Russian billionaires tend to prefer the minimalist school of public relations, sticking to “no comment” and leaving the hard work to their libel lawyers.
So when Alisher Usmanov, whose $14 billion fortune makes him Russia’s sixth-richest man and includes a stake in Britain’s Arsenal Football Club, suddenly took to YouTube with home-made video broadsides against opposition leader Alexei Navalny earlier this month, Russian social media lit up. The clips drew millions of viewers. A government official even chimed in.
In the process, Usmanov broke a Kremlin taboo against engaging directly in public with the government’s most prominent critic. Blacklisted by state media, Navalny is demonstratively ignored by top officials. President Vladimir Putin seems to go out of his way to avoid even mentioning his name. (The Kremlin, without using his name, denies that.)
But Usmanov, 63, personally responded to a widely watched online video that Navalny released in March accusing him of donating $90 million in real estate to a fund benefiting Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Both deny Navalny’s charges.
‘I Spit on You’
“I spit on you Alexei Navalny,” the billionaire said in the first video, released May 18. Wearing a grey polo shirt and speaking directly into the camera -- which it later emerged was a staffer’s iPhone -- Usmanov expounded for 12 minutes about what he called the activist’s lies. He mostly referred to Navalny, 40, with the informal pronoun “ty,” which in Russian is usually a sign of disrespect unless used among friends or with a child.
He said he’d spent six years in a Soviet prison in the early 1980s, calling those later-expunged fraud and bribery convictions fabricated, while Navalny has served much shorter terms and is still on a suspended sentence. He dismissed as slander Navalny’s suggestions he’d been convicted of rape. “Of the two of us, you’re the criminal,” Usmanov said. The cases against Navalny are widely viewed as politically motivated.
“I sense the horrible envy of a loser,” Usmanov said, calling Navalny a failed businessman. “I live in happiness, unlike you.”
Navalny, who has relied on Internet videos for years as a key way to get his message out given the lack of access to national media, picked up the fight. Ironically sticking to the respectful form of address, he reposted Usmanov’s video on his own channel, saying it otherwise wouldn’t be fair because he has so many more followers.
On Yacht