Alexei Navalny’s Interview with Blogger Kamikadze Di

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All right, guys, today we’re talking with

Alexei Navalny, a candidate for

the presidency of Russia in 2012.

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for

coming. Thank you for agreeing. It all happened rather

quickly, and Alexei is interesting to

talk to because he’s a practitioner who

has experience running for mayor of Moscow

as a candidate. That’s what we’ll be

talking about today: censorship,

the use of administrative resources,

and just how hard they squeeze

independent, so to speak, candidates who

have no connection whatsoever to the authorities and

consciously refuse to cooperate with them,

instead choosing confrontation. But is that really how it goes? The video

about Dimon (a colloquial nickname for Dmitry Medvedev)—if you haven’t seen it, watch it.

First question: how did you encounter

censorship, and in general, when did it first

begin? Well, I want to say that if you

want to ask about censorship, you’ve come

to the right place, because here it’s not

just in this office—yes, throughout the whole

Anti-Corruption Foundation, everyone knows about it.

Well, if I think back, probably the last time

I was on national television

not in a negative segment attacking me

was

in 2005. There were even some—well,

back then I was involved with the committee

for the Protection of Muscovites, which fought against

illegal development, and part of

the television world, which was sort of against

Luzhkov (former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov), because they were

against the developers, would sometimes

show me and say, well, look at this

lawyer—good job, he’s fighting all these

villains and corrupt figures who are

building over Moscow. But already from 2005 on,

when I started speaking directly about how

all this corruption is tied to

politics—there is no corruption without

politics, and this corruption

could not have developed without

political cover from Moscow City Hall

and from the Kremlin, and so on—I ended up on

a stop list. And by around 2010,

or from 2009, when I started

suing Gazprom and Rosneft, and

directly linking corruption to

the Kremlin, I had already landed in the blacklisted

part of those stop lists, and about me

they either say absolutely nothing, or

they say I’m a foreign agent.

At first, when people talk about censorship and

stop lists, everyone imagines talk shows—

who can be invited there, who can’t be invited. But I’ve

never really been involved with talk shows at all.

Not once. Honestly,

even if I imagine being invited now

to a talk show on Channel One, I’m not

sure I’d even go, because I see

how they go—it’s just a mess,

some lurid spectacle, 40 people just

shouting, and you can hardly say anything there.

But no, I’ve never been on a single one.

On a talk show, many, many years ago,

I think it was in 2004, on TV Center, I was on

one major program, but otherwise no. It was connected with

construction, yes, yes, one session...

They invite only vetted people, like

Gozman (Leonid Gozman, a liberal politician), hoping that if they say

something substantive, there will be

special people in the audience specifically for that. I’ve just now

felt how hard it is to

say anything—what you say barely gets through. But

there are these vetted

liberals whom they bring in as whipping boys.

You’re supposed to come and

express some kind of position of your own

that is supposed to look unattractive; then they

condemn it, and they present themselves there as

the opposition that is then duly condemned, and

that’s the end of it on TV. Okay, moving on now.

What about print publications,

online outlets—what used to publish or mention you

before,

and what about now? Well, first of all, we need

to draw a very clear distinction, because, well,

again, since around 2010 there has been a very

small and, unfortunately, constantly

shrinking circle of publications—Vedomosti,

and a few other newspapers—that are

generally allowed to mention my name. And in

major outlets like Argumenty i Fakty

and Komsomolskaya Pravda, the biggest

newspapers with circulation in the millions,

there

it’s either, once again, that I stole the whole forest, or

in 95 percent of cases it’s simply

forbidden to mention my surname at all,

in any way. It’s just prohibited. And for example,

our investigation about Dimon (Dmitry Medvedev),

right now,

combined with Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network), I think has around

10 million views—zero mentions.

None at all. They’re just completely silent. What’s interesting is

that a few years ago they

did at least mention me, talking about

what a terrible corrupt figure I was, but now

the authorities’ strategy is not to mention my name

at all—neither in a negative nor in a

positive context—because in 2013

they became convinced that even negative

mentions actually tend to bring me

some benefits, because many people

understand that newspapers lie, and they see:

if they keep writing about this person,

then that must mean something.

about him by word of mouth, and even that doesn't work

in their favor, so they stay completely silent.

If we continue this topic about how

things are banned and how all this works,

if you have information,

if there's a chance that some

deranged editor might just copy-paste

what you've posted there on your website

about Dimon (a familiar nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) — what happens next to

that editor? But we regularly

see cases like that, though fewer and

fewer. Some crazed editor like that

might copy-paste it onto their page

on Facebook or VKontakte (a Russian social network), and they'll be

fired from their job pretty quickly for it.

But for an editor somewhere in the media to actually publish it — no.

What's interesting is that we more or less

understand how it works, because

some of these people working,

for example at Channel One (Russia's main state TV channel), but who have

enough authority — people like Pozner —

they've said it outright about this.

Pozner said very clearly: they are not allowed

to do it. On various TV shows and in debates, I

took part on the TV Rain channel and in debates,

and they honestly say: yes, I'm forbidden

to invite you, yes, it's forbidden even to mention

your name.

There was a very funny episode a few years

ago when Tina Kandelaki came on Pozner's show

as a guest, and at the end of the program she

said something about me,

something complimentary. The program

was broadcast live to the Russian Far East,

and to the European part of Russia it aired on tape delay.

And in the version of the program that went to

the European part, they cut out those

couple of minutes where my surname was mentioned.

So we have a list of people

whose surnames are forbidden to be mentioned,

both negatively and positively. With an editor's permission,

you can mention it in a

negative context, but in a positive one

never. A separate category is

the NTV channel, my favorite one,

which seems to have a top list on you. They periodically

shoot smear pieces — I even had

the pleasure of seeing how at first about

me, as soon as something came out, they

didn't even really try.

In Kiselyov's program they already mentioned me —

well, not Kiselyov's own program, but in the program

of some Kiselyov clone, lisping, and they said nothing

interesting — all of it had already been

chewed over since Mussolini.

Constantly, and

the most shocking content from

their investigations — but the latest one was

an absolutely magnificent program about my

elite, luxurious vacation at the resorts

of Karelia and Novgorod Region.

But what really impresses you most

is when you realize the sheer intensity

of the surveillance being conducted.

Because we were in Karelia, really out in

the middle of nowhere, where there was nobody around, and

we rented a cabin on the shore of Lake Syamozero.

There was absolutely no one there, except some fishermen

regularly passing by near the shore. My wife even

said to me, "Look, those fishermen

might be filming us." And I said, "Come on, are you serious?

These people are fishermen, out here in inflatable boats.

That's ridiculous." And then it turned out

they really were filming us — me standing there

with the kids, grilling shashlik (barbecue) on the shore.

They were filming from an inflatable boat. That shows

that in reality this isn't being done by any

TV crew as such. They have a department there,

I think it's called the Directorate of Socio-Political

Programs or something like that.

And the journalists — you said that they

even sit separately. So in effect it's

a kind of FSB (Russian security service) unit that

legalizes this physical surveillance

and covert filming carried out by

FSB officers and the police.

Well, for example, of course the police can't just

come to a hotel and say, "Give us

all the footage from your security cameras." But

nevertheless, somehow they end up with it at their disposal.

So there it is: us standing there at the

reception desk,

paying for the room; me walking around with the kids;

me entering the hotel — all of that is there

in Winter.

I want to point out that when they need to, they

monitor the entire lake, and I've long since stopped being surprised by it.

For those who don't know — yes, yes, yes —

there was a tragic situation that

really shows that in an ordinary

situation, when they actually need to keep an eye on

things — for example, when children are being transported there —

there is no oversight from the authorities at all. But

when I arrived at Lake Syamozero later on,

which, by the way, was a few weeks later, the place

was, as we now know, very

densely

packed with police or the FSB or someone else.

So NTV and this directorate

are basically just an illegal

FSB subdivision leaking its

surveillance materials. I've

filed complaints about this many times

as a crime. By the way, it's interesting:

they're watching you too, and in

America, the much-discussed issue of

violations of freedom gets talked about all the time — and we have the same thing here.

It exists. Well, this is absolutely

illegal, because you can only surveil a person

legally

if there is a criminal case and a court order,

if he's a criminal and there is sufficient

evidence that he needs to be watched

because he's going to hand over

a kilogram of heroin to someone, and convicted

citizens are known convicts —

and here it's me, right? Well, anyway,

what's interesting is that this morning, to me...

A representative from the criminal investigation department came by.

In response to my complaint, and after the release

of that interesting film, I wrote that I was being

illegally surveilled, that I was under surveillance, and, well, at least

to his credit, he didn’t even come as a

police lieutenant colonel. He very politely took

my statement about the fact that

well,

I was being illegally monitored. Of course,

it will lead absolutely nowhere; there will be

a refusal to open a criminal case.

We understand that, because someone was clearly following me, well,

still, in Russia this is done

openly, completely openly.

Phone

conversations are tapped almost openly.

The statistics were absolutely astonishing.

A few months ago, it was published that

the courts had issued authorization for, for, for

the wiretapping of several million telephone

conversations. In other words, this is absolutely

mass-scale. And, by the way, that shows

that a lot of people joke and

say, “Who would even want to listen in on me?”

“What nonsense.”

But then who are they listening to? If

they’re wiretapping several million people,

I honestly don’t understand who they *aren’t* listening to, if

I’m being honest. So if you want to cut budget spending,

please stop intercepting these

massive volumes, because I’m not sure that’s a more

secure approach — in fact, I’m sure

it’s less secure, let’s put it that way.

In general, talk less on social

media and through any means of communication,

because Big Brother is watching you.

Yes, that’s true. A second big topic for

discussion is this formula used by the authorities,

which is routinely applied to people like you,

Alexei.

And it goes like this: “If you criticize, then propose something.”

“What have you accomplished? We’ve delivered results, and”

my immediate reaction is: you’re sitting

on the budget, with spending that is essentially uncontrolled,

and these funds — what has now been exposed

was a real blow, because I had thought

that if on Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel)

they were collecting money, then that was charity.

There was some foundation there, called something like

“Help for children with brain cancer” — but no, it turns out

helping Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) was more important. And what we see is this:

why do such formulations come from them?

There are even polls showing that people believe it. The worst part is

that you don’t have access to

the budget; you have some donations, maybe, but

it’s not even comparable, even if

some especially

sympathetic people throw you a bit of money.

They also have this wonderful phrase:

“First achieve something.” Like, “Who do you think you are?”

“First, try running

a municipality here. First become the mayor

of a village, then become the mayor of a small

town, and only then, obviously,

can you aspire to more.” But that is an absolutely hypocritical

position, because what else

can they say in response? I’m a very

inconvenient opposition figure for them, because they can’t

say, “You were already in

government in the 1990s,” because I wasn’t — I was

going to school. They can’t say I was

an oligarch or that I privatized anything.

I wasn’t an official, and so on. So

they say, “First go manage something.”

But first of all, how can anyone manage anything here

when they don’t let anyone

into elections, when they have seized

all the positions, and they don’t let anyone through who

— exactly — is not approved by United

Russia, even for relatively minor posts.

You can’t break through when they’ve filled

all the positions with their own children already in state corporations,

state banks, and so on. That’s first. Secondly,

if they are such great

managers, then let’s take a look

at whether they manage well — for example, Rosneft.

And we can see that they do not: this company has

3.5 trillion rubles in debt

(about tens of billions of U.S. dollars). So if they are

such great managers and everything

is supposedly going so well, then why has Gazprom

turned into a company that is

basically just hovering at the edge of

profitability, while gas production is falling?

But Miller (Alexei Miller, head of Gazprom) sits there and has personally become

some kind of, I don’t know,

owner of billions of dollars’ worth of wealth,

and so on and so forth. In other words, they’re trying

to convince us that

we would manage things badly, while they

manage them well. And yet

the results of their management are not just

terrible — look at the standard

of living of the population: 20 million people are below

the poverty line, Russia’s industry

is effectively in ruins, and housing and utilities infrastructure is in

an absolutely appalling state,

worse than it was in Soviet times.

And meanwhile utility rates just keep rising, so

yes, absolutely, every

time they tell us: pay more.

The question is: why should we pay more for poor service?

Show us the calculations. There are no calculations.

But still: “You fools understand

nothing. You’ve never managed anything. Trust

us — we’re effective managers.” And at the

official level, Golikova (Tatyana Golikova, a senior Russian official) appears before

the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) and says that all

the infrastructure has rotted away.

Yes. And how much was it — 200 billion needed for

restoration? Some debt figures

are much higher — yes, we’re talking

in trillions here.

So there’s this strange schizophrenia: on the one

hand, they more or less admit that

it’s a complete catastrophe; on the other hand, they

say, “As for the opposition, you keep quiet

and we’ll do the governing. You agree with that, right?”

by saying, "let's just keep pouring in more and more"

money. But guys, if you

had been

— addressing them — if you had been in power

for three or four years, then maybe it would still make sense

to talk about it.

What do you mean, we don't know how, but you do? The new

authorities have been in power for 17 years — 17. And Putin, generally speaking, has been in

the presidential administration since 1996,

so we've seen enough to know that they

can't do anything. No one could govern

worse than they do — really, no one.

Right now, we're building fewer paved roads

than were built in

those supposedly cursed '90s — that is, under

Yeltsin, more roads were built than under

Putin.

And that's despite the fact that back then there was none of the

oil money they have now — just so it's clear even to

the youngest viewers.

The situation, Alexei, is similar to when

you can't get hired because you

don't have experience, and you won't get experience because

no one will hire you. But even so,

I want to say that even under these

conditions, we're clearly showing that

we do have experience and that we can do many

things perfectly well. Look, for example,

at the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

We've never received a single kopek from

the state. Our organization is constantly

under pressure. Every second employee here

has a criminal case

fabricated against them.

Almost everyone has been subjected to searches and interrogations

and so on. Even so, even in this

situation, we still manage to raise money, and

people donate to us. Probably some

of the viewers have donated too.

Thank you very much. We work quite effectively.

We expose

their corruption schemes, even though for

their own protection they use all the security services and

all the resources at their disposal. Still, we manage to do many

things. Right now there's heavy pressure

against us and against the election

campaign, but we're running it anyway, opening

campaign offices and

still managing to work even under these

conditions. In other words, even under these conditions, we

show that we can work

and organize things far better than all of them,

despite the fact that they have trillions of rubles and the full

administrative resources of the state,

the courts, the Duma (Russia's lower house of parliament), and so on. Basically,

if Putin wanted to do something

good, he could do anything, because

the Duma is under his control,

the courts are under his control — do whatever you want, pass any laws you like,

you can get them adopted in 10 seconds.

And yet they still can't make anything work.

But in Russia, passing a law is one thing;

enforcement is another.

And supposedly, the coercive apparatus is on

their side too — entirely at their service:

the police, the FSB officers (Russia's security service), the judges — all of it.

Exactly. And if nothing works, and for 17 years they've been

building something and nothing

works, then it's not hard to guess that

it will never work, unfortunately. Well,

since we've touched on the subject of elections

and preparing for them, let me remind you that

elections are not just voting day, when

you show up — or a bus comes to pick you up —

and along with your coworkers or whoever else,

you cast a ballot. It's a long process in which

candidates are given equal access to the media, and

so on and so forth.

Alexei, tell us about how you ran your

election campaigns. How many have you

had?

First of all, that's an excellent point, and it's very

important that everyone understand that elections are

not just voting day — they are

a long period of campaigning, of working with

people. And in that sense, to everyone

who supports normal, honest

elections, I say this: you should be helping

independent candidates right now —

me and everyone else you support —

because if we only start doing something on voting day,

it will already be

too late. We need to work actively now.

In fact, I've taken part in one

election campaign. United Russia

likes to talk about how, supposedly,

I only have, what, two percent or something,

that nobody supports me. But the one time I, as

Alexei Navalny, took part in an election,

was in 2013, when I ran

for mayor of Moscow and received,

according to the official results, 27 percent. According to

the real numbers, I got around 31 percent, and

there should have been a second round,

which I have no doubt I would have won.

But in any case, I only lost because of

a disgusting campaign and only

thanks to the falsifications they

carried out at

polling stations were they able to

stage Sobyanin's victory in the first round.

Well, it was a very interesting campaign

because, unlike this one now, I

announced a year in advance that I would

run. Back then, we had a very short

campaign in a snap election, and we ran it

for only three months. There was no money,

no resources, no television access — but even then

we still managed

to work quite effectively, to raise

a lot of money, and to mobilize thousands of volunteers.

As I already said, the campaign's result was

very respectable: nearly every third

person who came to vote cast their ballot for me.

I simply wasn't invited on TV, I wasn't given

airtime at all. On TV, I existed only

as a "timber thief" and as

a "foreign agent" — but remember, in

to change things in the middle of an election campaign

they sentenced me to five years, and did it with great fanfare

they showed it on, well, every channel

what a terrible corrupt official I was — there he is

your candidate for mayor of Moscow, and there he is

being put in handcuffs right there in the courtroom

people, thank God, took to the streets, and they

of course had to release me, but there was

an absolute

block on any positive information, and

they just dragged me through the mud all day long, all

the major TV companies, all the radio stations, all

the vile newspapers — and the Moscow mayor’s office, by the way,

is basically this kind of media oligarchy

There isn’t a single federal subject in

Russia — and I don’t think there is a single city

in the world

that could sustain such a

number of newspapers — in practically every

municipal district there are district papers everywhere

there’s *Argumenty i Fakty* (a major Russian newspaper), there’s

the Moscow mayor’s office — they bought up, they grabbed

the free newspapers, exactly — that is,

it’s just nauseating: the Moscow mayor’s office every

day puts out its material in print runs of millions

publishing all this waste paper of theirs in order

to brainwash pensioners, but even so

even in that situation we managed

to stand up to their machine, and I hope

that this time too — although now the situation

has gotten even worse, they’ve seized even more

of everything — we’ll still be able to resist it, and here

of course, first and foremost

we’re counting on people, because our

main media resource is people who

can spread honest information

on YouTube

in the form of flyers, in the form of posts, in the form of

links — however they can, because that’s

the only thing left; there won’t be any

television or newspapers for us. All

we can rely on are people who

want to know the truth. You know how your

investigation about Dimon (a mocking nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) was pushed out of

first place on YouTube — by what, by whom?

Sure, I’ll explain: they took a clip

from *Comedy Club* — and *Comedy Club*, and TNT in general,

can have content removed with a snap of the fingers as soon as it

appears on the internet — not on YouTube,

but they allowed this one to stay up

they inflated the views on it, or

the likes on it — yes, it was some idiotic

absolutely idiotic sketch where Kharlamov and Grachev

were parodying Putin and us

Kharlamov was portraying Navalny in a wig

like Trump

A moronic sketch, but they boosted

its views very effectively

they really pumped it up, and it pushed you down, and then

something else appeared too

So even on YouTube, don’t

underestimate the extent to which the authorities

have gotten involved there

Well, I don’t really understand

the mechanism of promotion on YouTube very well — I’m still

a fairly inexperienced video blogger — but I can see

that people who understand this

have quite a lot of complaints about

how YouTube’s rankings are formed; there’s clearly

I mean, when I go in, I just see a lot of

some kind of manipulation — obvious manipulation

just ads for some Paramount movie trailer

or somebody else’s trailer, and not only that — there’s

also just blatantly paid-for stuff

floating around there — sometimes you just think, come on

videos that I can see have fewer

views, for example, than

our videos, but they rank higher

In any case, we can clearly see that

the authorities have effectively seized all

traditional media — television, radio,

newspapers

and now they are, of course, actively

taking over the internet too. They banned

VK, Odnoklassniki, and Yandex from accepting

any political advertising, so now

even for money we can’t promote our

videos — that is, all

political advertising is banned, and the

Yandex top news feed is also completely

scrubbed clean — completely cleaned out — and

it’s impossible to get in there. But this is to be

expected, after all. Just look:

there sits this Dimon (a mocking nickname for Dmitry Medvedev), right? He has

a palace here, a palace there, here

vineyards — he understands that he’ll lose

those vineyards, he understands that he’ll lose

all of it if we win

and even if in the Duma there are at least

a few real opposition members, there will be

a constant scandal around them and around

their property, their corruption schemes in the districts

so of course they will try

to devour the entire information space

in order to protect themselves, and

of course YouTube, it seems to me, is their

number one target

Now for a very, very election-related question

about how much the parties receive

the Communist Party, LDPR, A Just Russia

first and foremost for the votes

that they supposedly legitimately received in

the last elections. How does all this

work? It’s fairly simple: they

receive direct state budget funding

based on how many votes they

received in the election. The previous Duma

served for five years, and each party

received 100 rubles per year for every

vote cast for it — that is, any party

that got more than 3 percent — that is,

all the parliamentary parties, plus the party

Yabloko — got 500 rubles over the full

period per vote. That’s a lot of money; even

the Yabloko party got hundreds of millions

of rubles — close to a billion

and for United Russia it’s several

billion rubles; for the Communist Party, several billion as well

...rubles—what kind of budgets they’re dealing with.

At

In other words, very often the parties that are

called the “systemic opposition”

like to say, “We’re so poor, so unfortunate,”

“We’re not in power, we’re not funded by the state.”

But in fact, they really do receive billions from

the state budget. And those billions from the budget

come specifically from votes—that is,

if you voted for some party,

you brought that party not just a vote,

but also 500 rubles (about $5–6; now much more) after

the last elections to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament),

when turnout fell. But everyone understood

that these weren’t real elections, so a lot of

people simply didn’t go. All these parties—

the systemic ones that serve the Kremlin—

ended up short on budget money. They came

and said, “How can this be, dear

Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin’s first name and patronymic), we served

your interests, we didn’t criticize you

during the elections, we played the role of decorative opposition (like *Murzilka*, a childish propaganda mascot),

we got fewer votes, so we’ll

receive less money.” So their funding was increased; now

I think they get 150 rubles per year

Well, basically, they were compensated, and as a result

these parties of ours, quite

pathetic ones that clearly haven’t helped anyone

and haven’t done anything, are now receiving

even more money. So

every one of our votes brings them even more

money. That’s the paradox. How do you

assess the different

campaigns? The most striking one, in my view,

is the LDPR’s standard “going out to the people” routine.

Maybe you’ve seen the “LDPR train” video?

I saw one where they were handing out caps somewhere.

It was pretty absurd, yes, yes. So

how should we assess election

campaigns? Here, they always proceed

the same way. There is the party of power, whatever

it happens to be called—right now it’s United Russia.

Before that, they weren’t this;

before that they were “democrats,” before that they were

communists; now it’s United Russia.

They have administrative resources,

and representatives of various social services go around

apartment buildings—that is, state employees, in the midst of all this,

using public money. They simply

have lists of pensioners; they can see

who votes regularly, and they go after those

pensioners, canvassing and campaigning for United

Russia, handing out little trinkets. Plus, they

can see who never votes, too.

From the voter rolls over many years, they

can see that this person from this

apartment—Valentina Petrovna—

definitely never comes to vote.

So they just cast a vote for United Russia on her behalf.

That’s it—they just put a mark in the box. That’s what

the party of power does, and it always does it,

taking advantage of the lack of election monitoring.

At elections, Zhirinovsky works the same

way every time: he makes some outrageous

statements, very provocative ones.

Those outrageous statements get amplified in the media,

amplified on the internet, and people react like,

“Wow, that was wild, he really went off.”

And that’s how he

also picks up his share of votes.

Basically, that’s how it always goes. This time he

got more—he got almost

as much as the Communists.

Everyone else, for the most part, does nothing, and

that is a huge problem in our

political system. But just look:

right now the presidential campaign is underway, and in

a year there will be a presidential election.

For example, in America, in the same situation,

everything would already be in full swing—shows, debates, all the excitement.

But what’s happening here? I’m

traveling around now, opening campaign

headquarters. We’ve already opened 7; we’ll open 77.

I understand that if I want to go personally to every city,

I really have to travel a lot.

I look at all the other

candidates and think: who else is even visibly

running a campaign? It’s been announced,

they’ve said Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky,

Yavlinsky, even Sobchak,

and of course Putin and me—but who

is actually campaigning? Because in the

remaining official

campaign period—something like 80 days—

it’s impossible even to visit every major

city in Russia. So our

political system is structured in such

a way that the entire so-called systemic

opposition simply does

nothing—simply nothing—and

leaves as much space as possible

for United Russia, which then occupies

that space. This time, we want to change

all of that. More than a year ago, I announced

that I was running. I’m honestly traveling around,

opening headquarters one by one, and I

will honestly travel around and open most of the

campaign headquarters personally. We’re mobilizing volunteers

to campaign in every city in Russia,

even in small villages. That’s the normal

way to do it, because all the others have is the LDPR train and, well,

“come on, come on,” while people bring all sorts of

complaints and stories—for example, how some

elderly woman can’t bury her husband because

the military enlistment office didn’t allocate

funds, and his military pension won’t even cover the cost of a coffin. When

people come to you, what kinds of requests do they bring, what

real problems?

They do come, and it’s quite interesting, because

I’m not some official with

any resources at all—none whatsoever. Zhirinovsky, at least,

can submit a parliamentary inquiry; they

have a faction, they have money. But, roughly

speaking, when people come to me—here I am,

an opposition figure, a repeat offender in the authorities’ eyes, with a pile of

criminal cases against me—everyone knows we have no

budget money, and we can’t give anyone

any money. But people still come.

in huge numbers, with all kinds of

requests. When I was in Kazan, people came

deceived investors came and said, “Help us, do something,”

and so on, because this

shows just how desperate people have become.

They simply do not understand where they can

turn to get their problems resolved. Well,

they think, “Good Lord, at least let’s go to Navalny,”

because there is simply nowhere else

to go. You can bang with your hands, feet, and head all you want,

and no one will help you anywhere. That is the kind of system

that has been built now. But most often, of course,

people come to me asking me to investigate

this or that case of corruption. After all, our

specialization is such that most people come to me with

complaints that officials are crooks,

that they stole here, seized something there,

that a business here got an apartment by jumping

the waiting list, that something was handed out to insiders, that something

was taken away, stolen—and this is what people come to me with most often.

Most of all. And since we have come

to the subject of investigations, Alexei,

what advice would you give

to beginner investigators on how to properly

conduct an investigation into official

corruption?

How much do they fear

being identified—when surnames,

first names, patronymics, positions are named, not just vague content?

And in general, what is the very, very

most important thing, because in this country we

know how things work?

Should it be built around some kind of conflict, so that

someone’s head rolls?

But in my view, that is, as far as I remember,

whenever I did something, some kind of

coverage appeared when there was a specific

target—for example, Stakhov,

or when there was pressure over Syamozero (the lake tragedy in Karelia),

and when the internet was thoroughly stirred up by the scandal,

it helped, there was noise, things blew up. What

would you advise a beginner investigator?

In fact, the first and most important piece of advice

is simply to have the desire—the desire to become

an investigator—because

corruption in Russia is so blatant

that, paradoxical as it may sound,

it is actually fairly easy to investigate. But the

simplest thing—the thing we do a lot—is

government contracting in any region.

If you have even basic

legal knowledge, or even if you are simply

a meticulous and curious person, you will

start looking into the public procurement records of your

governor, your city hall, your

local council—anyone at all—and you will

guaranteed discover how they steal.

You will guaranteed discover how they

tailor public tenders to a specific

supplier. After all, even officially,

the head of the antimonopoly service

said a couple of weeks ago that 95 percent

of government procurement is a sham.

Of course there is no real competition. I mean,

it is simply outright fraud, and all it takes is

the desire to look.

Go to the public procurement website and sit there

working through it all—it is quite awful,

naturally, not everyone even tries to hide it—but

if you have patience and determination, you will

find all these things fairly quickly.

The next thing—and what you said is very important,

Diana—

de-anonymization, talking about it: the fight against

corruption has to be personal.

You cannot expose “officials in general,”

because everyone already knows that everyone

steals. I am just sick of hearing those

phrases. I mean, if you simply say

that there is corruption in our city hall—well,

that says nothing. Everyone already knows there is corruption in

your city hall, so that version can be dismissed.

Therefore, for example, in our

investigations there is always a person.

That is, we never say that “someone”

stole something—we always name the people

who stole it.

If we are sure, then we name them; or we name the surnames

of the people we suspect and

lay out our well-founded suspicions.

Only then will people read your

investigation. And that brings us to

the next crucial thing: for anything

to happen, of course, there has to be public resonance.

That means you need to write about it, you need

to speak about it, you need to reach out to the people who

live in your city, in your federal subject (region),

so that they

start discussing it. Because Russian

crooks fear this more than anything else. They

know perfectly well that the whole system works for them.

They are not afraid of the FSB (Russia’s security service), the police, or

their superiors, because their superiors

are the same kind of thieves, and corruption

is always a chain. Take Medvedev, for example.

Medvedev, at the top, stole 70

billion, but along the chain, at

every region where he has, for example,

a palace, the governor obviously knows about it.

We showed in our film how

governors come to the openings;

they help, they are the people

who help sustain this

corruption. So they understand that one crow

will not peck out another crow’s eye.

And they are not afraid of their bosses. The only thing

they are afraid of is that people will start

talking about it, that there will be public discontent,

that someone will come out and write, “Guys,

we have discovered that our mayor is a thief—let’s

all unite and

campaign against him, against United

Russia, and against Putin.” In that case,

that is when they start to get scared and start moving.

Then something gets done. What happened with Strakhov

is a great example, right? He resigned

—he was forced out only because by then

social media had absolutely exploded.

It was everywhere — the entire internet was flooded with it.

The authorities realized that continuing to keep

Astakhov in office

even though, well, he had long been a fairly

unpleasant figure who lectured us

about patriotism and about “wrinkled women,” yes, yes, yes.

I said back then: not only did he

spout all sorts of nonsense about “wrinkled”

women, he also really loved teaching us

patriotism — and at the same time, open

a glossy magazine and you’d see a glamorous

feature on how his family lives

in Cannes, with the gentle surf and all that.

All of that, all that kind of thing.

And it was precisely because of that public outcry that he

was removed.

How do you break through this wall of disbelief among a large

part of the internet audience — and it’s not a small one —

the belief that nothing will come of it, that what we

say about specific criminals — how do we break that?

Because if I knew

the answer to that question, I probably would already have

become president. That is the main goal of my

campaign.

My main task isn’t even

to convince everyone that they need to vote

for me. Everyone already understands that this

government is bad. Even the staunch Putin supporters

admit that, well, it’s bad government.

Low pensions, poverty wages, the housing and utilities system doesn’t work —

you can’t really argue with that.

They like to say, “There’s no money right now,”

and that’s a lie. And the main thing, the very main thing we need

to overcome is this: they say, “Well, any

government is like that. Nothing can be changed. You’re

saying all the right things, standing there somewhere

on a bench or at a podium, but nothing

can be changed.” And that is the main thing I’m

fighting against. That is the main theme of my

election campaign: to defeat precisely that

disbelief.

To make people believe that we can live better. Unfortunately,

the authorities have convinced many people,

convinced millions, that we are destined to remain

in this poverty forever,

that nothing can be changed, that these people

steal, the ones before them stole, and the next ones

will come and steal too — it’ll be the same.

That’s the classic phrase of the Russian бабушка (grandmother):

“At least these ones are okay because…”

And then there’s the other one — that’s a whole separate circle of hell:

“These have already stolen enough, but the new ones will come in hungry.”

They’ll steal even more. That phrase —

I hate it, and I hear it all the time.

So we have to fight together and

prove that a better life is possible, that

we can live, damn it, like in South Korea, where

salaries are five times higher. Why? Because

their president got caught up in corruption, and they

just today finally confirmed impeachment.

You can live better, and we will

live better. Russians are no worse at all than

Koreans or Finns. And I wanted to add

that the main thing is not to find some kind of super

manager. Yes, rotation matters, so that a manager

doesn’t go off the rails in the position he

has taken — and without public

oversight, he will go off the rails. That’s the whole

formula. What distinguishes

a great superpower from a decaying one

that claims to be resurgent — but it’s even simpler than that, not even

rotation, just political competition.

You become governor, then you’re

re-elected if you’re good; if you’re bad, you’re out.

If you’re president, you understand that

you won’t stay longer than eight years.

But here, look — we have loads

of district heads, loads of city heads,

who have literally been sitting there since the 1980s.

That’s not an exaggeration. Look, for example, at

the heads of cities and districts in the Moscow

region — wherever you look, they’ve all been there

since 1985, since 1986. In other words, these people

have practically fused with their posts. The police chiefs,

their families, all sorts of connected people — very quickly

they grew into this system of power, and they

extract everything they can from it.

They have become the embodiment

of power itself, and the embodiment of corruption.

Of course, when people sit in

their posts for 30 years, they deteriorate. There must be

political competition so that it is possible

to vote out a corrupt mayor.

As far as I know,

when political competition begins,

they smash your face in — we’ve had

regular attacks there. Why? Because

these district heads are fighting over very

real millions of dollars.

Land in the Moscow suburbs is worth

enormous sums. It means enormous influence. And that

district head thinks: well, now everyone in

my district knows I’m corrupt, and

some newspaper or magazine is shouting

too much about me — I need to do something

about him, damn it.

They literally crack people’s heads open so they

won’t talk too much, because the stakes are

money — huge money.

So what would you wish for the YouTube audience,

since they are the ones who will be watching?

To the YouTube audience, I wish — and ask —

that they hit like and share on the right

videos. And I want the YouTube audience

to realize just how powerful it is.

The YouTube audience

showed that with our film about Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev): 10

million people. Right now, that is probably

the biggest box-office hit among

what’s currently being shown in the country. Maybe

*Logan*

will beat us, probably, but everyone else

will have a hard time. At least for us, it’s clear

that this is no joke.

In other words, the YouTube audience has

enormous political significance because

it is millions of people who have already

received independent information, and from them

It depends on whether they will still be able to continue this

independent, truthful information

to spread this information, basically.

As of today, YouTube is the only one of the

major media platforms that remains uncensored; on YouTube,

information is being shared, so

our wishes and requests are:

stay the way you are, keep looking

for the truth on the internet, keep

spreading the truth online.

Subscribe to our channel.

They tell the truth. I understand that, of course,

right now

the main call will be to subscribe to

the Kamikadze DeeD channel, and to our channel as well.

Don't forget. Thank you, Alexei, thank you.

Thank you very much—it was interesting. Wishing you success and good luck.