— Alexei, your channel has already posted three videos in a row about raising the retirement age. Are you going to keep talking about this much longer?
— Yes. For a long time—and not just me, but everyone on our team. What Putin and United Russia are doing now is robbery, and it discredits the very idea of a normal pension system, one that should someday exist in our country.
They want to convince people that the best—and the only possible—option right now is simply to pay pensioners 1 trillion rubles less per year. That is what raising the retirement age comes down to. Leave everything as it is, but give pensioners 1 trillion rubles less. And television keeps gushing about how right this is. And Vladimir Pozner sings a song about happy longevity. And even those who are supposed to be shouting are silent. The trade unions are silent. Well, that is, they mumble something incoherent and still have not held a single even somewhat large rally.
All sorts of guys who loved calling themselves “center-left” are silent. And so on and so forth.
They are afraid to speak out—Putin’s approval rating is falling over this issue, which means anyone pushing it will get slapped down.
And this is exactly why the country needs an opposition. We are not staying silent. We organized the largest protests so far, collected nearly 200,000 signatures for the “revenge project”—a tactical voting database aimed at voting against those who support raising the retirement age. And we are doing painstaking explanatory work: why this works against middle-aged people, why women suffer from it, and where to find the money for pensions.
Today we are tearing apart that talking-points memo sent out by the Kremlin, the one our propagandists are parroting.
Watch it yourself so you have arguments for the debate about the retirement age—and show it to others.
