152-493: The Anti-Corruption Foundation ( ACF or FBK ; Russian : Фонд борьбы с коррупцией (ФБК) , romanized : Fond borby s korruptsiyey (FBK) ; lit. ' Foundation for combating corruption ' ) is a non-profit organization established in 2011 by the Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny . The FBK published investigations into alleged corruption by high-ranking Russian government officials. The organisation
304-476: A New York Times interview with him, "the rubles were piling up faster than his mother could count them". From 1991 to 1997, Prigozhin was heavily involved in the grocery store business. He became 15% stakeholder and manager of Contrast, which was the first grocery store chain in Saint Petersburg and founded by his former classmate Boris Spektor. Around the same time, Prigozhin became involved in
456-619: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
608-530: A fitness trainer at a children's sports school. In 1979, 18-year-old Prigozhin was caught stealing and was given a suspended sentence of two years and six months in prison. He served his sentence working at a chemical plant in Veliky Novgorod . In 1980, he returned to Leningrad and joined a gang. He participated in a burglary spree in Leningrad, before being caught after choking a woman on
760-559: A lathe operator, tractor driver, and cabinet maker after receiving training at a vocational school . In 1988, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union reduced his sentence to ten years on good behavior, noting that he had begun "corrective behavior". He was sent to a medium-security penal colony and was released in 1990. In total, Prigozhin spent nine years in detention. Immediately after his release, he started attending
912-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
1064-461: A "huge" number. He called for a response, stating: "The council of commanders of PMC Wagner has made a decision – the evil that the military leadership of the country brings must be stopped". Prigozhin declared the start of an armed conflict against the Ministry of Defence in a message posted on his press service's Telegram channel. He called upon individuals interested in joining the conflict against
1216-403: A 70% ammunition shortage. Shoigu, Gerasimov, where the fuck is the ammunition? Look at them, bitches". Prigozhin said to the Russian military commanders: "You sit in expensive clubs, your children enjoy life, you make videos on YouTube . You think that you are the masters of this life, and that you have the right to dispose of their lives". On 6 May, Prigozhin, in his next address, revealed for
1368-427: A blogger, and also bends his fingers that he doesn't like the special operation ... We didn't come up with this special operation, but we took a visor and said: "If we went to fuck with our neighbors, we should fuck all the way". Prigozhin condemned the luxurious lifestyle of the children of Russia's top officials and in particular singled out Shoigu's son-in-law Alexey Stolyarov [ ru ] for not joining
1520-816: A cassation appeals to the Second Cassation Ordinary Court. On 25 March 2022, the Second Cassation Ordinary Court rejected all cassation appeals and upheld the judgements of lower courts (case No.8а-5101/2022). Several members of the organisation, including Lilia Chanysheva (the head of the Ufa branch of the organisation) and Daniel Kholodny (the technical director of the foundation's YouTube channel), were arrested and sentenced to long prison sentences. Memorial considers them political prisoners . In January 2021, former Russian banker Alexander Zheleznyak registered
1672-493: A combination of aggressive marketing and specific achievements," in particular the capture of Bakhmut , and since Bakhmut was the only major capture of the Russian army in many months, "the public could not ignore such an achievement". By June 2023, Prigozhin had begun making regular statements that were not allowed for any other public figure in Russia. Journalists noted that many of his statements would have resulted in criminal charges against other people. This period witnessed
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#17327800133571824-574: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Yevgeny Prigozhin Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch . He led the Wagner Group , a private military company , and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching
1976-412: A high-risk role, although he could not refuse it. Dmitry Utkin , a Russian military veteran, was also named as a founder and commander of Wagner. As Prigozhin had no military background, he reportedly relied on Utkin to oversee Wagner's military operations. Utkin was once head of security for Prigozhin and was also listed as director general of Concord Management. Prigozhin rose to prominence during
2128-552: A lack of ammunition, his fighters would leave Bakhmut on 10 May 2023 and hand over their positions to units of the Russian Defense Ministry if they did not receive more ammunition. Prigozhin published a video in which he shouted with a face distorted with anger against the bodies of the murdered Wagnerites: "Now listen to me, bitches, these are somebody's fathers and somebody's sons. And those scum who don't give ammunition, bitch, will eat their guts in hell. We have
2280-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
2432-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
2584-559: A mediator to broker a settlement. Charges were dropped and Wagner ceased its march on Moscow. As part of the agreement, Prigozhin moved to Belarus and Wagner troops were slated to return to Ukraine, but those plans were cancelled in the wake of Wagner's refusal to sign military contracts. Despite his charges being dropped, Prigozhin remained under investigation for treason. The BBC tracked Prigozhin's private jet flying from Belarus to Russia in late June. The jet made several flights between Saint Petersburg and Moscow, but whether Prigozhin
2736-475: A metamorphosis, beginning to position himself as a "truth teller", ready to speak the unpleasant truth and to criticize the Russian leadership in the harshest terms. In addition to his rhetoric against the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin also had a conflict with the leadership of the Chechen Republic , and personally with its Head , Ramzan Kadyrov . By June 2023, Prigozhin was aiming for the image of
2888-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
3040-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
3192-535: A radical populist movement. The general principles of such a movement: a rigid division of society into "good people" and "bad elite", a demand (and promise) to save the nation, and authoritarian methods of implementing these slogans. Prigozhin has been described as being member of the " war party " within Russia's leadership, a group of hardliners in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine , but critical of what they see as ineffective or incompetent prosecution of
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#17327800133573344-563: A rebellion against the Russian military leadership. Wagner forces captured Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow. The rebellion was called off the following day, and the criminal charges against Prigozhin were dropped after he agreed to relocate his forces to Belarus . On 23 August 2023, exactly two months after the rebellion, Prigozhin was killed along with nine other people when a business jet crashed in Tver Oblast , north of Moscow. The Wall Street Journal cited sources within
3496-573: A rebellion in June 2023. Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering businesses that provided services to the Kremlin . Once a convict in the Soviet Union , Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2020 investigation, were "tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm,
3648-683: A second restaurant, New Island, a floating restaurant that became one of the most fashionable dining spots in the city. Inspired by waterfront restaurants on the Seine in Paris, Prigozhin and Ziminov created the restaurant by spending US$ 400,000 to remodel a rusting boat on the Vyatka River . He said his patrons "wanted to see something new in their lives and were tired of just eating cutlets with vodka". Before Prigozhin decided to focus on upscale dining, one of his dining establishments initially featured
3800-399: A striptease show. Prigozhin was reportedly known to punish poor performance or misconduct of employees of his catering businesses with physical violence. In 2001, Prigozhin personally served food to Vladimir Putin and French president Jacques Chirac when they dined at New Island. He hosted US president George W. Bush in 2002. In 2003, Putin celebrated his birthday at New Island. Over
3952-526: A surge in his popularity among the Russian populace, particularly among nationalists. In a May survey conducted by the Levada Center , respondents were asked to identify the politicians they trusted the most, and for the first time, Prigozhin emerged as one of the top ten names on the list, marking a notable shift in his public perception from non-political to a political figure. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde described Prigozhin's "program" as
4104-647: A time when a Russian soldier is dying at the front. I'm just asking – give me ammunition!". In May 2023, Prigozhin spoke out again about the Shoigu family: "Shoigu's son-in-law walks around shaking his buttocks, meaning his buttocks, and his daughter opens the Kronstadt forts. Did you earn money for these forts?! You spend your money on these forts? Spend it on fucking ammunition. And when the Minister of Defense shakes his little daughter and shakes some motherfucker who's
4256-490: A video depicting its mercenaries using a sledgehammer to execute Yevgeny Nuzhin , a deserter who had reportedly been returned to the Russians in a prisoner exchange. Prigozhin commented, "It seems to me that this film should be called: 'a dog dies a dog's death'" and "It was an excellent directional piece of work, watched in one breath. I hope no animals were harmed during filming." On 4 May 2023, Prigozhin cautioned against
4408-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
4560-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
4712-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
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4864-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
5016-488: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
5168-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
5320-591: Is funded by private donations. On 9 October 2019, the FBK was declared a " foreign agent " by the Russian Ministry of Justice . On 9 June 2021, the FBK was designated as an extremist organization and liquidated by the Moscow City Court . On 11 July 2022, while imprisoned, Navalny announced the relaunch of the FBK as an international organization. FBK Executive Director Vladimir Ashurkov formulated
5472-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
5624-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
5776-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
5928-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
6080-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
6232-496: Is the country to do if suddenly it turns out that grandpa is a complete asshole?". According to Meduza , the Kremlin negatively reacted to Prigozhin's words about "grandpa". "Of course, he can then say that this is about Shoigu or about an abstract layman, but people draw understandable conclusions". Since the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian war, " Grandpa in his bunker " has become an insulting nickname for Vladimir Putin , implying incompetence and irrationality. On 9 May, Prigozhin accused
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6384-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
6536-487: Is walking around like a beggar, from the world by a thread, asking unit commanders to help in some way". Prigozhin then published a photo with the bodies of dead Wagner fighters, saying that, lack of ammunition meant that his squads were suffering heavy losses. He said: "We're just going to die twice as much until everyone runs out. And when all the Wagnerites run out, then most likely Shoigu and Gerasimov will have to take
6688-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
6840-1000: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
6992-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
7144-756: The Donbas War , and later played a significant role in Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It has also supported regimes friendly with Putin's Russia in the Middle East and in Africa . Prigozhin repeatedly denied links to the Wagner Group, but during the 2022 Russian invasion he travelled to Ukraine to oversee the group's progress and was pictured at the frontline wearing military fatigues alongside Russian Duma member Vitaly Milonov . In September 2022 he said that he had founded Wagner in 2014 to "protect
7296-588: The Federal Security Service (FSB) for inciting an armed rebellion . PMC Wagner proceeded to capture the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don , and began an advance on Moscow. During the scuffle, Wagner shot down an Ilyushin Il-22M airborne command post plane and several military helicopters. A few moments later, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation, denouncing Wagner's actions as "treason" and vowing to take "harsh steps" to suppress
7448-630: The GRU ". In 2014, Prigozhin reportedly founded the Wagner Group to support Russian separatist forces in Ukraine . Funded by the Russian state, it played a significant role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine and supported Russian interests in Syria and in Africa . In November 2022, Prigozhin acknowledged his companies' interference in United States elections. In February 2023, he confirmed that he
7600-516: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
7752-534: The Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical Institute to get a pharmaceutical degree, but failed to complete his studies. Prigozhin would later flaunt his prison past to convince prisoners to join the Wagner Group . After his release from prison in 1990, Prigozhin began selling hot dogs alongside his mother and stepfather at the Apraksin Dvor open-air market in Leningrad. Soon, according to
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#17327800133577904-690: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
8056-756: The Sakharov Prize ($ 50,000) that was awarded to him. On 4 October, allies of Navalny said they were relaunching his regional network to fight the mobilization and war , saying it would be a "partisan underground" movement. On 1 June 2023, the Ministry of Justice added the Anti-Corruption Foundation International to the list of undesirable organisations ; earlier in December 2022, the ACF International
8208-584: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
8360-721: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
8512-704: The information field . In February 2023, the tensions began to escalate between Prigozhin and Russia's military establishment. This came against the background of the Russian winter offensive, with Russia's only success accomplished by Wagner forces at the cost of heavy losses. In February 2023, Prigozhin began to complain about the "shell hunger" of Wagner during the battle for Bakhmut. On 22 February, in another audio message, Prigozhin said, "The Wagner PMC kind of does not exist. We used to be given ammunition formally for some military units, which like to take Bakhmut instead of us". According to Prigozhin, "the Wagner PMC
8664-523: The "people's hero of the Special Military Operation ". In May 2023, according to Russian opinion polls, the sociological service Russian Field noted that Prigozhin "is fighting not only on the external front, but also on the internal front, actively earning recognition and a rating. And he converts the former into the latter very well". According to Russian sociologists and political scientists, Prigozhin increased his visibility "through
8816-544: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the initial stages, the Russian Ground Forces suffered significant casualties, but the announcement of mobilization for reservists was delayed by Putin. As a result, authorities actively sought to enlist mercenaries for the invasion, which led to a heightened influence and power for Prigozhin and the Wagner Group. Prigozhin was allocated substantial resources, including his own aviation assets. Additionally, starting in
8968-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
9120-471: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
9272-457: The FBK office and at the "Navalny LIVE" studio. Soon after the 2019 Moscow City Duma election , on 12 September 2019 the SKR carried out mass raids on the FBK regional offices in 40 Russian cities. In September 2019, various state-owned companies filed lawsuits against FBK for "organizing riots", and the courts partially satisfied them in the amount of ₽5 million (c. US$ 78 000). On 8 October 2019,
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#17327800133579424-561: The FBK shortly after as another legal entity. On 16 April 2021, the Moscow prosecutor office requested the Moscow City Court to designate organizations linked to Navalny including the FBK and his headquarters as extremist organizations, claiming: "Under the disguise of liberal slogans, these organizations are engaged in creating conditions for the destabilization of the social and socio-political situation." In response, Navalny aide Leonid Volkov stated: "Putin has just announced full-scale mass political repression in Russia." On 26 April 2021,
9576-430: The General Staff in 2012. Prigozhin was chosen to run the company and he was tasked with operational and logistical aspect due to his pre-existing service relationship with the Defense Ministry (in 2012, he received a contract to supply meals to the Russian military worth US$ 1.2 billion over one year) and close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Three different sources claim that initially Prigozhin objected to such
9728-409: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
9880-468: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
10032-411: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
10184-407: The Ministry of Defense was more focused on internal power struggles and "intrigues" than actually fighting. The Ukrainians themselves later supported this account, with their 3rd Separate Assault Brigade stating on Telegram that the 72nd Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade had "escaped" from the city and the remaining troops had suffered very high casualties. Within a few months, Prigozhin underwent
10336-401: The Ministry, portraying the rebellion as a response to the alleged strike on his men. In a video released on 23 June 2023, Prigozhin claimed that the government's justifications for invading Ukraine were based on falsehoods, and that the invasion was designed to further the interests of the Ministry of Defence and Russian oligarchs . He accused the Ministry of Defence of attempting to deceive
10488-429: The Moscow prosecutor office ordered Navalny's network of regional offices to stop its activities, pending a ruling by the court on whether to designate them and the FBK as extremist organizations. The move was condemned by Germany and Amnesty International . On 9 June 2021, Vyacheslav Polyga, judge of Moscow City Court , upheld the administrative claim of the prosecutor of Moscow city Denis Popov and, rejecting all
10640-416: The RosPil project. In addition, the team includes video production manager Vitaly Kolesnikov, mailing list manager Yan Matveyev, editor Maria Zakharova, office manager Olga Bulaeva. The director of the fund from 2014 to December 2018 was Roman Rubanov . Since December 2018, the head of the legal department of the fund, Ivan Zhdanov, has been appointed director. Since February 2012, the executive director of
10792-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
10944-724: The Russian army. Prigozhin complained that "the children of the elites smother themselves with creams and show this on Instagram, YouTube and so on, while ordinary people's kids return home torn apart in zinc-lined coffins". Prigozhin intensified his rhetoric against the Ministry of Defence in April. In May 2023, he said: "We have been put on an artificial shortage of ammunition that is in storage. We were receiving no more than 30% of our needs. So our losses were much higher than they should have been, but we were getting ahead. A month ago they stopped giving us ammunition, and we're getting no more than 10%". On 5 May 2023, Prigozhin announced that, due to
11096-622: The Russian military worth US$ 1.2 billion over one year. Some of the profits from this contract are alleged to have been used to start and fund the Internet Research Agency . On 11 December 2018, a company claimed to be unaffiliated with Concord Catering called Msk LLC (Russian: ООО "Мск" ) was paid 2.5 million rubles for an annual "Heroes of the Fatherland Day" banquet held at the Kremlin. However, Msk LLC shares
11248-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
11400-461: The Russians" when "the genocide of the Russian population of Donbas began". He explained that he played a personal role from the start, claiming that he "found specialists who could help" after "[cleaning] the old weapons and [sorting out] the bulletproof vests" himself. Prigozhin also confirmed allegations, previously denied by the Russian government, that the group had been involved in other countries aligned with Russian overseas interests, saying
11552-458: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
11704-427: The US government as saying that the crash was likely caused by a bomb on board or "some other form of sabotage". Since then, researchers and other analysts have reached the conclusion that an on-board bomb or explosive likely downed the plane. Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was born an only child on 1 June 1961 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg , Russia). His mother, Violetta Kirovna Prigozhina,
11856-467: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
12008-459: The United States. In an interview with journalists, Yuriy Maslikhov stated that he had transferred the money from his PayPal account as an individual and he had been carrying out such donations earlier. Two other payments totalling ₽ 138,505.41 (c. US$ 2170) were carried out by Spanish citizen Roberto Fabio Monda Cardenas through CaixaBank on 6 and 17 September 2019. Answering a question of journalists how he, unable to speak Russian , found out
12160-631: The Wagner Group's activities in Libya . In April 2022, the EU imposed further sanctions on him for his role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The FBI offered a reward of up to $ 250,000 for information leading to Prigozhin's arrest. Prigozhin openly criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for corruption and mishandling the war against Ukraine. Eventually, he said the reasons they gave for invading were lies . On 23 June 2023, he launched
12312-612: The Wagner mercenaries who "defended the Syrian people, other people of Arab countries, destitute Africans and Latin Americans, have become the pillars of our motherland". The Wagner Group was founded to support Russian interests in Africa and other parts of the world, allowing the Russian government to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad. The plan was pushed forward by Valery Gerasimov , who took over as Chief of
12464-497: The activities of the fund. In case of an increase in voluntary contributions, it is planned to develop the staff of the fund's projects, giving a special role to the anti-corruption "RosPil". Moreover, all business representatives support the fund financially as individuals. According to Navalny, in order to help potential donors decide to support the fund and similar projects, the first of those who have already done so will announce their names. And Vladimir Ashurkov suggested that later
12616-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
12768-414: The case file including the text of the administrative claim was classified as a state secret . According to advocate Ivan Pavlov , Alexei Navalny was not a party to the proceedings and the judge refused to give him such status; at the hearing, the prosecutor stated that the defendants are extremist organizations because they want a change of power in Russia and they promised to help participants of
12920-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
13072-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
13224-419: The course of the 2000s, Prigozhin grew closer to Vladimir Putin. By 2003, he left his business partners and established his own independent restaurants. Notably, one of Prigozhin's companies, Concord Catering , began winning numerous government contracts. He received hundreds of millions in government contracts for feeding school children and government workers. In 2012, he received a contract to supply meals to
13376-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
13528-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
13680-499: The first time publicly that he was banned from recruiting mercenaries among inmates , although information about this appeared as early as February 2023. According to the head of Wagner, the Russian military command took such a step "to compensate for their failures, because of envy". According to Prigozhin, the Russian military department also stopped issuing awards to dead fighters of his PMCs, and did not allow Wagner to use special communications and transport aircraft. Prigozhin accused
13832-435: The first time, as Putin had been chairman of the supervisory board for casinos and gambling since 1991. In 1995, Prigozhin entered the restaurant business. When revenues of his other businesses began to fall, Prigozhin persuaded a director at Contrast, Kirill Ziminov, to open a restaurant with him. They opened Prigozhin's first restaurant: Old Customs House (Russian: Старая Таможня ) in Saint Petersburg. In 1997, they founded
13984-579: The following films: Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
14136-507: The founders of the fund gained experience in public and transparent fundraising by organizing financing for the RosPil project. A significant amount was collected through the Yandex.Money payment system, which provided financial support for the project for a year. In parallel, the founders of the fund are working on the idea of involving on a permanent basis professional lawyers and economists in
14288-526: The frontline while wearing military fatigues. Wagner began to be perceived as Prigozhin's private army, operating beyond the boundaries of Russian legislation and the country's military hierarchy. Dissatisfaction arose within the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the General Staff , leading to heavy squabbles between Wagner leadership and Russian high command . On 1 October 2022, during Ukraine's Kharkiv counteroffensive , which expelled Russia from most of
14440-399: The fund "not to depend on one source of funding". In April 2012, the creators estimated the fund's annual budget at approximately $ 300,000. If more funds are available, the fund will expand. In 2013, the fund raised 23 million rubles through donations. In 2014 the budget was 28.5 million rubles; in 2016, it was 45 million rubles. The first public sponsors of the fund on 13 February 2012 were
14592-423: The fund has been Vladimir Ashurkov , who was forced to leave Alfa Group to work at FBK. FBK created its own media, 'Leviathan', in order to have a possibility to register for press conferences of Vladimir Putin and make a request to authorities. Since 2016 it has been publishing one news item per day. The name 'Leviathan' was taken from Leviathan , 2014 award-winning film by Andrey Zvyagintsev . FBK has made
14744-424: The fund's strategy as pressure on the authorities in order to push them towards internal reforms, working in two directions: organizing situations in which government structures will feel pressure, and creating a real alternative to the current power system. FBK was founded by Alexei Navalny. The Foundation was registered on 9 September 2011 (account No. 7714013315, OGRN 1117799018204). According to Vladimir Ashurkov,
14896-422: The gambling business. Spektor and Igor Gorbenko brought Prigozhin on as CEO of Spectrum CJSC (Russian: ЗАО «Спектр»), which founded the first casinos in Saint Petersburg. This trio went on to create many other businesses together throughout the 1990s across various industries, including construction, marketing research, and foreign trade. Novaya Gazeta notes that this may be when Prigozhin met Vladimir Putin for
15048-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
15200-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
15352-613: The head of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov of allegedly ordering him to give 10% of the required number of shells. Prigozhin said: "If there is no ammunition, then we will leave the position and ask the question – who is cheating on the motherland after all?". In a video published shortly before the start of the Victory Parade in Moscow , he berated the Russian military command and added: "The happy grandpa thinks he's happy. But what
15504-463: The independent Russian news outlet Meduza indicated that this development would undermine Prigozhin's hold over Wagner and jeopardize the group's profitable operations in Africa. Prigozhin unsuccessfully attempted to circumvent the order for Wagner's subordination while intensifying his criticism of the Ministry of Defence. On 23 June 2023, Prigozhin claimed that regular Russian armed forces had launched missile strikes against Wagner forces, killing
15656-400: The international non-profit Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) in the United States. On 11 July 2022, Navalny announced the relaunch of the FBK as an international organization with an advisory board including his wife Yulia Navalnaya , Guy Verhofstadt , Anne Applebaum , and Francis Fukuyama ; Navalny also stated that the first contribution to Anti-Corruption Foundation International would be
15808-588: The machine guns". Prigozhin's media companies launched the #DayShellsToWagners media campaign, which was active that spring. Family members of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu became an object of mockery by Yevgeny Prigozhin. On 20 February 2023, in his address to the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin said, "I am not poking you in the nose with the fact that you sit down to breakfast, lunch and dinner from gold dishes, and send your daughters, granddaughters and dogs on vacation in Dubai . Not embarrassed by anything. At
15960-719: The money back, Ministry of Justice of Russia refused to remove the Anti-Corruption Foundation from the register of "foreign agents". On 15 October 2019, the SKR again carried out mass raids on the FBK regional offices in 30 Russian cities. In February 2019, FBK published an investigation that reported that in December 2018, mass food poisoning of children occurred in kindergartens and schools in Moscow. FBK blamed Concord Food Plant LLC, Moskovskiy Shkolnik LLC and VITO-1 LLC for this, which he linked with Yevgeny Prigozhin . Subsequently, Moscow schools No. 760 and No. 1554 assessed fines against Moskovskiy Shkolnik due to
16112-409: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
16264-422: The names of those who financially support the fund will not be made public, except for cases when the donors themselves ask for it. Ashurkov said that Alfa Group's top manager Alexei Savchenko appeared on the list of sponsors thanks to his acquaintance with him. Navalny noted that the fund has no other sponsors from Alpha. Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky noted the interest of representatives of big business in
16416-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
16568-418: The opposition, highlighting Mikhail Fridman . As a funding strategy for the fund, Navalny stated the collection of small donations, but with the involvement of a wide range of donors, emphasizing the importance of mass support. The FBK project managers are Ruslan Shaveddinov , Ilya Pakhomov. The legal department includes: Alexander Pomazuev, Vladlen Los, Evgeny Zamyatin. Valery Zolotukhin is also involved in
16720-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
16872-461: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
17024-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
17176-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
17328-532: The petitions of the defense, decided to recognize Anti-Corruption Foundation as an extremist organization, to liquidate it and to confiscate its assets; a similar decision had been taken against the Citizens' Rights Protection Foundation; the activity of the Alexei Navalny staff was prohibited (case No.3а-1573/2021). The case hearing was held in camera because, as indicated by advocate Ilia Novikov ,
17480-478: The police filed a lawsuit against FBK for "costs of maintaining order during rallies" in the amount of ₽18 million (c. US$ 280,000). On 9 October 2019, the FBK was declared a " foreign agent " by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation due to payments from the United States and Spain . One of these payments was the payment of US$ 50 made by Yuriy Maslikhov, a Russian citizen residing in
17632-459: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
17784-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
17936-513: The presidential administration on the afternoon of 24 June 2023, including reaching out to Putin himself, who refused to speak with him. Final negotiations were reportedly conducted by Anton Vaino , the chief of staff, Nikolai Patrushev , the secretary of the Security Council, and Boris Gryzlov , the Russian ambassador to Belarus. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko reportedly spoke with Prigozhin upon Putin's request, acting as
18088-479: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
18240-472: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
18392-600: The protest with payment of administrative and criminal fines and with making complaints to the European Court of Human Rights . On 4 August 2021, First Appellate Ordinary Court located in Moscow upheld the decision of the court of first instance (case No.66а-3553/2021) and this decision entered into force that day. On 28 December 2021, it was reported that Anti-Corruption Foundation, Citizens' Rights Protection Foundation and 18 natural persons including Alexei Navalny filed
18544-439: The public and President Vladimir Putin by portraying Ukraine as an aggressive and hostile adversary which, in collaboration with NATO, was plotting an attack on Russian interests. Specifically, he denied that any Ukrainian escalation took place prior to 24 February 2022, which was one of the central points of Russian justification for the war. Prigozhin alleged that Shoigu and the "oligarchic clan" had personal motives for initiating
18696-416: The rebellion. He stated the situation threatened the existence of Russia itself. Furthermore, Putin made an appeal to the Wagner forces who "by deceit or threats" had been "dragged" into participating in the rebellion. In response, Prigozhin said that Russia's president is "mistaken", and Wagner fighters are "patriots, not traitors, we have been fighting for our country and continue to fight". Prigozhin said
18848-515: The region, Prigozhin said about the commanders of the Russian army that "All these bastards ought to be sent to the front barefoot with just a submachine gun". He called members of the Putin-controlled Russian parliament "useless" and said that the "deputies should go to the front", adding that "Those people who have been talking from tribunes for years need to start doing something". The Washington Post reported that Prigozhin
19000-477: The regular Russian army forces of "[running] away" from their positions, while his own Wagner forces were allegedly forbidden from retreating. According to him, any Wagner "withdrawal from the positions would be considered high treason." He also accused the Ministry of Defense of only giving his troops 10% of what was promised, causing high Wagner casualties, and threatened that if he did not receive ammunition, his forces would withdraw from their positions. He said that
19152-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
19304-404: The same amount. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision. In July 2020, Navalny said that he saw no reason to raise money to pay the "huge amount". He announced that the FBK would be liquidated, and that he and Sobol "until the end of Putin's power" would have to live with blocked accounts and bailiffs seizing any of their property in favor of "Putin's chef". Navalny said that he intended to revive
19456-691: The same contact phone number with Concord. On 11 December 2019, the company received another 4.1 million rubles for another banquet. In 2012, he moved his family into a Saint Petersburg compound with a basketball court and a helicopter pad. By this point he owned a private jet and a 115-foot (35 m) yacht. Prigozhin was later linked to several aircraft, including two Cessna 182s as well as Embraer Legacy 600 , British Aerospace 125 , and Hawker 800XP jets. The Anti-Corruption Foundation accused Prigozhin of corrupt business practices. In 2017, they estimated his illegal wealth to be worth more than one billion rubles. Alexei Navalny alleged that Prigozhin
19608-548: The search for and suppression of corruption schemes in the public procurement system. The contractual basis will allow to get some guarantees, in contrast to the scheme for working with volunteers. On 3 August 2019, the Investigative Committee of Russia (SKR) opened a criminal case against the FBK, accusing them of laundering ₽1 billion (c. US$ 15.5 mln). Later the amount was reduced to ₽75 million (c. US$ 1.15 mln). On 5 September 2019, searches were conducted at
19760-479: The second half of the year", which provides most of the planned annual budget of the fund ($ 300,000). According to Vladimir Ashurkov and Navalny, the negotiations took place for three months, and some of those with whom they took place eventually decided to refrain from making contributions to the fund. However, many of those who ended up supporting the project, despite not being bound by any contractual obligations, promised to make regular donations. This allows to plan
19912-496: The situation on the Ukrainian frontline was not affected. He also stated that his main goal was to remove Shoigu and Gerasimov from office and reiterated his accusations of corruption against the Ministry of Defence. Despite declaring that the justifications used to launch war against Ukraine were based on falsehoods, Prigozhin still continued to support the war efforts, although calling for waging war more effectively. Prigozhin allegedly made personal efforts to establish contact with
20064-452: The son of the founder of PJSC VimpelCom , businessman Boris Zimin (confirmed that he had already given 300,000 rubles and will give about the same amount every month) and former manager of Alfa Group Vladimir Ashurkov (confirmed that gave 300,000 rubles). On 30 May 2012, the list of the first 16 sponsors of the fund was announced: According to Navalny, "they have already transferred 4.4 million rubles, and guaranteed another 4 million for
20216-463: The street during a robbery, with him and accomplices then stealing the woman's earrings and boots. In 1981, he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment in a high-security penal colony for robbery, theft, fraud, and involving minors in criminal activity. According to Prigozhin, he violated the terms of his solitary confinement "on a regular basis" until he was sent to general population in 1985, where he started to "read intensively" and worked as
20368-436: The summer of 2022, he gained the authority to recruit inmates from Russian prisons into the Wagner Group in exchange for their freedom. Western intelligence estimated that the number of Wagner mercenaries increased from "several thousand" fighters around 2017–2018 to approximately 50,000 fighters by December 2022, with the majority comprising criminal convicts recruited from prisons. On 13 November 2022, Wagner Group released
20520-539: The supply of low-quality food. In April 2019, Moskovskiy Shkolnik filed a lawsuit against FBK, Navalny, FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol , who was in charge of the investigation, and its former employee Natalya Shilova, who was involved in the investigation. In October 2019, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Navalny to pay 29.2 million rubles as compensation for lost profits and damage to professional reputation. The court ordered Lyubov Sobol and FBK to pay
20672-679: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
20824-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
20976-786: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
21128-574: The use of nuclear weapons in response to the 2023 Kremlin drone attack , saying that "We look like clowns threatening to use nuclear weapons in response to a child's drone". Although the government provided the Wagner Group with increasingly large resources, Wagner had no legal authority. Prigozhin held no official position and was neither appointed nor elected, meaning that he technically had no authority to answer to. Furthermore, Prigozhin gained international recognition and abandoned his previously secluded personal life. He frequently reported news from
21280-511: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
21432-414: The war by the Russian government. In mid-June 2023, the Ministry of Defence ordered Wagner to sign contracts with the military before 1 July. This move would've effectively integrated Wagner as a subordinate unit within the regular command structure, thereby diminishing the influence of Prigozhin. However, Prigozhin declined to sign the agreement, alleging incompetence on the part of Shoigu. Reports from
21584-400: The war. Furthermore, he asserted that the Russian military command intentionally concealed the true number of soldiers killed in Ukraine , with casualties reaching up to 1,000 on certain days. During the early morning of 24 June, Wagner forces crossed into Russia's Rostov Oblast from Luhansk, encountering no apparent opposition. In response, criminal charges were filed against Prigozhin by
21736-403: The wire payment instructions of the Anti-Corruption Foundation after its removing from official website of the organization, Roberto Fabio Monda Cardenas was unable to explain. These payments were carried out at a time when the bank account of the Anti-Corruption Foundation was frozen at the request of the Investigative Committee of Russia . Despite the fact that the Anti-Corruption Foundation gave
21888-549: Was Soviet scientist Yefim Ilyich Prigozhin [ ru ] . He settled with Yefim for several years during his childhood in the Ukrainian city of Zhovti Vody , where he worked in an open-pit uranium mine . His stepfather, Samuil Fridmanovich Zharkoi, was a ski instructor and introduced Prigozhin to cross-country skiing . Aspiring to be a professional skier, he graduated from Leningrad Sports Boarding School No. 62 [ ru ] in 1977. However, he abandoned his sports career after an injury. He later worked as
22040-677: Was a hospital nurse . His father, Viktor Yevgenyevich Prigozhin, was a mining engineer who died when Yevgeny was nine. His grandfather, Yevgeny Ilyich Prigozhin, was a captain in the Red Army during World War II , who fought in the Battles of Rzhev and received a medal "For Courage" . Prigozhin sponsored the 2020 war film Rzhev [ ru ] , based on a 1991 novel by Vyacheslav Kondratyev [ ru ] that mentions his grandfather. His father and stepfather are believed to be of Jewish descent . Prigozhin's great-uncle
22192-468: Was declared a "foreign agent". After the death of Navalny in a Russian prison in February 2024, his wife Yulia Navalnaya leads the organization. FBK is funded by money transfers from its supporters; mostly these are donations from ordinary people. According to Ashurkov, "constant fundraising is a necessary condition for the functioning" of the fund. The creators want to build a system that will allow
22344-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
22496-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
22648-520: Was linked to a company called Moskovsky Shkolnik (Moscow Schoolboy) that had supplied poor-quality food to Moscow schools, which had caused a 2019 dysentery outbreak. Prigozhin was declared the 2022 Corrupt Person of the Year by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project . The Wagner Group is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) formed in 2014. It initially supported Russian separatist forces in Ukraine during
22800-606: Was one of the few people who dared to tell Putin about the "mistakes" of Russian military commanders in the war in Ukraine. One of the former Wagner fighters, in an interview with the BBC said: "I think it's a conflict between the Defense Ministry and Prigozhin. And it is escalating." Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the conflict between Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense exists only in
22952-553: Was the founder and long-time manager of the Internet Research Agency , a Russian company running online propaganda and disinformation campaigns . Prigozhin's companies and associates, and formerly Prigozhin himself, are subject to economic sanctions and criminal charges in the United States and the United Kingdom. In October 2020, the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions against Prigozhin for his financing of
23104-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
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