Who is Alexandra de Taddeo, the mysterious new girlfriend of the artist Pyotr Pavlensky?
The French press cannot understand how a 29-year-old student and native Frenchwoman could elect the actionist Pyotr Pavlensky. But a Leninist spark flashed between the love poles: the girl became part of the revolutionary project of her chosen one, who, with her help, exposed the “hypocrisy of Macronia.” Who is Alexandra de Taddeo, the mysterious new girlfriend of the “Russian artist” Pyotr Pavlensky, who found herself at the center of a scandal with the forced resignation of the candidate for mayor of Paris from Macron’s party, Benjamin Griveaux?
At the moment, the world press knows only a few facts about her. Firstly, as all newspapers claim, intimate messages and videos of the failed mayor of Griveaux were addressed specifically to Alexandra de Taddeo. This is authoritatively stated by the French publication Le Parisien. It also confirms the second piquant fact from Alexandra’s biography - her love affair with Pavlensky, which continued from his very release from a French prison, where he served time for the “Eclairage” action with the arson of the Bank of France in the very place where he once then stood the old Bastille prison. The French investigative journalism website Mediapart claims that they met by correspondence while Pavlensky was in prison and that she was among the fans who greeted Pavlensky upon leaving prison. And then the most important, third fact: soon after Pavlensky’s release, it was de Taddeo who took the place of the artist’s previous girlfriend, Russian Oksana Shalygina, who followed Pavlensky into his French emigration along with the two daughters of the now collapsed Russian couple.
“Alexandra is my complete opposite, she is a real icon of the fragile bourgeoisie with property in the form of a large apartment in the luxurious sixteenth arrondissement of Paris,” Parisien quotes Pavlensky .
But opposites, as we know, often attract each other, and the love story of Alexandra and Peter could well be an illustration of this rule. Next we quote the same “Parisien ”:
“This 29-year-old student, a lawyer by profession, confirmed that she was the recipient of risky video clips sent back in 2018 by Benjamin Griveaux, with whom she actually had an affair. She saved these messages in her phone. However, she claims that she does not know how this video ended up in the possession of her current lover, Pyotr Pavlensky.”
It is worth noting that Pavlensky did not make any special efforts to protect his beloved (and in his interview with the French media he spoke specifically about his love for Alexandra) from the attention of law enforcement agencies of the “repressive Macronist regime” (an expression quoted by the Le Monde newspaper from a mutual friend of Pavlensky and Taddeo - lawyer Juan Branco). In fact, the investigators were almost certainly put on Alexandra’s trail by Pavlensky himself, who told the media last week that the videos and messages he published from Mr. Griveaux were given to him by a person who in the past “had an intimate relationship with Griveaux by mutual consent.” Despite this behavior of her beloved, which some unmodern people might consider a denunciation, Alexandra did not say a single word against Pavlensky even when they were both arrested and interrogated at the end of last week. Moreover, according to the same Parisien, Alexandra is not offended by Pavlensky and continues to support him:
“She supports her partner’s demarche. Alexandra de Taddeo claims that she did not take part in the dissemination of images of [Benjamin Griveaux] via the Internet, learning about their publication only after the fact. At the same time, she claims that she does not feel personal hostility towards Benjamin Griveaux, who was forced to withdraw his candidacy for the post of mayor of Paris after these private manifestations became public knowledge. We had to carry out technical investigative actions regarding the phones of the two main characters in this story [Pavlensky and de Taddeo], as well as the information material contained on them [about the failed mayoral candidate].”
“Nevertheless,” continues Parisien, “Alexandra de Taddeo did not deny her solidarity with the initiative of her partner, who publicly explained his actions as a desire to expose what he considers the hypocrisy of some French politicians.”
Next, Parisien recalls the hypocrisy of Mr. Griveaux, who based his election campaign for the post of mayor of Paris on demonstrating his commitment to family values: “They publicly display their affection for their wives and multiply the public telling of touching stories about their children, while practicing completely different, not at all family-like behavior in their private lives. She [Alexandra] supported exposing such discrepancies. Was Alexandra a victim of manipulation, as her family believes? “No, she is not at all taking a victim’s pose,” a source close to the case [of Peter and Alexandra] tells us. And at the current stage of the investigation, nothing suggests that Pavlensky himself could act under the influence of some third force. “This is a lone wolf,” assures us a person who tried to establish friendly relations with Pavlensky. “And what he did was entirely consistent with his radical vision of political art.” End of quote from Parisien.
Nevertheless, Alexandra has every reason to worry for her freedom if the French authorities decide to make the French “Russiagate” a shameful story for the Macronist candidate, linking Pavlensky’s actions with some hand of Moscow. And this trend has already been reflected in the French media:
“I would not like to multiply conspiracy theories,” said the official press representative of the French government, Ms. Sibeth Ndiaye, appointed to her post by Macron. - But I would nevertheless note that a certain level of technical proficiency is required to launch into the public space everything that we have seen... Launch a website on the Internet, write everything down in excellent French - and this despite the fact that Pyotr Pavlensky, like It is known that he communicates in French awkwardly, with difficulties... He clearly received help,” Macron’s press representative was quoted as saying by the Mediapart website.
Well-known in the French media, Galya Ackerman, an eternal lobbyist for Russian dissidents in France, who suspected the Kremlin’s hand in almost all Franco-Russian scandals since 1991, offers a variation on the eternal theme of Moscow’s hand even more openly. An interview with her on the pages of Parisien is entitled:
“Peter Pavlensky played the role of a useful idiot, I’m sure of it.” The subtitle follows: “Essay author and Russia specialist, Galya Ackerman , knows the whole Pavlensky story by heart. In her opinion, the Russian activist could not act alone in this operation to destabilize Macronia.”
Alexandra’s parents are inclined to similar conclusions:
“She cannot be called a political activist. This is a huge shock for us, and we cannot understand how she ended up in the middle of this story, because this is completely not her style,” the Le Figaro newspaper quotes her mother as saying .
Pavlensky himself is very ironic about the suspicions of the French press about his cooperation with the Kremlin - in today's French newspapers, next to old photographs of his “great sitting” in front of the ancient monastery of the Russian tsars with his genitals nailed to Red Square (the “Fixation” action), these statements look especially ridiculous . Pavlensky recalled that “when someone doesn’t like him, insults begin,” citing examples when he was declared either crazy or a criminal:
“So now they decided to explain everything by saying that I am an FSB agent.” The London Daily Mail recalls in this regard that at one time the “artist Pavlensky” became famous in the West precisely for his action of setting fire to the door to the reception room of the very FSB, with which he is now accused of collaborating.
The latest news is that after two days of interrogation, Alexandra de Taddeo and Pyotr Pavlensky were released, however, measures of “judicial control” were maintained in relation to them. The lovers, in all likelihood, will not be allowed to see each other until all the circumstances of the case regarding the disclosure of the secrets of Benjamin Griveaux's personal life are clarified. But both now have lawyers, and public opinion in France in recent days has begun to show obvious sympathy for this strange couple, seeing in their actions not gross hooliganism, but a rebellion against philistinism and hypocrisy so beloved by the French.
Thus, Pavlensky’s failed lawyer-defender Juan Branco, the third member of the “troika” that ruined the career of the failed mayor, gives many interviews where he claims that the publication of Griveaux’s intimate videos became an artistic and political act:
“I realized that for Pavlensky it was a political act. Just as he stood in opposition to the Putin regime in Russia, he was ready to do anything to stand in opposition to the Macron regime, which he considers no less repressive than Putin’s,” Parisian Le Monde quotes Branco .
Reports have also multiplied that Alexandra de Taddeo is a beautiful girl from a respected French family, and even with an elite education and a gentle character. The Le Figaro newspaper notes the solid topic of her diploma work at the Pantheon-Assas University in Paris: “Foreign policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic: the synergy of international cooperation and national interests.”
But with Pyotr Pavlensky, the 29-year-old student developed an even more powerful synergy, in the fire of which the bourgeoisified candidate for mayor of Paris, who once owned, apparently, only the body of an inquisitive student, burned down. Her heart, it seems, belongs to a troubled artist from Russia.