The Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives gave 17 million rubles to create a database of patriotic songs. The project is supervised by Oleg Gazmanov

The Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives allocated almost 17 million rubles for the Rodniki patriotic song project, which is supervised by Russian singer Oleg Gazmanov. The money was received by the charitable foundation "Equality of Opportunities". to this Attention was drawn by the Sirena publication, created by associates of Alexei Navalny.

The website of the Presidential Fund says that the organizers of the Rodniki project, among other things, will have to hold a song contest and create a "base of patriotic songs of the project participants."

As TASS wrote , Oleg Gazmanov is the ideologist and artistic director of the Rodniki project. The singer introduced it in November 2022. According to Gazmanov, within the framework of the competition, it is planned to collect "musical and poetic material that would help our country, develop it."

The project website was launched in November 2022, all the applications of the participants are collected in the catalog . In the top of the auditions for the month, "I'll call you Russia" is in the lead, in the top for the last week is "The ballad about the boys who became fighters in the Russian army."

Applications for the competition are accepted until May 14, 2023, the gala concert of the winners will be held in August-September in Sevastopol.

Update. Singer Oleg Gazmanov, after media attention to the project , said that the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives allocated money not to him personally, but to the Equal Opportunities Foundation. “What I am working on is certainly not called a catalog of a patriotic song,” the artist noted.

• Oleg Gazmanov, like many other Russian performers who actively support the invasion of Ukraine, is under EU sanctions. In December 2022, as RBC reported , Gazmanov was among the Russian artists of a "patriotic orientation" whom the Kremlin recommended supporting before the New Year holidays.