Vladimir Solovyov (TV presenter)

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was sanctioned by the European Union for being an apologist and propagandist for Russian state power. His rhetoric since the invasion, which has summoned the specter of apocalyptic global nuclear war, has elicited Western condemnation. He has also called for Stalinist-era type domestic repression against anyone who opposes the “special operation” against Ukraine.

On 23 February 2022, a day before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Solovyov was sanctioned by the European Union. He is barred from entering the EU countries so long as the sanctions remain in force, and all his EU domiciled assets have been frozen. His villa on Lake Como in Italy was later seized by Italian authorities. The seized properties were valued at 8 million euros, though the exact number of properties involved is unknown.

In the lead-up to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Solovyov claimed that Russia has "enough firepower for the full annihilation of the Ukrainian military infrastructure without an incursion of forces into Ukrainian territory. But we aren't preparing to do this." He later voiced support for Putin's invasion of Ukraine, saying that "Today is the day that a righteous operation was launched for the de-Nazification in Ukraine."

On 27 February 2022 Solovyov said he had been placed on a list of international sanctions after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that his ownership of real estate at Lake Como was at risk. Later, on March 5, 2022, The Guardian wrote that the Financial Guard of Italy seized his villa, along with billionaire Alisher Usmanov's property. On April 6, 2022, his villa on the shores of Lake Como caught fire and was severely damaged, in what was probably an intentional fire.

In March 2022 Solovyov warned: "if you think we're going to stop with Ukraine, think 300 times, I will remind you that Ukraine is merely an intermediate stage in the provision of the safety of the Russian Federation." He accused Western-backed Ukrainian "Banderites" of attempting to assassinate him because he is "Jewish anti-fascist."

On 20 April 2022, Solovyov talked on Russian state TV about a new stage of the war that started as part of the "special operation" against Ukraine. He said this new stage of war would be against "NATO's war machine and all its citizens", asserting that Russia "will show no mercy".

On 26 April 2022, while discussing the possibility of World War III and nuclear war with Solovyov on The Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said, "Personally, I think that the most realistic way is the way of World War III, based on knowing us and our leader, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin knowing how everything works around here, it's impossible—there is no chance—that we will give up…We're all going to die someday." Solovyov added, "But we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak."

Igor Albin, former Vice Governor of Saint Petersburg, wrote on his Telegram channel: "Crazy 'propagandists' will burn in hell. You don't scold your own in times of war, but you shouldn't be proud of them either. There will be no winners in a nuclear war!" In June 2022, Solovyov warned that the US-UK military shipments to Ukraine were seen by the Kremlin as an escalation of the conflict, saying that "I hope we'll live through this. If everything keeps progressing the way that it is, only a couple of mutants in Lake Baikal will survive; the rest will be destroyed in a massive nuclear strike."

On 13 May 2022, he complained that Russian troops were being sent to Ukraine with "hopelessly obsolete weapons."

On 18 August 2022, he suggested attacking Berlin, Paris, London and Brussels using missiles.

On 5 October 2022, he said that some high-ranking Russian commanders should be shot by firing squad. Speaking of the chaotic partial mobilization, Solovyov suggested recruitment officers who call up the wrong people should either be shot or sent to the front to fight themselves. The clip with fabricated satirical subtitles has been circulating online purporting to show Solovyov complaining about being drafted into the Russian army as part of Putin's partial mobilization.

On 8 October 2022, a fire broke out on the Crimean Bridge as a result of an explosion on the road part of the bridge. Solovyov urged retaliatory strikes across all Ukraine targeting "bridges, dams, railways, thermal power plants and other infrastructure facilities". He also called on Putin to reinstate Stalin’s counter-intelligence agency SMERSH – whose motto was "Death to Spies" – to suppress any internal opposition to the war in Ukraine.

Towards the end of November 2022, Solovyov suggested that Russia should attack Norway, since the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, is a Norwegian. This was not taken very seriously in Norway.

In April 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had stopped a Ukrainian neo-Nazi plot to kill Solovyov; the FSB then released video of a raid of the alleged plotters' flat, where a book signed with the words "Signature unclear", a green wig, three The Sims video game boxes, a Nazi-styled t-shirt, a portrait of Adolf Hitler, and Ukrainian passports were shown. Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Daily Telegraph reported that the video "raised suspicions that the foiled plot may have been a Russian intelligence hoax", as the signature seemed like "an apparent instruction carried out too literally", while The Sims boxes being shown could be an error "instead of mobile phone Sim cards that would have helped frame the plot." The supposed Ukrainian passports were also noted to have been outdated.

In February 2021, Solovyov was banned from the Clubhouse social networking app. In Latvia, Solovyov was included on the list of personae non gratae after he compared jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny with Adolf Hitler, saying that Hitler was a "very brave man" and "unlike this codpiece Führer [Navalny], he [Hitler] did not get out of army service." Alla Gerber, president of the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Centre, said:

In February 2020, FBK lawyer Alexander Golovach turned to the Investigative Committee with a request to check Solovyov's documentary Mussolini. Sunset on the subject of violation of the law "On counteraction to the rehabilitation of Nazism" and other normative legal acts. Golovach, in particular, referred to the statements of President Putin and the text of the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, mentioning fascism.

In May 2020, a petition on change.org started collecting signatures for banning Solovyov from entering Italy and the EU. The petition was addressed to the Italian Interior Minister, Luciana Lamorgese, and received the support of more than 200,000 people. Solovyov refused to comment on the appearance of this initiative.

In May 2019, during the protests in Yekaterinburg against the construction of the Cathedral of St. Catherine in the park near the Drama Theatre, Vladimir Solovyov called the protesting people "demons" and "devils", and promised to visit the city to purge them. In response to Solovyov, they began to sue him, he was even challenged to a duel.

Subsequently, in 2019, FBK discovered that Solovyov owned another villa on Lake Como and a Maybach car. In July 2019, FBK found that Solovyov has an Italian permanent residency; the next day, the founder of FBK, Alexei Navalny, was arrested.

On September 28, 2019, Boris Grebenshchikov uploaded the song "Evening M" on his YouTube channel, which described a typical television propagandist. ("M" stands for "Mudozvon", which is a rude Russian word.) Solovyov claimed that Grebenshchikov had "degraded to a coupletist," and also that "there is a program in Russia that has the word "Evening" in its name, alluding to the program "Evening Urgant". Grebenshchikov replied: "There is an insurmountable distance between "Evening U" and "Evening M" - as between dignity and shame."

In September 2019, the song "Evening Bullshitter [ru]" was dedicated to Solovyov.

In October 2019, he got into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest time on television as a host in the span of one week (25 hours 53 minutes and 57 seconds).

On October 30, 2019, the British television channel Channel 4 released the film The World According to Putin. It is a 50-minute set of fragments of Russian political talk shows and Vladimir Putin's speeches. The film included statements by Solovyov, in particular, that "Britain has degraded to the level of a public toilet". According to The Guardian columnist Stuart Jeffries, the film displayed the "propaganda machine in full swing – just the thing to distract from a nation in chaos".

Since September 2, 2018 he has hosted the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin. show on the channel Russia-1, in which for 1 hour he talks about the deeds done by the president over the past week. The intonation of the program, the selection of guests - in the premiere, they turned out to be only individuals connected with state power: the president's press secretary Dmitry Peskov and the State Duma deputy from United Russia Andrei Makarov - the co-host (VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin, has prompted a number of media outlets to consider the show to be an attempt to raise the rating of Putin.

In November 2018, a picket was held in St. Petersburg against Vladimir Solovyov. The police detained seven people, six of whom were soon released. A protocol was drawn up against one of the participants in the picket, Pavel Ivankin, under an administrative article on disobeying the lawful demand of a police officer. The picket participants, in particular, compared Solovyov with Julius Streicher, one of the main propagandists of Nazi Germany, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Der Stürmer.

In September 2017, during the broadcast of Channel One's program Evening Urgant, presenter Ivan Urgant said in response to the remark of former MTV Russia presenter Irena Ponaroshku about the face mask from the nightingale droppings brought to her studio: "First of all, this is a good name for a show on the "Russia" channel..." (The surname "Solovyev" is derived from "solovey", a Russian word for "nightingale".).

In June 2017, Solovyov called participants in an anti-corruption rally in Moscow "the eternal two percent of shit", "children of corrupt officials" and "majoritarian imbeciles", and he also stated that "if not for the police, the (counter protest) people would tear them to shreds". The statement was criticized by journalist Alexander Nevzorov. Solovyov continued to use similar remarks against some audience members and Russian opposition journalists.

In September 2017, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) discovered that Solovyov has a villa on Lake Como, Italy, three apartments in Moscow and a house in the Moscow region. FBK estimates the total cost of Solovyov's real estate in Moscow, the Moscow region and Pianello del Lario at 1 billion rubles ($17 mil).

In June 2016, he intervened in the election campaign, harshly criticizing the KVN actress Yulia Mikhalkova-Matyukhina, who took the "passing place" in the primaries of United Russia in the Sverdlovsk region, who built her campaign under the slogan "I can take care of myself, I can also take care of the country". After that Mikhalkova-Matyukhina withdrew her candidacy.

On February 19, 2014, on the air of the Full Contact program, Solovyov announced that "under the auspices of" the Faculty of Applied Political Science at the Higher School of Economics, "organized terrorist groups" were operating, which were preparing the "Maidan underground". The university made a statement that they reacted negatively to both Solovyov's statements and students' remarks, and attempts to link the educational institution with the political position of the participants in the scandal were regarded there as a provocation.

In June 2014, businessman Sergei Polonsky appealed to the Savelovsky court of Moscow with a claim for the protection of honour and compensation for moral damage in the amount of 200 million rubles against the "Vesti FM" radio station and Solovyov because of his broadcast in November 2013. Polonsky lost the lawsuit.

In August 2014, the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine included Solovyov in the sanctions list for his position on the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the Russo-Ukrainian War.

At the end of February 2014, together with a number of other pro-Putin journalists, public and political figures signed an appeal for the "All of us are Berkut" foundation, which was created mainly to support the members of the Ukrainian special unit "Berkut" which was involved in violence and shootings against Ukrainian protesters during Euromaidan and the Orange Revolution.

On New Year's Eve in 2013, the then popular Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Russian comedian Maxim Galkin, who spoke out against the war in Ukraine and fled Russia in 2022, performed together in a traditional New Year's program called "Little Blue Light" on the Russia-1 TV channel. Solovyov also appeared on the show as one of the presenters and danced in the audience during Zelenskyy's performance.

Currently, he is the presenter of a TV talk show, Duel on Rossiya 1 (2010–2014, 2015–2017). Solovyov also hosts a debate show, Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, on Rossiya 1.

The media often describe Solovyov as a propagandist. Solovyov regularly talks about his patriotism, the rapid development of Russia under Putin and the decline of the West. On November 21, 2007, at a pre-election rally forum in Luzhniki, Solovyov spoke in support of Putin and described him as a "strong, intelligent, talented leader" who loves the Motherland and does everything to make Russians proud of their country.

On October 19, 2006, as a presenter, he participated in a televised debate between the candidates for the post of the head of the Samara city district, Viktor Tarkhov and Georgy Limansky. During and after the broadcast, Solovyov insulted Tarkhov. After that, the candidate filed a lawsuit against him for 10 million rubles. After a year and a half, the original jurisdiction partially satisfied the claim, deciding to collect 70 thousand rubles from the defendant.

In the fall of 2005, Vladimir Solovyov was awarded the TEFI Russian television prize as the best interviewer.

In December 2004, Solovyov featured as a solo singer in his first CD album Solovyinye Treli (Nightingale Warbles).

Since 2003 and 2005, respectively, he has been hosting two more programmes on NTV – political talk show On the Stand and weekly news commentary programme Sunday Night in a talk-show format.

In 1999 he first appeared as a presenter on two TV talk shows: The Process on the ORT channel (with Alexander Gordon) (1999-2001) and Passion for Solovyov on the TNT channel (1999-2002). These were followed by his own projects Breakfast with Solovyov and Nightingale Night on TV6, the latter being the final show broadcast on the station before it was shut down in early 2002, as well as Look Who's Coming!, Duel on TVS and Orange Juice on NTV.

Solovyov, a member of the Russian elite, graduated from an English-language secondary school in Moscow, and obtained graduate degrees in economics. He was a teacher until 1990. By 1999 he had become a presenter on two talk TV shows. From that time he has hosted a number of other programs. He is also a singer.

In 1989, Solovyov completed graduate studies at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow with the defence of his thesis "Basic tendencies of new materials production and its efficiency factors in the USA and Japan". He became a candidate of economic science (a PhD, second (of three) Russian graduate degrees in economics). He taught physics, mathematics, and astronomy at the School No. 27 until 1990.

In 1980, he graduated from the elite, English-language secondary School no. 27 in Moscow, where the children and grandchildren of diplomats and members of the Central Committee of the CPSU used to study. He entered the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, graduating in 1986.

Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov (Russian: Владимир Рудольфович Соловьёв, born October 20, 1963) is a Russian TV presenter, propagandist and apologist of the Russian leadership. He is an anchor on the television show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov on Russia-1.