only does it require people to maintain it — eventually it will get hit, it will break down in the field and sit there rusting, getting in the way.
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And someone will need to haul it out of there. It doesn’t create new added value, whereas civilian production does create added value.
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So in that sense, in an ideal world —which doesn’t exist— where no money at all is spent on tanks, your economy will feel better than if you do spend money on them.
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Am I right in understanding that if the economy has shifted to a wartime footing and is producing tanks, then for many years to come it will have to keep producing tanks, and switching back to manufacturing combine harvesters will be quite hard?
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I think it’s very important to understand how it actually works, in a bit more detail than just slogans.
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Why is it that a militarized economy doesn’t easily switch back? Not because it’s impossible.
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After all, it was converted into a war economy, so why not back again? It’s possible.
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Because there are a huge number of stakeholders who don’t want this restructuring. The big player got used to making money on tanks.
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The small player got used to earning by producing some sort of control panels for those tanks, or treads for the tank, which are installed into it.
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The generals got used to being numerous and well-paid, because drills are ongoing. They need to fight, and so on.
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Under wartime sanctions, suppliers got used to operating in the shadows and earning large profit margins.
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It’s more profitable to supply European goods through some Central Asian republic than directly from Europe for these players, and so on.
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And then, when the war conditionally ends, everyone roughly speaking comes to the ruler and says, "Your Excellency, we’ll have nothing to feed our children with, and there might be another war soon anyway.
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Let’s not change anything, let’s keep producing lots of tanks, let’s not make peace with everyone, let’s keep trading through Central Asia, let’s maintain a large army — just in case.” “And if you don’t do that, then, sorry, we’ve got the tanks, we’ve got the rifles, we’ve got the soldiers,
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and we’ve got the financing methods too. Maybe we’d prefer a different high noble in your place.” This is dangerous, because when the military gains informal power due to war, they don’t give it up easily afterward.
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If not for World War I, economic development would have taken a different path, and maybe, well, I don't know, certain things might have happened—we might have gone into space earlier—not “we” as in the Soviet Union, but humanity.
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I think that if World War I had not happened, Russia would look completely different today.
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And most likely, Russia would be at the same economic level as Western Europe. I don’t think Tsarism in Russia would have lasted much longer.
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It might have taken on a British form, a kind of decorative monarchy. All the prerequisites for that were in place.
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Or maybe it would have simply faded away, like it did in the Balkans. But most likely, the situation would have been much more balanced.
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And it’s quite possible that today we would see a European Union of some kind that included Russia.
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And besides that, of course, if there hadn’t been... Of course, “if” is a silly word.
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But I think if there had been no World War I, there would have been no USSR, no communist ideology, no German fascism, no German Nazism, no Italian fascism, no Chinese communism.
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History would have unfolded much more smoothly. And perhaps, perhaps there's a strong chance that today we would be living in a completely different world— one with more people, more civilized people, a higher level of development, a different morality, and a different culture.
Speaker A
Because the two wars of the 20th century, unfortunately, brought back into the world a huge number of people with the culture of Pithecanthropus—people who had gone through war and killing, and believed it was the only way to deal with things.
Speaker A
A culture of distrust was also instilled by the two regimes— communist and capitalist. But perhaps the world could have been much better than it is now.
Speaker A
So how does a person's economic behavior change during war? In fairly obvious ways—during war, two things happen.
Speaker A
Risks increase sharply, and time horizons shrink dramatically. When risks surge and time horizons collapse, investments naturally fall, because investment is always about long-term planning and risk assessment.
Speaker A
Consumption patterns shift dramatically toward stockpiling. People start hoarding—non-multipliable investments, like, say, bags of grain.
Speaker A
People’s understanding of what has value changes dramatically. The value of your skills shifts. The value of goods and services changes drastically.
Speaker A
And during war, those who play outside the rules gain a significant advantage, because the rules themselves become blurred.
Speaker A
Because during wartime, since your time horizons shrink dramatically, and rules tend to be stricter the longer the time horizon, then there are significantly fewer rules left in real life.
Speaker A
This creates a much more archaic economy, without investment, and with much more primitive, natural rights and norms, much more focused on stockpiling and much more localized, because logistical distance during war is always a risk.
Speaker A
What would you advise people to invest in right now? The same things as before.
Speaker A
You're trying to link your question to the war, but if you're talking about the war between Ukraine and Russia, that's a regional conflict.
Speaker A
It doesn't affect 99% of the investment landscape. There is the war between Russia and Ukraine, there is the war between India and Pakistan.
Speaker A
There is no war between India and Pakistan. It's been called the Indo-Pakistani incident since the 1950s.
Speaker A
The Arab-Israeli war. China is constantly trying to start bombing Taiwan. It's not trying. We must be reading different news.
Speaker A
No, I simply don’t read the news. See, and I’m telling you. Thanks, but I don’t read the news — it’s on principle.
Speaker A
Why? Because the news exists because you read it. People read about scandals, fears, horrors, and so the news says China is trying to bomb Taiwan.
Speaker A
But if you read more serious materials, you’ll see that China isn’t bombing anyone. India and Pakistan wouldn’t start a war, they’re both nuclear powers, it’s unrealistic.
Speaker A
They might exchange some jabs, just like India and China, by the way — they also have their own issues, but they wouldn’t start a war.
Speaker A
The conflict in Israel — we’ve gotten used to the conflict in Israel, unfortunately. It either smolders or flares up more actively, but it will end somehow.
Speaker A
It doesn’t really affect investments in Israel, as we both understand. Yeah? I don’t understand.
Speaker A
Well, I don’t see it affecting investments. Look at the Israeli market. Has anything changed? No.
Speaker A
The shekel is strong, the government has a high deficit. That will put some pressure, but Israeli investments are known not for being in small Israeli companies, which may now struggle a bit.
Speaker A
They’re in high-tech, which is sold to Americans, and they’re barely affected by what’s happening now.
Speaker A
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, yes, it’s a terrible war, probably a regional one, and investments even in Eastern Europe haven’t really suffered because of it.
Speaker A
So if we look at the economy, it doesn’t look anything like what things were before World War I began, does it?
Speaker A
First of all, no, because we live in a different era, and economies are completely different.
Speaker A
No panic? Secondly, there’s no panic at all. Before World War I, there wasn’t any panic either, by the way.
Speaker A
World War I started suddenly, almost out of nowhere. People started realizing something a month in advance, and even then, not all of them.
Speaker A
And now, I don’t think such a threat exists. As you can see, Western powers today are very afraid of the very idea of a preemptive strike, of preemptive actions.
Speaker A
The idea that you must start a war to prevent a war. This is now entirely a Kremlin idea— that war is peace.
Speaker A
In the West, that idea was completely cured by World War I. You know, it’s all about constantly shifting alliances.
Speaker A
One day we’re against America, the next we’re with America. That also reminds me of the war between Oceania and Eastasia, and vice versa.
Speaker A
Why are you against or for America? No, I mean “we” as in Russia. Why them?
Speaker A
No, them too—it’s also their media, their newspapers. They’re neither against nor for America. There are elites there with their own interests, who are solving their own problems.
Speaker A
Today they’ll solve them together with America, tomorrow not with America. And all this talk about how they’re now aligned with America — that’s total nonsense.
Speaker A
America is pursuing its own path. Russia is somewhere far away, and so is the war in Ukraine.
Speaker A
If you ask a regular American, "Hey, there’s a war near Kyiv..." They’ll ask: "Kyiv? Where’s that? Is that in Russia?" In 2022, during that shock, the horror of March 2022, I went to a meeting with an architect who was designing a house for me in London.
Speaker A
And he’s a full-on Englishman, Matthew. And he says, “Hey, how are you guys doing, everything okay?” I say, “What do you mean?” He says, “Well, you have a war going on there.
Speaker A
Where did you come from again?” I said, “Matthew, I didn’t come from the part where the war is happening, but what are you even trying to say?” He goes, “Well, you’re from somewhere in Russia, right?
Speaker A
There’s a war in Russia.” I said, “Hold on, no — the war isn’t in Russia, it’s in Ukraine.” He says, “In Ukraine? Isn’t Ukraine part of Russia?” This is an educated person, yes, an architect, head of an architecture firm.
Speaker A
So for America—especially for America— even Europe is something distant, so to speak. For America, it's like India and Pakistan, like Malaysia and Indonesia.
Speaker A
It's some regional war somewhere, bad, very bad that there's a war. It's still some kind of leftover consequence of the Soviet Union.
Speaker A
The Soviet Union was an evil country. Of course, we should somehow intervene, of course, to stop the war.
Speaker A
It's very bad that someone is capturing something from someone. By the way, who’s capturing what from whom? I forgot.
Speaker A
But judging by what you say about the prospects of the defense industry and investment in it, you understand that this kind of pre-war situation and anticipation of war is likely to continue.
Speaker A
How much does the current economic situation suggest that a big war of everyone against everyone might actually start?
Speaker A
Anticipation of war doesn’t lead to war. On the contrary, usually. Just like anticipating a crisis prevents the crisis from actually happening.
Speaker A
We just talked about 1914. There was anticipation of war, and the war happened. There wasn’t an anticipation of war there.
Speaker A
Austria wasn’t expecting war, Serbia wasn’t expecting war, England wasn’t expecting war, France wasn’t expecting war.
Speaker A
Germany and Russia weren’t expecting war either. The decision to start a war was made quickly, step by step, and was tied to a large number of rather accidental crossroads.
Speaker A
But in the end, the decisive factor was the attempt to strike preemptively, out of fear.
Speaker A
Fear was the driving force behind it. Today, when major powers have nuclear weapons, the fear of striking is greater than the fear of not striking.
Speaker A
That’s why I wouldn’t expect a big war, but the anticipation of war will undoubtedly last for many years, just as it did during the arms race.
Speaker A
The same kind of anticipation, and just as clearly, it was the military industries that benefited and kept developing, and yet the war never happened.
Speaker A
I think this anticipation of war will last until... It will be fueled, it will grow, it will keep spinning until there's a change in political course in Russia.
Speaker A
Specifically in Russia? Yes, specifically in Russia, because Russia is vulnerable to changes in political direction.
Speaker A
America and Europe, for good or for bad— and I really want to stress this—for good or for bad— are very rigid when it comes to political direction.
Speaker A
Whether it's for worse or for better, they’re simply not able to change quickly. There, continuity of power mainly means continuity in the direction of movement.
Speaker A
People change, but the system keeps functioning. In Russia, the course is determined by a single person or a cohort of individuals.
Speaker A
Just like what happened after Stalin, when Khrushchev came with his cohort, Brezhnev with his cohort, Gorbachev with his cohort, Yeltsin with his cohort, Putin with his cohort.
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Each time the course was different. Since all of us are mortal one way or another, sooner or later the course will change again.
Speaker A
In fact, today’s Russia, in terms of its governance system, as paradoxical as it may sound, is not much different from the Soviet Union.
Speaker A
Specifically in terms of governance. Yes, the mechanism of succession isn’t well developed, unlike in the Soviet Union.
Speaker A
Yes, the system is more person-centered, unlike the Soviet Union. But the mechanism for setting the course is the same.
Speaker A
The Politburo, the General Secretary, the shaping of a worldview around one person’s ideas. Change the Politburo, change the General Secretary, the worldview changes.
Speaker A
So yes, I think this confrontation will keep escalating until there's a change of political course in Russia.
Speaker A
Not necessarily with one change of leadership, maybe with two changes. We don’t know, we can’t say, but one way or another, yes, that’s roughly the cycle I see.
Speaker A
From what you're saying, it almost sounds like you're a Trumpist. I’m not an -ist.
Speaker A
The problem is that now everyone wants to label everyone as some kind of -ist.
Speaker A
What kind of -ist are you? I’m not an -ist. I try to look at the situation objectively, because I need to understand it.
Speaker A
I currently have 550 clients behind me. I need to understand what’s going to happen, otherwise if I follow any of the “-isms,” I’ll lose their money and be left without a job.
Speaker A
So I’m not a Trumpist, I’m not an anti-Trumpist, I’m not left-wing, not right-wing. I have my own ideas about what makes an economy effective or not.
Speaker A
They could probably be called more right-leaning than left. But I don’t personally like Trump as a figure at all.
Speaker A
You have to understand that Trump is not a disease, Trump is a medicine. A bad medicine, a toxic one — but still a medicine.
Speaker A
So you think Trump is not a destabilizing factor for the global economy, but a stabilizing one?
Speaker A
I don’t think Trump can destabilize or stabilize the global economy. He doesn’t have the resources for that.
Speaker A
All his attempts to shake things up just result in a wobble in the global economy, and then it balances itself out.
Speaker A
It’s impossible — the ship is too heavy. Trump is a medicine for America. In America, several processes have taken place over the last 20–30 years that could have very negative effects on the country in the coming decades.
Speaker A
Something has to be done. And Trump came to power because more and more people understand that something has to be done.
Speaker A
There is no alternative in sight. There’s Trump — however he may be. He’s popular, well-known, and strongly supported in some circles.
Speaker A
And then there’s the path that brought America to the edge of decline, to a cliff, where all that’s left is to jump off.
Speaker A
And now something has to be done about it. Is Trump doing the right thing?
Speaker A
I can’t say right now. Does he understand what he’s doing? I’m afraid not. How can you trust someone who doesn’t understand what he’s doing?
Speaker A
Who said you have to trust him? Well, you’re saying he’s a medicine. Medicine comes in different forms.
Speaker A
You know, you take medicine for your kidneys, your liver fails. But “medicine” not in the sense of “hurray, salvation has come.” Medicine in the sense that Trump was chosen as a tool to fight what was happening in America.
Speaker A
People didn’t vote for him because they wanted Trump, but because they didn’t want what was happening.
Speaker A
And the people who voted for him — there are many of them you wouldn’t want to sit next to at a holiday dinner.
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— And would you want to? — I wouldn’t either. A huge cohort of people voted for him simply out of desperation at what was happening at home, as a Great Classic once said.
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And I know these people. They’re successful entrepreneurs, successful lawyers, people who see what’s happening in schools, what’s happening to industry, people who see what’s happening to finance.
Speaker A
This attempt to artificially prop up the system with massive doses of monetary narcotics — where does it all lead in the end?
Speaker A
If 15 years ago one could say, “Okay, this is a temporary measure, and since money is cheap, we can afford it,” then after what happened during COVID, and after interest rates changed, they can’t afford it — but they keep doing it anyway.
Speaker A
But COVID happened under Trump, and everything that was done during COVID — that was his doing.
Speaker A
Well, not exactly. The elections happened right around then, and Biden came to power. But that doesn’t mean the expectations associated with Trump weren’t progressive.
Speaker A
There’s a huge issue here — sorry, but the expectations associated with Putin were also progressive at the time.
Speaker A
- Whose expectations? - A vast number of people. He spoke foreign languages, educated, cultured, soft-spoken, constantly talked about democracy.
Speaker A
He came from the security services. Okay, Trump came from the real estate business, also probably not the best background.
Speaker A
What I’m talking about now is where Trump came from. There’s a very serious trend right now, including — and mostly — among people who, one way or another, felt hurt by Trump’s actions.
Speaker A
Like, say, left-leaning journalists who used to live off government money and are now losing it.
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They try to portray Trump as evil that fell from the sky onto a prosperous America.
Speaker A
Like everything was perfect, and then Trump showed up and ruined it all. That’s not true.
Speaker A
Everything was ruined — and then Trump showed up. You’re looking at Trump purely in a domestic American context.
Speaker A
But what interests me more is the foreign policy context. I’m looking at Trump in the domestic political context, even in the domestic economic context.
Speaker A
First of all, because Trump himself says that, “we should, first of all, take care of ourselves.” God gave America a land that is well isolated from your problems, and we've cared about others for too long." And we lost ourselves.
Speaker A
We need to take care of ourselves." And that's a very clear doctrine and logic.
Speaker A
That’s one. Second point. The world is a massive ship. It’s not easy to turn it around.
Speaker A
Look at all of Trump’s attempts — his initial idea was, “I’ll come in and quickly fix everything.” Well, that’s just bluffing.
Speaker A
Bluffing is when someone knows they can’t do it. I think Trump genuinely believed he’d come in and fix everything.
Speaker A
But as you can see, everything he tries to fix — it doesn’t get fixed.
Speaker A
It doesn’t get fixed, and what he tries to break — doesn’t break. Why? Because it's a massive, very rigid machine that changes based on factors that take decades to mature and decades more to play out.
Speaker A
And the arrival of one, let’s say, big beautiful president can’t change much. Just like with Afghanistan.
Speaker A
Yes, look how many different powers tried to turn Afghanistan into a different country. None of them hit the right spot, the one that actually needed to be hit, obviously, but still — nothing happened.
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Neither the Russians, nor the Americans, nor the locals, nor the powers on the periphery.
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Afghanistan is still Afghanistan. And in the end, everyone negotiates with the Taliban, because that’s what can hold Afghanistan together.
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It’s the same with other places around the world. You can’t just come in and say, as was the initial idea in the Western world— a monstrous idea, if you think about it— “People should live the way we live,
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because it's good, because it’s good for everyone to live this way.” They tried to do that.
Speaker A
And they kept losing, time after time, in every place—and leaving. And even in Ukraine, eventually, they’re de facto pulling back too.
Speaker A
So does that mean that Russia, teaching everyone to live the way it wants, stays and wins?
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No. Russia will end up the same way if it goes around teaching others how to live.
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No one will live the way someone else wants. Not because people are so different, but because circumstances are so different.
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Because in order for Afghans, for example, to decide they’ll have only one wife, and that a girl won’t give birth at 14, they have to give up their economic way of life, in which the more sons you have, the better you can
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defend your small patch of land. And if you have too few sons, you lose everything, you die off, you have no economic means to survive.
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To change that, they need factories to be built, like the Chinese built in the west, not in the east.
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They need to completely change their model of economic interaction. But who is going to build those factories?
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When the Americans came to them, they gave them a lot of democracy, which manifested in financing the army.
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What does army funding change, apart from the fact that everything was looted and now a bunch of Afghans live in huge mansions in Chelsea and Belgrade? Nothing.
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Changing the economic fabric of a country with tens of millions of people is something America can't do either.
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Changing mentality is practically impossible— it's a generational matter. It was and will be exactly the same with Russia.
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Look at the Russian Empire—Tajikistan, Turkmenistan—were part of the empire for many years. So, did the mentality change much?
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So why is Trump ultimately important for the world and also for Russia? - Who said he’s important? - Everyone says that.
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I think all of this is monstrously overestimated—just like news is monstrously overestimated, just like who becomes president is overestimated.
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If you look closely at how political courses are arranged— well, imagine it's a multi-lane highway, where each lane is a certain zone of political responsibility— then you'll quickly see that in developed countries, even when the government changes, the highway still moves
Speaker A
in roughly the same direction. It may turn, but not because the government changed. Now Labour came to power in the UK.
Speaker A
They simply continued the things the Conservatives were talking about. They're moving in the same direction. Why?
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First, because the elite is fairly united. It's very hard to break out of that structure.
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Parties today are like in Ancient Rome—you remember, Pompey switched from party to party several times, depending on where he had better chances of election.
Speaker A
Nowadays, parties look exactly the same, at least in Europe. In the U.S., maybe the confrontation is tougher, but the elite divide is also more pronounced there.
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One elite is bureaucratic, the other entrepreneurial. In Europe, the difference has become barely noticeable.
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When many parties are built through consensus, on the one hand, it blocks radical parties from power, but on the other hand, it brings them in to hold the golden share and secure a majority.
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And in that sense, the elite is united, it's conformist, because even if your party is small, you can always be co-opted to reach 51%.
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And you're always counting on that. What can you trade your votes for? So, most small parties in Europe are like the LDPR, and most major parties are part of a unified system that differs only marginally.
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And in America, even in America, despite the fact that there are some distinctions, you still have a single elite interest.
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Every senator clings to their fund— several million dollars a year— which they can distribute themselves.
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Because, as we know, this is often distributed in favor of themselves, their relatives, partners, etc.
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Anyone in charge of a committee or a particular system protects their network of agencies through which this money flows.
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See, just one little scoop into USAID, and it turned out that there were $1,500 dinners in Nigeria for people who weren’t even in need.
Speaker A
Okay, fine, dinners in Nigeria, but supporting Hamas— Well, no, that's politics—supporting Hamas. And this is purely economics.
Speaker A
$1,500 dinners for needy Nigerians. How much did a Nigerian actually eat? That's a big question.
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How much ended up in people’s pockets? That’s more or less clear. Like, I don’t know, Clinton’s daughter with her foundations, who can’t account for the allocation of 90% of the money.
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The entire elite—Republican, Democrat, whatever— wants to stay in this broth. And it’s very hard to stop them.
Speaker A
That’s why even Trump’s attempts… How much did he save? 100 billion? 150 billion? A lot of money—against a $2 trillion deficit.
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But what about the rest? He gets bogged down in the system. If there’s going to be reform, it must be radically larger than Trump can even imagine in order to actually change anything.
Speaker A
So I don’t think it’s that important. Trump will do something, or not, he’ll leave, and there will be a new president.
Speaker A
And America will continue moving in more or less the same direction. So Trump won’t be able to become a trigger in this very complex system of global dominoes, which is teetering on the edge of either World War III
Speaker A
or something else just as terrifying. No one can predict anything. Including because the world is not structured in a flat, parallel way, where we move toward war, move toward war, move toward war — now we’re closer to war,
Speaker A
even closer to war, and then we fall into war. The world is a rather complex system with stochastic behaviors, including those where you just keep moving forward, then make one step to the side — and fall into a world war.
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Suddenly, a rupture occurs in the system. That’s why predictions are very hard to make.
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Our, so to speak, pre-dialogue began with World War I. And that’s exactly the kind of situation where the world kept moving, kept moving, moving, moving— then suddenly woke up and a war had started.
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I can’t predict anything about war. I don’t think Trump will be a trigger. It doesn’t look like it.
Speaker A
This whole so-called nightmare for the left or celebration for the right in America is greatly exaggerated.
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A small celebration, a small nightmare—nothing much really changes. Tell Gordeeva Andrey Movchan Did you go to a physics and mathematics school?
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Or was it purely mathematical? Call it whichever you prefer. We studied both physics and math very seriously.
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School No. 444. Were there entrance exams? Well, for first grade at age 7— They asked me to read something syllable by syllable.
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I said I wouldn’t read syllable by syllable, I can read normally. So I read it that way.
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They asked something else, I said something. They said they’d take me. –Was it your parents’ decision? –Yes, of course.
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But then you applied to the Mech-Math Faculty? That was also my parents’ decision. My father is a very authoritative person, I love him dearly.
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He’s a great scientist, a physicist who still does physics and won’t do anything else for the rest of his life.
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He worked at MAI, he was a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute. He worked on strength problems, and believed that composites were the future of the world at the time.
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And he had a huge influence on me. And he’d say, “No, listen, there’s simply nowhere else to apply.
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No one else will teach you anything worthwhile. You should study mathematics, you should work on strength problems, materials mechanics.
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Physicists, they’re just speculators, making up theories— this is real science.” So I didn’t even question it.
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Even the fact that I’d have to go to the army didn’t stop me. I worked for a short while in “Podlipki.” I also tried working on all those problems of nonstationary motion in the atmosphere.
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The whole country, I think, was dealing with the problem of non-stationary motion in the atmosphere. Missiles were everything for us.
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But did you like it or not? I liked it. I didn’t like the salary.
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I graduated in 1992. At the time, I was making, converted to dollars, $10 a month.
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My daughter was born in 1990, my wife was a student. I had to feed them, but I still wanted to remain a mathematician.
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And then, suddenly, a miracle happened. I opened a newspaper— Moskovsky Komsomolets. Remember that paper? It had classified ads.
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I saw an ad: mathematicians wanted. Friedman was hiring mathematicians into Alfa Group to calculate his projects.
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So, I went there for an interview. There was Sasha Sapozhnikov, who headed the economic analysis department, a graduate of Lviv University.
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I came in—nice office, sandwiches with smoked sausage. Do you know what smoked sausage meant at the end of 1992?
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Sandwiches with smoked sausage. Everything looked nice. And then he said, “So, what can you do?” I can do everything.
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Anything you need, I can do. Listen, I won second place at the International Olympiad, 63 awards, an honors diploma from the university, a lab in Podlipki— What more do you want?
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He said, “No, no, no, I don’t need all that— can you calculate a percentage?” Yes, I can calculate a percentage.
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“Well, alright, let’s hire you. Will $250 be enough for you?” “For how long? A year, a lifetime, or a month?” – “A month.” – “Enough.” That’s how I got into business.
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Then I moved to the main GUTA group, but already earning $1,250 a month. At that point, Troika tried to recruit me.
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I told them, “I want $2,000.” They said, “Only one person here gets $2,000 — the president.” I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “Well, we’ve got this Armenian guy, Ruben Vardanyan.” I said, “Ah, alright then, just wait and think about it —
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if you decide to pay me more, then we’ll talk.” So, I worked at GUTA, then at Russian Credit Bank with Bidzina Ivanishvili for a while.
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Then in 1997, I went to Bidzina Ivanishvili and said, “Bidzina Ivanishvili, so, are you going to bury the bank?” I said, “Well, let’s look at the numbers—what are you doing?” He said, “Yeah, I’ll bury it. What’s the big deal about burying a bank?
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I’ve got a big industrial holding— for that, I can bury a bank.” I asked, “And whose liabilities are those?” I said, “Whose? The clients’, of course.” He said, “Exactly.” I submitted my resignation, left, and remembered Troika’s offer.
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I said, “Did you change your mind about the salary?” Met with Ruben Vardanyan, and he said, “So, how much do you want?” A hundred thousand a year.
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I said, “Alright, let’s do a hundred thousand a year. What would I be doing?” He said, “You know, I’m not sure. We’ve got a bunch of recent grads, the place is a total mess—if you can handle the chaos…”
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“Alright, I’ll be in charge of the mess. A hundred grand a year sounds good to me.” Turns out they hired me by mistake.
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Ruben thought I was Armenian—my last name sounded like it. And you're not Armenian? I’m Jewish, with a Ukrainian surname.
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But he didn’t know that for six months. By the time he found out, it was too late.
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I was already working there. How do you assess the ’90s in terms of the change they brought to the Russian economy, and what it led to in the 2000s?
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It didn’t lead to anything. Nothing. Everything that happened in the 2000s was about global oil price growth.
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The economy of the ’90s prepared Russia to absorb that—but it could’ve absorbed anything else, too.
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It made no difference. The ’90s were a period of chaos—terrible years. I kept a pistol at home, and two of my friends were killed in the ’90s.
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Was this after you'd already started working in big business? It wasn’t connected to big business.
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Each of them had their own business and their own dealings. And I have to say that in the business I was in—the financial sector—I never once ran into gangsters directly.
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They just didn’t come into financial business. There was a funny story at Troika Bank when some gangsters were buying those voucher shares like Bashkir gasoline and such.
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Then, when it all tanked, they came around to find out who was to blame.
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But they weren’t against business itself, they weren’t trying to shake us down, there was no racketeering.
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They talked to us more like professors, like people who knew things. It was never pleasant, but it was never dangerous.
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But elsewhere, in material assets, of course, there was absolute lawlessness. And when we got involved in deals, say, with material assets—that’s where anything could happen, any kind of consequence.
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And competition—especially inside the system, even within the financial system—often played out in that same style: criminal cases, bringing in gangsters… What else could you do?
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The economy had been completely destroyed. No one had a magic wand to wave and rebuild it.
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And now, as the debate around the '90s flares up again, with attempts to reassess it and find those truly responsible for all the destruction, it seems like the ones rebuilding the ruined economy were the same people who ruined it, no?
Speaker A
You can’t assign the economy to specific authors. The economy was being ruined over time, gradually.
Speaker A
Deliberately? No, with good intentions—like the deindustrialization of Ukraine, why Ukraine was made a backward country in Soviet times.
Speaker A
And there wasn’t even a trace of any idea to harm anyone intentionally. On the contrary, they were trying to do good.
Speaker A
It’s just that Ukrainian industry operated with more expensive raw materials and longer logistics chains.
Speaker A
So it was decided, for the good of everyone in the Soviet Union, to shift the industrial center of gravity to the Urals and beyond, including based on the experience of World War II, when Ukraine was occupied— that our main industry can’t be located in a danger zone.
Speaker A
And no one back then thought that Ukraine would one day separate and find itself in a situation where it had no industry and its logistics were broken.
Speaker A
Because they were building one country, but ended up with another. And the same thing happened with the Soviet Union, when they built an integrated system within the Warsaw Pact, when economic relations were structured in such a way that,
Speaker A
for example, it was decided that Armenia would have a chemical cluster, because Azerbaijan with its oil was nearby in Baku, and everything else would be delivered from the top.
Speaker A
Then Azerbaijan and Armenia went to war, and Armenia's industry collapsed. There was a common doctrine of a unified Soviet people.
Speaker A
A doctrine that was actively implemented, executed, carried out— and it seemed to be working.
Speaker A
Within this overarching doctrine, many things in the economy were done correctly. For example, we had a huge base of gas and oil resources, and the world was heading in an oil-and-gas direction.
Speaker A
So, we had to build our exports around oil and gas—we could import many other things, including because we supplied all of Eastern Europe with oil and gas on friendly terms.
Speaker A
And around that, energy complexes were built, production facilities, and so on. We would build a fertilizer production complex, say, in Belarus, because we didn’t mind bringing gas there, and we needed people there to have jobs and do something.
Speaker A
We would build a chemical complex in Armenia, because we needed to industrialize the territory, and the raw materials were right there in the neighboring republic.
Speaker A
And all of it was built not based on the logic of economic efficiency, but on the logic of what’s easier to control, plan, and structure.
Speaker A
We build a factory, and then move people there. We get a single-industry town, because everyone works at that factory, because no other factory will ever produce this for us.
Speaker A
And then it turns out that 30 kilometers away across the state border, there's another factory ready to supply it cheaper.
Speaker A
What are you supposed to do with that town? But you never thought about that because that factory across the border didn’t exist.
Speaker A
It was across the border. You were building an isolated country—the Soviet Union. And everything that happened in the '90s is the result of what was built in the '60s, '70s, and early '80s, when the economy was built entirely
Speaker A
on different assumptions and logic, based on the idea that we could achieve more through production intensification...
Speaker A
Not such a stupid idea—one that's only now gaining ground in the West. It just didn’t have time back then.
Speaker A
Based on intensifying production, we could build a good economy with very low motivation. But in the end, the production intensification didn’t make it in time, and motivation collapsed on its own, with a big role played by the external environment, which at the time was also suppressing
Speaker A
that motivation. External as in abroad? Abroad, of course. Because abroad, unlike today, they believed they were friends with the people inside the Soviet Union, not with the government.
Speaker A
And so the people they befriended, they absorbed Western culture and Western experiences and compared it to their own lives.
Speaker A
And they didn’t like their lives. That destroyed motivation. Attempts to increase discipline without increasing motivation led, how to put it, to collapse in rural areas, to defects in manufacturing, to fiction in the research environment.
Speaker A
And as a result, we got what we got. It couldn’t go on any longer.
Speaker A
Something had to be done about it. And when they tried to do something, it just collapsed.
Speaker A
That’s it. There, in the suburbs of Nizhny Novgorod, for example, are huge chemical and technical industry complexes.
Speaker A
It all just died and stopped. Why? Because there were no raw materials —it had to be bought.
Speaker A
And there was no money to buy it. The financial system had never worked that way.
Speaker A
Raw materials were just delivered. There was no one to sell to, because no one had money to buy anything or even knew where to buy from.
Speaker A
Europe began drifting toward a completely different market. And Europe was abundantly supplied in order to help it drift into that new market.
Speaker A
The republics drifted off and focused on their own business. Economic chains were broken. What else could have happened at the time?
Speaker A
And then onto the stage step the people who would later, in the 2000s, become the new Russian economic elite.
Speaker A
People who understood that to make money and have real influence, you had to be close to power.
Speaker A
People who were more involved than anyone else in the process of changing the government and elites.
Speaker A
I think it was more complicated. In the ’90s, whatever floated to the surface, floated.
Speaker A
And it was all kinds. There were gangsters, security officers, enterprise managers, and just random acquaintances.
Speaker A
And random strangers as well. And a whole cohort of people who came from absolutely nowhere.
Speaker A
Simply because they failed at some point to create, build, or think something through in that whole space.
Speaker A
The fight for political influence started with the economy. Meaning that during Yeltsin's time, it wasn’t the government trying to influence the economy—it was the economy trying to influence the government.
Speaker A
But in 1996, the government said, "There will be no economy for you unless you support us." Friedman, as you mentioned, in 1996 received a certificate—in his name, the Alfa Group received a certificate for supporting Yeltsin's presidential campaign. Absolutely.
Speaker A
But it wasn't the government that came and said, "there will be no economy unless you support us." It was the economy—this economy built by oligarchs— that told itself, "if the Communists come to power now, our economy will be gone."
Speaker A
Wait, but the government did say, "no one will get anything from the loans-for-shares auctions until Yeltsin is re-elected in 1996." That was the deal.
Speaker A
The loans-for-shares auctions existed before 1996. Yes, but the most specific, most serious, most valuable auctions were those.
Speaker A
Clearly, the game was being played both ways. Obviously, the authorities needed support. Any government needs support.
Speaker A
But it was definitely mutual. This wasn't a situation where the oligarchs said, "we're for democracy, let’s have fair elections," and the government replied, "no, you’re going to support us." But you’re no longer with Alfa Group now?
Speaker A
I haven’t been with Alfa Group since 1993. So you can evaluate from the outside Alfa Group’s contribution to the formation of the current Russian government.
Speaker A
That’s the thing — I don’t and haven’t worked at Alfa Group. Which is why it's hard for me to assess such things.
Speaker A
I know about Aven’s relationship with Putin. Everyone knows about Aven’s relationship with Putin, right?
Speaker A
I know that Alfa Group, like any other group, was closely involved with the government from the very beginning.
Speaker A
Could they have built Alfa Group into what it became without a relationship with the government and dependence on it?
Speaker A
Without a relationship with the government? Of course not. But again, what do we mean by “relationship with the government”?
Speaker A
Could Musk have built what he built without one? No. Over Musk’s lifetime, the government changed several times.
Speaker A
Same with Friedman. Yeltsin, then Putin at least. Then Medvedev... Doesn’t that make you laugh a little?
Speaker A
It really changed, admit it. Remember Berezovsky. It changed. Remember Gusinsky. You could name many people.
Speaker A
The oligarchs’ relationship with the government changed, but the government remained linear. I wouldn't call the government linear.
Speaker A
In relation to the economy, it was non-linear. And Putin’s government was also nonlinear in relation to the economy.
Speaker A
But again, large entities have relationships with the government all over the world. They are not necessarily corrupt and not necessarily about getting extra privileges.
Speaker A
We often see similar scandals in both America and Europe. The fact that the Russian loans-for-shares auctions were predetermined in terms of who was supposed to win — that’s absolutely true.
Speaker A
And for such deals to happen, the people who were the beneficiaries of the auctions had to promise something.
Speaker A
And once they promised something, they received not just the chance to win, but also money to ensure that victory.
Speaker A
In other words, the companies’ own funds were used to pay for their win in the auction.
Speaker A
And that’s all completely true. And I think if you invite him, he wouldn’t argue with any of that.
Speaker A
And there were many other forms of interaction with the government. What distinguished the situation in the ’90s from, say, the situation in the 2010s?
Speaker A
That in the ’90s — whether corrupt or not — there was still a dialogue with the government.
Speaker A
After the early 2010s, it seems to me, that dialogue with the government simply ended.
Speaker A
It turned into a monologue by the government. Is that a point of no return?
Speaker A
If we consider the point of no return to be successful tests after which the government decided it could do as it pleased, then I think the Yukos case was it.
Speaker A
Don’t you think that the whole story related to the loans-for-shares and the year 1996 fundamentally predetermined the development of the Russian economy, when control over very large segments of business was given to people who were clearly loyal to the authorities?
Speaker A
I watched the series *"The Unpast Tense"*, and one of the most striking things that really shocked me was Potanin’s interview, where he says that, apparently, he invested his money to save Russia.
Speaker A
I don't think so. I believe that the hyperconcentration of resources in Russia was predetermined by the structure of its economy.
Speaker A
I’ve spent a lot of time studying so-called resource economies — that is, economies that have a source of abnormal profits.
Speaker A
Everywhere such a resource exists, you see hyperconcentration, the formation of oligarchy, the rise of monopolistic structures, and so on.
Speaker A
Everywhere that institutions haven’t historically been built to prevent this from emerging right from the start.
Speaker A
And even in places where institutions can, at the early stage, stop this from emerging, it still tends to emerge—albeit gradually.
Speaker A
Even in Norway, where institutions are very strict in this regard, there are still bubbles, there are conglomerates that control what happens.
Speaker A
But those are mostly state-owned conglomerates. Russia could have followed the path of state conglomerates, which it is now beginning to follow.
Speaker A
But Russia, in principle, had neither the personnel nor the experience to build state conglomerates.
Speaker A
The “red director” of the 1990s wasn’t even comparable to today’s monopoly executive. These were people who, in principle, were not capable of functioning in an economy.
Speaker A
In this sense, the decision to appoint more or less random people as owners of resources in Russia wasn’t foolish.
Speaker A
Concentration would have happened anyway—this way, the authorities had control over whose hands it ended up in.
Speaker A
And if they hadn’t controlled it, it still would have happened—but in the hands of who knows whom.
Speaker A
Again, there's no denying that the authorities granted resources to a narrow group of people, after which those people started fighting among themselves, and then some of them began fighting the authorities.
Speaker A
But you can’t say that any other approach would have been better. Most likely, it would’ve been worse.
Speaker A
A strange view. That’s the Danube, and that’s the Sava. They converge here, and at this bend Belgrade was originally founded, right?
Speaker A
Well, the fortress is somewhere around here, isn’t it? Strange view. A view of the capital of a country that has survived sanctions.
Speaker A
Well, I don’t know. I’d say it looks better than Nizhny Novgorod. I wouldn't say so.
Speaker A
Look, that office building over there. That building ruins the view here. And the apologists of socialism would say, “That’s your damned private property.” Yes, the owner is ineffective, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker A
Can’t restore it, can’t put it in order. But overall, if we’re talking about the Serbian economy, then in a sense, I’d even say they’re doing the best they can.
Speaker A
For a country surrounded by relatively hostile nations, for a country that doesn’t belong to any major bloc or pact, for a country without significant natural resources, they're actually doing a great job with what they’ve got.
Speaker A
They have growth of 3–4% per year, they manufacture their own cars, they produce spare parts, they make equipment, and overall, their logistics are quite good.
Speaker A
So all things considered, even though, as one of my acquaintances used to say, “poor but tidy,” at least it is tidy.
Speaker A
I wouldn't say Belgrade is particularly tidy. Look over there. It’s a matter of culture.
Speaker A
The closer you get to the East… When you travel to Eastern countries, unfortunately, you'll see this kind of thing everywhere.
Speaker A
Unfortunately, it's a cultural issue, not an economic one. There’s nothing you can do. Even in London, if you go to certain neighborhoods, they’re much dirtier than others, because immigrants from other countries live there.
Speaker A
But Serbia is also an example of how a country can live for many years under sanctions.
Speaker A
And am I right in thinking that general economic sanctions have their roots in World War I and the post–World War I era, and gained traction in the 1990s and 2000s?
Speaker A
General economic sanctions originated not even in the Middle Ages. They go back further. It’s just that the formal culture of expression developed over time.
Speaker A
When someone stopped trading with someone else or broke off third-party trade relations, which happened all the time, even in ancient times, they didn’t call it sanctions, they didn’t hold congresses or write papers, they simply made the decision and did it.
Speaker A
Over time, as people began to write more and everyone learned to read, this took on a more formalized shape.
Speaker A
And yes, in the 19th century, sanctions were used in bilateral relations. From what I recall, it was in the early 20th century that the first official bloc statements appeared about suspending supplies due to political disagreements.
Speaker A
Well, for example, Serbian banks are, I believe, under permanent sanctions, and they can’t move anything or transfer anywhere because they cooperate with Russia among others.
Speaker A
I don’t know, I see payments going through Serbian banks. And they go to Western banks just fine.
Speaker A
During the Balkan War, there were many types of sanctions, but many of them are now either abolished or effectively defunct and no longer in operation, even though they may formally still exist somewhere.
Speaker A
But Western legal frameworks are like that. In some U.S. state, for example, it's still illegal to drink milk while eating on a train.
Speaker A
Obviously, no one checks that. And here, too, we see payments going through Serbian banks, we see cooperation with them.
Speaker A
There is a flow of FDI, Foreign Direct Investment, from the West to Serbia. Serbia is a recipient of investment, and quite a substantial one at that.
Speaker A
Serbia covers its trade deficit by attracting investment. Serbia has a trade deficit with Europe and with China in particular.
Speaker A
Everyone has a trade deficit with China. And it receives money not only, and not even primarily, from Russia— now almost not at all from Russia.
Speaker A
It’s the same Western money. So relations with Serbia now are, let’s say, politely cool.
Speaker A
There are no warm relations. - With Europe and America. - With both Europe and America.
Speaker A
And with Russia they’re warm. The warmth of Russia’s relations with Serbia resembles Georgian friendship, where everyone is your best friend, always.
Speaker A
Because de facto... What’s actually going on in these relations? There’s no major trade exchange.
Speaker A
No more than with neighboring European countries. Yes, planes fly through Belgrade—they do. Serbia depends on natural resources, so whenever possible, it tries to get them from Russia despite everything, because it’s cheaper.
Speaker A
And who wouldn’t want to get them from Russia? It’s business, nothing personal. Talks about Slavic unity—they’ve been going on for 200 years.
Speaker A
And they’ll continue. Slavic unity has existed at times, and at times not. All this unity always lasts only until your shared interests end—and then the opposite begins.
Speaker A
That’s why I wouldn’t exaggerate the role of Russian-Serbian relations. It’s clear that Russia, especially now, is thinking very much in 19th-century terms—late 19th century— and is once again contemplating a path to the Mediterranean through the Balkans and so on.
Speaker A
Clearly, this narrative has resurfaced in Russia. I actually think it’s largely tied to the trauma of World War I and the revolution.
Speaker A
Yes, very often a traumatized person who can’t process their trauma returns to the time before the trauma, where they once existed.
Speaker A
And they want to go back there. And Russia clearly longs for the year 1913.
Speaker A
But the world is completely different now. No one needs that trade route anymore. There are much cheaper trade routes.
Speaker A
And building them is much cheaper—done differently. And no one wants this confrontation. This kind of anachronistic thinking, even in 1914, was already 25 years out of date— and now it’s 150 years outdated.
Speaker A
And that’s a much worse case. Yes, it’s very harmful, of course. But Serbia, from what I see as an economist—what’s happening there— aside from the central street where they sell “Great Serbia” T-shirts, Serbia is free from this kind of thinking.
Speaker A
It’s more like a superficial ideological layer. Internally, it runs the economy of a small, non-aligned European country.
Speaker A
The local elite doesn’t want to join the EU, because they see what happens to peripheral countries within the EU.
Speaker A
And maybe they’re right not to want it. Perhaps there's a better way to exist outside of it.
Speaker A
And despite the country’s relative poverty— well, it’s not that poor, actually, it's growing— it’s searching for its own model, hasn’t found it yet.
Speaker A
So would you recommend investing, for example, in the Serbian economy? Surely the apartments in this building aren’t that expensive.
Speaker A
Here’s the issue: there are 195 countries in the world. And there are many countries whose economies are more interesting than Serbia’s.
Speaker A
Take Berlin, for instance—people who bought apartments there 20 years ago are now super landlords.
Speaker A
And yet, prices are falling. Real estate funds are going bankrupt. So I wouldn’t advise investing in Europe, in the EU.
Speaker A
— Not at all? — Not right now, no. I don’t know what will happen in ten years. We’ll see.
Speaker A
Investing in America... Just three years ago, perhaps, I would’ve said it’s worth it. Now I’d say be a bit more cautious.
Speaker A
Everything has become extremely expensive. And some things in America make me quite uneasy. For example, the real estate market situation.
Speaker A
There are many interesting sectors, not necessarily countries, that one could consider investing in. Including even in Europe—for instance, as cynical as it may sound, the defense industry is about to grow.
Speaker A
It might be worth investing in the defense industry, if you're comfortable investing in the defense industry.
Speaker A
High tech, biotech—not pharma, biotech. Anything related to large-scale logistics, to efficient logistics. Does this have a foothold in Serbia? Most likely.
Speaker A
Is this industry present here in some way? Is there an interesting team, an interesting business here?
Speaker A
Will it develop regionally in some way, and so on? I’m actually a poor microeconomist.
Speaker A
I’m not the person to ask where exactly or what spot to invest in. I have a team behind me that handles that.
Speaker A
I deal more with macro questions, so to speak— territories, currency markets, how to navigate them, some larger derivative matters.
Speaker A
So if I say something now, I might mislead someone, they’ll act on it, and it’ll end badly.
Speaker A
I’ve always been fascinated by the profession of someone who manages other people’s money. And it always seemed to me: if you truly know where to invest, then invest your own money, get rich, and don’t do anything else.
Speaker A
— Where’s your money? — It’s all about scale. If you know where to invest for, say, a 100% annual return, then sure, invest your own money.
Speaker A
And by the way, when we talk to investors about investments, and they say, “I was offered a great business— 30% annual return, guaranteed,” I always tell them, “Well, you know, someone who can guarantee a 30% annual return will just go to a bank
Speaker A
and take out a loan at 5%.” He doesn’t need your money.” The problem is, first of all, there are no guarantees in the markets.
Speaker A
And second, the more expensive, the more attractive, the riskier the product, the less control you have over it, the more it becomes a roulette.
Speaker A
So basically, in today’s markets, if you want to earn even 15% annually, let alone 20%, you have to understand— no matter how smart you are, you’re sailing a little boat in a storm.
Speaker A
And wherever the waves take you, that’s where you’ll land. Maybe it’ll be +15-20%, or maybe –50%, or even –100%.
Speaker A
And even if you’re a manager, even with a strong team like ours, still— at that level of risk, you’re not really in control.
Speaker A
And if you take investors’ money for this, then you’re kind of a swindler. Because essentially you’re saying, “Let me sail your money in my little boat through a storm— wherever we end up, we end up.” We work with products that yield
Speaker A
let’s say, 5–10% annually in dollars. At that level, manageability is significantly higher, but it’s still just 5–10% in dollars.
Speaker A
So, let’s say I have some money— let’s call it X—and I’m earning, say, 7–8% annually.
Speaker A
So if you have $1,000, by the end of the year you’ll have $1,070. $1,070–$1,080.
Speaker A
Is that a sufficient return? Well, if it’s me, and I make 7–8% per year on my own money, that’s not bad—I’m earning it, that’s money.
Speaker A
But imagine that my own money is only 1% of the total capital I manage, and I charge 1% in management fees on all of it.
Speaker A
So I earned 7–8% of 1%— that’s 7–8 basis points on my money. And another 99 basis points because I manage other people’s money.
Speaker A
That’s why we do this. It’s the economics of scale. I earn as much—or even more—from the asset management business than I do from my personal investments.
Speaker A
Again why? Because the returns are not 100% per year. We manage conservative products. And the scale is much larger.
Speaker A
Of course, I don’t have 100 times that scale, but my own capital is probably around 6–7% of the total we manage.
Speaker A
Still, my management fees are substantial, and those earnings are high. And still—where is your money?
Speaker A
I mean, what have you personally invested in? Ah, in the same funds we manage.
Speaker A
Which ones? Well, any curious viewer can go to our website, movchans.com, and see for themselves.
Speaker A
We have a fund that invests in various equity strategies. We have a fund that invests in debt.
Speaker A
And in different debt-related strategies. We have a derivatives fund that I, as a mathematician, designed myself—it works well.
Speaker A
We also have a special situations fund in the debt market. What have we tried to do?
Speaker A
We’ve tried to understand how many different, uncorrelated ways we can earn a conservative return.
Speaker A
And every time we come up with a new method, we launch it. Because the more ways you diversify, the more confident you feel overall.
Speaker A
So you believe in conservative returns? Yes—if you consider that a belief, then yes, I believe in conservative income, and I don’t believe in aggressive ones.
Speaker A
So you don’t believe in crypto? Well, look—what does it mean to “believe”? Can you make a lot of money in crypto? Sure.
Speaker A
What percentage of crypto market participants have lost money in crypto? More than 50%. So less than half have actually made money?
Speaker A
Less than half made money. That’s what the stats show. Why? That’s clear too. Crypto is a very volatile asset.
Speaker A
And the higher it climbs, the more people start buying it. When it drops, many people panic and sell.
Speaker A
So if you look at the chart, it goes up. But if you look at the life of specific people, their experience with crypto often goes top-down.
Speaker A
And there’s no way around that. And we don’t know how long it will keep going up.
Speaker A
Why is crypto going up? Because right now, with rising general risks, with so much money around and everyone wanting to play, people are looking for alternative ways.
Speaker A
They go there because there’s a certain hype. And when that hype disappears, when something else comes along besides crypto, will it face the fate of NFTs or not—we don’t know.
Speaker A
But it’s entirely possible. Here’s an example for you. A branch of crypto—NFTs. People invested a lot of money there.
Speaker A
NFTs met a rather sad fate. Yes, yes, yes. We don’t know. Again, maybe Bitcoin is the future of digital gold, and maybe it will be worth 5 times more, 100 times more.
Speaker A
I don’t know. Do you personally hold any? No, I don’t. I have two issues with Bitcoin.
Speaker A
The first issue is the one I just mentioned. You never know what’s going to happen.
Speaker A
And the second issue is that it’s impossible to manage anymore. No one can say they have a reasonable investment strategy for Bitcoin.
Speaker A
Because a reasonable strategy simply can’t exist there. And if I don’t have a reasonable strategy, I can’t offer it to the market.
Speaker A
Which means I can’t build any scale on top of it. So I’m just not interested in it right now.
Speaker A
We do a lot of thinking and looking into arbitrage strategies in cryptocurrency that don’t depend on price movements.
Speaker A
But what’s held us back is the infrastructure quality. Because the amount of fraud is extremely high.
Speaker A
The reliability of the entire system is weak. And I’ve seen many funds that started off well and then fell victim to scammers and lost money.
Speaker A
We still don’t know how to deal with that. Maybe it makes sense to wait a bit until the infrastructure improves.
Speaker A
But in arbitrage, there’s probably something real there. As for outright investments, any investor, if they want, can make them on their own.
Speaker A
They don’t need us for that. And how much capital does MOVCHAN'S GROUP manage today?
Speaker A
We manage about half a billion dollars. Are those mainly people from Russia? Mainly Russian-speaking clients.
Speaker A
Right now... Since we’re always under supervision, constantly audited, we’re forced to go through ongoing compliance checks, only about 16–17% of our investors are from Russia now.
Speaker A
And ideally, how would you like it to be? I’d love to have many more investments from all kinds of different people.
Speaker A
I don’t see any difference between people in Russia and people outside of Russia. I have many friends who still live there.
Speaker A
And do you also see no difference between money from Russia and not from Russia?
Speaker A
– No difference. You think there’s no dirty money outside Russia? — I’m sure there is. — Tons of it.
Speaker A
And there’s plenty of dirty money from Russia too. In a way, in a sense, our position — the fact that I’ve never supported the Russian government, even back in calmer times I was very critical of its economic policy,
Speaker A
and the fact that I left Russia — in some sense, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Speaker A
So money from, say, officials, military, oligarchs, and so on simply won’t come to me because I’m an outsider — I’m not “one of them.” The money that does come to me is from people who are no worse than people in Europe
Speaker A
or, say, in the U.S. It seems to me that this is the point where the heterogeneity of Belgrade becomes visible — on one side, these run-down buildings, on the other side, beautiful high-rises, and elsewhere everything under construction —
Speaker A
this is the very place where we should talk about how the concept of sanctions has evolved.
Speaker A
In general, I find the concept of sanctions very Marxist. That is, when you proceed from the idea that being determines consciousness, and you punish someone who behaves the wrong way economically, lowering their standard of living so they come to some realization.
Speaker A
But it seems like it has never worked anywhere. To me, the concept of sanctions is extremely anti-Marxist.
Speaker A
What does Marxism say? It says there are no such things as states — there are only classes.
Speaker A
Ah, well you’re coming from the general Marxist framework, and I’m referring to specific theses.
Speaker A
No, but actually, all those separate theses are built on the idea that all of world history is a war of classes, a class struggle.
Speaker A
And behind every political event, especially a negative one, one must see the interests of a particular class and fight that class.
Speaker A
In that sense, if sanctions were targeted at some imaginary political class in Russia that started the war, then that might have been a Marxist concept.
Speaker A
And by the way, the relationship between the U.S. and the USSR back in the day was very Marxist.
Speaker A
Because despite the dislike for the party elite, for example, the Americans constantly tried to build relationships with ordinary Russians inside the country.
Speaker A
All those Voice of America broadcasts aimed at Russia, all those attempts to build bridges, bring tourists back and forth, so to speak, open the gates, welcome all refugees with open arms.
Speaker A
If you’re unwelcome in Russia, then you’re welcome here — that kind of thing. Very Marxist.
Speaker A
There’s a class of ordinary people. We’re all united, we’re all just ordinary folks here, we’re all a bit like American farmers.
Speaker A
And then there’s the evil party elite in the Soviet Union. Today, though, the approach is completely different — it’s more like something from 19th-century capitalist history.
Speaker A
Like, “this is my feudal kingdom, I am the king here, and that’s your feudal kingdom, and you are my enemy.” And so I’ll beat your serfs, and I’ll beat you, and basically, we’re not friends.” And in that sense, in my opinion,
Speaker A
it’s definitely a major regression. But has there ever been a case where sanctions led to positive change?
Speaker A
No. To self-satisfaction, yes — absolutely, in many cases. Left-wing economists in the West often cite South Africa as an example where sanctions led to the fall of the apartheid regime.
Speaker A
But I’m going to say something terrible now. I don’t think positive change happened in South Africa with the fall of apartheid — I think it was negative.
Speaker A
I believe that sanctions and the West’s fight against apartheid, just like the year 1917 in Russia, they accelerated a natural process, made it unnatural, and essentially destroyed the structure that could have formed in South Africa over time —
Speaker A
the structure of a normal state. Now it's a deeply corrupt state with extremely high crime rates, a weak economy heading into a dead end, and one that's beginning to play an increasingly negative role on the international stage.
Speaker A
Did the Americans do the same in Yugoslavia? Accelerate a natural process? In Yugoslavia, I'm not sure that the sanctions directly affected Yugoslavia — though you have to understand, the more isolated a country is...
Speaker A
First there were bombings, then sanctions? then they decided to combine them? I think the bombings had a much stronger impact.
Speaker A
Actually, more important was that Yugoslavia lacked resources. Unlike Russia, for example, which has oil.
Speaker A
Yugoslavia didn't have the resources to sustain the policy it was pursuing — with or without sanctions.
Speaker A
Without friendship with its neighbors, the economy doesn't function. Europe came to the neighbors' aid and took a constitutional stance.
Speaker A
But the country wouldn't have survived even without sanctions. Simply because that friendship was lacking.
Speaker A
So theoretically, you can bend a small, isolated country with sanctions quite easily. But the changes that happen in it may not be to your liking at all.
Speaker A
Remember Iran in 1976. That was a consequence of sanctions. These are the consequences of the U.S. and U.K.'s attempts to suppress Iran’s efforts to build a nationalist economy.
Speaker A
As we were walking here, we talked about how Europe’s and America’s position on Russia’s economy is quite hypocritical — they say one thing, but actually do another.
Speaker A
But how do you assess the economic damage or, conversely, benefits of sanctions on Russia starting in 2022, or maybe even since 2014?
Speaker A
Any sanctions cause economic damage. So of course, they harm the Russian economy — absolutely.
Speaker A
The markup on imported goods has risen, and revenue losses from exports have increased. I don’t think that’s even up for debate.
Speaker A
Of course, no one really wants sanctions. But now people say that thanks to sanctions, agriculture has grown, factories are working better, trade is booming, and everything is being produced within Russia — even the rarest medicines.
Speaker A
Well, no — the auto industry is being lost to China. A huge number of claims about domestic production are fake, and a huge number of processing stages had to be given up, because previously we received first-level components, and now we have to buy the finished products.
Speaker A
And equipment has to be reconfigured, automation systems too, they all have to be adapted to Chinese systems.
Speaker A
And generally speaking, isolation has never allowed a country to grow quickly and actively, especially if that country is heavily economically dependent on the world.
Speaker A
When we talk about U.S. auto sanctions, by the way, about tariff barriers, no one says that America will benefit from them.
Speaker A
Everyone says that America depends little on imports, so the damage won’t be as big, and maybe it will be offset by securing better deals with other countries.
Speaker A
But Russia has always been very dependent on imports. And therefore, the damage is certainly there, and it's significant, but...
Speaker A
There’s a big “but” that could be written behind me on a poster in two big letters.
Speaker A
The “but” is that sanctions really help with waging war. – Explain. – Two things.
Speaker A
Ideological, sociological, and economic. The ideological and sociological part I can see just from people I correspond with — sanctions have led to serious internal consolidation in Russia.
Speaker A
Even fairly cultured, intelligent, reasonable people have, over these years, had their sense of cynicism towards attacks on ordinary Russians outweigh whatever they think about what's happening on the battlefield.
Speaker A
They started saying, “We're all here in Russia, and right now we’re united by the hostility of the world.” Because, I mean — what happened?
Speaker A
Why can’t planes fly anymore? What did we do? Me personally, I work in Samara, I run a bakery.
Speaker A
Why can’t I go to Europe? How did I offend you? What can I do?
Speaker A
What do you want me to do? Overthrow the government? How would I do that?
Speaker A
Did you often overthrow your governments when you had fascist regimes?” And that affects society, it has a huge impact.
Speaker A
It affects the ordinary person who doesn’t fully understand, and who lives inside propaganda. It has a drastic effect.
Speaker A
That’s one. The second issue is purely economic. Why was there not enough money in Russia before?
Speaker A
Because most of the money earned in Russia was taken abroad. The risks in Russia were huge, it was dangerous to keep it there.
Speaker A
People wanted to buy imports, keep them at home, or transfer the money out, spend it while traveling, or deposit it in a Swiss bank.
Speaker A
Now the West and the U.S. came in and banned Russians from transferring money out of Russia.
Speaker A
And where did all that money stay and go? Through domestic loans, through the high ruble interest rate?
Speaker A
They basically went into the treasury? And where? Into the military budget. There you go — that’s your source of war.
Speaker A
Not even oil sales, but these locked-up funds. Fridman, who came under sanctions — what was he supposed to do? Where could he go?
Speaker A
The other oligarchs under sanctions — Fridman tried everything he could. Openly giving money to Ukraine, directly, without fear.
Speaker A
Even though he still had a bank in Russia. Signing any declarations. He had lived in the West for many years.
Speaker A
What were you trying to do? Make 4 billion dollars return to Russia? Well, they did. That’s the result.
Speaker A
So you believe the West’s treatment of Fridman was unfair? Why are we even talking about fairness?
Speaker A
We’re discussing the issue of sanctions. What do sanctions do? Let me show you. Sanctions are supposed to bring justice.
Speaker A
But they don’t. I’m showing you. They help wage war. Sanctions brought a lot of money into the Russian budget because capital outflow stopped.
Speaker A
So what should have been done? Do you want me to be the president of the world right now?
Speaker A
I don’t know. I'm a small-time economist, an investment manager. I have a company with 30 people.
Speaker A
I don't know what should have been done in the world. But definitely not stopping the flow of money in this situation.
Speaker A
I’ve always been surprised that when a bank has a really good investment advisor who provides sound consulting services to people who need to invest, and the bank makes it public, including using it in their investment forecast, why do they publicly tell everyone to do the same?
Speaker A
They should just do it themselves quietly and make money. Because no investment forecast is meant to help those who read it make money.
Speaker A
It’s meant to help those who write it make money. – So, is that deception? – No. Why? Sometimes it is deception.
Speaker A
Sometimes a person honestly writes what they believe. But... – Why would they share it then? – Let's suppose...
Speaker A
I believe—genuinely believe—that the probability that Goldman Sachs stock, I don't know, will go up is higher than the probability it will go down.
Speaker A
I think the probability is 51%. I buy Goldman Sachs shares for the bank’s position today at $10 and publish a research report in which I honestly state that I believe these shares are more likely to rise than to fall.
Speaker A
I send this research to clients and say, “Guys, look, buy Goldman Sachs shares.” Clients start coming to you, and you tell them, “$11, $12,” then they keep buying, $13, and the price on the market, on the exchange, rises to $14.
Speaker A
So you attract people who invest in this stock, and the price predictably goes up.
Speaker A
You sell off your position, which you bought at $10, and sell it at $11, $12, $14, $15, $16 — whatever it goes up to.
Speaker A
What happens next to Goldman Sachs shares? There’s a 49% chance they’ll fall, 51% they’ll rise.
Speaker A
But that no longer concerns you — you’ve made your business. That’s how an investment bank works.
Speaker A
So it’s a scam? No, I genuinely believed they would go up. Again, if I’m a good banker, I won’t promote trash.
Speaker A
I’ll promote something that has a good chance to grow. Why? Because I want 51% of clients to come back to me afterward.
Speaker A
I understand that more than 51% is unlikely, because I’m not a prophet. I can’t guarantee that Goldman Sachs will definitely rise.
Speaker A
Anything could happen. But if I believe the odds are high, that’s what I’ll do.
Speaker A
I’ll buy a position and bring it to people. If I believe something is likely to fall, I can take a short position, meaning, so to speak, sell uncovered, and encourage people to sell, then cover my position from their sale.
Speaker A
That’s standard practice for an investment bank. Overall, statistically, it contributes to the flow of money toward good companies.
Speaker A
But for any individual client, trusting an investment bank’s research is a huge risk. So the research of an investment bank is basically PR for the bank?
Speaker A
Purely and simply. And that’s how it works worldwide? It’s not some Russian invention? No, Russia didn’t invent anything.
Speaker A
On the contrary, Renaissance and Troika banks were always built entirely based on the model of American investment banks.
Speaker A
It was considered a great way to build an investment bank for a reason. Did you work in institutions closely connected to the government?
Speaker A
Like Troika Dialog, Renaissance Group? I did not. In general, a close relationship with the government is a separate topic.
Speaker A
Both Troika and Renaissance always publicly positioned themselves as independent players. — Publicly? — Publicly, absolutely.
Speaker A
I don’t know anything— let me be careful— I don’t know anything about corruption involving Troika Dialog or Renaissance.
Speaker A
State-level corruption. And what do you call corruption? What everyone calls corruption— when public officials or businesspeople receive unjustified income due to their contacts with those in power.
Speaker A
And unjustified income received by companies thanks to their connection to the government, due to their loyal behavior toward that government— is that not corruption?
Speaker A
Unjustified income, of course, is corruption. But at the same time... I, for example, worked at Troika, yes, this was in the early 2000s.
Speaker A
Troika served RAO UES. Troika was an investment bank that handled, among other things, the breakup of RAO UES—projects, deals, and so on.
Speaker A
And Troika received a market-based commission for it. If Morgan Stanley had done the same thing, they would have received the same or even more.
Speaker A
But it wasn’t Morgan Stanley who did it. Here I want to move away from the Marxist-Leninist idea— this notion that either you don’t work with the state at all, or you're a criminal.
Speaker A
Well, someone has to work with government agencies. But the contracts with RAO UES were market-based contracts.
Speaker A
I don’t know if RAO UES was doing a good job, I don’t know what RAO UES did to bring about certain decisions, and some billionaires emerged from the RAO UES leadership.
Speaker A
Ask them about that. But the contracts Troika worked on were market-based. Vardanyan, who received these contracts, Troika, having received them, got nothing beyond those contracts.
Speaker A
They did the work and earned their commissions. Back then, by the way, RAO UES paid.
Speaker A
It was later that Gazprom came up with the idea that you could get contracts and not pay.
Speaker A
But back then everything was still calm, and investment bankers never even considered that they wouldn't receive a commission.
Speaker A
If the contract was signed, the commission would come. We worked with Anex, we worked with Bank of Moscow.
Speaker A
Bank of Moscow actually bought Troika, by the way. Troika was a subsidiary of Bank of Moscow.
Speaker A
And as for what Borodin was doing at Bank of Moscow— He was doing something.
Speaker A
Troika Dialog was doing its own thing. There was massive trading happening, mostly for foreign investors.
Speaker A
I wouldn’t say that Troika, at least up until 2003, had any difference in working with the state compared to working with non-state clients.
Speaker A
And Ruben used to say this very clearly, and frankly, he was absolutely right. Troika managed to work with companies controlled by Luzhkov, for example, and also those controlled by Chubais— Even though Luzhkov and Chubais were mortal enemies.
Speaker A
Renaissance Credit had two layers of activity, since Renaissance loved hiring people from the top.
Speaker A
Igor Sagiryan, Sagaydak, and a whole group of people with strong ties at the top ensured GR— and whatever else they ensured, I, as the person who led the asset management business, don’t know.
Speaker A
What I do know about Renaissance deals, about IB— about investment banking—it worked just like at Troika.
Speaker A
Very cowboy-style, very tough, very aggressive, very good at selling, and they did it very actively.
Speaker A
But again, it was all at arm’s length. And Renaissance, by the way, didn’t do government deals.
Speaker A
Unlike Troika, its deals were more oligarchic in nature. And for foreigners too. A lot was done for foreign investors.
Speaker A
As I understand it, Renaissance was largely created to attract foreign money into Russia? Of course. 90% of Renaissance’s revenue booked internally came from trading.
Speaker A
Well, let’s say 80% from trading, 10% from management, and 10% everything else. Trading was huge, very powerful.
Speaker A
And in trading, where's the corruption? You trade on the exchange, there’s nothing you can rig.
Speaker A
But if you’re not just trading, but trading with insider knowledge, then you can pull off all kinds of schemes.
Speaker A
Sorry. Here, I can say this with certainty, as someone who was directly involved in this, alongside Sasha Pertsovsky, who led the trading.
Speaker A
There was no insider trading, and Renaissance’s proprietary positions didn’t earn much. They did earn something from their own investments, but it was minor compared to commissions.
Speaker A
Renaissance made money on commissions. And yes, of course, a good trader knows how to buy, then sell for more.
Speaker A
But not because he has insider info, but because he knows how to sell higher.
Speaker A
Renaissance’s trading was completely disconnected from that kind of knowledge. Moreover, when the Yukos story happened, for example, I remember Oleg Kiselev—you probably remember that figure— he walked around the trading floor saying, “It’ll all go to zero, you don’t understand what kind of machine this is.
Speaker A
Once they start, they’ll destroy everything to the end, they have no reverse gear.” And Boris Jordan sat in the same building.
Speaker A
He said, “No, no, I don’t believe it, you can’t destroy such a company, they’ll work something out.” And he bought Yukos shares during the fall and lost money.
Speaker A
That’s how far removed people were from that whole government circle. Why do you think those European institutions that check the cleanliness of Russian money and its owners chose completely different strategies for Petr Aven and for Mikhail Fridman?
Speaker A
I really can’t comment on that. Firstly, personal sanctions are very hard to track. They’re extremely sporadic and extremely inconsistent.
Speaker A
In some countries, I think they just grabbed the Forbes list, poked their finger and said, “That one.” In some countries—for example, the U.S. imposed sanctions on a vice president of Sberbank, not realizing that at Sberbank, a vice president is just a department head.
Speaker A
It’s just a title. But for them, a vice president is like, you know, a top executive.
Speaker A
And so many of my acquaintances —very decent people— who were department heads at Sberbank ended up under U.S. sanctions for no reason at all.
Speaker A
Which is utter nonsense, but they’re under personal sanctions. So I can neither comment nor judge.
Speaker A
But do you understand Fridman’s decision to return to Russia? On a human level, I do.
Speaker A
Would you do the same? I don’t know, but first of all, I’ve lived my life differently.
Speaker A
I didn’t work with the government, I didn’t privatize assets, I wasn’t friends with Putin.
Speaker A
I’ve lived my life completely differently from Mikhail Fridman’s. But I understand—he ended up in a situation where he’s allowed to take something like £2,000 a month out of one account and spend it.
Speaker A
He’s constantly being checked, practically raided, they’re always trying to find some violation of sanctions and jail him.
Speaker A
His entire network of European companies was basically frozen, and none of them could meet their obligations to counterparties because of this.
Speaker A
No one cares. Nobody gives a shit. Here we have this scary Fridman. "If we sanction him now, then Russia will definitely stop the war." So let’s sanction him and shut down all his companies— and the fact that there are thousands of other investors
Speaker A
in those companies—nobody cares. That’s how the system works, unfortunately. You end up practically under house arrest, with no money, no opportunities.
Speaker A
After you’ve declared that you’re against the war, against the Kremlin, loyal to Ukraine, want to help Ukraine, ready to donate your money— nobody listens or hears you.
Speaker A
So emotionally, what should one do in that situation? I don’t think I should be Fridman’s spiritual advisor or comment on his actions.
Speaker A
Do you keep in touch? We didn’t even back then. Still, you worked together. We didn’t work together. I worked at Alfa-Bank, he was the owner.
Speaker A
I was a young employee analyzing projects, he was at the top, and I left very quickly.
Speaker A
My only encounter with Fridman was when Alfa-Bank was talking to me—they wanted to start an investment banking division and were thinking about inviting me.
Speaker A
He spoke with me, and then I was told that Fridman said, “No, he left us, we never take people back who left us.” That was probably the only direct encounter I had with Fridman after that.
Speaker A
And what do you think about the contribution of these people who seemed to be building independent and supposedly very free businesses in Russia?
Speaker A
I mean like Alfa Group, I mean Troika. To what extent did these people influence what Russia eventually became?
Speaker A
Honestly, I wouldn’t lump them all together. Take Alfa Group, for example—it was much closer to the government, and in its development it used not only state resources, but more importantly, resource resources— natural resources like oil, the very core of the country’s wealth that led to consolidation.
Speaker A
That said, to be fair to Fridman, Alfa remained the most independent and the least subservient to the state.
Speaker A
Fridman was a maverick—he left for London quite early. Troika, meanwhile, was built as a completely non-governmental structure, and the fact that it collapsed sharply under government pressure says more about a miscalculation by the owners than any intent.
Speaker A
Then why didn’t the Russian government fight for Ruben Vardanyan, who is currently being held captive in Azerbaijan?
Speaker A
May I be cynical? Ruben Vardanyan is of no use to anyone. He wasn’t a government agent, he’s not one of their own—he’s an outsider.
Speaker A
Ruben Vardanyan is someone who always talked about free markets. He was used when needed by the state—only when he was useful.
Speaker A
When Gref needed to compete with Kostin, he paid money—mostly to Chemezov—and Ruben became a tool in that game.
Speaker A
So he was a good businessman but a bad political player? Ruben was always a very bad politician, without question.
Speaker A
His ideas about how politics should work were always terrible. He believed you could do politics with clean hands, gracefully, and be friends with everyone.
Speaker A
Ruben ended up being—if our Armenian friends won’t be offended— a Jew to the state.
Speaker A
Smart, quick, able to get things done when things need doing. And what happens to the Jew once he stops being useful? He gets thrown out.
Speaker A
That’s what happened to Troika. Once Troika did all the useful things, did them well, properly—including for the state— Troika was sold, and all the people who played that game and operated inside it were more or less thrown out.
Speaker A
I wouldn’t call Vardanyan a player in the system. Yes, Vardanyan was a resource for the system.
Speaker A
Troika was a convenient resource. They did good deals, they did their work well. Then the state came and said, “do the job for me.” They were thrilled, because it meant money, they were making money.
Speaker A
Troika was never very profitable without government contracts. Then Gref’s ambitions demanded Troika be brought into the fold, and Chemezov’s desire for money aligned with that.
Speaker A
And I still think Vardanyan made a terrible mistake not selling Troika to Standard Bank when he had the chance.
Speaker A
He would have gotten out of the game much cleaner. He got some money— some part of the money for Troika.
Speaker A
He was and remains a respected person and a good investor. But the state had no need for him whatsoever.
Speaker A
He had served his purpose—they now have their own people, who are far more loyal, who don’t allow themselves rebellious statements, don’t allow themselves to be equidistant or neutral, and so on.
Speaker A
So neither Russia nor Armenia will fight for him in captivity? I suspect Armenia will be the first not to fight for him, because for the Armenian leadership— whatever it may be—he is still some kind of competitor in the struggle for power.
Speaker A
He’s still a charismatic figure. Ruben’s situation is absolutely tragic, and it’s completely awful, because he is that rare kind of person who truly does not deserve to end up in such a situation, and considering his potential, his intellect,
Speaker A
his capacity to make things happen, the world is also losing a great deal of benefit, a great deal of good that he could have done.
Speaker A
Because in recent years, he had fully shifted to attempts to bring good into the world in the way that he understood it.
Speaker A
To be honest, I have no idea what to do in this situation, because there’s no one in this world who actually cares about getting him out of prison.
Speaker A
For Europe, after that monstrous —scandalous, in my view— investigation about the “laundromats,” if you remember, he’s of no interest, because it’s unclear whether he stole, or was stolen from.
Speaker A
To Azerbaijan, he’s an enemy; to Armenia, a competitor; to Russia, a spent resource who was never part of the inner circle and generally allowed himself far too much.
Speaker A
There’s just no one who would take up this issue now. And it’s surprising how, even if you understand business well, it doesn’t mean at all that you can navigate politics.
Speaker A
This applies to quite a few major businesses. Moreover, if you’re good at business, it’s even harder to navigate politics, because politics isn’t about business.
Speaker A
Business is about cooperation. In both, you need to be good at calculations. No, not at all.
Speaker A
In politics, you don’t need to calculate. Politics is the art of communication. Politics is the ability to secure alliances.
Speaker A
A huge number of people. Take Khodorkovsky, for example. An excellent businessman. Say what you will, Khodorkovsky could have built a brilliant business in a free world, under normal conditions.
Speaker A
But when it came to politics, Khodorkovsky miscalculated 100%. Then there's Michael Calvey. What, Michael Calvey’s a bad businessman?
Speaker A
Michael Calvey let a trivial situation escalate, when he should’ve just stood up and walked away—because you don’t play with cheaters.
Speaker A
He let it go as far as his people getting jailed, he himself landing in prison, and losing the entire business.
Speaker A
Wait, but in constructs like the Russian Federation, there can be no such thing as truly free business.
Speaker A
You either work with the authorities, or you start having problems. First of all, that’s not entirely true.
Speaker A
Give an example. Troika Dialog—until around 2004–2005. Before 2004, even newspapers could still be independent, and radio stations too.
Speaker A
And many businesses that weren’t directly tied to resources managed to remain independent for quite a while, and maybe some of them still are.
Speaker A
Like a pie shop in Samara— I think that can still be an independent business.
Speaker A
I think if the owner of a pie shop in Samara says something against United Russia in Samara, those pies won’t last very long.
Speaker A
I’m talking about business independence—not politics. But that’s exactly the point. As a business, you have to show loyalty to the state.
Speaker A
Not saying you're against United Russia is not an act of loyalty. It is an act of loyalty.
Speaker A
Alright, let’s agree on the terms. Let’s say a pie maker in Samara only needs not to say he’s against United Russia in order to be considered an independent business.
Speaker A
Is that a problem in terms of business freedom and freedom of speech? For me, it is. For many pie makers, it’s not.
Speaker A
Well, it depends on the personality, of course. – Absolutely. – Let’s go back to the beginning.
Speaker A
Could an independent business grow that freely expressed its point of view? It could, and it did.
Speaker A
Look, when did they start destroying Rolf? Remember? That was around 2014. Or even later.
Speaker A
So there you go, up until that point. I know Sergey Petrov very well, you probably know him too.
Speaker A
He's an absolutely wonderful person. I know about him from the press. I know him personally, and he definitely was independent.
Speaker A
If he were my client, you'd be really messing up the situation for me right now, because I'm not allowed to disclose who my clients are.
Speaker A
But there you go, up until that time, such a big, successful business could thrive.
Speaker A
A lot of construction businesses developed quite independently and successfully. Oleg Tinkov is another example.
Speaker A
Tell me, how did Oleg Tinkov cooperate with the state? I know his business and his bank very well.
Speaker A
Because I used to run a competitor at the time, and we watched them not through binoculars, but through a magnifying glass to understand what was going on.
Speaker A
What kind of cooperation with the government was there? A foreign model, very well implemented, foreign management.
Speaker A
Did they get a banking license? It wasn’t hard to get. We had a license too — no problem, we did it.
Speaker A
The capital wasn’t inflated by a single kopeck — this wasn't Uralsib. Everything was absolutely honest and clean.
Speaker A
And no one attacked him, they let him grow into a mega-business without interference, even though he was always saying something, he was always loud.
Speaker A
He was never loyal, never stood at attention, never praised anyone. And this went on practically until 2020, maybe even later.
Speaker A
So it was possible, as you can see. Did Oleg Tinkov say a lot about Crimea?
Speaker A
Once again, first of all, I don’t know what statements were made. Tinkov in general could’ve said anything — I know him well.
Speaker A
Oleg made all kinds of statements. First of all, we don’t know what he thought about Crimea.
Speaker A
If he didn’t say anything, then we don’t know. Second, again, let’s go back to the pies in Samara.
Speaker A
If you didn’t say anything about Crimea, then we know for sure that you could build a business.
Speaker A
If you did speak out, for example… Well, I spoke out, for instance. I published huge articles in Carnegie about it.
Speaker A
And I lived in Moscow until 2019. And no one ever came to me and said, “You’re doing something wrong.” Moreover, in 2017 or 2018, suddenly someone approached me with a proposal to join a working group under Medvedev.
Speaker A
And I said, “God forbid, God forbid, spare me,” “Step away, holy cross and all that.” Yes, I was ready to sprinkle myself with holy water, but still.
Speaker A
And Ksenia Anatolyevna first offered me to become the head of her campaign, and when I declined, she publicly announced that I had agreed.
Speaker A
And I declined again, of course. And what did she do? She never announced again that I had agreed.
Speaker A
And there was no conversation at all? No why? Even after the war started, we— She did a big interview with me.
Speaker A
No, no, we’re on good professional terms. She runs her business, I understand — we each have our own business.
Speaker A
Do you think that people who made their large or medium fortunes in Russia in the ’90s or 2000s, when there were a lot of questions about how that money was made, and with whom they were cooperating, and with whom they were affiliated — do you think these people have the right,
Speaker A
after taking their money abroad — and we’re very glad for them that they managed to do so — do they have the right to speak out about Russia and somehow comment on its current development?
Speaker A
First of all, I don’t believe people should be divided into those who made money in Russia and those who didn’t, or into those who made money in the ’90s and those who didn’t.
Speaker A
They should be divided into those who made it honestly and those who didn’t. And in the ’90s, a lot of money was made honestly, and a lot was made dishonestly.
Speaker A
And I know there are people living in London, who stole and fled, and there are also people living in London who made their money in the '90s, some of them very honestly, and they're living very well in London too—they left as well.
Speaker A
So first of all, I would strongly object to dividing people like that. Second, regarding the right to speak out.
Speaker A
I believe everyone has the right to speak out. Whether you earned it, stole it, fled, stayed, butcher babies, or don’t butcher babies.
Speaker A
You still have the right to speak, because people have the right to listen—or not to listen.
Speaker A
If, for example, you think that Andrey Borodin, let’s say, stole money and fled from Bank of Moscow, and now lives in London, and has no right to speak about Russia, then just don’t listen to Andrey Borodin.
Speaker A
Why is there this strange idea that you should be offended that Andrey Borodin, having stolen money, talks about Russia?
Speaker A
No, this is actually what the concept of reputation is about. No again— there are lots of people I simply won’t listen to.
Speaker A
But I don’t want to restrict their right to speak. Khazin Mikhail—go ahead, let Khazin speak.
Speaker A
I definitely won’t listen to him, because he spouts paranoid schizophrenia. But he has the right to do it, so let him—why not?
Speaker A
Why should I limit his right to speak? But when an investor comes to you and says, "I want to invest my money through you," do you check the cleanliness of that money?
Speaker A
Is that important to you? We’ve effectively become a company that checks the cleanliness of money.
Speaker A
And not because we chose to—but because all the institutions around us are doing it.
Speaker A
We can’t just take the money in our pocket and invest it ourselves. That money goes into banks, to brokers, custodians administrators.
Speaker A
And all these players... We try to work with top-notch players— global, major ones—so that we never suffer from problems on their end.
Speaker A
All these players—first of all, at the word “Russian” they immediately go on alert, and some even faint.
Speaker A
And secondly, they are bound by very strict compliance rules. We had our own compliance department for a long time.
Speaker A
At some point I said, "No, guys, you don’t understand what you’re doing. From now on, you’ll be called counter-compliance." You’re not here to do compliance checks on our clients — you’re here to help our clients do compliance with institutions."
Speaker A
Because we’re facing this kind of blockade, a very rigid barrier. And it’s very hard for us, and it costs us a lot of smashed ashtrays.
Speaker A
But on the other hand, it’s very easy for us. We only deal with very clean money—crystal clear.
Speaker A
Meaning that when an investor comes to us, they don’t have to worry that because of some other client of ours, their money will be seized, frozen, or investigated.
Speaker A
Because we’ve built such a track record over a decade that it’s basically impossible to find fault with us.
Speaker A
In case of global instability, what would you recommend people keep their money in? In case of global instability, I would advise not keeping money at all.
Speaker A
Because global instability… – Should we buy gold right away? – Not even gold. Global instability is when a loaf of bread costs a bar of gold.
Speaker A
Global instability is when you can’t win through any assets. My grandmother was evacuated while my grandfather was fighting at the front, in a village near Kazan.
Speaker A
Everything they took with them from Moscow was enough for one week of food. I don’t think you should keep money in case of war.
Speaker A
You keep money in case of peace. In case of war, you need to preserve your hands, your mind, your ability to work, your ability to feed yourself through some activity, your ability to move, to escape the horrors of war if you're not
Speaker A
going to the front line—to go somewhere, to be able to speak a foreign language if you've arrived to look for work, because you speak that language.
Speaker A
Nothing else will help you. Where to go is another question. You need to find some kind of island of safety.
Speaker A
We’re entering the realm of science fiction now, if you like. Yes, I do. Disclaimer: this is the science fiction genre.
Speaker A
We can recall the experience of world wars. Latin America didn’t participate in the world wars.
Speaker A
Canada was involved only very indirectly. I think if we’re imagining things here, then in a future world war, Canada, I think, won’t be heavily involved either, except maybe in supplying something to the zones of military action.
Speaker A
So here you go—large regions. If you speak Spanish, for example, or French— there’s your escape route.
Speaker A
– Australia – And New Zealand. New Zealand. They will... It’s clear whose side they’ll be on in World War III, obviously.
Speaker A
There’s more risk there—say, of a Chinese invasion— than in Latin America, for example. But still, they’re far enough away.
Speaker A
So if you want advice for World War III— let’s have a laugh. There you go—Latin America, Canada.
Speaker A
– Don’t you think about that? – No. But still, in 2020 you left Russia.
Speaker A
And what year did you completely leave all state-related businesses in Russia? I never had any business related to the state.
Speaker A
Not yours—those where you worked. I left Renaissance in 2009. And even at Renaissance, my business wasn’t tied to the state.
Speaker A
We didn’t have any government money. We had private clients’ money—on the buy side, in my case.
Speaker A
I wasn’t making tea yet, just saying, for those who’ve watched this far. That was the sell side, not the buy side.
Speaker A
I left there in 2009. We started our own investment bank with partners. We decided we were no worse than anyone else, Russia could now develop after the crisis, and so on.
Speaker A
But our only attempt to work with the state in this bank was a visit to Rusnano, after a big discussion, we came back, sat down in our meeting room— and not me, but my guys, the cowboy types who were always about making money,
Speaker A
they said, “Sorry, but we’re not working with this.” Did they explain why? – Do you need me to explain? – Yes.
Speaker A
Because they looked at what was being offered and looked at what was really going on.
Speaker A
My people never stole anything. We could be clever, we could play the markets, we could come up with schemes, but we never stole.
Speaker A
I remember telling a friend of mine— his investment company had gone bankrupt because, as it turned out, everyone there was stealing from him.
Speaker A
I explained to him, "They're all stealing from you because you taught them to steal from others." Not that we were some kind of saints—it’s just I clearly understood that if we wanted a successful company, we must not steal—because otherwise,
Speaker A
they’ll loot the company from the inside, steal everything in it. So, my people flat-out refused.
Speaker A
We worked with private businesses. At the end of 2013, we sat down, did research, and realized that oil prices would fall and the ruble would weaken.
Speaker A
And we needed to sell the investment bank, because we wouldn’t survive. At that time, Russia was still very popular— Russia was at its peak in 2013 in terms of popularity— and we sold the bank to the British relatively easily.
Speaker A
Then came the Maidan, and then 2014, and we were left turning our heads, wondering what to do.
Speaker A
And in 2015, I created the company that exists today — Movchans Group, and this company was never based in Russia, and it never invested in Russia from the start.
Speaker A
Why? Because I believed the market had absolutely no prospects. You understood that already in 2014?
Speaker A
Of course. I wrote back then that it was a market with no prospects, that it was bad not because I didn’t love the country, but because the risks were high, the costs were high, efficiency was low, productivity was falling, and the country’s economic development system
Speaker A
didn’t support a normal market environment. I tried to convince Michael Calvey’s people of this completely in vain back in those years — that this wasn’t sustainable.
Speaker A
Such exposure was already very dangerous. By the way, why didn’t your private fund management model become an example for scaling or imitation by others in Russia?
Speaker A
– Why did you remain the only one? – First of all, it did. And after 2015, we together with partners built a company to manage our own money.
Speaker A
Very soon investors started coming to us, because the idea of investing outside Russia was already quite popular.
Speaker A
Besides, quite a few other players started doing the same business — not just us.
Speaker A
And people were moving their money to private banks, and those private banks invested globally for them.
Speaker A
There was a real outflow from Russia. Which was exactly what Western sanctions later stopped.
Speaker A
That money drain, when an average businessman with a few million dollars, who until 2011 and even somewhat in 2014 was happily investing inside Russia, after 2014 began investing abroad.
Speaker A
There were quite a lot of them. But then there’s this thing called FOMO, right? As we say in England...
Speaker A
Fear of Missing Out. You're living in a country with lots of oil, oil prices are rising, there’s a lot of money, lots of people, Moscow is becoming more beautiful, low competition, high returns.
Speaker A
How could you not invest here? Moreover, you don’t speak English— you speak Russian, for example.
Speaker A
And maybe you’ve built up some local connections. You know the deputy governor, you understand how to work with that.
Speaker A
You grew up here, you were born here. And everyone around you is saying, “Are you crazy?
Speaker A
We’re about to start building residential real estate in Khanty-Mansiysk, for example, the margins are 30%, 40%.
Speaker A
And the government is offering cheap money, subsidized mortgages.” Fear of Missing Out. – Did you ever feel that? – No.
Speaker A
– Why not? – I’m cynical. But still, after that you left—why? Well, we had been planning to leave for a long time. It was just a long process.
Speaker A
Back in 2014, my eldest daughter packed her bags with her husband and said, “That’s it,” and they left for Israel.
Speaker A
Now they live in Israel, in Jerusalem. They’re doctors— respected people there— and I think since then she’s only been back to Russia once or twice.
Speaker A
It’s generally believed that if you're an emigrant leaving with a profession, you lose ten years of your career.
Speaker A
If you emigrate with anything at all, you lose a lot. In any case, we lost a lot by leaving.
Speaker A
I personally lost a lot, undoubtedly. We didn’t leave because we were going to gain something.
Speaker A
It wasn’t an emigration for sausages. – So why did you leave? – For two reasons.
Speaker A
One was kind of spot, the other was forward-looking. The spot reason was that I started to feel suffocated.
Speaker A
Just in everything. It became unpleasant somehow. These huge black cars, three-hour traffic jams because some official is being driven around, these flashing lights, license plates you can buy to drive past traffic police.
Speaker A
– But that existed in the '90s too. – Not like that. Even in the '90s, honestly— and I can say this for myself— even after the Khodorkovsky case, probably up until the Georgia conflict, I had the illusion that we were moving in the right direction.
Speaker A
That this was just a transitional period, that everything would eventually become more organized, more structured, that a system would emerge, that laws would be established, and that even the oligarchs needed laws, that the government needed laws, that the country
Speaker A
would turn into a place where many things were better than in the West, because the West was far from perfect, and what was bad here would become like the West.
Speaker A
Honestly, up until the Georgian campaign, I truly believed that the chance was real. After 2008, I and many people around me said, “We need to leave, we need to think about how to do it properly.” After 2014, it simply turned into: we need to leave.
Speaker A
And from then on, the process unfolded depending on each person’s circumstances and how they made their own decisions— some did it earlier, some later.
Speaker A
We, as parents, left later; our children left before us. In 2023, you renounced your Russian citizenship.
Speaker A
Why? Look, I view citizenship in more of a social sense for myself. Not as subjecthood, but as citizenship tied to a position.
Speaker A
Not just a status, but a stance—a civic stance. I spent most of my adult life in Russia.
Speaker A
And for most of my adult life, I was in one way or another defending a certain set of views.
Speaker A
I believe, by the way, that democracy is a terrible system— but better than all the others.
Speaker A
I believe in a liberal economy. I believe that power must be changeable. I believe relationships should be based on cooperation, not conflict.
Speaker A
I believe the judicial system should function effectively and follow the law. I'm, if you will, a liberal democrat— very much right-leaning.
Speaker A
So if I were in the U.S. right now, I’d be a hard Republican. A Trump supporter, actually.
Speaker A
If I were in Britain now and decided to vote— and I probably will in the next election— You have a British passport now?
Speaker A
I have ILR, so I’ll have a British passport soon. And right now you’re a citizen of Cyprus?
Speaker A
Yes, I’m a Cypriot. In the UK, I’d probably vote for reform now, but I’m still a liberal democrat—just right-leaning.
Speaker A
I’ve spoken and written a lot about this, and I tried to build something in Russia— including free markets, securities markets, which I understand well.
Speaker A
We brought a lot of foreign investment into Russia. And I had the feeling that people in Russia were liberal democrats not out of conviction, but necessity.
Speaker A
That power, or life itself, forced them into it. But give them power, give them a comfortable life— and you'd get a liberal democracy.
Speaker A
But we now see that this is not the case. We see that the majority of Russia’s population does not agree with this at all.
Speaker A
And that’s their right. I don’t want to judge these people. They have the right to choose how to live.
Speaker A
But when I see, for example, in elections that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin receives—I don’t know—70% of the vote...
Speaker A
More than 80%. Or more than 80%, I fully understand that probably some of that is falsified, but you can’t turn 20 into 80.
Speaker A
You can turn, I don’t know, 60 into 80. I, for one, am categorically against this war.
Speaker A
I believe the war that Russia started—yes, and it's no secret that Russia started it—should never have been started.
Speaker A
It absolutely should not have been started. But we see that a large number of people in Russia support these actions now.
Speaker A
Again, I don’t want to judge. I don’t want to deliberate on why they do this, or say they’re terrible people.
Speaker A
Although they are doing this. But they are doing it—they support it. They are content with what’s happening.
Speaker A
And even before any war, back in 2020, it was already clear to me that my views did not align with those of the majority.
Speaker A
For many years we tried to convince the majority—myself included. – Was that a mistake? – Why a mistake?
Speaker A
We did what we could. We tried to convince these people, we tried to convince the majority.
Speaker A
But look, I think it’s hard to overestimate your personal contribution. To the way Russia stabilized economically and improved in many ways.
Speaker A
That is, many people—smart, talented, honest— did a lot to make Russia’s economic situation such that people didn’t have to worry about tomorrow.
Speaker A
Personal housing, the ability to earn a stable income— things that seemed completely unattainable in the '90s.
Speaker A
And on top of that came the illusion of a return of the Soviet Empire.
Speaker A
My contribution, actually, is very easy to overestimate, because the main contribution came from oil.
Speaker A
But you helped. I helped—and so did millions of others. I’m not saying you’re the only one to blame for everything.
Speaker A
No, I’m just saying that... – Blame for what? But for something else. Of course, we helped.
Speaker A
The built securities market, the structuring of the financial system, the attraction of foreign investment— it all definitely helped, of course.
Speaker A
But in mass consciousness, things don’t align cross-temporally— it’s not like it was bad, we did something, and it got better.
Speaker A
They align horizontally in time. When was it good? When Putin was in power. When was it good?
Speaker A
When they cracked down on the oligarchs. When was it good? When there was a rise in recoverable income.
Speaker A
When was it bad? When those liberal democrats were trying to build something. Psychology works in mysterious ways, unfortunately, because perestroika ended in collapse.
Speaker A
Many people lost a lot in the '90s. To explain to them that in reality they lost it back in the '70s and just didn’t realize it until the '90s—is very difficult.
Speaker A
What happened in government in the '90s was monstrous. The loans-for-shares auctions, the corruption, the favoritism, the disregard for the law—and from there stems the tradition of criminal prosecution of those who are inconvenient, and so on.
Speaker A
To explain to them that this has nothing to do with liberal democracy, that it actually goes against liberal democracy, that it’s a consequence of trauma—is very difficult.
Speaker A
What happened in the 2000s, when the economy suddenly began to grow because oil prices were rising— to explain that this wasn’t because of the new government, that the new government actually did a lot to make things worse—and that it was due
Speaker A
to the rising price of oil—is very hard. Because they see this government, they see order, they see that the bandits are gone.
Speaker A
But why did the bandits leave? Because the government now had enough moneyn to become the bandit itself.
Speaker A
But government, acting as a bandit, is not visible to people in the same way.
Speaker A
It doesn’t wear sweatpants, drive around in Mercedes, or shoot guns. Government behaves like a bandit in other ways.
Speaker A
Our huge mistake was not realizing how hard this is to explain. The people who understood it thought it was obvious.
Speaker A
Our mistake was thinking that a huge part of the population aspired to an entrepreneurial mindset, wanted to build something, wanted to take an active role.
Speaker A
But it turned out that the vast majority of people want... And in the West too, by the way—not just in Russia.
Speaker A
They want to receive guaranteed benefits—and they’ll believe the one who offers guarantees, even if they don’t deliver.
Speaker A
But someone who comes and says, “Go out, take it, work, do it, each of you can achieve something,” they won’t believe that.
Speaker A
Because people mostly don’t believe in themselves. They don’t want to achieve— they’re afraid of it.
Speaker A
We didn’t understand that either. So in a way, we were building something not for them.
Speaker A
And we weren’t trying to convince them—we were mostly convincing ourselves. And we were just talking to ourselves about it.
Speaker A
And in the end, it became clear that no one wanted to listen. People want strong authority, guaranteed distribution, and the assurance that their neighbor isn’t richer—because they envy that.
Speaker A
But I decided, okay, it’s the country’s right, it’s society’s right to self-determination. – Is that your defeat? – Well, undoubtedly, of course.
Speaker A
Of course it’s a defeat. But you have to know how to lose with dignity.
Speaker A
I left—I left the country, I left my citizenship. And I openly told everyone about it.
Speaker A
I once wrote an article that even ended up in my 2015 book, where I answered a teenager’s question—a teenager wrote in, actually sent a letter, asking: “What should I do, what should I prepare for, where should I live?”
Speaker A
Back then I wrote, “You’re young—leave. Don’t take on the responsibility for your future kids who would stay in Russia. Leave.” But not everyone can leave.
Speaker A
So what? What conclusion am I supposed to draw from that? I sympathize with many people who are now living in Russia in conflict with their own beliefs.
Speaker A
Those who are okay with what’s happening in Russia today—they're fine. There’s no famine in Russia now, no freezing— people are earning decently.
Speaker A
They think everything is fine, that things have improved? For many, they haven’t, of course—but for many others, things have improved.
Speaker A
And for those whose values align with what’s going on, they don’t need to do anything, they’re fine, everything’s normal for them.
Speaker A
I’m far from thinking that Russia’s economy will collapse tomorrow and everyone will die. Those people who live in Russia against their beliefs and suffer because, for example, they can't speak freely, they can't properly connect with the free world—
Speaker A
of course, I deeply sympathize with them. But again, the question is—what are they willing to sacrifice?
Speaker A
Many people stay in Russia because they’re not willing to sacrifice, for example, an 80-year-old mother or father who are still living in Russia.
Speaker A
Yes, they’re not ready to make that sacrifice. Yes, they take on... But that’s a huge sacrifice.
Speaker A
If someone isn’t willing to give up a stable job, or their routines—that’s different. It means they’re making that choice.
Speaker A
It means a stable job is more important to them than freedom of speech, or freedom of movement, or even just the ability to breathe.
Speaker A
Everyone makes their own choice. I have very good friends—people I care about— who stayed in Russia and still live there.
Speaker A
And they say openly: “Because no one abroad would pay us the kind of salary we get here.
Speaker A
We have three kids—we need to feed them. And here we’re doing okay, we’re earning decent money, doing meaningful work.
Speaker A
We don’t work for the government.” And their kids go to school there. “And we try to teach them what matters, not what’s being shoved down their throats now.” In a conversation, my friend said, “I’m here with the kids like Janusz Korczak.”
Speaker A
And I said, “Well, you know, Janusz Korczak wasn’t offered a chance to take the kids to America—unlike you.” So yeah, a kind of modern-day Janusz Korczak.
Speaker A
But that’s their choice—what can I say. Everyone has the right to choose. I made my choice, and they’re making theirs.
Speaker A
Was it a serious decision for you to renounce citizenship? — Wasn’t it heartbreaking? — Not at all.
Speaker A
Once again: I didn’t give up my citizenship as a form of protest. I have nothing to protest against.
Speaker A
I simply left the game. Like someone leaving a party that, in your opinion, has gone off track.
Speaker A
But that’s a hard process, isn’t it? Renouncing citizenship is bureaucratically difficult. No, not at all. Russia lets go of her sons very easily.
Speaker A
I gathered about three and a half documents and took them to the embassy. Everyone at the embassy was incredibly polite and courteous.
Speaker A
Everything went very smoothly. In four months, I received a letter saying I was no longer a citizen.
Speaker A
And once again, I want you to... Since you're asking about me, I want you to understand— this is not a protest, not a statement, not a fight.
Speaker A
We fought for our vision of Russia. We fought the best we could. I wrote, I spoke, I tried to persuade.
Speaker A
I failed to persuade. And Russians chose to live a different way. Long before the war.
Speaker A
The war is just a continuation of that other life. And I left because that’s not the life I want to live, and not the life I want for my children.
Speaker A
I left, and logically, I had to take everything of mine and leave behind everything foreign.
Speaker A
In that situation, the passport was foreign to me. So I left it behind. And how would you respond to the claim that, first, the country fed you, educated you, gave you a free education, and second, you earned your money in this country?
Speaker A
Easy. I’ll answer that this is complete nonsense. First of all, I fed the country.
Speaker A
All those years I worked, I didn’t sit idle. Two years in the army doing dangerous work.
Speaker A
– Where did you serve? – I served in the engineering troops, in Ivanovo. Mostly we did hazardous work— clearing debris, concrete, and so on.
Speaker A
Two years of honest slave labor. And every year after that, working in Russia, I lived on my salary or from what I earned through business— thus providing value.
Speaker A
I didn’t steal, didn’t privatize assets, didn’t take part in debt auctions, didn’t work for the state, never held a government position.
Speaker A
As for the money the state spent on me at university—first of all, it chose to admit me.
Speaker A
I was accepted on merit. Second, I paid that back a hundredfold over my career.
Speaker A
I brought in tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign capital—I didn’t count—into Russian companies during my work.
Speaker A
I’ve closed nearly 120 deals for Russian companies over my career. I earned the money I was paid for what I did for Russia.
Speaker A
And it wasn’t government officials who paid me, the ones who might say that— I was paid by those who were willing to pay, including foreigners, who were willing to pay for me bringing their money into Russia— a country that later seized their businesses
Speaker A
and jailed their executives. I did far more for Russia than it did for me.
Speaker A
That was payment for my work. It was fair. There’s no such thing as unfair pay for honest work.
Speaker A
But what about now? You're 57 years old. You're a man without a homeland. What does that mean—without a homeland? First of all, I’m Jewish.
Speaker A
I’ve always been without a homeland. I have a refuge country, Israel—I’m an Israeli citizen.
Speaker A
But for a Jew, the idea of a homeland is complicated, you know. Since childhood, we've been told where our homeland is.
Speaker A
So we’ve grown used to the idea that it doesn’t exist. – Do you miss it? – Not Russia, no.
Speaker A
Please choose: mercy or justice? Mercy. But you say you're a cynic. I’m a cynic because I invest money.
Speaker A
You’ve never invested emotionally in your life? No. Otherwise, I’d have lost it. But, for example, I’ve lost large sums lending money to friends.
Speaker A
– So you’re not a cynic. – No, I am a cynic. There are many things I’d like to do but don’t, when it comes to investing.
Speaker A
Because the mind understands. Same thing with fear of missing out, for example— that’s a terrible affliction.
Speaker A
You absolutely mustn’t act on it. Freedom or stability? Freedom. I’m an entrepreneur—what stability? – Homeland or truth? – Truth.
Speaker A
– What happens next? – I have no idea. It’s all just a matter of probability.
Speaker A
We can reason together about what’s more likely, what’s less likely. But when it’s 70/30 probability— 30 is still a huge probability.
Speaker A
It can happen quite easily. So yes, we can discuss what's more likely to happen.
Speaker A
I'm happy to discuss it with you. But I can't say what will happen. I think for many years, Russia will look more or less the way it does now.
Speaker A
I believe this is, in some ways, a generational choice. Power will change hands naturally.
Speaker A
No one lives forever. People die sooner or later. We don’t know if the first, second, or even the third power transition will be the point of liberalization.
Speaker A
But that point will definitely come, sooner or later, because such constructs in the modern world lead to economic dead ends.
Speaker A
And at some point, it’ll be necessary to climb out. Not anytime soon. As long as oil is expensive, resources are plenty, and Russia plays an important and visible role in China’s foreign policy, it can all hold up.
Speaker A
But sooner or later, it will have to change. And there's only one way out.
Speaker A
Through liberalizing the space so that the system begins to heal itself. That will happen someday.
Speaker A
Whether I live to see it, I don’t know. Of course I’d like to live to see it.
Speaker A
But by then, I’ll be observing as an outsider. I can’t and don’t want to help or interfere.
Speaker A
Heartfelt thanks for your support. By watching this video, you confirm that you are an adult. If this is not the case, do not watch it. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or is intended to promote anything.
Speaker A
THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED BY FOREIGN AGENT KATERINA VLADIMIROVNA GORDEEVA, OR RELATED TO THE ACTIVITIES OF FOREIGN AGENT KATERINA VLADIMIROVNA GORDEEVA.
Topics:Andrey Movchaninvestment managementwar and economicsWorld War Ifreedomenvironmental impactKedr-MediaRussian politicssanctionsgeopolitics
