Alexey Smirnov wandered with his mother, who begged for alms, lived in a boarding school and was a street child until the 2000s Source: Alexey Smirnov / Vk.com – I just decided to save this guy, a loser who is always somewhere. outskirts and he is embarrassed to go to the store because he wears torn clothes. I protect him in every possible way and hope that no one will offend him. Now Alexey Smirnov manages a YouTube channel with an audience of almost two million, and provides humanitarian assistance to civilians in an armed conflict zone. But his childhood was spent in terrible conditions, which were allegedly led by Balabanov himself. As a teenager, he wandered the streets of Khanty-Mansiysk, slept in a travel bag, collected bottles so that he could eat the cheapest custard noodles once a day. Until the age of 20, the young man lived completely without documents. He received his first passport through the court. And then, with the same tenacity, he headed to the capital. But a few years later he decided to escape from the Moscow crowd to Donbass. Our colleagues from 72.RU tell how a homeless child became a millionaire blogger and the creator of a humanitarian battalion. In this video we tell how Alexey became a video blogger and volunteer in Donbass Source: Alexandra TonkuMother begged for alms, and his father. tried to kill Alexey was born in 1984 in the village of Pogorelka, Abatsky district. He grew up in a large family, besides him, his mother had four more sons; All from different fathers. His mother did not particularly like children and, as Alexei himself later admitted, gave birth only to beg. [заведено] a criminal case for once stealing someone else’s child to beg. And when the child grew up, but also, apparently, wiser, he was simply thrown away. Mother’s money was spent on some booze, some parties, to which, of course, no one invited you,” Alexey said in an interview Pogorelka is a small village of one street and one alley Source: Safe-rgs.ru Boy didn’t do this. has a father or knew. He calls the man from whom he got his last name and a few more painful memories to add to his piggy bank. In one interview, Smirnov told how his father hated him and tried to kill him several times: “I don’t remember how old I was, it feels like I was either three or four.” I’m just very young. And I remember how much this father hated me, that he tried to lock me in the bathroom, completely flooding it, leaving me propped up. [дверь]. Grandfather saved me. Another time he tried to drown me. He threw me into a stream, into a river. And I remember these bubbles before my eyes, my grandfather’s hand, and he pulled my hair. Alexey did not live long with his mother. As a child, he was hospitalized with frostbite on his hands and feet, but escaped from there back to his mother. However, at that moment there was no one in the barracks where they lived with their family. Just a pile of potato peelings, under which lay his little brother with a broken head. After this, Alexey ended up in the Talovsky boarding school in the Voronezh region. They ate chicken only on New Year’s Eve. He stayed there for several years until his grandmother reunited the whole family and took all five brothers from boarding schools in different cities. to his home in Ugra, in the village of Bolshiye Leushi. In addition to her grandchildren, the woman was in the care of her seven children. A year after she took the boys, her husband was killed by a drug addict with a chainsaw, leaving the woman to raise 12 children alone. The family lived from hand to mouth, and their only food was potatoes from the garden and milk. Alexey recalled that chicken was “elevated to the rank of royal food” for him, because he could only afford it on New Year’s. Payments for grandchildren were not made due to the children’s basic lack of documents. Until the age of 20, Smirnov lived without a passport. “This happened because of a 1992 law, according to which a person who was in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union must confirm his citizenship,” Alexey told reporters. – And I was a subject of the streets, because until 1993 I was a street child. Later I ended up in a boarding school, but I didn’t have documents. But a request to the village of Pogorelka, where I was born, yielded nothing. During this time I had no documents, and my grandmother’s guardianship was finally taken away. So after 9th grade I ended up with my brother in Khanty-Mansiysk. He entered the master of construction and finishing, and I tried by hook or by crook to enter the 10th grade in the Samarov region. We had nowhere to live, we worked part-time so that we could at least have something to eat. The teachers watched me for the first six months and said: “Apparently, you won’t be able to bring the documents. And since you are losing consciousness from hunger, then let’s solve the problems first, and then let’s go to study. Alexei and his brothers were raised by their grandmother after boarding school. She found the boys and took all five of them to her Source: Alexey Smirnov / Vk.com From a janitor to a journalist, Alexey survived in terrible conditions. A 16-year-old teenager sold bottles to make some money. With his own money, he could only afford cheap Alexander and Sophia noodles. “At that time, the governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug was Alexander Filippenko,” the blogger said. – It seemed to me that only he could help me (get documents. – Ed.). I came to see him, but they didn’t let me in because I didn’t have documents. Miraculously, a woman from the reception noticed me and let me in to see the governor. And he enrolled me in vocational school No. 10 for shipping, where they gave me a dormitory. I studied and practiced for several years, but it turned out that I had a color anomaly and was unsuitable for the profession. I still had no documents. I was kicked out of school too. One day he read an advertisement in the newspaper about a vacancy for a photojournalist. At that time, the young man had no documents, no education, and even the ability to type. For six months he worked for free at a newspaper as an ordinary cleaner, and in the evening, when everyone had left, he learned to work on a computer. In 2004, Alexey finally received his first passport. We had to achieve this through the courts. A year later I entered the Faculty of Journalism at Ugra University. After this, the young man got a job in another publication, and even later began publishing the newspaper “My City Without Censorship.” The owner of the media was Ugra journalist Viktor Fedosenko. The publication was published once a week and specialized in investigative materials. Most of the newspaper’s articles were devoted to critical materials, the heroes of which were officials, politicians and businessmen of various levels. The film is based on real events and tells a terrible story about five abandoned children, whose editors were persecuted and regularly collaborated with the Glasnost Defense Foundation (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation in 2015), the New Eurasia Foundation and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. Because of threats, Smirnov had to leave for Yekaterinburg, where he decided to change his occupation and began making social films. There he decided that cinema is something where you can say something, but not point a finger at a person. That’s why the idea came to make a social film “The Cradle” (18+). I did this in 2011. I simply took as a basis the events that happened to me, as well as an incident in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, when children froze to death in a sewer mine. As a result, the film became a mandatory program in many prisons and also became a benefit for showing to low-income families. For example, in the film there is a scene where the main character takes out a banana skin from a basket – a grocery store. Nobody eats them, but for street children they are a godsend. “All this happened in my orphan life,” Alexey Smirnov later admits. He almost finished working on the film “Archi” (18+), but the film was never released, and so his directorial career began. The young man was invited to Moscow to produce his own feature film “Somnambulist” (18+). Some of the filming took place in Yekaterinburg, the other in Moscow. The film was released in 2012. The music for the film was written by the lead singer of the Machete group, Yaroslav Maly. The plot is based on the personal story of Smirnov, who suffered from sleepwalking as a child. The film intertwines two branches of history: one is a chronicle of the main character’s illness, and the second is a fictional story of the character’s life as an adult. The next project was supposed to be the film “Archie” (18+). . . According to Alexey, it was 90% filmed. The film stars Arthur Smolyaninov (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation in 2023) and Yanis Politov for free. Everything was going well until at one point Smirnov decided to radically change his life: “I had an internal drama when I wanted to run away from everything and do something real, without pretending, when I would have to throw parties, go to parties. a lot of cocktails and girls,” Smirnov told reporters. “As a result, the money that I had to spend on the film was invested in people in Donbass. These stories became a cold shower for me and pulled me out of the cycle of cinema and parties. Dramatic thoughts about failure “Somnambulist” (18+) became the first full-length film by Alexey Smirnov Source: Kinopoisk.ru Humbat “Angel”, prison and “Big Caliber” Alexey used the money allocated for the project for humanitarian aid. So, in 2014, a Moscow director and former street child went to Donbass as a volunteer. There he created the “Angel” humanitarian battalion, which helped civilians in the zone of armed conflict. Participants delivered food and medicine to hot spots and evacuated victims. But in 2016, Smirnova was arrested by the DPR Ministry of State Security for illegal possession of weapons. He spent nine months in a pre-trial detention center in Donetsk: “I was sitting in a block where life prisoners are usually kept. I spent most of the time in isolation,” the ex-journalist recalled. “During this time, my consciousness changed. At first I appealed to conscience, justice and remembered how many people I saved. During this time, while we were helping, not a single Russian official said a kind word to us. In 2020, the Big Caliber channel appeared. As a leader, nicknamed Commander, he tests the strength of all types of weapons at the training ground Source: Alexey Smirnov / Vk.com After all charges were dropped, Smirnov turned the “Angel” battalion into an official base. A little later, in 2020, he created the YouTube channel “Large Caliber,” where he tests and talks about different types of weapons. The theme includes both Soviet classics (Kalashnikov assault rifle, Dragunov sniper rifle, the legendary PPSh and Mosin rifle), as well as more modern types of small arms, as well as grenades, flamethrowers, anti-tank mines, armored personnel carriers, MLRS and even tanks. . . Now the channel has more than 1.7 million subscribers, and Telegram has more than 300 thousand. According to Smirnov, funds from monetization of videos on YouTube and donations from subscribers go towards humanitarian assistance to people living in the war zone. Another portion of the money comes from the sale of homemade knives containing shell fragments. After the start of the Northern Military District, Alexey Smirnov remained in Donbass and continued to help civilians – once upon a time, in childhood. I gave myself [обещание]- Alexey said in an interview. – When I was seven years old, when my hands were frostbitten, I got blood poisoning. I ended up in a boarding school without documents, without anything. And the guy there read the Bible to me. Then I made a clear promise to myself, I remember. I said that when I grow up, I will help people like me. Since 2014, Alexey has been living in Donbass and even after the end of the enemies he does not plan to leave here. Source: Alexey Smirnov/Vk.com.
blogger of the “Large-Caliber Trouble” channel, journalist, director of the humanitarian battalion “Angel” – May 10, 2024 – Russia today
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