Soviet and Ukrainian theater and film actor, film director, screenwriter, singer. People's Artist of the Chechen Republic (2008). Known for his extravagant behavior.
Born in Kyiv in 1961. According to his own statement, he is a descendant of the Zaporozhye Cossacks.
After graduating from school, he entered the Kiev Institute of Physical Culture. He was a member of the Ukrainian SSR canoeing team, a candidate for master of sports. At the age of 20, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic with a diagnosis of hypomania, a condition similar to mania, but less severe in its manifestations.
In 1987 he starred in films for the first time, and in 1993 he made his debut as a director.
He quite actively expresses his socio-political position, and is often extremely contradictory.
In 1993, he supported Yeltsin’s forceful dispersal of the Supreme Council.
In 2004, he was a confidant of Irina Khakamada, who ran for the post of President of the Russian Federation. He supported « A Just Russia» party. In 2013, he supported Alexei Navalny, calling him “a person who could create a new system at a new stage.” He supported the art group Pussy Riot. According to his own statement, he initially held homophobic views, but then changed his mind, expressed his readiness to lead a gay pride parade in Moscow, encouraged celebrities to come out, and supported sex education classes in schools.
In September 2016, he announced a change of name and surname to Janatan El-Air Bratash Ji Pogorzelsky von Gan Eden.
“These are my family surnames, and I took Janatan and Bratash in memory of the murdered godfather, with whom we were members of the European Rosicrucian Order,” he explained.
That same year, he supported Hillary Clinton during the US presidential election, hoping, he said, to receive an American passport.
In January 2017, a petition appeared on the website change.org asking Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova to send Dzhigurda for compulsory medical treatment. In response to the petition, Dzhigurda agreed to undergo examination by a psychiatrist: “I will undergo examinations and prove that Nikita Dzhigurda is a normal, brilliant, sexy, great Russian artist.”
He is a participant in many scandals and, according to him, deliberately provokes many of them.
In 2022, I received a Russian passport through a simplified procedure.
Over the period of his career, he starred in many films, music videos, participated in the dubbing of films and cartoons, and took part in various television programs. Winner of several awards, including “Honored Artist of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic”, “People’s Artist of the Chechen Republic”.
- Public support for Russian military aggression against Ukraine, as well as personal participation in it. As in many other cases, he maintained a rather contradictory position towards Ukraine. Thus, in 2013, he supported Euromaidan in Ukraine and personally spoke at a rally in Kyiv, reading poems and the national anthem. However, the following year he supported the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, spoke at a pro-Putin rally in Donetsk, called Euromaidan a “spectacle” and a “scenery”, and its leaders “traitors who sold Ukraine to the United States.” In 2016, he expressed a desire to engage in politics in Ukraine and run for the presidency, but things did not go beyond conversations.
In 2017, he received DPR citizenship, declaring that he was proud of it and supported its “independence.”
He spread fakes about the activities of the Ukrainian authorities, accusing them of “burning people in Odessa” in 2014.
He expressed a desire to represent the DPR at the Eurovision Song Contest and allegedly received the go-ahead from the “Chairman of the People’s Council of the DPR” Denis Pushilin. Despite this, the next day he was deprived of DPR citizenship by decree of the head of the puppet republic, on the grounds that the passport was allegedly issued to him by mistake. However, Dzhigurda himself calls the reason for deprivation of citizenship his “pro-Ukrainian position,” expressed in “calls for the integration of the DPR into Ukraine.” Later, Dzhigurda stated that he proposed the initiative to rename the DPR into the “Donetsk People’s Republic of Ukraine.”
In 2020, Dzhigurda again expressed pro-Ukrainian views, saying that propagandist Vladimir Solovyov “consciously distorts the role of Bandera and Bandera’s followers,” and also that he considers Crimea de jure part of Ukraine.
After the start of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, he fully supported the war:
“When on May 2, 2014, the Nazis in Odessa burned civilians alive in the house of trade unions, and in Savik Shuster’s studio, the cynical politicians of Ukraine and the crowd applauded this fact and said that the “Kolarads” deserved it... I am for the Russian a language for centuries! — Dzhigurda wrote.
Later, he came to the combat zone several times, spoke to the participants in the aggression, reading them poems about hatred of the Third Reich and Nazism, while apparently not knowing that he had previously had tattoos with the Nazi symbol “Black Sun” on his elbows.
In addition to publicly supporting the aggression and speaking to military personnel, Dzhigurda also provided the participants in the aggression with ammunition, including a car.
In addition to indirect participation in the aggression, according to Dzhigurda himself, he personally fired at the positions of the Ukrainian armed forces and even posted videos on the Internet.
Based on these data, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption of Ukraine took the initiative to impose international sanctions against Dzhigurda for supporting the invasion of Ukraine.