The thing is, the people in the Kremlin are no longer even businesslike crooks: they are thieves who got lucky when Yeltsin handed them power in 1999, and turned that stroke of luck into billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts from selling off our country’s resources.
Basically, we loot the budget while there’s still something left in it. We don’t let anyone into elections, so they can’t interfere with the looting. We control the media too, so they can’t interfere with the looting.
These are sneering, swaggering scumbags and villains. Money is not enough for them, and power alone is not enough either—they want to revel in the ability to torment ordinary people.
Jailing a political opponent is nothing new—there are plenty of such prisoners around the world. But they have to do it in a more twisted, more cunning way: we’ll throw your brother in prison for nothing, and put you under house arrest. People come out into the streets for you, but you, technically, are almost free.
I spoke about this in my final statement: I won’t lie, this is the most painful outcome for me. The vilest sentence of all those possible.
Everyone chooses their own fate, but no one chooses their relatives. Yet it is precisely from that list of relatives that this grinning thieving creature chooses, in its desire to take revenge in the most vicious way.
That is the “quality of human material” of which those who seized power in our country are made. And that may be the main reason why such a government must not exist.
As for me, we need to abandon any illusions here. You understand that this is fundamentally impossible: to hand down a suspended sentence and still keep someone under house arrest. House arrest is a form of deprivation of liberty, and it simply does not fit with a suspended sentence.
I was questioned in the case about financing the mayoral campaign, and after the New Year they summoned my wife for questioning. I have no doubt that new charges will be brought before this term of house arrest expires, so that they will have grounds for another one—and then another, endlessly.
I am not changing a single one of my positions, and I will not take back a single word. The rule of thieves, scoundrels, and traitors in Russia must be destroyed. Once again I urge everyone to remember: it exists for only one reason—we allow it through our passivity.
The choice here is simple: either you make your own personal contribution, or start right now coming up with an explanation for your children and grandchildren about “why I kept my head down.”
Millions are made up of individuals.
Since news has come that even my final statement has been blocked on the internet at the prosecutor’s office’s request, I will not write anything here that could serve as grounds for blocking (that kind of thing goes only on Twitter and Facebook), but this is exactly one of those moments when you already know everything yourselves.
I will do everything I can, together with you.