Lenta.ru has published a fairly interesting interview with Yakemenko.
There’s a lot in it, but as usual, the most interesting part is the money: The newspaper Vedomosti reported that of the 400 million rubles in budget funding, half went in 2010 to the Nashi movement and its satellite organizations. I was never against a structure close to the Nashi movement winning; advisers would say, “It will be perceived badly.” But I don’t care how it will be perceived. The Nashi movement has unique expertise related to carrying out complex technical and logistical projects such as Seliger (the pro-Kremlin youth forum at Lake Seliger). And if Nashi offers a lower price for that, if it complies with the letter of the law, and if they win the tender, then thank God. But surely there are some preferences? There are preferences, because some of Rosmolodezh’s projects—the Seliger idea itself, for example—originated in the Nashi movement. I set support for talented young people as a priority, and in infrastructural terms it turned out that Nashi was the movement ready to implement these projects. Do you really believe that Seliger brings together the most talented young people in Russia? That’s a medical fact. Two hundred million rubles of taxpayers’ money were devoured by the Nashi movement in 2010 alone. They live well. RosPil spent 3.07 million rubles out of the 8.6 million it raised in its first year. Not a single ruble came from the budget—only voluntary donations. On the contrary, of the 3.07 million spent, about one million rubles will go back into the budget in the form of personal income tax and social fund contributions. I agree, it’s unfair to compare the huge, wonderful, vitally important Nashi movement with little RosPil. So let’s compare RosPil with the loudest anti-corruption project of the Nashi people—and of the Kremlin crooks in general. The “White Aprons” movement. Remember that? You should. There were mass rallies, with people bused in from the regions to Moscow.
There was a wonderful promotional calendar
There were TV reports too: More than 50,000 activists from the Nashi youth movement put on white aprons today and took part in a rally against corrupt officials. All in all, it was all polished, expensive, and full of promise. So what did we get from the “most talented young people in Russia” in exchange for millions in budget money? Let’s go to the website of the “White Aprons” movement, belyefartuki.rf Oops. Nothing works. Fortunately, **alburov **looked into the “White Aprons” website back in October of last year to see what results it had produced, and we can read his post. Back then the hosting money apparently hadn’t been stolen yet, so the site still opened—though there were no results there either. Here is the only thing in the “report” section:
Yandex News results for the query “white aprons”, for some reason, contain no stories about corrupt officials being jailed or exposed. Even though I gave them a tip myself. One of the aprons’ main ideas was to record thousands of videos pinning corrupt officials of every level to the pillory. No such videos can be found on YouTube. Unfortunately, we have to conclude that the only result of the Nashi movement’s anti-corruption campaign was the disappearance of some number of millions of our rubles. As for me, this “fight” also manifests itself in the fact that Google Alerts constantly sends me links to commissioned hit pieces by anonymous authors (some of them even promoted into the LiveJournal top on paid “promo” terms) about how terrible and ineffective RosPil is and how “Navalny stole all the money that was raised.” I personally don’t see any other regular or systematic activity from the Nashi movement. I understand this may be naive, but I’d still like to ask Vasily Yakemenko and the leaders of the Nashi movement: guys, where does all the money actually go? And are you planning to give it back to us—at least the part that went to “fighting corruption”?