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112-666: The prize was founded in 2012 with a $ 100 million endowment from five Russian businessmen: Mikhail Fridman , Pyotr Aven , German Khan , Stan Polovets , and Alexander Knaster . The prize was established under the administration of the Genesis Prize Foundation, in partnership with the Israeli Prime Minister's Office and the Jewish Agency for Israel . It has been referred to as the "Jewish Nobel Prize", causing some commentators to question

224-674: 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

336-519: 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

448-555: A Danish attorney, represented Reiman's interests during deliberations between the two groups. Altimo's ownership of the stake was finally maintained in 2007. During the dispute in 2005, Altimo hired the Haley Barbour -founded BGR public relations firm, which then hired a security firm, Richard Burt 's Due Diligence, in order to infiltrate and obtain information about the KPMG independent investigations funded by Paula Cox , who

560-860: A Spanish court that he was a friend of Vahe. In 1988, along with German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev , Fridman co-founded Alfa-Photo (also transliterated as Alfa-Foto), which imported photography chemicals. In 1989 the three partners founded Alfa-Eco (Alfa-Echo, Alfa-Eko, Alfa-Ekho), a commodities and eventually oil trading firm, and Alfa Capital (Alfa Kapital), an investment firm. Alfa-Eco and Alfa Capital developed into Alfa Group Consortium . The company, which initially focused on computer trading and copy machine maintenance, expanded into imports and exports and commodities trading, eventually becoming one of Russia's largest privately owned financial-industrial conglomerates, with interests in industries such as telecommunications, banking, retail, and oil. Using $ 100,000 of his profits from his businesses to pay

672-512: A Switzerland-based petrochemical company owned by Jim Ratcliffe , for $ 750 million. The British government assured LetterOne that the forced sale was "not a judgement on the suitability of LetterOne's owners to control these or any other assets in the UK". In October 2015 LetterOne Group acquired German utility company E.ON 's equity interests in 43 Norwegian oil and gas licences, including interests in three producing Norwegian fields, all located in

784-558: A company that sold used computers, and a company that imported cigarettes and perfumes, with fellow friends from college, employing students from various Moscow universities. Armenian Robert Yengibaryan ( Russian : Роберт Енгибарян ) provided strong assistance to Fridman and, later, Yengibaryan's son Vahe Yengebaryan ( Russian : Ваге Енгибарян ), who was the Russian consul in New York from 2003 onwards, became very close to Fridman's business interests. In October 2019, Fridman told

896-665: A debt default, and was one of the few Russian banks at the time to continue to allow customer withdrawals. Fridman's Alfa Group founded the Perekrestok (also transliterated Perekriostok ) chain of supermarkets in Moscow in 1995. Through a merger with the Pyatyorochka (also transliterated Pyaterochka ) supermarket chain, which had been founded in St. Petersburg in 1999 by Alexander Girda and Andrey Rogachev , Alfa Group founded

1008-558: 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 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

1120-546: A joint venture to invest $ 1 billion in distressed real estate properties along the U.S. East Coast. In June 2016, LetterOne prepared to expand into healthcare by launching the $ 3 billion fund L1 Health in the United States, for investments in the global healthcare industry. In October 2016, Alfa Group acquired Ukrainian bank Ukrsotsbank , by offering its parent, the Italian financial conglomerate UniCredit Group ,

1232-484: 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

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1344-555: A large cellular operator in Russia, and Fridman joined Vimpelcom's board of directors. Alfa Group consolidated its telecom holdings as Alfa Telecom, and in 2005 renamed it Altimo . Its holdings and acquisitions included MegaFon , Vimpelcom, Golden Telecom, and Kyivstar . In December 2005 Altimo also acquired a 13.2% interest in Turkcell , the largest telecoms company in Turkey. Fridman's desire to merge Vimpelcom and Kyivstar

1456-539: 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 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

1568-588: 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

1680-544: A man reported by Russian state media to be Fridman was arrested in London by the UK's National Crime Agency, on charges of money laundering , conspiracy to defraud the Home Office and conspiracy to commit perjury. The UK National Crime Agency did not name the man, stating only that it had detained a 58-year-old "wealthy Russian businessman" at a "multi-million-pound residence". He was later released on bail. Subsequently,

1792-622: 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

1904-464: A minority stake of 9.9% in ABH Holdings. In December 2016, LetterOne launched L1 Retail, headquartered in London, to invest $ 3 billion in "the retail stars of tomorrow" in Europe and the UK. In 2016 Fridman coined the term " Indigo Era ", for his theory of a global shift to an emerging era of economics based on creativity and digital skills rather than on natural resources. In 2017 he funded

2016-546: A net worth of $ 13.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index . In 1991, he co-founded Alfa-Bank , one of the largest private banks in Russia. After serving as CEO of TNK-BP , the 50/50 TNK-BP joint venture, for nine years, in 2013 he sold his stake in the company and co-founded the international investment company LetterOne (L1). Until 2022 Fridman was chairman of the supervisory board of Alfa Group Consortium , and also served on

2128-412: A package of sanctions imposed against Russian officials and oligarchs in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine . Fridman said that the war would "damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years" and called for the "bloodshed to end". The United Kingdom also sanctioned Fridman on 15 March 2022. In October 2022 Fridman offered to transfer $ 1 billion of his personal wealth into

2240-526: 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

2352-628: A £100,000 Indigo Prize for new economic-measurement models based on the paradigm. In June 2017 LetterOne's L1 Retail division acquired Holland & Barrett , Europe's largest health-food store chain, for £1.8 billion ($ 2.3 billion). Also in 2017 Fridman, via LetterOne, invested $ 3 billion in Pamplona Capital Management, a private-equity firm that was founded by Alexander Knaster , the former CEO of Alfa-Bank, and which Fridman had invested in previously. In January 2018, due to concerns over possible sanctions stemming from

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2464-539: 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,

2576-409: Is a Ukrainian-born, Russian–Israeli tycoon . He is one of the co-founders of Alfa-Group , a multinational Russian conglomerate. According to Forbes , he was the second-richest Russian as of 2013 ($ 16.5 billion), moving down to ninth-richest Russian in 2023 ($ 12.6 billion). In May 2017, he was also ranked as Russia's most important businessman by bne IntelliNews . In February 2024, Fridman had

2688-481: 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

2800-401: 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

2912-557: 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

3024-488: 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

3136-624: 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

3248-573: 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

3360-564: 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

3472-657: 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 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

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3584-762: 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 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

3696-402: 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

3808-569: 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

3920-585: 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

4032-518: 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

4144-470: 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

4256-1000: 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

4368-413: 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

4480-706: The Council on Foreign Relations . In 2022, the EU imposed sanctions on Fridman in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine . Fridman claimed the EU's allegations were false and defamatory. He subsequently decided to step down from the boards of LetterOne and Alfa Group, so that they could avoid sanctions. As reported by several media, Fridman has already filed lawsuits challenging sanctions on at least two occasions, like in July 2022 and in December 2022. In December 2022,

4592-735: The Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC). Fridman first appeared in the Spanish press in November 2002, when the Liberian tanker Prestige sank off the coast of Galicia . It was transferring 77,000 tons of Russian heavy oil; the cargo belonged to Crown Resources, a company owned by Fridman's Alfa Group. The oil spill contaminated the Spanish coast, causing a major environmental disaster, with total damage estimated at 1.5 billion euros. After

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4704-521: The Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys . He had various jobs while a college student in Moscow, including washing windows and founding and co-owning a student discothèque named Strawberry Fields. He also led a group of students who would queue for tickets at popular Moscow plays, and then use the tickets as hard currency to barter for rare goods and favours. Having studied metallurgical engineering , he graduated with distinction from

4816-584: 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

4928-578: 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

5040-659: The X5 Retail Group in 2006. X5 acquired another grocer, Kopeyka , for $ 1.65 billion in December 2010. X5 is Russia's largest food retailer in terms of sales. Alfa Group acquired a 44% stake in Golden Telecom , a large telecommunications and internet company in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States , in 2001. Also in 2001, Alfa purchased a strategic ownership interest in Vimpelcom ,

5152-833: The 2017 U.S. Congressional sanctions on Russia , Fridman announced that Alfa-Bank was phasing out its holdings in Russia's defense industry. In May 2018 Fridman and Aven spoke to an off-the-record private dinner at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. The invitation and the privacy of the meeting drew criticism of the Atlantic Council from a group of 13 Russian and U.S. experts and activists, who wrote that "In our view ... Aven, Fridman, and other key Alfa-Bank oligarchs are ... close cronies and insiders of Putin's regime, and do not operate independently of Putin's demands." The Atlantic Council responded that

5264-519: 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

5376-695: The 48 percent stake in Vimpelcom owned by Fridman and his partners. The fund also has a 13.2% share in the Turkish telecom company Turkcell , which since 2005 has been hampered by a long-running feud between its three largest shareholders: Cukurova , owned by Turkcell founder Mehmet Emin Karamehmet , Fridman's LetterOne via Alfa Telecom/Altimo, and Sweden's Telia Company . In February 2016, Vimpelcom agreed to pay $ 800 million to settle U.S. and Dutch claims that it had bribed officials to win contracts in Uzbekistan between 2006 and 2012. A year later

5488-471: 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

5600-618: The British multinational oil and gas company BP agreed to form the TNK-BP joint venture with the AAR (Alfa-Access-Renova) consortium, which included Alfa Group , Blavatnik's Access Industries , and Vekselberg's Renova . After the merger, TNK-BP became the third largest oil producer in Russia, and one of the top 10 largest private oil companies in the world. Fridman served as TNK-BP chairman for nine years, and CEO for three years. Prior to

5712-563: The Foundation opened the selection process to online voting and invited the public to nominate and vote for the 2021 Genesis Prize Laureate. Close to two hundred thousand Jews on six continents participated in the voting. The final selection of the Laureate remains with the two committees. The Prize came under scrutiny from the start for its "right-leaning, overwhelmingly male selection committee." According to Haaretz, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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5824-681: The Genesis Prize Foundation and the Israeli Prime Minister's Office agreed to terminate their agreement which required the Prime Minister to present the award to the Genesis Prize Laureate at a ceremony in Jerusalem. In 2019, Prize Laureate Robert Kraft was named as one of more than 200 people involved in a Florida solicitation sting operation. Genesis Prize Foundation Chairman Stan Polovets said that

5936-737: The German utility RWE for $ 7 billion (€5.1 billion). Headquartered in Hamburg , Germany with extensive assets in the British North Sea , RWE DEA had total natural gas production output of 2.6bn cubic metres in 2013. The purchase was opposed by the UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey , who raised concerns that Fridman might one day face international Ukraine-related sanctions against Russian companies and individuals which could force L1 Energy to shut down production in

6048-409: 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,

6160-468: 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

6272-411: 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

6384-406: The Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1986. After graduation Fridman worked as a metallurgical design engineer at the Elektrostal Metallurgical Works, a state electrical machinery factory, from 1986 to 1988. As Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began to open up the economy in the late 1980s, in 1988 Fridman established a window-washing business, an apartment rental agency for foreigners,

6496-410: The North Sea, for $ 1.6 billion. In April 2015, LetterOne Technology (L1 Technology) was launched in London. Its focus was on buying "struggling telecom or technology companies that require a fresh infusion of capital". Various advisory board members were appointed including Brent Hoberman , Denis O'Brien , and Sir Julian Horn-Smith . The L1 Technology fund began acting as a holding company for

6608-416: The North Sea, thus imperiling oil supplies and 5% of Britain's North Sea natural gas output. On 4 March 2015, Davey gave Fridman a one-week deadline to convince the UK government not to force him to sell the North Sea oil and gas assets. In April 2015, the government gave Fridman up to six months to sell. In October 2015 Fridman and the LetterOne Group sold L1 Energy's British North Sea assets to Ineos ,

6720-466: The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog. Thus far, all laureates have opted to give the $ 1 million prize money to philanthropic causes of their choice. Members of the committee that selects Genesis Prize laureates are chosen based on their leadership and support for Jewish causes. Current and former committee members include Elie Wiesel , Meir Shamgar , Lawrence Summers , Yuli Edelstein , Jonathan Sacks , Isaac Herzog , and Nathan Sharansky . In 2020,

6832-520: The Prize to Kraft would not be rescinded, noting that in democratic countries "everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence." All charges against Kraft were later dropped. Below is a chart of all laureates per country (updated to 2023 laureates). Some laureates are counted more than once if have multiple citizenship. Mikhail Fridman Mikhail Maratovich Fridman (also transliterated Mikhail Friedman ; Russian : Михаил Маратович Фридман ; Hebrew : מיכאיל פרידמן ; born 21 April 1964)

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6944-807: 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

7056-458: 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

7168-405: 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

7280-484: The TNK-BP joint venture, in 1999 Fridman had thwarted BP by seizing BP's stake in the Siberian oil company Sidanko , via bankruptcy maneuvers widely regarded as unfair practices. And although TNK-BP was highly successful financially, Fridman's relationship with BP during the TNK-BP years was contentious, and included blocking BP's 2011 planned partnership with Rosneft for Arctic oilfield exploration. He resigned as CEO of TNK-BP in May 2012. In 2013, TNK-BP

7392-434: The Ukrainian Sense Bank that he co-founded. Officials said the proposal was calculated to persuade the UK to lift sanctions against him. Fridman denied making a quid pro quo offer to Ukraine. Following the invasion of Ukraine Sense Bank transferred millions of its own budget to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and territorial defense units . Fridman was sanctioned by the UK government in 2022 in relation to

7504-403: 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

7616-423: The agency scaled back its probe. In September 2023 the National Crime Agency closed the investigation. In October 2023, Fridman reportedly announced to return to Russia. Fridman was born in 1964 in Lviv , Ukrainian SSR , USSR, where he spent his youth. He graduated from high school in Lviv in 1980. He says he was denied entrance to Moscow 's top physics college because he is Jewish, and instead attended

7728-407: The bankruptcy of the parent company. El Confidencial published a series of articles about the story of ZED's bankruptcy, and accused Fridman of staging an illegal takeover by removing Javier Perez Dolset from the business and ruining him financially. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It

7840-430: The boards of Alfa-Bank and ABH Holdings. Prior to 2022, he was on the supervisory board of directors for VEON (formerly Vimpelcom) and X5 Retail Group . He is a member of the supervisory board of DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG , which is owned by LetterOne. Fridman has been a member of numerous public-facing bodies, including the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs , the Public Chamber of Russia , and

7952-403: 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

8064-473: The company rebranded itself VEON, and changed its focus to mobile internet services such as banking, taxis, and messaging. In February 2016, Fridman's LetterOne fund invested $ 200 million in Uber . In August 2016 LetterOne invested $ 50 million in telecommunications start-up FreedomPop , to help finance its international expansion. In 2012 Fridman partnered with American real-estate developer Jack Rosen in

8176-529: The company's chairman. LetterOne's additional co-founders were Petr Aven and Andrei Kosogov . Headquartered in Luxembourg , the company was created to invest in international projects in energy, telecoms , finance, technology, and other sectors. As of 31 December 2013, LetterOne had $ 29 billion in assets under management . In May 2015 Mervyn Davies (Lord Davies) was appointed deputy chairman of LetterOne, and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt

8288-572: 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

8400-487: The disaster, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo called Fridman ‘Dirty Michael’. In the summer of 2016, the Spanish entrepreneur Javier Perez Dolset, head of the ZED Corporation (mobile apps developer), addressed the Spanish prosecutor's office with a complaint about his Russian partners associated with VimpelCom Ltd. According to Dolset, they had illegally seized the capital of their joint venture, which resulted in

8512-555: The document. On September 5, 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine announced in absentia that Fridman was suspected of violating Article 110 of the Criminal Code, which provides for liability for financing actions to seize power, overthrow the constitutional order, or change the territory of the state. Under this article, he could face up to 8 years in prison with confiscation of property. The SSU believes that since

8624-413: 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,

8736-456: 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

8848-704: The former Minister of Foreign Economic Relations for the Russian Federation; in 1994 Aven became president and chairman of Alfa-Bank. By late 1996, thanks to the success of Alfa-Bank and Alfa Group, Boris Berezovsky , in an interview by the Financial Times , named Fridman and Aven among the seven businessman and bankers who controlled most of the economy and media in Russia, and who had helped bankroll Boris Yeltsin 's 1996 re-election campaign. Both Fridman and Aven were quite close to Berezovsky. In his book The age of Berezovsky Aven says: "It

8960-692: 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

9072-480: 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

9184-504: The invasion. In September 2023 the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation HM Treasury (UK) updated the text of the financial sanctions notice related to Mikhail Fridman. He is now referred to as "an involved person under the Russia regulations" instead of "a prominent Russian businessman and pro-Kremlin oligarch". Additionally, a phrase alleging close ties between Mikhail Fridman and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been deleted from

9296-478: The need for a "Jewish" Nobel Prize. In 2018, prize winner Natalie Portman declined to attend the prize ceremony because Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu , was set to give a speech at the ceremony. In 2019 Robert Kraft 's award was also questioned because of his legal troubles. In 2021, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was awarded a posthumous Genesis Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to his widow by

9408-524: 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

9520-515: 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

9632-461: 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,

9744-446: 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

9856-453: 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

9968-459: 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

10080-418: 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

10192-471: The press that "recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel." Portman later claimed that she was not boycotting Israel, but that she didn't want to "appear as endorsing" prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu , who was set to give a speech at the ceremony. In January 2020, partly as a result of the Portman controversy,

10304-560: The private meeting was not "a sweetheart platform", and the Kremlin responded that the two oligarchs represented the interests of their business. In 2019, Mikhail Fridman acquired a 50% stake in one of the suppliers of computing devices for the Russian defense industry via the structures affiliated with A1 investment company. On 28 February 2022, the European Union blacklisted Fridman and had all his assets frozen as part of

10416-479: 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

10528-472: 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 ,

10640-488: The required fee, in January 1991 Fridman co-founded Alfa-Bank . The company grew to become one of the largest private banks in Russia. Alfa Group's later divisions include Rosvodokanal , a private water utility; AlfaStrakhovanie, a diversified insurance company; A1 Group, an investment company; and X5 Retail Group, a large chain of food retailers. Alfa Group flourished considerably after Fridman recruited Petr Aven ,

10752-491: 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

10864-694: The start of the conflict, the banker has invested about 2 billion rubles in Russian defense enterprises, in particular, in the Tula Cartridge Plant . In April 2024, following a legal challenge, The General Court of the European Union took Fridman off the EU sanctions list. In May 2024, Fridman sued the Luxembourg government, becoming the first Russian billionaire to challenge European sanctions and demand compensation for his frozen assets. In August 2024? Fridman, after loss of trial in Luxembourg, started arbitration dispute with Luxembourg at

10976-679: 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

11088-512: 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

11200-786: 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

11312-511: 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

11424-459: Was Fridman and I who happened to be by Boris's bed after his attempted assassination in 1994, and it was our yacht that he chose to go after being discharged from hospital". Fridman and Aven sold off most of their Russian government securities in early August 1998, prior to the ruble crisis of 17 August 1998, and emerged relatively unhurt from the 1998 Russian financial crisis . During the crisis, Alfa-Bank used its holdings related to TNK to avoid

11536-419: Was appointed as the board's advisor. In 2013 LetterOne also formed L1 Energy, an energy investment vehicle, initially focused particularly on undervalued international oil and gas assets during the slump in oil prices. John Browne (Lord Browne) was appointed to its advisory board, and in March 2015 became its chairman. On 3 March 2015, L1 Energy acquired the international oil and gas company DEA from

11648-405: 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

11760-421: 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

11872-467: Was initially the sole 2018 award recipient. But according to a committee source, when the Prime Minister's Office learned that a critic of Trump would be publicly given an award by Netanyahu, it was transferred to Portman. As consolation, Ginsburg was given a separate "Lifetime Achievement Award." Another committee source denied this was the reason the award was changed. On November 7, 2017, the Genesis Prize Foundation announced that actress Natalie Portman

11984-529: Was locked in a complex four-year battle of claims and counter-claims of fraud with the Bermuda -based investment firm IPOC International Growth Fund associated with Leonid Reiman and Jeffrey Galmond over ownership of a 25.1% stake in MegaFon that was formerly held by Leonid Rozhetskin 's LV Finance. James Hatt, a British telecommunications executive, represented Fridman's interests while Jeffrey Galmond,

12096-456: Was sold to Russia's state-owned energy group Rosneft for $ 56 billion, with Fridman and his Russian partners receiving $ 28 billion for their 50% stake, at the height of crude oil prices. Using the proceeds from the sale of their stakes in TNK-BP, Fridman and his Alfa Group partners Khan and Kuzmichev established the international investment company LetterOne (L1) in 2013, and Fridman became

12208-691: Was the Bermuda Minister of Finance, into the IPOC International Growth Fund. Richard Burt and Mikhail Fridman have a strong working relationship. In 2012 Fridman sold his entire stake in MegaFon for $ 5 billion. In 1997, Fridman had collaborated with Len Blavatnik and Viktor Vekselberg to purchase the state-owned TNK (Tyumen Oil Company), an oil company in Siberia, for $ 800 million. In February 2003,

12320-510: Was the 2018 Genesis Prize Laureate, and that she would donate the $ 1 million Genesis Prize Award to philanthropic programs focused on women's equality, education, economic advancement, health, and political participation. A month later, Israeli philanthropist Morris Kahn pledged another $ 1 million in Portman's honor, bringing the total gift to $ 2 million. The prize ceremony was canceled in April 2018 after Portman's representatives told

12432-402: 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

12544-458: Was thwarted by his Vimpelcom partner, the Norwegian telecoms group Telenor , which held stakes in both companies. Fridman resorted to protracted and aggressive efforts to strong-arm Telenor in 2005, and although the merger of Vimpelcom and Kyivstar was achieved in 2010, conflicts with Telenor over control of Vimpelcom lasted seven years in total. From 2003 until 2007 Fridman's Altimo

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