The Daily Beast asks whether this "home video" on Djohar Tsaraev's Vkontakte page is of him.
I don't think it is.
My thoughts, which may be buried:
I'm a Russian translator familiar with the regional accents and I've been listening to this repeatedly since the names were released. It *might* be the older brother. It doesn't look like Dzhokhar, for one. On his VK, Dzhokhar says about this video "sil'no zamutil bratishka, "meaning something like, pretty amazing, brother" and Bratishka means "my little brother," but it's a diminuitive that could be used about your older brother, a cousin, or even just someone in your community. It does look sort of like his older brother but not perfectly.
The video contains an amazing set of brilliant parodies of all the accents of the Caucasus — hard to do, unless you are from there. It is a kind of ethnic joke, not hateful, as the man himself is Caucasian, i.e. from the Caucasus. Not only does he do the accents perfectly, the content of what he has the stereotypical different groups say is funny and typical, i.e. about the Georgian with the restaurant, etc.
I don't think it can be Dzhokhar himself. At age 19, even speaking Russian and Chechen as he says (although his friends now say he speaks English without an accent), and with some 10 years outside of the former Soviet Union, he couldn't possibly have gotten all those accents and the content of what they said so aptly. His brother, at age 26, could do it much better. But so could some guy on the Internet they know or who is from there, the name on the account doesn't tell us.
It *might* be the older brother. It doesn't look like Dzhokhar, for one. On his VK, Dzhokhar says about this video "sil'no zamutil bratishka, "meaning something like, pretty amazing, brother" and Bratishka means "my little brother," but it's a diminuitive that could be used about your older brother, a cousin, or even just someone in your community. It does look sort of like his older brother but not perfectly.
The video contains an amazing set of brilliant parodies of all the accents of the Caucasus — hard to do, unless you are from there. It is a kind of ethnic joke, not hateful, as the man himself is Caucasian, i.e. from the Caucasus. Not only does he do the accents perfectly, the content of what he has the stereotypical different groups say is funny and typical, i.e. about the Georgian with the restaurant, etc.
I don't think it can be Dzhokhar himself. At age 19, even speaking Russian and Chechen as he says (although his friends now say he speaks English without an accent), and with some 10 years outside of the former Soviet Union, he couldn't possibly have gotten all those accents and the content of what they said so aptly. His brother, at age 26, could do it much better. But so could some guy on the Internet they know or who is from there, the name on the account doesn't tell us.
***
I'm still thinking if my sense that "sil'no zamutil" means "that's pretty sick" or "that's pretty sick" as the kids say today (meaning good). It may work that way although the Russian is literally from "zamutit'" which means "to muddle up, to roil, to trouble".
Thoughts?
It's important to establish if this is the brother or someone they know, because his work with accents is so good that it means he could be in intelligence or a very trained operative.
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