I'm back with you after a month under arrest, and before I take up my role as the next host of our wonderful investigative mini-series, I want to answer the question I get most often: what exactly is going on, and how are we supposed to make sense of it?
Have Putin and Sobyanin completely lost their minds? Arresting candidates, beating people, opening criminal cases over paper cups thrown at police officers, new political prisoners, raids on the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) with all its equipment seized. Why is all this happening? Because of the Moscow City Duma elections? Three months ago, most of us didn't even know that body existed.
To understand what's happening, we need to remember where it all began. At the start of the summer, the Kremlin suddenly realized that its darkest secret was about to be exposed: the emperor has no clothes. Putin no longer has the approval rating he once did. At least, not the kind of rating that lets his team and his party, United Russia, win elections easily.
Putin's regime is what is called electoral authoritarianism. It is based on Putin deciding how elections should be run, calling them, and always winning them. And the whole country throws up its hands: we don't like them, they're thieves and fools, but they seem to have won the election again. So we have to submit.
But the situation has changed. People are getting poorer, prices are rising. On top of that, they raised the retirement age. And then we came up with Smart Voting, which can unite the efforts of everyone who dislikes this regime.
So the pollsters came running to Putin and Sobyanin, waving stacks of data in panic, shouting: we're, well... going to lose.
Lose? Lose to whom? We are Putin's party! We are Moscow City Hall, with trillion-ruble budgets, and we're supposed to lose to these pups? Some Yashins, Sobols, Zhdanovs, and Jankauskases. Who even are they? Running around the streets like nobodies. Bums. They have no newspapers, no money. We cannot lose to them. If United Russia collapses in a city they've flooded with money, in full view of the whole country, then tomorrow it's all over. You can talk on television all you want about stability and support, but the whole country will know: this Putin, his entire propaganda machine, all his officials, were crushed by a bunch of independent candidates.
Which means: people don't love Uncle Vova anymore. And Uncle Seryozha can't find candidates, can't organize the election the right way. That thought terrifies them,^ so they hold a meeting: there are 45 seats, and 45 people will be elected. And no matter what it takes, those 45 people will be ours. United Russia's.
We'll throw every last one of them the hell out of the election. We'll declare all their signatures fake. We'll jail every candidate who refuses to shut up and keeps demanding to be allowed on the ballot. We'll beat everyone who comes out to support them. We'll make an example of 20 people or so, just to scare the rest who keep coming out no matter what.
Because it's better to listen to outrage now over police lawlessness than to lose the election tomorrow and destroy Russia's central myth: that Putin's candidates always win.
No. We'll beat people and jail them, but we will get our specific deputies elected, and then we'll say: well, you marched and shouted, but look who got elected. There they are, our fine specimens, shoulder to shoulder. Every one of them a first-rate thief. But members of the ruling party. The people chose them, not you.
We must not let them win this way. Muscovites, Petersburgers, people in Irkutsk—everyone. And now, regardless of political views. We all have to say: we will not let you win through beatings, jailings, and removing candidates from the ballot. As a matter of principle, we will go and take part in Smart Voting. We will rally, we will protest, but don't count on us forgetting to show up and vote against your people.
We will do everything in our power to help the common cause, and despite our office being ransacked, our funds frozen, and our equipment stolen, I declare that until election day we will release one investigation a day, telling you about the faces of this regime. Frankly, the task is almost beyond what is possible, but we will try—and you can help by spreading the word and urging everyone to take part in Smart Voting.
This is a shared effort. We provide the investigations; you register and, on the 8th, vote for United Russia's opponent. Watch an episode, then go straight to the website and register. Watch the next one, send it to a friend, and persuade them to register too.
Now to the point. Today is the story of the man who organizes these beatings. It's the police and the National Guard who swing the batons, of course. But there is a civilian official in Moscow City Hall who oversees the security forces. He is the one who chairs the meetings where arrest quotas are approved. How many people should be detained—1,500 or just 50? The decision is made there: let them walk along the boulevards and ignore them, or crack heads and don't hold back. Protests are his area of responsibility. Ban them or authorize them—it's all up to him.
What's more, our hero violates the two main principles I demand from those in power and from politicians: don't lie and don't steal.
He is a master of both.
Our new investigation is about a Moscow vice mayor, one of Sobyanin's most loyal lieutenants, responsible for regional security and information policy.
Meet Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov.
Moscow Vice Mayor Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov has worked for Sobyanin since the first days of his mayoralty and oversees regional security and information policy. In plain English: he is the man in charge of protests and, at the same time, the man in charge of lies—responsible for Moscow's propaganda and Sobyanin's personality cult in the media.
And now you're saying to me: ex-cuuuse me, but there is no Moscow vice mayor named Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov!
Exactly. It seems there isn't. On the website we see Sergunina, Biryukov, Rakova. But no Fyodorov. Or is there?
The reason is that our officials—especially those connected to the security services—love classifying their identities and changing their names in official documents. It's illegal. You would never be allowed to do that. But for Alexander Nikolayevich Gorbenko, the law does not exist. If he wants, he becomes Fyodorov. If he wants, Pugacheva (a famous Russian singer). He could probably register himself as Putin too.
To expose Fyodorov-Gorbenko, I was helped by... myself, circa 2013. Back then I was running in the Moscow mayoral election, explaining why Sobyanin's city administration was mired in corruption, and exactly six years ago I showed everyone Gorbenko's enormous country estate and asked the Moscow authorities to explain how this official had earned the money for it. Six years have passed, and there are still no answers.
But the estate has grown, in proportion to Sobyanin-era corruption.
But Gorbenko has not only learned to steal more. He has learned to hide what he stole more effectively.
If you pull the registry extract for this main 2-hectare (about 4.9-acre) plot, which used to belong to Gorbenko, you will find that it now belongs to... Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov.
At first we thought that Sobyanin's propagandist Gorbenko had been so ashamed by our post from six years ago that he literally grabbed the first passerby off the street—who happened to be Ivan Ivanovich Fyodorov—and said: "Take it all! I bought this with stolen money. Take it, I can't bear living on an estate like this."
But then we decided that was probably unlikely. And plenty of other things point to some obvious inconsistencies. The plots belonging to his son and wife, right next to it, have not gone anywhere, were not transferred to any Fyodorov (here, look at the extracts: one, two), and have not been fenced off separately.
But the most important thing is this: since we had already written about this house, we still had the old records listing Gorbenko as the owner. We dust them off and see that Fyodorov has owned the plot since the exact same day that, according to the old records, Gorbenko owned it. Even the transaction registration number is the same.
In other words, here is yet another case of some petty official going to Rosreestr (Russia's state property registry) and saying: right, some ordinary people are asking questions about my estate. Remove my surname and put in another one.
So, shall I show you the estate too?
By the pool, we found a dachshund-shaped bench.
It guards a sports area with punching dummies.
Apparently this is where Gorbenko trains, imagining in turn a right hook to an independent candidate, then a hard shot to the liver of an 18-year-old girl who came out to protest.
Altogether, on Gorbenko's 20,000-square-meter (about 4.9-acre) estate, we counted 9 buildings for various purposes, two ponds, 3 sports and play areas, 5 statues, and 1 dachshund bench. We estimate all this wealth at 500 million rubles.
And that is your answer to the question of why Moscow officials carry out orders to crush protests with such relish and such diligence. You can see how they live: half a billion rubles and a literal lordly estate full of amusements.
And this is a civil servant who previously headed the trashy and loss-making Rossiyskaya Gazeta (a Russian state newspaper). In what other country could such a nonentity—someone who has done nothing good or useful in his entire life—live such a luxurious life?
That is why it matters not only to Putin and Sobyanin, but to him personally, that United Russia wins and once again holds 90% of the seats in the Moscow City Duma. So that no one ever asks him the question: what money did you buy this with?
And at every meeting, this thief and propagandist Gorbenko will insist: disperse them, beat them, keep them out. He has a personal stake in it.
Take part in Smart Voting. Together, we must get back at the officials who steal and lie.