Alexei Navalny on the YouTube channel "Top Secret"

Hello, this is *Our Time* on the air. In the

studio is Stanislav Kucher. Today, without

any long introductions, we’ll be speaking with

Alexei Navalny, a man who, on the one

hand, has already become the virtual mayor

of Moscow, whom some call, well,

a Robin Hood, an anti-corruption fighter, and,

the future president of Russia, the first

president of Russia to emerge from the

virtual sphere. And at the same time, he is also

called a man who is effectively on the payroll

of American—at a minimum, the embassy, and at

maximum, the intelligence services—whose

task is, well, to tear apart

Russia. Those are fairly serious

accusations. They were voiced by

representatives of United Russia (the ruling Russian political party). So

this man is unquestionably one of the

most striking figures in today’s

public and political life of the country.

And, incidentally, a good acquaintance of mine

as well—that’s how it turned out. Welcome,

Alexei.

>> Hello. I seem to have many names. Yes, yes,

so we decided that we’d speak

informally. We even have a few amusing

episodes from

our shared past,

>> a shared television past.

>> A television past, yes, which

will probably have some bearing on

this conversation. Right away, for you, Alexei,

and for our viewers, I’ll say that

since my civic position

is fairly well known, and so that no one can

immediately accuse us of the fact that I’ve

invited you here and now together we’re going to

undermine things, rock the boat of Russian

statehood, I’m going to ask

many of the questions that were sent to me by

people who don’t believe in you,

who, accordingly, are skeptical

about everything you do.

That is, I’ll often be speaking from

the side of those—just imagine that I’ll

sometimes simply be putting on the

gloves, so to speak, of your friends from

United Russia, in quotation marks, right?

>> Wonderful. My task is to convince these

people of something, so please, go ahead.

>> So, to begin with, you have a blog

on LiveJournal, so how many

friends do you currently have there? And what

does that mean? How many people read you, so that

those people who, I repeat, don’t live on the

internet can understand what kind of

audience you’re currently able to influence. For

those who don’t use the internet very often,

what exactly is a blog? A blog

is essentially your own little

personal mass media outlet.

You write whatever you want there. The number of regular

subscribers to my blog right now is about

48,000 people. Regular readers, that is,

unique users who

come by every day in order to

read it, number roughly 100,000 to 150,000 per

day. So it’s a fairly large

audience. Of course, I’m not inclined

to exaggerate my fame or

my ability to influence what’s happening,

but still, it’s quite a lot—it’s

comparable to the circulation of a fairly

large newspaper. I think this is actually

happening not because

I write so wonderfully or

for some other reason people come.

It seems to me that what attracts people is precisely

this format of practical

impact. I don’t just write, “Look,

look, over here something has been

stolen again.” I write about it. I say that

these are the people who stole it, here is the complaint

I’m sending to the prosecutor’s office. I

name this specific person. I

believe he is a criminal. We investigate this

case. Through the blog I gather

experts from completely different fields.

In other words, a blog is a tool

for practical work. That’s why, it seems to

me, many people come and watch,

and they’re even ready to

take part together with me. And, as I already said, we

find experts in all sorts of fields there,

in road construction,

the supply of medical equipment. I

spend quite a lot of time

investigating corruption in public procurement.

The state buys everything imaginable, from

semolina porridge to optical sights.

It’s absolutely impossible to understand

everything. Keeping a staff of experts in

every field is also impossible and expensive.

So the blog is a tool where

any person who wants to make

some personal, perhaps

small contribution to the fight against corruption,

or simply help, can come and

help.

>> There was a scandal involving embezzlement, in

which you accused one of the largest

giants of the Russian economy,

the company Transneft.

What happened? Why did it occur to you

at that time to take up this particular case?

Well, Transneft—I’ll use some

strong language here. They are well-known

crooks, and for quite a while now, for several

years already, I’ve been engaged in—if you can

call it a dialogue—though in fact I’m trying

to bring the management of this company to

criminal responsibility. It all began

back in 2007, when

we discovered that the company Transneft,

which is effectively a monopolist

in the transportation of petroleum products

within the country, is a company with

100 percent state

share capital. I own their

shares, but they are preferred shares only.

100% of the common shares belong to

the state. In other words, it is a state-owned

company that belongs to all of us,

it belongs to you.

>> When did you become a shareholder in this

company?

>> In 2007.

>> Why? Was it simply in order to

investigate its activities, or just

or was it because you thought it was

a good business and I simply wanted to

invest a small part of my

funds. It is a good business, a monopoly,

which

and oil is the main business in our country. They

move that oil back and forth. It is a good

business; it makes sense to invest in it.

After investing, I saw that there were no

profits at all. We started looking into where

the profits were going. It turned out that the company

Transneft, besides

transporting oil, is also

the largest charitable donor in the Russian

Federation, one of the largest in the world. In

2007–2008

they donated

$500 million to charity. Just

think about that: half a billion dollars for

charity. And yet there was no trace of this

>> Well done.

>> there was no trace of this charity

anywhere. I spoke with all the

heads of real

charitable foundations that

treat children and do other such work. I asked,

have you received anything from them at all? No one

had seen anything. So I started legal proceedings and

spent many months in court with them to

force the company to disclose the list of

recipients to whom they had given money

for charity. Paradoxically,

a state-owned company spends

half a billion dollars on

charity. At the same time, they

completely classified all of their

charitable giving. They say, "We will not

tell anyone; we did not give a single

kopeck." That is astonishing. We managed

to identify the only recipient of their

charitable assistance. It was a,

a foundation with a very telling

name: Kremlin-9. As you might guess

from the name, this was not really about

helping children. It was an organization

founded by former employees of the

Federal Protective Service. What purposes

they received this money for is hard

to say. My version, my view,

based on what is happening

in the company and based on their

actual practices, is that

through this supposed charity they were

in fact paying law enforcement

agencies of all kinds. And in exchange for protection, they

cover up the corruption taking place

inside Transneft. And here we come

to my main investigation and,

probably, one of the best-known things

I have done. So, the company

Transneft was carrying out the largest

construction project since the collapse of the

Soviet Union, the so-called

Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline,

through which oil from Eastern

Siberia was to be transported to

China. A wonderful project that everyone

supported. It leads to diversification of

oil export routes, so there was no

problem with that. What was suspicious

was that the cost of the pipeline

kept rising constantly. Even now, no one

really knows how much it cost. But the

last officially recorded

figure was about $17 billion, which

is a great deal. Of course, it was built

out there in the taiga, in Siberia, under difficult

conditions and so on, but even taking

that into account, it was an astonishingly high price. And all

the market participants I managed

to speak with while investigating this

case all said in unison: "They stole everything,

looted everything. The corruption is absolutely

staggering." I started looking for documents,

and I managed to uncover a report,

documents that the company itself,

Transneft, had provided to the Accounts Chamber (Russia's state audit body),

when the Accounts Chamber was auditing them. Now

pay attention here, this is important. These are

not the results of my investigation, not

the results of some analysts. Not

some assumptions of mine or my own

calculations, not my estimates. These are the calculations and

documents of the company itself,

Transneft, which it provided

to the Accounts Chamber. They were signed off on by

lawyers, engineers, the first

vice president of Transneft, and so on.

A huge, thick report

describing how they stole, how they

squandered money,

how they laundered money, and so on. So

based on this dry

legal document, it clearly follows

that in the construction of this pipeline

no less than $4 billion was stolen.

Every contractor who

built anything on this gigantic

project of the century, personally overseen by

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who

regularly flew there by helicopter and

signed the pipes so ceremonially,

every contractor was simply

a shell company with nothing

behind it. Just imagine,

right,

a contract to build, say, 1,000 km

of the pipeline in the conditions of Eastern Siberia

goes to a company whose authorized

capital is 10,000 rubles (about $100) and which does not have a single

employee. Is that even possible? In

Russia, it would seem, even at Russia’s

level of corruption, something like that would be impossible, but

it was happening. More than that, a significant

share of the contracts was awarded

to organizations that had simply been

registered using stolen passports.

In other words, these people took the contracts, pocketed

half of the money right away, and then subcontracted

the work out to real companies. And that is how

absolutely everything worked. In other words, all

the prices were inflated several times over.

A portion of it was stolen just through design work alone,

just on the design stage there were

5 billion rubles (about $50 million) stolen. This is stated in black

and white in Transneft’s own

documents. They conducted an internal

audit for the Accounts Chamber (Russia’s state audit office). But when

they finished it all and submitted it to the Accounts

Chamber, these documents should, it would seem,

have caused a huge scandal. There it was, there was

the proof. There were the terrible

crimes. There were the corrupt officials—catch them

red-handed and throw them in jail. But no. What

did the Accounts Chamber do? It classified

all the audit results.

The documents went nowhere. Everything here was kept under

lock and key. No investigations,

no criminal cases. Everything was stopped

after that. Later, when I spoke with

a representative of the law enforcement

agencies, they said: "Yes, documents like that

did come in. They told us, ‘Jail them all,’

but a week later another order came in: ‘Shut it all

down, hand over all the documents.’"

>> All right, but how did you personally get hold of

these documents that point to

the theft? That show these $4 billion

were stolen? After all, you’re

a lawyer, yes, and already somewhat well known,

with experience, but still—you’re not Henry

Reznik (a prominent Russian attorney), not a member of the Public Chamber (a state advisory body),

so how did you get documents that

in theory should have been marked

secret?

>> Well, in a sense, they did carry some kind of

classification. In fact, legally speaking,

they could not actually be classified as secret,

because this is not

a state secret. But they were concealed,

hidden in practice. Exactly. But

you can’t hide an awl in a sack. First of all, dozens of people

took part in this audit,

because everything was being checked by specially

created commissions. That’s the first point.

So this document was in the hands of many people

at Transneft, many people at the Accounts

Chamber, and many people in

law enforcement. So

>> Transneft. Wait a second—Transneft

has no interest in sinking itself.

It’s unlikely they came and

said, "Alexei, now we’re going to

tell you how we were stealing here." Right. And

as far as I know, the Accounts Chamber

received many appeals once this

case became high-profile. And the Accounts

Chamber, let’s put it this way, walked it back. In other

words, it said that things were not at all

the way Navalny was trying to

present them. Not at all. We have

no complaints against Transneft. And the people in

law enforcement whom

you’re referring to now—well, I mean,

who are these people exactly? I mean,

>> Well, look, it’s just that,

>> when you say “Transneft,”

that means a lot of people. There are

people there—the villains—who were taking this money

for themselves. There are people who

knew about it, maybe even took part in the schemes,

but didn’t personally pocket much

from it. Maybe someone didn’t share with

someone else. One way or another, the world is not without

good people. And even at

Transneft there are quite a lot of

people who work there and whom all this

simply infuriates—what is going on.

They see every single day how these

people steal everything and move it all

off to Cyprus and then to Switzerland. And

it is done practically out in the open. Just

imagine it: again, at Transneft there are

a whole lot of seconded officers from

the FSB (Russia’s security service), a whole lot from the MVD (Interior Ministry), and with sums

this enormous, in theory all of it

is being monitored. And so the scale

of the corruption—the day-to-day observation

of this corruption—involved

dozens of people. And among them, of course,

without any doubt, there were those whom

this, frankly speaking, irritated

and who, seeing that there was no

investigation, may have

passed these documents to me. To name

a specific person—someone like,

you know, Stas, this particular person, he

works there—would mean that this

person could possibly be deprived of

their freedom, and more likely even their life

would be put at risk. So I cannot disclose

the specific source.

>> And why haven’t they sued you yet—I mean,

Transneft?

>> That is an excellent, absolutely

excellent question, because

>> despite the fact that the answer is very simple,

it means things are not so simple. And the answer is very

simple: everything I am saying

is true from beginning to end.

In its public

statements, yes, in its rhetoric, Transneft does not

hold back. The head of the company,

Nikolai Tokarev, called me

a village idiot on air on Channel Two.

the channel in its official press releases

there they say that I’m supposedly some kind of

CIA agent. In their response to my statement of claim

filed with the arbitration court, they write

that I studied in America on money from

the U.S. State Department and work for some kind of

offshore funds, and so on. Notice

right away: if they’re saying this, then

that is, roughly speaking, they could simply have

ignored Navalny and said: "There’s no

such person, and that’s that." Yes. But since they

are, accordingly, acknowledging that such a

person exists, calling him

a village idiot and a CIA agent, and at the same time

not suing him, that

is, for me, evidence that

they really do have something to hide

after all.

>> They’re up to their necks in it.

Absolutely. Besides, it’s impossible

to ignore me, because, as

I said, the principle of my work

is that if I report

some fact of corruption, I take

formal steps to bring

those people to justice. So

if I had simply said, published,

look how terribly these people stole $4

billion, well, as usual they would have

ignored it. But I—and, by the way,

I brought in the readers of my blog.

We sent several thousand complaints to

the Presidential Administration,

the Prosecutor General’s Office.

I initiated proceedings in all

the law enforcement agencies that I could

possibly initiate them in. In other words, I

formalized the process. Transneft must,

at the very least, answer these

questions.

>> And what happens? Does it answer these

questions? Is there any response from the Presidential Administration,

the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Interior Ministry,

the FSB (Federal Security Service)?

>> Well, you have to understand: I’m not a utopian, not a

romantic. I understand what kind of system

I exist in. It’s obvious that

Transneft, whose security service employs

a huge number of

those half-retired former

FSB colonels and generals,

and which, as I already said, through its

charitable activities supports a huge

number of former and current

members of the security services, and who,

naturally, if they were able to steal

billions under the total formal oversight

of the security services,

then obviously they were paying something off there.

Well, it would be naive to suppose that after

my complaint, special forces with

helicopters would immediately descend on them and

arrest everyone, though there would be good reason to. So

naturally, they resist, all the

cases fall apart, and they have a fairly

well, there is a fairly

clear strategy for dealing with these

situations, yes; the prosecutor’s office, despite the fact that

I would like to note that both Medvedev

and Putin both spoke publicly,

saying that what’s needed here is an

investigation. So, at the very least,

my first step was to tell as many

people as possible about it.

>> So Medvedev and Putin reacted

to it? They did react, absolutely right,

they reacted publicly and said that

there needed to be an investigation. But then the question becomes

how much control

Medvedev and even Putin actually have

over these people? And to what extent

are these people sitting there not

being asked to

investigate something that is in fact a request to

investigate their own corruption?

All right. Now a bit more about the high-profile cases, and

then I’ll ask a few questions, I don’t

know, of a more personal, human kind,

because you can’t do without those. And the next high-profile

project associated with your

name was RosPil. So, RosPil was

when, uh,

as I understand it, you simply wanted

to formalize, in a way, part of your

work further—that is, bring in people who

would professionally, for pay,

handle the paperwork. Well, now

you can explain what exactly is meant.

But the main, main result

that amazed everyone at the time, at the

moment the RosPil project was announced, was,

of course, that within—again, you can specify

the exact time frame in a moment—uh,

an absolutely record-breaking

amount of money was raised from ordinary people. That is,

people turned out to be willing to donate

their own personal money to fight

corruption. Later, Boris Nemtsov used a similar

approach with his

team in order to raise money

to publish an additional print run of the

book *Putin. Corruption.* And again, this

showed that people are ready to finance

the opposition out of their own pockets. And

in my view, this is simply

a tremendous,

I don’t want to attach any value judgment to it right now,

whether positive or not, but it is an entirely new

step in the development of our

society. A tool has appeared

for the independent financing of civic

movements. Tell us about the RosPil project—what

stage is it at now? How

did the RosPil project come about in the first place? From

the simple understanding that the biggest

buyer of anything in our

country is the state, which, with

our money, buys things, and that

It’s called public procurement. In

a year, the state spends—and all of us together,

as taxpayers, spend on it—

about 5 trillion rubles. And even President Medvedev himself

has openly said in

his speeches that no less than one

trillion out of those five is simply

stolen. Right now in Russia there is

a portal for so-called state procurement, where

every institution, from

a hospital in Ryazan to the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service),

posts that it wants to purchase

such-and-such at such-and-such a price. And each of

us, in theory, can go in, check, and

see whether the price is high, low,

and so on. You can find

a huge number of violations there, but my idea

is that it’s not enough just

to find them—you have to try to stop them.

That’s why I proposed that we all together

launch the RosPil project. All together,

well, I simply appealed to

an unlimited circle of people, because

in order to file complaints about these

procurements and get them canceled, you need

to go to court, to the antimonopoly

service, to the prosecutor’s office. So you

wanted to create a team, like

a professional team that would

handle the routine work. Routine work in which

there should be no fewer than

five people working. I’m not,

generally speaking, either rich or poor,

but to finance these people

in addition—at least

six people—I simply don’t have the money. So

I decided on this experiment, which,

of course, at the time seemed very

risky. I suggested that everyone simply

chip in money for it. I

set up a separate account. I said that it

would all be completely transparent. There would be

special people who would have

full access to the account and would fully

monitor all expenses and all

incoming funds. And I set the goal that

the minimum target for the year was to raise 3

million rubles, and the maximum target for the year

was to raise 5 million rubles. Honestly,

I was worried. You make a big announcement,

and then bang—you raise

100,000. What do you do then? It’s unclear. Or

you raise a million, which is a lot, but

still not enough. But in two weeks we

raised 5 million. In other words, we met the annual

maximum target in two weeks, which,

of course, made me very

happy—but also astonished me, because,

as you rightly said, we are seeing,

our civil society move into

a new stage, because people are already

so enraged by this completely

open, brazen corruption that

they’re not even trying to hide anymore,

there’s no “watch my hands” trick—they’re just

stealing in broad daylight because they know

we can’t do anything. And people are

ready to fight this corruption,

not by throwing grenades at government

buildings. Instead, someone simply

decides: “I’ll send him 400 rubles

and let him hire lawyers and sue

these people.” So far we have raised

almost 7 million rubles already.

The average transfer is 400 rubles.

About 15,000 people. 15,000 people

have sent me some small amount

or other. Right now we already have

three people working. We are fairly

careful in selecting people, because I

understand the enormous responsibility,

because if a person paid those 400

rubles, they have every right to ask, “What did you

do with those 400 rubles? How

effectively did we spend them?” And if we

are fighting for efficiency in public

procurement, then at the very least our own

spending absolutely must be

transparent and efficient. So far we’ve

managed that. There haven’t yet been any conflicts

where someone accused us of misusing

funds.

>> No, from the very beginning everything was set up

in such a way that, well, that’s impossible.

Or it would be exposed immediately. And I think that

became one of the reasons

why people do in fact send money.

Because it’s clear that if I were to, I mean,

take the money for myself—yes, tomorrow

I could take those 7 million rubles

for myself, because formally people are giving them

to me as a gift, simply so that we can optimize

the tax side of things.

But if I take even

a single kopeck for myself, a group of

monitors who do not report to me

and who have the password to this account will see it immediately. And

then I’ll be exposed at once

for what I am. And that would be the end of all my wonderful plans.

Exactly. So if I

understand that the stakes are high,

>> What’s more, in Alexei’s blog it was written

rather amusingly that if

one of the monitors—for example, you have

Anton Nosik there, right—were to buy

himself a new Leica camera, then

naturally everyone would immediately understand

what was going on, of course, yes,

>> and practically an antique one at that, yes,

so naturally it would be obvious to everyone

what was happening. So far, though,

no one has managed to catch anyone out. But around the RosPil project

there was, uh, a recent remarkable

scandal connected with reports that the FSB

was collecting information on people who

donated money to the project. Or wasn’t

it? So what was the final story? Or was it actually

not the FSB after all? Some pro-Kremlin

young people.

>> There was a very strange situation that

at first just seemed strange, and then it turned out

that the situation was illegal. And

suddenly, people who had donated

money—who had sent their 400

rubles (about $4), started getting calls from some people who

began asking questions. And from those

questions it was clear that the side

making the calls had access to

all the transaction records, all the financial data, and

so on. I do not have that data,

you understand? People got alarmed and started

calling me to ask, "Where exactly did you

leak our data to, anyway?"

>> So once again, what did this look like?

Out of nowhere, a number belonging to

an ordinary person.

>> You sent me your 400 rubles. Then you

get a call from some woman on your mobile

phone or your home phone?

>> Yes. She calls and says she is from some

nonexistent newspaper. Basically, people

quickly discovered that this nonexistent

newspaper was asking, "So, you

sent money to Navalny. Why? And

did you really send it?"

"And you also sent money somewhere else. And

why was that? Explain." People do not like

questions like that. They are not doing anything

illegal, but at the very least it

means that someone has their

personal data and information about activity

on their accounts." People started coming to me

with questions, thinking that I had

given that information to someone. But under

the terms of how this payment system

works, I myself do not see that kind of

information. I do not even see the surnames of the people

who send me money. When

the number of such complaints, well,

passed a certain threshold, we contacted

Yandex, and Yandex

because we collect money through Yandex

Money, officially

first replied to me, and then officially

commented in the media that yes,

the Federal Security Service (FSB),

had requested documents on everyone who

had transferred money to RosPil (Navalny’s anti-corruption project), and then also

separately requested all transactions for a certain

sample of people, after which, uh, those—those

data ended up in the hands of some

people who, by indirect indications—I

cannot say this with 100% certainty—

appear to be commissars of the Nashi movement (a pro-Kremlin youth movement). And

that raises a whole series of questions.

The first question, of course, the most

important one: why is the FSB, instead of

investigating what we are investigating—how

these people are stealing? We have loads of

proven cases showing that this tender

for 100 million rubles (about $1 million) is completely

corrupt. Okay. Let us suppose

they are investigating that too, that they

are also working on it. Maybe

for some unclear reason, they

for some unclear reason, in order to

conduct operational-search activities

against me and request these

documents, must have had serious

grounds. In theory, one assumes that

they had some grounds, they

requested this information, and then they

passed it on to some third parties,

who most likely are not

employees of the FSB or the MVD (Interior Ministry). And these

third parties, for unclear—for incomprehensible

reasons, were calling donors. So

the situation is extremely strange. Well,

more broadly, it shows that

FSB officers and the police are engaged in

complete nonsense and absurdity, some kind of

political surveillance, instead of

doing what they are actually supposed to do. The

Federal Security Service is

supposed to be dealing with state

security. Instead, it is doing exactly the

opposite. We are the ones dealing with state security,

because

taxpayers, in addition to

paying taxes, also pay me so that I can

hire lawyers, so that we can do the

work that law enforcement

agencies are supposed to do. And on top of that, they

also leak this information to some

Nashi movement people or some other unclear

individuals who go around calling people.

But obviously this was done in order to

>> All right, in your view, what was this?

Why was all of this done?

>> I think that, first of all, it was stupidity,

of course. And second, the goal here

was clearly some kind of political

provocation. Another goal here was

to stop the flow of donations, because

as you quite rightly said,

this experiment that I carried out successfully

was the first of its kind in

modern Russian history. No one had financed

projects of this sort—

semi-political or anti-corruption ones.

Before that, in Russia people raised money, well,

to treat a sick child, which is understandable,

noble, and so on. But when people

raise money simply in order

to go after corrupt officials in

power, that means that tomorrow they may

quite possibly really raise money for

public television, a genuine

public political party.

>> Exactly. They will create a political

party. Well, if we raised, uh, more than

$250,000, yes, in about 2

months, then it is entirely possible that someone

else could raise $2 million in

a year and use that money to build a real

political party in which there will be no

There’s no cash in the shadows there, and there won’t be any

kind of suspicious transactions that

would actually be funded simply by

ordinary people, right? If a million people pay

100 rubles a month, then that’s 100

million rubles a month. That really is enough to

support a strong

political party with regional branches and so

on, and so on. That’s why the authorities

really dislike any projects aimed at raising

money. The way they think, within their whole

mindset, is that if money appears,

it must mean it came from the CIA or the U.S. State Department

or from some fugitive oligarchs or

someone else. But here, in this case,

they have nothing to counter with: here are 15,000 people,

go ahead and check. I’m even glad they

did check. Now they have nothing to say. They’ve

seen that these are real, genuine

15,000 Russian citizens,

who don’t believe them, but instead believe—well,

not even in me, but in the idea that people need to

unite and fight them. I

understand that you’re about to say some fine

words. Those fine words will sound

good, and they’ll be sincere, but

still. Who protects you?

You understand perfectly well that at any

moment, uh, you can be taken out of

this activity in any number of ways.

Well, you see,

>> if you’re stepping on the interests of people this

serious, where there are billions of

rubles and dollars at stake, right, and where on top of that

there are almost certainly also some personal

grievances,

then simply too many people,

too many people’s interests

end up being affected.

>> One of them could turn out to be

a complete thug. Yes,

>> you don’t want to hear platitudes from me.

But other than those fine

words, I have no other explanation, because

that is what protects me, or, let’s say,

what keeps me from being afraid of all this.

My inner conviction that I’m

doing the right thing, and that this is the only

possible thing—the thing I am obliged to do, in

a sense. Who protects me physically

there? No one. Who can protect me from

them? These people are the state—the authorities. They

control everything here: the courts,

the police, the FSB (Russia’s security service), the prosecutor’s office—everything under the sun.

the housing office, the utilities, hot water, cold water,

gas supply, the foreign intelligence service.

Everything. So without any doubt, these

people can do whatever they want to you, to me,

to Ivan Petrov, to Ivan Sidorov—anything

they want.

>> The question is: "Why don’t they?"

>> I don’t know.

>> Have you asked yourself that?

>> I have asked myself that. I just don’t know.

First of all,

um, maybe for some of them, within some kind of

conceptual framework,

those who really want to

check who’s behind me,

by tapping my one and only phone,

looking through my legal casework,

my financial flows, and so on,

can quite easily establish that no one

is behind me, that I don’t have any money

to speak of. And all this activity—well, I

carry it out using what I earn myself,

spending whatever amount I can,

>> in short, that you’re on your own,

>> right? That I’m on my own. And so, within

that way of seeing the world, some of

them, yes, understand that basically

there’s no hidden motive—I’m doing this because I

have to. As for those who really are crooks and

actually thieves and killers, whose

interests I’m stepping on, and who

want to do something—well, I don’t know. So

if you’re asking me, "Why

haven’t you been killed yet?"—the answer to that question

I don’t know, Stas. It’s obvious that

discrediting me is far

more effective than hitting me over the head with a metal bar.

That is, and so

what is the task when it comes to me? Not to

say, "Navalny got hit

over the head with a metal bar, so he must have been right about everything."

But if he himself is a crook and a thief, then

that’s a different matter. Then we can

say that everything he said

was false, because he himself is a crook.

And there are constant attempts here to, I don’t

know, somehow manufacture criminal cases against

me, based on

things that at least

look plausible, but

starting with complete nonsense like this,

when just a couple of days

ago I went to the police and gave

a statement about why the RosPil logo

was supposedly an insult to the state

coat of arms, and so on.

>> All right, let’s talk now about specific, specific

cases. So, uh, let’s start with

the most recent one. This is

the criminal case that has already been opened over,

>> it’s a very strange situation, this business about

insulting the coat of arms.

>> Ah, there was an inquiry based on a letter

from just some person on the internet,

somewhere in Penza, and

a decision was issued refusing

to open a criminal case. They said:

"No crime took place." Then one

of the deputies of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), a member

of United Russia, filed a complaint with the

Prosecutor General. They launched a real

investigation, and even extended it. And as part of

that investigation, I was recently

asked in and shown this thick folder.

documents. In this fat little folder, among other things,

there is, uh,

an expert opinion from some institute

of cultural studies, which says that

it really is desecration. And

the investigator told me that

a criminal case will be opened, in which

I will, well, at the first stage, be treated

as a witness.

A witness to this terrible act of

desecration of the state

coat of arms of the Russian Federation.

>> And how exactly did you desecrate it,

>> Gera? The RosPil logo. I—I didn’t

desecrate anything, and no one else did

either. The point is that

the RosPil logo is, well,

a perhaps ironic, but still

affectionately reimagined version of the state

coat of arms of the Russian Federation. And there our

wonderful little bird, yes, the double-headed

eagle, is holding not a scepter and

orb, but two saws in its claws. That’s

RosPil. And it was made by a person—

an actually unknown person on

the internet. And the website says that

the author of the logo is unknown. But the meaning of all this is

completely obvious. We want

Russia’s coat of arms to be real, that is,

to return to its true meaning.

Because right now, what is displayed on

the RosPil website is the real

coat of arms. It represents state power,

which has a saw in each claw and

uses them to actively carve up, steal,

loot, rip apart all those

petrodollars that

are raining down on us from every direction.

We want Russia’s coat of arms to become

normal in terms of its meaning. But

some figures in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament)

seem to think that these two saws,

which the eagle is holding, are

a desecration of the anthem. By the way,

I’d like to draw them onto

various coats of arms of various Russian

agencies, starting with the tax

service, the bailiff service, and all sorts of others—

there’s no shortage of them. Some hold axes,

and the Russian Post has some kind of

crazy thing in its emblem, and so on. None of that

is considered desecration. But our two

saws are.

>> Now, about the criminal case concerning damage caused

to the Kirovles enterprise in the amount of

more than

more than a billion rubles.

>> More than a million. Just over one million.

Yes. Yes, yes.

>> 1,000,000 rubles.

>> It’s just that they keep bringing us new

updates here. I thought, could it really have

gone up even more?

Well, it’s clear that the governor of Kirov Region,

Nikita Belykh, whose unpaid adviser

you were

at the time, said that

the criminal case was based on

the testimony of a single

person, the former director of Kirovles,

Vyacheslav Apolyov—or Opava, right,

Opolev, right,

>> Whoops.

>> That’s quite a mistake. Well, lots of vowels.

And he does not consider it serious or likely to have

any real judicial future, but nevertheless

still, what’s your view—

legally speaking, how could you have stolen

this money? Or is the criminal case not about

how you stole it, but how you

skillfully advised someone else to steal it?

>> This isn’t even about—it isn’t even about

me stealing this money. It’s

called causing damage without

signs of theft.

That’s the allegation.

>> How does that work?

>> I mean, I’m not a lawyer, so

and

>> well, under this article in Russia,

90% of those prosecuted are

train conductors who let fare-dodgers ride.

An inspector comes along and says, “Oh, you’ve got

a fare-dodger here?” The conductor says, “No,

that’s not a fare-dodger, it’s just a person. I didn’t take any money

from him. But since you’re transporting him, and

he could have bought a ticket, then you caused

damage, even though you didn’t steal anything.”

>> Lost profit,

>> something like that. And according to our fantasists

from the Investigative Committee, while I was

an unpaid adviser to the governor of Kirov Region

on a voluntary basis—that is, I was never

a government official—

I gave this enterprise some kind of

bad advice, imposed some sort of business scheme,

as a result of which they

suffered damages of 1,300,000 rubles. Overall,

this enterprise’s losses are 200 million rubles.

So the other 199 million

don’t interest anyone. The only thing that matters is

some invented, supposedly

advice of mine that caused them 1 million rubles

in damage. Besides, this damage—well, the enterprise

itself has to establish it

for itself somehow. How is damage determined? They

say, “We have damages.” The owner of the

enterprise says, “Damages.”

But the owner of the enterprise—the government

of Kirov Region—says, “There are no damages.”

The enterprise says, “There are no damages.” What’s more,

this case has already been dragging on for many

months.

It was investigated at every stage. And at the

stage, at the level of Kirov Region, it

was investigated. An investigator came,

took my statement, and issued

a decision refusing to open

there was no criminal case, nothing at all. It

was overturned, and that ruling was taken to

a higher level, to the level of the

Volga Federal District. The same thing

was investigated and investigated,

and they issued a so-called refusal

order: there was nothing there. That too

was overturned and taken to the very highest

level, to the Investigative Committee.

an investigator for especially important cases.

This is probably a unique case in the

history of the Investigative Committee.

Investigators for especially important cases

were looking into a case involving damages of

1,300,000 rubles (about 1.3 million RUB). And under that kind of statute, too, yes,

they dragged it out there for a long time, also

calling me in to give explanations. And then

a representative of the Investigative Committee,

Mr. Markin, said on television:

"We have opened a criminal case against

Navalny because he, through some kind of

corporate raid, tried to seize

an enterprise."

To this day, I have not received a single document. I

have already gone to court, because, well, if

they say that a criminal case has been opened

against me, then by law they

must immediately give me

the order initiating the case so that

I can exercise my right to a defense. But

as of today, we see nothing

except some statements of theirs

simply on television. Not a single piece of paperwork

exists. This whole case is stitched together with white

thread. It is completely obvious that

they dragged it out and escalated it to the highest

possible level so that it could simply

by political decision

be, uh,

formally opened. And what will happen next?

At this point, no one

knows.

Now I want to move on to two key,

not exactly accusations, but versions,

that exist regarding why

you do what you do

and which are, let's say,

alternative to your own account, to what you

say—that you are doing this

entirely independently, because

you are doing what you must, and come what may,

right. Well, simply because, uh, I, as

a journalist, will now just set aside

my own value judgments.

Whether I believe you or not, I think that is

for whoever needs to decide. Clear enough. So, one

version is that Navalny is

an American project.

An American project. Uh, well, you yourself

have probably read books and newspapers and know

the history of how Americans operate abroad. And

they really do have various

projects. This is not a figment of Soviet

foreign-affairs journalists' imagination, as

I once thought. Still,

you have to give them credit. The Americans.

They really do have think tanks,

institutions that work on

developing long-term, uh, plans for

economic and political expansion in

a number of countries, and they really do

look within those countries for politicians loyal to

their ideas.

Moreover, let me put it this way: as

someone trained in American studies,

a person who has spent a great deal of time in the States,

traveled there, hitchhiked,

crossed the whole country at 19, and has

a lot of friends there, yes—I share many of the values

of those people, and I am not afraid to

say so. I consider them

an outstanding, very strong people. Yes.

Another matter is what I think about their

state policy, their foreign

policy—Iraq and so on. So,

uh, they are a nation of pragmatists,

and idealists, strangely enough, that is,

where idealism, belief in

the ideals of freedom, personal initiative,

and self-reliance, on the one hand,

and on the other hand pragmatism: the fact that

of course they will not miss an extra cent and

will try to spread their ideals

to the whole world, because they sincerely

believe that this is right. So

in principle, when they take some

country where there really is a dictatorship

and where, in their view, everything is bad, and try

to help that country become a democracy, from

their American point of view there is nothing

wrong with that. So they find

a young politician who speaks

English

or is learning English, right? And then

they simply help him in one way or another.

They provide him with a certain

cover through their more

serious people in government

structures. They give him money in some

way. And this practice is widespread;

it exists all over the world. That is a fact. So

tell me: are you

a participant in that policy?

And if not, why not? And finally,

why not?

>> Well, that's a common question I get,

if you boil all of this down briefly: aren't

you an American spy? And

>> those are different things, let me repeat—not necessarily

a spy,

>> but an agent of influence or something else. Well,

you know, our country has a long-standing

tradition of conspiratorial thinking.

Not only ours. In America there are

even more hardcore conspiracy theorists. And I, well,

you know, with people who are convinced that

there are spies everywhere, it is quite hard

to prove anything. So all I can do is simply

say: let’s look at what I actually do

and at who is making these accusations against me.

It’s the usual pattern: we hear

that Navalny is working for

the Americans. When I say, “You stole

a billion,” they tell me, “And you’re

an American spy.” So where does all this

come from? You see, when people have nothing

to say, the loudest and most prominent

people accusing me of working for

the Americans are the very same

people from Transneft. The people who looted

that company, who robbed it from

top to bottom—instead of

explaining to anyone where they spent

the money on “charity,” how they

built this tower, they say, “He’s

an American spy, we’re not going to answer

anything.” And for me, there’s a very simple

way to prove it. I say:

“Let’s look at my work

overall.” More than 90% of my

investigations and information I simply get

from open sources. I take a business

newspaper where, unfortunately, every single

day there’s a description of some scheme

for how a billion was stolen from some company. I

base my work on this completely open

and public information when conducting my

investigations. My organizational

capacity is obvious and visible to everyone. I

have a small team there—

four people. All the methods, mechanisms,

ways of finding information, and so on—

all of it is completely open. These supposed

amazing, as you put it, more

high-ranking handlers or patrons—

well, where are they? And the main question is,

Stas, tell me this: I’m the one

investigating corruption here, and the person

who stole a billion, moved it into a

Swiss bank, laundered it somewhere, and

invested it in real estate in the U.S. or

Israel—which one is more likely to be an American

spy? No, well, you answered that question perfectly

when you had—well,

“duel” is probably too strong a word, but I mean

with Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman

of the State Duma committee on

entrepreneurship, and on air at Finam

FM, where the idea was

for Fyodorov

to prove that you were wrong in claiming

that United Russia is a party of thieves and

crooks. That conversation basically showed

all of this. By the way, it’s all online.

You can watch how amusing

it looked. It really was a show.

It was real infotainment, but at the

same time, Alexei was genuinely convincing there

when talking about United Russia—

who has how much money abroad,

where their money is, where their children are, and so on and so forth.

Exactly. If we’re looking for

>> an agent, Alexei, that’s not what I mean right now.

Still, I’ll say it again: right now I’m

talking about something slightly different. That is,

as for the guys from United

Russia, especially the ones you

mentioned, there’s nowhere left to put a mark on them—they’re that tainted,

that’s obvious. I mean you specifically—I just

need a simple answer. So, are you

financially connected to the Americans

in any way,

>> Well, of course not. Of course not.

As for

>> trips and meetings at the mansion

of the U.S. ambassador, right nearby

on Spaso House (the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow).

>> Never happened, never happened. There was some kind of reception

hosted by the U.S. ambassador,

people said you were there

>> I was invited once to something. But that

never happened. But first of all, I don’t

see anything wrong with

speaking with the U.S. ambassador.

Next. More than that, I am absolutely

trying to cooperate with

U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Why? Because all our crooks

who steal here also launder money, including

in the United States. In the U.S. there is

legislation under which—well,

first of all, money laundering is a

federal crime, and people can actually

go to prison for it. Second, they have

the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,

under which, if an

American company is involved in

corruption in Russia, those people can

be prosecuted under U.S. law. That’s exactly what

brought down the company

Daimler, which we already talked about

here, and so on. So when our

crooks set up offshore structures in

the state of Delaware and use those offshore entities

to steal money, and since neither our

police nor our prosecutors are going to investigate it,

I try to make sure all of it

is investigated in the United States. And it

can also be investigated in

the United Kingdom as well, because

our largest companies are

listed on the London Stock Exchange. Since

their criminal activity has this

cross-border, transcontinental

character, I am without any doubt doing

everything possible to involve

law enforcement agencies in other countries.

If we can’t jail them under our laws and with

our crooked police officers, then we’ll

try to have them caught by the FBI or,

I don’t know, some British

law enforcement agency. That’s what needs

to be done, and I will keep doing it.

As for any cooperation

beyond that, it’s quite easy

to verify. Please, let the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service)

requested all my transactions there. Let them

let them, let them check and see who

is financing what. And I’ll repeat: the main

question is this: how is it that

our officials, sitting in the State Duma

(the lower house of Russia’s parliament), in the Russian government, all have

dual citizenship,

all own property abroad,

all have bank accounts. And under

the laws of those countries, this is plainly unjustified

enrichment. Any one of them could immediately be

picked up crossing the border. So

the question is: who has been recruited there? I

am absolutely certain that a significant part of

our corrupt, venal elite,

really is just absolutely

an easy target for recruitment. And

a significant part has already been recruited,

because those people could be, tomorrow,

when they travel to London, arrested

for money laundering and put away for many

years. And yet they live quite comfortably,

their children study there, their families

vacation there. And look at the official

asset declarations of our government: there,

half of them have houses in Spain, Cyprus, and so

on.

When I write something online about

commenting on your activities,

comments immediately start coming in, including

from people who

are completely in favor, fully approve — there are many of them.

Then there’s the next one — well, about

the American spy, I already mentioned that,

we seem to have dealt with that. And the next

thesis is: Navalny is a Kremlin project. And

that’s the only reason he is so freely

able to do what he does.

That’s the only reason, obviously. You’re married,

>> right? I have two children.

>> That’s the only reason his wife doesn’t nag him

every day saying, "Stop doing this

already." Because in reality

it’s a Kremlin project. A Medvedev

project, or a project of the elites who

>> The Kremlin told my wife not to nag me

>> or of the elites who, well, something like that, yes,

or of the elites backing Medvedev and

want to push him into the presidency, and so

they are counting on Navalny. That’s why the order has been given

to everyone who needs to hear it: don’t touch him.

And what’s more, there’s one exotic

idea: that the criminal case which

the Investigative Committee has now opened — and in our country

the Investigative Committee now reports

directly to the president, right — so

this too is supposedly an idea cooked up in the Kremlin

with the aim of truly bringing you

to the federal level, because now

after the Investigative

Committee of the Russian Federation announced a

criminal case, that’s it — now it’s impossible

not to notice Navalny. Soon

even the federal TV channels will be forced

simply to talk about it. See how

great that is? Everyone is working for me — both

the Americans and the investigators — Americans too.

They forgot the Americans, yes. That’s all

settled then.

>> I understand perfectly.

>> As a lawyer, I can see the logic — that

there is a logic to it here. Yes,

>> I understand that. There are people who simply

don’t believe that anything happens

for no reason. And all the more so there are people who, in

their lives, have never done anything

for no reason. So when, well, simply

someone starts writing a complaint to the

prosecutor’s office about a crime, then

he can’t possibly be doing it just because

he’s outraged by corruption — so either

someone paid him for it, or someone is

behind it, and so on. It’s impossible

to convince such people otherwise. I

am perfectly fine with people who

are skeptical about my

activities. I’m ready to persuade them. Everything I do

can be checked,

traced, examined under

a microscope. That is, I try in general

to live in such a way, uh, that you could

show me, I don’t know, live on air

all the time. Well, that’s partly for

my own safety too. The fewer secrets

you have, the better. Well, those who think

that there’s some kind of project behind everything,

for them, someone is always

working for someone. He who looks

will always find something. Exactly.

No, but in that sense, in that sense I

do understand you, because I don’t

have anything like your level of popularity online,

but even so, with my fairly short

experience working

on the internet, in blogs, I’ve already had enough accusations, uh, that

there’s money behind it, and that I’m somehow

being secretly funded practically with

American money. So

we are carrying out detailed

and the radio station Kommersant FM, where I

work, and, uh, the fact that I’ve already managed

to be called both a Jew and an anti-Semite, and, well, basically

to be on everyone’s payroll.

>> So then the question arises: Navalny was on

Kuchera’s show? Then why, if he’s

so oppositional, if they’re both so

oppositional, why are they allowed on

television? They’ve been banned, but where do they

get their money? That’s the question that comes up,

Stas, are you more of a Kremlin project or

an American one? You see, from that,

you understand, out of absolutely nothing

a conspiracy theory gets built. Uh-huh.

They said such terrible things about corruption

on television. It can’t have been

for no reason, so someone must have allowed it. And

if someone allowed it, then it all must have had

some purpose, and so on. Ah, well, we didn’t

we will never convince these people.

>> Moving on, moving on. As for

the future, yes, and your political future

in particular,

have various political

forces invited you to join them?

>> Russia, Forward! (a political initiative associated with Dmitry Medvedev),

>> for example, or Right Cause, or PARNAS,

the systemic or non-systemic opposition.

I was a member of the Yabloko political party,

from which I was expelled for promoting

nationalist ideas. After that, I

did not join any political

movements,

well, any structured ones. No,

no one invited me anywhere, asked me to join,

and so on. As for that kind of non-systemic

opposition like PARNAS and the like, I

generally view their

activities positively; I consider them my

allies and sincere people. But

overall, what they are doing

strategically, I consider fairly

meaningless. As systemic poli... I

believe that trying to register

a party now, running to the Ministry of Justice

for a piece of paper—I don't need that. I am engaged in

my own work. More or less,

some people support me. And whether

more people support me or fewer

people support me, I will keep doing what I

do. I think it is effective.

Practical pressure on the authorities—that is what

we need to be doing. As for registering a party,

you are only playing into their hands. That is exactly what

they want. All they want

is to send you through this labyrinth.

Go to notaries, register your

regional branch, collect signatures, take them to

the Ministry of Justice. At the Ministry of Justice, we reject you, then you

go to court, and so on. That is not

political activity.

>> So you do not intend to join PARNAS?

intend to.

>> I do not intend to join any

political parties. Ah, and as for

the question of parties and

whether this is some Kremlin project, pro-Kremlin,

near-Kremlin, and so on—I have never

received, I have not even received such

offers, it seems to me, because

to any reasonably sensible person

my answer would be obvious.

>> All right. But still, do you have any idea of creating,

for example, your own movement,

your own party?

>> We live in the 21st century, in a post-industrial

society. That is the reality in practice.

The question is whether I am going to create

what is called a Leninist-type party,

the kind of thing they came up with in the 19th century,

namely cells. I will collect from everyone

lists, these cells will elect chairmen

and so on. I would be formalizing

and building this little pyramid, and I do not

need that. There are people who

support me now. They exist in practice,

they are there as a matter of fact. So why do you need this

movement? The movement already exists. If

I collect these people's names and

hang the list on the wall in my office,

will that make my work any easier? All right. As I understand it, you

still want to change

the system, uh, of life in this country, the system

of governing this country, the people who

are currently governing our

country, the country we live in, the one in

which your children live, as far as I

understand. They do not live somewhere else,

>> They live in the Maryino district of

Moscow.

>> Right. So, accordingly, you

intend to change this system somehow,

and there are legal ways of changing this

system through, uh, elections.

And there are also

illegal ones,

or semi-legal ones, the Egyptian

option, the Middle Eastern option.

>> Entirely legal. And I believe that what

happened in Egypt and Tunisia was

simply the consequence of what those

authorities had been doing. And I think such a scenario

will play out in Russia, because

all these guys have usurped and

concentrated a colossal amount of

power, which they simply cannot

handle. They have it, but they

cannot do anything with it and are no longer of any

use to anyone. I

believe that the political concept, if

you like, the political concept,

the political strategy, consists in

putting pressure on the authorities

from different directions. My

activity is one of

those directions; what I am doing is

perhaps a narrow one, until

we force them, uh, to open up,

to make the system free enough and give

everyone the opportunity to take part in

elections. And when that happens, when everyone

can participate in elections without the threat

of being removed from the ballot, and so

on, then it will be time to take part

in elections and then form legitimate

government. Sooner or later, that will happen.

Either they will do it themselves, or, as in the

Tunisian scenario, they will be thrown out into the

street and forced to do it. There is no other way

this can develop. Because

right now, every person who wants

to become, say, a deputy in the

Uryupinsk district (a proverbial small Russian backwater), either has to

go bowing to United Russia, or

has to pay someone money. And if

if he is disliked by someone, by the mayor

of his city, that person gives the order

the election commission simply won't

register them, or it removes them from the ballot.

In other words, elections have stopped being

a mechanism that forms

genuinely popular power,

legitimate authority. There are just some

people there—some got in by accident, some

didn't. And there they are, sitting

on the dais, riding around in cars with

flashing lights, calling themselves the authorities. Everyone

else they simply, through

the election commission, shut out. How do you

assess the prospects of the Right Cause party under

Mikhail Prokhorov?

Well, on the one hand, I welcome

the creation of any groups there that

are now going to fight United Russia,

because United Russia is

the very foundation

of usurpation, that kind of monopolist

that provides political cover for all

crimes, including corruption.

So in that sense, it's not a bad thing.

On the other hand, my concern is—I don't

know Prokhorov personally, I don't know how

charismatic a politician he may be, or

whether he can really lead people—but from what I've

seen of businessmen who go into

politics, every single one of them has

ended in what you'd call a fiasco,

right? These business methods,

strong-arm tactics, and so on have never worked in

a political party. Here Prokhorov,

Mikhail, needs to understand clearly that

leading a political party and bringing

it to victory is nothing like

snatching Norilsk Nickel from the state

for next to nothing and then

selling it for a huge profit. Those are

slightly different kinds of work. And here all those

so-called effective management tricks

don't work. Different mechanisms apply. That's

the first point. Second, I'm afraid that United

Russia is simply creating for itself

a sparring partner. Because if we

look at the latest regional elections,

they all ran on the right idea: everyone

against United Russia. United Russia is

the party of crooks and thieves. Vote for anyone

as long as it's against them. United Russia is creating

this kind of bogeyman for itself so it can say:

'Oh, you're against us? Sure, we're bad, but look at

them—that's where the oligarchs are.'

>> Those are the real oligarchs.

>> And that's the alternative to us. It's either them, or us and

Putin. What's the alternative to us? Look:

an oligarch, Courchevel (the French ski resort associated in Russia with luxury scandals), some kind of

scandals, billions, offshore accounts

and houses somewhere abroad. Yes, maybe we

have a couple of wealthy

millionaires on United Russia's list. But

why are you pointing fingers at us? Look, he's got 15

billion. It's unclear how he

made it. So I think that for

United Russia this is more likely, unfortunately,

a gift. Unless Prokhorov

actually decides to play a truly

serious game—if he genuinely

goes into politics in earnest, and not just

push some fake

liberal-market

agenda and talk exclusively about

his rather unpopular initiatives to

change the Labor Code, and so on.

But if he answers the questions

people will ask him: 'What is your attitude toward

Putin? What is your attitude toward corruption?'

'What do you think of Medvedev, who

looks like a fairly helpless

figure? What are you going to do with

all these people?' If he finds the strength in

himself to answer those questions

directly and honestly, instead of playing games and being

like some laboratory rat

scrambling over obstacles and then, after that,

running on a wheel,

but instead tries real independent politics,

then perhaps there may be some prospects. Well,

I wish him luck. Overall I'm skeptical,

but I do wish him luck.

>> Khodorkovsky and Lebedev advised you

to leave the country. Have you heard about that?

>> I have. Didn't it make you think?

Well, you see, for me, leaving

the country would mean that everything I

have done was, first of all, pointless, and that I

never really believed in any of it, and that it has

no future—because you cannot

fight corruption from London.

If you want to fight

corruption here—and most importantly, bring

new people into that fight, which is my

main task—then you have to

share the risks with those people. That's it. Well,

no one will ever—I will never be able to

convince

you here in Moscow to do something

if I'm trying to persuade you over

the phone or on Skype while sitting in London.

>> In your view, is it possible in Russia in the near future

to have a revolution—not in the sense

of people merely taking to the streets, but protest

marches after which the authorities

either undertake reforms or

step down?

But in the most undesirable sense for everyone—

with bloodshed?

>> I think it's possible. I think it is

possible. It's hard to say: it could

happen in a year, or in a month,

or it could happen in five years. But the more

they keep trying to clamp all this

down, the more likely such a

scenario becomes, because in practice

they're not really managing to suppress much. And

it's clear that this government is being held up by, well,

a kind of fiction. It would only take some

single small event to be enough for

for everything there to be turned upside down there

upside down. But the more they dig in their heels and

the more they do so—because for them, power

means entirely practical things.

It means your personal safety,

the safety of your family, your money, your

business associates, their families, and their money. In

other words, for Putin there are specific

people—all these Kovalchuks, the

Rotenberg brothers, Timchenko—who are sitting

in Switzerland. So it is clear that as a result of

changes

of some kind—positive changes, any changes at all—all these

people will, at the very least, lose

the ability to keep making money. That is why

the longer they proceed from the assumption

that “we won’t give it up, and we will

be here like Gaddafi, we will

defend so-called sovereignty with a gun,” while in

practice they are simply defending their Swiss bank accounts,

the more likely such a scenario becomes.

>> What do you think about Khodorkovsky? And

the president, at a recent press conference,

said that Khodorkovsky’s release

poses no threat to Russian society, is not

dangerous for Russian society. What do

you think he meant?

>> I think he—Medvedev—meant

exclusively to maintain his supposedly

liberal image, because

he is supposed to play precisely the role of

the good cop in practice. Well,

he says he is not dangerous, yes, not

dangerous—Khodorkovsky is not dangerous. That is obvious

to absolutely everyone. There is no doubt whatsoever

that Khodorkovsky committed some

economic crimes. Absolutely

certainly. But the first time he was imprisoned

not for that, but for political

reasons. In any case, he has already served 7

years. Khodorkovsky’s second case was

an absolute mockery of common

sense, of the justice system, and so

on. So as things stand now, Khodorkovsky

for everything he did—

and he certainly did commit things—has already paid for it

by serving time. At this point he does not pose, does not have

any real social

danger or threat, and so on. More than that,

there is now testimony that

in the second trial there was

pressure on the court. The court secretary is giving

testimony. If you are the guarantor

of the Constitution, then you should not

just say that Khodorkovsky poses no

danger. Then you should,

forgive me, take steps to ensure that

justice is done. If there is extremely

serious evidence that the

court was pressured, then come on—you are

the guarantor of the Constitution, deal with it. But

Medvedev limits himself to these

sorts of joking little remarks. This

simply shows that he cannot

influence the situation. This paranoid government

regards

Khodorkovsky as its personal enemy,

someone who, once out of prison, will change

the political situation in some way. I

actually doubt that this could

happen, but in any case for them he is

some kind of uncontrollable factor,

>> like a member of the tsar’s family after

the revolution,

>> well, something like that,

>> who could be used as a banner.

>> Yes, yes. Exactly. That is why for

them he is an uncontrollable factor. So

they would rather keep him in prison on completely

What is happening now is

completely illegal and absurd.

>> Last question, Alexei. We are out of airtime,

unfortunately. And

Russia in 2000

in five years. Not exactly a forecast, but

how do you imagine what kind of

country it will be? What will you be doing in five years?

What will Putin be doing in five years? What will

our fellow citizens be doing in five years? What

would be, I don’t know, two main scenarios, or

three, or maybe one?

>> Scenarios?

Well, I’m not a very good political

forecaster, and certainly not a political scientist,

but the way I see the logic of how these

events are developing is this:

Russia will continue to remain

a very rich country. In fact, in terms

of the amount of money that

is coming in, the Soviet Union in its entire

history never had this kind of money. The Russian

Empire did not either. In other words, we are very

rich right now. If we continue

to develop the way we are now, this money will

for the most part continue to be

wasted or stolen, which

may by that time lead to

some kind of revolution, in a harsher or

less harsh form.

The optimal scenario is that

the optimal—though probably still

unlikely—scenario is that as a result of

some event, these two

gentlemen, Putin and Medvedev,

wake up one morning and realize that things cannot

go on like this, that all of this is leading to

disaster for them—perhaps

a personal disaster. And that the threat

to their safety and lives lies more

in the fact that they are holding on to

power. And they begin, well, to share

power in the broad sense of the word. They

start taking what they have piled up for themselves and

returning power to municipalities, to

the regions, restoring some kind of

elections, and finally launching some

basic anti-corruption processes, and

dealing with some of the most odious figures.

obvious crooks start being

jailed, and so on. And in this way, they

would, well, simply give up power gently

and in return receive some kind of

security guarantees for themselves, their families, and

so on. That way, they remain in

history as people who, well, somehow

brought Russia to a different level, rather than

ending up like Ceaușescu

shot by a wall.

>> So you don’t rule out reforms carried out by

Putin and Medvedev under

certain circumstances.

>> I don’t rule it out, but as I said, I

consider this scenario unlikely. And

that’s because, well, apparently they

are afraid of it, and they think that this

is too dangerous for them. Although, it seems to me,

the real danger is something else.

>> And what do you see yourself doing in five years?

>> Right now, I’m not trying to define

what exactly I’ll be doing in five years. I’ll

keep doing what I’m doing until

I achieve some kind of result.

If there is an opportunity to run for

office, I will run.

I will fight for political

positions. I will fight to hold

certain posts through fair competition,

to take on leadership roles.

If there is a system in which I can

compete honestly, I will compete. If there

continues to be this crooked system

of corruption and total control,

then I will fight against that system.

>> Are you a happy person?

>> I’m a happy person in the sense that I

do what I like. My

family supports me. Yes, I think

yes, I’ve been lucky.

>> Thank you. Alexei Navalny was the guest on

the program *Our Time*. Stanislav Kucher

asked the questions. Thank you, Alexei. All the best

to you. Be free.