Vladimir, I'm waiting. Vladimir

Which of the inhabitants of Donbass knows President Putin better than anyone else? "Quiet American" from Gorlovka will give faults to politicians and oligarchs

Vladimir Renzin in his apartment in Gorlovka. April, 2014 /Photo: Leonid Ragozin

"What would you like to convey to Putin?" At first, the warned, pro -Russian activists, who surrounded journalists in the square in front of the City Council in Gorlovka, a mining city 60 km from Donetsk, blurred in a smile. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, come to us. We will throw the best Gorlovka flowers at your feet! ” - says Irina, the mother of the Berkut fighter, who spent the whole winter in Kyiv, fighting with Euromaidan. Next to her is a man of about 60 with biblical features and beard. He also calls Putin to Gorlovka: “Volodya, come! You will be carried in your arms throughout Donbass. This is Volodya Renzin - your school friend ... "

Stormy childhood

Yes! In the middle of the Soviet landscape of Gorlovka-a city with a minimum of two giant statues of Lenin and 40-year-olds, slowly drifting against the backdrop of the dull Brezhnev parallelepiped-a classmate of the Russian president lives. The city is not in the siege, like Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, but the Donbass uprising did not bypass it: the leaders of the self -proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) claim that it is under their control. Vladimir Renzin approves the actions of the separatists, impresses him with the position in Ukraine of his former friend.

The future national leader and the future Gorlovsky pensioner first met back in 1960, when both entered the first grade of the 193rd Leningrad school. Friends were not at first. “The class to the fifth Volodya was a district bully. There were fights, and shoots from the house, and registration in the children's room of the police, and the calls of parents to school, ”Renzin recalls. Then, however, he moved to another class and met with Putin again four years later, in 1968, when they both transferred from eight-year-olds to school No. 281-a ten-year-old with a chemical slope on the basis of a technological institute.

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“At this time (in the early 1970s), Putin was no longer a bully, but a serious and extremely decent person ... I was even surprised that he was taken with such qualities in the KGB”

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The friendship of Putin and Renzin is confirmed by their common friend Vyacheslav Yakovlev, who told about her the “Moscow Komsomolets” back in 1999 (“In the Trace of the President”, MK No. 470 of December 29, 1999). And Svetlana Potapchuk, who studied with them, in an interview with the same “Moscow Komsomol member” also called Renzina and Yakovlev two best friends of Putin. By the way, she confirmed the fact of Renzin’s move to Ukrainian Gorlovka (“Simply Volodya”, MK No. 1686 dated 06/20/2005). But this happened much later. And then, at the dawn of the 1970s, two Vladimir really agreed. “At this time, he (Putin) was no longer a bully, but a serious and extremely decent person,” Renzin recalls. And, thinking, he adds: "I was even surprised that he was taken with such qualities in the KGB."

Dissident near the agent

Vladimir Renzin does not like organs, explaining this by the fact that in his youth he turned out to be an object of their interest. According to him, he was an activist of the Zionist Underground and distributed illegal literature, for which after the “preventive” conversation in the Leninsky district of the KGB was excluded from the Leningrad Technological Institute (now the St. Petersburg State Technological Institute (Technical University). What “Zionist underground” in Leningrad the early 1970s talks about the early 1970s Renzin? As the chief rabbi of Russia, the head of the Congress of Jewish religious communities and organizations of Russia (Keror) Adolf Shaevich, explained, we can talk about cooperation with the groups of the so -called refuseniks - Jews who were denied the exit from the USSR and the simple study of the Torah or Hebrew: after all, in the Soviet Union, any religious literature The Bible*was banned and spread illegally.

True, the classmate of Renzina and Putin Svetlana Potapchuk in an interview with MK claimed that Renzin himself dreamed of becoming a scout, but he was prevented by Jewish origin and bright appearance, unlike Putin.

One way or another, the career chosen by Putin did not at all prevent Renzin with him to be friends. “When he first called a large house management, I realized where he works,” says Renzin **. Did he experience any emotions on this? "Yes, no." Friends talked about politics and even came up with the game “If I were Brezhnev” - they developed and defended their own political program, which would be implemented, they would find themselves on the site of the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee. However, Putin, according to Renzin, was always loyal to the Soviet regime.

Friends even came up with the game “If I were Brezhnev” - they developed and defended their own political program, which would be implemented if they were on the site of the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee

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Overseas bubble

This friendship continued, according to Renzin, until 1979, when Putin was sent to Moscow to the Higher School of the KGB No. 1. They met again in the early 1990s, when both became politicians: Putin-the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, and Renzin, according to him, was a member of the Democratic Union and the deputy of the Dzerzhinsky district council from the Leningrad People’s Council front. They did not communicate close, but collided at work.

By 1993, Renzin was completely disappointed in Russian democracy, and the events of October 1993, during which he was entirely on the side of Boris Yeltsin, became the last straw. “It was a fascist coup, the same as now in Kyiv,” says Renzin. Despite the defeat of the supporters of Rutskiy and Khasbulatov, Renzin was then finally established in the decision of the emigrate to the United States, and the liquidation of the Soviets as a result of the adoption of the new Constitution removed deputy responsibility to voters. A childhood friend, according to Renzin, provided the Green Corridor at the customs: "At least our container did not smon like the rest."

Since then they have not seen each other. Renzin settled in San Francisco-at the very beginning of the heyday of the silicone valley. Everything was fine until the Internet bubble burst in the late 1990s, many online companies went bankrupt, and he had to retrain to the guards. Eight and a half years later, since the beginning of his American adventure, a newly -made US citizen Vladimir Renzin returned home to his native Petersburg, although he still considers America a “beautiful, magical country”.

At the first wedding of Renzin in 1976, Vladimir Putin (left) was a witness. (Photo from the personal archive of V. Renzin)

American in the Donbass

The new Putin Russia made a double impression on Renzina. On the one hand, he liked that the country "again turns into a superpower." On the other hand, he, as a democrat, did not please the defeat of the opposition and independent media. Renzin answers quite seriously to the comic question why he did not try to get into the government: “I tried to get in touch with him, but did not receive an answer.”

The Ukrainian Gorlovka entered his life thanks to a local resident, which he married, having met on the Internet. This was his third marriage: with his first wife, at the wedding with whom Vladimir Putin spent the witness in 1976, Renzin parted in the USSR, with the second - already in America. The new wife did not tolerate the St. Petersburg climate, and in the end it was decided to move to her homeland. So in 2004, on the eve of the Orange Revolution, Renzin was in the Donbass, where he lives to this day - without a Ukrainian passport, but with Russian and American.

The wall of his office is decorated with photographs of Putin and founder of the Zionist movement of Theodore Herzl. Renzin lives in a brick high -rise building through the square from the City Council. The area makes a gloomy impression. On April 17, in broad daylight, people in masks and camouflage form abducted the local deputy from the "Fatherland" by Vladimir Rybak. Two days later, his body was found in the end of the end, near the epicenter of the separatist rebellion of Slavyansk, with a ripped belly and traces of torture. The Ukrainian Security Service later posted the records of negotiations, which, according to its experts, indicate involvement in the murder of militants controlling Slavyansk, and in particular Igor Strelkov (Girkin), self -proclaimed commander in chief of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Pro -Russian activists, in whose company Renzin spends time in the square, saw how a few minutes before the abduction the fisherman tried to break into the Gorlovsky City Council, captured by Strelkov’s militants, but this does not prevent them from believing that the fighters of the “Right Sector” in the murder. However, the “right sector” in the Donbass includes everyone who counteracts the rebels: from peaceful activists to Ukrainian military. Renzin himself says that during this incident was absent.

The language from Kyiv will take away

The activists surrounded by Renzin, among whom are mostly women under 50, do not like it when they are called “pro -Russian” or “separatists”, although they admit that they would like to see the Donbass part of Russia. How does the new Ukrainian government manage them? “Inflation - prices are rising not by the day, but by the hour,” one of the women complains. "The fascist junta has banned the Russian language!" - another woman is indignant, thus interpreting the decision of the Verkhovna Rada on the abolition of the law on the status of regional languages, which imposed a veto and. O. President Alexander Turchinov. “In Kyiv, they decided to arrange a new Holodomor here. They take out grain from Donbass, ”another version appears. "Where does such information come from?" - "From the Internet."

Renzin, with a St. George ribbon on the chest, stands out against the background of other activists with a balanced and gently besieges women when they begin to put forward a surreal accusations to Kyiv. But he himself also starts an “anti -fascist” record as soon as it comes to changes in the Ukrainian capital: “It was a fascist coup, which is characterized by extreme nationalism, the suppression of the opposition and all forms of dissent. Their symbolism is very reminiscent of Nazi. ” Renzin, according to him, cannot support the Kyiv authorities “by definition” - because a Jew. At the same time, it is known that the leaders of the Jewish communities of Ukraine were quite unanimously supported by the new power.

The request to give examples of any truly fascist statements of the Kyiv authorities entrusts Renzin into thought: “Well, Dmitry Yarosh (leader of the“ Right Sector. ”-The New Times) said:“ We drown the Jews in the blood of Muscovites. ” It is everywhere on the Internet. ” The New Times, however, failed to find such statements by Yarosh, on the contrary, the leader of the “Right Sector” repeatedly opposed anti -Semitism, did not accuse him of anything like that and the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine. And on May 9, the Right Sector stated that Yarosh, at the request of the Israeli authorities, personally organized the export of the Israeli family from the Kramatorsk wrapped in war.

However, despite the position regarding the fate of Donbass, Vladimir Renzin assures that he does not interfere in Ukrainian policy. But "as a private person, I would like the throat to be in Russia." School friend Vladimir Putin conspiratorially smiles Renzin from a photo on the wall.