‘In Tears’: Hollywood’s Messy Breakup With Russia’s Weeping Elite

Until recently, it was a happier time for Russian oligarchs: America’s A, B, and C-list celebrities flocked to Eastern Europe for easy paychecks posing at film festivals and mingling at soirées. For a night, and for a price, even a kleptocrat got to feel cool.

At the center of the industry stood 68-year-old Bob Van Ronkel, an American who spent 15 years living in Russia before taking up residence in Las Vegas. Since 2002, he has shepherded more than 100 celebs to the region, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Nicholson, Kanye West, Sean Penn, and Mariah Carey, he has said.

But now, thanks to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the play dates have been indefinitely suspended, and Van Ronkel is unhappily caught in the middle.

“I can’t take any one side without offending somebody,” he told The Daily Beast. “I don’t want to be cut out from all the business I do in Russia… and yet I can't turn Hollywood against me.”

Van Ronkel expressed disbelief about certain sanctions facing Russian tycoons, however. “I can’t believe that we're going to start taking the oligarch assets. I mean, I can understand freezing [them],” he lamented. (And that was before the U.S. imposed expansive sanctions on eight additional high-profile Russians on Thursday.)

Already, one of his oligarch connections has been “in tears” over the conflict and is suffering over the ruble’s plummeting value, Van Ronkel said. “He has so many friends in Ukraine and has nothing against Ukrainian people… All he cares about is doing business.”

In recent days, two of Van Ronkel’s deals have been put on hold. Things are even bleaker looking ahead.

Celebrities are already wary of blowback for connections to Russia, not to mention that President Biden has closed U.S. airspace to the country’s flights.

“We'd have to bounce off Dubai or somewhere like that,” he said of a theoretical client trip. “But, you know, that’s a pain.”

It wasn’t long ago that Van Ronkel was merrily partying with President Vladimir Putin and other members of Russia’s elite.

He recalled a 2010 trip in which he brought Kevin Costner’s band to an event in Saint Petersburg. That night, in front of Sharon Stone, Mickey Rourke, and Goldie Hawn, Putin grabbed the mic and bizarrely sang “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino.

Van Ronkel also helped open the Grand Havana Room Moscow, which billed itself as “the most exclusive private club in Moscow for Russia's richest and most powerful businessmen.”

His Russian journey started in 1998 after years running various businesses, including a karate studio, a clothing company, and a restaurant. He landed in Moscow with no real plan “other than to try and meet a new girlfriend,” he said, adding that his success came about because of luck, hard work, and salesmanship.

Eventually, “wealthy Russians started asking me if I knew or could get certain stars to attend their events,” said Van Ronkel, who grew up humbly but attended Beverly Hills High School. He scrambled to use his connections to meet their requests. “I never dreamed to meet so many oligarchs, presidents and gangsters, it just happened.”

But things are different now.

Van Ronkel said that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine came as a surprise, both to him and to his Russian connections.

He appeared to partially blame the invasion on American foreign policy, including the installation of U.S. missile defense systems in Europe. “It's like [Putin] putting one into Canada, Mexico or Cuba,” he said. “But we don't understand that. We don't listen to that. We don't respect it.”

He later sent a text message to The Daily Beast of an “interesting interview” on Fox News featuring a guest calling for the U.S. to “let Russia take the portion of Ukraine they want to take,” including by denying Ukraine military aid and refusing to sanction Russia. (That guest, retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, was separately chastised by one of the network’s own reporters for his “distortions” and for “sounding like an apologist for Putin”)

Timur Beslangurov, a friend of Van Ronkel’s and managing partner at the Russian firm VISTA Foreign Business Support, argued that the sanctions are broadly affecting the Russian population and may push the country closer to China and India.

“I think that nothing good will happen. Neither for his business or for any business,” Beslangurov said.

Van Ronkel considers his work to be apolitical, notwithstanding the leaders like Putin he has rubbed elbows with—and whose personas, one might argue, he has helped normalize. (He said he has never been hired by Putin directly.)

“I live for the deal and trying to do what nobody else can do,” he said, citing client trips to Chechnya and Uzbekistan as examples. In the latter case, he is also actively working on a possible deal “with some big name people in Hollywood” to promote tourism in the country. (Uzbekistan's government is “largely authoritarian,” according to Human Rights Watch.)

Terrifying Putin Phone Call Warns ‘Worst Is Yet to Come’

Van Ronkel expressed contrition for the victims of the ongoing war in Ukraine, noting that he and his clients will ultimately be fine while others will die in the fighting.

Financially, he could retire, he said, but he expects to remain in the business arena: “COVID slowed me down for the last year or two, and then now all of a sudden this. Again, I'm a mover and a shaker, so I'll roll with the punches.”

If the Russia connection fades entirely, Van Ronkel has prospects elsewhere.

In the next two months he is hoping to launch a company with a focus on bringing A-listers to the Middle East. And as usual, he is dealing with the ruling class. “My partners who found me from over there are very, very powerful and control a lot of money,” he said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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