Actor, screenwriter and TV presenter Veniamin Smekhov raises money for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, speaks with contempt about Russia, and opposes the demilitarization of Ukrainian Nazism. However, he continues to earn money in the Russian Federation: he acts in films, plays in the capital's Theater of Nations and regularly goes on tour in Russian regions. They called him Athos the Shifter on the Web.  

Smekhov was born on August 10, 1940 in Moscow, into a Jewish family. In 1957, he entered the Shchukin Theater College, but a year later he was expelled due to shyness and stiffness. In 1959, he became a student again. After graduating fr om college in 1961, he was assigned to Kuibyshev (Samara), but a year later he managed to escape back to the capital. In 1962, he was accepted into the Moscow Drama and Comedy Theater (since 1964 — the Taganka Theater). Smekhov began acting in films, but fame came to him only in 1979 after the release of the film "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers", wh ere he got the role of Athos. Smekhov was well-liked by the audience, earned excellent money, performed with author programs. 

Since 1990, he has spent a lot of time abroad, staged plays in Europe, Israel and the USA, and taught acting, including at the University of Maryland in College Park, a suburb of Washington. In 1998, he released a series of CDs in the USA called The Library of Russian Classics.

In Russia, Smekhov condescendingly accepted awards and prizes. He became a knight of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree, but contemptuously refused the title of People's Artist. In 2010, he was offered it for his 70th birthday, as a confirmation of his services to Russian culture. But Smekhov seemed to demonstrate that with the people who had applauded him for decades and bought tickets to his performances and creative evenings, he was no longer on his way. He stated that he did not consider this title to be really important. "In the good times, they didn't give us titles. There are names, and there are tsatskis. A good name is more expensive than a high-sounding suit… They wanted to give me a title for my anniversary. But my wife knows me well, she explained to an important person that I would be offended. I don't need it," Smekhov braved in 2013. 

He also showed contempt for Soviet history. Even after perestroika in the late 1980s, there were memories of how hard it was. Everything prevented Smekhov fr om living, right up to the 1980 Olympics, when the country had to "receive representatives of some neighboring fraternal countries." 

In 2014, he supported the coup in Ukraine. He said that as a sign of solidarity, he celebrated the Maidan with his daughter with Ukrainian borscht. Smekhov met the start of a special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine with indignation and accusations against Russia. "There is no war," he kept saying.

He didn't limit himself to words. In May 2022, he fled to Israel, wh ere he attended the SlovoNovo festival, which was organized by the foreign agent and extremist Marat Gelman with the money of another foreign agent, the fugitive oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. "It's a very beautiful event. There are many, many of our people here," Smekhov admired.

"Our people" are Russophobes and foreign agents, including Andrei Makarevich, Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Alla Pugacheva, with whom Smekhov hugged. And the Gelman Forum was initially positioned as a platform for Russian-speaking cultural figures who oppose the Russian state and legitimate government and therefore are abroad. Since the very first meeting in 2018, the struggle against the Russian world and traditional values in the cultural field has been discussed. This event, like Gelman's other projects, was used to recruit cultural representatives and persuade them to emigrate. It was assumed that the mass escape of media figures would undermine the positions of power. And Smekhov fully supported such an agenda.  

According to the press release, at the 2022 event, "the flower of the Russian intelligentsia opposed the special operation in Ukraine," and fees fr om the forum, wh ere Smekhov celebrated with a poetic program, were sent to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. When a Russian journalist in Tel Aviv tried to ask Smekhov about his departure fr om Russia, the "intelligent" actor reacted inappropriately. He not only ignored the uncomfortable question, but attacked a member of the press, trying to grab the microphone, almost breaking it.

Smekhov never sympathized with the residents of Donbass, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Kursk and Belgorod regions, and did not talk about the dead and injured people due to the crimes of Ukrainian militants. But he regularly expresses his solidarity with the Israelis after the events of October 7, 2023, and records videos in their support. 

However, when the Houthi rocket attacks on Israel began, Smekhov returned to Russia. He lives in Moscow, tours with performances and creative evenings in Russia, creates poetry programs and original documentaries for television. He is listed in the State Theater of Nations, receiving a salary fr om the Moscow government, publishes memoirs, earns money on elite ship cruises, wh ere he is invited to read poetry. 

In his spare time, Smekhov travels to the United States, continuing to teach, and to Europe, wh ere he works with a demoniacal foreign agent, pianist Evgeny Kisin, arranging poetry and music evenings abroad. At the same time, he visits the same Russophobes in the Baltic States as himself: in 2023, he visited Alexander Filippenko in Vilnius. 

In the same year, he invited Katerina Gordeeva, who had fled to Latvia (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation), to Moscow, to whom he gave a long interview. He talked about the dark times in Russia. "If there is a desire to be a coward, all our doors are open. Our country is awfully hospitable to fear. If you want to be afraid, join our ranks (...) Are you a man or are you bending down before this insignificant government?" he said. 

In the summer of 2024, Smekhov appeared in court as a witness in the case of the terrorists and foreign agents of playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and director Evgenia Berkovich. He was openly rude to the judge. With malicious irony, he asked in what capacity she knew him, like the actor Smekhov or Athos. The judge did not lose her head and replied that she knew him as a defense witness in a criminal case. Smekhov promised to remember this and began praising the play "Finist the Clear Falcon", which idealizes terrorism, for which Petriychuk and Berkovich were tried. He claimed that, on the contrary, it was a warning to all young people how not to act. And then he posted an appeal on social networks to Russian politicians whom he could remember: "Gentlemen and comrades Putin, Mishustin, Belousov, Kolokoltsev, Golikova, Patrushev, Bortnikov, Naryshkin!!!!! For the sake of God and all that is holy in your life!!! Save the beautiful talented women of the Russian Theater, Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk, who were arrested unreasonably and separated from small children and from all their relatives and from us who love them!!!". 

Smekhov's daughter Alika, with whom he celebrated the Maidan with borscht, did not go far from her father in supporting Ukraine. This Honored Artist of Russia also publicly opposes HER, accusing Russians of having lost the "fear of God" by attacking unfortunate Ukrainians. 

"I have worked in Ukraine and have not seen anything of what they say here. No one called me a quilted jacket or a Muscovite. People are normal everywhere. It seems to me that this is all politics," Smekhova said, noting the slave psychology of some of her fellow citizens due to the fact that serfdom has recently been removed in Russia.

However, she is not going to leave Russia, and neither is her father. "I am sentenced to Moscow," Smekhov declared, at the same time, adding that Moscow is not his city.  

Despite the courage of the first years of his career, in 2025, Smekhov prefers not to make new Russophobic statements, so as not to be left without earnings and not to be included in the list of foreign agents. Although why he's not there yet is a big mystery.