Special Opinion broadcast of December 27, 2017.

Hello! Alexei Solomin is in the studio. And our guest today is Alexei Navalny, politician and presidential candidate denied registration by the Central Election Commission.

Good evening!

Does announcing this protest, this voters’ strike, mean that you are ending your attempts to get registered?

We proceed from the assumption that the Kremlin has made its final decision. Of course, we will pursue every legal avenue. We will challenge it in court. We also cannot rule out the possibility that, as part of some crafty, Jesuitical strategy of its own, the Kremlin might register me two weeks before the election and say, “All right then, go run your campaign.” We are prepared for that scenario too, but it is still rather exotic. It belongs on the political periphery. Judging by how the election commission behaved, and how uncompromisingly they repeated all those completely illegal and absurd things, we understand that the Kremlin has decided to make this campaign entirely noncompetitive. It is afraid of me because it is afraid that I would be able to rely on a majority of voters, and that is why we have declared a strike and will now make all actions connected with that strike our top priority.

So there will be a court appeal in parallel. But there will be no attempt to put forward, say, some alternative candidate on your behalf?

We are engaged in real politics and real elections. Real elections mean that a candidate runs... I ran an honest campaign for a full year. I believe I gained broad support. I’ll repeat: I believe I can rely on a majority of voters, because I traveled across the entire country. I genuinely believe we could have won this election, and we have no interest in playing games with substitute candidates or resorting to political-technological tricks.

Why not?

Because it’s not advantageous. Well, because this is politics, this is an election. Elections require a real candidate. Why do I consider all the other candidates fake, even without getting into the details of their programs or beliefs? Because they did not fight for voters’ support. That is the only way to win. In general, it only makes sense to take part in an election if you are going to fight for votes. I fought for those votes, and I am still fighting for them. And I can see that, by and large, I am doing it alone. The others are mostly doing nothing. Replacing candidates or trying something else is not politics. It is an attempt to outsmart the Kremlin on a field where it controls absolutely everything—and that makes no sense whatsoever.

Throughout your political career, you have tried to outsmart the Kremlin and chosen different strategies to do so: at times supporting another candidate, at times calling for a full boycott. Now you are focusing on a boycott. Meanwhile, some experts—Andrei Movchan, for example, I was preparing—ask you: why not put forward your wife? Everyone would understand that those would really be votes for Alexei Navalny. It would be neither deception nor a secret to anyone.

Well, first of all, if you want to read real experts, then you should actually read experts. Read what Grigory Golosov writes. I mean real, genuine political scientists who can speak as political scientists. In politics, as we know, everyone is an expert, so anyone can offer their own useful advice. But here is the thing: you are completely wrong when you say that throughout my political career I have been trying to outsmart the Kremlin by using different strategies. We use different strategies because the Kremlin develops mechanisms to counter our strategies. In 2011, I urged everyone to vote for any party against United Russia. For the next six years, the Kremlin’s top priority was to build a defense against that strategy. They have now arranged things so that you simply cannot vote for another candidate against Putin—you will be voting for Putin in any case. Because they have put forward completely fake candidates who do nothing. So everything I have done is not trickery; it is, if you like, grounded in a moral position. We do what a decent person ought to do. But we change strategy based on what the Kremlin comes up with. As for nominating Yulia or someone else, that too is, you know... political technology. We nominate Yulia—they refuse to register her. I nominate Dasha Navalnaya—they refuse to register her too. I nominate ten-year-old Zakhar Navalny—they open criminal cases against him too and bar him as well. Then I nominate Alexei Solomin from Echo of Moscow, and then even Alexei Venediktov, who comes next—and they refuse to register them too. It’s a pointless race.

But why are you so sure they would not register Yulia Navalnaya, who has no criminal conviction? Fair or unfair, valid or invalid—it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have that extra blemish.

A. Navalny: We call it a voters’ strike, not a boycott

Tens of millions of people in our country have no criminal conviction, thank God, and I hope they never will. But either you run a real election campaign, or you engage in nonsense. Constantly shuffling candidates around and changing things on the fly—that is nonsense. I insist that this government can be defeated in an election honestly, by running a normal campaign. I have seen it with my own eyes. When you are not fooling around, but come to any city and, as one does in a campaign, first make a video saying, “Guys, come to the meeting.” People come to the meeting, you talk to them, you persuade them. You gain support. And that is voter support. You earn it, and with it you can win. But all these elaborate schemes... well, they exist on Facebook, in some people’s heads. They have nothing to do with reality. My headquarters and I—and I am sure all the tens of thousands of volunteers supporting this campaign—joined it because it was honest politics, without any manipulation or sleight of hand. I am not going to abandon that line of honest politics for some kind of schemes and shady setups.

May I ask: did you and Yulia discuss such a possibility at all? Did you ever talk about it between yourselves?

Different people keep writing about it, so Yulia and I read it in the news. There’s no escaping it. We love Echo of Moscow, we read it, laugh, and think: what a great radio station, what nonsense they say on air!

And your wife also considers this option nonsense?

Naturally, my wife considers it nonsense, because she is not only my wife, she is also a citizen of Russia and a person who supports this election campaign too—a normal, honest election campaign, for which replacing candidates and doing strange things is simply unacceptable.

But for many people this looks like a kind of egocentrism. In reality, not a struggle for an honest way to win an election, but the exclusion of any option other than your own candidacy.

No, of course not. I’m sure that for a sharp question, that’s fine, that’s good. But my answer to your sharp question is that this is an invented construct. Many people think presidential elections are about choosing one specific person who says, “I want to be president, support me.” Well, that is exactly what I said more than a year ago, and with that idea I traveled around the country, published a program, fought for votes. That is what a presidential campaign is. It is about one person around whom many unite, and one person represents the interests of those many.

Will you appeal to the Constitutional Court over the conviction that is preventing you from running?

Of course. The law is entirely on our side. And I was very disappointed that the Central Election Commission simply lied to everyone by saying that the Constitutional Court had already considered this issue. It had not. The Constitutional Court considered that article on barring convicted persons only in relation to State Duma elections, which are governed by a completely different law. Presidential elections are governed by a special law. We will certainly appeal to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, everywhere—but let’s not deceive ourselves: we understand that it will lead nowhere. We will do it simply to show ourselves and everyone else once again that we are conducting an honest campaign. If we know we are right, we will go to court even when defeat is a foregone conclusion.

And what is the timeline? Before or after the election?

Of course it will be before the election.

You have scheduled a major protest for the 28th called the “Voters’ Strike.” Am I right in understanding that this is not a one-off action, but an entire process—a voters’ strike?

A. Navalny: We love Echo, we laugh and think: what a great radio station, what nonsense they say!

The voters’ strike is an entire process, and that is precisely why we call it a voters’ strike rather than a boycott. We intend to make this voters’ strike a more important and meaningful political process than the election itself. These are not elections. They are a reappointment, where, essentially, no one is doing anything. You saw it: Putin did not even show up for his own nomination. The other candidates are somewhere too, and no one even knows where. We will use the huge nationwide network structure we have built across the country to persuade Russian citizens not to go to the polls, to actively boycott them, to make sure as few people as possible turn out, and to monitor every polling station to see how many people actually came, so that the authorities cannot falsify turnout. That is exactly what they are planning to do, because from everything we can see, turnout is their only concern. They know victory is already in their pocket—“victory” in quotation marks. Turnout is the only thing they care about.

We are going to take a short break now. Alexei Navalny is in the Echo of Moscow studio. This is the program Personal Opinion. I’m your host today, Alexei Solomin. Stay with us, we’ll be back in two minutes.

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Alexei Solomin back in the studio. We continue the program. Our guest is politician Alexei Navalny. We had started talking about the voters’ strike, explaining how it differs from the protest action planned for the 28th. But what is its practical goal? People will come out into the streets. The Epiphany frosts. Thousands of people. And then what?..

Mobilizing people, showing what they consider important. And what is the point of any protest action? In fact, what is the point of elections and participation in elections? Either you want to win, or you want to gather people around you and demonstrate something to the authorities. Parliamentary parties, or any parties that take part in elections, do not necessarily get 100 percent of the vote or even a majority. But they want to show that such-and-such a part of society stands behind them. That is exactly what we want to do within the voters’ strike in general and the January 28 action in particular. Today we published a list of groups—I urge all readers to go either to the blog or the video blog, find their city, and sign up for the group there. The goal is precisely this: to demonstrate to the authorities that we do, in fact, exist. And that there are a great many Russian citizens who are not represented in this election, and they are deeply unhappy and upset about it. Because de facto the Kremlin has, of course, excluded several tens of millions of people from the political system, including, of course, residents of major cities, because they were simply told: “You do not have the right to nominate your own candidate, and in general we are not interested in you.” And overall, as I said in today’s video, this is not about me. It is about the authorities’ principled position that they will exclude from the political process everyone engaged in real political struggle and relying on grassroots political movements. That is the most important thing. It means that, in principle, they never want to let us in. And there will be only these puppet parties, puppet politicians, and we will spend our whole lives sitting around and lamenting: “My God, why do our parties, which do nothing, get 2 percent? We suffer, blame ourselves, blame the Russian people?..” It is some endless vicious circle. And it is actually quite easy to get out of it. You simply need to run real election campaigns. That is exactly the kind of movement they are very afraid of.

A. Navalny: I fought for those votes, and I’m still fighting for them

And why did you decide that the Kremlin does not know how many supporters you have? There are FSO polls (Federal Protective Service polls), unofficial polling of some kind. And the fact that President Putin does not say your name does not mean he knows nothing about you.

On the contrary, that is exactly what I am saying: they know everything very well. And I do not believe in any FSO polls. That is complete nonsense. But they can see how we are running this campaign. They understand that our structure is real and exists in every major Russian city. They see that the volunteers are real, that the campaign is entirely real. When a person comes to some city and all students and all state employees are told, “Under threat of dismissal, do not come to his meeting,” and still a substantial number of people come—more than they themselves can gather in any case—of course they know about it, and it frightens them badly. And they realize that when the formal campaign period begins and people are told, “Here, look, five names—choose one,” they understand that with the help of our network we would be able to persuade a majority of Russian citizens to choose my name. That is why they did not let me in. They know everything, I assure you. In fact, they watch us more closely than anyone else, because all the others are just political phantoms they themselves created.

Should the January 28 action come to an end?

The January 28 action should begin. I hope it will be massive. And I believe it should not be the only one. We’ll see. This is a major political process that we are organizing...

...Or are you interested in a prolonged street protest, an open-ended one, so to speak? You remember we’ve had different examples of that, like Occupy Abai, a permanent act of civil disobedience.

As of today, the plan for January 28 in all the largest cities of Russia—83 cities are already covered—is marches and rallies. At the moment, we are not talking about any indefinite actions, but I think we will hold more than one action before this election. We will act according to circumstances. It is impossible, by my own wish or command or by this wonderful interview on Echo of Moscow, simply to say: let the protest be indefinite. People themselves will not leave if they feel they should stay in the streets.

Are you setting that as a goal?

At the moment, no such goal has been set. At the moment, what matters is to show the scale of these actions during this difficult period of Epiphany frosts, as you rightly pointed out.

What turnout percentage—if I understand correctly, your work now is focused on lowering turnout in this election—what percentage would be satisfactory for you?

We are not setting any specific target. It is not about the numbers. We do not have a turnout threshold, and there is no such thing as us driving it down...

A. Navalny: They came into this campaign because it was honest politics without any rigging

Driving it down how?

It is important that it be below 50 percent. But in essence, we will be fighting turnout falsification. We understand perfectly well... and what matters is how effectively we fight that falsification. But the legitimacy of power is not measured by a number, as if they got 70 and are legitimate, got 49 and are illegitimate. It is a feeling, people’s confidence. We want to show people how ridiculous, absurd, and fabricated this election will be. And that will have major long-term consequences. We are looking at the bigger picture. This is our country. We are not planning to leave, are we?

I’m not—for now.

Excellent! Nor am I—for now. So that means you and I will stay and keep fighting. And what happens within our voters’ strike is an important element of the current struggle and a precondition for the future.

Well, you’ll be the one fighting—you’re the fighter.

You’ll be fighting too.

I’m not much of a fighter, but that’s not important.

We’ll convince you to fight, and you’ll be a wonderful, excellent fighter.

Alexei, why do you think high turnout matters so much to the Kremlin?

It’s not that I think so—it’s a fact. Look: everything they are doing now is a struggle for turnout. Patriarch Kirill today called on people to go vote. I published documents from the Moscow region, but we know similar ones were sent out across the country—saying that special groups, “hundreds,” brigades will be created to go around to 100 percent of voters and ensure they are brought to the polling stations: fridge magnets, little gifts, designated people assigned to apartment blocks, and so on. Peskov said yesterday that our calls for a strike should be examined by law enforcement. We can see from the facts alone that they are trembling over turnout.

Turnout in presidential elections in which Vladimir Putin has taken part has always been roughly above 60 and below 70 percent. It has always been fairly high. Why, on what basis, did you come to believe that this time it would be different? Where did that feeling come from?

That feeling came to me after the Central Election Commission meeting, where they told me—and in my person, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, I can say that confidently—“Sorry, your face doesn’t fit for taking part in our election.” That is what they said to all those people, and to all those who had said before that they would not let us into the election. And Putin, who said outright back in 2013 that if Navalny posed a danger, he would not be allowed into the election. And now they are not allowing me in.

A. Navalny: If we know we are right, we will go to court even when defeat is a foregone conclusion. All of this convinces me that the system is absolutely unjust. And I am not the only one who sees that injustice. Everyone sees it. Of course people simply will not go to such an election. It will all turn into a complete farce and absurdity. Besides, we need to understand: yes, Vladimir Putin has taken part in elections several times, but now he is running for the fifth time! He has been in power for 17 years and wants another six... People grow up, new voters appear, some people grow tired... In general, the degradation of the authorities and their inability to do anything properly has a very strong effect. Four years of falling real incomes is the main factor. Every person, any person in the country, knows that their income has been falling for four years in a row, and it is obvious that the authorities bear responsibility for that.

Ksenia Sobchak offered to make you one of her official campaign representatives. And many people, in my view fairly, reproach you for ignoring that offer, because you would have had a very good platform on federal television to express any of your views.

The idea that I would somehow get a platform on the federal channels can provoke nothing but a smile, and the whole idea of campaign representatives and so on can provoke nothing but a smile as well. Of course I follow what the other candidates are doing—Sobchak, Grudinin, Titov, Yavlinsky—they all, in their own logic, are naturally trying to attract the electorate that would vote for me, to attract my voters. But it seems to me that they will not succeed, for one simple reason. Regardless of what they are doing now, if they had started a year ago and run an honest campaign, and had really fought for voters’ support, then this could be discussed. But now this is not politics. They are not politicians. They are some strange people who—in Sobchak’s case two months ago, in Grudinin’s case a week ago—did not even know themselves that they were running, then suddenly popped up in the last three months and started doing something. That is not an election campaign. These people are incapable in principle of getting many votes. More than that, they openly say, “We are participating not in order to win.” None of this interests me. I would rather focus on a real political process, not on things that are announced merely to be discussed on Facebook.

We’ll pause here and continue right after the news and advertising. Alexei Navalny is in the Echo of Moscow studio. Alexei Solomin is hosting today’s broadcast. Stay with us.

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Personal Opinion continues. Hello! My name is Alexei Solomin. For those who have just joined us, let me say that our guest in the studio is politician Alexei Navalny. And we had begun a very interesting conversation about Ksenia Sobchak.

Not interesting at all. Let’s discuss Ksenia Sobchak a little more and then move on to some more real political issues.

One can really sense some very negative feelings toward her in your emotions right now.

No, no, absolutely no negative feelings toward her. I do have negative feelings toward all candidates who call themselves candidates but do not run election campaigns. Absolutely, I can say that they all irritate me. Because—as I have said many times—I spent a year traveling around the country, a year speaking, I went all over Russia. And my irritation built up because I looked at all the other candidates... that is, I saw no candidates at all. Then they seemed to announce that they were running, and still they continued to do nothing. A. Navalny: We will fight turnout falsification. And I understood that there was always a risk that I would not be allowed into the election. And I wanted some candidates to emerge who would fight for voters’ support, so that there could be some alternative other than boycott and a voters’ strike. Of course that would have been preferable. Taking part in an election is always better than not taking part. But I simply see a bunch of people declaring themselves candidates while not taking a single step to fight for votes. And of course those candidates irritate me. I am not even going to hide it.

You rightly said that Ksenia Sobchak stated she does not intend to win this election. Everything she is doing now is reminding the country that you exist. She asks your question at Vladimir Putin’s press conference. She says your brother’s name on Vladimir Solovyov’s show. Doesn’t that deserve gratitude?

It is very nice, of course, only it probably would have been more appropriate to do the same over the last four years, or at least over the last year. But an election campaign does not exist to remind the country of my name. An election campaign exists to fight for votes. So Ksenia Sobchak should stop talking endlessly about Navalny and go to Novosibirsk, hold a rally there, and speak to the residents of Novosibirsk. Then fly out that evening and the next day speak in Perm or in her native St. Petersburg.

But why?..

Because that is what an election campaign is.

That much I understand. Quite right. But why are you concerned about the other candidates? The other candidates are helping you run your own campaign.

Alexei, you’ve hit the point exactly. As I told you... “Why are you concerned about the other candidates?” I want to answer that I am not concerned about them at all and would actually prefer not to discuss them now. But if you ask, of course I will answer. Still, they are not real candidates. They may be pleasant people or unpleasant people, but they are not real candidates. So what is there to discuss?

Your goal is not to trample your opposition rivals. Your goal is to replace Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in office. Well, if you don’t like discussing Ksenia Sobchak... If any candidate comes along who says your name and is not ashamed of it, if that person, having come to power, having won the election, including with your support, talks about dissolving the State Duma...

Let me stop you right there. When you say “having won the election,” you should pause—and simply burst out laughing! Because the first thing they say is that they are not going to win the election. And second, they are not even trying to fight for voters’ support. So your whole construction has already collapsed, because they are doing nothing.

A. Navalny: We’ll convince you to fight, and you’ll be a wonderful, excellent fighter. But of course, listen, if there were any candidate at all—even one I did not particularly like or whose program was not close to mine—who alongside me was really fighting, traveling, maybe criticizing me, debating me, but in fact fighting for voters’ support, then I would now say: “You know, friends, they did not let me into the election, but of course for the common cause I want to support this candidate, because this is a real candidate against Putin. And even if my program differs from his by 30 percent... or 20 percent, or even 100 percent, let’s vote for him, because he is against Putin.” If you can give me the name of such a candidate, let me support him right now on Echo of Moscow. But I’m afraid you can’t name one. See, you’re smiling. But this is no joke. The next election will be in six years! The people, the citizens of Russia, have to wait six years for the next presidential election. It’s a catastrophe.

It seems to me that most people have already come to terms with that...

Well, I haven’t.

As soon as Vladimir Putin announced his candidacy, everyone immediately started talking about 2024.

I have not accepted it, and I am gathering around me all those who have not accepted it either.

Isn’t that a naive position?

No, not at all. How could it be naive, when we are dealing here with things that are not naive at all? I have one life. I will spend it in Russia. I want to influence this election here and now. Everyone else understands perfectly well that another six years of Putin means a continuation of the last four years—that is, the impoverishment of the country, the country falling behind. It will grow more slowly than the global economy as a whole. We will keep falling behind, falling behind, falling behind... Our rockets will keep falling, and nothing here will develop. It is monstrous...

Not exactly. Why? As far as I have followed—and I follow you closely—you have one scenario in which Putin gets immunity if he ensures a peaceful transfer of power. Is that right? That is still your position, correct?

Yes.

People ask you a fair question, including your supporters: why on earth should Putin get immunity if he is the author of this system and the person directly responsible for it?

Granting Putin immunity is a painful and unpleasant decision, one that is unpleasant for me too, just as it is for everyone else. Probably more unpleasant for me than for others, because I have many personal reasons, among them, not to like Putin. My brother is in prison right now, even though there is a ruling by the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) stating that the case was fabricated—and he is still being held under strict conditions. But we must act in the interests of the country as a whole, including by making such unpleasant decisions. And if there is a guarantee of a peaceful transition for all 145 million people, then immunity can be given to Putin—but only to Putin himself, without any Medvedevs or anyone else.

A. Navalny: Name the signs of a “Kremlin stooge.” But I would also like to return to your remark when you said this was a romantic point of view. It is a practical point of view. When I say that we are fighting for our country and for our future, that is, of course, a grand phrase, but it is definitely not some kind of romanticism. It is absolutely political practice. There can be no more practical position right now than exactly this attitude. That is what is at stake. And so our activity during the voters’ strike, during the January 28 action, and afterward—this is all a struggle for our country, for our future. We won’t even have time to look back... How old are you?

30.

30. So only at 36 will you be able to vote next time.

I’ll be able to run for president next time too, like Ksenia Sobchak.

Excellent! I hope you won’t do it like Ksenia Sobchak, but will start running your campaign a year in advance.

Thank you.

And you will compare very favorably to her as a candidate. So this is not a romantic position at all; it is simply the only possible political practice.

A practical position.

Yes.

But you can continue fighting to take part in other elections. There will be a Moscow mayoral election in September. There will be a Moscow mayoral election in September. You had an excellent result—almost 30 percent, very good for Moscow. Aren’t you going to try yourself?..

From the standpoint of the current authorities, I do not have passive voting rights—the right to stand for election—until... In the papers they wrote, it’s something like 2030, I think... I’ve gotten confused myself. A long, long time... You will get older than I am now, and I still will not be allowed to take part in elections. So in principle they have closed politics off to me and to all the people I represent—or at least they are trying to. They do not let me run. My political party—the Progress Party—we tried to register it four times, and every time we were refused.

And you stopped those attempts. You’re not planning to do it anymore?

We will continue. We are doing it constantly. It is an endless, permanent process—trying to obtain political representation one way or another, including through a party.

Since you yourself will not be taking part in the Moscow mayoral election, which candidate would you support? For example: Dmitry Gudkov, Sergei Sobyanin, Ilya Yashin, Sergei Mitrokhin...

A. Navalny: I have many personal reasons, among them, not to like Putin

I can feel the spirit of Alexei Alexeyevich Venediktov hovering over this table, floating there, smiling, rubbing his hands, and saying: “What a tricky question!”

Alexei, no. That’s a different office.

I can tell you, Alexei Alexeyevich, and everyone else who is very concerned about the Moscow mayoral election, that you are all great, and rightly concerned. It is the election of the mayor of the country’s largest city, the most populous federal subject. But I am not thinking about it at all, and I do not think this is the time for us to be thinking about it. What would I like the candidates to do? The same thing—to start doing real, practical work now. Because once again we will see the same thing: some people will pop up a month beforehand and say, “Oh, support us,” or don’t support us, “Express some attitude toward us.” I will come here to your studio, and you will question me again, whether it is Ksenia Sobchak again or Katya Gordon or whoever—and you will ask me about them with a sly smile, and I will have to answer. Of course I will answer, but right now, from December 2017, I am addressing all possible candidates with one appeal: “Guys, do some actual work.” But I am not thinking now about the Moscow mayoral election, because other issues are on the agenda.

But do you want there to be a single opposition candidate or not?

Of course I would like there to be a single candidate who could defeat Sobyanin, who has thoroughly worn everyone out and who is one of the most corrupt regional heads in the country, as shown constantly by our investigations and anyone else’s investigations. The evidence is already so overwhelming that it is obvious this Moscow government is simply rotten and incapable of fulfilling its own duties. So yes, of course I would like there to be a single candidate who would win, who would get more votes than I once did and win in the first round or the second round. Of course any normal person is interested in that.

To settle this question. I have always personally been curious: do you consider Dmitry Gudkov a “Kremlin stooge”?

No, of course I do not consider Dmitry Gudkov a “Kremlin stooge.” I have known him for many years. So tell me, let’s understand this: what exactly is a “Kremlin stooge”? Tell me the signs of a “Kremlin stooge.”

A person who works with the mayor’s office, including against you.

Works with the mayor’s office against me? Works with the Kremlin against me? Well, I have known Dmitry Gudkov for many years. I think he does, of course, interact with various people, officials. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you are not acting against the opposition. I hope that is not the case.

And when your supporters attack Dmitry Gudkov and call him nothing but a “Kremlin stooge,” do you support that?

I support freedom of speech. Different people can call me different things. Many people, after all, call me a Kremlin project too, as you know. And in this very studio I have answered the question thirty times: “What do you say to those who call you a Kremlin project?” I urge everyone to judge by actions and by concrete statements. If a person acts correctly, if a person acts in the common interest, then he is doing well. If he acts against the common interest, then he is not doing well, or has already reached the stage you call a “Kremlin stooge.”

What matters more to you: your personal political career or democratic transformation in Russia?

What matters to me is my life in my country. I would like to live in a normal democratic country. And I am making my own personal contribution. But when the time comes that I can no longer win primaries, can no longer secure people’s support, I will have no problem moving into the background—second, third, fourth... twenty-fifth place—and I will be perfectly happy not to be involved in politics at all, if there are other politicians doing it.

I beg your pardon. Breaking news: there has been an explosion in a supermarket in St. Petersburg. At least nine people have been injured. Source: Interfax news agency. This is a news flash. I think we’ll hear more in the news.

A horrifying piece of news. I hope there will be no fatalities, and perhaps fewer injured than reported. Yes, it is very страшно.

Alexei Navalny was with us in the Echo of Moscow studio. My name is Alexei Solomin. All the best, thank you!

Bye!