Russian President Vladimir Putin did not have a purposeful strategy to help Arkady and Boris Rothenberg or other "oligarchs of Putin's era".

This is written by The New Yorker, transfers republic. En.

So, according to a source close to the Kremlin, these statements are "fantasy".

"He may have agreed to help them, and at some point when they became influential and successful, he realized that they could be useful: it's good if there is a caste of very rich people who owe you," the interlocutor explained..

At the same time, the former wife of Boris Rotenberg, Irene Lambert, did not rule out that Putin assisted the Rothenberg business. As she said, "they were friendly in the childhood, these relations were not torn".

"It is logical to assume that at least some advice was given, and, perhaps, there was help here and there," she said..

According to the woman, the business for Rothenberg was an accident.

"Where would they be if the USSR did not collapse?" Arkady would run the state sports organization, and Boris would become a successful coach, "she added..

In turn, a former KGB officer Nikolai Vashchilin, who went on sports training with Arkady Rothenberg and Putin, said that Rothenberg and Putin became closer when they participated in competitions in sambo.

According to Vashchilin, both of them "loved the jokes". For example, on one of the May Day demonstrations, they threw balloons with wire, which were carried by protesters.

Another childhood friend of Rotenberg and Putin said that they took candy from children in a sports camp.

The interlocutor of The New Yorker, who told the magazine about Putin's attitude to the Rothenberg business, summarizing, suggested that, as a result, "Putin's oligarchs" formed a "shadow cabinet".

As reported by the "Observer", earlier in Russia they revealed the shocking truth about Putin's friends.

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