Igor Medvedev

Igor Medvedev Russian artist

Igor Medvedev

Igor Medvedev  

Igor Medvedev

Art by Igor Medvedev

'Golden Forest', Igor Medvedev

İgor Medvedev

igor medvedev

Igor Medvedev (1931-2015) acuarelas, grabados, pintura...

Nacido en Kharkov en el este de Ucrania el 10 de noviembre de 1931, el interés de Medvedev en el arte comenzó con su amistad con el artista Anatoly Martinov. Medvedev y su familia huyeron de Rusia en 1943 a la zona ocupada por los estadounidenses en Alemania; durante este tiempo Medvedev realiza esbozos de las ciudades alemanas.En Munich, Medvedev aprendió el arte de la fundición de bronce y de la escultura. Con su familia se muda a Estados Unidos cuando tenía 17 años. Medvedev ganó una beca para asistir a la universidad de Dartmouth, donde se graduó con una licenciatura en Historia del Arte. Continuó sus estudios en la Universidad de California, Berkley, obteniendo una licenciatura en 1952 y una maestría en 1953.El arte de Medvedev se caracteriza por un sentido de la composición, colores profundos, el uso de la luz y de la sombra y un ambiente tranquilo, reflejando un estado de ánimo tranquilo. No intentó copiar lo que vio, pero en su lugar crear un "momento de la insinuación." Durante su carrera trabajó con varios medios, incluyendo la pintura, el grabado, la acuarela y la escultura

Shishel-Myshel

Author: Medvedev Igor

Mayya Bulgakova in Wings (Larisa Shepitko, 1966)

Cast: Mayya Bulgakova, Sergey Nikoninko, Zhanna Bolotova, Panteleymon Krymov, Leonid Dyachkov, Vladimir Gorelov, Yuriy Medvedev, Nikolay Grabbe, Zhanna Aleksandrova. Screenplay: Valentin Ezhov, Natalya Ryazantseva. Cinematography: Igor Slabnevich. Production design: Igor Slabnevich. Film editing: Lidiya Lysenkova. Music: Roman Ledenyov.

Wings was the first feature by Larisa Shepitko, who made only four of them before dying in an automobile accident in 1979, only 41. It's a low-key character study of a woman, Nadezhda Petrukhina (Mayya Bulgakova), who was a decorated pilot during World War II but now leads a quiet existence as headmistress of a school that prepares students for work in the construction industry. She is admired by her colleagues and students but unfulfilled by her work. She has an adopted daughter, Tanya (Zhanna Bolotova), but they have grown apart: Nadezhda hasn't even met Tanya's new husband, and when she goes to a party where he's present she mistakenly greets the wrong man as her son-in-law. In addition to supervising repairs at the school and coaching the participants in the school's entry in a theatrical contest, she also has to discipline a rebellious young male student -- with whom, we see, she has a kind of sympathy that is stifled by her official duties. She occasionally sees a man, the director of the local museum where her picture as a war hero is on display -- on a visit to the museum she overhears a girl ask if she's still alive. And occasionally she visits the local airfield to watch cadets being trained. We get a flashback to wartime, when she had a lover, Mitya (Leonid Dyachkov), a fellow pilot whose death in combat she witnessed. Flight, that eternal symbol of freedom, is a strong force even in the earthbound life she leads, and we glimpse her fantasies of soaring through the clouds. So at the film's end, having quit her job, she takes a daring move to achieve that freedom once again. Spare but poetic, with a stunning performance by Bulgakova. 

Igor Medvedev

Since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Telegram channels have become one of the Russian authorities’ most powerful tools for promoting their narratives of the war in Ukraine and spreading disinformation. Readovka, a channel that gets its instructions directly from a pro-Kremlin autonomous nonprofit organization (ANO) called Dialog, exemplifies the shift. After years of branding itself as a “liberal” outlet, Readovka abruptly morphed into a “patriotic” one after the start of the full-scale war, and its popularity skyrocketed. Meduza analyzed some of the “news” Readovka has published on the Kremlin’s orders — and dug into the story of how its founder tried (and failed) to branch into the military uniform supply business.

‘He always wanted to be in the center’

Readovka was first launched in Russia’s Smolensk region in 2011 as a “community” on the Russian social media network VKontakte. Its founder was Alexey Kostylev, a native of the area who, by his own account, was simultaneously running the news page, working in the construction sector, and writing poetry. Within a few years, he was devoting more attention to his media ambitions, and in 2014, Readovka became a full-fledged local news agency. In 2020, Kostylev started a separate division of the outlet in Moscow.

Before 2022, Readovka was never considered a pro-government outlet (though it was sometimes called a right-wing source for some of its coverage of ethnic conflicts in Central Asia). After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, it quickly rebranded as an “ultra-patriotic” channel, and its readership rapidly increased. While Readovka had just over 200,000 subscribers in January 2022, by the end of that March, the number had grown to nearly one million and counting. The channel currently has almost 1.7 million subscribers.

“In March [2022], our newsroom literally turned into a cult,” one former Readovka employee told Meduza. “Editor-in-chief Alexey Kostylev started rounding up employees and lecturing us about how the world had changed with the start of the war, and how we needed to accept the new course of events, not ask questions, and trust the information he was giving us.”

According to this person, “Kostylev always wanted to be in the center; it didn’t matter what he was in the center of.” He achieved this, the source said, by networking at various events. That’s how he met two of his “patrons” — All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company host Andrey Medvedev and former Odesa City Council deputy Igor Dimitriev. Shortly before the start of the war, the source told Meduza, Dimitriev introduced Kostylev to several senior managers at the Russian Defense Ministry’s press service, while Medvedev put him in touch with Vladimir Tabak, the head of the Dialog autonomous nonprofit organization.

The Moscow authorities created Dialog in 2019 for the express purpose of facilitating better communication between themselves and city residents. Soon after, the Kremlin decided to expand the organization to the federal level and commissioned a service that would allow citizens throughout the country to voice concerns, RBC reported, in February 2020, citing a source close to the Kremlin. In fact, Dialog was creating Internet propaganda at the Kremlin’s request, publishing advertisements for things like Russia’s 2020 round of constitutional amendments and its 2022 mobilization campaign. Initially, the organization was led by Alexey Goreslavsky, who had previously served as the deputy director of the Putin administration’s public projects team and the Kremlin's former Internet policy curator. In 2021, Goreslavsky left to head up the Internet Development Institute, and was replaced at Dialog by Vladimir Tabak, who’s best known for creating an erotic calendar addressed to Vladimir Putin and available for public sale.

After meeting Tabak, Kostylev decided to start covering the news according to the “guidelines” developed for pro-Kremlin outlets by Dialog. Meduza has obtained messages from Dialog employee Darya Bogdanova, in which she sent Readovka a list of topics to be covered, as well as screenshots of Readovka employees’ work chats.

The news items mentioned in the messages:

“Ovsyannikova — prepared by Western media to divert attention from explosion in Donetsk”;

“Video on creation of nuclear bomb in Ukraine”;

“White House asked popular TikTok bloggers to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for rising fuel prices in U.S., Fox Business reported”;

“Working out unemployment — comment [from Russian Economic Minister Maxim] Reshetnikov”;

“Resilience of the economy — comments from experts”;

“Labor guarantees for workers at frozen businesses”

How ‘Readovka’ covered these topics:

“Ovsyannikova — prepared by Western media to divert attention from explosion in Donetsk.” On March 14, 2022, twenty people were killed by a Russian missile strike in Donetsk. The Russian Defense Ministry declared that the missile was from Ukraine. That evening, Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of the Russian state TV network Channel One held up an anti-war sign on a live broadcast. Pro-Kremlin outlets, including Readovka, repeated allegations that Ovsyannikova’s protest was “orchestrated by NATO.”

“Video on creation of nuclear bomb in Ukraine.” On March 6, Russian pro-government media, citing an “informed source,” reported that a “nuclear weapon” was being “secretly developed” at an institute in Kharkiv. Pro-war Telegram channels like Readovka widely disseminated these claims, as well as reports that Ukraine was working to create a “biological weapon.”

“White House asked popular TikTok bloggers to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for rising fuel prices in U.S., Fox Business reported.” The news that the Biden administration was working with popular TikTok users to spread the message that Putin was responsible for high gas prices in the U.S. was reported by multiple Russian government-controlled media outlets and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. Readovka misleadingly characterized statements White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made to TikTokers as instructions or tasks rather than answers in a Q&A session.

“Working out unemployment — comment [from Russian Economic Minister Maxim] Reshetnikov;” “Resilience of the economy — comments from experts;” and “Labor guarantees for workers at frozen businesses.” On March 16, Russian Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov took part in a meeting with Putin dedicated to economic support measures for Russia’s regions. After that, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels started regularly repeating Reshetnikov’s statements about the state of the Russian economy.

Kostylev gets into the uniform business

Alexey Kostylev’s collaboration with the Russian authorities didn’t stop with his decision to follow the Dialog’s “guidelines.” In the spring of 2022, at a Russian Defense Ministry meeting that included representatives of pro-war media outlets, the conversation turned to the shortage of winter uniforms for soldiers. Kostylev reportedly volunteered to supply a portion of the uniforms. His “starting task” was to send 1,000 winter uniforms to the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics,” according to a source who was involved in the wholesale purchase of Chinese goods and was familiar with Readovka’s plans at the time.

During that same period, “war correspondent” Mikhail Potepkin, who came under U.S. sanctions two years earlier for heading the Wagner Group front company Meroe Gold, began working for Readovka. According to a former Readovka employee who spoke to Meduza, Potepkin was still working with entities belonging to Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin and was tasked with keeping track of Kostylev’s procurement of winter coats.

The person Kostylev charged with organizing the purchase of the uniforms in China and transporting them to Russia was Ilya Prints, the husband of Readovka senior editor Elizaveta Prints, two sources told Meduza. In their account, Elizaveta Prints is Kostylev’s “right hand” — after February 24, she headed up the outlet’s “rollout of foreign broadcasting,” which refers to its English-language version, Readovka World (which has 14,000 subscribers on Telegram), and the channel’s office in the Donbas.

Ilya Prints had not previously worked at Readovka, but he does have a sole proprietorship registered in the Smolensk region. In November 2022, Kostylev registered two LLCs: “Prints Corporation,” which specializes in wholesale clothing and footwear, and “Barkhat Tim,” which specializes in “non-clothing textile products.” He planned to use these companies to import ordinary winter coats from China and sew various Russian military units’ insignias on them, Meduza’s sources said. According to them, the contract promised to be lucrative: the Russian Defense Ministry had previously purchased sets of winter military uniforms at prices ranging from 15,000 to 100,000–200,000 rubles (a range from $194 to $2,588), depending on the fabric used.

But by the time Kostylev reached a deal with his Chinese supplier, China had blocked exports of khaki-colored winter coats to Russia in order to avoid violating Western sanctions, according to a source (Meduza was unable to independently verify this information). As a result, Kostylev’s plan failed, a source who works for a firm that supplies goods from China and who knows Ilya Prints personally told Meduza. A former Readovka employee confirmed that Kostylev, Elizaveta, and Ilya Prints did not fulfill the contract.

After their failure to supply the uniforms, according to two former Readovka employees, Kostylev “walked around white-faced,” while Potepkin was “enraged.” Potepkin resigned from the outlet and went on to work on other Defense Ministry contracts with different suppliers, while Readovka continued publishing the news stories ordered by Dialog.

Neither Kostylev nor Dialog head Vladimir Tabak responded to Meduza’s questions. Potepkin said that he worked at Readovka until mid-December, that his only role was as a columnist, and that he’s “not aware of any supplies of anything.” Evgeny Prigozhin’s press service responded to Meduza’s questions about the tycoon’s work with Readovka and the supply of military uniforms by saying, “This isn’t publicly important information, [and] you fall under the category of provocative and hostile media, so we don’t consider it appropriate to answer your request.”

After this report was originally published in Russian, Alexey Kostylev posted the following message on Telegram:

For some reason, we thought that these once-respected journalists would report on our development over the past year, if from a position of hostility. But to our surprise, the foreign agent outlet instead released this shameless bullshit that’s absolutely incoherent and illogical.

The following day, March 23, Readovka announced the launch of its own clothing brand, under which it plans to sell, among other things, winter coats.

L'Ukraine sera complètement en feu si Kiev attaque la Crimée.

L'ambassade de Russie aux États-Unis a accusé les États-Unis de confirmer leur implication directe dans le conflit en Ukraine, à la suite des remarques de la secrétaire d'État adjointe américaine Victoria Nuland, qui a déclaré que les bases militaires russes en Crimée étaient des cibles légitimes pour l'Ukraine. L'attaché de presse de l'ambassade, Igor Girenko, a déclaré que les remarques de Nuland confirmaient l'attitude belligérante des États-Unis envers la Russie. Dmitri Medvedev, vice-président du Conseil de sécurité de la Russie, a également répondu en disant que la Russie utilisera tous les types d'armes, sans restriction, en réponse à toute attaque sur son territoire, tandis que Maria Zakharova, porte-parole officielle du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, a sarcastiquement conseillé les États-Unis à se concentrer plutôt sur le problème des ovnis et des ballons blancs. Read the full article

Russia on Monday said more than 60 soldiers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on Russian-controlled territory in a New Year assault, the biggest loss of life reported by Moscow so far. Kyiv took responsibility for the strike which it said took place in the occupied city of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine on New Year’s Eve. In an extremely rare announcement following criticism by Russian military correspondents, the defence ministry in Moscow said 63 Russian servicemen were killed “as a result of a strike by four missiles” in Makiivka. It was the biggest loss of life reported by the Russian defence ministry so far in a conflict that has dragged on since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade on February 24 last year. The Russian ministry said US-supplied Himars rocket systems had been used and the target was a temporary deployment point. Late on Monday, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement that its forces were behind the strikes on Makiivka. “Up to 10 units of enemy military equipment of various types were destroyed and damaged,” the general staff said. Earlier in the day the strategic communications department of Ukraine’s armed forces said nearly 400 Russian troops were killed in Makiivka. The general staff, which usually communicates on such incidents, did not confirm the figure and said the human “losses” were still being established. Russian war correspondents, who have gained influence in recent months, said hundreds could have been killed in the strike on a vocational school in Makiivka and accused Russia’s top commanders of not learning from past mistakes. Former Russian separatist leader Igor Strelkov said the troops, largely consisting of mobilised Russians, were stationed in an unprotected building that was “almost completely” destroyed because ammunition stored on the premises detonated in the strike. He said “hundreds” have been killed and wounded. “Ten months into the war it is dangerous and criminal to consider the enemy a fool who does not see anything,” said Andrei Medvedev, deputy speaker of the Moscow city legislature. The Samara governor, Dmitry Azarov, said that among the victims were residents of his region, adding that a hotline was set up for their relatives. On social media, some accused the Russian authorities of downplaying the death toll. “Dear God, who will believe in the figure of 63? The building has been completely destroyed,” one Russian, Nina Vernykh, wrote on the country’s largest social network, VKontakte. An announcement on the social network urged Russians to collect clothes, medicines and equipment for those who survived the strike. “Everything that the mobilised had on them remains under the rubble,” said the announcement. Another announcement said that residents in four of the region’s cities — Samara, Tolyatti, Syzran and Novokuibyshevsk — will gather on Tuesday to mourn the troops. – Explosion in Kyiv – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country’s forces shot down more than 80 drones since the start of 2023. “In the near future, this number may increase,” he said. He also said it was paramount to increase “the cost of a new mobilisation and the war on the whole for the terrorist state”. Russian strikes across Ukraine on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day killed at least five people and wounded dozens. Kyiv again came under fire from Iranian-made drones on Monday, although Ukrainian forces claimed the majority were shot down by air defences. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in northeastern Kyiv and said emergency services were dispatched. “An injured 19-year-old man was hospitalised in the Desnyanskyi district of the capital,” he said. On Monday evening, Kharkiv region head Oleg Synegubov said Ukraine’s second largest city and the surrounding region were once again attacked with Russian missiles. “Critical infrastructure has been targeted,” he wrote. General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed

forces, said the army had so far liberated “40 percent of the territories occupied after February 24”. – ‘Extreme hardship’ – After suffering a series of humiliating battlefield defeats, Moscow started to target electrical and other critical infrastructure in October. The strikes have caused sweeping blackouts and cut off water supplies and heating to civilians as the temperature in some regions dropped below freezing. The UN’s human rights chief has warned the campaign has inflicted “extreme hardship” on Ukrainians and decried probable war crimes by Russian forces. Moscow said its New Year’s attacks had targeted the pro-Western country’s drone production. Russia has accused Ukraine of targeting its domestic military sites and infrastructure in recent weeks. On Monday evening, Mikhail Razvozzhayev, governor of the Crimean port of Sevastopol, said two drones had been shot down over the Black Sea. Earlier in the day, Russian officials said a Ukrainian drone had struck an energy facility in the southwestern Bryansk region neighbouring Ukraine. Authorities in the southwestern region of Voronezh said a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone had been shot down.