Alexei Navalny on the program “Full Albats” from October 22, 2018

We’re starting.

>> And you’re listening to Echo of Moscow.

>> Guys, I can’t hear the operator’s audio.

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>> Uh-huh, thanks.

>> More than 2 million guaranteed gifts,

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...store. We’re on air. Everything’s fine.

>> Uh

>> Are we on air?

>> Yes, Alyosha, it’s fine. We’re on ai

>> We’re on air, everything’s fine. Not too hot, all good.

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the procedure, learn more

persons eligible to participate in the drawing are those

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>> By the way, I don’t even remember you like this.

>> I weigh 88 kilograms (194 pounds); the last time I weighed this much

was probably

with the help of the company svi and on our channel

on YouTube

the full Albats

>> Good evening. It’s 8:05 p.m., and on the air is

the radio station Echo of Moscow. At the microphone is

Yevgenia Albats. And I’m beginning our

program devoted to the key events

of the week, the events that will

influence politics in the coming

weeks and months. Today I have one

guest: the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

(FBK), the leader of the Russian opposition,

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny. Over the past few months, he and I

have several times

agreed that he would come on the

program, but each time he was jailed.

The last time, for a total of 50 days.

Alexei Anatolyevich, hello.

>> Good evening, Zhenya. Indeed, whenever we

make arrangements, I get jailed. And I

was preparing for this broadcast with some apprehension,

because the last time it was

exhausting, after all, to spend 50 days locked up.

>> Hard, right?

>> Well, not exactly hard—people spend years

inside, right? My brother served 3 and a half years, but,

well, it’s exhausting, and it’s

meaningless, wasted time, and you

understand that you’re locked up for nothing. And

naturally, what really irritates you

is all these court rulings and all

these brazen people who, looking you

straight in the face, say completely absurd

things. Well, at least I

used that time for self-education. I

read a lot, and I spoke with wonderful

people whom life brought me together with in

that detention center.

>> And what kind of wonderful people were they,

what charges were they on?

>> Well, mostly hooligans, drunk

drivers. Uh, actually, joking aside,

it’s always quite

interesting because, well, first of all,

there are always a lot of migrants and a lot

of foreigners. All these Uzbeks,

Tajiks, Kyrgyz—lots of them. And, uh,

now, at least, in any

political discussion on the subject of migr

ants’ rights, migrants in general, why they

come, how much they earn, how

they get robbed—I definitely know much more than

any other Russian politician.

And in that sense, it’s extremely useful for

any person to immerse themselves in

that environment. There are also always many people from

the North Caucasus, right? And with them too

you sit there, drink tea with them,

eat with them, and you talk,

and all these questions—“So what happened

in Ingushetia? What’s going on in Chechnya?”

How do people really feel about Kadyrov?

How do they really feel about Putin? You

are constantly discussing all this with them,

and of course it’s not representative. You can’t

say that I spoke with all

Chechens or all Ingush, but when you

spend 50 days inside, at least 10 people

will end up in your cell one way or another, and

you’ll talk to all of them. So I

—well, this may sound a bit too

grandiose, but I’m a politician

as close to the masses

as one can possibly be.

>> By the way, I wanted to ask you,

who do you consider yourself to be,

Alyosha? A politician,

an investigator,

or, I don’t know, the head of a media holding on

YouTube? And

>> I consider myself, of course, a politician,

because I’m fighting for change in our

country. I’m fighting for power in order

to change the state of affairs in our

country. Everything else I’m forced

to do, and I’m building this media holding,

as you quite rightly said, ironically,

because, well, I

have to, and I myself view it ironically.

All of us view it

ironically, because I’m forced

to make and record these videos for

YouTube, which of course I would never

have done if there weren’t censorship

in the country, if I could appear on normal

television—why would I need

YouTube then? Right. And investigations,

the journalistic work that we

do—I think we do it well,

and we’re also forced to do it because

because, well, in this country there are literally only

a handful of media outlets left

that

can carry out such investigations and can

speak out against corruption. So all

these things—the media holding,

the investigations—are still just

means, while the goal is to achieve

a normal situation in the country, one that

our people deserve.

>> So the goal is, after all, to come to power?

>> Absolutely. Yes.

>> And your video

responding to Army General Viktor Zolotov

has already been viewed by 4,852,000

people. I checked today. And I have to

offer you my wholehearted congratulations on

an absolute success. It is, without question,

a brilliant piece of political commentary.

I say this with no irony whatsoever: it is

a brilliant piece of political commentary.

The general's response was

extremely strange.

First he said he was a fool because

he had rushed into saying something or other.

Then he said that first there should be

court proceedings, and only then everything else. No. His first

response was that he had not invited you to

that at all. Then what exactly was he inviting you to?

An Army General, the head of a

law enforcement agency, no less.

>> Well, you see, sorry to interrupt. This

in itself is quite an unfortunate thing:

that our Army General and the head of the

largest law enforcement structure

does not understand the meaning of the words

he is saying. He just strings letters together,

says something, but he does not understand

what it means. 'Let's put Navalny on a

polygraph. Let's test him in order to

find out whether I am lying when I say that I

consider him a thief and a crook.' Well,

and besides, it shows, in principle,

his basic

disorientation about who he is and

who we are. He genuinely thinks that he is

the owner of this country and can, accordingly,

order everyone around: 'We'll run these people through

a polygraph, and those people through

some lineup of informers or something else.' He

truly does not understand that he is

a public official accountable to the people, receiving

money from our pockets. And therefore he

must explain certain things to us, from

the price of cabbage he

pays for the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) to, indeed,

where exactly his family got

real estate worth 3.5 billion rubles. But his response

is very clear: he refused

to debate.

>> He refused. Well, as far as I can

tell, I said it clearly: a duel in the form of

a debate. Time is passing; a week has gone by. So on

Thursday he must say whether he

agrees to these debates or does not.

The court case is all nonsense, because it is not even Zolotov who filed

against me, but rather

that Crimean

meat-processing plant, with this ridiculous lawsuit. And there

is nothing there concerning Zolotov. In that suit

they are trying to prove to me that the higher

the fat content of the meat, the better the

meat. And therefore, they say, I am wrong

to claim that they supply the Guard,

Rosgvardiya, with lower-quality meat. So

this is just a collection of tricks and a pile

of nonsense, plain and simple,

meant to distract us from the essence

of the corruption in which both Zolotov and

the entire Russian elite are mired. On my Facebook page

I wrote that you would be coming on the air and

invited people to submit questions.

And I am going to weave them in, because

there are many substantial, good questions. So,

here is a question from Vasily Yakimovsky:

"Maybe it would be worth agreeing to a fight

with Zolotov?" Of course, Alexei would lose, but

the effect even of such a loss would be

stronger than no clash at all.

What do you say? The maximum effect would come

from getting answers to the

questions we are asking. And Zolotov's task,

just like Putin's task and that of all the

others, is very clear. For

them, the carnivalization of politics is important. And they

do this during elections. And in the last

presidential election we saw it, and

now they want the same thing: that, in

response to substantive accusations,

there will be some kind of fight, and people

in different-colored shorts, and we will

all discuss it, and it will be so entertaining,

so amusing, and behind all of this, well,

there is, of course, the great Putin, he is

serious, sitting there in the Kremlin, while

down below there is all sorts of riffraff

busy with various ridiculous

things and entertaining the Russian people,

entertaining the public. It is very important not

to fall for this trick and to demand

answers to our questions from them. Because

these people really, not only

steal billions themselves, they have condemned

the entire country to poverty and decline. And

somehow, one would like to stop that. Well,

I am 42 years old; I have spent almost 20 years, half my life,

living under Putin. Half my life. My

child has lived her entire life under Putin. And

therefore, here it is important, after all,

to finally have a substantive

conversation, especially in circumstances where we

see that they are losing gubernatorial elections

for United Russia, and still

they keep dodging all of this.

>> Have Zolotov's people approached you in any way,

with any behind-the-scenes proposals? No,

>> was there anything at all? Nothing whatsoever.

>> Okay. And do you understand, uh, Alexei,

how serious the risks are for you? Today,

Novaya Gazeta (an independent Russian newspaper) published

an investigation concerning people

connected to the well-known so-called

"Putin's chef," Prigozhin, which, among

other things, mentions an attack and

an attempted murder of the husband of your colleague

Lyubov Sobol.

>> Yes, absolutely. It’s a remarkable

investigation. And of course, for us,

for the entire Anti-Corruption Foundation, it is

very important. We had no doubts and

from the outset stated that

Prigozhin’s involvement in the attack on

Lyubov Sobol’s husband was the primary

theory. But now I believe we have

facts. Facts showing that

indeed, a person connected to

Prigozhin carried out this attack,

injecting him with a syringe. Not just an attack, but

what kind of attack? A syringe with an unknown

liquid into the thigh of my colleague’s husband. He

lost consciousness. And that person, as I

understand it, was killed after he

carried this out, well, this act.

>> That’s what *Novaya Gazeta* writes. Yes, absolutely

right. And all of this is confirmed by a source

for *Novaya Gazeta* in Prigozhin’s circle,

who, as I understand it, has now also

disappeared. There are grounds to suspect that

he may no longer be alive. And we

understand these risks. We have always understood

these risks. We stated and accused Zolotov

of essentially

being behind the murder of Boris

Nemtsov, because in February

2015, when Boris was killed,

at that time he was

a minister,

that is, commander of the Internal Troops

of the Russian Interior Ministry. And Boris Nemtsov’s killers

came from the Sever regiment,

which is stationed in Chechnya. And

it has been proven in court that it was people who

served in that regiment who killed Boris.

>> Exactly.

>> You understand, once again, I want to say this—I’m not

talking about everyone, not about various

people in the ACF. I’m interested in you personally,

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny. Do you understand your own

risks? Zhenya, to be honest,

forgive me, of course, but your question is

even slightly insulting. Has there ever

in all the many years of our

acquaintance been any sign that I am afraid or

that I fail to assess certain risks or

Yes, I understand everything about the risks, I understand

everything about Zolotov and Kadyrov. And I

have repeatedly said directly that I believe

Kadyrov is involved, and I believe that

Zolotov is involved. And the court materials,

the investigation materials, directly point

to this. Security, of course.

>> I know—why would I need security when I have

you, Echo of Moscow, Alexei Alexeyevich

Venediktov has just been protecting me. And in

that sense, the multiethnic people

of the Russian Federation stand behind my

back, and I am not afraid of anything.

>> Nevertheless, it still seems to me that

quite a lot of people in this country, and I

for one, am ready to help fund your

security, because this is too serious.

I’m glad that you are ready to finance

our work, and I urge you to go to

the website donate.fbk.info

and send your money to support

the funding of the Anti-Corruption

Foundation.

>> Okay. Now to the next block of questions.

The ACF published information about the palaces and

incredible apartments of the heads of corporations—

Sechin, Chemezov, Miller, and so

on. You showed the palaces and apartments

owned by the Zolotov family worth several billion

rubles. And that, of course,

compromises the authorities. Do you have an

explanation for why President Putin

allows such ostentatious

luxury,

>> Because he is the same way himself. Because he

is exactly like that. And they do all this by looking

at Putin. Just look at Putin’s palace

in Gelendzhik, which, by every

measure, is a lavish building.

It was built by an Italian architect. Uh,

marble was smuggled in from Italy,

FSB officers received it at the port of—what was it—

Gelendzhik or Novorossiysk

Novorossiysk, probably, right? And these

materials were taken past customs. And

all of this was handled by Sechin, Zolotov—they

were all involved in it. And, of course,

>> Zolotov—I don’t remember, maybe Shamalov was involved in that,

and Sergei Kolesnikov was involved,

who spoke about it extensively and who,

in fact, for some time was part

of this Putin circle and

was involved in financing the palace in

Gelendzhik; he also pointed to the role

played by Zolotov. Because many of the

communications there were tied to the FSB,

to the personal security detail. They

see that Putin is obsessed with

a life of luxury. He is obsessed with money,

with financial interests. After all, he makes his

friends into billionaires. Not because,

well, not only because

the Rotenbergs are dear to him. All these billionaires,

the Rotenbergs, the Kovalchuks, whoever—they

are, in effect, quasi-custodians. They hold

Putin’s money. People very often ask me,

“Why don’t you do an investigation

into Putin? Where are

Putin’s millions?” Well, here they are, these

Putin millions and billions. They

sit in Rotenberg’s accounts, they sit in

the accounts of Surgutneftegas,

they are held by this entire group, by all

these classmates, former colleagues,

judo sparring partners who

became billionaires. All of this is money,

money like Roldugin’s in those strange accounts. This is,

of course, Putin’s wallet. And, uh, all

his subordinates look at him and

do the same as he does, and that suits him.

because they get drawn into this

vicious, corrupt circle. Each

of them knows they’re completely implicated

in it. And each of them knows that

they could be sent to prison to the applause of

the public, because you can jail

any one of them and show their apartment, show

their palace, and people will say: "Well, of course,

give him life." And so they

closed ranks. It’s like, you know, in

action movies, when you join

the mafia, you have to shoot someone

in the head, right, as part of some collective

murder. But with them, you have to buy a palace

in order to become part of the mafia and

understand that you’re so deeply compromised that you

can’t get out anymore.

>> Well, when it comes to Putin’s inner circle, you

present specific documents both on air and on Navalny Live,

and when you make your separate videos

you show concrete documents. And here, this is

Sechin’s wife, his first wife. This is

the second wife, or the third, whatever it is,

right? Or Miller’s. And there

these assets are registered to them. But with Putin, there’s none of that.

There’s nothing.

>> Well

>> How is that possible?

>> Well, because Putin’s form of corruption

is more sophisticated.

It all runs on trust. Like

the mafia. The mafia boss registers and keeps

his money in the common fund. What are

Roldugin’s accounts, after all? They’re a kind of

slush fund, Putin’s wallet. He

says: "Roldugin, go there, they’ll

open an offshore account for you in Panama, and

the guys will wire $2 billion into it. You just maintain

the whole thing, and later I’ll tell you how

to use it." And it’s like that for everyone. You just

have to understand how

Putin’s corruption works. That’s exactly

how it works. Of course, we won’t find—well, at

least right now, I don’t know of anything

like a specific

Swiss bank account that says:

"Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and here lies

a billion or a trillion or, I don’t

know, a brazillion dollars." He does it differently.

He registers things in the names of his closest

associates.

>> Well, in that situation he can’t step away from

power.

>> Exactly. He doesn’t want to, and he won’t

either. That’s why he’s been clinging to power for 20

years. There it is. The logic is very simple. You’re

confirming my point yourself. And

well-known film critic Yuri Gladilshchikov asks you:

"Roughly how many clans

does Russia belong to?"

>> It’s hard for me to say how many clans there are,

because they’re all intertwined already. It’s

a kind of mafia, uh, something close to

the Italian model. They’ve all

married each other, divorced, then

married again—godparents, in-laws,

all sorts of family ties. It’s hard to say, but I think

that, broadly speaking, all of Russia belongs to

about 500 families—500 families at different levels.

There’s some super-top tier of 20 families,

but overall those 500 families own

almost everything in the Russian Federation.

>> Political scientist Alexander Morozov from Prague. In

the civil service, in your view, are there

people who could become your

potential allies, or is it all just

thieves?

>> Well, of course there are. The civil service is

still something enormous, right? If we

take actual civil servants, and then

also include

public-sector employees—just public-sector workers alone,

whose salaries are regulated by the May decrees

(Putin’s presidential decrees issued in May 2012), and who are not formally

or legally civil servants, but still

by Russian informal standards they’re kind of

treated as state employees too—there are

6 million of them. That’s millions of people

who are all very different. I assure you that

most of them—or let’s say

a substantial share of them—know a lot about

this corruption, are angered by

this corruption, and have no opportunity to be

part of it. Because not everyone

holds a position where millions are

being distributed. There are decent people there, but

they’re afraid, they work, they live, unfortunately,

by the proverb: if you live with wolves,

you have to howl like a wolf. So they go along with it, but

they’re not very happy about it. And, without question,

many of them will, uh, be our

supporters in one way or another. I actually have

an interesting story about that. I think

I may even have told it on the air at Echo of Moscow

that we

during the 2013 Moscow mayoral election

specifically analyzed the voting levels

in those districts and specific buildings

where various

Moscow City Hall officials live in concentrated numbers. I won everywhere there.

I won in all of those

polling stations and in all of those buildings.

>> So officials vote for you?

>> Well, in part because they keep

a fig in their pocket against their

bosses. But I don’t know whether you noticed

this poll or not.

There’s a public group on VKontakte,

called Police Ombudsman. It’s the

largest online community where

police officers hang out.

It has

around 80,000 members, I think. And there was

a poll. 25,000 of them

voted. Who is more convincing: me or

Zolotov? 93% voted for me. Not

because they necessarily love me,

right? But because, well, Zolotov...

First, he's insane, and second, well, they...

They are sensible people who go to the

store. And if they see that Zolotov

is actually buying potatoes at four times

the price they cost in the store, then you

can't convince them otherwise. And that's because

the authorities are now getting to the point

where they are literally pointing at

something white and saying, "This is black." And

vice versa. Have people from the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) reached out to you

there—officers, maybe,

I don't know, the officer corps?

>> Well, people do write to us, including about

this food issue, and they say they are

outraged and express some support.

They write cautiously, of course,

because in Rosgvardiya, on Zolotov's side, there are also

various security services

that very closely

monitor the mood inside, and they are not going to

tolerate any dissenters there.

But I can say this: during those 50 days, I was constantly

being transported by convoy one way

and then the other. Everyone had seen

those videos, and everyone agreed with me. There

may be some political differences,

but everyone, without exception, says: "Well, what's there

to say—Zolotov is a crook." And then,

when he released his address, and I

hadn't seen it yet, everyone seemed

to be saying: "Well, you haven't watched it yet,

but once you're out and see it, you'll realize he's

completely insane, just an

insane man."

>> If it's not a secret, were you tipped off about this

topic, or did you deliberately start digging into

state procurement related to Rosg...? This is our

main anti-corruption project,

the long-running RosPil. And a RosPil staffer

just came to me and said, "Listen,

I've been looking at Rosgvardiya's procurement, and

they're buying something odd. They switched

the contracts to a single supplier, and the prices

shot up immediately compared with

the previous year." I said, "Well, that's kind of

strange. It's hard to believe they'd act so crudely and

openly, because that's how things were done

several years ago, but now

corruption has become more

sophisticated." I said, "Let's

take a look." And that's when we found

a secret decree by Medvedev,

which, despite being secret, was sitting

on the state procurement website. So in the course of

routine monitoring, and through open

sources, we established everything.

>> I don't doubt for a second that

Zolotov coordinated

his response to you with Putin. He must have gotten approval

for it.

>> So what actually happened now? I keep

coming back to this topic.

I don't know, but all of this looks very

strange. I don't know any of these people.

And to be honest, I'm curious myself

about what happened among them, because over

the last three months we've seen

several absolutely insane

things. Take these two, Petrov and

Boshirov—Putin said, "We will show you

Petrov and Boshirov." And they did.

And it was some kind of epic failure

of intelligence, of Kremlin PR, and

of everything in general. Putin's address about

raising the retirement age, with the

famous "Try to understand our position."

That's completely out of character for him, and then

there were these hysterical-looking addresses

by Zolotov, in this strange and

comic setting—this too

is not something they usually did. It seems to me

that, well, degradation leads to this, but still—

20 years, 20 years without

any real competition—and they've simply lost

their minds. They were gradually losing them, losing them,

losing them, and now it has all simply

come to the point where they are doing

strange, absurd, insane

things.

>> Look, I spoke with people who were at

the Valdai Forum, with people

who speak English and understand Russian

well. I asked this

question. That famous statement by

Putin that we will all go to heaven,

while they will simply drop dead. And some people

had already started writing that the president

might have some kind of cognitive

problems. And the response was:

"Nothing of the sort. He thinks very clearly

and understands perfectly well what he is doing."

>> Well, let's look at the results of the

latest elections. And let's look more broadly

at their actions. Raising

the retirement age makes no

economic sense; it will not lead to

higher pensions. That's a fact, and we can see it

simply from the next budget. And from every

angle it is absolutely harmful; it is

insulting, it makes people

poorer. Nevertheless, they

just pushed ahead like tanks and raised

the retirement age. But with this

Petrov-Boshirov business, who was even

making them do it? Who told them to? Who

asked them to drag those men onto television?

Well, if everything is corrupt, then how

can anyone expect that some segment,

some institution in society—say,

the GRU (Russian military intelligence) or the intelligence services—would not be

corrupt as well?

>> Well, I agree with you, but that still doesn't

mean they had to haul them onto

television and publicly humiliate

themselves. In that sense, well,

it's like with a person, you know. Sometimes he is

normal, sometimes senile, and

well, in some respects they seem to...

There are, of course, some deliberate

actions; they are still in power. These are

cunning, malicious, cruel, deceitful people

who are effectively holding on to power.

So here we are, sitting and

talking about what fools they are. But

they are the ones sitting in the Kremlin, and at any moment

the police could walk in here and jail

us under any charge they choose. So we also need

to be a little less puffed up. They still

understand things very well, but even so

we can see some clear signs of

degradation and, frankly, outright senility already.

>> We now have to break for the news and

advertising, and then we’ll return to the Echo

of Moscow studio.

>> Oh, no, not yet. I’m afraid I won’t

fit it all in. Al,

>> could you ask them to bring me some tea?

Thank you very much.

>> Black, no sugar. Thank you.

half past two in Moscow.

>> Now we have a question from citizen

Boris Semyon. The United States

intends to continue consultations on

the INF Treaty with Russia and its partners in

Europe and Asia. As he said in an interview with Echo

the U.S. president’s adviser

John Bolton

in Moscow

at the time,

that Washington had already accused Russia of

violating a number of agreements. No water

needed.

>> No, I’ve got some in the middle of the radio segment.

>> There are 18,000 people watching us right now. And where

are they watching? Over there. Well, anyway,

somewhere around here. Hi, everyone.

>> There it is. There, there, there it is on screen.

>> Honestly, I’m not really... I do understand

why you’d watch, when it’s very convenient

just to listen.

>> Well, on YouTube you can both watch and

listen. But look, if you’re in the office

or at home, how are you going to listen? Will you find a

radio? Do you even have a radio at home?

>> No.

>> Exactly.

>> Well, I listen either on my phone or on

my computer.

>> Well then, if it’s on your phone or

computer, you just turn on YouTube and it

plays. You can just walk around

while it’s on, and I can go about my business and

listen to something. So when it says

18,000 people are watching, that quite

possibly just means they turned the sound on

and that’s it. And how many watch you when

actually, I looked at your statistics

— they’re insanely interesting.

>> Of course, nobody can keep up with you,

Alexei. Your last Navalny Live had 570,000

views. And after that the best numbers are

Dasha’s. After you, Dasha does best.

Navalny, I’ll ask you about that later.

A little bit, yes, also doing well. Lyuba Sobol

is doing really well too, yes, good for her.

Well, some things work out for us,

some things don’t. It’s a complicated

process. And for us, this is all completely

new. We come up with various

ideas. Today I was sitting there and came up with

yet another script and thought, "My God,

what am I even doing with my life?"

How the hell did I become some kind of

TV producer? Well, it is

interesting to me, of course, but honestly, I

never planned to spend my life doing

this kind of thing. I mean,

it’s interesting, I like it, but it’s just

strange. I had actually planned to be a

lawyer.

And for some reason Cactus has very poor numbers.

11,000, 14,000, 20,000.

>> Well, it had its peak. And we, well, we’re

constantly experimenting there with

formats. Sometimes it works, sometimes

it doesn’t. Cactus is also that kind of

humorous format. And again, we’re

not actual comedians, so it doesn’t

always come off.

>> Do you need a mishit for that?

>> Well, we do need people. We need lots of people. We

don’t have the money to afford

to hire a large number of staff.

>> Right. Underground television for

landing the plane.

>> Zhenya, shouldn’t you announce that

Alexei will be on for two hours?

>> Well, not quite, not the full two hours, summer

of next year.

A slight rise to 68° is expected

I’ll take care of it

they’ve brought you the second hour

>> advertising. It doesn’t matter. The legendary clown

Slava Polunin and the renowned violinist

and conductor Gidon Kremer with the Kremerata

Baltica orchestra present a fantastical show.

Only from October 24 to 31. Information at

ponominalu1+advert

on the radio.

>> How have you been? What interesting things happened over

the past two months? Ten.

>> I went to Africa.

>> Alexei, let me tell you — I just flew back from Africa.

I’ve just arrived back.

>> From Africa?

>> From Africa.

>> Which country?

>> Kenya.

Damn, I want to go to Kenya too.

>> Another 10 days in a tent, imagine that

>> with a headlamp on my forehead, because

also

>> there was no electricity. Thank you. Uh-huh. No

electricity,

no water.

>> Was it some kind of safari? Were there antelopes and

Cheetahs were running around. Awesome.

>> And different people,

>> different people. I came in a cape,

the Maasai wear this.

>> It's insanely interesting. It's incredibly

fascinating.

>> I found a very budget-friendly option—or rather, not me,

my friends from Chicago found a very

budget-friendly option. All in all, it was

amazing.

>> Well, I'd really love to go to a place like that.

Well, I'll tell you, it costs $2,200

>> per person.

>> Per person

plus airfare.

>> Tickets from Moscow. No,

>> they're not that expensive. Moscow, Dubai,

Nairobi.

>> And round-trip cost me 54,000 rubles,

but I bought

comfort class so I'd have room to stretch my legs.

On your smartphone. Subscribe to the public page.

I can't think about anything else anymore.

>> It's amazing. Everything is interesting. This whole

structure of life.

>> In general, we know very little about it.

I'm reading a book about it right now.

>> So,

>> good evening.

It's now 8:35 p.m. You're listening to the radio station

Echo of Moscow. I'm Yevgenia Albats. In the studio at

Echo of Moscow today, our only guest is

Alexei Navalny. Alexei Anatolyevich,

hello again. Ah, and I want to warn you right away

that, thanks to the editor-in-chief of

Echo of Moscow, our airtime has been extended,

because so many questions came in that I

was completely overwhelmed.

>> To make up for all those times I didn't make it to your show.

>> Yes, for all those times Alexei was sent

to a temporary detention center instead of

coming to Echo of Moscow. A question

from citizen Boris Zimin.

Someone well known to you asks: what should be done in

the beautiful Russia of the future with the FSIN (Federal Penitentiary Service) and with

the many millions of security and law enforcement personnel whose

sense of right and wrong has been damaged?

In general, Alyosha, the question of what exactly you

will do with these people when you

come to power keeps

coming up, doesn't it?

>> Well, first of all, the security services are, of course, very

different. There's the police, uh, the most

numerous branch of the security apparatus. And again, they are

completely different from one another. Some are desk officers, others are

district officers. But here the question was specifically

about the FSIN. I believe this is one of the

few agencies in Russia that is not

capable of being reformed. It must

be disbanded and rebuilt from scratch, because

it is a gulag.

It is a completely senseless system for consuming

and destroying people. It is officially

called the penal enforcement system.

And it is supposed to rehabilitate people. It is a

correctional system, yet it carries out

no corrective function whatsoever.

And in that sense, well, I mean, there

torture by staff against inmates is officially accepted and encouraged there,

as is the encouragement of torture

by some prisoners against other

prisoners. What's more, they publicly

state that this is their method of control:

to torture and torment people. Now, these people

may be criminals, and most often

they are criminals, but forgive me,

because if they are criminals, society

has put them in prison—but society has not

ordered that their fingernails be torn out there or that they be

beaten on the heels with a baton. Therefore

the FSIN specifically must be completely

disbanded and fully rebuilt. And we

understand how to do that.

>> And Lubyanka (a metonym for Russia's security services), is it any easier—better, if you pardon me?

Uh, again,

there are different divisions there, but

what we are seeing now—the FSB as

the country's security service—is

a pointless institution. What kind of

security do they provide us? Do they

help us in any way fight

corruption? No. Do they provide

some kind of anti-terror system?

No—we see a completely insane number of terrorist attacks.

So this is

a gigantic bureaucratic body

that, of course, mainly serves itself. All these

security structures as a whole must be, uh,

downsized; new people must be recruited;

those involved in crimes must end up in the dock;

those complicit in crimes;

and the archives must be opened,

without question. In that sense,

everyone should get what they deserve.

As for the Interior Ministry system, of course,

the main funding should go to

the grassroots level—to what is called

working on the ground. The people who

actually solve crimes.

Eighty-five percent of crimes are solved by the people

who directly

interact with the public—district officers, detectives,

working in precincts. A normal federal police force should be created

instead of

this Investigative Committee,

which it's completely unclear

what it actually does. The prosecutor's office should be stripped of its general

supervisory function, but

the prosecutor's office in its current form could really

be disbanded altogether—it's basically unnecessary. It's just

some people sitting around and retiring at 35

with gigantic pensions. I mean,

overall, this is millions of healthy

men—not stupid men, healthy men—

who could work in the private sector

and benefit themselves and their families. But

instead they're just warming seats.

So overall: cut it down, increase...

significantly raise the salaries of those who stay

and are ready to work professionally; everyone

else should be laid off, retrained where

necessary, and some simply dismissed.

>> Another question from political analyst Morozov.

Whose property rights will be preserved

after Putinism collapses?

This is always a question of how much

why these questions are being asked, because

it is well known that authoritarian regimes

inevitably collapse, but they collapse when

a coalition or alliance is formed between the old

elite and the incoming new elite. Yes. And

the question is: with whom will you be prepared

to negotiate?

>> Well, if the question is whether I am going

to embrace the oligarchs and

build an alliance with them, then the answer is no. And

you know, this whole line of thinking that

we should cozy up to the oligarchs,

because the oligarchs are supposedly in favor of

the market economy, and supposedly, after all,

even though they grovel before Putin

all the same, deep down

in their hearts they are, in a way, a little bit on

our side. So if you're any politician, if you're

Navalny, please go on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station)

and swear that all the oligarchs will keep

everything they have. While I was sitting there, I read

this book, *The Time of Berezovsky*. Yes.

Whew, it made me want to

tear the book apart. I mean,

it

it is interesting, there are many

remarkable interviews in it, but it describes

the utter vileness and amorality of this

entire group that is somehow regarded as

what are for some reason called major

businessmen. Some of them are, overall,

fairly decent. And there is an astonishing

interview there, specifically

an interview by Aven himself with Chubais, where you read it and

Aven—the author of the book—comes across

almost like some kind of democrat,

a Westernizer. And Chubais, who, um,

was supposed, in the 1990s,

to be the one deciding that

property should go to private

and efficient owners, instead just spouts

completely disgusting

filth in the spirit of

well, I don’t know, the early Supreme Soviet (Russia’s parliament in the early post-Soviet period)

of 1993. Well, these are simply

absolutely hypocritical people. I have not the slightest

sympathy for them, not the slightest warm

feeling toward this whole disgusting

gang. And nevertheless, property

rights must be respected. It’s just that

these people do not have lawful and legitimate

property rights. Everyone who acquired

their property honestly—then 90%

of that property will remain with them. But

the loans-for-shares auctions—do I consider them

sacrosanct, something I must uphold? No.

My answer is no. I believe that all these

people who acquired colossal

assets should pay at least

a privatization tax, which

did exist, for example, in

the United Kingdom. It existed in the UK,

and it can exist in Russia too. So, uh,

property, yes, of course, will

remain, but, uh, property,

for example that of Zolotov,

should I guarantee that the dacha

that belonged to Mikoyan, essentially a cultural heritage

site, should remain

the property of Zolotov? Yes, I

guarantee that this will never

happen.

>> Still, in the video I noticed this point.

Alexei, you said, look,

this dacha was owned by

Dzerzhinsky, and it remained state property;

Voroshilov, and it remained state property;

Mikoyan, who from Ilyich... without

a heart attack... and it remained with

the state. But with Zolotov, you said,

it is now his forever.

>> Well, it’s his forever as long as Putin is in power. And I

hope—I don’t know whether I myself will be able

to, uh, or whether people like me will come to

power. Uh, but I am sure that sooner or

later—hopefully sooner—people will come to power in

Russia who will

drive Zolotov out of that Mikoyan dacha—

not just drive him out, but who will take him from that

dacha and send him to the defendants’ bench

where he will answer questions about

how exactly he managed to

privatize it.

>> Won’t this lead to another 1917?

What about all the things we must...

>> ravaged dachas, Blok’s dacha, and so on.

You just compared Blok and Zolotov,

which means nothing of the sort will begin; there will be

no ravaged dachas, because no one

is planning simply to take things away from wealthy people,

from entrepreneurs. In fact, we

actually, uh, know quite clearly—and there are not

that many of these people—who obtained

their property as a result of this

corruption, these blatant major

corrupt deals. Again, these

people are not going to be dragged out of anywhere

by the scruff of the neck just because they are oligarchs.

They will be told: "Well, you privatized these assets, and

let’s review all of this, and you

will pay a tax." Now, in situations

like Zolotov’s, with certain

officials who simply cannot

explain the origin of their

wealth, a case for illicit enrichment

is opened against them. That’s all.

>> So there will be no outright expropriation.

>> No, not outside legal procedures; within

the framework of the courts, there will be nothing like

Navalny saying: "Well, I don’t like..."

like his mug, then get the hell out.

from the dacha (country house). This dacha is now somehow caught up in

legal proceedings, and by a court

independent of the executive branch.

>> Uh-huh. Okay. Fighting corruption is

your trademark issue. Ah, however, sociologists from

the Levada Center (an independent Russian polling organization), have noted, uh,

that t

hat Russians have, in a way, adapted

to this corruption. Moreover, their

attitude toward this or that

politician is not greatly

affected.

by the fact that the politician is corrupt. On the

principle that they're all like that, they all steal, right? And

so, essentially, the question

is this:

where do you go from here? Well, you'll

do another investigation, and we'll

learn again that this one is a thief, and this one

is a thief, and that one too. And overall, we understand that

the entire system of power in the country is built on

theft. It is vertical, and

there is horizontal corruption too. And a person

who enters this system of power

inevitably becomes compromised. What will you

do next? What is your

strategy?

>> I know very clearly what I'm doing,

what my strategy is. I'm simply

a politician who has a job. I'm not

just a politician in the abstract. I'm a politician who

created the Anti-Corruption Foundation

and works at the Anti-Corruption Foundation. In

that sense, I have daily

work that I do for the benefit of

society. But if we look,

for example, at my political statements

during the presidential campaign, over the course of

the last several months, then 90%

of what I said concerned, in general, uh,

the raising of the retirement age. Before that,

the main theme of my presidential

campaign was, incidentally, not fighting

corruption, but increasing funding for

healthcare and education—that is,

investment in human capital, and

budget redistribution in that sense,

creating a new Russia that will

spend money on people, not on

weapons or on pointless

security forces. And in that sense, I will continue

to propose solutions and talk

about the things that matter for the country

and about corruption as well, including on a daily

basis, because that is my job. But

what I talk about and what I

focus on from a political point of view,

has long since been not only, and not even primarily,

corruption. Here are the questions that came in on

Facebook from young people, and

interestingly, they differ, uh, from

the questions asked by people aged 50+,

and young people are asking you questions, uh,

human rights activist Nikolai Levshits, or, uh,

Gleb Chudetsky, who is about my daughter's age,

right? They are asking your question: so,

what next, exactly? The party isn't being

registered. Street protests have declined

in the number of participants.

Views on YouTube have fallen. What should be done

next? Nikolai asks. So,

Levshits asks: are there new ideas and plans? Are there

new ideas and plans for the future? I understand

that life will show the way, but apart from new

investigations and broadcasts, what else?

>> Political work. We are doing this political work in

completely different formats.

We want to change

the country. We want to change the government. Where

there are elections, we take part in elections.

And here you're being asked whether one should participate

in elections.

And we will be involved in

municipal elections, and in St. Petersburg,

we will be involved in the Moscow City Duma elections.

In that sense, we have no, you know,

schizophrenia. And where there are no real elections, where it is

a complete fake, like the presidential

elections, we call for a boycott. Where

elections do exist, we call on people to participate in

them. On September 9, there were some of the

few remaining elections for

city mayors—the mayoral election in

Khabarovsk. We took a very active part in it,

our candidate was removed, not allowed to run,

because he would have won. And in

those gubernatorial elections, we

supported Communist candidates. And

despite the fact that, generally speaking, they were

trying to distance themselves from our

support, we invested resources,

put out videos, and carried out investigations.

And in Primorye (Russia's Primorsky Krai) right now, we are supporting,

and our штаб is actively supporting

the Communist candidate. So in that sense, we

will take part in all elections, we

will organize mass rallies, we

will conduct investigations, we will

come up with new formats of

consolidated voting. That is,

we are doing all kinds of political work

right now. Trade unions are constantly coming to us,

and we help trade unions,

we deal with labor disputes. We have

a structure of forty regional offices across

the country, after all. And they do all sorts of

things.

>> And these offices have survived?

>> Yes, they have survived, of course. It is

a huge and difficult job, but the offices

have survived, and despite the fact that

there are inspections of some kind all day long, and

now arrests as well, we are still doing all this, and we,

uh, well, I can proudly say that

we are the country's leading real opposition political force

that exists

as an actual structure. And all opportunities, all

the kinds of political work we will be doing.

I mean, there is no such thing as,

you know, me telling you, right now we’ve

come up with this great idea. Starting

tomorrow, we’ll do this

and that, and that’s how we’ll win. But there

is no single magic solution. There are

traditional forms of political work.

We engage in all of them, some more effectively

and some less effectively. That includes,

among other things, creating media. Right now we have our own

several YouTube channels with a reach of

several million people. We want

to make sure that in every

region we have, well, even if it’s a small media outlet

with a reach of several tens of thousands of

people. In some places it’s going

better, in others worse.

>> That’s not cheap,

>> but we’re making it almost

free. These are all YouTube channels. I mean,

these aren’t journalists

writing articles; we’re trying to do it

in such a way that it’s impossible to

shut us down. And of course, the easiest way to shut something down

is where it’s expensive, where

you can come in, arrest the editorial staff, and

scatter everyone, or cut off

the newsroom’s funding. We do it

so that people can simply set up

a webcam, a computer, and start video broadcasting.

It’s not easy; all of this is fairly difficult

to get going, but we’re working on it.

>> But FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation), as I understand it, has

a proper studio. I can see that you do

special effects.

>> FBK has a proper studio, but we want

some kind of studio setup to exist in

forty cities, at least in all

cities with populations over one million. They already do. Our штабs (regional campaign offices)

put out videos. Those videos get

hundreds of thousands of views, tens of

thousands of views, or in some cases just thousands

of views. So in that sense,

as a media operation, we have a very

large reach. We’re constantly trying

to improve this product, because, well,

of course, it looks very homemade,

it definitely looks like

some obscure guerrilla group

shot the whole thing on a single camera. So,

yes, that is a problem, but we try

to make do and be resourceful. By the way,

I remember they seized your

equipment in the spring—twice they seized all your

equipment. Did they return any of it?

>> No, they returned nothing. No, nothing

was returned. And it’s still not even clear who

seized it. I mean, we know who seized it—

the FSB (Federal Security Service)—but in response to all our letters, court filings,

and everything else, they say: "Well, you don’t

know who seized it, so you can’t

file a complaint against anyone." And if you can’t

complain about anyone, then goodbye.

>> Great. What’s happening with the registration of the party Russia

of the Future?

>> We are demanding registration. We were refused. We are

demanding registration again. We are pursuing

legal proceedings all the way to the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) at every stage

where we were denied. There was People’s Alliance,

then the Party of Progress; we are litigating everywhere,

we keep pushing, we get

results. We know for certain that once the party is

registered, we will definitely

clear the barriers everywhere, both in the regions

and at the federal level. And, well,

the Kremlin knows that, which is why they won’t

register us—but we are demanding registration.

>> How do you see the situation with civic

protest? Gleb Chudetsky asks.

Given the tightening of laws and the development of

surveillance technologies—cameras, neural networks

that identify faces, and so on—as well as the strengthening of

the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), how far can things

go, in your view?

While I was sitting here, I was reading an amazing

report—I don’t even know what to

call it, a Meduza feature about China,

>> about the Uyghurs,

>> yes, about the Uyghurs, about how they’ve created

something straight out of some insane

science-fiction film: a system

of total control, with monitoring of

phones, video cameras, and

absolutely everything. So yes, you can

get to that point; you can even get to North

Korea. It’s just that the Russian

political regime is so

inefficient that they won’t manage it the way the Chinese have.

All they can do is,

well, what they will do effectively is

jail people for likes and reposts; they’ll keep

jailing people for likes and reposts; they’ll keep

stopping people from holding rallies. But

there is no alternative,

you understand? If you believe that

this is your country, then you still have to go out

anyway, because the moment you leave the

streets, it means their

video cameras have done their job. When all is said

and done, what are you really facing? Well, they’ll give you

15 days in detention. It’s bearable.

>> And you don’t think that causes

concern?

>> It does. Of course it causes

concern. We can see that they are,

well, intimidating people on a mass scale. People are afraid

to come out, and the size of rallies has fallen.

Not because fewer people support

us—more people support us—but they are

being intimidated. So what can we do? We’ll still

go out, and we’ll look for other methods. I mean,

there is no magic

button. We will use everything. But in

some situations it is a matter

of principle to go out into the streets, because

that is the most basic right. We cannot

and never will achieve free

the media, or access to elections, let alone

the fight against corruption, or anything else, until

we are allowed to gather in the streets

of our city. Yes, that is simply,

basically, absurd. That is the first thing we

will achieve.

So we will keep going regardless,

with these mass actions, of course.

>> Well, you do get feedback through your

campaign offices. But in the regions, what are people waiting for? What

are they hoping for at all?

I traveled around in the summer; I was in Irkutsk

and in Arkhangelsk.

And, honestly, I just shake my head

and cannot understand why people put up with

what they are putting up with.

>> Well, that is the main reason why people

join us. Because there is total

hopelessness. Because at one time they

were waiting—well, there really once were

improvements. In Putin’s early years there was

growth in people’s real incomes. But

for the past five years, real incomes have been falling

and, well, most importantly, there is a kind of

complete ideological and economic

dead end. Oil prices are high, and yet

people are still in poverty, nothing

is growing. And it is clear that nothing will grow. And

that is not my assumption. Again,

look at the federal budget. We can see

that nothing is provided for there. No growth

in wages, no increase in pensions, no

economic growth—there will be nothing. Putin has

officially told us in his documents:

"Folks, keep putting up with me,

but you are not going to get richer; I have no

development to offer." That is why people in the

regions join us, because, well,

they have understood that there is no other way out

except to start somehow

fighting back or speaking out themselves. Uh, well, in

that sense, people’s despair brings them

to us, because they expect no change from above

whatsoever. No miraculous

awakening from Putin, from Medvedev, or

recipes from the Skolkovo School (a Russian innovation and business hub) or from some

so-called liberals in the government.

We expect nothing good from anyone.

>> Well, look, a study has just been

published by the Committee

of Civil Initiatives on, uh, trusted figures

in the media. And the top ten are all

propagandists.

>> Well, what other authorities do you expect?

Who do they show on television? Well, those are the

authorities. But wait, how can people

name someone they have never seen?

If Leonid Parfyonov were on

television, then of course he would be

in first place, but Leonid Parfyonov

is nowhere near it. He exists on YouTube now,

but Solovyov is there instead, and, it seems to me,

already on every channel and in

a million different programs. So that is who

people name. That is just how it works, how

authoritarian countries work. They push everyone else

out, and people name those

they see. Ask about politicians, then,

and they will tell you: "Well, Zyuganov,

yes, Zhirinovsky, yes, Putin, yes, Shoigu, and

that is all." Because no one else is visible. Well,

if you know that politics in the

country consists of four people

from Putin to Shoigu, then those are the ones

you name. Do you think that in the regions

there really is demand for the opposition and

for new elites?

>> Of course, enormous demand. And again, this is not

my assumption. In Primorye, the United Russia candidate lost;

in Khabarovsk, the United Russia candidate lost;

in Vladimir Region, the United Russia candidate

lost as well. And in most cases, they did not

lose to some super-

charismatic candidates who ran

active campaigns. United Russia candidates simply lost

to just about anyone. People will vote

for the devil himself, as long as it is not for

a United Russia candidate.

That directly shows the mood and the demand

in the regions. It is just that there it does not turn into

mass rallies or anything

like that. But look at what is happening in Ingushetia right now,

right? On the one hand,

we are told there is supposedly 90% support

for the authorities there, some unimaginable support for

Yevkurov, but we can see that the

system has broken down. The demand in the regions is

enormous. In the regions, the demand is greater than

in Moscow, because people in

Moscow are, after all, much better off. And in

Moscow you can at least try to find yourself

a job that pays 60,000 or 70,000 rubles

or more. In the regions, even in a large

city, even one with over a million people, try finding

a job that pays 50,000 rubles. It does not exist.

That is the whole story. So of course there is much

greater demand there.

Again, I sit with these people, with all

of them, and I see that they are from different cities,

they hold jobs, they were earning low

wages, they came here to work

as taxi drivers or at McDonald’s, or they

work as paramedics on ambulances.

A working person in this country cannot earn more than 40,000 rubles.

And on 40,000 rubles

you cannot support a normal family.

That is the whole demand right there. We now have to

go to the news and commercials, and then,

I should note that our broadcast has been extended.

We will be back with Alexei

Anatolyevich Navalny on the air again on Echo

of Moscow (a Russian radio station). We will continue answering

our listeners’ questions.

>> Very good.

>> We are right here, Alyosha.

>> Well, we will get as far as we can.

>> Yes, as far as we can.

>> Actually, by the way, it is very interesting.

For the first time, I asked people on Facebook

to write in their questions, and I’m surprised. These are

essential—no, Alexei, the main thing is that they are

fundamental questions, you understand, and they

differ greatly

from the ones that come here

at first

to be quite enough.

>> Well, it’s just that Facebook is full of people

who follow politics closely.

On Moscow websites, probably, the people there

follow politics less closely. “Let not the burden

of their cares weigh upon us,” wrote Herzen (Alexander Herzen, the Russian writer and thinker). One could also

recall the old-fashioned expression “news

from us.”

>> From us, yes, all right

>> news will come from here, that is, we should

keep quiet.

“To each his due” means that everyone has their own lot

destined for them, and there is no point in wishing for more

than what fate has written. And “let it not weigh upon us”

would not oppress him. This is nothing other than

a call to live for today and its concerns.

>> Me, how am I? So-so, fine—how are you?

>> Good. Great. I’m very glad to be here.

In

>> any case, in any case it did some good

after all.

>> I’m just feeling wonderful.

>> What good did it do, then?

>> The man lost weight. There you go.

>> Well yes, soon he’ll be transparent. Mom didn’t

want to feed him.

>> I’ll put the weight back on now, now. Good Lord,

that’s the easiest thing in the world.

But at least they released him today. I mean, how can someone spend 8

months locked up for absolutely nothing?

>> In our reality.

>> Well, the fact that they let him go, the fact that

they released him—yes, that’s some consolation.

>> And who is this, guys? It’s me

>> this is the guy—when I was walking and they detained me,

they detained him too, basically

just for company, and then once they had

detained him, they accused him of

pushing a police officer there.

>> Was this on Tverskaya, near

>> Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And they kept him hanging for 8 months.

>> And since, well, the case there was absolutely

made up,

they gave him a 10-month sentence. And

since he had been held in pretrial detention (SIZO, a Russian remand prison), they

released him immediately. I mean, just for

nothing at all.

>> Echo of Moscow radio.

>> 9:00 p.m. in Moscow. In the studio is Yakov

Shirokov. This is the news. The United

States has not yet ended discussions on

the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

with Washington. There are

still questions, and consultations are expected

to continue," the adviser to the U.S. president on national

security told Echo

John Bolton.

We had very serious, intensive

discussions today on the issue of arms

control. Comments were made on both sides. We

made very serious statements regarding our

position, consulted on

this issue, and will continue these

consultations with other participants in this

negotiating process.

Bolton is in Moscow these days on

a visit. He is expected to meet

Vladimir Putin tomorrow. The

Kremlin hopes to hear the White House’s position

on many issues. On

Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump

announced that the United States intends

to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which

has been in force for more than 30 years.

Yandex may restructure its

news business. The company says this

is connected to a bill that

would limit the share of foreign capital

in news aggregators to 20%. Such

a bill was introduced today in the

State Duma. Analysts at Finance.ru

consider this a form of pressure on

the company’s founder, who owns 48% of

the voting shares, Arkady Volozh, who

also holds Maltese citizenship.

The Investigative Committee has charged

a staff member of the Institute of Linguistics with extremism:

Alexei Kasyan. The case

is connected to posts on LiveJournal and

other entries from three to four years ago. The posts

were found to contain signs of inciting hatred toward

people from the Caucasus and Asians. The criminal case

against Kasyan became known in June

after a search was carried out at the linguist’s apartment.

He himself links the prosecution to

his participation in the Dissernet project,

which helps identify plagiarism in academic

works, including those by politicians and

officials.

Moscow City Hall has already received a fourth

application to hold a Russian March on November 4,

National Unity Day (a Russian public holiday).

The applicant’s proposed route is the same as

the traditional one for such events. It

runs along Pererva Street to the monument

to the Soldier of the Fatherland on Lyublinskaya Street.

The declared number of participants is 5,000

people, Interfax reports. The applications,

city officials say, will be reviewed within

three business days.

Roskomnadzor says it has received no complaints about the video containing

footage of the killings of students and teachers at

Kerch College. The surveillance camera recording

was published the day before by

the Vesti Krym TV channel. The clip also appeared

on the broadcaster’s YouTube channel, but

was later removed. Roskomnadzor

claims the video contains no propaganda of

violence, nor any justification of the

killer himself or calls to carry out

similar acts. The student’s victims were

20 people from the college were affected.

Several people were injured in the Kyiv

metro because of an unknown substance. As

reported by the TV channel TSN, the incident

occurred in the city center at the

Ploshcha Lva Tolstoho station, where people were going down

the escalators to the platform when some

of them began having trouble breathing. There was

severe coughing and dizziness. At the

station, panic broke out. Police are

searching for a group of minors

who, they believe, were playing with a pepper spray

canister.

Light rain is expected in Moscow tomorrow afternoon.

The high will be +6 to +8°C.

Yakov Shirokov, Echo of Moscow news service.

Moscow.

Yeah, thanks.

>> See you for now. I'm still in the middle of it. Ah, okay.

From here too. Okay.

>> What can maternity capital (Russian state family subsidy) be spent on?

How can you protect your interests when buying

property?

>> We'll tell you the essentials. Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

They're announcing everything. Attention.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Find yourself on the FM dial.

>> Echo of Moscow advertising service.

Watch the broadcast of this program with the help

of CVER and on our channel

on YouTube.

Full Albats.

>> Good evening once again. It's 9:00 and almost 5

minutes. This is Echo of Moscow on the air.

At the microphone is Yevgenia Albats. And here we are

for the second hour, grilling Alexei Anatolyevich

Navalny, founder of the Anti-Corruption

Foundation, politician, leader of the Russian

opposition, who, uh, after serving

50 days, because of which several

of our broadcasts fell through, has finally

come to us. A whole lot of questions came in to the

Echo of Moscow website and to my page on

Facebook, and we finally have the opportunity

to ask him those questions.

>> Don't torture me too much; give me the pleasure

of an interesting conversation.

>> Thank you, Alexei.

You are being asked to comment both on the tragedy

in Kerch, and the split in Orthodoxy,

the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox

Church, and the crypto case, and

the publication of the names of the possible

accomplices of Chepiga and Mishkin. Are you

ready to comment on that, or will you

do so on your program on Thursday,

Navalny Live?

>> I-I comment on all of it. It seems to me

that commenting on everything that has happened over

the past two months will be difficult. But

ask whatever interests you. I basically

have a point of view on almost

everything.

>> Okay. And what do you think about this

tragedy in Kerch? We're used to reading about

the United States, where people come in and

start shooting.

>> It's a monstrous tragedy that, unfortunately,

could not have been

prevented, just as it is impossible

to prevent them in the United States. What is now

happening in Russia, when we see, well,

some utterly foolish

bills being proposed,

saying that, well, this must be tightened,

that must be tightened—we know that this does not

work. At the very least, we have

extensive American experience, where these

shootings happen. And we see how

a state that is much wealthier,

much safer, with a much more

developed law enforcement

system.

But it does something; it becomes

more effective or less effective.

I believe that first and foremost for that reason

we should look closely at

the American experience. But, unfortunately, against

the actions of a lone madman

there is very little that can be

done.

>> So you don't see any specifically Russian

aspect here?

>> No, I don't see anything specifically Russian here. I've read a lot

about how this is supposedly some kind of mass

hysteria or militarization of society. Well,

no, actually no. And in my program I

talked about this: the biggest Russian

shootings of recent

years. There's Major Yevsyukov.

>> Yes, in a store. Then there was a Russian

soldier at a base in Armenia who killed several

people. Well, these are all deranged loners

who decided to die after committing horrific

crimes.

And moreover, the first two of them were actually

using service weapons. You can ban

all civilian firearms. Well, there you are,

service weapons. And this

debate in Russia that

is taking place in America about limiting

the number of rounds in a magazine, for

Russia it doesn't work at all, because

everything is already banned here. Nevertheless, that

person came in and simply shot everyone with a hunting rifle.

In that sense, I don't see

any particular Russian specificity.

It is a feature of modern society

that people lose their minds and do such

things. It's terrible. And we will have to live with

it. It's interesting that on this issue

you and Vladimir Putin agree. You

have roughly the same point of view.

>> Well, on some issues I probably

can quite easily agree with Vladimir Putin,

but no. Vladimir Putin said that

globalization is to blame for everything. I do not think that

it is globalization. In fact, globalization in general

None at all. It’s just modern...

That’s simply how modern society is structured.

>> How so? A kind of effect, so to speak—

a copycat effect, when a young person learns

that there is, supposedly, a way to solve things by punishing

both teachers and students. And he sees

that in the United States people come in and

start shooting, and he does exactly the same thing.

No.

>> All right. And when Major Yevkov did this,

was he also looking at what

was happening in the United States? No.

And shootings of this kind also happened

in the Soviet Union. And almost always it was

simply a conscript driven mad by dedovshchina (violent hazing in the Soviet/Russian military),

an ordinary draftee who would grab

an assault rifle from the guardroom and

start shooting at everyone. He had not seen

any American example. This was

even before the famous—and infamous—

events at Columbine. And yet it still

happened. In other words, this is not something that

was invented in the United States in recent years.

No, not at all. Humanity, people in general,

understand what a weapon is. They

understand that a weapon can be used

to kill people. Probably it’s just that

once upon a time, a deranged person would grab

a spear and start stabbing everyone in sight, whereas

now he grabs a gun and starts

shooting.

>> Okay. And Arel Coin, an American

political scientist, asks: Relations with Ukraine. How

can the conflict be ended?

>> That’s quite a question. A tiny little question

for three minutes. No, I’m ready to answer

that question. Obviously, in order

to end a conflict, you have to want

to end it. The Russian

leadership, evidently, does not want

to end this conflict; instead, it is trying

to use it both as a bargaining chip

with Western partners and, above all,

to turn Ukraine into

a kind of failed state, so as not

to allow Ukraine to develop, so that there would be no

Ukrainian success story.

So first of all, there has to be the political will.

Second, the Minsk

agreements need to be implemented, and the process needs to follow the road maps

and documents that

Russia, represented by Vladimir

Putin, has already signed.

>> So do you think Donbas will become some kind of

appendage of the Russian Federation,

or should it remain

part of Ukraine? Well, Russia, once again,

Putin has acknowledged, stated, and signed that

Donbas is Ukrainian territory. And that is, generally speaking,

what he says everywhere.

The problem is that he does not actually abide by any of this

in practice. He uses Donbas as

a kind of strange arena where everyone

suffers, and everyone around it suffers too, and

there are refugees, and everyone is miserable. But it is simply

a lever. You can just turn it one way

to make things hotter there, so that

shooting starts. Or you can turn it back and

things seem to calm down. Plus, of course,

it is a zone of enormous corruption. It’s well known

that salaries there are paid in rubles, right? And

so let me ask a question.

>> All transactions are in rubles.

>> All transactions are in rubles. Where do those

rubles come from?

>> In white KamAZ trucks?

>> Exactly. KamAZ trucks leave the

treasury carrying cash.

Well, if there are KamAZ trucks loaded with

cash, then probably one

or two trucks could disappear somewhere along the way,

right? And who is going to count it? It’s

a war zone.

>> In wartime, who counts? What nonsense. Well,

one KamAZ here, one KamAZ there. Totally normal.

That is why Russia’s leadership, both at the highest

level and at the middle level, where those KamAZ trucks are

distributed, simply does not want

to end the conflict with Ukraine.

>> Relations with America—these are four

questions that came in from Coin. And again, on

Facebook, several people said:

“Be sure to ask Navalny about geopolitics.”

>> Do you see

the United States as Russia’s main adversary?

Actually, this is a unique and wonderful time

for Russia, because we do not have any

serious or powerful enemies.

In fact, with America, with

Europe, and with China, we could now

get along perfectly well and make

a great deal of money through trade. But for some reason

we are not doing that. Instead, we are

getting carried away with various geopolitical

games and other strange things. In that sense,

in America, neither at the level of the

establishment nor at the level of the

general public do they regard

Russia as an enemy, and they are not our

enemy. Right now, we have far more

shared problems, such as radical

Islamism, nuclear

proliferation, and the problems of North Korea and

Iran. So in that sense, we could

live peacefully and prosper. There is not the slightest

objective reason

for us to be in conflict with these countries.

They are all our natural allies

here at the beginning of the 21st century.

>> What do you think of Trump?

>> Well, when Trump was elected, I was also

asked many times: “How will

U.S. policy toward Russia change?” I

said: “It won’t, because the system

in the United States is structured in such a way

that a president, by himself, cannot change all that

much. He can change some things,

but overall, no. So Trump...

Well, uh,

I mean, he really does have

an inexplicable and mysterious affection for

Vladimir Putin. And that really is

the ultimate mystery, because essentially everything

in Trump’s ideology, everything in what he

says for a domestic audience in

the United States, is 100% at odds with what

Vladimir Putin believes in. Yes, the role

of the state, healthcare,

guns, I don’t know—everything, all of it,

migrants. Good Lord, just look at how

I can’t understand how Putin and Trump

can be so fond of each other when Trump’s

main source of popularity is

anti-immigrant rhetoric, while Putin at the same time

brings millions of migrants here and

refuses even to introduce a visa regime with

the countries of Central Asia. How can these people

possibly like each other? It’s

inexplicable. Well, maybe someday

we’ll get an answer to this riddle.

>> What do you think of Trump’s slogan? Kon asks.

America First. That can also be translated as

“America above all,” right? Trump’s

slogan—we could also say “Russia First.”

Russia above all.

>> Well, we can translate anything however we like.

Trump advocates a protectionist

policy. In that sense,

protectionist policy of this kind

has been part of Russian

reality for many, many, many years.

Remember how we protected, and still protect,

Zhiguli cars (a Soviet/Russian car brand) back in

the 1980s and 1990s with outrageous

tariffs so that, supposedly,

our AvtoVAZ carmaker would flourish. And

how did AvtoVAZ develop? It didn’t. All it did was

lead to cars becoming very

expensive, and people becoming poorer because

they had to buy expensive cars, while AvtoVAZ

didn’t develop at all—people just stole

a lot of money from it. In that sense, I believe in

free trade and the free market, and

there’s no need to invent unnecessary

restrictions.

>> And yesterday Trump said that the United States

is withdrawing from the treaty on

limiting intermediate- and shorter-range

missiles.

>> This is a huge problem, one that

is happening both because of

Trump and because of Putin. Well,

let’s put it this way: the belligerent,

strange, irrational rhetoric of the leaders

of the United States and Russia will lead to both us and

the Americans having to spend

huge amounts of money on, uh,

weapons development in this area. We

are poor already. Fine, the Americans—they’re

rich; their military budget is several times

larger than our entire federal

budget. But we, excuse me, are destitute. And

that’s not an exaggeration. Some 20 million people are

living below the poverty line—we’re impoverished. And those poor

people will be paying for

these idiotic missiles, which,

strictly speaking, aren’t needed, because

we already have strategic nuclear

missiles sufficient to, as

Putin said, send some people to

heaven and let the others die. And this

will lead to a new arms race,

in which Russia will—well, we will

be forced to become even poorer in order to

pay for it. And how much poorer can we

possibly get? Don’t you think that

Putin is a very pragmatic man, and the people

around him are also extremely

pragmatic. They’re focused on how to become

richer. Don’t you think this will remain

mere rhetoric? That in reality there won’t be any arms

race at all.

>> No, I don’t think so, because in practice that’s

impossible. There will still be

allocations—I mean, there will be a lot of

made-up stuff, like those videos

he showed—the ridiculous ones where

some missile is flying and hitting something—and

that either doesn’t exist or doesn’t exist in

that form, or at the very least it isn’t

ready for deployment. But in any

case, enormous sums of money will be allocated.

Those enormous sums will be partly

stolen, and for the most part they will simply be

wasted incompetently. That’s what

we’ve seen with our wonderful

Dmitry Rogozins and the rest of them.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome. We did a lot of, uh,

investigating into how the Vostochny Cosmodrome was built.

The same Lyubov Sobol,

whom we mentioned earlier, worked on that.

It’s just

an enormous amount of money wasted incompetently, and

corruption, where 10 rubles were stolen outright, but

300 rubles were squandered. And the same thing

will happen with all these programs.

Unfortunately, that’s basically how it was in

the final years of the USSR (the Soviet Union).

You know, what struck me was that I was at

the Mirny cosmodrome, what used to be called

Plesetsk, in Arkhangelsk

Region. And there’s this wonderful cosmodrome,

a new launch pad, I mean. All of it

is done just brilliantly.

And after that we went into the town and, uh,

the streets leading to the homes of the officers

of these space forces were full of enormous potholes,

everything flooded with water. It’s just

this completely

jarring mismatch

between a super-modern cosmodrome and, at the same time,

absolutely dreadful—well, one of my

favorite stories, the one I tell everyone,

is about the city of Arkhangelsk,

where the cosmodrome is also right nearby, right nearby

in the city of Arkhangelsk. So, Putin

is holding a meeting on Arctic development.

You see? Great Putin, great

Arctic development. You arrive in the city of

Arkhangelsk, and, well, anyone from

Arkhangelsk won’t let me lie,

because on Sovetskikh Kosmonavtov Street in the

city center, people carry water in

buckets. This is a city—the administrative center of a

constituent region of the Russian Federation. I was told this

as something very funny.

>> And the sewage system just stretches along the length of it.

>> Exactly. So when Putin

was holding his meeting, where he

was talking about how we would spend a lot of money

on Arctic development, while in the city

there was monstrous filth, and they held it at the

local university. And in order to

hide that monstrous filth, they built

a huge wooden platform that

covered it all up. So Putin held the meeting, and all the

locals were happy. Well, at least

the filth was hidden, and then the platform was dismantled after

Putin left. That’s it. That’s how it

will keep going. We’ll keep throwing away

money on all sorts of nonsense while still carrying

water in buckets.

>> Tatyana Shcherbina, poet, what is your

political forecast for next year?

One way or another, everyone is asking this question:

should we expect the screws to be tightened even further

— will things get even harder?

There is no scenario whatsoever

for liberalization. When I sometimes read on

Facebook, it’s as if people are suddenly hit by

some kind of wave or something, and they

start writing about some kind of thaw.

But there are no thaws under

this kind of authoritarian regime. There simply

cannot be, because that contradicts their

very nature. They do not know how to produce any kind of thaw.

So of course there will be, to one degree or another,

further tightening.

Look at what is happening to Yandex right now.

We just

heard it in the news. My God, yes—one

of the few successful Russian

companies. We really can be proud of it. In

recent years, when people tell us, "You

can’t make anything in Russia,"

we say, "We have Yandex,

a national search engine. Young

guys built it and became billionaires.

Ordinary employees became

millionaires. It was all great. And now

the state is trying to devour and

destroy Yandex, coming up with

bills that target our national

treasure, created from nothing, from

scratch—they are simply destroying it. So

of course there will be more tightening,

there will be new absolutely idiotic

laws in huge numbers. And the authorities

will keep losing ground in elections, as

we saw on September 9, and

to compensate for the decline in their

ratings—which will of course continue—

they will do it by keeping more and more

people off the ballot, by

inventing ever new

tricks to preserve themselves. Above

all, of course, this

trend of fighting the internet—above

all freedom of speech online and the

spread of information—will

expand, expand, and expand.

That is their main line of attack.

>> The internet in particular.

>> The internet, and really everything in general.

>> And yet your video “Gold” has

been watched by 4.8 million people.

>> Well, that is exactly why they will

try to clamp it down and tighten the screws. I mean,

how else? Right now they are sitting there thinking

about how to do it—that’s why Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and internet regulator) is blocki

>> But they weren’t able to block Telegram.

Today

they couldn’t do it, tomorrow they might.

Still, Telegram as a company—this is also

about Pavel Durov’s stance—he

really did accept the challenge and

fought them. And, first of all, not everyone

has those kinds of resources. Not everyone

has such charismatic, principled

leaders as Pavel Durov.

Not everyone has that much money. And

>> And what about Yandex—why isn’t it fighting? What about

Volozh?

>> That’s the question. And what about Volozh? How is he not

fighting?

>> Because if they start

fighting, they’ll simply be taken over tomorrow into

full state ownership,

because Sberbank already holds a golden share in them.

Well, Durov is outside

the country. Most of

the users are also outside

the country. In that sense, if

they lose the Russian market entirely,

they will still have something left. But Yandex is

a national search engine. It is for

Russia; it is for us. And so

they cannot go anywhere. And,

unfortunately, they are forced

to operate under conditions where

they may be sitting there somewhere on Leo Tolstoy Street

and tomorrow some

goons in masks show up, and that’s it. And they say:

"We’re taking this server

>> You’re being very accommodating toward

Yandex." Alexei, let’s speak seriously.

They themselves went along with censorship.

First came censorship of the news.

They started manually tweaking

the news items that even made it into the top

results, and so on. Then censorship began

on Yandex.News. They surrendered on their own.

>> Well, and they, they blocked—no, they

They blocked our accounts, but they gave in.

But I really am somehow more loyal to

Yandex. They’re people I like. So far, they’re

to me, pleasant billionaires and

some rich people who are, all in all, good guys.

But, well, of course, they gave in. In that

sense, certainly. As for them, all these

criticisms are justified, because they

themselves took the first step toward saying,

uh, “We’re cowards, we’re afraid of you,

and we’ll give you everything you

ask for.” Of course, they do try somehow

to strike a balance and—uh, well, they’re decent, they

at least worry about it. And in

that sense, I can’t compare Yandex with

Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel) or some newspapers, because

because

>> Doesn’t it make no difference to you who gets down on

their knees? Whether they’re good or bad?

>> Well, no, I can’t say that Yandex

got down on its knees. That would still be

an exaggeration. They, uh, simply remove

some things. When the Kremlin was

famously—well, maybe people don’t remember now,

they had a Blogs section,

yes, a very important one; it mattered a lot for

the opposition and for media freedom in general.

When the Kremlin tried to take it under

control, they removed it altogether. Uh, nevertheless,

Yandex now has something strange going on

with its news algorithm.

Well, I’m not banned on

Yandex; I can use Yandex

Zen. Sometimes I show up there in Yandex

News, in that sense. Uh, it’s a platform

that can be used. Let’s say they

don’t, so to speak, act proactively

on their own initiative. They’re pressured, and they back down.

But I don’t like it. In that sense, they’re

also weak and vulnerable people, but I can’t

compare them with Channel One.

>> You seem to be much more critical when it comes to journalists.

significantly more critical.

>> Of course, much more critical, because

because, excuse me, journalism is a vocation.

A journalist is a person

who came into the profession in order to

tell the truth or, at the very least,

stop cheating. Yandex, after all, is

a company that built a

search engine. And all this news and everything

else is more of an auxiliary

product. For a journalist, that is the main

product. That’s why, with journalists—I'm on

excellent terms with many of them, and I myself am, in

some sense, a rather strange kind of

journalist or editor-in-chief of a media outlet—but I

won’t cut anyone any slack. If, Zhenya, to

come back to the question of criticizing journalists.

If your magazine, *The New Times*, tomorrow starts writing

something and shows even a bit of

weakness—I believe that won’t happen with you—

I will criticize you more harshly than

I have criticized any journalist in

my entire life. Well, because, uh, because

something would happen that would

shake the very foundations of my faith in people and

in journalism. But that’s the only way it can

work. That’s why I go after,

for example, the newspaper *Vedomosti*, because

I worked with it more than with any other outlet.

I don’t care about Channel

One, uh, well, they never talked about me,

but the fact that the newspaper *Vedomosti*

betrays free speech really

hits me hard. Of course it does.

You’re painting a rather bleak picture, but

in general, we all more or less understand where we

live. And the next group of questions

concerns you directly.

Vyacheslav Volkov asks you: “How far,

to what limit, are you prepared to go? Where is the

red line beyond which you would say

to yourself, ‘That’s it, enough, to hell with it all, I’ve

done everything I could’?”

>> There is no such red line. I don’t see one.

And I

>> It’s 50 days now, but what if it becomes a year or two?

>> Well, so what? That’s the choice

I made many years ago. I mean, I’m a

lawyer. And when it became clear that I needed

to go into politics—if you

believe in certain things and are trying

to change the world around you—I

made that choice. I discussed it with

my family; we all made that

choice together. And after that, I don’t think about any

red lines. That’s not how it works. I mean,

if you start doing

politics and claim that you’re engaged in

honest politics, but at home

before going to sleep you think, ‘Well, the red

line is probably somewhere over there; maybe

I’ll move it to 50 days,

fine, but 55 is already too much, or

I’ll do a year, but something like two years

I won’t’—uh, then that means you

shouldn’t be doing this at all. Then just

draw the red line right here under

your feet, right now, and don’t go anywhere

else. I don’t think in those

categories at all. I don’t think about any red

lines. I do what I believe is necessary. I

know that I’m right. And I’m supported by

quite a lot of people. I represent their

interests. That’s all that matters to me.

Uh,

>> Irina Demidova asks: how does your fame

affect your children? Well, apart from

the fact that Dasha Navalnaya has started hosting

her own show on YouTube. Do they

have problems at school because their

dad is against Putin?

>> No, they don’t have problems at school

because of that. On the contrary, well,

as far as I know from the interviews

Dasha now gives to various media outlets,

uh, well, I already knew that from the first times

I came under arrest, and the teachers there

would come up and somehow express their

support to her, yes, she was very

little. In that sense,

at our school too, in Maryino (a district of Moscow), though now they go to

a different school, everywhere.

There was probably one minor

incident, I mean, one of the teachers

said, "Well, so

we never observed anything that could have been

connected with any aggression on the part

of teachers or students, thank God."

Another thing, yes, it’s not exactly

fame, but when, for example,

I’m being followed by surveillance, and so is

my wife, uh, as it were, well, I’m used to it,

yes, my wife is used to it too, but the children

are growing up, and when the children start being

followed by surveillance,

when some people start tailing them.

Uh, well, of course I don’t like that. And they

have, my children have,

a whole bunch of restrictions that they

are forced to put up with because of my

work. For example,

>> Social media, for example, yes, until

recently we didn’t even allow them to have any.

>> And you have to keep saying where

you are. And you, you live all the time

in this sort of, well, kind of slightly

paranoid family, where, well, in a normal

family, if you disappear for two hours,

well, you disappeared and that’s that, but here if you disappear

for two hours, they already start

looking for you, because who the hell knows what

might have happened to you these days. So

in that sense, well, of course they

do have to make some

sacrifices, sacrifice

part of their happy childhood simply

because I do what I

do.

>> We now have to break again for the news and

commercials, and then we’ll return to the Echo

of Moscow (independent Russian radio station) studio.

15 minutes left. Well, all right.

It is 9:30 in Moscow. In the studio is

Yakov Shirokov. This is the news.

The American side at the talks in

Moscow raised the issue of allegations

of interference in the elections in the United States. In

particular, this issue was discussed at

talks with Russian Security Council Secretary

Nikolai Patrushev by the adviser to the U.S. president

for national security, John

Bolton. In an interview with Echo, Bolton

stressed that he knows Russia’s

position on this issue. Russians

receive guilty verdicts in

American courts for their actions

if it is proven that they are guilty,"

the adviser stressed. This concerns, among other things,

interference in the electoral process.

A few days ago, the United States filed charges in absentia against

Elena Khusyaynova for conspiracy to

interfere in the U.S. midterm

elections. They are due to take place in

November.

In addition, in his interview with Echo, John Bolton

also noted that Washington had never

discussed the possibility of a nuclear strike on

North Korea. Kim Jong-un, the leader of the DPRK,

is honoring the agreements that were reached. And

the main thrust of American

foreign policy on this issue remains

President Donald Trump’s statement that

talks with Pyongyang will

continue, the White House adviser

emphasized. Investigators have detained another

suspect in the case of the explosion at the

pyrotechnics plant in Gatchina. He

is suspected of failing to properly oversee

the organization of the work process, according to

the Investigative Committee. Earlier,

the plant’s chief engineer was detained.

He was accused of allowing people to work at a

hazardous facility who had not

been officially employed and who did not

have the required authorization.

It was reported that the chief engineer admitted

guilt and is cooperating with the investigation. As

a result of the explosion last Friday,

four people were killed and 11 were injured.

It was also reported that about

100 homes in the area around the

plant were damaged.

The dates for the ISS crew’s return and the launch

of the next mission will not be determined before

October 30, Roscosmos says. The date of the spacewalk

to inspect the hole in the spacecraft hull

aboard the ISS will also

be set after the commission investigating the causes

of the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle accident

has finished its work. Sources

at RIA Novosti, in turn, claim

that the next expedition’s launch

is planned for December 3. The spacewalk

is planned for the 11th.

A large-scale inspection of buses has begun in Moscow

after the major road accident in the Tver

region. This primarily concerns

the companies that transport passengers

on interregional and long-distance

routes, the Moscow traffic police told RIA Novosti.

Inspectors are focusing on

the technical condition of the vehicles, the organization

of drivers’ rest periods, and the presence of the necessary

documents for carriers to operate. At the

beginning of October, near Tver,

scheduled buses and a minibus collided,

13 people were killed and three more were taken to

hospital.

Football club Spartak did not contact the

Russian Football Union about

inviting Russia national team head coach

Stanislav Cherchesov to the club. The

union itself assured that the organization has

a fairly comfortable relationship with the club.

and with a specialist, Interfax reports.

Spartak's management announced today the

dismissal of head coach Massimo

Carrera. At the same time, the press reported that

one of the candidates for the post

is the former goalkeeper and former

team manager Cherchesov.

Light rain is expected in Moscow tomorrow afternoon,

with temperatures of 6–8°C. Yakov Shirokov, the

Echo of Moscow news service.

>> Thank you

>> bye for now.

>> Right now, immediately, the department

>> let's go straight away. There's very little time

left.

So I'm saying this:

22, performed by outstanding Russian and

international musicians, will feature all

the concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach. Do not

miss this unique event.

For information, call 84992240

Ages 6+.

Advertising on Echo of Moscow radio. Phone: 495

10210.

495 10210.

Echo of Moscow and the Tatar Cultural Center

of the city of Moscow present the program

"Speak." I have no right.

>> Sapsan.

>> Sapsan.

>> Merciless. Sa.

>> While I was inside, I even learned some Chinese. Well, I

forgot it, though. They also speak

Chinese there; there's a program in Chinese too. There

was some Chinese word. I

learned it. But, well,

>> I forgot it.

You were listening to the program "We Speak

Tatar".

>> That's it. No,

>> on Tuesday

>> when I read Kira Yarmysh and how she

was sitting right here. For me, that

of course—I'm extremely squeamish.

>> Well, yes, that's a problem there.

Ksenia

>> Have you gotten used to it already? Yes.

>> Well, after a while you

do get used to it, right? Well, I mean, still

you only wash once a week,

and you feel like you're simply

covered in dirt from head to toe, and all the

time you want to wash. So why is that

supposedly a punishment? It's detention. It's part

of the punishment.

>> To wash.

>> Well, of course,

>> a complete mess.

>> Good evening once again. In fact,

the last 10 minutes of our broadcast with

Alexei Navalny. So without even

any introduction, I'll go straight on with the questions. Viktor

Shklyarov asks: perhaps sometimes you

feel like giving up. How do you

motivate yourself to get back up and

keep going?

>> I never feel like giving up. I never

need to, ever. I mean,

there are moments when I

>> Doesn't it ever happen that you come to your wife Yulia and

say, "Yulia, I'm so tired"?

>> No, I can come home and say: "What

idiots. These people, I don't know, some kind of

representatives of the democratic opposition

are doing the wrong thing." Or I complain about

journalists, or, I don't know,

the liberal intelligentsia on Facebook,

or Putin supporters, or someone else. But

to give up and say no—well, I

do get joy from my work, there is

irritation over specific things, but I

like what I do, and I like

that people support me for it.

>> You mentioned the democratic opposition,

and I

>> Damn, I shouldn't have done that. I opened the gates of

hell.

>> Yes, exactly. But a short

>> question: are any tactical

or temporary alliances with Yabloko, the Party

of Change, Open Russia possible, or is that even

theoretically impossible, for example in the

upcoming municipal elections in St. Petersburg?

municipal?

>> Well, with Yabloko and with Open Russia,

certainly. In this respect, what we have done

is based on a rational position; it

is based not on my emotions but on

the sociological research that

we conduct. In that sense, with Yabloko we

can cooperate, with Open Russia we can, but with

Sobchak's party absolutely not, because

that kills everything immediately.

And in general, no one has any prospects who

is connected in any way with her party. In

that sense, there can be no cooperation

at all. But overall, in this

direction, I do not plan to invest

much effort.

>> Okay. And Miriam Levina also has a question:

where do you draw your strength, and how do you see

the end of the struggle? She asks: "How do you

see it?"

>> The end of the struggle? I see the arrival of

the beautiful Russia of the future—a normal

European country that right now

could live much more prosperously and much

better, because we have people, we

have oil, and there is no reason for

this poverty, lawlessness, and

injustice.

>> And for yourself? What kind?

>> For myself? I will live in this beautiful

Russia and know that I, uh, made

some effort to help bring it

into being. Some people—like you—

>> So you don't want to be in the Kremlin? I

>> I want to be in the Kremlin in order to, uh,

to ensure, among other things, these changes.

the arrival of the Beautiful Russia of the Future (a slogan meaning a democratic, prosperous post-Putin Russia). I

want to serve one term or two terms,

if I'm lucky, get re-elected and then step down

to go back to my own life. And you'll come

visit me, and we'll

talk about how great it was that back in

2018, whether we knew it then, and all sorts of

things like that.

>> Yury Samodurov, what is your view on

the advisability and desirability of convening

a constituent assembly? At least in order

to settle the question of whether the country needs

another president after Putin.

>> Uh, in some form, yes. I don't know what

to call this body—a constituent

assembly, a constitutional assembly—but

we need it, because Russia's current Constitution

is completely unfit; it

keeps producing one authoritarian leader after

another. Of course, we need to, in

a certain sense, re-found our

country from the ground up, make the kind of basic

changes that would prevent

people from constantly emerging who

seize power for 19 years. So

in one form or another, this needs to be done,

certainly.

>> Okay. My favorite question, from Erik

Stepanyan. Let him explain how he is

better than Putin, and what guarantees there are that he won't

cling to power the way Putin does.

"I swear on my mother" doesn't count. You have

a few minutes for this.

>> Erik Stepanyan, I'm not going to say "I swear on my mother."

First of all, I'll show you my

election platform—presidential,

mayoral, whatever you like. I stand for a system in which

Erik Stepanyan will keep writing his comments

to me, and no one will

touch him for it. I support separation

of powers, and an independent judiciary that

will be separate from me. And I won't be able,

even if something extremely irritating to me

happens—for example, if in the

Beautiful Russia of the Future (a slogan meaning a democratic, prosperous post-Putin Russia), suddenly in a case over

one of Zolotov's real estate properties

Zolotov wins a lawsuit against me. And, well, I'll say:

"Well, that's the court's ruling,

because I won't be able to influence it

in any way." And that is exactly why, when I

try to go for a third term—or even for

a second term illegally—Erik Stepanyan

will sue me, win, and I will be

removed from the ballot.

Will you provide immunity guarantees for

President Putin

>> in the event of a peaceful transfer of power? Yes.

>> And do you believe—I remember our 2008 interview,

when you said that

a peaceful transfer of power was no longer possible.

>> I said that power would not change as

a result of elections. I still

believe that elections alone will not be

the reason power changes in Russia.

It will be some combination

of events. Unfortunately, power in Russia—

Putin has made sure that it will not change through

elections. Well, because

there are no real elections, strictly speaking,

at least not at the national level.

>> So if not as a result of elections,

then how will it change?

>> Well, I don't want to speculate. It's a rather

pointless conversation. I'm

doing my part to help

bring about a change of power. And if Putin

leaves as a result of certain events, without

violence, without soldiers shooting at

the people, and without anything like that,

then he and his family specifically should be given

immunity. Although that will be

a painful decision for everyone, we

must make decisions not because

I, for example, feel anger

toward him, or because he imprisoned my brother

or other people close to me.

No—we should do it because it would be better for

145 million people.

>> Dmitry Vitushkin: it would be very interesting

to know what Navalny thinks about

the regionalists' program: transforming

all federal subjects of the Russian Federation into republics, dissolving

all federal government bodies,

and concluding a new federal

compact strictly on a

voluntary basis. Well, I think that's

an absolutely utopian idea; it's

impossible. Is Smolensk Oblast really going to

sign a new federal agreement with Kaluga Oblast?

Russia needs a federation; a federal structure

is necessary, and even more necessary is local

self-government.

That is, cities should have

real power. But let's be honest:

all this Russian federalism is

mostly an invented, artificial construct,

especially when we're talking about oblasts,

right? I mean, is Smolensk

Oblast some kind of independent state?

Or Kaluga, or Arkhangelsk? Well,

there are republics. Everything else is

some artificial, strange,

made-up construct—just random

lines on a map, with nothing behind them. What we need

is real federalism, not utopia.

That means real powers devolved to the local level,

where people actually live, so that in the course of their

everyday lives in

Novosibirsk they can make decisions about

their own lives—tax, financial,

legislative decisions and so on. But no,

we shouldn't do something like this idea that

we'll now dissolve all federal

government bodies and start re-founding

the country from scratch. No, that's nonsense.

>> But right now, de facto, there is no federalism at all

No. The country is unitary.

>> No, it doesn’t. Not because there isn’t

a proper agreement between

Primorsky Krai and Kaliningrad Oblast,

but because it doesn’t exist since

the government and Putin’s circle specifically

have taken all the money and

all the powers away from the regions.

The Committee of Civil Initiatives mentioned here—

Alexei Leonidovich Kudrin

did a great deal to make this happen. For that, they

adopted a tax and financial

system under which the regions have no money

at all. The regions control nothing.

No money, no powers—that’s it.

>> And a question from Irina Demchenko. Another question.

How was he able to fly a drone over

Medvedev’s residence? Is the airspace over

such residences really not protected?

>> It is protected. So what? We get past

the security. You can go and launch a drone

just about anywhere. It’s small,

it’s fast, it flies. These are

the kinds of questions people ask who don’t

do practical

investigations. I understand that listener

Irina doesn’t know much about drones, but if

she understood them a little better,

she would realize there is no technical

problem here at all.

>> So no one shoots drones down?

>> No, they do shoot them down. But over Medvedev’s residence

you can launch one.

Of course, after our investigations

it has become harder to do now, but there are

certain ways—after all, we also showed

that Mikoyan dacha (country house), which

is located right next to Novo-Ogaryovo

and beyond the fence there is

an FSB section. I’m not going to explain how

we do it, but I assure you that we

can do it, and when we do,

we do nothing that would threaten

real security there. That is,

I’m not going to say much more about it

so that some

crazy people don’t start thinking about using some drone

to launch, I don’t know,

explosives there, and so that foolish ideas

don’t get into their heads.

>> We have 50 seconds left. They’re asking you

to say what ideology

you support. Obviously,

you’re not a communist. But there are

social democrats, if—

>> In modern Russia, that’s an entirely

hypothetical and meaningless

exercise, because if you’re in America,

you can say that you’re

a progressive, or a right-wing

conservative, or a left conservative. In

Russia, that doesn’t exist. Here, no one

understands who is left and who is right. Here,

communists are called left-wing, even though they are

essentially right-wing conservatives.

So in Russia, I’m simply normal. I’m for

a normal path of development for the country, for

separation of powers, for a market

economy, for freedom of speech. And

in practice, everything here really

comes down to normal people and crazies, and I

am trying to work toward

leading the normal faction.

>> Do you have some image of the ideal

politician, or a politician whose experience

seems important to you? Well, I don’t

have any one specific example

to emulate. There are many wonderful

politicians, and there have been many wonderful

politicians in Europe, and now in

Canada there is the excellent Trudeau

as prime minister. I look at them, at

all of them. Some of their experience is applicable,

some of it isn’t, but I simply

do what it is possible to do now

in my country.

>> Thank you very much. This was Alexei

Navalny. A wonderful ending. With that,

we are wrapping up our hour-and-a-half—indeed,

even longer—broadcast. I thank all of you for