“I overslept the beginning of the war. On the night of February 23-24, I flew to Vilnius, arrived early in the morning, and went to bed. I woke up around noon and opened the Internet… I started calling-first my family, then my partner and my Ukrainian friends. I was confused, confused, depressed , just like everyone else.
Until February 24, I didn’t believe this would happen. I thought it was just another rattle of weapons. At most, there will be another annexation, this time of Donetsk and Luhansk. Also bad, but still not bombs on Kiev. From today, this seems like the best case scenario.
— You are a businessman, and doing business requires farsightedness and the ability to anticipate the situation. Or not?
– Unfortunately, the fact that businessmen have a special political insight is a myth. They don’t have it.
“Reproached yourself?”
– no. It makes sense to reproach yourself if you know that you could change something, fix it. I couldn’t change or fix anything.
—Did you have a plan B?
” I understood that, in comparison with the anti-war Russians and, especially, with the Ukrainians, we are in a privileged position. The war barely affected us economically. Touched – emotionally.
— What was the reason for your departure from Russia in 2008?
— The second Chechen War, the Yukos case, the arrest of Khodorkovsky. The departure was not immediate, it took several years. Then I came there-not often, once or twice a year, but Russia was not a cut-off territory for me. Until February 2022, I didn’t consider myself an expat. Now I don’t have a chance to go back. And there is no desire either.
— You were born in a small village in Primorsky Krai. It’s called beautiful-Transfiguration. When was the last time you were there?
— I don’t know, maybe 20 years ago?.. I have no sense of “lost small Homeland”, no nostalgia. I may miss people, but I don’t miss places or rocks. I am not a “person from the village of Preobrazhenie”, not a “person from Russia”.
“And who?”
— I consider myself an earthling. I was born on this planet. Just like the rest of us, in fact.
— How did Pristanište start?
—Even before the war, Marat Gelman introduced me to Vladimir Shmelev. Volodya ran the Adriatic school in Montenegro, and I, as an expert who moved the company here in 2008, sometimes gave him some advice on how things work here.
On the second or third day after February 24, it became clear that this is a real war, it will last for a long time. So there will be refugees, there will be people who have lost everything. We all saw the chronicles of the Great Patriotic War, imagined what it meant. We called Vladimir and his brother Alexander, and they said yes, there are already a lot of refugees. On March 5, the Shmelevs rented a house – the first Pristanište shelter. My partner and friend Vyacheslav Taran and I became its trustees and sponsors.
— Was investing in Pristanište a common decision for you?
– Absolutely unanimous and unique. No one sat down and analyzed it-it’s worth it, it’s not worth it, like for a long time, no business plans, no Excel spreadsheets. It was our common reaction to help. If you want to help – you need to do something.
— Inasha, the friendship with the Battering Ram grew out of a common business? Or did the shared business grow out of friendship?
— We were classmates, we became friends at the Institute. We did business many years later.
— So a business doesn’t necessarily end in the collapse of a friendship?”
— Not in our case. For me, business is possible only when you trust your partner, and he trusts you. Vyacheslav Taran died in 2022. It’s very hard for me without him.
— In addition to Pristanište, you support the forum of Russian-language culture “Slovo Novo”. Why? Don’t you think that Russian culture confessed its helplessness when it failed to stop the war?
Whether it is Russian-speaking or not, any culture moves humanity forward. And that’s why it needs support. The Russian-speaking culture, which for the last 100 + years has been in a crisis – not a creative one, but rather an institutional one – all the more so. Recent events have marked a global split in the culture, a significant part of it was outside the Russian Federation. But this culture seems to me to be the only platform that can bring people together and give them hope.
– What has changed during the 3 years of the war?
– Unfortunately, we are used to it: another shell, another bomb, more victims. You realize that this is terrible, but it doesn’t paralyze you, it doesn’t deprive you of the ability to think about something else. Probably, this is a protective property of the human psyche: to get used to it and live.
– And yet, you continue to help Pristanište
– Yes, because Pristaniste continues to help those who suffer from the war. You don’t have to sit in a daze in front of the monitor and scroll through the feed. But you need to help. Currently, the foundation focuses on helping Ukrainian children and women who have been living under constant stress for three years. Two weeks in Pristaniste allows them to forget about it at least a little.
– Do you know any other organization that would help war victims regardless of the color of their passport?
– I don’t know, but I think there are such organizations. They can’t be large. While the war is going on, and long after it is over, it is impossible to create a large healthy community of Ukrainians and Russians. Too much pain, too much conflict. When scaling, this is doomed, but in small communities it is possible. And these small communities are doing a great job.
– Since 2022, the world has changed radically, and not for the better. What do you see as a fulcrum when the ground goes out from under your feet?
“We are witnessing – and participating in-the collapse of the previous world order. Past rules don’t work. There are no new ones yet. Well, our parents had to go through revolutions, repressions, wars and other cataclysms. Now it’s all up to us. But if their generation was able to survive that meat grinder-probably, we will somehow cope.
– Which of the people who have ever lived on earth would you like to talk to?
“Probably not with anyone. To talk is to ask. I do not know what I would like to ask someone.
– Books that you have read recently?
– “Random Lives” by Oleg Radzinsky. This is an honest story about yourself, a biography that is close to us in time. You can try it on yourself and think about whether you are capable of this kind of courage or not. “The Story of a German” by Sebastian Hafner. Here the time seems to be far away from us. And the described feelings are as consonant as possible. And anyone who is in the Balkans should probably watch the films “No Man’s Land” and “Tour”. This is the history that the people among whom we now live and who we need to understand have gone through.
– Why are you involved in charity projects?
– Everyone chooses how to spend their money. What is important to him, what is interesting, he spends on it. It’s important to me – on this.
Interview recorded
