The companies of Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov), who is known as “Putin’s confessor,” have been able to earn at least $20 billion over the past seven years, some of this money they have earned on their own by selling tickets and renting premises, but most of the funds are government orders. This is reported by the publication "Important stories" in its investigation.
Of these funds, since 2015, the historical parks “Russia is my country” have earned about 10 billion rubles, and funds associated with Shevkunov have received almost the same amount. In particular, the My History fund received a total of 3 billion rubles from Gazpromneft in 2021 alone, which is half a billion less than the fund’s total annual budget. In addition, the National Fund for the Development of Humanitarian Knowledge "Perspektiva" received 485 million rubles. The main revenues were from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and Gazprom Neft, and the Revival of Cultural Heritage in the City of Pskov Foundation also received a subsidy of 1.35 billion from the state budget.
Tikhon Shevkunov's projects have always been focused on pro-government actions and exhibitions, and have repeatedly been criticized for explicit political propaganda, non-science and clericalism. At the same time, nothing was said at the exhibitions about the role of the USSR in unleashing the Second World War, historians specify. From February 2022, they began to specialize in praising the so-called "special operation", justifying Russia's attack on Ukraine. For example, in May, in the Chelyabinsk historical park “Russia is my history”, the exhibition “Archives testify. Ukrainian nationalism during the Second World War. Assistance in organizing the exhibition was provided by the local department of the FSB.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the buildings of the “historical parks” were decorated with the letters Z, and expositions like “NATO. Chronicle of cruelty. The exhibition was advertised on Channel One showing a Ukrainian military uniform created according to “NATO standards”, an American flag “removed from the car of the Azov people”.
As The Insider reported in 2014, Tikhon Shevkunov acted as an intermediary in negotiations between the heads of the Donbass separatists of the “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev and the Kremlin. In particular, Shevkunov transmitted through Malofeev the necessary speeches that Igor Girkin was supposed to publicly deliver.
