Vladimir Soloviev (P) and The Russian Experience

And Now

But in 1991…..

My Russian Experience started when I met and talked with Vladimir Soloviev, now referred to as Solovyov (P) after he had given a presentation about Russia and the dramatic changes taking place under Gorbachev to the Huntsville Rotary Club. That was early in 1991.

We found that we both enjoyed tennis and so a social contact was created. He was employed at the University of Alabama lecturing on something or other but that position did not last long and soon after we met he was out of a job.

He suggested that I visit Russia and see the opportunities for myself.  That was during the summer of 1991. So we went in the August and while we were there Gorbachev was deposed and Yelsin came into power.

Back in the US Soloviev tried to find work and managed to survive by cutting grass and selling fire extinguishers. My contact with him grew closer and we discussed starting a business in Moscow.

Our first thought was a manufacturing plant making Discotheque Equipment. Russia had none and Disco is the entertainment of the masses. I asked about personnel, from technical to clerical and accounting. In every case he answered that “he knew someone who could do that”. When I suggested that we went to an agency he said:  “We are Communist country, we don’t have agency”. “Well we do now, I countered” and I set about opening the first western style employment agency in Moscow, “Meteor Personnel”.

It was a huge success. One small classified ad brought 3247 replies. The ad took 6 weeks to place, as Vladimir said “after he found the right person to bribe.”

Then we bought a turret  press in the UK and shipped it to Moscow. They had never seen anything like it and we started to manufacture nightclub lighting.

Of course Meteor was our brand and to mark the occasion I had some “T” Shirts printed – Hence Meteor in a red square in Red Square and other locations around the Kremlin.

 

And more Vladimir, this time with mother, Inna, and friend, and just mother

Inna in her kitchen. She is a good cook, told me I was a “good cooker”.

And Vladimir was a keen footballer

Vladimir wanted an American vehicle in Moscow so I bought a Chevvy Suburban, shipped it to the UK and then Vladimir and I drove it overland to Moscow in three days. In the photos you can see Vladimir getting fuel from Government guys.

 

Then our arrival in Moscow

And this was our first office.

To set up our first business we found three rooms in a lens factory just over the bridge from the Kremlin. Money in the pockets of the Directors did the trick. Vladimir proved to be a good negotiator. that’s our front door! More pictures of that complex, the street outside and the nearby Metro Station.

The empty street was typical of Moscow at that time, very few cars, as you can see in the material under The Russian Experience heading

 

During recent years Soloviev has become a TV personality with his own show and is a controversial figure as can be seen in various U-Tube excerpts.

I am told that in one of his interviews Vladimir stated that we fell out over a Russian woman. That is utterly untrue. We fell out because he engineered the taking over of my business in Russia by the creation of a fraudulent contract. I tried to sue him but in Russia I would not have stood a chance and in America they took the view that the matter had occurred in Russia and therefore US Courts had no jurisdiction. He was off with all the assests.

Today he is well-connected with many politially involved Russians including Putin, as you will observe

One interesting link is:

U-Tube (https://youtu.be/9MHqpyN6iAk)

This is all the more interesting as my office in the USA was broken into in early September  2017. Nothing was stolen from the building but many drawers were turned out, files opened etc. The picture below shows how my office was left.

At that time I was also contacted by a lady lawyer in Moscow who was doing research on Soloviev in her support of Putin’s opponents. Navalny I think.

I understand that as Putin has remained in power she has had to flee out of Russia. 

So was the break-in by Soloviev’s people to see what was in my office that might show him in a bad light or by his opponents for the same reason.

Soloviev taught me many things about the Russian Psyche.

We would all do well to remember two in particular.

Number One:

“Never trust a Russian, not even me”. And he was telling the truth.

And Number Two:

“You take (steal) whatever you can take, but you will only keep what you can defend”.

Crimea?  Maybe now the Ukraine?.

Vladimir Soloviev is now a multi-millionaire with apartments in Moscow, a massive dacha outside Moscow and two Villas on Lake Como about the conviscation of which by the EU he complained bitterly about as report in the UK press at the beginning of March 2022

Amazing from just cutting grass for a living in Huntsville Alabama! Strangely enough not mentioned in his Wikipedia all “Glory” page which can be seen at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Solovyov_(journalist)

And there is more today on the Yahoo landing page:

James Kilner
Thu, 10 March 2022, 9:42 pm

Russia 1 is usually a reliable source of propaganda, but guests on one of its most popular shows spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine – Russian Defense Ministry Press Service
Russian state television has broadcast calls for Vladimir Putin, the country’s president, to stop his war in Ukraine during a programme in which pundits openly likened the invasion to “Afghanistan, but even worse”.

Vladimir Soloviyev, usually one of the Kremlin’s most reliable chief propagandists, had to interrupt guests on his prime time television talk show to stop their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking during a broadcast on Russia 1, Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker and state pundit, said the conflict in Ukraine risked isolating Russia.
He told Mr Soloviyev: “I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look.”

He went on to call for the conflict to be brought to an end, saying: “If this picture starts to transform into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us.“This public opinion, with which they’re saturating the entire world, can play out badly for us … Ending this operation will stabilise things within the country.”

Later during the broadcast of An Evening with Vladimir Soloviyev, one of Russian television’s most-watched programmes, guest Semyon Bagdasarov, an academic, said: “Do we need to get into another Afghanistan, but even worse?”
He said that in Ukraine “there are more people and they’re more advanced in their weapon handling”, adding: “We don’t need that. Enough already.”

The reference to Afghanistan, a conflict that scarred the Soviet Union and still scars Russia, was particularly poignant. The Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, 10 years after it invaded, humiliated.

Historians have said that the Afghanistan failure and the disillusionment that millions felt after it helped pull down the Soviet Union two years later. Thousands of Soviet soldiers were killed in the war, which became deeply unpopular at home.
The invasion of Ukraine has been likened to the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan in the 1980s – AP Photo/Estate of Alexander Sekretarev

The invasion of Ukraine has been likened to the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s – AP Photo/Estate of Alexander Sekretarev
A clearly irritated Mr Soloviyev, who owns a villa in Italy that has been seized and sanctioned by the European Union, interrupted Mr Bagdasarov.
The Kremlin relies heavily on state television to project the message that Putin’s so-called “special operation” to rescue the Russian kinfolk of Ukraine from Nazis is going to plan.

Kremlin state television is one of the few sources of information about the war for the Russian public, after authorities restricted access to some social media sites and forced independent stations off the air.
Russia has threatened to imprison anyone who criticises the war for up to 15 years.
Ukraine has fought a savvy media campaign, which has included filming captured conscripts repenting for the invasion.

News of the setbacks in Ukraine appears to be filtering back to Russia. Over the weekend, a video emerged which showed mothers of soldiers angrily confronting a regional official and accusing the Kremlin of using their sons as “cannon fodder”.
Small protests have also continued in Russia, despite a hard clampdown by the police.
The prime time Vladimir Soloviyev show is not the only one that appears to be straying off-message.

On the Russian ministry of defence’s television channel, Zvezda, a serving army officer explained to a talk show audience how Russian soldiers were dying in Ukraine.
“Our guys over there, from Donetsk and Luhansk, and our special operation forces are dying and our country,” he said.

“No, no, no,” interrupted the presenter who gets up from his desk gesticulating and marches across the studio shouting: “Stop!”
“Our youth are still dying,” the soldier continued. By this time, the presenter had come up to him and shouted: “Can you stop now? I will tell you what our guys are doing there. Our guys are smashing the fascist snakes. It’s a triumph of the Russian army. It’s a Russian renaissance.”

Really!

Well Vladimir in my opinion there is one thing that that you did learn in your years in America – BS

And now there is more:

Putin’s Stooges: He May Nuke Us All but We Are Ready to Die

Julia Davis – Wed, 27 April 2022, 7:38 pm

Russian President Vladimir Putin ominously warned on Wednesday that if any other country intervenes in Ukraine, Russia will respond with “instruments… nobody else can boast of, and we will use them if we have to.”

In recent days, Russian state media has been hyping up the same rhetoric, bombarding audiences with jarring declarations that World War III is imminent. Every major channel is promoting the idea of an inevitable, never-before-seen escalation over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is being portrayed as a war waged against the Kremlin by the collective West. Patriotic citizens are now being primed for the idea that even the worst outcome is a good thing, because those dying for the motherland will skyrocket to paradise.

During Tuesday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, Vladimir Avatkov of Russia’s Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered an Orwellian perspective of current events. “What is happening right now is not about Ukraine, but about the future world order, which has no room for hegemony and where Russia can’t be isolated.”
Host Olga Skabeeva described a summit hosted by the U.S. in Germany that day to discuss upping Ukraine’s defense capabilities as a sign that this is indeed “World War III, no longer just a special operation, with 40 countries against us. They declared a war.” Portraying global opponents of Russian aggression as evil incarnate, political scientist Mikhail Markelov claimed: “The representatives of those 40 different countries are today’s collective Hitler.”

Later the same day, on The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, host Vladimir Solovyov lamented the West’s refusal to heed the Kremlin’s warnings. “If they decide to support Ukraine—even though [Russia’s Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov told them that this could lead to WWIII—nothing will stop them. They’ve decided to play it big… These are the bastards with no morals.” Head of RT Margarita Simonyan added: “Personally, I think that the most realistic way is the way of World War III, based on knowing us and our leader, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, knowing how everything works around here, it’s impossible—there is no chance—that we will give up.”

In perhaps the most shocking declaration about a nuclear holocaust delivered on Russian television in recent months, Simonyan concluded that the idea “that everything will end with a nuclear strike, to me, is more probable than the other outcome. This is to my horror, on one hand, but on the other hand, with the understanding that it is what it is.” Solovyov chimed in: “But we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak.” Simonyan comforted the audiences by adding: “We’re all going to die someday.”

Once the conversation turned to Western arms deliveries to Ukraine and a series of fires and explosions on Russian territory, Solovyov pondered out loud: “What is preventing us from striking the territory of the United Kingdom, targeting those logistical centers where these arms are being loaded?” Andrey Sidorov, deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University, retorted that rather than strike the U.K., Russia should target the real mastermind: America. He specified: “If we decide to strike the U.K., we should rather decide to strike the United States… Final decisions are being made not in London, but in Washington. If we want to hit the real center of the West, then we need to strike Washington.”

Attacks Begin in New Country as Russia Warns Nuclear Threat Is ‘Real’

In a bizarre attempt to soften the blow of Russia’s grim predicament, state TV host and media personality Dmitry Kulikov told audiences that war is sometimes “inevitable.” “This is a big war. The West declared it against us. It’s being waged through different methods, never seen before, but there’s never been as many nuclear weapons in the world either,” he said. “That is the only thing that sets this war apart from all others. This is a historical event, something we’re used to. Let’s be worthy of our predecessors, everyone who lived through that. What made us think that our lives should be better than those of our grandparents? Why should we be free of our historical mission?”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova appeared on the same program and continued with the same hard line. Solovyov asked her: “How far is the West ready to go?” Without hesitation, Zakharova replied: “They’ll go as far as they’re allowed to. If they aren’t stopped, they will go all the way.”

Adding his two cents to the nuclear apocalypse sideshow on Wednesday was military expert and retired Colonel Yury Knutov. “I’ve been observing the American approach from its top levels of leadership towards Russia for several years now,” he said on the state TV show 60 Minutes. “For some reason, they believe that Russia can be choked for as long as it takes, until it surrenders, and Russia will never respond or use its nuclear weapons or its nuclear potential… They themselves are creating the situation when there is a threat to the existence of our nation and our military doctrine prescribes that it gives us the right to use nuclear weapons.”

Throughout the program, close-up photographs depicting dead Ukrainian servicemen were repeatedly shown on the screen. Knutov praised the production choice. “We see the Ukrainian land flooded by corpses of Ukrainian soldiers and National Guardsmen… our media needs to be showing more of that.”

and just after that……