Popov effect

The film on the air of the Russia 1 television channel about how the Western intelligence services for the misfortune of the unintelligent Russian opposition recalled Alexei Navalny, could not but attract attention to the figure of its author - the correspondent of VGTRK Evgeny Popov. The path of a modest guy from Vladivostok to the most responsible special prison in his journalistic career - tracked the New Times

The author of the “Brower effect” is also the host of the Special correspondent program, April 13, 2016. Photo: vesti.ru

There were many revelations in the tape called “Brower effect”: it turns out that back in 1986, the CIA developed an operation “trembling” on “changing the constitutional and political system” in Eastern Europe and the USSR. 20 years later (when the USSR has already become Russia), in December
2007, agents of Solomon (the pseudonym of the famous businessman, the head of the Hermitage Capital investment fund William Brauder) and Frida (Navalny pseudonym) were allegedly involved in the implementation of these insidious plans. In pursuance of the plans of specialists from Langley, Brighter bought shares of Russian companies (in order to provide pressure on them) and even organized the murder of his own financier Sergei Magnitsky in the Sailor Silence camera.

The 15-minute advertising trailer for the film showed three days before the premiere in his Sunday program Dmitry Kiselev. However, the announcement hit his forehead with inconsistencies: the place and time of action of various events were mixed up, the “secret documents of the special services” and fragments of the correspondence of Navalny and Brauder abounded with grammatical, spelling and semantic errors. For example, the authors of the film “transferred” the Moscow office of Navalny to Kyiv, and in the “screenshots” of the correspondence of heroes in the Skype program, the question was asked two years after the answer.

Evgeny Popov at the beginning of his career

Evgeny Popov, who led the filming of this tape, has already managed to be famous for the use of inaccurate videos for professional purposes. In addition, he is known to the public as the husband of Olga Skabeeva, nicknamed the manner of filing information with an “iron doll”. Other pages of professional activity of Navalny's exposure are much less known. Meanwhile, the career rise of Popov is impressive - from the employee of the provincial radio to the status of one of the most famous correspondents and the leading TV channel Russia 1 - this is not given to everyone. But only one of the interlocutors of the magazine agreed, naming his name, to talk about what thorns our hero had to go on the way to the career crown. Others insisted on anonymity-someone from the reasons of corporate ethics, and someone, frankly admitting to the unwillingness to make an influential enemy.

NT made repeated attempts to get answers to questions from Eugene himself. However, a television fighter with the opposition flatly refused to communicate. This is what in the end it was possible to find out thanks to other sources.

Sicked on the ad

Evgeny Popov was born on September 11, 1978 on Aleutskaya Street in the city of Vladivostok. The mother of the future TV star, a biologist, taught at one of the universities of the capital of Primorye. Popov himself recalled in an interview that he had been in journalism by chance. Parents stumbled upon a newspaper announcement, which announced a set of children who wanted to try themselves as the leading Sakvoyazh program, which was published several times a week on Primorsky radio. Thirteen -year -old Zhenya successfully made his debut as a journalist, which became the determining moment of his life. “Since then, in fact, I have been swimming in this vast sea of ​​the VGTRK Corporation,” Eugene says about himself.

A little later, Popov began to cooperate with local television. On his first foreign business trip, he went immediately to one of the most closed cities of the planet - the capital of North Korea Pyongyang.

By the way, Popov is a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of the Far Eastern State University (today the Far Eastern Federal University). And the leadership of Alma Mater still leads him as an example, along with other graduates-the chief editor of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper Vladimir Sungorkin and his deputy Igor Kots, Channel One, NTV, Zvezda TV channel ...

Despite many years of life and work in the United States, the reporter considers this country a "monster"

In his student years, Eugene did not shy of Katees and even, according to his memoirs, did not take a bit to twist the discs behind the DJ remote control in the local night cafe “Manila”. Having received a university diploma in 1998, he continued his career on television: since 2000, he was the Vladivostok correspondent of the Local Time program and the Vesti Sobtor, and after a couple of years of work in the regional corps moved to Moscow.

NT sources in the Federal Migration Service assure that citizen Popov for some time indicated as a place of temporary registration in Moscow of the VGTRK building, and later took shape in a "rubber" house located in the village of Yadrovo, Moscow Region, in addition to Popov, another 156 people fictitiously lived.

In 2003, our hero was seconded to the Ukrainian corrup of the Rossiya TV channel. Oddly enough, the “Orange Revolution” of 2004, which many of his reports were dedicated to, he remembers today not without enthusiasm, contrasting those events of the 2014 Maidan. For example, holding a master class in the Higher School of Television of Moscow State University in the year before last, Popov said: “... then (in 2004- NT ) a million people went to the square, and they were all with clean hands.”

Oddly enough, the “Orange Revolution” of 2004, which many of its reports, recalls today, remembers, not without enthusiasm, contrasting those events to the Maidan of 2014

Family ties

Having returned to Moscow in 2005, Eugene did not work long worked as a political observer of the “news of the week” and, having gained experience, in 2007 he received an enviable position of his own correspondent of VGTRK in the United States. And after some time, the chief editor of the New York Bureau "Vesti" took the post for some time, that is, he became the head of the Corcont. The position is highly comfortable: the salary of $ 5-7 thousand per month, in addition, the channel pays for a full social package, rent a decent housing, expensive car, communication and other expenses. Now Popov recalls this time, as “very interesting and useful” professionally. True, after three years of life in New York, he “began to ask back, because I wanted to be closer to the processes that we are taking place, because, of course, this is heaven and earth,” the TV presenter said during the already mentioned master class. As a result, Popov stayed in the United States, with which he now wages an irreconcilable ideological war, for six years. During which he, judging by his own memories, was not only journalistic work.

The first wife of journalist Anastasia Churkina, Miami, USA, 2014

In an interview with Vladnews news agency, Popov shared some details of his private life. “With a girl who became my wife, and then again stopped being her, he met on a business trip, he spent his free time. Although it is not enough for him terribly ... And about the official novels Sasha (colleague Popov on the Russian TV channel Alexander Khabarov) is right. What is it, especially since rare, as it is mistakenly believed, varieties of girls - beautiful and smart - are enough in the corridors of our company! ”

One of Popov’s colleagues at work in New York, on anonymity, told NT that the first wife of Eugene was the daughter of a regular representative of Russia at the United Nations and the United States of the UN Vitaly Churkin Anastasia, who worked in the US channel on the Russian Today. “They met everyone in sight in a cafe in the UN building,” says the interlocutor of the magazine. - Then they were married. After a break in 2012, Nastya's father stopped putting Zhenya into a mission. Once, seeing Popov at one of the tricks, Churkin even asked the press attache, what kind of pi-pi-pi-pi, the former son-in-law was doing there. ” As a result, Popov was forced to leave New York immediately after the official end of the business trip-in 2013.

According to another version, Evgeny returned to his homeland not thanks to the efforts of the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation at the UN, but in connection with the tempting proposal - “to go on air” as the author of the program, albeit going out at 23.00 ”. In parallel, he prepared reports for the special correspondent program, where in September 2014 he took the place of the host, replacing Arkady Mamontov himself.

Some NT sources are confident that with their rapid rises in the service ladder, Popov owes an “influential roof” in special services. None of the familiar people in uniform could confirm the regular cooperation of Eugene with the FSB, but many spoke about the likely patronage from the "office".

Hot news

You can evaluate Popov’s professional qualities in different ways, but you definitely can’t refuse in courage. He managed to visit many hot spots: in the war in Libya, at the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima, immediately after the destructive earthquake in March 2011, on both Kyiv Maidans, in the war in the Donbass, etc. The TV presenter himself recalls that he literally "attracts troubles." So once during the air travel, he fell into a real disaster. The UTAIR aircraft, in which Popov flew along with the operator with the next shooting, was damaged by the damaged chassis during landing at the Moscow airport. Having jumped out along the emergency inflatable lane from the liner salon, Eugene immediately began to work and immediately made a plot in the news.

Interview with a military, Debaltseve, 2014

Later, Popov became the author of the films "Telemaydan", "Blockade. Slavyansk. " “Big Brother”, “Citadel 911”, “Kiev Sich”, the documentary “Media Graduation” dedicated to the ideological confrontation between Russia and the West. His manner of serving the material caused a violent reaction to the “Browner effect”: the news plot “Aggressive Islam: the Stavropoliece split into his own and strangers” nervously perceived the human rightsman in Chechnya Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, who stated that “Russia 1” was waging an information war in favor of the branch of the Northern Caucasus from Russia and generally engaged in inciting inters READS. Another report of Popov, for which he had to make excuses during the Tauris youth forum, who was there, the eminent colleague of Popov - Dmitry Kiselev - about early children's education in Norway. In the plot, which was also aired in the special correspondent program, the author said: in Norway, they say, in the first grade children are taught the basics of sexual education and talk about homosexuality. The thesis was illustrated by shots from a children's room, hung with photographs of naked men. The video turned out to be a fake: on the filming original, shot by Fathead, a photo from a computer game was imposed. I had to make excuses for Popov and his own colleague, the political observer of the VGTRK and the host of the Vesti at 20.00 program Andrei Kondrashov, already before the audience of another youth forum - the “territory of meanings”. Allegedly, Popov himself was not to blame for a fake, the fake videos got editors who collected the material on the Internet. As a result, the VGTRK Holding even promised to create a special service to combat fakes.

During the Kyiv Maidan of 2014, Popov’s film crew was delayed by the Right Sector fighters (the organization is prohibited in Russia). In an interview with the Riga radio station, MIXFM in March 2016, to the question of how objectively Russian television channels covered events in Ukraine, Popov replied: “I can’t speak for all Russian television channels, I can’t even speak for my TV channel. I can speak for myself. If you look at the programs that I lead, you will always see two points of view ... I try to call people who represent the entire palette of opinions. ”

Evgeny Popov broadcasts from the Maidan, Kiev, 2014

Popov was not afraid to shoot during the conflict in the Donbass. Where, however, not everyone was remembered only from the positive side. “We met Yevgeny in Slavyansk when I worked as a Vice News reporter and was captured by rebels,” says NT American journalist Simon Ostrovsky. - I was kept in the basement of the SBU building along with other detainees for several days and suddenly informed that they were released. They untied their hands, removed the bandage from the eyes, ordered to wash and picked up. It turned out that Russian journalists, led by Popov, want to interview me. I told him the history of captivity and explained that they were treating me badly. Then the separatists again took me to the basement. I hoped that thanks to the appearance of the news that a foreign journalist is in the basement, they would help me to be released, but Popov did not give this information on the air. At the same time, he wrote to Imail to my family that I was alive and informed where I was. ”

For his statements about the war in the east of Ukraine and the accession of Crimea to Russia, Popov was on the list of journalists who are prohibited from entering Ukraine.

Translation difficulties

“Zhenya has never been disgusting in communication,” recalls his colleague with VGTRK. - Many turned to him and turn to him for help. He has wide knowledge in completely different areas - from volleyball to the history of religion. ” How did such an erudite reporter not notice the obvious blunders in his film about Navalny and Broud?

According to colleagues, Popov, despite the six -year stay in the United States and numerous foreign business trips, is quite bad, at the high school level, owns English. “This is the trouble of many Russian corncels abroad today-knowledge of the local language at a level sufficient to order dinner in a restaurant,” says a friend of Popova in New York. - In the United States, for example, in difficult situations, all our television people are saved by an employee of the Washington Bureau Elena Sokolova. Therefore, Zhenya could easily not notice the errors in the papers used in his revealing film. ” Errors were noticed by Internet users after the release of the film in the "Vesti of the Week". In the full version, some errors have already been corrected, and some were written off on the illiteracy of employees of the Western intelligence services.

“This is the trouble of many today's Russian employees abroad - knowledge of the local language at a level sufficient to order dinner in a restaurant”

According to experts familiar with the topic under discussion, typos are not the only problem of the film. Indeed, on the same William Brouder it would be easy to find a real incriminating evidence. So, there is data on the dubious economic activity of a businessman even in the public domain on the Internet. However, the authors decided to limit themselves to a clear fake. Perhaps the case is the urgency of the execution of the boss order. People close to the First Deputy Head of the President of Russia Vyacheslav Volodin say that they did not hear anything about the preparation of the exposures of the VGTRK before the film was released. It is possible that the shooting of the “Brauder effect” became the initiative of another curator of the federal media - another first deputy head of the Kremlin administration Alexei Gromov.

Out of left: Evgeny Popov, Daria Lobanova and wife Olga Skobeev

Among the employees of the VGTRK, the version is distributed that the documents on which the expanding “masterpiece” Popov was made was provided by the ex-head of the security service of the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky Sergey Sokolov. “They say that Sokolov with these delusional pieces of paper ran through different channels for a long time, trying to regain his lost place in the clip of people close to the imperious circle,” says one of the NT interlocutors. - At first, he seemed to offer them for the first, but was sent due to the evidence of the fake. I can assume that Sokolov concocted these “superdocations” on his knee. “Russia” closed up for the opportunity to please the curators from the Old Square, undertook to implement the project and immediately close some of the most problematic topics: the deaths of Sergey Magnitsky, investigations against the family of the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, the subversive activities of Alexei Navalny and, most importantly, “Panama files”.

“Even those who understand that we are engaged in cynical agitation, never admit this in a conversation with fellow soldiers. Reflection is not welcome "

The source of the magazine is sure: the decision to put the papers in their hands was made directly by the leadership of the VGTRK, and Popov, who proved his loyalty for many years, was appointed the contractor. Probably, Dmitry Kiselev chose the candidacy, widely advertising the brainchild of the "chick" of his nest. “Zhenya is an absolute soldier of the party and the government, clearly complying the orders coming from above,” continues the NT source in VGTRK. - In our company, it is generally considered a good tone to publicly advertise his devotion to the sovereign. And for inner peace, living in a fictional reality and blindly believe in your case is much more useful. Even those who understand that we are engaged in cynical agitation, never admit this in a conversation with fellow soldiers. Reflection is not welcome. ”

Коллеги утверждают, что вполне милый и приятный в личном общении Евгений пытается оправдывать свою, мягко говоря, не всегда прозрачную с точки зрения подачи информации деятельность патриотизмом, любовью к Родине и нетерпимостью к врагам ее руководства. «У него в плане веры в правильность своей работы, наверное, интересные диалоги с женой происходят вечерами, — улыбается старый знакомый Попова. — Иногда нахождение внутри системы приводит к тому, что когда-то надетая по необходимости маска окончательно прирастает и человек становится настоящим цепным псом режима. Помню, как однажды мы мило пили пиво в их с Настей нью-йоркской квартире, где был выход на крышу. Кто-то из присутствовавших в компании приятелей начал вспоминать, что в Госдуме торгуют депутатским мандатами. Женька страшно возмутился этими словами и потом долгое время не разговаривал с этим рассказчиком».

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