English verbs have a multi-valued system of tenses, consisting of 12 different combinations. This is if you do not take into account the passive voice and other constructions expressing tenses. Today we will begin to study this system and analyze in detail its first large category - the present tense in English. Let's consider the situations of using this group, the schemes for constructing structures in different subgroups and summarize the material in a generalized table.
In Russian grammar, the answer to this question is clear - the present is everything that happens at a given moment in time. In the English-speaking environment, the generalized concept of Present Tense ( present time) is divided into four more specific types: simple, continuous, perfect and perfect-continuous. Let's find out in more detail how these times differ.
Present Simple
Constructions of this type are used to express ordinary, everyday or regularly repeated actions in English; conveying facts, current information, attitudes, perceptions, generally known truths; designations of permanent phenomena, states of nature.
- I am 15 years old –I'm 15years.
- The sun rises in the East –Sunrisesoneast.
- She likes to sing –To herlikesing.
- Jack and Nick are his best friends –JackAndNickhisthe bestFriends.
- I run in the morning every day –IeverydayI'm runningByin the morning.
1) The action ended very recently, which connects it with the present moment.
- Childrenhavejustdonetheirhomework— The children have just finished their homework.
2) The conversation emphasizes the experience of the action and its result.
- I have heard something about it –IWhat-Thatheardaboutthis.
- PupilshavelearnfiveEnglishrulestoday– The students learned 5 English rules today.
To indicate completeness in the present tense, use the auxiliary verb have and participle II, which is usually translated as a passive participle in Russian, but in this verbal construction expresses action. Here again pronouns and 3rd person nouns receive special shape – has. To compose a sentence with a question, the auxiliary verb is brought forward, and when negated, it is used after it not.
- Has she just arrived at the airport? –SheonlyWhatarrivedVairport?
- She hasn’t arrived at the airport yet –ShemoreNotarrivedVairport.
It remains to study the last present tense, possible in English language.
Present Perfect Continuous
The name sounds scary, but the logic in such constructions is easy to follow. This is a type of speech phrase that indicates that an action has already been performed for some time, but has not yet been completed. This subgroup differs from the usual continuus and perfect precisely in its emphasis on the duration of the ongoing (but not completed) action.
- I have been studying the German language since August –IstudyingGermanlanguage since August 2017.
Present Perfect Continuous sentences are also found when denoting recently occurring events, if it is necessary to emphasize their result in the present, or they are the cause of current actions/states.
- Shelookstired, shehasbeencookingdinnerfor10 personsfor2 hours– She looks tired, she spends two hours preparing dinner for 10 people.
As the examples show, the statement in this tense is formed using the construction have been and the participle I. In this case, the third person again uses verb has. Interrogative combinations are built according to the same principle: at the beginning speech expression there is have/has, then the subject, followed by been + participle I. For negation, add not.
- Has he been waiting for teacher for 20 minutes? –Hewaitingteachers 20minutes?
- He hasn’t been waiting for teacher for 20 minutes –HeNotwaitingteachers 20minutes.
We have studied everything species forms Nowadays, it’s time to summarize your knowledge.
Present tense in English in the language - summary table
Let's present all the tenses studied in one table and add circumstances that are often used with them. These words will become a kind of beacon that will help determine the type of time.
| Present Tense | |||
| Form | + | ? | — |
| Simple | 1. P. (subject) + 2. Infinitive (at 3faceending –s)
3. Remaining part |
1. Do/Does+2. P. + 3. Inf.+ 4. Remaining part | 1. P. + 2. do/does not + 3.Inf.. + 4. Res. Part |
| Circumstances: always, never, every day, regularly, usually, generally, sometimes, ever, as a rule. | |||
| Continuous | 1. P. + 2 . To be + 3.Proverbs I+ 4. Res. Part | 1. To be+ 2. P.+ 3. Proverbs I+ 4. Res. Part | 1. P. + 2. To be not + 3. Proverbs I+ 4. Res. Part |
| Circumstances: now, next, soon, at the moment, constantly, still, right now. | |||
| Perfect | 1. P. + 2. have/has + 3. Proverbs II+ 4. Res. Part | 1. Have/ has+ 2. P. + 3. ProverbsII+ 4. Res. Part | 1. P. + 2. have/hasn't + 3. Proverbs II+ 4. Res. Part |
| Circumstances: just, already, before, not, for a long time, never, ever, lately, so far, until, recently, up till now. | |||
| Perfect Continuous | 1. P. + 2. have/has been + 3. Proverbs I+ 4. Res. Part | 1. have/has+2. P. + 3. been + 4. Proverbs I+ 5. Res. Part | 1. P. + 2. have/hasn't been+ 3. Proverbs I+ 4. Res. Part |
| Circumstances: since, for, already, before AndT.P. | |||
Present tense, present, n.v. (lat. praesens) grammeme of the grammatical category of time, means that the unfolding of the situation includes the moment of speech. Wed. rus. girl sings, lat. puella cantat action at the moment of utterance; rus. victory... ... Wikipedia
present time- ▲ time existing present time time of existing relationships. the present existing in real reality, always or which has not yet ended, still continues at the given [described] moment; expressed by an imperfective verb... Ideographic Dictionary of the Russian Language
- (from Latin praesens - modern) in psychology, a period of time that is experienced as an immediate reality; Typically this time lasts only a few seconds. Philosophical encyclopedic Dictionary. 2010 … Philosophical Encyclopedia
REAL, ah, her. Dictionary Ozhegova. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary
Noun, number of synonyms: 1 today (24) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary
The tense form of a verb denoting an action that coincides with the moment of speech. This general meaning is complicated by a number of others. The present tense means; a) an action or state occurring or occurring at the moment of speech. The weather is charming... Dictionary of linguistic terms
The query "Present Tense" redirects here. For the grammeme of the grammatical category of tense, see Present tense (linguistics). The present is part of the time line, consisting of events that are happening at the present moment, that is, a certain ... ... Wikipedia
Present tense- (present, lat. praesens) form of a finite verb, indicating in direct use that the situation referred to in the sentence is either simultaneous with the moment of speech (“Shh! The child is sleeping”), or is repeated over a period of time… … Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary
See presente... Five-language dictionary of linguistic terms
Present tense- a period of time that is experienced as an immediate reality; something that lasts a few seconds... The beginnings of modern natural science
present time- linguistic A category of verb indicating the occurrence of an action in time coinciding with the moment of speaking... Dictionary of many expressions
Books
- Russian magazine literature at the present time, I.M.. St. Petersburg, 1898. Leshtukovskaya steam printing press of P. O. Yablonsky. Typographic cover. The condition is good. Readers are invited to the brochure “Russian Magazine…
- History of materialism and criticism of its significance at the present time. Volume II. History of materialism after Kant, Lange A.. St. Petersburg, 1883. Published by L. F. Panteleev. Owner's binding. The condition is good. Readers are invited to the historical and philosophical work of the famous German philosopher F.A....
Who is Prigozhin?
Evgeny Prigozhin is a businessman from St. Petersburg, a restaurateur and owner of a catering business, who became known as “Putin’s chef”, as his company organized catering at official receptions at the highest level.
Since 2016, Prigozhin has been included in the US sanctions list. According to US prosecutor Robert Mueller, he was directly involved in financing a “troll factory” that the United States considers involved in interfering in the presidential election.
Prigozhin is also associated with the so-called Wagner PMC, a commercial paramilitary structure whose fighters, according to media reports, participated in the conflicts in Donbass and Syria. Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev and Kirill Radchenko, who died in the CAR on July 31, 2018, were filming a film about the Wagner PMC in Africa.
EARTH, WATER AND SKY EVGENIY PRIGOGINE
How a light helicopter accident leads to a businessman's entire fleet of aircraft and a new yacht; what the pilot who carried him says about Prigozhin; who does “Putin’s cook” trust with the plane and yachts; how the company that owns the equipment is connected to Central Africa. Joint investigation of the Present Time and the Municipal Scanner.
Catering helicopters
In St. Petersburg, near the famous Gazprom tower, the low-rise Lakhta Park block is located. Among the forest, on an area of 17 hectares, there are 490 apartments, cottages and houses no higher than five floors. Lakhta Park was built on land leased from the mayor's office of St. Petersburg. It is located near Olgino: an area world famous for its “troll factory” - according to the American intelligence services, it belongs to Prigozhin, and its employees were able to influence the course of the American elections with their posts on social networks.
The “factory” moved, but entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigozhin remained. He even sued Smolny for this land. In 2011, the site was leased by Concord Management and Consulting LLC, then the owner of the company was Prigozhin’s 72-year-old mother, Violetta. It was explained to officials that a medical and rehabilitation center with a wellness park would be built here. When a residential neighborhood appeared in Lakhta, they tried to take away the land, but Prigozhin’s wife’s company, New SPA Technologies, defended the right to land plots for already built houses and cottages in arbitration.
Prigozhin's wife Lyubov Valentinovna is a co-owner of many companies within the sphere of interests of her husband. She ended up being a residential developer.
Next to Lakhta Park there is another residential complex - Northern Versailles. Its developer was the company Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which since 2017 has been rewritten as Prigozhin. The entrepreneur personally owns one of the 49 unique mansions, and three more belong to his wife and daughter.
Between Lakhta Park and Versailles there was a place for a helipad. From there, a small Robinson R44 helicopter regularly takes off - the personal air taxi of Prigozhin and his family.
Until 2011, Evgeny Prigozhin was the owner and co-owner of the Beta and Gamma companies; later they belonged to his wife Lyubov. In 2017, Beta and Gamma established the Northern Versailles Homeowners Association, and in 2016 Lyubov Prigozhina began to own the Lakhta Park Premium company. The owner of Prigozhin’s parent company, Concord Management and Consulting, was his mother, Violetta Prigozhina, until February 2017, after which Evgeny Prigozhin began to own the company personally.
According to Rosreestr, the land plot on which the helipad is located has been leased from the Concord Management and Consulting company since 2009. She appeared in a video by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which made a virtual tour of Prigozhin’s properties.
In May 2016, a Robinson R-44 helicopter (tail number RA-06364) crashed on the territory of the Yuntolovsky reserve, two kilometers from the Lakhta landing site. Both pilots were not injured. From the IAC report it became known that the helicopter belonged to the Mercury company, which organizes catering for the Ministry of Defense in the Far East.
Photo of the Robinson R-44 helicopter, tail number RA-06364, after the crash. Photo: IAC report
About a year later, the State Aviation Supervision Department conducted an inspection at the helipad in Lakhta Park, but now another company was involved - Obshchepit. (the location of the inspection is indicated in the report, which is posted in the open database of the Prosecutor General’s Office). Identified violations: the pilot did not inform passengers about fire extinguishing equipment, did not report the location and magnetic take-off course.
An ordinary guy
The work of the Robinson helicopter was to transport Prigozhin or his wife short distances within St. Petersburg and the surrounding area, one of the former pilots of this machine told NV on condition of anonymity. For example, the entrepreneur usually flew to the airport and “to places where it is impossible to reach by car.” The pilot practically did not communicate with the employees of the Public Food company; he was not even registered for work.
“I came from the back gate, received keys and a work phone from the security guard - and sit and wait. If fuel was needed, the phone had a pre-recorded number through which barrels of gasoline could be ordered. I ran it myself. Before departure, all necessary pre-flight approvals were carried out using the same phone number; after the change, the phone and keys were returned to the security guard. Money for work was transferred through a security guard at the entrance to the territory, the pilot said. “In fact, I didn’t see anyone except the first person.”
The pilot found out who was the “first person” later after watching a video on YouTube about the journalists killed in the Central African Republic. “There are much scarier characters. An ordinary guy,” the pilot described his passenger.
A specialist involved in business aviation, in a conversation with NV, noted that the Robinson R-44 belongs to the class of light helicopters; these can even be registered to a private individual. The expert was surprised that such an influential person as Prigozhin uses this particular model.
“This is a very simple budget machine, any average businessman can afford it, people of this caliber usually fly Eurocopter. It’s strange that Prigozhin chose the Robinson R-44,” said NV’s interlocutor.
The pilot who worked for Obshchepit was also not happy with this car. “People who get into a helicopter, especially a piece of junk like Robinson, change. On earth they can be anything, but inside they become smooth and pretty. They behave as expected, they don’t ask questions,” he said.
Good soul man
The owner of Obschepit is Pavel Arnold, a resident of St. Petersburg. Arnold wrote on his social networks that he graduated in 2003 Military Academy logistics named after A.V. Khrulev. Since June 2013, the Public Food company has received 18 government contracts totaling 233 million rubles for catering. The customer is JSC Voentorg.
Arnold confirmed to NV that he is indeed the director of Obshchepit. When asked why his company needed a helicopter, he wrote that one of the company’s activities is “buying and selling various equipment and renting it out.” The manager refused to answer other questions.
Evgeny Prigozhin and Pavel Arnold are connected not only by a ready-to-eat food business and a shared helicopter. Arnold in 2014 became the founder of the company Litera CJSC, which since March 2017 began to own the Business Project LLC company. Before this, Business Project belonged directly to the Prigozhin family.
Business Project owned a small Cessna 182T aircraft with tail number RA-67717. Then it became the property of the M-Finance company, and Lobaye Invest, a company registered in the Central African Republic, became the operator of the aircraft, according to documents received by the Dossier center. (NV talks more about this Cessna in the fourth chapter).
In 2016, Business Project purchased a 31-meter yacht Stormbringer. The charterer with the right to purchase the yacht was the Seychelles company Beratex Group. This is known from the documents of the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg: Business Project was fined 126 million rubles for violating currency laws, the company successfully appealed this decision.
Another yacht of the Beratex Group company is the 37-meter St. Vitamin, which was used by the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin - previously found Alexey Navalny. A resident of Gelendzhik managed to catch both yachts in one shot.
Yachts Stormbringer (left) and St. Vitamin (right) in the Gelendzhik Bay. Photo: coast.ru forum
The Beratex Group offshore is connected not only with the Prigozhins’ maritime vessels, but also with aircraft. In the European Commission regulation on the list of operators aircraft Beratex Group is listed as Russian company. According to public information, the offshore company owns a small twin-engine aircraft Hawker 800 with tail number M-VITO. Polina Prigozhina, Evgeniy’s daughter, published photographs of this plane and a photo of the interior on her Instagram. "Dad kind soul man,” one of her subscribers responded.
During one of the flights to Europe, the plane required urgent repairs: it was necessary to “change the window,” the technicians who performed this work told NV. To avoid being denied service due to Prigozhin being under US sanctions, the jet requested an emergency landing. The repairs were paid for by the Seychelles offshore Beratex. An employee of the Lithuanian company that repaired the plane, on condition of anonymity, told NV that the organizer of the flight was the charter broker Unijet. (company that services private aviation), registered in Moscow.
An employee of Unijet, when asked whether Prigozhin flies on this plane, replied that “this is not entirely correct information,” but refused further comments, citing commercial secrets. The company did not respond to a written request.
The Hawker 800 M-VITO business jet has a rich and quite original flight history. Most often the plane flies between St. Petersburg and Moscow. But there are other, more exotic destinations: over the past two years, M-VITO has landed and taken off 48 times in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Then it went to Syria and towards African countries, in the airspace of which public air trackers cannot obtain the information necessary to track the aircraft.
According to Novaya Gazeta, in Africa M-VITO landed in Libya, Democratic Republic Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. It is known that in December 2018 M-VITO landed in Khartoum (capital of Sudan), Nairobi (Kenya), N'Djamena (Chad).
In Madagascar, a business jet appeared in the midst of a presidential election campaign, in which Russia took an active part. Prigozhin’s structures sent political strategists there, and the FAN agency associated with the entrepreneur sent its employees, who published materials about American interference in the elections in favor of one of the candidates. As a result, the politician, who was supported by the FAN agency in his articles, won.
NV has no confirmation that all flights of the M-VITO business jet are related to the business trips of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Dogs of war cutlets
How the monopoly business of servicing the Russian army emerged and grew stronger; how the businessman’s structures acquired enough money to build a bridge to Crimea; why connections between companies of Prigozhin’s empire are obvious to inspection authorities, but are ignored; Why create so many companies at all? Joint investigation of the Present Time and the Municipal Scanner.
Serdyukov's legacy
In the Soviet and later Russian army, a conscript soldier did everything: cooked, cleaned, built - served as free labor, including in the personal interests of commanders. There was not much time and energy left for combat training. In 2007, the Russian Armed Forces were headed by Anatoly Serdyukov - not a security officer, but an official. He was contemptuously called a “furniture maker”: Serdyukov began his managerial career in a furniture store.
Since January 2008, the conscription period has been reduced from two years to one, and in August the war with Georgia began. The command was dissatisfied with its results, and a large-scale reform of the army began.
The transformations concerned not only technical equipment troops, reorganization of units and rearmament. All household work that conscripts had previously done was to be taken over by civil organizations. This is how a market niche appeared, in which Prigozhin’s empire occupied a significant share.
Endless network
According to our calculations, since 2011, companies from the empire of Yevgeny Prigozhin have concluded at least 5,393 government contracts totaling 209.23 billion rubles.
The count was carried out on companies whose affiliation with Prigozhin’s empire was confirmed by investigations by the BBC, RBC, FBK, Fontanka and Present Time: “Moscow Schoolboy”, “Ecobalt”, “Shkolnik-YuZ”, “Spetsresurs”, “SPb-Culinary”, “ Social catering “Center”, “RestaurantService Plus”, “ProdFoodService”, “Pishchevik”, “Mercury”, “Component”, ASP, TKS, “Teplosnab”, “Eurogroup”, “Teplosintez”, “ProfTechUslugi”, “Prometheus” ", "Publishing", "NordEnergo", "Msk", "Moscow Cooking", "Concord Plus", "Concord Management and Consulting", "Concord M", "KDP-Catering", AVK, "MedStroy", "Kombinat" preschool nutrition" and "Vito-1".
It is worth understanding that 209 billion government contracts is not the final amount. Prigozhin does not recognize many of the companies we found as his own; formally they belong to his employees and other nominal owners. But most of all, the concealment of the volume of government contracts was influenced by the decision of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who in 2017 allowed Voentorg and other subsidiaries of the Ministry of Defense to classify information about government procurement. It is also known that many companies had not previously received public government contracts from the Ministry of Defense, but still provided services to military units.
Here's how it works in the example of Pavel Arnold, director of the Obshchepit company, whose connection with Prigozhin is described in the first chapter.
Arnold, together with a certain Alla Petrova, founded the Litera company. Petrova, in turn, owns MTC LLC. The MTC company did not receive government contracts, but it is known that in 2013 it provided services to military unit 63559 (Domna village, Chita region).
According to the documents, the director of MTC is Elena Mozhar, who, together with Elena Bukhantseva, opened MTC CJSC in 2014. Simultaneously with Obshchepit LLC, Pavel Arnold opened Obshchepit CJSC, which existed under this name until 2018. The relationship between these and other legal entities is beyond doubt.
The same Elena Bukhantseva, who was at the origins of MTC, has been the owner of Pishchevik LLC since 2010. This company has government contracts with the Ministry of Defense for food similar to what Arnold’s Public Food supplies the Russian army.
In 2016, the labor inspectorate in the Vladimir region revealed a violation at the Pishchevik company - failure to report an accident. “Pishchevik” was fined 115 thousand rubles. Deputy regional manager Pavel Samokhvalov was found to be the violator. Until May 2017, he was the director and nominal owner of ASP LLC - the company has 12 more government contracts worth 2.6 billion rubles with Voentorg and other subsidiaries of the Ministry of Defense.
The companies “MTC”, “Pishchevik”, “Obschepit”, “Mercury” and “ASP” are listed on the Voentorg website as “catering partners”.
Let's return to the landing site from the first chapter, on which the helicopter of Arnold's catering company is based. During the inspection by the labor inspectorate of Obshchepita, his interests were represented by Irina Medved. She also represented the Mercury company by proxy in January and February 2017 during inspections by the state labor inspector.
A common lawyer for several business structures may be a coincidence, but more often it indicates the affiliation of companies, and fiscal authorities should pay attention to such connections, Sergei Chernykh, professor at the St. Petersburg Financial University, explained to NV.
Another similar connection
In 2017, the Moscow Arbitration Court considered the claim of the Ministry of Defense against its subsidiary company. The military department accused Voentorg of violating the terms of the contract. Third parties involved in the process were the companies Pishchevik, Collective-Service, Obshchepit, MTC and Mercury. All these companies were represented in court by proxy by one person - a certain Shkodkina K.V. NV was unable to establish the name of the lawyer.
Another similar connection
The name of the Mercury company was already mentioned above - it was the company that owned the Robinson helicopter, which crashed near the Lakhta helipad in 2016. Olga Kholodovich has been registered as the owner of Mercury since 2013. Mercury is looking for dishwashers, loaders, cooks, and kitchen workers in the labor market in the regions of the Far East. In many advertisements, Yana Nikitina is indicated as the contact person for Mercury. Since November 2017, she has been the director and nominal owner of Service K LLC, another company associated with Prigozhin.
Personnel decides everything
How Obschepit fed soldiers and officers can be assessed from the claims filed by Voentorg with the Moscow Arbitration Court in 2015. The reason was a random check carried out in different military units under contract No. OP-13-8.
NV found that, according to the Kontur Focus service, the companies Concord M, Pishchevik, AVK and the liquidated Moscow Creative Agency had the same contact phone number.
Separately, among the companies of the Prigozhin empire that received government contracts, the Megaline company stands out. Until September 2013, Megaline, through Lakhta LLC, belonged personally to Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mother Violetta. In December 2015, 50% of Megaline was transferred to the ownership of the Business Project company, already known to us, which owns a yacht and an airplane.
Megaline received government contracts from the Ministry of Defense for the maintenance of its real estate, for example, the Patriot Park, which is famous for the model of the Reichstag, as well as for the design of a military unit in Korenovsk, Krasnodar Territory.
The Megaline company was part of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s cartel when concluding government contracts with the Ministry of Defense. The scheme was discovered by the Anti-Corruption Foundation and partially recognized by the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The essence of the conspiracy is that Prigozhin’s structures agreed to jointly participate in tenders of the Ministry of Defense and were able to achieve a minimal reduction in the initial prices of government contracts, according to FBK. According to politician Alexei Navalny, the companies received 23.5 billion rubles, of which 8 billion were stolen. The court recognized only part of the contracts worth one and a half billion rubles as a cartel conspiracy and issued a fine.
This was in 2017. A year later, the Megaline company began building a chapel in memory of those killed in Syria Russian volunteers near the Molkino training ground in Krasnodar region, where the training base for Russian mercenaries is located. Pavel Arnold did not answer questions about the cost and motives for building the chapel and asked not to bother him anymore.
The chapel that Megaline was building and the land underneath it became the property of the League for the Defense of the Interests of Veterans of Local Wars and Military Conflicts in December 2018, the BBC found out. The Chairman of the Board of the “League” is Andrei Troshev, Hero of Russia, participant in the operation in Syria, one of the commanders of a private military company created by Dmitry Utkin with the call sign “Wagner”. Both mercenaries were awarded state awards. The founder of the League is Oleg Erokhin, director of the Euro Policy company.
Dmitry Utkin, known as Wagner, at a reception in the Kremlin (in the left corner of the frame)
At the beginning of 2018, Europolis entered into binding agreements to operate in Syria. In 2016, Europolis signed a memorandum at a meeting between the Syrian Minister of Oil and the Russian Minister of Energy. According to Fontanka, the company lays claim to a quarter of all oil and gas produced in Syria in territories won for the government of Bashar al-Assad. “Euro Policy” promised to liberate the fields and oil refining infrastructure of Syria from IS militants (banned on the territory of the Russian Federation) and the armed opposition, and then to protect them.
In February 2018, about 300 fighters from a private military company were injured and about 80 were killed as a result of US airstrikes during an attempt to seize an oil refinery in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor. Since January 26, 2018, the Europolis company has been under US sanctions.
The owner of Europolis is JSC Neva, which was founded by Valery Chekalov in 2014. From 2016 to 2018, Valery Chekalov owned the Collective-Service company. It follows from the court decision that this structure had contracts with Voentorg and other “subsidiaries” of the Ministry of Defense for food supplies.
Why so many difficulties?
Examples of chains of connections between Prigozhin’s companies turn out to be very important for understanding the structure of the business, which cannot be captured by any targeted checks and investigations. It’s difficult to keep a big picture in your head - and who would be interested in understanding the dozens of LLCs that receive government contracts.
NV asked experts to explain why a business might need such a complex and confusing ownership structure and why inspection authorities do not pay attention to the obvious affiliation of companies.
The interlocutors spoke on the condition that the editors did not name the final beneficiary of the chain, but one of the experts quickly guessed who we're talking about, and agreed to be quoted only on condition of anonymity. “Given the toxicity of the gentleman in question, I agree to be a business source,” he said.
“It's a classic. Two or three structures enter the competition, all of them are yours, and you win contracts with a minimum step. You are creating a holding company that is supposedly unrelated to each other, although sometimes even companies that are connected by address, director, and email come in for purchases. That is, it is verifiable, it has actually happened a thousand times and will happen a thousand more times. You can go to jail for this,” says the expert, who wished to remain anonymous.
Professor of the St. Petersburg Financial University Sergei Chernykh lists the signs of affiliation of companies: “When there are the same people who are either employees or participate in some other aspects in the business of other companies, plus one person who outsources or protects them , or serves. These are signs of maliciousness in the financial chains with these companies.”
According to the professor, businessmen usually avoid risks associated with affiliation, since “fiscal officials monitor this very clearly.”
“They just work brazenly and expect that they will be covered,” the expert concludes.
When asked about the cost of maintaining such a structure, both interlocutors said that an extensive network, on the contrary, allows you to save money and “provides room for maneuver,” and that servicing such companies is handled by “one team of management accountants.”
NV sent 12 questions regarding the relationship between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Concord Management and Consulting company and the companies mentioned in the investigation. The organization’s press service stated that it is not obliged to answer questions from the Present Time, and Yevgeny Prigozhin called the co-author of the article Timur Olevsky “a petty, dirty bastard” (original spelling). Questions and reactions to them posted in public VKontakte.
Less than a year has passed since Poland fell out with Israel over a controversial law denying Polish participation in the Holocaust, and the issue of anti-Semitism has again become a source of political discord between the two countries. Conservatives from the Law and Justice party who came to power in Poland do not like being reminded of dark moments national history. So much so that they even threatened with criminal prosecution anyone who called Nazi concentration camps “Polish death camps” or spoke about the participation of Poles in pogroms or the Holocaust. This time the scandal was even louder. Israel was going to host the summit of the Visegrad Four (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary), but the meeting at top level had to be canceled, reduced to a series bilateral meetings. Israeli and Polish media tried their best to understand the protracted dispute.
The secret of military correspondence. The Russian State Duma adopted in the third and final reading a law banning military personnel from now on from using smartphones and social networks. You cannot film the everyday life of the service on mobile phones, write about it on the Internet and share sore points with journalists. This does not mean that hazing in the Russian army will stop, it’s just that from now on it’s not allowed to publicly report it. The real reasons why the law was passed are known. It was social networks that showed the whole world that the Russian military is “absent” in the Donbass and Syria in fact “there”. It was thanks to open sources on the Internet that it was possible to find and show who exactly was behind the death of the civilian Malaysian Boeing MH-17, or who tried to poison the Skripals in the British city of Salisbury. We decided to recall the most striking episodes of independent investigations into “military operations” that, thanks to social networks, could not be hidden.
Social media have long become the place fast way dissemination of news. Dozens of journalists follow the accounts of leading politicians on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Media workers themselves also actively use these communication tools. And even if a politician or journalist publishes his personal opinion, it still quickly becomes news. This, for example, happened a few days ago. Russian media made loud accusations against the West and foreign mainstream media. We are talking about the Syrian city of Duma, where in April last year Assad’s troops used chemical weapon. Many Western media and Western military sources then announced Damascus’s involvement in the incident. And the very fact of the attack, probably with the use of chlorine, was confirmed by international doctors who visited the site. Now one of the BBC producers has tweeted that the video footage of assistance to victims after the attack is fake. He does not deny the fact of the attack, but for the Russian federal media this is not important. They turned the producer’s tweet into “evidence” that the attack was staged, which they announced from the very beginning. In their opinion, the provocation was staged by the opposition White Helmets. How convincing the arguments turned out to be is up to you to judge.
The Kremlin-funded TV channel RT (Russia Today) actively covered the topic of staging a chemical attack in the Duma for a foreign audience, and it is in trouble again. A page from one of the RT – In projects the now– blocked on Facebook. The management of RT claims that this happened after a story shown by CNN, in which American journalists asked the management of the social network whether they were tracking those pages of publications funded by foreign states. After this, the In the now project was blocked. The social network said it would request information about the owner of the project. Let me remind you that the RT channel itself in the United States was required by the authorities to register as a “foreign agent”; such a law does not apply to pages on social networks; Facebook’s management itself did not previously require this from others.
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On February 23, 1944, the deportation of Chechens and Ingush from the North Caucasus to Kazakhstan began. “Current Time” publishes memories of residents of Ingushetia about forced eviction, death of loved ones, life in exile and return to their homeland.
“In the morning, my mother didn’t have time to fry eggs or serve us churek; we didn’t have breakfast. Two soldiers came and said that they were taking us away.
Large vehicles covered with tarpaulin began to appear. Later I found out that these were Studebakers. We were put on these cars and taken to the railway station. They loaded it and immediately closed the cars. I wanted to go, it was interesting to get into a car. I also wanted to take the train. But I knew it was a tragedy. Because there are tears all around, screams all around.
There was a stove in the carriage. There was no toilet, there was very little space. Not only was it difficult to lie down, it was difficult to stand. The potbelly stove burned all day and all night, but it was small for such a huge carriage. Cold. During stops, they brought one bucket of millet porridge. Adults did not eat this porridge; they gave it to children. It was impossible to be late. If the train starts moving and you stay behind and can’t get on, you could get shot. I saw one such case. He fell behind the train. He ran. He would not have caught up with the train... And he was shot.
The older sister always cried, she even had a song about her father: “May you burn, Stalin... Blue dove, you live a thousand years. When the Cheka workers fall asleep, take my father out of prison...” These are the words. My sister sang this song and played the harmonica,” recalls Yakub Medov, who was 6 years old at the time of deportation.
Stories of deported Ingush
How necessary is Russia's law against thieves in law, as proposed by Vladimir Putin, and in whose interests is it actually being adopted? The Current Time TV channel asked Andrey Konstantinov, author of the “Gangster Petersburg” series, general editor of the multidisciplinary Russian media group Agency for Investigative Journalism, about this.
“The law makes it possible to bring to justice not only thieves in law, but also other persons who organize criminal communities. And this could be anyone: people in power, people in uniform. Any law is first and foremost a tool. Its effectiveness will depend on in whose hands it is used. Sharapov also told Zheglov: “If so, then this is no longer a law, but a brush.”
“It will be quite difficult to completely eradicate the criminal environment with its hierarchy. It doesn’t seem to me that the state sets itself such a task. In this case, the state has a desire to acquire tools that will make this world more manageable. It’s still quite easy to put businessmen in prison today,” says the author of the “Gangster Petersburg” series. – But there are two problems that may be quite acute on the eve of the “Problem 2020” and the “Problem 2024”. This is the behavior of regional elites, which is not as controllable as the Kremlin and Moscow would like. And the somewhat hysterical behavior of the “new elite”, which has not yet had time to enjoy all the new benefits that their current state allows them to enjoy.”
About the world of thieves in law in Russia
“They pressed my hands to the wall and told me to put my feet shoulder-width apart. So I understood, in fact: the terrible things that began to happen in Russia began to happen to me,” Maxim Khalturin, a follower of Jehovah’s Witnesses, told Present Time. Before house arrest, a follower of Jehovah's Witnesses Spent 3.5 months in a pre-trial detention center. He is accused of creating and continuing the activities of a banned extremist religious organization. In October 2018, Maxim was raided and his equipment and religious literature were seized.
Maxim’s parents, who live with him, were present during the search. Pensioners need care: their mother can’t walk well, their father suffered a stroke. “We were woken up. I stood up and looked, the corridor was full of people. All in black. Maxim is facing the wall,” recalls the mother of the accused, Galina Khalturina.
Another accused, Vladimir Korobeinikov, was transferred to house arrest. Now he lives on the funds of his wife and daughter, who receive a disability pension. My wife has group I. She doesn't get out of bed. Vladimir is the only one in the family who could physically go outside to buy medicine and food.
Stories of Arrested Jehovah's Witnesses (the organization is prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation)
30 years after the war. On February 15, 1989, the last column of Soviet equipment crossed the border Friendship Bridge on the Amu Darya River. Soldiers and officers of a limited contingent of troops left Afghanistan, leaving behind a country that was torn apart by Mujahideen groups. Najibullah's friendly puppet regime in Kabul was doomed. During the 10 years of the Afghan war, the USSR lost 15 thousand military personnel killed and almost 54 thousand wounded. The leadership of the Soviet Union in the late 80s found the strength to admit they were wrong Afghan war, which was recorded in the resolution of the Congress of People's Deputies. Thirty years later, some deputies, only this time Russian, want to correct what they believe is a historical injustice - to justify the start of the Afghan war, habitually blaming the West for everything. How memorable date presented to the viewer on Russian federal television channels - the first material of our release.
The problem of the post-Soviet legacy is especially evident in the Baltic countries. After the collapse of the Union local authorities were so busy organizing their national media space that they often ignored requests to inform the large Russian-speaking diaspora. Without state support many publications in Russian had to close or barely make ends meet. The resulting vacuum gradually began to be filled by other resources; they had no problems with Kremlin funding. At the beginning of February, a three-month ban on the retransmission of the Rossiya TV channel was introduced in Latvia; it was removed from all cable networks. The NTV-Baltic World channel is also under threat of ban. The Latvian authorities said that in this way they are fighting Russian propaganda and inciting ethnic hatred. At the same time, in Latvia there is now a question about the possible closure of two local Russian-language information resources at once - Latvian Radio 4 and the editorial office of the public Internet portal LSM - there is no money. Report from Riga.
National media, like the coat of arms, flag and stamp, are symbols of statehood. And it doesn’t matter that the state itself is officially considered the smallest in the world, only a thousand people live in it and it only occupies a quarter of another large city. This week marked the 90th anniversary of the Vatican City State. On February 11, 1929, Pope Pius 11 concluded an agreement with Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini on the sovereign status of this dwarf territory inside Rome. The pontiff immediately took on state media. The Vatican already had its own newspaper, but something new and progressive was needed. Pius 11 turned to the father of broadcasting, Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi. Two years later, Vatican Radio went on air. The Vatican media even now, despite all the clumsiness and archaic nature of the church bureaucracy, is trying to keep up with technical innovations. The voice and eyes of the Pope are also the media of the Holy See.
Intrusive journalists and especially photographers, paparazzi are an Italian invention. There is no consensus on where exactly the term “paparazzi” itself came from, either it was invented by the famous director Federico Fellini, or the click of the shutter is so reminiscent of the sound of a closing shell of sea mollusks - “paparazzi di mare”. You can guess or argue as much as you like, but everyone will agree that nosy photographers have already ruined the lives of many and continue to do so today. In the modern world, we ourselves sometimes play the role of paparazzi - we take pictures that can later compromise us. This happened to the richest man on the planet, owner of the largest online retailer Amazon, Jeff Bezos. He sent frivolous photos to his mistress, they were intercepted, and now the businessman is accusing the National Enquirer of blackmail. The next article is about a family and media scandal with a flavor of international politics.
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In April 1980, the administrator of a department store in the city of Khust, Transcarpathian region, G. Mikk, brought a leaflet to the district KGB department that someone had left in the fitting room. "People! If you value the lives of your sons, husbands, and in general the lives of our soldiers, do not allow them to be sent to their deaths in Afghanistan. Their lives depend on us - the civilian population. Rise up to fight against the authorities. Reprint leaflets. We do not want to die for someone else's land. We will fight! " - called the unknown (hereinafter the spelling is preserved - NV).
On the thirtieth anniversary of the withdrawal Soviet troops from Afghanistan Present Time publishes declassified documents of the Ukrainian KGB, on the basis of which one can judge how the war affected life Soviet people. The intelligence service struggled with rumors of mass casualties, prepared to disrupt anti-war rallies and reported on a soldier being “buried alive.”
The State Security Committee was obliged to report to the party leadership about what people were saying about important events in the country and the world. The first messages from security officers about the reaction to the events in Afghanistan were sent to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party at the end of December 1979 - a few days after the start of the war.
In April 1980, B. Panasyuk from the village of Ukrainka, Rivne region, brought to the KGB department a notebook sheet with “a poem of an ideologically harmful nature,” found in the possession of a 14-year-old local schoolboy, G. Shevtsov. The document states that the work entitled “Son” is dedicated to to a young guy from the same village named Victor Klimek, who died in Afghanistan in February. The security officers described the content of the poem as follows: “... the expediency of the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan is called into question.”
What other stories are hidden in the Ukrainian KGB archive?
Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, expelled from the USSR, meets his wife and sons in Zurich Exactly 45 years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was detained in an apartment on Gorky Street (now the street is called Tverskaya, and the apartment houses the writer’s museum). They brought him to the Lefortovo detention center and announced: you are accused under Article 64 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of treason and have been deprived of Soviet citizenship by a special decree of the Presidium Supreme Council THE USSR. Even those closest to him did not know what fate awaited him, and then it turned out that he was already in Germany, where he was deported the very next morning. Dissident Arina Ginzburg witnessed the events in the apartment on Tverskaya. She told Present Time what was happening there, how they hid the manuscripts and helped take the children away. Five years later, Solzhenitsyn’s fate was repeated by Arina Sergeevna’s husband, Alexander Ginzburg. “About eleven, the guests left, I began ironing the children’s shirts. On desk there was a receiver. I’m listening to Voice of America, and suddenly: “We are interrupting our program for an emergency message.” So Arina Ginzburg learned on April 27, 1979 that her husband had been deported to the United States. How the KGB and the Foreign Ministry developed operations to expel dissidents from the USSR 
Alexander Ginzburg and Vladimir Bukovsky in the USA in May 1979. Archive of the International Memorial
Twenty years ago the main police building burned down Samara region. 57 people died in the fire. The official version was recognized as the unextinguished cigarette butt that caused the fire trash bin. Many conspiracy theories immediately arose around the tragedy: people did not believe that the burned archive with documents, the absence of superiors at work and the long fire extinguishing were random coincidences, and not the well-coordinated work of attackers.
Firefighters were unable to approach the building for a long time; there were not enough stairs and water pressure. People, without waiting for help, jumped from the windows.
After the tragedy in Samara, citizens who did not believe the official version joked about the fact that in the ruins of the building, investigators found a fragment of a cigarette butt that started the fire. Other versions were discussed in the press and on television: not only employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs died in the fire, archives of criminal cases, including those related to AvtoVAZ, were destroyed.
What versions do rescuers and victims believe?
The Doomsday Clock shows two minutes to midnight. Throughout recent history of this project Chicago atomic scientists this is the closest, and therefore the most dangerous situation arrow to the mark of the beginning of the world nuclear catastrophe. This already happened once, in ’53, when the USA and Soviet Union tested thermonuclear weapons. Since then, the indicator has fallen and risen depending on the global situation. A little over 30 years ago, in 1988, the authors of the project had reason for optimism. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev at the end of 1987, came into force. The clock hands were advanced by three minutes, the “arms race” ended, and “detente of international tension” began. But history, as we know, is cyclical, and forgotten times return. The INF Treaty has effectively been terminated; Washington officially announced its withdrawal on February 1; the next day, Moscow announced that it was not going to continue negotiations on this issue. This means one thing - the parties are no longer legally bound. The US and Russian media announce the beginning of a new stage of the “arms race”.
“It’s good where you are not,” the Ukrainian authorities reasoned and intend to officially ban the presence of Russian observers at the upcoming presidential elections. The head of the Ukrainian state, who is running for a new term, Petro Poroshenko intends to give the corresponding order to the border service. Moreover, they do not want to see Russians in Kyiv among delegations from international organizations, for example, from the OSCE. The “aggressor country,” as the Ukrainian authorities call Russia, has no right to be present and interfere in the elections. They plan to issue a ban on legislative level. This, however, does not prevent the Russian federal media from biasedly telling viewers about the presidential candidates of Ukraine two months before the vote, almost on a daily basis. The general tone is edifying, the characteristics and epithets addressed to the candidates vary: from rude ones about the “chocolate king” Poroshenko, sarcastic ones about the “gas princess” Tymoshenko and mocking ones about the “clown” Zelensky. If you watch the broadcasts of pro-government Russian channels, the Ukrainian elections cannot be taken seriously at all; in their opinion, this is such a political circus, a farce.
Mobilization of the opposition in conditions of censorship and state control over the media, as events have shown recent years, is forced to be carried out on social networks. This was the case during the Arab Spring, and this was the case in Ukraine. The most popular social network in the world, Facebook, often became such a place of communication. This week she turned 15 years old; the service was launched on February 4, 2004. How the social network has changed over the years, how the world has changed along with it, how we have changed too. Social networks in general and Facebook in particular have changed our habits, our daily routine and the way we communicate with each other. The social network helps us receive large amounts of information faster. Its algorithm often selects exactly those topics and opinions that it believes we share, changing reality into a picture that is familiar and pleasant to us. This also applies to news. They have become shorter and faster, but it is not always possible to verify their authenticity.
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