Alexei Navalny’s interview with the TV2 channel

The Kirovles case, and this whole

legal side of it, doesn’t interest us

at all. I mean, we understood perfectly well,

and I understood perfectly well, that

the Kirovles case was really only needed

to convict me and prevent me

from taking part in political

activity and, in particular, from taking part

in elections at any level. I couldn’t

run for the State Duma. Now they’re

saying that I can’t

take part in the presidential election. And

that’s complete nonsense, because the Constitution

explicitly states that only people

who are prohibited from participating are those

who are in prison.

So, from a legal standpoint, I

will take part in the election—I have the right

to take part in elections. The European Court

of Human Rights overturned the first

verdict and will overturn the second one as well. But overall,

if it hadn’t been the Kirovles case,

it would have been some other case. We realize

that this government is afraid of my

participation in politics in general, because

it’s afraid of losing the billions

of dollars it has stolen.

So there will always be some kind of case,

but that should not affect

our determination to take our country back.

Well, if they find some formal legal

grounds to bar you

from running,

what else do you think they might

come up with—what else can the authorities devise

to stop this from happening?

The authorities can come up with anything.

You see? On the one hand, we have

a Constitution that prohibits a third

presidential term, but Putin has been in power for 17

years and plans to stay for, what, 23

or 24 years. Under this same Constitution,

governors were supposed to be elected for two terms, and

now some of them have also been sitting there for 24 years.

Under this Constitution, people are jailed for

one-person pickets. So the issue

is not what kind of legal

tricks they come up with; the issue is that

there is simply a political confrontation,

there is a group of people who have seized power,

and they do not want to let it go. They

want to be lifelong

rulers of Russia. We

cannot agree to that. And we will

oppose it. As for the formula

the authorities use, it was

invented long ago: everything for friends, the law

for enemies. That’s why they rewrite the law

and try to apply any kind of nonsense

to us, while they themselves

don’t care about any laws at all. Just recently,

United Russia MP Maksakova literally fled abroad to Ukraine

(United Russia is the ruling political party in Russia). And

at the same time, she gave an interview saying

that for the entire period when she sat in the

State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), she had

German citizenship. And everyone

knew about it, even though that is, in principle, absolutely

prohibited. That perfectly shows

the authorities’ attitude toward the law. They don’t care

about any law. They interpret every law

against us and in their own

favor. That is exactly why I am running in

the election, because I do not agree with this.

As for your presidential campaign, I

very often come across the opinion online

that Navalny is running for president

in order to lend legitimacy

to these elections, that he’s a Kremlin project. How do you

feel about that? Well, it’s funny, in

my situation,

to argue with the claim that I’m a

Kremlin project. It always leads to a lot of

jokes in our office at the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

like, is there really not a single person left

who hasn’t had

a criminal case opened against them, or a search,

or computers seized, or something else like that?

People just have this conspiratorial

way of thinking. For my part, I will

try to persuade them, I will work with them. I

completely understand those people who

say that elections, since in

Russia they cannot be free,

should be boycotted altogether. And any

participation in elections is legitimization. Those

people, well,

have a right to that point of view. And I

even acknowledge that there is

a certain logic to it, because free

elections really will not exist in Russia

in the foreseeable future. And what

we are fighting for right now is simply

to be allowed, in principle, to take part at least in

unfree elections. So yes,

there are maximalists who say, ‘Well,

until there are free elections, we will not

take part in this.’

I have a slightly different approach here. We

live here and now. Here and now, I

am running in the election in order to

represent those people who do not

like what is happening, who do not

agree with the fact that power has been

usurped, who do not agree that

all of Russia’s national wealth

serves only one purpose: enriching

Putin himself, his relatives, and his

closest friends. So I will engage in

dialogue with everyone. I will try to persuade people

who are skeptical about

participating in elections to

support me. That is what elections are for.

You just mentioned the foundation again,

the anti-corruption

yes, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Tell me,

why is it that your investigation,

impressive as it is, speaking as a journalist, did not

cause that much of a major stir

in political circles? It creates

the impression that some people read you

and say: "Ah, well, they steal." Well, and in

Russia, they’ve always stolen—throughout Rus' (historical Russia), they’ve always stolen. And

and

that’s exactly why I’m running in the election, because

I do not agree with the idea that

the investigations we publish do not

provoke a strong reaction and do not lead to,

most importantly, any consequences in a country with

a normal political system.

matured.

Most of our investigations would have led

to a political crisis, would have led

to major resignations, when we

tell a story and prove it

all about how the Deputy Prime Minister

of the Russian government, Shuvalov, has already

become so rich that he flies dogs on a

private jet to dog shows—well, in

any country, even the richest country,

that would simply have led to resignations at

the very highest level. But in Russia,

nothing happens, because, well, on the

one hand, there is censorship, and simply

most of the population knows nothing

about it. On the other hand, there is, uh,

rule by phone call (informal political pressure overriding the law), and there is a completely

controlled judicial

and law-enforcement system, and everyone knows

that, well, it is impenetrable, and

corrupt officials are never punished.

And so there is simply this level of

tolerance for corruption. Well, they stole

a billion there, a billion here, there are

thieves everywhere, but nothing can be done. I do not

agree with that. I am not going to tolerate

this situation in which, uh, Vasilyeva

and Serdyukov

are let off. Serdyukov did not spend a single day

in the defendant’s dock, and yet we

see reports about how they imprison

some people who, in order not to

starve to death, stole from a store

a loaf of bread and some sausage worth 500 rubles.

These people are prosecuted with prosecutors,

courts, and everything else. But people

who embezzle billions are completely

ignored. Not ignored—encouraged, I

would even say. I really do not

like this. That is why I feel great

frustration, to say the least,

about the fact that our

investigations do not lead to resignations. And

I want to be president so that,

among other things, so that

investigations into officials, facts about

official corruption, would lead to the point

where they resign or

end up in the dock. And

then the system will start working. Then, among

other things, people will live better, because

all this corrupt rent-seeking income will

go to everyone.

Now a few questions about

your presi—presidential campaign, about

your reforms, your platform. So

a very sensitive issue for us is taxes.

So you support the idea that part of

taxes should remain in the regions, rather than

going to Moscow. How exactly do you

envision that? And which taxes exactly

should stay there?

What should the proportion of tax revenue split between

Moscow and the regions be?

In any case, it should shift in favor

of the regions. And the regions need

to be left with both money and authority, because

without that there will be no

development. But right now not a single

governor is really interested in anything

except stealing federal

money. Because even if we

suppose, imagine an ideal

governor—he develops business,

opens factories, develops small

businesses, barely sleeps, meets with

entrepreneurs and helps them, and he is not

corrupt at all. So what

does he gain in the end? Nothing. All

the money the region earns is still

taken by Moscow, and he gets back

pathetic crumbs. So this makes

any genuine, worthwhile initiative at the

regional level meaningless. One of my

favorite examples on this subject is this. And the system

in which Moscow sucks money out of

the regions has already reached, well,

threatening and absurd proportions. Here we are

in Novosibirsk, the country’s third-largest

city. The budget of the city of

Novosibirsk is 36 billion rubles a year. At the same

time, Moscow spends on New Year’s

decorations 7 billion rubles. Just on

light bulbs hanging in the streets for

three weeks. And what’s more,

the investigation shows that these

light bulbs

were bought at five times the proper price. That

means most of the money was simply stolen.

And this is an example of how absurd the system is.

So, uh, more personal income tax should

remain there, more natural resource tax,

excise taxes—these are comprehensive

measures, but their main purpose should

be that the regions should have

more money and, and more

authority both at the regional level and,

even more importantly, at the city

level, because cities are where

people live. And in fact, 95%

of the problems and issues that arise for

people in their everyday lives

are connected with city administration, connected

with the city mayor. So let the money

stay there too, because that’s where the school is, where your

hospital is, where your kindergarten is, where you

You walk down the street, and that’s where they should be,

the money should stay there, where you pay taxes and where you

earn your income. We want to change that. In

fact, this system hasn’t always existed.

It was essentially a Putin-Kudrin project

when they consolidated all the money in Moscow,

including in order

to strip governors of political

power. Now a governor’s job has basically

been reduced to traveling to Moscow and

begging for money instead of

developing their own region.

And what specific

examples do you have of which taxes should stay locally?

Well, as I already said, excise taxes and personal income tax

should remain there to a greater extent and be distributed to cities;

they shouldn’t be taken away from

the cities. For example, in Novosibirsk

a significant share of personal income tax was simply taken

up to the regional level, taking it away from the city

level. In other words,

most of the corporate profit tax should

should

while the mineral extraction tax and some other taxes remain federal. I understand that

for regions like Tomsk Oblast,

this is a complicated issue, but we

obviously can’t leave the entire mineral extraction tax in

the regions, because then we’d end up with

a super-rich Tyumen and a super-rich

Tomsk Oblast. But of course,

a larger share of the mineral extraction tax—well, not a large

share, but somewhat more of it—should

remain in the regions. But again,

otherwise, what’s the point of developing at all? And with this

program, incidentally, we went into

the regional elections in 2015.

That’s why we were removed from the ballot everywhere,

because, uh, people in the regions understand

why this is needed. Because, among other things,

the mineral extraction tax and this shared resource rent

should be distributed evenly. But those

regions where, of course,

oil workers are employed and where these plants are located, should

receive a little more. That’s how it

works all over the world—for example, Texas

gets more in the United States from

oil sales than other regions do. Well,

because that’s where the oil workers live, because

that’s where they work. That is fair and

right. United Russia (the ruling political party) keeps telling us

that this is impossible

to do. They say privatization happened in

1996, in 1995, in 1997, and so

therefore

now it’s supposedly impossible to tax, uh,

those oligarchs who bought all that property for next to nothing.

That is absolutely not

true. And here we are referring first and foremost

to the positive example of leading

developed countries. A similar tax on the results of

privatization was successfully

applied in the early 2000s

in the United Kingdom.

They first privatized, during

the Thatcher era, coal mines and raw-materials

enterprises. Then, several years later,

a completely different government

decided that they had been privatized too

cheaply. And those

privatization results were taxed. Those

tax revenues went toward infrastructure

development, and the money was spent

wisely. And in Russia, we can do

the same thing, because this also

leads to a situation where no one

recognizes this property as legitimate. Well,

no one will ever agree that

Norilsk Nickel somehow legitimately belongs

to whoever it is now—not Prokhorov anymore,

but Potanin—because he once bought it

for $100 million when it was worth several

billion dollars. And those $100

million came from the state budget. Everyone

understands perfectly well that the loans-for-shares

auctions were fraud,

which led, among other things, to

an ugly

monopolistic

form of large-scale ownership in Russia.

It produced oligarchs, and in Russia

despite the country’s overall poverty,

it increasingly led to this

abnormal number of

billionaires. That is wrong. And we

must introduce these compensatory

taxes, as they did in the United Kingdom. We will

introduce them, and it will benefit

the economy.

Mm-hmm. And is there a list of them?

The loans-for-shares auctions—how many were there

in total? Thirteen, I think, or

twelve. So it’s not that many, but it

concerns the largest enterprises. In other words,

in that sense, of course, those people who

created colossal fortunes for themselves in five minutes,

became

some of the richest people in the world—they

simply have to pay tax on that,

because, well, just as people everywhere pay

taxes. People who own oil

companies and raw-materials enterprises

all over the world pay substantial

taxes. In Russia, they got these enterprises for free.

They pay a very small

tax—13%, and dividend tax is 9%. Those are

simply laughable tax rates.

On top of that, they pay very low

wages—14,000 to 15,000 rubles (about $150–$165) at

enterprises with hazardous working conditions.

That is the source of this wealth. And

it is both unjust and economically

wrong. So they will pay. Nothing

terrible will happen because of it. This is

not a revolution, not a redistribution, not

“take and divide.” It is a perfectly sound

economic measure. I repeat, it has already been used in

the United Kingdom.

And roughly how much, would you say—

Have you estimated roughly how much money that would be?

How much would it bring in?

I think it could bring in between 50

and 70 billion dollars.

And you are proposing to cut part of

Moscow's tax revenues and redirect them to

healthcare. Well,

not Moscow's, federal ones. I am proposing

simply to cut them. I myself am a Muscovite, and

of course I cannot speak out. I do not want

to speak against my own city. I am simply

saying that, generally speaking, this does

not bring Muscovites any happiness either,

because all that money that

comes in leads to the fact that in

Moscow everything becomes terribly expensive, and all that

money is mostly stolen there anyway.

Yes, I believe that since the burden of

social spending has now been shifted onto

the regions for all

healthcare and education—after all, all of that

comes out of regional budgets, and there is no money there,

let's leave the money in the regions so that

they can improve their hospitals and schools, yes,

that is what I think.

And as for modernizing the road network, on

what basis are you planning to improve its quality? With

what money, exactly?

With the money that already exists in

Russia. Look, in Russia GDP per

capita is 16,000 dollars. That is

quite a lot. There is plenty of money in Russia,

enough, including for

reconstruction—well, at least

of the main highways, and certainly roads

of federal importance and major regional

roads. There is enough money for that in both

the federal budget and regional

budgets. Enough. Just look at the

structure. We simply have monstrously

bloated

military and police spending,

and some insane expenditures on the so-

called law-enforcement apparatus.

Moreover, right now a third of the federal budget is

completely classified.

It would be one thing if we spent that

money and got a high level of

security in return, but we do not

get that. In terms of murders per

capita, we surpass every country. In

terms of serious crimes per

capita, we are ahead; in terms of the number of

terrorist attacks, we look simply awful. So

then why are we throwing almost

40% of the budget at this?

Let's take at least a little from this

military-police part of the budget and

spend it on roads, hospitals, and schools.

Then we will definitely have enough money for that.

You said that the annexation of Crimea was

illegal, that the referendum was illegal, and

that somehow it needs to be returned, with

international negotiations involved. How do you

see this working in practical terms? Suppose you became

president.

Then what?

I would call a new referendum. Right

now

the Crimea issue is insoluble, and I

believe that, broadly speaking, it is insoluble

for any president. This is a kind of Putin legacy

under which Crimea will for

many, many years—decades—

remain this strange territory

that is de facto part of Russia.

No one around it recognizes that. And

what happens is the same thing we see

with Northern Cyprus, or what is happening

in Israel or in the Palestinian

territories, or the Falkland Islands, and

so on and so forth. There are quite a few such territories

around the world. Crimea

will become one of them. In order to

at least begin normalizing the situation,

we must hold a proper

referendum. I mean a real

referendum. What took place

was not a referendum. There must be

observers, there must be a long period of

campaigning,

so that at the end of that referendum, at

the very least, we know the true

will of the people of Crimea, because

their opinion, their right to

self-determination, is fundamental here

and is the basic point from which

we can start building something further

and begin conducting

any dialogue with the international

community, with Ukraine itself, and

so on. So that is the first thing. But

I repeat, there are no

simple solutions that could be applied by

President Navalny, President Putin, or

President Whoever, or anyone else,

that would normalize the situation with Crimea.

That is no longer possible. When one

state takes from another

state a piece of its territory,

Uh-huh.

it automatically creates a conflict for

decades. This conflict for

decades is now with us, and unfortunately it will remain

with us.

Suppose you became president. Your first

three actions.

First: the release of all

political prisoners. Second: introducing a law

to combat illicit enrichment.

When an official cannot explain

where that wealth came from. When he

earns a million and at the same time builds himself

a country house worth 100 million or buys a yacht,

criminal proceedings are automatically initiated

against him. And third: the

start of judicial reform, without which

all other reforms are impossible.

economic development is impossible.

And lustration?

I support lustration. At the same time,

when people talk about lustration, they

often confuse lustration with the need

to punish those who are, right now,

committing crimes. Those judges and

police officers who jail people for

nothing—they do not need any lustration, they

need ordinary law. Because, uh,

criminal prosecution of someone known to be

innocent is already an offense on the books

right now. No

lustration is needed. To put

these judges in prison, to put

corrupt officials in prison. I do not need any

lustration for that. I take the current

criminal code and send

half the government to the

defendants’ bench, remove a significant

number of judges, and so on, and so

forth. What is needed here is political will, not

lustration. As for lustration,

it is a kind of punishment without guilt, when

under lustration people are stripped of some

of their rights simply because, for example, they

held senior positions in United

Russia (the ruling political party). Yes, they may not have been

guilty of anything, but society punishes them.

For example, we can see that

similar lustration measures that

were applied in Eastern European

countries were beneficial for those

societies and led to positive

changes, including economic ones.

That is why I support it, this

lustration, and I will work to ensure

that a majority is formed in

parliament that would pass one

lustration law or another, because

well, among other things, in the Soviet Union, in

Russia, in young democratic Russia,

nothing worked out because, well,

for example, all those lying crooks,

those journalists who sat there at the

Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) and

lied to the Soviet people for years, they

were all left in place. They simply changed colors,

became great democrats, and then they

changed colors again and became great

Putinists. Well, these—pardon the

expression—these sellouts. They need to

be driven out at last. And,

of course, we will never build any beautiful Russia

of the future if we leave

people like Vladimir Solovyov and

Dmitry Kiselyov, all these lying

propagandists, and allow them once again

to change colors. And they will say, like

those deputies who have fled to Ukraine

now, from United Russia and the Communists,

are saying: "But we were always

in the opposition, we were forced

to vote for terrible laws." No, they

do not need to be imprisoned or have their hands

or legs cut off. Lustration. You simply do not have

the right to work in the media. You do not have

the right to hold public office.

That is all. It is the right measure. I

support it, but it is a matter of national

consensus. A majority of political forces

must vote for it.

All right. Federal TV channels, yes? But

what about NTV, supposedly private, which is funded by

Gazprom?

I do not consider NTV a private channel, just as I do not

consider Gazprom a private company. And

people need—I urge everyone—to stop believing

this lie when they, you see, tell us:

"Oh, Rosneft is a private

company," or "Gazprom is a

private company." What private

company? Its chief drives around with a

flashing official light, and 80% of it belongs

to the state; Rosneft is 75%. These are

state companies, and their

managers are state officials

who have simply arranged things in such a cunning way that they are both

officials with flashing lights and people who pay themselves

salaries of 3 million rubles a day (about $33,000/day) and

then tell us: "Oh, but we are a private company,

we pay whatever we want." This is

a lie, it is deception, and this should not

be allowed. It is a state company,

Gazprom is a state company, and NTV

is state television.

Gazprombank is also de facto

state-owned, despite the fact that on paper

it is private; Gazprom Media is

state-controlled. All of this is controlled

by the state. And that is exactly how it should

be treated.

All right. And lately, even our

creative intelligentsia has been speaking out,

not being judged.

The creative intelligentsia has always

spoken mostly in favor of those in power,

unfortunately. There are, well,

wonderful, excellent,

fearless people who say what

they believe is right, what they believe

needs to be said. But most of these people,

tomorrow, whoever becomes president,

they will go around bowing at his feet.

Alas, unfortunately, that is a characteristic of, well,

a large part of the creative intelligentsia.

So I do not see much point in paying

too much attention to them. They fawned over the General Secretaries

of the CPSU, then they fawned over Yeltsin,

and now they fawn over Putin.

Look at Nikita Mikhalkov, the kind of

toasts he sang to Yeltsin, the pompous

speeches he delivered, how he spoke at congresses,

saying: "Thank you, Boris

Nikolayevich." And now he is supposedly the

main fighter against Yeltsinism, speaking out

against the Yeltsin Center and as a major Putin supporter.

These people keep changing colors. They do not even

They keep changing colors; they’re essentially chameleons.

Whatever color the environment is, that’s what they become.

That’s what they turn into. Now, are you familiar with the reform

that Kudrin is supposedly proposing to Putin? You—

Well, that’s ridiculous. You see, even you yourself

are laughing as you ask that

question. What Kudrin reform? It’s all the same

thing. They were running around with it back in 2000, with

Gref’s program. Then, in

2003, they had Strategy 2020 again,

and now it’s 2030.

Every year they come out with some kind of reform.

For all 17 years, they’ve been going around

talking about reform. Medvedev,

speaking publicly—when he spoke

a month ago, he said: “We need

administrative reform.” At the same time, he himself

also said: “True, we’ve been talking about this for 15 years.”

Well then why are you still talking about

it? You hold power in the Kremlin. You

completely control the State Duma

(the lower house of Russia’s parliament). You can pass any laws you want.

You have no opposition at all. All

the governors are with you, all the city mayors are with

you. So carry out this reform. Why do you keep

coming to me with Kudrin, with Putin, with

Gref, telling these fairy tales? You

have the ability to carry out any

reform as early as tomorrow. You just don’t

want to. Because any reform, in

essence, if it is aimed at

making life better for people, ultimately

comes down to this:

take a little money away from Putin’s

billionaires and give it to the people. One way

or another, it means redistributing that

wealth, and they will never

agree to that. Because Putin has

a son-in-law, the youngest billionaire in Russia. And

that’s why no reform that would make

his son-in-law a little poorer and you a little

richer is acceptable to him. And they will never

adopt a single such reform. That is exactly

why I believe that the current

government—the Putin regime—after its

seventeenth year in power,

it

can no longer bring any benefit

to anyone. It has completely degraded. It

is incapable of changing, and it is harmful

to the country’s residents in general. In other words,

the main enemy of this government is the people

of the country. Your brother is currently in prison.

If you withdraw, that would be a major

way to pressure you. Will you withdraw

from the election? Everyone will say that your brother’s fate

is in your hands.

My brother’s fate is in the hands

of all the people of this country, because this

government will go on imprisoning

innocent people and will continue

taking people like

my brother hostage. They put him in prison because

they thought it would be leverage over

me. And my brother understands that perfectly well. And

that’s why the first thing he said to me when

he was imprisoned was: you have no right

to bend or give in to this

pressure by even 1 millimeter. And I myself will be

the first,” he told me, “to

criticize you

if you

ever stray from your principles

for my sake.” So both my brother and my

family support me. And despite

the fact that this is

a huge problem for our family, a tragedy, and

all our thoughts are always with Oleg, who

has been held for almost two years in solitary

confinement, essentially in

near-torturous conditions, nevertheless,

his being taken hostage is not

something that will stop me.

In your view, what is the secret of Putin as

a politician? Because sometimes

you talk to people, and they live in terrible

conditions. And still they say, we’ll go and

vote for Putin. Putin is nothing special.

There is no unique Putin

secret. What’s Lukashenko’s secret? And

what’s the secret of the leader of Turkmenistan? And what

is the secret of the leader of Uzbekistan,

Tajikistan, and all the other former Soviet

republics? They’ve all been there longer than

Putin. And all of them have approval ratings—what

they call approval ratings—higher than Putin’s. Well,

they all have 99%.

And what was the secret of President Mugabe in

Zimbabwe, who stayed in power for 30, 32 years

and, despite having completely

ruined his country, still claimed

to have a 99% approval rating? There is no secret.

He is a typical authoritarian leader

who stays in power because

he holds power by

controlling the mass media,

imposing censorship, controlling

the judicial system after putting it in the service

of himself, and falsifying elections. And all of this

is the mark of a typical, completely authoritarian

ruler. No secret at all, none. The whole

history of humanity has shown us that

this is how they all govern. And they all

have their ratings—85% right up

until the day they are overthrown.

There is nothing new here, nothing

frightening, nothing original,

and there is nothing here that we could not

overcome as we fight for a better

future for our country. Thank you very much.