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Depardieu, Obama and Snowden Receive Silver Galosh for Dubious Achievements

The annual Silver Galosh anti-award ceremony on Wednesday, organized by radio station Serebryany Dozhd, saw several Russian and foreign public figures honored for their reportedly dubious achievements, including French actor Gerard Depardieu and NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Depardieu, who was granted Russian citizenship in January, was the winner in the category "Guestworker of the year or who lives best in Russia," beating intelligence leaker Edward Snowden and actor Steven Seagal to the punch.

U.S. President Barack Obama was perhaps the highest ranking winner, receiving a Silver Galosh for reportedly having copied an idea for an election ad from President Vladimir Putin's campaign office. Other nominees in the same category were President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and the Olympic torch.

State Duma deputy Yelena Mizulina won the "Mememe of the year" award ahead of St. Petersburg anti-gay champion Vitaly Milonov and the meteorite that fell on Chelyabinsk in February.

In the category, "Biggest intolerance of the year", the jury decided to give the award to all three contenders for their unethical or xenophobic statements. The winners were State Duma deputy Irina Rodnina for her Twitter post of Barack Obama with a banana, journalist for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda Ulyana Skobeida for a xenophobic article and journalist Dmitry Kiselyov for making derogatory statements about gays.

Other winners of the Silver Galosh were former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, socialite and opposition activist Ksenia Sobchak and former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

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