Celebrating the Best in Russian Security
By Kevin O’Flynn, Staff Writer
Moscow Times, Russia
Feb 7 2005
Ruslan Kochetkov / For MT
Ultimatum performing at the ZUBR awards ceremony on Saturday, which
honored the best in the Russian security industry.
Everyone needs to feel like a star now and again, and in an industry
reliant on danger and close run-ins with death, security guards are
not much different.
More than 500 people packed the security industry’s version of the
Academy Awards ceremony on Saturday to cheer the winners in
categories such as best bodyguard and best fire protection equipment.
The entire industry seemed to have been given the night off for the
show, held at the School of Dramatic Art on Ulitsa Sretenka, where
there was no one at the door and nary any shaven-headed men talking
into their thumb.
Now in their second year, the security awards are known as the ZUBR
(for za ukrepleniye bezopasnosti Rossii, or for the strengthening of
the security of Russia) and are billed rather grandly as one of the
new “civil society initiatives used to cooperate with the government
in the fight against new threats.” The word zubr means bison, so all
the award winners went home with a large metal bison.
“I think the industry is worthy of having such events,” Vadim
Ignatov, a winner in the information defense awards, said after the
ceremony, still clutching his framed diploma. “It’s like those best
film awards, the Oscars.”
If the names of awards such as best product in the sphere of
information security and best product in the sphere of personal
defense and rescue did not quite trip off the tongue as easily as
best actor or best film, the organizers still tried to make it as
grand an occasion as possible. Representatives of accounting firm
KPMG came up on stage to affirm that the voting had been done
correctly. Security people are an untrusting bunch.
The ceremony was one of large pauses interspersed with large dashes
of pomp. It began with a short-skirted troupe of female drummers
marching around the stage as the Russian flag fluttered in the
background on two large video screens. An all-girl pop group,
Ultimatum, then mimed its way through a song extolling Russia.
Best bodyguard went to Sergei Shchetinin for winning a national
shooting contest. To receive the award for him, he sent Dmitry
Fonarev, the president of the National Bodyguard Association, who was
part of Mikhail Gorbachev’s security team when he was the Soviet
leader.
Even without the awards, those in the security business have a right
to be pleased. The industry was worth $2 billion last year, and the
market is growing by more than 40 percent a year, according to Sergei
Trapani, who handles international marketing for Grotec publishers,
which puts out magazines on security themes and was one of the
organizers of the award ceremony.
The security business is not just bodyguards and reinforced jeeps.
“It is all around us,” Trapani said, pointing to fire safety systems
in schools and apartments, and plans by the Moscow government to
require most apartments to have video equipment installed on doors.
Russia is one of the leaders in the bodyguard business, Fonarev said,
and foreign experts come here to see how Russians provide protection
against assassination and kidnapping. There are 17,000 bodyguards in
Russia, with an average monthly salary of 750 euros ($965), he said.
The main stars of the ceremony, Armenian Prime Minister Andranik
Margaryan and Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin, did not show up to
receive their awards. Stepashin could be seen Saturday attending a
similar Hollywood-inspired show, broadcast on television and with
many more all-girl groups than at the security awards, to celebrate
the 10th anniversary of the Audit Chamber.