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February 23, 2012
THE MASTER AND MIKHAIL
Are Putin and Prokhorov running for President against or with each other?
The New Yorker
by Julia Ioffe
On December 24, 2011, Mikhail Prokhorov—banking and mining billionaire, N.B.A. team owner, international playboy, and Russia's third-richest man—set out to be among the people. A crowd of about eighty thousand had come out to Moscow's Sakharov Avenue to demand free elections to lambaste Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
...
The urban professionals who made up the core of the Moscow protests have come to despise Putin, and they generally despise Communists. But they also don't have much love for Prokhorov. For most of them, he is a Kremlin stooge, taking orders from Putin, his ostensible opponent. According to this theory, which Prokhorov denies, his campaign is roughly equivalent to what would happen in Barack Obama persuaded T. Boone Pickens to run as an independent, in order to siphon votes from the actual Republican nominee.
The story on the Nets' owner's phony Russian presidential campaign contains some additional entertaining tidbits.
For one, like everyone else involved with the Nets and Atlantic Yards, Proky doesn't need sleep — until now:
"No, no, I'm not wilting," Prokhorov said, when I remarked on his posture. "I'm just catching up on sleep. I'm sleeping seven hours a night now! Before, it was four or five."
Of course, just because Proky's in bed, doesn't mean he's sleeping.
In general, Prokhorov is unapologetic about his predilections. ("How will I become president without a first lady?" he recently wrote on his Facebook page. "Let me tell you a secret: I had my first lady when I was seventeen.")
Ba-dum-ching.
Speaking of shtupping, Proky could maybe use marketing genius Brett Yormark's help with his Russian version of the Toyota Prius:
He began investing in high-tech and nanotechnology projects, which were being pushed by the Kremlin in its drive to diversify the Russian economy. One of these ventures is a Russian-made hybrid vehicle whose name, to the Russian ear, sounds like "Fuck-Mobile." Putin gave it a spin last spring and praised it as "a totally new product" with an "attention-grabbing" name.
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Posted by eric at February 23, 2012 11:46 AM