Paramount +
According to all who appear in Secrets of oligarchic wives, Vladimir Putin is a ruthless, greedy and sociopathic monster who only cares about his own power, wealth and legacy as a titan who united and restored the glory of Mother Russia. The ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as the continued imprisonment and ill-treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, corroborate these claims, although the real hook of the Paramount + documentary about the Russian president is his privileged commentary on the women who were closer to the oligarchs of the authoritarian. What they have to say is not particularly shocking, but it is certainly further proof that the world is in danger from a man willing to do anything, to anyone, to achieve his own ends.
Narrated by Ranvir Singh and executive producer by Justine Kershaw, Laura Jones and David McNab, Secrets of oligarchic wives (released June 28) is a portrait of Putin as “the most dangerous man on the planet,” told in large part by a collection of women with ties to big fish whose lives were deeply affected by he. There are only two nominal “oligarchic wives” featured in this 90-minute documentary: Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, a distant relative of the famous writer Lev Tolstoy, who spent years alongside oligarch Sergei Pugachev; and Tatiana Fokina, the spouse of exiled mobile phone oligarch Evgeny Chichvarkin, and even then, the former never formally married her Russian multimillion-dollar partner. As for the false publicity, this is a moderate case, if not a ultimately disastrous turn, as the speakers do a proper job providing first-hand accounts of the agitation and terror provoked by Putin. against anyone who dares to stand in his way. .
As part of Sundance’s top secret documentary about Putin, Alexei Navalny points out
For its third opening, Secrets of oligarchic wives it functions as basic information about Putin’s rise to power. When the Soviet Union fell in 1989, Putin was a KGB agent stationed in Dresden, East Germany, and in Russia’s next “wild west” of the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, he rose to the political ranks of the Soviet Union. country and finally became Yeltsin’s successor when the leader abruptly resigned from his post on December 31, 1999. According to financier and political activist Bill Browder, Yeltsin had backed his bankrupt nation, shattered by unemployment widespread, food shortages and ruined state industries, selling 40% of the country to 22 oligarchs, borrowing money from them and then repaying loans. This created a class of oligarchic billionaires not only with incalculable wealth, but with massive political influence, and this group manually selected Putin as the new president of Russia, assuming he was a “boring official” who would carry out his orders.
The story goes on
They were wrong. Although Yeltsin had turned a blind eye to the oligarchs, who basically acted as mafia bosses, Putin decided that he had become Russia’s main godfather, demanding large cuts in his profits (and his unwavering allegiance). and punishing severe punishments for anyone who disobeyed their wishes. For critical voices of the FSB like Alexander Litvinenko, this meant deadly poisoning. For his former allied businessmen, it meant criminal prosecution and confiscation of property. Far from a “malleable pawn,” Putin revealed himself as a boundless ditch tyrant. However, as he had initially looked like a young, vibrant, and open-west “breath of fresh air,” most were glad to overlook his more dictatorial actions. Even when the mysterious deaths of opponents began to pile up, these crimes were carried out with enough plausible denials to provide others with a justification for continuing to do business with him.
All this is a well-trodden territory, and Secrets of oligarchic wives it’s not exhaustive enough to be a true non-fiction history lesson. However, he gets the general background details right and embellishes this familiar material with Tolstoy and Fokina stories. For the first, life with Pugachev was a whirlwind of glamorous yachts and luxurious palaces, which she makes no bones for having loved, at least until Putin decided to revolt with his former confidant and send him to flee to France. Fokina, for his part, did not meet with Chichvarkin until he escaped from Russia after Putin’s attempts to confiscate his empire and prosecute him for all sorts of offenses. In both cases, the women dispense stories about Putin’s nasty, small-man complex and brutality, which are then complemented by similar comments from Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, as well as Browder, a colleague of the who was assassinated after speaking out against Russian corruption, and who … in a shocking press conference archive clip — is singled out as an enemy by Putin, at which point Donald Trump expresses his support for the intentions autocratic of the Russian leader.
Tolstoy takes viewers on a car tour of some of the many mansions the oligarchs owned (or previously owned) in London, where many have fled for the past twenty years. However, the same Secrets of oligarchic wives it leaves Tolstoy’s personal details vague, just as the documentary refuses to question her about her willingness to go to bed with a gloomy criminal just because her wealth and influence were seductive. Even Browder, who speaks harshly of Putin, is barely identified, so his current position in Putin’s point of view seems a fact without significant context. Talking about Putin’s own humble upbringing, and later about his enthusiasm for living in the lavish Kremlin, is finally assessed as possible reasons for his ruthless tyranny, but that angle also seems underdeveloped.
The ongoing siege of Ukraine is approached briefly towards the end Secrets of oligarchic wives, and serves as the latest and most heartbreaking example of Putin’s cruelty. Fokina conjectures that Putin is willing to do anything because he is secretly ill, while Browder suggests that he is a mentally ill madman who lacks normal human empathy, consciousness, and emotions, and has had them all his life. A large number of old clips gave Putin an unfavorable light, depicting him as a stone-faced plunder. Unfortunately, almost any nightly news show could tell you the same thing, and without the pretensions of this rather shallow documentary, which aims to offer inexplicable secrets about the Russian elite of the women who were previously part of it, and which, however, mixes well. -Advertising facts and scattered anecdotes to unclear results.
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