Broadcast of "Morning U-turn" from April 6, 2020. Alexei Navalny on the coronavirus and quarantine

But Navalny himself is better. Alexei Navalny is joining us via Skype. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Are you managing to keep up the self-isolation regime? And do you support it in general? I mean not just staying at home, but ideologically as well. What do you think of the measures the authorities have introduced?

Well, first of all, I’m outraged that neither of you has self-isolated. I can see you’re clearly sitting in the studio, not at home.

To be honest, so am I.

And there’s no distancing either.

Well, I am certainly a consistent supporter of quarantine. Not because I’m some great virologist or public health expert. Simply because I’m doing what seems to me the only sensible thing right now: I’m looking at the experience of different countries and urging Russia to adopt the best parts of that experience. Because there’s negative experience, positive experience, all kinds. In Turkmenistan they basically banned coronavirus altogether. We could ban coronavirus here too, but that obviously doesn’t work.

And the countries that introduced a strict quarantine seem to me to be fighting it more successfully now. That’s why I have consistently called for quarantine in Russia, because it is good for combating the virus. That’s the first point. And second, it needs to be called quarantine, and as a citizen, you could say, I demand this fiercely, because people should be paid compensation. Because this is quarantine, not this damn “self-isolation.”

And are the non-working days through the end of April a good thing?

From the point of view of keeping people from going out and spreading the disease, yes, that’s good. From the point of view of common sense and of the people themselves, it’s bad. Because what is a “non-working week,” really? When people hear “non-working week,” they go out for barbecues, they head to their dachas (country houses). And most importantly, they don’t get paid (most of them), because the line is, “Well, let employers pay.” Maybe the wealthy radio station Echo of Moscow can afford to pay, even if it sends all of you on leave, right? But most businesses, especially small ones, simply can’t do that—they send people on unpaid leave, and that’s it, and people sit at home with no money. It’s awful.

In essence, this is quarantine, isn’t it? So why are we lying? It needs to be called quarantine, and people need to be paid. There is enough money in the budget, enough money in the National Wealth Fund (already 12 trillion rubles) to pay everyone some modest amount—say, 20,000 rubles.

A. Navalny: In Turkmenistan they basically banned coronavirus altogether. We could ban it here too, but that obviously doesn’t work

All right. If we look at the best of what other countries have done, what could be borrowed and implemented here?

A strict quarantine, mass testing, protective suits. I mean, mass testing is simply... If we don’t do it, everything will go much worse than if we did mass testing.

We can see that many countries have now moved to this. I checked specifically before your program. I posted on Instagram for the first time on January 30, wearing a mask, saying that I had bought masks for my family. That means they had already arrived to me by then through online ordering. Which means the epidemic was already spreading worldwide. The Russian government had at least two months to set up some kind of testing system. But it didn’t. So it needs to be set up now. We need to stop repeating this nonsense that we will test only those who show symptoms. Everyone who wants a test should be tested. Testing should be free. Testing should be mass-scale—that’s the first thing. Second... It’s strange that we’re even having to talk about providing doctors with protective equipment, right? I woke up today and saw a story on your website saying that doctors at Pokrovskaya Hospital in St. Petersburg were afraid the chief doctor would fire them because they made a video appeal saying they had no protective equipment. That’s insane. Obviously, until doctors are provided with personal protective equipment, fighting the epidemic is pointless. And third, from an economic point of view, we should of course pay every citizen 20,000 rubles per adult and 10,000 rubles per child right now. And we should launch some kind of support program for small businesses, with subsidized loans. I mean... this is so obvious. And all the more or less successful countries are doing it, so again, it’s ridiculous that we’re even discussing it.

Well, it was said today that there will only be targeted support measures for business, and that it shouldn’t count on much.

Well, that’s exactly what “targeted” will mean. Like, in this spot sits Rotenberg—let’s help him. And in that spot, Timchenko.

We’ve seen these targeted support measures in every crisis—in 2008, in 2014. Every time. Every time the same thing happened: we gave money to oligarchs. That is, we gave additional billions to very rich people, to billionaires. Now... again, there’s no need to invent anything. Germany and the United States are giving money directly to people. These are the most ultra-mega-capitalist countries imaginable. It’s probably pretty hard to accuse Merkel or Trump of engaging in left-wing populism. But now, when millions of people have lost their income and are sitting at home, of course those millions need to be given at least some money, because they’re sitting there not understanding how they’re going to pay their rent.

Well, it’s easy to say, “Give money here, give money there, provide help here and there.” But from where? Where does the state get the money now? The fat years are over, as Siluanov said today.

That’s wonderful. Siluanov said that to Nailya Asker-Zade. But Nailya Asker-Zade has a private jet, a yacht, and total assets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Siluanov is also officially a dollar millionaire. And they sit there telling each other that the fat years are over. Their fat years are continuing and will continue, and all of that fat comes from the state.

So, there is the National Wealth Fund. It belongs to me and to you and to all the radio listeners and YouTube viewers. And it contains $123 billion—that’s at least 10 trillion rubles. And we should spend that money right now, because that’s exactly what we were saving it for: to spend it in a critical moment. That needs to be done. And like developed countries, we should spend no less than 15% of GDP on helping people and businesses. That’s it. We should spend it. And those would be the right measures, helping both the economy and the people.

Look, there was this story over the weekend. In a way, the police were thinking like Alexei Navalny: they too came out in favor of a strict quarantine and grabbed one particular Jesus Vorobyov. What do you make of that story?

Well, that story is, of course, absurd. You know, there’s been this discussion going on—I saw it on social media, on Twitter—about in what sense this Jesus violated the rules. He was supposedly violating quarantine, so they really had to take him away. But he was with a dog, so it would be animal cruelty to take Jesus away but not take Platon (his dog).

I think even having that discussion is silly. When a police officer detains someone, he should proceed from the level of public danger. What public danger was there in one person walking alone somewhere with his dog, as it turned out, literally 70 meters from his home? The police should have said—if they objected to him walking specifically on the boulevard—“Hey, man, please don’t walk here anymore,” and moved on. Because three police officers see one person out walking. He poses no danger whatsoever in terms of spreading the epidemic. Even if he is technically violating something, they should move on, because we have lots of people standing in groups near every metro station, drinking beer. Those are the people they should approach. Not arrest them, but say, “Guys, stand 2 meters apart.” That’s the police’s job. Not to drag people to court and elsewhere, but to make sure that...

The kind of police Alexei Navalny is describing sounds less like police and more like Mother Teresa.

Well, right now we need Mother Teresa more. I mean, from detaining this Jesus—not even getting into the long-term consequences we’re seeing... Fine. Three police officers are occupied. We dragged him to court. An entire state machine spent a huge amount of time and money for what? So that some guy wouldn’t walk his dog? He should walk his dog—that’s normal.

Of course, many people are probably surprised by the opposition’s support for the authorities’ measures—I mean from Alexei Navalny—for quarantine and so on. In that sense, you’re on the same side. And on the other hand, people are probably expecting some kind of... Since Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have always been at the forefront of many, let’s say, unauthorized protests, they’re waiting...

Look, they say, black swans are flying in one after another, and you’re all sitting at home supporting self-isolation. Where are the protests? Where are the demonstrations? Maybe digital resistance, at least, they say. What do you say to them?

I say the following. First of all, you can’t say I’m on the same side as the authorities, because I’m demanding quarantine, while they declared a non-working month, right? I’m demanding that during quarantine people be paid, as required by law. They don’t want to pay. But at the same time... I’m not on the side of the authorities, I’m against the epidemic—I’m on the side of common sense. I think that right now it would simply be stupid and pointless to call people out to mass rallies where they infect one another.

As for digital resistance, that’s the right thing. I absolutely... and thank you for inviting me. I think that right now all of us should use the internet to promote... to infect—sorry for the word—all residents with the idea that the state must spend money helping people. And in that sense... This will objectively happen only if, say, 60% of Russian citizens support it. And I and our whole team are doing what we can from home. We’ve kept all our livestreams, which are watched by a lot of people, and we’re maintaining the infrastructure of our regional headquarters. We’re helping the doctors’ trade union that is trying to supply other doctors with protective equipment. So yes, of course, maybe we could do more, and we have various plans. But in the near future, until the real quarantine ends worldwide, I think holding mass street actions would be the height of pointlessness and harmfulness.

A. Navalny: From an economic point of view, we should pay everyone 20,000 rubles per adult and 10,000 per child right now

Are you planning any online actions, including, say... I don’t know, flash mobs or something, to persuade the authorities to pay up?

Yes, I absolutely think that needs to be done. We’re just trying to find the right format, something interesting.

Yes, such actions are needed, and we need to persuade people to demand payment. We need to persuade people, in particular, to demand that protective equipment be purchased for doctors. That’s what we’re more focused on right now, but... And as for financial assistance—of course, yes. Without a mass campaign, they simply won’t pay, that’s all.

Interesting: today we were discussing the situation in Nizhny Novgorod and Tatarstan, where a permit-pass system has been introduced. You have headquarters there too, after all. Are your supporters there having any trouble leaving home? Are they getting permits?

I don’t know specifically about those regions, but my understanding is that in some regions the authorities are definitely using this ban on simply going outside, and the pass system, to harass certain people.

Look, right now I can look out the window and see two goons near the entrance. It’s unclear on what basis they themselves are standing there and whether they have permits. But they’re standing there all the time by my building entrance so they can film me if I go somewhere and violate this quarantine regime. And in that sense, of course, as soon as the authorities are given the opportunity to ban something extra, they won’t rush to ban it in order to achieve some legitimate goal—they’ll rush to try to prosecute local opposition activists, ours and not ours, any activists who in ordinary peaceful life speak out against them.

As I understand it, the headquarters’ work—their offline work, I mean—has now been suspended?

Well, like almost all offline work across the country for almost everyone. Basically, the work of our headquarters consists of preparing for regional elections, where there are any, conducting local anti-corruption investigations, and they are continuing to do that. Right now we’re all trying together to help the medical trade union, and if we launch some kind of nationwide campaign for financial assistance to the population, they’ll take part in that campaign.

I wanted to ask about several of your pieces concerning Margarita Simonyan and the Russia Today channel. What interests me most is why you’re focused on them right now. It seems that maybe there are other targets for attention—oligarchs, Putin’s friends, other, so to speak, traditional clients of yours—perhaps more significant figures and personalities. Why now, and why Simonyan?

It’s not really “right now”; it has nothing to do with this coronavirus crisis, okay? We started these investigations quite a while ago—they take time, after all. To obtain documents and analyze in detail, down to the last kopeck, for example, the budget for the Crimean Bridge and the TV show International Sawmill, takes quite a lot of time, and that’s what we were doing. We started doing it when there wasn’t even any epidemic on the horizon. We finished it. And then released it. In that sense, we would have released it in any situation. At first we were actually heavily disrupted by Putin’s rescheduling of those deadlines, which completely changed the agenda. But we already had the investigation ready, and we rather unfortunately published the first episode, the film Parasites, five minutes before Putin went to the State Duma to announce his “zeroing out” of presidential term limits. In that sense, these things are unrelated—we were simply doing the work.

But I still think it is more than appropriate now. You mentioned “oligarchs.” Why aren’t we going after oligarchs? And what is Margarita Simonyan? She gets 20 billion rubles for her Russia Today channel. As she herself wrote on Twitter, it takes only 5 million rubles to equip an average hospital. Well then, let’s take those 20 billion rubles and we can equip thousands of hospitals with protective gear. In that sense, she is the biggest state media oligarch, and she should be pursued legally, in the media, and morally.

There was Lyubov Sobol’s piece, and it basically argued that state funds were being spent inefficiently. The conclusion suggested itself immediately. So are you also arguing that Margarita Simonyan should be replaced by some more efficient manager, someone who would spend the same 20 billion but somehow do propaganda more effectively?

Well, listen, that doesn’t sound very economical. But at least more effective propaganda. Because when they make propaganda, and then it turns out that even their own propaganda is being boosted with traffic from porn sites... I mean, literally nobody watches it. So yes, of course, we think Margarita Simonyan should be put on trial. And the Russia Today channel should be disbanded altogether, because those 20 billion rubles are badly needed by the country right now, and they’re simply being wasted.

But when the state tells us, “You know, we need some kind of influence channel. We’ll create this kind of television. The Germans have it, the Americans have it. Global television to tell the world something about Russia, to promote our point of view.” That’s debatable. But fine, let’s allow that such a thing is possible. But when it turns out that they created a global TV channel that nobody watches, that inflates its YouTube views through porn sites, as Sobol proved, then we say: yes, first, your propaganda is garbage; second, it is completely ineffective; and this whole thing is made up—and Simonyan should be arrested, yes. For real.

I’ll ask the traditional question for any conversation with Navalny.

Good Lord! “Why haven’t they killed you?”

No. What do you live on, Alexei? Because look: your accounts were blocked—that was a whole story. Second, there’s the crisis—nothing you can do about that, people are counting their money. And they’ve stopped donating to various NGOs. I imagine the Anti-Corruption Foundation is no exception. So what do you live on? “You” meaning not you personally, Alexei, but you as a collective.

We absolutely need to separate me personally and the ACF as a collective, because there is a Chinese wall... I have never received money from any donations. The ACF, like any NGO, is indeed feeling a drop in donations, because people don’t have money. But people are still donating, because they believe our work is right. And however much money we raise, that’s how much we’ll be able to pay in salaries, office rent, and so on. In that sense, nothing has changed.

Every day we work to prove to people that our existence is necessary, and only then will they support us. As for me personally, yes, my accounts and those of all my relatives, children, and wife have been blocked. But... after the blocking, I opened another small account at Sberbank—there are 20,000 rubles in it, which I can use for, I don’t know, some minimal expenses. And they haven’t closed it yet. Though now I’ve probably let it slip like an idiot, and by evening they’ll shut it down.

They’ll find it.

And there were also some issues involving your parents, as I recall.

A. Navalny: She is the biggest state media oligarch, and she should be pursued legally, in the media, and morally

Yes, my mother’s pension account was closed. First they froze her entire pension. After I wrote about it on Twitter, they lifted the freeze. Then the next month they froze it again. So yes, it’s a very irritating situation. Her pension is 21,000 rubles, I think, and she constantly has to go to the post office and to Sberbank to find out whether it’s frozen or not. It seems they lifted the freeze on the latest 21,000 rubles.

It’s also a funny thing—funny and outrageous. It’s absolutely illegal, because if you’ve imposed a freeze, you can’t just lift it arbitrarily. But they freeze it, then I write a tweet, everyone gets outraged, and they lift it. That just shows once again that this is completely outside the bounds of law.

What I wanted to say while you were talking about RT is that they’re simply showing us which media we’re actually supposed to watch and listen to. Because Radio Liberty (U.S.-funded Russian-language broadcaster), Meduza, and Current Time are now going to be investigated for fake news about coronavirus. They’re simply demonstrating which media are “correct” and which are “incorrect.” Right?

That’s absolutely right. And frankly, it irritates me terribly. In my latest livestream... well, everyone is discussing it now. They’re discussing the fact that the main source of fake news is, of course, the authorities—and real, genuine fake news at that.

Take that same hospital you were discussing—the Pokrovskaya Hospital in St. Petersburg. The nurses come out and say, “We have no respirators, we have no protective equipment.” The St. Petersburg administration says, “No, they have everything.” Then the next day it turns out that doctors there have been infected and the hospital is being closed for quarantine. That is a genuine fake spread by the authorities. And the authorities lie endlessly. The same Margarita Simonyan, already mentioned here many times. She was one of the people running around everywhere shouting that it was no more dangerous than the flu. Putin said it was no more dangerous than the flu. Peskov said there was no epidemic in Russia. So the authorities are a constant source of fake news on this very subject. But for some reason they’re planning to shut down Meduza, and as I understand it, you were issued a warning over the words of some guest on air?

As far as I understand, it concerns the Orenburg editorial office. Anything can happen, you know. Orenburg is one thing, Moscow is another. I have no idea what Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and communications regulator) is up to there or what it might lead to.

Tell me, Alexei, what are you doing while working remotely?

The same thing as always. I mean, what does my work usually consist of? I sit in front of a computer and hold meetings. Right now I’m sitting in front of a computer and holding a meeting on Zoom or Skype. I prepare programs, we plan investigations, and together with my colleagues I organize the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. I don’t really like remote work, to be honest. A lot of people think it’s great. I don’t like it. First of all, all of you... well, you’re handsome and washed and nice. And I’m sitting here unshaven in a T-shirt like a bum, and I can feel my productivity dropping.

But what about Zoom? They said it’s an insecure service, that all this data could be made public. Meetings on Zoom? Seriously?

What secrets could the Anti-Corruption Foundation possibly have? Are you kidding? Our work is absolutely open and transparent.

I mean, we’re doing all the same things. And just like everyone else in Russia right now, we’re facing certain problems because we have to work remotely, because there’s less money, because people donate less to us—because people are getting poorer. So in that sense we are an absolutely ordinary part of Russian society in every way.

When should we expect the next investigation? We have half a minute left.

Another frequently asked question that...

No, I didn’t ask which one. I asked “When?”

Well, we never answer questions like that. We’ll publish it when it’s ready.

But there will be more, right? Even though you’re working remotely, you’re still doing all this?

Of course, of course. Absolutely.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alexei Navalny, politician, joined us today via Skype as a live—relatively live—guest, since he wasn’t here in the studio. Thank you very much. In a minute we’ll continue and tell you about the weather.