Today we're going to talk about “locomotives” — a scheme invented by United Russia and Putin to win elections. It is, quite literally, a technology of mass deception. It goes against common sense and the very meaning of the political process. You are being asked to vote for someone who is not actually running. They tell you: come to the polls, choose your representative. You come, you vote — and the person whose name you saw on the list has no intention of going to the State Duma. And never did.
This fall, in the State Duma elections, you will receive two ballots. The first is for single-member districts — specific people, from whom you must choose one, and that one person will represent your district in the State Duma. The second ballot is much trickier. It contains parties and names — the regional leaders of those parties. In other words, these are the people who will get seats in the State Duma if the party performs well in your district. The more votes you give a party, the more people from its list will make it into the Duma, in order: first the top name, then, if there are more votes, the second, then the third, and so on.
But contrary to all common sense, in 44 of 57 regional party lists, the top spots are occupied not by the region’s best-known, most successful, and most recognizable politicians, but by governors — even though not a single governor is actually going to the State Duma. Absurd? Absolutely. But the problem is that United Russia simply has no one else to put on those lists. People hate United Russia. Have you ever heard the phrase “a popular politician from United Russia”? Neither have we. So, lacking any alternatives, they put governors at the top of the lists. It’s simply the best the useless, corrupt United Russia machine can offer. They have no other candidates for you.
And today we’re going to take one such “best” candidate and dissect him. We’ll take a close look at what exactly United Russia is offering as its strongest asset — the best of the best, the number one name on the list. And along the way, we’ll expose a mole. A real Czech mole. But not the sweet, lovable one from the old cartoon — a thieving Putin-era United Russia mole who has been burrowed deep inside the Russian state for years and has acquired elite real estate abroad.
And of course, we’ll show how Putin really fights corruption — and what all those endless promises and strategies are actually worth.
We are heading not to an average Russian region, but to one of the poorest and smallest: the Republic of Mari El. In the latest ranking of household incomes, Mari El stands 79th out of 85 regions. Here, 20% of the population earns less than one minimum wage — that is, less than 12,130 rubles. News regularly appears about how Mari El ranks among the worst regions in the country to live in. The “May decrees” — presidential orders setting minimum salaries for doctors, teachers, and other public-sector workers — are not merely ignored here, as they are elsewhere; they are flouted with particular brazenness. An elementary school teacher, instead of the mandated 32,000 rubles, receives at most 20,000. A neurologist earns 26,000 at best, though the target is 64,000. Teachers here have gone on hunger strike over low pay. And then the state tries to take away their children — because apparently you’re not allowed to complain about a salary of 15,000 rubles.
You might think: the region is so poor, what is there even to steal? This man looks at you skeptically from behind bars. His name is Leonid Markelov:
He was the eternal governor, heading the Republic of Mari El for 16 years. A painfully familiar story for any Russian region. A United Russia governor, declaring an income of 3 million rubles — and then one fine day he gets caughtred-handed taking a bribe of 235 million. All the federal TV channels covered the case as if the country’s top mafia boss had been captured and corruption and poverty were now sure to end. Television reports breathlessly listed everything seized from him — and there was a lot seized! A shopping center, a sports and wellness complex, apartments and offices, 16 cars, 25 gold bars, 15 expensive wristwatches, a collection of precious coins, fountain pens, paintings, collectible wines, icons, and tableware. The total value of the confiscated property was more than 2 billion rubles. Most of it had been registered in the name of Markelov’s stepmother. At trial, the lawyers said she had earned her billions herself, and that her governor stepson had absolutely nothing to do with her business. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The same kind of billionaire mother can now be found with Volodin, with Minister Manturov, and with United Russia politician Metelsky, who was pushed out of the Moscow City Duma by Smart Voting.
Markelov was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security penal colony. The anti-corruption show is over. Putin has defeated everyone. He saved the people of Mari El, drove out the thief, and appointed a new, good regional head in his place — one who will not steal, will not register billions in his mother’s name, and will usher in a new era of cloudless prosperity for the republic. And you say Putin doesn’t fight corruption! Aren’t you ashamed, skeptics?
The new governor was brought in straight from Moscow. Here he is — our hero for today, and the number one name on United Russia’s regional list for Mari El in the September State Duma elections: Alexander Evstifeev.
He spent his entire life in public service; for the previous 13 years he worked as a judge, rising all the way to chairman of the Moscow Region Arbitration Court.
Look what a fine choice Putin made — a judge! Not some gangster, not even a bodyguard, but an Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation. The chairman of an entire arbitration court in a huge Russian region. And the people supported the president’s choice: in the last election, the governor “won” 88 percent. Almost like in Chechnya. A universal favorite.
At first glance, Evstifeev really does seem hard to fault. His income has been known for many years, his career path is clear. His wife is not a billionaire. He is ostentatiously modest. In interviews he talks about how, as governor, he rents a two-room apartment for 22,000 rubles a month — and how wonderful it is: there’s an exercise machine, a TV, and a sofa. After all, a man doesn’t need much.
You have to admit, the contrast with the previous governor is striking. That one was a crook and a thief with elite real estate and billions. This one is modest and honest. It’s almost a shame to ruin such a lovely picture — but we have to. There really is a difference between the old governor and the new one. But not as dramatic as it seems. Your previous governor, dear people of Mari El, stole and registered everything in his stepmother’s name. This one steals and registers everything... in his mother-in-law’s name.
In 2016, a 67-year-old pensioner from Yekaterinburg decides to pack up and move to Moscow. She has a striking, memorable name: Lilia Malinova. Like any pensioner from the Urals, we are sure, she begins looking for a place to live in the capital. So where will our elderly newcomer settle? Butovo? Vostochnoye Degunino? Biryulyovo? None of those will do. How about Arbat? In this building on Kompozitorskaya Street, Lilia Malinova buys an apartment: 171 square meters.
Today, a place like that is worth more than 120 million rubles. A fine start to life in Moscow. But something is still missing for a comfortable retirement, wouldn’t you agree? So our Lilia also acquires four parking spaces in the underground garage. That’s another 20 million rubles, bringing the total to 140 million.
We looked into who was officially registered at this apartment, and at first we were alarmed. There were some strangers listed there. What was this? The classic scheme of predatory real-estate scammers trying to trick a trusting pensioner out of her elite property? But the alarm turned out to be false. The people registered at her address were her closest relatives — just with a different surname.
Yulia Evstifeeva, born in 1970, is her daughter.
Artyom Evstifeev, born in 1992, is her grandson.
And Alexander Evstifeev, born in 1958, is our governor of Mari El — and at that time, still the chairman of the Moscow Region Arbitration Court.
It seems we were mistaken about the honesty and modesty of United Russia’s number one candidate on the regional list. Even back then, his position was far more lucrative than his official declaration suggested. A little something gets brought here, a little something sticks there, you help resolve a small issue over here, whisper a few words over there — and suddenly you have a 170-square-meter apartment in the very center of Moscow.
140 million rubles for an apartment is not bad, but as you can imagine, our story is only beginning. Who else can you register expensive elite real estate in the name of, besides your mother-in-law? Of course — your children. But there’s a problem. The son we found registered in the Arbat apartment is also a public official.
You can’t put anything in his name without having to declare it. But there is a second son: Alexander Alexandrovich Evstifeev Jr. When he was 19, at the same time the Arbat apartment was purchased, he too acquired expensive property of his own: two (one, two) non-residential units totaling 283 square meters in southwest Moscow, on Koshtoyants Street. They are worth 85 million rubles. This building right here — a nice location near the Olympic Village.
All of this real estate, worth 225 million rubles, was bought by the Evstifeev family while he was still serving as head of the Moscow Region Arbitration Court. But in April 2017, Putin appointed him head of Mari El — a poor, small republic, as we remember, where supposedly there is nothing to steal. Sure.
And Evstifeev’s festival of buying up elite real estate did not merely continue — it accelerated. In 2019, Evstifeev’s 22-year-old son bought two more non-residential units — 126 and 145 square meters — in addition to the two he already owned in southwest Moscow. Cost: 82 million rubles. It is not hard to calculate that the passive rental income alone of the head of Mari El’s son — our young and gifted investor — now amounts to more than 750,000 rubles a month. That is about 26 times more than, for example, an ambulance doctor in Mari El earns. Choose the right profession, as they say. And the right governor-parents.
Let’s move on. And where does the governor’s offspring live? Not in an office on a folding cot, surely? Correct. He lives in a super-elite building in Moscow’s historic center, in Khamovniki — this one here, the “Life on Plyushchikha” residential complex. Read their advertising, and you immediately want to drop everything and move to Plyushchikha.
At 22, Governor Evstifeev’s son apparently needed an aura of peace and serenity so badly that he bought 182 square meters here.
Market value: 248 million rubles — a quarter of a billion. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms. A kitchen, a living room. Views of both the luxurious inner courtyard and the city.
But despite the feelings of lightness and carefree living promised by the developer, our young man still grew lonely. He missed his father. After all, his father was supposedly off there in Yoshkar-Ola, living in a rented apartment for 22,000 rubles a month, if one believes the state news agencies. So in the summer of 2020, Governor Evstifeev himself bought the apartment next door to his son’s — 147 square meters.
Market value: 200 million rubles — we found an identical one for sale. Both apartments were bought outright, with no mortgages of any kind. Add these two properties to the Evstifeev family’s real-estate piggy bank, and that’s 448 million rubles. Which brings the running total value of the Mari El governor’s property holdings to 755 million rubles.
Not bad, but in the competition among thieves and corrupt officials, he still trails former governor Markelov. So we go looking for a country house. At first, we are disappointed. We open Evstifeev’s latest declaration and... see that he sold it, sold his dacha! Here is the income from the sale of suburban property.
The dacha was in the village of Velednikovo in the Istra district of Moscow Region. The plot measured 23 sotkas (about 2,300 square meters), and the house was 350 square meters.
An excellent, expensive location: Evstifeev’s former dacha was just 800 meters from Volodin’s famous dacha.
We liked the area so much that we decided to look around — what else is here? For example, the neighboring property, even more impressive, with a house one and a half times larger.
Let’s take a look, just out of curiosity. A certain Almaz Valiakhmetov bought it quite recently, in March 2020.
We check the databases JUST IN CASE. You never know.
And would you look at that! Some Almaz with Valiakhmetov’s phone number is selling an apartment in Yekaterinburg in his own name.
Except that the apartment actually belonged... to Evstifeev’s wife.
Or here is another listing: a non-residential unit of 134.1 square meters for rent on Koshtoyants Street in Moscow.
What an amazing coincidence. Since 2016, a unit of exactly that size has been owned by Evstifeev’s younger son, Alexander.
Or this one. Remember the mother-in-law, Lilia Malinova, with whom we began? Her luxury Mercedes S350 was also insured by a certain Valiakhmetov.
He parked it too.
And Almaz works at the BENVENUTI interior design studio, which until recently was owned by Evstifeev’s wife and which she has now transferred to her business partner.
If you still have any doubts about Mr. Valiakhmetov’s connection to the governor of the Republic of Mari El, here is one final, compelling argument. A criminal one, by the way. It looks very much like grounds for a bribery case.
Evstifeev’s older son, Artyom, owned a 108-square-meter apartment in Sochi, which he had held since 2012. In 2019, Artyom transferred the apartment to that same Valiakhmetov. Valiakhmetov owned it for less than a month and then sold it... to the Mari pulp-and-paper mill, one of the republic’s largest enterprises and the main air polluter in Mari El.
Six months before the Sochi apartment was sold, Evstifeev listened as an environmental prosecutor explained how this enterprise was destroying the region’s ecology. And a few months later, that same mill bought a Sochi apartment from the governor’s son (through an intermediary). Apparently, the pulp-and-paper mill could not find any other apartment in all of Sochi. And how could a pulp-and-paper mill possibly manage without a seaside apartment located 1,500 kilometers away? It couldn’t.
In short, this Valiakhmetov is either a driver, a distant relative, or both. The main thing is that he is a highly trusted proxy in whose name Evstifeev registered his new dacha — worth 200 million rubles. That brings our running tally of the Mari El governor’s assets to 955 million rubles. Not yet a billion, but we still haven’t played all our cards.
So now let’s move to Prague. A wonderful location — right in the center, with a park and a river. Opposite them stands the elite Lannova residential complex. It was here, at the end of 2016, that Evstifeev bought not one apartment, but two. Their total area is 335 square meters.
A skeptical reader might reasonably ask: perhaps we just showed some random building in Prague and falsely attributed it to Evstifeev in order to slander this patriotic United Russia politician? A fair point — so here are the property records for the Prague real estate.
Everything is owned by Lilia Malinova, who, as we have already established, is Evstifeev’s mother-in-law. Her address is there too — 17 Kompozitorskaya Street, the very same 140-million-ruble apartment from the beginning of our investigation. The entire Evstifeev family is registered there. And here are the documents showing the purchase price of the two Prague apartments: a total of 21 million Czech koruna, or 54 million rubles at the exchange rate at the time of purchase.
It is amusing that as recently as spring, the Czech Republic was officially declared an unfriendly state toward Russia. One of the leaders on United Russia’s list, Sergei Lavrov, said that unbearable conditions had been created there for Russian officials. How strange — Evstifeev seems to like it there very much.
We looked at these apartments, looked at the residential complex, but still did not feel the picture was complete. There was a sense that this was not all, that there was more property somewhere else. So off we go on a journey to the other end of the Czech Republic.
You know, if you asked us — or any other Russian citizen — “What is the most desirable place to live for a near-retirement-age official?” then after Miami or Italy, this place would surely come up: Karlovy Vary. A small but very famous spa town in western Czechia, practically on the German border. For centuries, the most famous people came here to relax and drink the healing waters — Mozart, Beethoven, Peter the Great (Russian tsar), Gogol — and now, apparently, the governor of Mari El himself, Alexander Evstifeev.
Forty days after buying the 330-square-meter apartments in Prague, Evstifeev bought an apartment here as well. Its area is more than 100 square meters.
Here are the documents for the apartment in Karlovy Vary. Lilia Malinova of Kompozitorskaya Street paid 3 million Czech koruna for it, or 8 million rubles.
In total, we counted 62 million rubles’ worth of Evstifeev property in Czechia. And altogether, the value of the Mari El governor’s family assets — for a man who has spent his entire life in public service — exceeds 1 billion rubles.
An astonishing fact: none of this real estate is located in the Republic of Mari El, the region he governs.
Evstifeev is not some uniquely Russian kind of governor — he is, in fact, quite typical. That is how Putin’s system works: Putin picks a thief loyal to him and sends him off to graze in a region he has never even been to before. The interests of the Mari people? Never heard of them. The views of local residents do not matter. Putin knows better what your region needs. And he also knows that if you let your “effective managers” steal to their heart’s content, they will say thank you by delivering the percentage United Russia needs in the elections.
And now this crook, Evstifeev, has been placed first on the party list for Mari El. In other words, he is the “best” candidate — the locomotive who will help pull United Russia into the State Duma. He himself has no intention of going to the Duma; a few days after the election he will say he has changed his mind, and his seat will go to the next United Russia member on the list, whose name you do not know.
And we have a duty to stop this. Smart Voting has already worked extremely well in Mari El. In the 2019 elections to the republic’s State Assembly, Smart Voting helped deprive United Russia of 11 seats. In 2014, 46 United Russia members were elected; in 2019, only 35.
And United Russia is not especially popular there overall. In the last State Duma election, it received less support there than nationwide — [46%](http://www.mari-el.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/izbirkom?action=show&root=1000030&tvd=100100067795885&vrn=100100067795849&prver=0&pronetvd=null®ion=12&sub_region=12&type=242&report_mode=null %28http://www.mari-el.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/izbirkom?action=show&root=1000030&tvd=100100067795885&vrn=100100067795849&prver=0&pronetvd=null®ion=12&sub_region=12&type=242&report_mode=null%29), compared with a national average of [54%](http://www.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/region/izbirkom?action=show&root=1&tvd=100100067795854&vrn=100100067795849®ion=0&global=1&sub_region=0&prver=0&pronetvd=0&vibid=100100067795854&type=242 %28http://www.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/region/izbirkom?action=show&root=1&tvd=100100067795854&vrn=100100067795849®ion=0&global=1&sub_region=0&prver=0&pronetvd=0&vibid=100100067795854&type=242%29).
Keeping local United Russia candidates out of the State Duma is absolutely possible. But only if we all act together. For the party lists, it is very simple: just do not vote for United Russia. Even if your workplace pressures you — tell your boss you voted, but cast your ballot for someone else. And single-member districts are not difficult either. Smart Voting will identify the candidate with the best chance of defeating the United Russia nominee. All you need to do is learn the name and vote. Closer to election day, you will be able to see the candidate lists in our app. It is called “Navalny.” Without any registration at all, simply by entering your address, you will be able to get a Smart Voting recommendation. Or you can register on the website.
The crooks in United Russia are very afraid of Smart Voting. They are already blocking our websites and demanding the app be removed. So there is no need to delay. Download the app right now (from the App Store or Google Play), and by September 17 you will be armed and ready to take on United Russia.
Freedom for Alexei Navalny.