Dmitry Medvedev's duck. A Tale of Two Ducks

It appeared thanks to an investigative film by the Anti-Corruption Foundation about Medvedev’s secret dacha, on the territory of which a pond with a duck house was noticed. Since then, Medvedev's duck has become a symbol of the Putin regime and excessive spending by government officials. Rubber yellow ducks began to be often used at opposition rallies.

Origin

On September 15, 2016, an investigation was published on Alexei Navalny’s YouTube channel about the secret dacha of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Plyos. The quadcopter flew over a 6-meter fence and filmed a huge complex of buildings, some of which are historical, a ski slope with lifts and much more.

But what most attracted the attention of social media users was a pond with a small house, which the filmmakers signed as “The Duck’s House.”

The fact of the presence of a “duck house” at the no less impressive dacha of the prime minister caused a serious resonance among the Russian population. In andThe Internet reacted to this instantly, they started joking on Twitter, but then this topic appeared on Facebook and VKontakte.

Famous cartoonist Sergei Yolkin joked about Medvedev’s duck.

In March 2017, another FBK investigation about Medvedev was published: . The title of the film became a meme, and the investigation into corruption schemes and illegal income of the prime minister sparked a wave of protests throughout Russia. One of the symbols of all these rallies were yellow rubber ducks.

Meaning

“Medvedev’s Duck” is a symbol of the exorbitantly luxurious life of a government official. In a country where thousands of people live in poverty, the Prime Minister's duck having his own house has caused great outrage. It is also important that this information was presented in an ironic manner by Alexei Navalny, who has attracted a lot of public attention.

After rubber ducks began to appear en masse at opposition rallies, Medvedev’s duck became a uniquesymbol of protest movements in Russia.

It has long been known that in Russia property rights are unwritten and work informally. Usually, when discussing this story, they recall the legendary phrase of the Moscow mayor that there is no need to hide behind a piece of paper. You can own property in Russia only if your bosses are not against it, everyone knows this. But this same plot also suggests another perspective: in order to truly own property in Russia, use it, be able to transfer it, and so on, it is not at all necessary to have a formal piece of paper. Of course, an excellent example here is the so-called Medvedev dacha in Ples, about which I already wrote a few years ago “ New Newspaper” and to which Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has now drawn the public’s attention again.

Natalya Timakova, the press secretary of our Prime Minister, officially explained that according to the documents, the dacha does not belong to Medvedev and that he also does not rent it. At the same time, for inexplicable reasons, a government special communications system is located at the dacha. This gives rise to a logical paradox. If the special communication system is equipped with private land and for a private owner, this is downright sabotage. If the property is actually state-owned, then officials seem to need to report to taxpayers. In Plyos, a circle of Trotskyists has been discovered who propose incredible scenarios: before us is something neither private nor state, but Medvedev is simply there, for whom special communications have been equipped and also a house for a duck.

The life of the supposed prime minister's duck became a sensation. Her house in the center of the pond, discovered by FBK on the estate in Plyos using a quadcopter, became the center of attention on social networks. Theoretically, a duck should evoke affection, but in the case of Medvedev, on the contrary, it infuriates everyone. The leader of United Russia has been plagued by failures in recent months, so the duck was reminded of everything: his dormancy in the presidiums, and “no money,” and teachers’ salaries. Medvedev’s duck even displaced the undisputed headliners of the domestic political bestiary - Shuvalov’s dogs. Social media they joked that even Yanukovych had ostriches, as if pitying Medvedev, but actually this is a cruel irony. And the point here, apparently, is that citizens want to know at whose expense and in whose interests this banquet is being held. Who built a six-meter fence behind which a duck with special communications is hiding.

Duck owners (whoever they are) of course adhere to a different value system. It’s not a servile thing to stick your quadcopters into our affairs. This is approximately the agenda of these noble dons. The head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, does this especially beautifully (the editors do not have documents about whether Sechin has a duck and a house for it). This statesman and the businessman won the lawsuit against the Vedomosti newspaper. And now the publication is obliged to refute the information that Sechin is allegedly building a house on Rublevskoye Highway. And - in accordance with the well-known refined taste of the plaintiff - to destroy the paper copies of the newspaper with the corresponding publication.

The motivation for the claim was related to Vedomosti’s violation of Igor Ivanovich’s right to private life. It turns out that today Russia is structured something like this: no one officially owns anything. The only reliable exception is a duck house, but provided that there is a special communications center next to it. However, talking about this means divulging state secrets to the enemy, also known as the privacy of the best men of Russia.

Okay, let's talk about ducks. I have a very instructive story on this topic.

Against the backdrop of the British duck scandal, what is happening here looks even wilder. The huge one costs 30 billion rubles and is financed by gas oligarchs.

That there is a no-fly zone there.

Well, a lot of interesting things were revealed, including cut down birch groves due to “Ilyusha Medvedev’s allergies.”

And what? And nothing.

Okay, everything is clear to me with the authorities, prosecutors’ offices and deputies.

Well, what about the press? Even the remaining independent media are unable to keep something in the spotlight for more than one day. Not to mention the development of the plot.

Dear Russian journalists, do you think Cameron demanded Wiggers' resignation because he was so outraged by the house? No - he was simply crushed by the press. With endless publications they created such a background and such an intensity of pressure that the British Prime Minister was forced to do what the public wanted from him.

Great topic. Beautiful pictures. Traffic. Clicks. Interesting. Socially useful. And still no one does anything.

OK. This is not a post complaining about journalists. This is a post about the fact that in the beautiful Russia of the Future, the duck house incident will be resolved as in Britain, and not as we have now.

The fact is revealed --- the media and public opinion put pressure on politicians --- politicians resign.