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An advertisement calling for backing the constitutional reforms that President Vladimir Putin will submit to a referendum in July is drawing widespread criticism for his strong anti-gay message.

The video was made by a Russian media group called Patriot, linked to Putin's allied businessman and contractor Evgeny Prigozhin, the same who finances the St. Petersburg trolley 'farm' from which hate messages have been broadcast on networks. social. The company has been sanctioned in the USA.

The video tells a story with an 'unhappy' ending. A young boy from a Russian orphanage discovers that he is being adopted by a gay couple. "Here's your new mom. Don't be mad," says one of them while the other man, with his face made up, takes out a small dress for the boy to put on , who in turn lowers his head in sorrow. "Which Russia do you choose?" says the voiceover. "Decide the future of the country. Vote for the amendments to the constitution."

EL MUNDO has spoken to one of the actors featured in the ad. Alexander Filimonenko, who plays one of the gay adopters, says he did not know the content of the ad until he arrived at the recording location. "I just knew I had to play a non-traditionally oriented person," says Filimonenko, using the usual periphrase with which they refer to gays in Russia. " Probably if I had known I would have refused , now there are a lot of negative messages against me and I have LGBT friends who are very good people, everyone has their choice," he explains by phone from Saint Petersburg.

Filimonenko is a face known for having participated in Dom2 (a kind of Big Brother) in Russia six years ago and in some series. He is "neither for nor against" the idea of ​​restricting marriage only to couples of different sexes. But he wants to clarify that with the video "I did not intend to offend anyone, because I am only a character there, it does not mean that this is my position." In fact "he was not going to participate" in the referendum, but later he proclaimed that he would go to the polls on July 1 to vote against. He decided this after being fined for violating the solitary confinement. Unfairly, according to him, because there was no prior warning. Last night "with a cooler head", he assured that he does not know if he will participate or not on the day of the vote. Like many of his neighbors.

Actor Alexander Filimonenko.

According to polls, the Russians will vote on July 1 in favor of constitutional changes that would allow Putin to be re-elected president. The challenge now is to avoid high abstention. This homophobic announcement can help, because the gay issue is an issue that unnerves a very conservative part of society but that could still stay home because it is not unconditional of the president.

Although the most important amendment is the one that allows Putin to present himself in 2024 as if he no longer had two terms as president, the video takes advantage of another of the changes proposed for the constitutional text: the written stipulation and in a clear way that marriage is a union between a man and a woman .

Patriot released his ad on social media on Monday. It has had tens of thousands of visits. The company says that it recorded the video without using state money and defends its content and the constitutional proposal: "We believe that this amendment is the result of a coherent and logical policy of the president of our country." It was in 2013 when Vladimir Putin signed the law that prohibits the "promotion of homosexuality among minors". The move was widely criticized outside of Russia, but it served to consolidate its conservative base at a time when many liberal middle-class youths were protesting on the streets about his return to the Kremlin.

Putin's Chef's Specialty

Evgeny Prigozhin is the man who pays for the controversial but timely message. He does not grant interviews and his activity is partly a mystery . After a difficult youth in Leningrad, he spent nine years in prison for robbery. He is known as 'Putin's Chef' and his fortune has been on the rise since 2001 he personally served lunch at his luxurious restaurant to two exceptional guests: Putin himself and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. Soon he was in charge of catering for the Kremlin banquets . He is also responsible for the menu of school canteens and canteens for Russian soldiers.

Various media outlets have targeted Prigozhin as the creator of the Wagner group of mercenaries, deployed in places of conflict such as Syria, Libya or some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where Russia protects its interests or seeks new opportunities. According to the US, Prigozhin has "extensive business" with the Russian Defense Ministry.

But the activity that has caused the most problems abroad is propaganda. Last year the US Treasury Department announced new sanctions against him for "directing Russian efforts to influence the United States elections in 2018 [the legislative mid-terms]." The Kremlin has always washed its hands in this matter. Dimitri Peskov, a presidential spokesman, denies knowing the existence of the 'trolley farm': "We do not know anything about this agency and we have never had contact with it ... if it exists."

In 2017 several former workers of this 'farm' described to EL MUNDO the methods they used to place their messages 'online ': provoke discussions on the networks by creating groups formed by three people in which one of them plays the role of "bad" criticizing the Kremlin for prompting the other two to reply, praising Moscow's leadership, and always with better arguments. Ukraine, USA, NATO ... the topics were very broad and the 'commentators' were distributed by rooms according to their profile. In order to keep the 'right tone', "ideological checks" on the "farm" were constant in a building that its former workers remember as "dark, cold, and gloomy, with doors dividing each section."

IT'S NOT HATE, IT'S 'PATRIOTISM'

The video against gays has been widely criticized but it will not be the last. Content factory Patriot says it continues to work on spots like that. For years Patriot has been presuming to "counter" the "anti-Russia" media that "do not realize the good things that are happening in our country." Four Saint Petersburg-based news websites are accessed from its portal: the RIA FAN news agency (which has paid for the announcement), Narodnye Novosti, Ekonomika Segodnya and Politika Segodnya.

"I agree that the issue is ambiguous, but the meaning of this video is not in campaigning against homosexuals, as some opposition representatives are trying to show," explains Patriot coordinator Nikolai Stolyarchuk. "The main issue is not the fight against the LGBT community, but the defense of the family institution as the union of a man and a woman." "I am also of the opinion that it is not possible to adopt children of parents of the same sex," he adds.

Stolyarchuk assures that they make "this and other videos" with a simple objective: to clearly explain to the citizens what the meaning of each amendment is "and why they cannot be ignored". In his opinion, "many do not understand the essence of the amendments, and in our videos we simply and clearly show the possible consequences."

The first "explanation" of Putin's patriots has been a viral success. According to the BBC published last year, the combined audience of their media is estimated to be greater than that of the state news agency Tass or RT television, another key piece of the Kremlin to counter the work of "western media", although sometimes it is even done by slandering other journalists by accusing them of things like receiving money from third parties.

Opponent Alexei Navalny, whose old ties to Russian nationalism are known, posted the video on social media with sarcastic comments. "Putin's officials have gone completely insane on the issue of homosexuality."

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