Navalny: Release Kokorin and Mamaev; put Solovyov and Kiselyov on trial

All of them—football players, hockey players—they all trail around with Putin like idiots.

That’s not your level. Here I’m just fat.

A role model for children.

Putin is close to senility.

I think that’s incitement.

Now the stupid questions have started.

Sit there and keep quiet.

Alexei is in great shape.

How are your legs afterward?

Nothing hurts?

I’m not an experienced runner, of course.

I’ve only been training regularly for five months, and I’m disabled.

Can you describe your impressions?

Because, for example, I can’t even imagine it. The last time I ran was at school.

What were you feeling while you were running?

I hated running.

Your whole life?

It’s not just that I didn’t like it—I hated it.

I was good at short distances.

But at school,

but when it was anything over 800 meters, I’d basically just take the failing grade.

I’d just turn around and leave.

But then, kind of under pressure from people—really, pressure from the environment around me—

everyone started running, and they weren’t all especially athletic—just nice, fit-looking people.

And looking at them, I started running too. But...

I still haven’t come to love running.

My main running goal, really, is

to learn to enjoy running.

I’m moving in that direction, but I’m still a long way off.

Usually during a timed race, I really, really hate it.

Everyone, by name.

Everyone who talked me into running—my coach and so on.

But somehow it came relatively easily to me.

The Moscow half marathon went relatively easily for me.

Do you have any running goals—like a half marathon, a marathon, a triathlon?

Maybe not? No.

My real main running goal is to learn

to enjoy running.

That’s all.

I wanted to break

I had this romantic idea that after a few months of training

I’d be able to run 10 kilometers in under 50 minutes.

But that was too ambitious.

The actual goal was to finish in under an hour.

And so now it turns out that

among this whole running crowd, I’m, roughly speaking, somewhere in the middle,

even though I’d only been training for five months. Maybe it’s not a great thing to say

about the running crowd in general, that people

like me are already somewhere in the middle of the pack.

But still, I did make it.

How much weight did you lose over those five months while you were running?

I didn’t lose any.

What do you mean? You...

What about those photos from November where you had a belly?

Well, right now I’m sitting here sucking in my stomach with all my might.

So otherwise I’d be sitting here with a belly too.

I lose weight when I’m under arrest.

That’s it.

The only chance to lose weight is when

they lock you up.

I can’t recommend it to everyone, but still.

Because there are restrictions there,

you can eat less there, because there’s no refrigerator that you

open

in the evening and eat everything that’s there.

I mean, during home arrest,

on the contrary, under

house

arrest, when I was stuck at home, I ate terribly, because you have

all this wonderful, delicious food.

My house arrest was such that I was forbidden

from taking any walks at all or having any contact with anyone.

What else was there to do?

Even though I specifically bought myself an elliptical machine, it just

ended up with clothes hanging on it, of course.

It was covered in clothes, and mostly I just ate.

But when they put you in an actual cell, then

there are restrictions, and there you can lose weight from running.

Well, no, I wouldn’t say I lost weight.

And how much did you lose at most in a cell?

I don’t know. Maybe seven kilograms.

But that takes some effort too, because they allow into the cell

the kinds of foods that are high in carbohydrates.

So there are plenty of cookies in a cell,

and you can live off them—I certainly tried.

But if you give up the cookies, you can lose weight. But

it’s not like I’m setting myself some kind of

super-goal of specifically losing weight or getting in shape.

I like running as a mass-participation sport.

And how much do you weigh now?

What was your maximum?

I assume

that a photo is about to appear on screen showing your maximum weight during that period.

No, of course not.

This isn’t that.

Here you’re just showing that I’m fat.

That one is me under house arrest, and here I’m just fat.

But I

weighed maybe 101 or 102 kilograms.

But I worked out in the gym in my first years at university.

My maximum weight was 106 kilograms.

So only six more than that—by one kilogram, I think, 120.

Here it’s 120.

So yes, fat, of course.

But do you agree that it’s not a very good look for a public politician to appear like that?

It’s not a very good look for anyone.

Of course I agree.

You said that at university you worked out—you were going to the gym all the time.

I mean, I wasn’t some kind of super-mega bodybuilder or anything.

But for two or three years—three, probably—I was going to the gym four times a week.

What was your max bench press?

143. One hundred and forty-three.

So you really had some... not bad numbers, actually?

Well, yes and no, I didn’t have anything special, especially at university.

Why do people go to the gym at university?

That was the whole 1990s.

Well, girls like it.

Naturally, I had hanging above my desk—above my

bed—a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the movie Commando.

I mean, all those wonderful things that are familiar to anyone

my age, or even a little younger.

What other sport was there to do back then?

You go to the gym—great, your bodybuilding buddies are there.

And in general you read all that stuff, and then you walk around kind of like this, a little bit

with your arms held farther apart than necessary.

Than you really need to.

In this room we’ve got lawyers sitting around whom we chased away

while we were recording the interview.

And right here there is

a piece of equipment that was bought especially for me because I’m in a special detention center.

How do you get the hang of doing pull-ups?

And then I quit so I wouldn’t give up completely.

So I asked

some kind people to keep this thing for me.

There was nowhere else to put it. Could you at least demonstrate it a couple of times?

A couple of times, sure.

One will be enough.

And how many can you do like that?

Nine, maybe ten.

If I really push myself.

Push-ups in the morning, maybe some ab work.

I do work my abs, but push-ups—not really, my shoulder hurts.

When I do push-ups.

We’ve got all sorts of people sitting here.

Literally all kinds of people.

Absolutely everyone.

What do they all do?

And how many people work in the office altogether?

It depends very much on what we’re doing.

If it’s an election campaign.

Then we hire people, and the number grows.

There are volunteers too.

There are volunteers here, and there are also people whom we simply

bring onto the staff, hire, because if you want

to manage volunteers, you need more people working.

So right now we probably have about 40 people working in total.

I heard about someone who took up judo not just

to fight or simply defend himself

from some bad guys, but to understand Putin’s logic, his ideology.

Did that thought ever occur to you?

No, that thought never occurred to me.

It seems to me

I understand Putin’s logic and ideology quite well without any judo.

It’s just that

the man’s ideology is an obsession with money.

He is, in fact, an utterly cynical person.

There’s nothing new about it—most of our

oligarchs from the 1990s and officials from the 1990s are people with the same

exact same logic, without any judo or any sport at all.

Just maximum enrichment.

I love myself and couldn’t care less about everyone else.

Have you ever tried playing hockey?

No, I haven’t. I never had the time or the place for it.

I spent my whole childhood in various military towns (closed residential settlements built around military bases).

What does a sports club in a military town amount to?

Some captain guy shows up.

He sets up a boxing club.

I go to that boxing club.

Then that captain gets transferred.

To another military town, and the boxing club shuts down.

All through my childhood, I was terribly jealous of kids who studied in big cities

and went to schools that looked like the one from the film The Adventures of Elektronik (a famous Soviet children’s movie).

They had all these clubs and activities, and the friends

of my parents who studied somewhere like Moscow—they went skiing

in the mountains or trained and went off to sports camps.

In most military towns, that kind of thing is simply unavailable.

We even made a video about hockey, about the Night Hockey

League and Putin’s friends.

Am I right that you hate the president so much

that you use every opportunity to go after him?

I don’t like the president.

I consider him a crook and a thief.

But in that particular video, I supported him—or rather, I didn’t support

him, but I didn’t directly accuse him either.

I said he was being senile. But.

Excuse me.

When you’re playing with stars

of hockey and you keep scoring 10 goals, eight goals, and everyone sees it,

and laughs when the defenders peel away, when the opposing defenseman

decides at the crucial moment not to defend, and the goalie just lifts his pad

so your puck can slide into the net.

The goalies there literally lift their leg on purpose to let the puck in.

Well, that’s absurd.

I mean, sure, the boss is the boss, and apparently people are supposed to lose to him,

and it pleases the boss.

But the boss himself should know there have to be some limits.

It’s one thing when they let you win by

two goals; it’s another when you’re handed 10 goals.

It just looks bizarre. It really is absurd.

That’s what I made the video about, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

The man likes playing hockey.

The Rotenbergs let him win.

If they want to throw the game, let them.

There’s nothing wrong with him playing hockey; that’s great.

The man is over 60, he plays hockey, he’s in excellent physical shape,

he promotes a sporty, active lifestyle.

That’s wonderful. I have no issue with that.

I have two complaints.

First, this whole Night Hockey League

consumes a huge amount of budget money, and we’re being lied to.

We’re told that some oligarchs are paying for it.

And second,

it’s broadcast to the whole country and turned into part of a personality cult.

Look, Putin scored 10 goals.

Come on, it’s genuinely ridiculous.

A role model for children.

A role model for children because Putin plays hockey—but also a role model for children that

a bunch of grown-up sycophants let Putin score on them.

That’s a bad example for children.

But they don’t understand that yet. They just see that the president is playing.

Of course children understand perfectly well.

They watch—kids don’t actually watch television, by the way, where Putin is glorified.

Kids watch YouTube, where they show the funny parts of this match,

where the defenders run away from Putin in the opposite direction.

You mentioned budget money.

What do you mean?

The hockey league received

400,000,000 rubles (about 400 million RUB) by government decree.

These specific

events in Sochi are paid for by the administration of Krasnodar

Krai, and so on and so forth.

It’s a gigantic black hole

into which a huge stream of state budget money flows.

And, by the way, these oligarchs—

Potanin, who skates there, and the rest of them—

they don’t pay any significant

contributions at all.

It’s paid for by the state-owned company Transneft.

And in that sense, what outrages me is that

a bunch of millionaires and billionaires

have literally arranged

entertainment for themselves.

It’s broadcast to the whole country, and I’m supposed to pay for it.

No—that’s corruption, not the promotion of sports.

You wrote about the 400,000,000 rubles (about 400 million RUB) that Medvedev allocated to the Night Hockey League.

From that video, one might think the money goes directly to his friends

And they are the ones paying for this whole banquet for Putin. That’s the entire system.

I understand that the Night Hockey League consists of many different teams.

I was just reading the government decree,

and it says there that this money goes toward prize payments for the winners

of the All-Russian Hockey Festival, Champions League, in the 40+ category.

And according to this decree, another 120 organizations will be provided

with equipment, outdoor rinks will be built, and four hockey centers will be constructed.

Can you explain what’s wrong with this money going toward the development of sports?

Even if it is for sports, still, no.

Sports for older age groups are great; I’m in that category myself.

But here, specifically, what we mean is

Putin’s strange hobby.

And the fact that Putin is building some kind of incomprehensible pyramid around this hobby of his.

If we want to fund hockey or any other

sport, then let’s fund it properly.

We have a ministry specifically for that; there is a system.

A system for hockey development and training.

A system for teaching hockey that, in the Soviet Union, was actually built fairly well.

Quite well, as you yourself know.

Let’s use that system.

But just as under

Yeltsin, everyone suddenly rushed to play

tennis, so under

Putin, everyone has now rushed to play

hockey—some Night Hockey League, obscure

officials, obscure state contractors out on the ice.

These strange things that are happening in Sochi.

And the culmination of all this is

the federal TV schedule being rearranged,

with commentators shouting, “Go, go, the president has scored another goal,”

I’m in favor of normal, honest, transparent funding for sports.

If we simply want to allocate money to children’s hockey or any mass-participation sport,

I believe we should, of course, be developing grassroots sports, not elite sports.

If we want to allocate money, great—let’s allocate money.

Do you agree?

First of all, about the commentator.

As it turns out, he always shouts like that.

That is, he even shouts during regular games. But I don’t want him to—

And I don’t want federal television, which is subsidized with my

money—from my pocket, your pocket, everyone’s pocket—

to broadcast these matches where Putin scores 10 goals,

with his friends skating alongside him.

That’s not promoting sports; it’s sheer absurdity.

This particular match is Putin’s perverse spectacle, not the promotion of sports.

As for the rest of the hockey league—

Are you sure only Putin’s friends play there?

Of course, in the rest of the hockey league as well,

all sorts of people play there, many of whom have never even met Putin.

But when I was preparing this video, for example, I went to the YouTube channel where

all the Night Hockey League matches are posted, and they get almost no views.

Have you seen them?

One view for a match, two views for a match.

So this is not a mass sport; it’s some kind of elite pastime.

And even then, it’s only among Russia’s elite—once they rise to the top,

a deputy governor sees that Putin plays hockey at night,

and thinks: let’s do it too, in our

godforsaken region—we’ll play hockey at night as well.

I don’t understand why that match should have a lot of views.

It’s just ordinary amateur sport.

Because if we are allocating 400,000,000 rubles to something,

I would like that allocation to be transparent.

I would like it to be very clear.

There should be a clear decision explaining why we are giving 400 million here rather than 400 million there.

I think there are quite a lot of sports federations

in Russia that wouldn’t turn down 400,000,000 rubles, right?

I would like there to be some transparency in the decision-making.

But here, what I see very clearly is this:

after scoring his 10 goals,

the leader of the country and a bunch of people who, in order

to entertain him, start yanking around

federal budget money back and forth.

Well, specifically regarding this money, you don’t know exactly who it went to.

400,000,000 rubles—400,000,000 rubles went to fund

the entire Night Hockey League system.

A strange system.

Because there is

a normal system for training hockey players.

Well, you would know better.

I’m not claiming to be some great expert on federations and all that.

But the regular system probably needs budget money too.

It is being built up.

Instead, they created some parallel—again, strange—system and are throwing

hundreds of millions into it. I don’t like that.

But this strange system and the 400 million were not the main point of your video.

The main point was that playing hockey with Putin is a way of getting state contracts.

You said that in the locker room they’re all pleased,

the winner signs a state contract for this one—10 billion, for that one—20.

Here, approval for a little bench next to an apartment building; there, a contract

to build military housing complexes at three times the market price.

Alexei, what state contracts in the locker room?

You do understand that they don’t sign them there, right?

You have to understand the essence of my video.

The essence of my video is that there is Putin, and there are his friends.

The biggest billionaires—the Rotenberg brothers among them—

Timchenko, the king of state procurement; the Rotenbergs, kings of state procurement,

who play hockey with him, have received contracts

worth 1,000,000,000,000 rubles already. Of course, this friendship of theirs, this

corrupt friendship, is expressed in the fact that they hang out together, including

playing hockey in front of the entire country.

That’s why I don’t like the fact that the country’s president

stages these private get-togethers together with the biggest contractors.

They know what goes on there, in those locker rooms.

But I have no doubt that they played their game,

letting Putin win first in some kind of hockey, or imitation of hockey, fine,

and then went off to take care of business.

Whether that happens in the locker room or at a bathhouse (a traditional Russian sauna)

after the locker room doesn’t make much difference.

If hockey is something that brings people together, then why are the last three sponsors

of the Night Hockey League currently under arrest?

I don’t know—who knows why they devour one another?

Maybe Transneft alone wants to be that sponsor?

Maybe. I don’t know.

Maybe they didn’t let in enough pucks.

I mean, it’s pointless to analyze.

What we see is that there are just a bunch of crooks there,

stealing colossal sums of money, as was the case with the Magomedov brothers,

and everyone knew perfectly well that they were crooks and thieves.

And I made a video and said directly that, for example, they paid for the vacation

of Putin’s press secretary, Peskov, on a yacht—but then at some point they were devoured.

Why were they devoured?

Maybe it was Sechin, maybe it was—

Tokarev. Well, spiders in a jar eat each other.

Each of these families,

each of these people has some number of billions of dollars there.

Obviously, the others look at those billions of dollars and want to take them for themselves.

It’s just like in Game of Thrones.

Exactly the same thing.

The very same, just—

Only here do we fund everything with our own money.

What I'm getting at is this:

Don't you think this particular video about hockey comes off as populist?

No, that's not your level.

You've made such great films, and then here you are talking

about some government contracts and locker rooms.

You didn't find out where that money is going.

I think that's the wrong way to look at a video that has two valid messages.

First: Putin is close to senility, and we're going to end up with Brezhnev 2.0 (Leonid Brezhnev, late Soviet leader associated with stagnation in old age).

Brezhnev had his medals; this one wants to score 10 goals every game.

I directly showed the evolution of that senility.

That's the first point. Second.

I showed that these strange

little insider get-togethers, including

on the ice, are an element of corruption.

This is, essentially, a system—a shadow government.

If you like, it's there—on the ice, in the locker room, wherever—that

more important decisions are made than at government meetings,

where people are supposed to sit and formally say for the record,

"Let's discuss who we'll award the road construction contract to."

That doesn't get decided at government meetings.

But in the locker room it's like, "Olya, let's give this to you, and in return you'll give us..."

that's where it all gets decided.

That's why it's a great video.

It's not really about hockey; it's about senility and corruption.

And who writes the scripts for these videos?

I write them myself.

And you gather the information yourself too?

Well, the investigations department looks for the information.

Sometimes I find things myself too.

Most often I just say:

Let's look for

information in this direction.

Or I say, with this particular video, here's how it all happened.

I see that the whole internet is laughing at this hockey game.

I said, let's do something about the Night Hockey League.

The guys who work on public procurement went to check how much state funding

it had received.

The investigations team started digging, and it turned out

that this whole Night Hockey League is registered to an offshore company.

So

we have a division of labor in that sense.

Well, I'm sort of

the person on screen; the larger

part of the work is done by other people.

I mostly just organized it.

In the video, you gave the example of Mao Zedong, who in '71 cited it.

He claimed he came first.

You said that the width of that river in Wuhan is 1,600 meters.

And that he swam across it in 1 hour 50 minutes.

And you say that would mean his speed had to be 14 kilometers per hour.

He was photographed in the water and announced

that he had crossed the Yangtze River in 1:50.

So that would mean he was swimming at an average speed of 14 kilometers per hour.

Try not even swimming, but running on land

for 2 hours at that speed, and you'll immediately understand whether it's true or not.

I didn't say what the width was.

I read about it.

It's all on Wikipedia and in other

reference sources.

And everywhere it says that he claimed an average speed—an average speed—

people calculated it, this was widely discussed, that the average speed was 14 kilometers per hour.

Alexei, I checked the width of the Yangtze.

Near Wuhan it really is 1,600 meters, but if you swim for 2 hours, that's 800 meters per hour.

So the average speed is 0.8 kilometers per hour.

They say 14.

Well, what I can say

in my defense is that I didn't

measure

the width of the Yangtze in Wuhan.

I think I read all the reliable sources

on the subject.

And in any case, I have no doubt—just as 1,000,000 other people have no doubt—

who studied the whole situation, that this was, of course, a propaganda stunt.

And Mao Zedong did not swim across the Yangtze at the age of 72.

It was staged. It's like Putin's hockey.

It's a kind of aging senility.

The national leader is trying to show the nation that he's not senile.

The national leader swam, crossed rivers back and forth.

By the way, Mao Zedong—he

during his political career repeatedly made a point of it.

For him, it was an important

fact to show that he was still a tough guy.

And that he could still swim across a river.

But everyone understands that it was fake.

But don't you agree that these mistakes in the numbers—

I don't have any mistakes. Wait, but there obviously was a mistake there.

I need time to look into all of that.

But at the very least, the Wikipedia article and other

sources say that.

Of course, I

could be mistaken in the numbers. I don't think I was, but I'd have to check.

I could have been mistaken.

But the point here is the substance, the substance.

On the substance, yes.

But because of mistakes like that, trust in your videos...

There are no mistakes.

And no trust in my videos is being undermined.

Because the key figures in my video are there.

There's the example I gave of Mao Zedong; it's a well-known one.

After that swim, in China there were

dozens and hundreds of mass swims.

In that sense, to swim across—or supposedly swim across—

by Mao Zedong

the Yangtze River was a hugely important political move.

It has been revisited many times in film and so on.

So I thought it was right to use that example, and entirely appropriate

to include it, even if I got a number wrong somewhere,

though I don't think I did, but I'll check,

even if I did get a number wrong somewhere, it doesn't matter.

Because when it comes to the figures related to state funding for hockey,

who owns the hockey league, and who siphoned off what money where—

I am not

mistaken.

Over here we have

the designers

of Fundraiser.

There's a legendary little sign here that everyone

loves photographing.

I won't quote it.

And do you usually do this yourself? With your head, I mean?

No, a woman named Lena Moroz worked here.

She sat here.

She was almost my height.

And they kind of made the sign for her. We have

a wonderful cooperative.

We have portraits of Putin; they're just all tied up in negotiations right now.

One is called Ozero, and the other is called Sosna.

And there's a portrait there.

If you have a portrait of Putin on the wall, then you're in the dacha cooperative.

Why is there no eye? Did you

just

glue some extra eyes on top there?

So, here we have...

This is where our video production team sits, along with various other departments.

This is where we assemble our spy equipment for wiretapping.

Now this is the CIA office.

If you do a bad interview with me.

And here, right here, this is where we actually...

take apart those...

those very videos that...

that you...

dare to criticize.

Oh, and I see a nameplate here.

Lyubov Sobol. So she sits right here. SOBOL. She found violence.

She's with Navalny LIVE now; she's also our Navalny LIVE producer.

She sits in the neighboring room, which is about 300 meters away.

And the sign is just a promotional sign.

Apparently one of Lyubov's fans...

put up her nameplate here where Sobol sits.

So Yuri from TV Rain has some competition now.

A couple of years ago we made a video about Putin

Team and about the creator of that team, Ovechkin.

Don't you think that was weak?

No, it was an excellent video.

It was excellent.

A video about the hypocrisy of all those wonderful hockey players.

They are wonderful hockey players.

But they all live abroad.

They're all multimillionaires.

And unfortunately, they all allowed their names to be used

by this corrupt elite that simply robs people,

that has turned 20 million Russian citizens

into paupers—paupers in the literal sense.

They live below the poverty line.

And of course,

it disgusted me to

watch all of this. I...

I'm not a big

hockey fan, but of course I still

know Ovechkin.

And a couple of other names, but it was pretty unpleasant for me that

these people, whom everyone around the world loves and respects,

agreed to take part in these utterly vile things.

Alexei: Well, it's simply not the level you'd expect from someone aspiring to be president

of the Beautiful Russia of the Future, someone who made films about Medvedev,

about Chaika, to show Ovechkin's house and say,

"Look, he bought this for $5 million, even though his annual salary is $12 million."

And he can afford it.

He can afford to live in America, where he moved from comfortable Russia.

He could easily have played for SKA or CSKA, but he went to Washington

to a more competitive league, the premier league of his profession, and glorifies Russia there.

Fine, let him glorify it.

Good for him for playing and achieving sporting success.

But I think it's important for a politician

who is fighting for leadership positions in our country

to say: pay attention to this absolute hypocrisy.

Because yes, he left, he has every right to, and he has enough

money

to

buy whatever houses,

whatever homes he wants.

But he campaigns for a man

I said there about Putin with him—he joined Putin Team,

he campaigns for a man who is the leader of Russian

corruption, who robs 1,000,000 of our fellow citizens every day.

Besides, you talk about Ovechkin as perhaps such a wonderful person.

But there's also this.

There's the less wonderful Fetisov, a very famous and celebrated hockey player.

No question about that.

The whole country knew him when we were kids; I knew Fetisov, and so on.

But we found an undeclared apartment belonging to this man

with an area of 1,000 square meters.

And despite insisting that we were wrong,

the following year he acknowledged it and listed it in his declaration.

And I calculated it.

Maybe now, as with the situation in

the city of Wuhan, try to dispute my calculations. But,

fortunately, Western hockey players' earnings

are widely published.

And the earnings

Fetisov made over his entire hockey career

do not make it possible for him to own the real estate that he

has.

Most likely, he acquired all of it when he headed

state sports

organizations that at the time also issued casino licenses,

for the gambling business. And in that sense,

if a celebrated athlete—even if he's loved by

100 million people, a trillion people,

if people love him and applaud him—

if he rides around with the biggest trophy—

but if this person

is involved in corruption, I will talk about it.

Don't you think Ovechkin and Kovalchuk might sincerely support Putin?

I don't rule it out—they absolutely might, of course they might.

And let them support him.

But let's not have all this nonsense, you understand?

Putin Team, and telling us that this

whole movement was completely sincere.

But we understand that's absolutely not the case.

It was simply an election stunt.

And even if they sincerely support him.

Even if—even if they sincerely support Putin, I have every right,

just like anyone else in the country, like any Ovechkin fan,

to say: Ovechkin, you're doing this for nothing, and your position is

hypocritical.

Because you cannot support a man

who is destroying and robbing our

country, including robbing

I don't know, athletes, sports fans—depriving our sport of a future.

Why did we show the real estate

owned by Ovechkin, which he earned and bought with honestly earned money? Because

I

wanted to show what Putin and Putinism are.

They are legal and illegal billionaires and millionaires.

Ovechkin represents

the legal millionaire in this Putin system.

But there is this kind of screen.

Look, Ovechkin.

He's a funny guy, he's missing a tooth, and he's kind of amusing.

We love him.

And some Kovalchuk too, or whoever—but behind that screen

stand the Rotenbergs, Timchenko, and all the rest.

A very real gang of crooks and killers.

And I was saying that

They should not be used as that smokescreen.

And if they are being used as a smokescreen, then let’s also remember that

they are all millionaires,

while our country is a poor one.

And I would like everyone to take that into account.

It seems to me that this is incitement.

Look, they have palaces, and on top of that they support Putin.

Here I absolutely agree with you.

That is incitement.

And I wanted to draw the attention of those very

20 million people who are living below the poverty line, those people

who are not below the poverty line but are following the situation.

I wanted to draw attention to this corruption.

To this hypocrisy, to bring attention to it.

And people often make this complaint to me, you know.

Maksim Galkin says to me, “How can you, Alexei,”

“go around showing Solovyov’s palaces? He could have bought them himself.”

“That’s incitement, some kind of Bolshevik maximalism, tra-la-la.”

That is exactly incitement.

Yes, I show this gang of thieves, I show their lifestyle.

Solovyov, of course.

And Ovechkin is a completely different kind of person, but nevertheless,

I show their lifestyle in order to stir people up.

So that everyone hates this government, so that everyone hates it.

Solovyov and the rest of the propagandists—that’s exactly the point.

I absolutely support your ideas against illicit enrichment.

I just don’t understand why Ovechkin and Kovalchuk

should be compared with Timchenko, Sechin, and Rotenberg.

I’m not comparing them.

I’m simply pointing out that they are very rich people who earned their money legally.

Their money. And they

are helping ensure that the man

who is making our country poor,

stays in power for as long as possible.

That’s my complaint about Ovechkin. I don’t care about his house,

let him build a house three times bigger.

God bless him, let him score more pucks and earn

all the money in the world.

What I am against is Ovechkin

making money in America

while helping preserve Putin for us here and prolonging his

years in power.

So, basically,

this is my office. My plaques are hanging here, along with my father’s.

Is there anything more impressive than that?

I mean, a gold one, if—

It’s called a diamond one, but they give it for 10 million.

If you reach that number.

Right now I have, I think,

2.5 or 2.7 million. Ten million seems pretty unrealistic to me.

I mean, for that you have to be some kind of

make entertainment

content.

Of course, there is an entertainment element in what I do, but

not the kind that gets 10 million views.

But on average, you get, what, 1.5 million to 2.5 million views.

Do you think that’s basically the ceiling, and that only the very

biggest

videos can get more views for you?

He Is Not Dimon to You got 30 million.

But everyone watched that one, roughly speaking—even my grandmother.

This year, for example, we released an investigation

that seemed fairly routine to me, about Karachay-Cherkessia.

It has nearly 7 million views.

So it

depends very heavily on the topic, and very heavily on

whether it catches on or not.

Sometimes you think

it’s a great video, a really strong case, and the investigation was hard to do.

And nobody is interested.

And sometimes you make something

that everyone supposedly already knows about, but it turns out well, and people watch it.

So it’s one of those things that

is hard to calculate, hard to sit down and

say, “Now I’m going to make a hit.”

Alexei, on a topic

you definitely know more about than hockey: Kokorin and Mamaev.

You commented on their detention in a SIZO (pre-trial detention center), which lasted six months.

They have now already been sentenced.

Can you say why six months in pre-trial detention was excessive for them?

That is obvious to anyone.

You don’t even need to be a lawyer to understand it. But look, Kokorin and

Mamaev are hooligans.

What they did really looks disgusting.

An aggravating circumstance is that they were drunk,

another aggravating circumstance was that, as celebrities,

they were shouting that nothing would happen to them for it.

But let’s assess the real severity

of their criminal act.

So, the criminal act was that they beat people up.

Well, this kind of crap happens every night in every other bar here.

And most of the time it doesn’t even end in a criminal case; at most it’s treated as an administrative offense.

They took part in an ugly brawl, and for an ugly brawl

you should be taken to the police station,

given 15 days in jail, if there were consequences from the ugly brawl.

If they damaged a car, broke someone’s jaw,

then maybe there should be a criminal case, maybe compensation.

What happened with Kokorin and Mamaev?

This is not punishment of Kokorin and Mamaev for an ugly brawl.

This is the staging of a vile TV show that lasted for many months.

But you saw the kinds of questions they were asking there.

The kinds of things they were asking in court.

You mean in court—the things the prosecutor asked, the things the judge asked.

Well, they dragged in these stars—these wayward stars—and really started humiliating them.

“Aha, you thought you were tough? Now we’ll make you toe the line, we’ll put you in a cage.”

“Your wives will come here.”

“We’re laughing at them.”

“Some of your girlfriends will come too.”

“We’re putting everyone in their place now, and we’ll be showing this all day long,”

“turning this whole situation into a TV show,” and so on.

But this has nothing whatsoever to do with the law.

You cannot keep people

in detention for six months over an ordinary drunken brawl.

That’s the first point. And second, basically,

what was there to investigate for six months?

The entire case file is just videos of the fight.

This case was investigated for more than six months, as if there had been

a murder.

As if there had been some complex fraud scheme.

That is why I maintain

that this has nothing to do

I don’t know anything about Kokorin or Mamaev, I don’t know what

teams they even play for.

Well yes, people told me, but I’ve already forgotten; it doesn’t interest me much.

I’m not really into football, but to me Kokorin and Mamaev

are people who have the right

to the same justice as everyone else.

Within that system of justice, they should have been convicted.

and find them guilty, but they should have done it quickly.

A normal judge would have watched the video recording.

Two drunk troublemakers — 15 days for each of them.

Apologize to the victim and pay him compensation.

Compensation, if they tore something there, damaged his clothes, all of that, up to...

visitation rights. Next case.

But as it turned out, you and I were paying for all this too.

It was all a clown show.

You mentioned those 15 days several times.

So normally, for something like that, they give 15 days.

Or a criminal case is opened, a criminal case.

But I assure you, and you can look up the court practice,

for all similar cases it's either an administrative penalty,

or a suspended criminal sentence.

But nobody actually goes to prison.

Nobody sits in a SIZO (pretrial detention center) for half a year over this, that's absolutely certain.

That's out of the question.

That just doesn't happen.

This happened to them because they're celebrities.

And someone decided — I don't know who it was — some person decided: let's...

Simply because they're such stars, let's make an example of them and humiliate them.

Well, okay, celebrities do bear greater responsibility for everything.

But you can't treat anyone like that.

And in your view, who was it, and who organized this whole TV show?

I don't know.

But the entire power structure was already involved in it.

Look, who was making all these decisions there?

The famous Judge Borovkova, the one who dealt with your case too.

The person who directly made the decision.

The judge. But she got a call and was told what sentence to give.

But of course, the extension of their detention by the prosecutor's office and the investigators,

this case — since it was high-profile — of course all of this was decided

at the level of Chaika and Bastrykin.

It couldn't have been decided at any lower level.

I absolutely rule that out.

So this was, of course, at the level of the country's top leadership.

Why the hell did the country's leadership need to keep Kokorin

and Mamaev in a cell?

I don't know, maybe

I certainly wouldn't rule out such a cynical move.

But they were simply distracting public attention.

People need to be given a show.

And there was a show: watching these brazen, rich, arrogant footballers and how the system

was crushing them, instead of discussing corruption or the increase in the retirement age.

Look at this instead.

It's absurd. I'm telling you, they're all senile over there.

That's the romantic

version.

There was also another version — sports journalists discussed it too —

that it's better to stay longer in the SIZO, where one day

counts as one and a half, so that later you get out earlier once you're sent to a penal colony.

But that's what people say who

have never been in a SIZO.

Tell me about how I was held in a criminal SIZO.

I've been under arrest many times; in a criminal SIZO

I was there during the Kirovles case, when we spent one night there.

But when you're serving administrative detention,

it's actually very similar.

It's a cell, an enclosed cell, you're sitting in a cell, you...

have very little

ability to move around, to put it mildly.

For those people, that was very important.

I mean, it's

harsh conditions.

Especially when you're there not for 30 days but for half a year, you end up there

people turn green.

It's when they bring you in a prison van, you arrive at 05:00,

and then they take you to court at two, and all that time you're just sitting there.

It's a tiny

I don't know, some kind of bug-infested

cage within a cage, or a pencil-case-sized box they keep you in.

They shove you into it.

But in any case, you spend hours in these iron

booths with the light on, then they take you to court

and put you in another concrete booth, and you sit there again for two hours.

In that sense, people actually try

to get out of the SIZO as quickly as possible.

Even if it's to prison. Despite the one-for-one-and-a-half calculation, because

in a SIZO you lose your health.

When you're in a penal colony, at least you can walk around there normally.

Eat, talk to people, exercise — there are at least some pull-up bars.

They're there, but a SIZO is just a death trap.

A Russian SIZO is endless torture, absolutely guaranteed.

So there was nothing good about them being held there.

The degree of their guilt was completely disproportionate

to the punishment they received.

Even just during the investigation, it was a death trap.

Even those detention facilities where people are held on administrative charges.

That's not a SIZO, it's called a special detention center.

Well yes. Of course it's a death trap. I mean, it's

a pretty harmful, unpleasant,

dirty place where you quite quickly

come down with something and get no medical care whatsoever.

A place where this whole system of humiliating people and senselessness

some kind of endless senselessness, is always highly developed.

It's unclear why certain things happen at all.

All sorts of strange things,

starting with a radio that's always playing and simply can't be turned off.

Just can't.

And ending with it playing all day long — well, not literally 24 hours, they turn it off at night,

but during the day you take soap and newspaper, and then

make another layer and cover the radio with it, or stuff wet bread into it.

And then the guards come and pick that bread out.

And then it starts blaring again — because it's impossible to listen to Russkoye Radio

there every day for 30 days straight.

Once, I did 60 days.

For 30, 20, 50 days, I listened to the radio every single day.

It makes you want to jump out the window, except you can't even do that.

There are bars on it.

And by Russkoye Radio, you mean the radio station?

The Russkoye Radio station plays, and sometimes they put on Radio Dacha.

You can't stand that kind of music?

Well, it's not that I can't stand it — I even like that kind of music, like on Radio Dacha.

It's great.

I'm happy to listen to all those songs — you know them all.

At first you lie on the bed and cheerfully tap your foot to the song.

But then, when you've heard it 40 times, 140 times, it all stops being fun.

Not so fun anymore.

What was the most unpleasant thing that happened to you in the special detention center?

Nothing like that happened to me there.

Maybe they tried to frame you or something like that.

Well, if the presidential election were held in a

special detention center, I saw for myself, absolutely,

everyone likes me in the special detention center,

the cops too, and everybody else.

That sounds like a very self-confident thing to say.

Of course, they're all different, some don't like me, but overall

the detainees there are fairly sympathetic toward me.

In general, everyone likes me very much, because even those

who are quite rightly locked up for drunk driving,

once they see the judicial system and how it works from the inside,

even a drunk person understands that being jailed for 10 days is what should happen to him.

But then he comes out and says, “Listen, I never even saw a judge.”

“I was sitting in the hallway, a cop went in, a cop came out,”

“handed me the report, and said, ‘That’s 10 days.’ That’s not how it should work either.”

So they understand that the system is so rotten

that they start supporting me simply based on their own experience.

When you were talking about Ovechkin, you spent a long time discussing his connection with Putin.

Why didn’t you pay attention to that in Kokorin’s case?

The fact that he supported Putin.

I don’t care that he supported him.

I condemn him for supporting Putin, but...

But have you seen those photos?

Yes, I have.

Good Lord, they all do it — all those football and hockey players.

Unfortunately, they all parade around with Putin like idiots.

But just because he walks around like an idiot in a Putin T-shirt,

does that mean he no longer has the right to expect justice?

I’ve heard that view: if you put on a Putin T-shirt, then sit down and shut up.

You backed this regime, right?

No, that’s the wrong position.

It’s completely wrong, and it won’t lead to anything good.

Well, let’s think: who is the most vile person

in the country?

Vladimir Solovyov. Dmitry Kiselyov. Yes.

But even if tomorrow he were to be

repressed completely unlawfully, I would say that was wrong.

I would still despise and hate him just the same.

But if someone is imprisoned

for nothing,

that means the abuse is being committed not against

Kokorin, not Mamaev, not Kiselyov, not Solovyov, but against the judicial system.

And I, like everyone else, need a normal judicial system.

After all, I could easily end up there myself.

I want the courts to be fair, I want the courts to be fair

both to those idiots who walk around in Putin T-shirts and to normal people

who wear anti-Putin T-shirts — everyone must be equal before the law.

And would you be glad if Kiselyov or Solovyov were detained and jailed?

I wouldn’t just be glad,

I actually expect that someday, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future,

there will be an investigator

who opens a criminal case against them and detains them,

sends them to the dock after conducting an honest investigation,

and then an honest judge will sentence both of them — Kiselyov

for illegal enrichment and tax evasion.

And Solovyov, apparently, for the same thing.

They are people who have committed criminal offenses.

But all of this must happen through the courts.

I want both of them to be punished,

to be held criminally liable.

But do I want them to simply be...

for some equally corrupt judge or corrupt investigator to just

start throwing them in jail for no reason?

Lawlessness in response to lawlessness — of course

I don’t want that, because that kind of lawlessness can affect anyone.

And will Putin stand trial?

In the Beautiful Russia of the Future, remind me?

In the Beautiful Russia of the Future.

If Putin ensures a peaceful transfer of power,

this is my most unpopular answer,

but if Putin ensures a peaceful transfer of power, I believe

he and his immediate family could be granted immunity.

But that all depends on him.

If you were to run in

an election now, under current conditions, and you were allowed to run,

you wouldn’t have nationwide TV airtime, you’d only be able to reach people through YouTube

and direct contact.

What percentage would you get? A million votes would be enough to win.

That many.

Why take part in an election unless you plan to win it?

First of all, YouTube is huge.

Second, my campaign doesn’t run only through YouTube.

In 2013,

and in 2017, when I wasn’t allowed to run, I traveled all over the country and spoke in

every major city where we managed to hold a rally.

If

I had been allowed to run, I would have spoken in every

city.

Considering that I wasn’t allowed to run, I still had

from Kerch to Pskov — how many rallies did we hold where I spoke?

Twenty or thirty?

It was 27 large rallies.

I mean from a stage in a city, with several thousand people in attendance.

If I had been allowed to run,

I wouldn’t have held 20

seven, but 127 or 227.

I’m exactly the kind of

politician who has no problem meeting with people, whether in large

or small numbers.

So even without television,

I’d still be able to talk to a great many people.

This is starting to sound a bit like Maxim Katz,

who says we’ll always win.

But actually no — this isn’t about printing 20 million newspapers for Yavlinsky.

Twenty million newspapers for Yavlinsky.

I’m not talking

about a million newspapers for Yavlinsky; I’m talking about what I did in 2013.

I held

100 courtyard meetings — I would come into a courtyard and speak to the local grandmothers.

Sometimes there were five of them, sometimes there were 1,000 people.

But I held all those meetings, everyone saw them, and huge numbers of people were there.

Back then I got 30 percent. Officially, 27.

I got 27 percent according to the official figures; in reality,

I got 30 percent.

And there would have been a runoff, because Sobyanin officially got 51 percent.

If there had been a runoff, I would have

won that mayoral election, of course.

During the World Cup last summer,

you posted photos with fans, but said you didn’t have tickets.

I still didn’t understand: did you get into a match or not?

I got a FAN ID.

Yes, that’s true.

There was that whole story that they weren’t issuing them to people who

were on lists of extremists, offenders, and so on.

So partly out of curiosity,

I got the FAN ID.

But after I got it — again, I don’t really know football, I don’t follow it closely.

All of that, but I

just said to some guys I know, “Come on, I’ve already got the FAN ID.”

“Buy me a ticket, I’ll give you the money, for the final.”

They just started laughing at me loudly.

We’ve got a lot of football fans here.

They said that, first, everything had already been bought up, and second, it was all terribly

expensive, and third, you’d have to travel somewhere else because there would be some good matches there.

So I had the FAN ID, but I wasn’t especially eager to go anyway.

To be honest.

I don't quite understand how you got it, because it was without buying tickets.

So first you buy the tickets, and then...

You bought some kind of ticket from someone in Mordovia, something like that.

That is.

As I understand it,

a lot of people got it that way: they bought some insignificant,

the cheapest ticket to a stadium in Mordovia in order to get it.

That's exactly how I did it.

So in the end, you didn't go to Mordovia for the match.

And why didn't you want to?

I'm not a big football fan.

There was some match between national teams.

This country and that country.

I won't say.

What countries were they, by the way? Were they any good football countries?

I'm curious. That's all.

I really liked what was happening in Moscow.

During the World Cup.

I absolutely loved what was happening on Nikolskaya Street.

I went there too.

All those foreigners and our own people, all that brotherhood, the whole atmosphere.

Well, basically, I like this whole football

culture and

spirit in all its forms, from things like,

from hardcore fans to just guys drinking beer in bars.

It's cool.

It's just that I don't like watching football for 90 minutes.

So that's why I just don't like it.

Do you like it?

But at the

same time, do you think the World Cup was just a massive embezzlement scheme in Russia?

In Russia, the World Cup took place

in such a way that we built, as you know as well as I do,

the most expensive stadiums in the world.

Like the stadium in St. Petersburg.

And the cost of all the other stadiums, the contractors, and the methods

used to award the contracts raised more than just very serious doubts.

It was clear that this was a mechanism for corruption.

That is, I...

I'm not against the football World Cup, I just don't understand why

these things have to be linked here, why they come as one package,

wrapped together: the football World Cup and stolen money.

How much was it, 300 billion rubles (about $4.8 billion at the time), 300,000,000,000 ₽.

I'd like to separate those things.

Let there be a championship, but let there be no stealing.

Don't you think that for the sake of the friendly atmosphere,

that came back last summer?

For God's sake,

for the sake of the fans who came to Saransk,

who finally let people in Saransk see that foreigners are not spies,

living off Soros Foundation money, but ordinary people just like them, open and approachable,

for the sake of the investment that went into the stadium, for the sake of the improvements that remained

after the championship.

Can you turn a blind eye to the fact that money was spent on it illegally?

No, I really can't.

And that's because I'm looking at the bigger picture: how many matches in Saransk

could possibly fill that stadium?

Hardly more than one.

Why did they do it?

And I know that in Saransk, in Mordovia, there are huge numbers of people who

live below that very

poverty line.

A nurse there earns 11,000 rubles a month (about $175 at the time).

And my approach to this is very simple.

Do I want people in Saransk to go to football matches?

Yes, I do.

But do I want a nurse there to be earning 11,000 rubles?

No, I don't.

So I'm saying: come on, guys, let's build in Saransk

a stadium for, I don't know, 10,000 people, or not build one there at all.

It's a small city, with all due respect to Saransk, it's a small city.

Why not hold that match in Krasnodar,

where there's already a huge stadium built by Galitsky?

I don't have answers to those questions, and I'm not prepared to sacrifice

one thing for the sake of another, because it's a false choice in principle.

We shouldn't, for the sake of a good atmosphere,

sacrifice public money, because somehow other countries

manage to host World Cups just fine without stealing 1 billion.

Football is a very

corrupt sphere everywhere.

But nowhere do they steal on the scale they do here.

Could you clarify what exactly you're proposing?

So, not to build

in Saransk, hold it in Krasnodar instead, and what should be done with Saransk's money?

Spend the money meant for Saransk in some better way.

Healthcare is underfunded, we have underfunding in

education, and, after all, we also underfund

all those children's football schools. If we want to spend this money on sport,

then let's spend it on grassroots youth football.

We have plenty of ways to spend money other than building

giant stadiums in Saransk.

They aren't needed there.

Everyone understands that.

The World Cup budget,

all the stadiums and transport infrastructure, was 683 billion rubles (about $10.9 billion at the time).

If you distributed that money among the population,

each resident of Russia would get 4,900 rubles (about $78 at the time).

So with an amount of money for which

you couldn't even buy your wonderful shirt, we held such a grand event.

So what?

All right, but then let's do the math.

And Rotenberg stole only 1 trillion rubles from us.

If we divide that among everyone now, it still won't amount to all that much.

You couldn't buy a car with that money.

And Chubais gets 20 billion rubles a year allocated to Rusnano.

What nonsense!

Divide it among everyone and it comes to 4 rubles per person.

Well, that's exactly how it all adds up.

I'm not prepared to give even 0.01 rubles to a stadium

in Saransk that will be too big for Saransk.

I'm not prepared to give even 0.01 rubles to Chubais, or Rotenberg, or anyone.

Even taking into account that I earn much more than any nurse,

I will stand up both for my own kopeck and for the kopeck

of that nurse even more strongly, because that's what

the state budget is made of.

If we say, well, what's the big deal, 300 million here, 300 million there,

we're a poor country.

I'm citing the official figure: 20 million below the poverty line.

And the real numbers are much higher.

Just look at what's happening: in some places everything is falling apart, there isn't a single decent road.

And yet we start staging a Universiade (an international university sports event).

Come on.

By the same logic, we held the Universiade there in Krasnoyarsk.

How much was it, 80 billion?

What nonsense!

Converted per person, compared with world-shaking events, it's supposedly nothing.

Let's do the math.

Per resident of Russia, they just took 80 billion and burned it.

it's unclear what to spend it on.

Have you estimated, in your view,

how much was skimmed off in total during the FIFA World Cup?

We had a video where we made some estimates.

Specifically for the stadiums.

I don't want to give you a false figure off the top of my head, so I won't say, but listen,

on any major construction project here, at least 40% gets stolen.

So just look at the cost of the stadiums.

Besides, there's this figure that...

You mention 800. 680.

683 billion rubles, but it's obviously understated.

There were a huge number of expenses there.

They weren't directly included in that total, because regional spending,

targeted ministry programs—not to mention all the security spending,

the amount of money that had to be spent on the police, the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), the FSB,

and everything

else—it was simply unimaginable.

Absolutely unprecedented spending.

So if you count absolutely everything, the total would be at least

twice as high.

If money is being skimmed somewhere, then obviously someone is getting rich off it. Have you worked out

who got rich from the World Cup?

The contractors. Who built the stadiums? Putin's friends.

We have a very small group

of people who take all that money.

It really is quite a small group.

In principle, even

within a corrupt system, they could have created some kind of

competition, the way it was in South Korea.

Where there are several major structures,

that somehow compete with each other, skim

money, loot budgets—but at least there is some kind of competition in that sense.

In Russia now, even corruption has been monopolized from the top.

Just open any ranking of state contractors and you'll see who occupies all the top spots.

Putin's associates, the Magomedov brothers, built the stadium in Kaliningrad,

and later they were accused of embezzling 2.5 billion rubles.

I think for them that's pocket change.

Their assets are all tied up in assets.

They're rich people—2.5 billion rubles is some kind of...

Clearly, that's not the kind of money they would have been jailed over.

2.5 billion rubles.

Especially if it's cash, cash in an account.

Money as actual money, not as asset liquidity.

But in the form of money.

That's an enormous, colossal sum, and it matters a great deal

for the Magomedov brothers. It's one thing when you have

a stake in an asset—that's your potential money,

and quite another to have cash in an account that you can actually use.

But of course they weren't jailed for that.

Then what were they jailed for?

Well, I think they had some kind of falling-out with Rosneft, and they were jailed because

they tried

to sell something to Putin's friend Tokarev.

He heads Transneft, and they tried to sell him a stake in the Novosibirsk port.

For much, much more than it was worth.

And as I understand it, they were blackmailing him.

Well, despite being, so to speak, our crooks,

they were still these wild brothers with their fighters, sports clubs, and so on.

And here we are, so to speak, former

colonels from Dresden—had they completely lost their bearings?

Well, now we crushed them.

Why didn't Peskov protect them? Who is he, really?

He can't.

He's not at that level.

He's just a crook, a major crook.

A bribe-taker, and so on.

But he's not a figure of that scale to

protect anyone there.

At that level, when all these former colleagues

from Dresden

and former judo partners sit around after a match carving up contracts, Peskov

is just standing by the door holding the tea.

Something like that.

You said 2.5 billion rubles was a significant sum for them—2,000,000 dollars.

ULYUKAYEV: A significant sum.

Cash measured in the millions is always a significant sum.

It is, of course, a large amount.

But as for Ulyukayev, it's also clear that

we did an investigation into Ulyukayev, showed his real estate, and the point was

that we understand, and everyone understands, that he's corrupt—a major corrupt official.

It's just that they handed him that suitcase with 1,000,000 dollars, and for that

they formally jailed him.

But of course the real reason

is that, well, he did something

something

wrong.

He went against Putin's instructions and insisted on his own position.

So they devoured him and put him in prison.

So you think he didn't consider it beneath him to take

those 2 million, even though his real estate is worth many times more?

That's just how it works.

For these people, there's never such a thing as too little.

Have you seen those videos from the search of the FSB colonel who oversaw banks?

It's just bags full of cash.

They carry bags of cash to each other.

2 million is a large sum.

For a foreign official, yes; for one of ours, it's nothing.

For them, it's just routine.

In fact, the Ulyukayev case was very revealing: it showed us that this is

just some ordinary episode in their lives.

Nighttime, a suitcase.

Ministers and heads of oil companies bring them to each other.

Here you go, congratulations—here's some sausage, and here's another 2 million for you.

Thank you very much.

And we'll bring you 4 million at Christmas too.

And that's how they carry things back and forth to each other.

If in the Kokorin and Mamayev case the decision was made no lower than

Chaika or Bastrykin, then who made the decision on the Magomedovs and Ulyukayev?

Putin, of course.

Personally, directly. I have no doubt about it.

It's said that there is some kind of council around Putin, a kind of

council of elders that includes Patrushev, several others, and Chemezov as well.

Do you believe that, or does Putin ultimately rule alone?

But you can't rule single-handedly and

know every issue.

There are still people who bring you red folders,

and inside those red folders there's a sheet of paper marked 'secret'

with some nonsense at the bottom

copied from the internet. In any case, there is an entire infrastructure around those red folders.

There are people Putin trusts, there are people

with whom he carries out his personal corruption,

there are cellists who hold 1,000,000,000 dollars in bank accounts.

That's Putin's money, and

then there are people like the Rotenbergs and Timchenko,

who get gigantic contracts and are told, in effect, 'this is yours.'

There is Usmanov, who performs a certain function, buys the newspaper Kommersant.

He fires journalists over it. And so on and so forth.

In any case, it's all fairly...

Some kind of

significant circle of people within which interaction can take place.

There are lots of clueless

political scientists who try to list that circle of people.

I don’t know, I haven’t seen it myself, so I can’t really say.

Well, I mean, there are obvious things.

It’s clear that this circle includes the Rotenbergs,

Timchenko, Kovalchuk, and various bankers.

Bortnikov, Patrushev, Sechin—the close members of the gang, the people we know

have become fabulously rich thanks to Putin’s regime.

But that’s probably not all.

There are probably some people in there we don’t know about.

But the final decision rests with Putin.

And of course, the final decision is Putin’s.

But naturally, that’s how the mafia works,

there still has to be someone who drives the spear, so to speak.

Especially in a particularly disputed situation.

Can we

just say, well, yesterday he was playing hockey with us, and now my friends and I have decided to lock him up?

Well, of course not.

The boss has to say, all right, him.

His offenses are serious enough to warrant it.

They threw him into Lefortovo (a notorious Moscow prison).

And now what is he facing there—20 years?

You’ve probably already been asked a hundred times

this question, so could you answer in just a few sentences

why you’re not fleeing anywhere and why you’re staying here instead of going

to Montenegro, Italy, or the States just to lie on the beach by the sea?

I have a great job—the best job you could possibly have.

I’m surrounded by wonderful, very brave people, and it’s a pleasure to work with them.

There are also lots of people who support me,

who send money to keep this office running.

I’m doing what I love, and people support me for it.

Some people respect me for it, some hate me for it.

Of course, they do.

So in that sense,

things are going very well for me.

I’m very happy with what I do and with

where life has taken me.

Why would I leave?

Let them leave instead.

So you’re happy that, for now, you can’t run for office?

No, I’m unhappy that I can’t run for office.

But I am happy with my work.

I’m achieving more this way.

Of course I’d like to be shown on

the federal TV channels, not just on YouTube.

Sure, I would, but

at least this means I can still say something on YouTube.

What I

want to say.

Most importantly, I believe in what I’m doing.

There are many people around me who share that belief and support me.

That’s really great.

Very few people manage to achieve something like that in life—to do this kind of work.

So I’m quite a happy person.

Do you consider yourself a happy person?

And yet two idiots follow you around, you’re constantly being filmed,

there have been attacks on you—they even splashed you with brilliant green antiseptic.

Well, look,

this morning two idiots were following me, but that was offset by the fact

that right now I’m being followed by one, two, three, four—

five fairly smart people.

A film crew, support staff—it’s great.

So you have to pay for everything in life?

Of course, yes.

And yes, idiots follow me around.

They put me under arrest, they search my apartment.

My family lives under constant pressure of some kind.

Yes, absolutely.

But that’s the price of what I do.

For doing the right things. And for

having the courage to tell the truth.

But I pay that price.

And I still believe I’m doing something great,

and I’m very happy that I get to do it.

Alexei, you studied at Yale University for half a year.

Can you talk about that experience—what it was like?

A little longer than that, actually.

It was a really great experience.

I’m very glad I got in.

The program is very simple.

You arrive there, and the whole point of the program is that

you can take any course you want.

I’m a lawyer, so I went to

the law school, and

I was interested in investigating

our corruption abroad.

So I took courses in corporate governance.

People who worked on

climate change took those kinds of courses.

We had a girl from South Africa who was studying

AIDS, so she attended the medical school.

You simply take the courses

that interest you.

But it’s great because you see how Western education is structured, you see

a truly enormous university with a very wealthy endowment.

At places like Harvard and Yale, it’s in the billions of dollars.

You see how all of it is financed.

And in general, you just

get enormous pleasure from the fact

that you find yourself among very smart people from all over the world.

There were many Russians there too, though unfortunately fewer now, and a huge number of Chinese students.

Lots of Koreans and Indians as well.

They come from all over the world.

The biggest American universities are basically set up like a giant

vacuum cleaner—they suck in

both professors and the smartest students from around the world.

It’s quite a cunning strategy. A very smart one.

And being inside it, seeing how it works, is very interesting.

And you studied there for free, if I understand correctly?

It was a special program. They even paid me a stipend.

They paid something like $5,000 a month.

And how did that work—how could you go there for free?

Anyone who passes the exams and is admitted goes there for free.

You can’t go there on a self-funded basis.

All these programs are structured in such

a way that they’re specifically for people my age.

The university understands perfectly well that a

person

my age has a family and children, so they cover your family too,

your children, and give you housing—a dorm room or some kind of apartment.

And they give you a stipend. Otherwise nobody would go.

I mean, why the hell would I have gone if I’d had to pay for it?

That’s just how it’s set up.

And in fact, the universities aren’t stupid.

I often went to speak with students there who were interested in Russia and studied it.

You come in, and they ask questions.

Do you teach in that sense?

And they get that for the money.

But something more practical.

A teacher who explains how things work in Russia.

Could you name the three main things you brought back from America?

It doesn't matter whether it's related to studying or just everyday life.

The main lesson is a sad one.

It's that no one is going to help us fight our corrupt officials

through the American legal system, or the Western system in general.

Basically, they don't care that

they say they're concerned about Russian corrupt officials.

They steal $1 billion in Russia and invest it in the West, but help us fight them?

Not at all.

No one will.

No one is going to solve our problems except us.

That's the main lesson.

That's what I took away from it.

The second lesson is sad too, though that was back in 2016, to be fair.

Things have changed a little now.

I was surprised to learn that Russia is not nearly as

interesting to the whole world as people here tend to think.

Sitting here, we think Americans don't think about anything else

except Russia.

And then you go there and end up at some

international discussion of world affairs.

A bunch of students, a hundred people, famous professors.

And the word 'Russia' comes up twice.

Everyone is discussing China, everyone is discussing Brazil, everyone is discussing Indonesia—countries

with huge and growing populations—and no one is discussing Russia.

And you realize: my God, we're basically on the margins of the world.

But the third thing is probably, in general,

an understanding of how the education system works.

That made a huge impression on me, of course.

This whole university system.

These professors.

Professors from all over the world—how it's all organized there.

For me, for example, it was a shock, a revelation.

That 80% of Yale students—actually even more—study there for free.

Because our idea of an American university is usually this:

you have to be super rich.

But the university pays for them itself.

If you've passed the exams.

And if your family doesn't have enough money to pay the university,

then in fact your tuition fee

isn't that important, because the university already has plenty of money.

Some former graduates

are constantly donating—one gives $100 million, another gives $200 million.

In that sense, it

wants to educate you so that you become successful.

And then, when you're older, you donate to the university

$100 million or $200 million.

It's very interesting to see how that works.

Did America change you in any way as a person over those six months?

No, not really, not in that sense.

I like speaking Russian; over there I felt like...

Well, maybe I'm still a bit of a Soviet-type person—it really irritates me,

that American friendliness.

At a certain point it's genuinely hard to take,

when people keep endlessly asking, 'How was your weekend?'—what business is it of yours?

I mean, they keep asking you all the time,

what kind of weekend you had, how you spent it.

But those are just ritual phrases?

You don't really have to answer them. It's just politeness.

And you realize that it is politeness.

And, broadly speaking, it makes society kinder and better.

But for a gloomy Russian person, it's pretty hard to handle.

So I wouldn't want to live there. It's hard for me there.

To live there. Your daughter Dasha has now been admitted to Stanford.

How difficult was it to get in, especially on a free place, with tuition covered?

They don't really have that concept there.

It's the same there.

You get admitted.

And I'm incredibly proud.

I'm incredibly happy that she got in.

For ten years, my wife and I were drilling it into the kid's head:

'Come on, study, study, study so you can get into a good place.'

And in the end, she did, after all.

She got into university.

She was admitted to Stanford and Cornell, and she chose Stanford.

And you just submit the documents.

I requested bank statements and sent them in,

she sent them to the universities, they reviewed them,

and said that your family's income is less than $100,000, so

we will cover the tuition, and you

will only pay for housing and food.

If the income is even lower, they'll pay for housing and food too.

That's a fairly standard arrangement there.

It was hard to get in—she applied to

several different universities and got into only two.

The competition is enormous.

The whole thing was terribly

stressful and difficult.

She was taking exams, getting up there...

Of course, you take tests even before

you sit the Unified State Exam (Russia's national school-leaving exam); you take standardized tests.

You write

essays, fill out a whole bunch of documents.

I mean,

it's a whole process, quite a major one.

And now,

it's especially strict, because over the past few months

there has been a major scandal in America over the children of wealthy Hollywood stars

faking test results.

They also falsified their athletic achievements, by the way.

So now they're examining everything under a triple microscope.

I mean, maybe for some top-tier super-mega elite there is such a thing as

getting in through connections, but at places like Harvard,

the universities are so rich

that they don't need any well-connected patrons.

I mean, they don't depend on anyone; they're

very wealthy, and getting in is extremely hard.

Did you consider Russian higher education?

Yes, we did consider Russian higher education.

The idea was simple: apply down the ranking of universities.

Try for the top ones; if you don't get into the top ones,

apply to the middle-tier ones; if not those, then to some ordinary ones.

If you don't get in anywhere, then you'll go

Universities here in Russia were also under consideration, of course,

it's just that their exams are much later.

She got into Stanford earlier, so at this point she hasn't even taken the Unified State Exam yet.

But it doesn't seem all that important anymore.

I understand your mission and your concern as a father, but do you realize yourself

that after Dasha got into Stanford,

your career as a public politician has essentially been destroyed?

No, that's absolutely not true.

First of all, that's completely untrue.

On the contrary, I think I've shown everyone that I value education.

I am the kind of politician who believes that investment in human capital,

Education and healthcare are the most important things.

And I said this during the

election campaign, and I’m saying it now as well.

And that’s what sets me apart from Zheleznyak, from Peskov,

whose children studied or are studying abroad, and from Lavrov.

Zheleznyak and Peskov.

What makes me different is that they steal money here, and then that money

they invest abroad and send their families abroad to live.

My daughter studied hard and got into a decent university

to get her education and then come back.

What’s more, I’ve said many times before, and I’ll say it again now: when,

if I hold some kind of leadership

position in this country, we will do

what the Chinese do—namely, send tens of thousands of Russian students

abroad to study: to China, to America, and everywhere else.

Go into any American university.

You’ll see that there are literally thousands of Chinese students there,

whose education is being paid for by the Chinese government.

Any Russian citizen who gets into a university like Harvard or

some place like Skoltech, will have their education paid for by the Russian government,

if they’re talented enough, because this is an import of knowledge; we will send them

there even taking into account that 10% of them may not come back, and then bring that knowledge back.

Here.

And they will bring us knowledge. In fields like medicine, for example,

this should be an absolutely massive campaign.

We should simply send thousands of

Russian

doctors to Israel, Germany, and the United States,

because our medicine is simply 50 years behind.

And in that sense, I’m a normal person who believes that Russian students

should, can, and will study abroad,

if they can get into decent universities.

And only in this

way will we be able to improve our education system.

That’s for the future.

And what guarantee is there now that Dasha will come back in four or five years?

There are no guarantees for anyone.

She’s a living person.

Dasha is going there to study, get her education, and come back.

That’s exactly why she enrolled there.

And in that sense, I’ve always said: by all means,

let Zheleznyak’s children, or anyone else’s children, study abroad.

That’s not the problem.

No, the problem is when Zheleznyak, Solovyov, or Putin

first tell us about the terrible “Gayrope” (a derogatory propaganda term for Europe)

and about how awful the education system is there, and how everyone supposedly wants to come to Russia,

while secretly sending their own children abroad to study or live—that kind of hypocrisy is what we don’t need.

But the fact that our education system as a whole is now

far behind Western higher education

is really pointless to deny.

You talk a lot about brain drain.

About how our best people go there to work and then stay forever.

At the same time, do you remain an example—a symbol—of the fight against corruption?

Don’t you think you could have set an example?

I don’t want to be some kind of monument or example.

Don’t you think you could have kept your daughter in Russia and shown everyone: look,

I’m staying in Russia, I’m not going anywhere.

I’m fighting corruption here, fighting Putin’s regime here.

And my daughter is staying here too.

And let’s stay here and make things better in Russia,

instead of leaving for five years and then maybe coming back, maybe not.

And as for whether she’ll return—I’ve

been telling my child for 10 years straight: study hard.

So you can get into a good university.

She studied and studied and studied, took exams,

comes running up to me shouting, “Dad, I got into Stanford,”

one of the best universities in the world, just like you wanted.

And I’m supposed to say, “You know what? No, you’re not going to Stanford. You’re going to

some no-name construction institute,” so that I can—well, or not that one,

some other mediocre place—so that I can tell Aleksandr Golovin

in an interview that this is how I became a politician?

People—I mean, people understand this. I have no problem talking to people.

I travel all over the country, and I tell people the truth:

our education system is falling apart.

I want it to be normal.

Russian children should study abroad.

If they can get in, we will pay for them.

I value education.

Have you set any kind of deadline for yourself?

Say, in 15 years

if you haven’t managed to become mayor, a deputy, or president.

Then I quit.

It’s like running—we started with that.

If in 15 years I can’t become a world champion in running,

does that mean I should give up running?

No.

I do all this because I believe in certain things.

I’m simply fighting corruption; I’m fighting for a normal judicial

system; I’m fighting for

equality and a fair distribution of wealth.

In our country, so that there aren’t so many

poor people, and so that our country—a rich country—makes everyone prosperous.

I don’t think that in 15 or 20 years we’ll be able to

defeat all of these problems.

The real question is whether I’ll still be able to fight them.

Whether I’ll be able to work for Russia

as president or simply as a person sitting in this office—whatever role that may be.

In any case, I’ll be where I belong.

I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing and try to be useful to people.

It’s just that stories like that often look very ridiculous.

Like Limonov, who kept going out to Triumfalnaya Square on the 31st (in reference to Strategy-31 protests)—at some point it just became ridiculous.

An old man—it’s obvious he wasn’t fighting the way you are.

But let’s not talk about Limonov.

He’s an old man, and on top of that, a corrupt old man.

But there are

brave and courageous

people who go out in their own cities with one-person pickets and stand there.

And maybe someone will laugh at that.

But I think they’re awesome, really cool people.

And there are human rights activists in the North Caucasus,

it’s frightening to be one,

hard to be one, and not in any way advantageous to be one.

But they still exist.

To me, they’re not local eccentrics; to me, they’re also

really awesome, admirable people who deserve every kind of respect

and who are doing something a million times more useful

than those people who may formally seem successful but are really just officials of some kind.

Driving around in their Mercedeses, looking impressive,

but to me they’re not impressive at all.

Alexei, about half of my Instagram follows you.

Even people who are completely from the other side,

even people who are absolutely not interested in politics,

I ask them, “Why do you follow Navalny?”

They say, “He has an amazing family, he runs an amazing Instagram,”

“and his wife does the same.”

Can you remember how you met Yulia?

Can you remember? Of course I can.

I remember the exact moment I saw her.

It was in Turkey. I was sitting on a bus,

and we were on our way to some excursion.

She was staying at the hotel next door, and she came out and walked toward the same bus.

And I looked at her, and at that very

moment I understood that I would marry her.

So I don't need to remember anything.

It's right there before my eyes.

Did you go to Turkey alone?

At the time, I worked for a company.

I was working as a lawyer at a Moscow real estate development company.

And those were the boom years for construction, and they,

and our whole firm, during the May holidays,

would go to Turkey at the shareholders' expense; I think we stayed in Istanbul there.

And Yulia went by herself.

Yulia was there with some group of people too.

And what happened next? I mean, the bus.

We went, and the excursion was, you'll laugh, to a bowling alley, because bowling alleys

were very rare back then.

At the time, there was one somewhere in the Central House of Tourists,

the only bowling alley in all of Moscow.

What year was that?

I was in my second-to-last year of university.

Well, maybe around

'95 or so. So we went on this bowling excursion.

That's where we all met, and we kept in touch afterward.

And very quickly we started living together.

Pretty quickly, we moved in together.

Then, about a year and a half later, we got married.

A big problem now,

though I suppose it's always existed, is that even young couples lose their passion.

People get married, and then it feels like they're not supposed to get divorced.

They've only just gotten married. They think they probably ought to stay together a while longer.

Looking at you, it almost feels as if

your relationship is only three or four months old.

No, we just have a great relationship.

I'm very proud of that.

But how do you preserve that after 20 years?

First of all, it's

luck.

You have to find the right person.

Some people get lucky, some don't.

The divorce rate isn't just high here.

Not only here—worldwide it's over 50%.

A lot of people are simply unlucky. They may

never find the right person.

And one of the things I'm grateful to fate for is that I simply found her,

that I met her, that I went to Turkey that

May holiday period—because maybe I might not have gone, and then by now I'd probably be

like everyone else, divorced three times, remarried, and all that.

And everyone around me would be suffering.

But I was blessed with that kind of luck.

And after that,

it's simply a matter of shared interests.

Political views, outlook on life.

Still, it takes work.

We have a normal marriage.

One that runs into many of the things any normal

marriage does, including conflicts, arguments, and all the rest.

But it is work.

You have to make an effort so that

small conflicts don't turn into something bigger.

That's too simple an answer.

Surely there are some concrete examples.

Maybe you take a break from each other every month or something.

No, not at all.

I mean, I'm not interested in vacationing without Yulia.

We always travel together; she's both my wife and my best friend.

I'm interested in talking with her about politics

and about anything else.

In that sense, we don't spend our vacations separately, and we spend all our time

together—a lot of time—and as a family we go out to lunch all the time.

And if I want to go have lunch with someone,

I'll invite her.

She's my best friend.

What's the best gift you've given her, and the best one she's given you?

A silly question?

I don't know, it's hard to say.

You've stumped me.

As for the best gift from me, you'd have to ask her.

I don't know.

I'm a bit at a loss.

And what about the best gift she gave you?

Well, she gives me a gift simply by existing.

She gave me a gift by going to Turkey back then.

And when I saw her, she smiled back at me—because if she hadn't,

then maybe I

would never have met her.

That was the gift.

But surely, even with your wife around, women still hit on you

and send you DMs on Instagram, right?

Oh yes, she really

likes laughing about it together with me.

We read all sorts of funny messages.

What's the strangest message you've received lately?

Well, people write to me, call me all the time, joke around.

Things like, "Let's meet up, I want to have your child."

But all famous people get messages like that, and most likely they're written by some

big, fat, drunk men just for a laugh.

There are lots of funny messages like that.

You often post photos from trains.

How often do you actually go on vacation?

I read somewhere that it was seven times a year.

Any time I travel abroad, it's because I'm going to a hearing at the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights).

The Kremlin TV channels say, "Navalny has gone off on yet another vacation."

But in reality, this is just our hobby.

I don't have a dacha (country house); I live in a rented apartment,

though I do own an apartment in Maryino, while I live in Avtozavodskaya.

Right now I'm renting.

In that sense, I'm quite a lucky person—I walk to work.

But you don't disclose the figures, do you?

And you won't say how much you pay in rent?

Well, I mean,

it's my main expense.

It's an expensive apartment.

Well, expensive for Avtozavodskaya, anyway.

But it's a four-room apartment because the children are different sexes.

Dasha grew up, and we realized we needed one more room.

So I guess around 40,200?

No, less than 1,200—but still a lot.

It's a major expense.

What were we talking about?

Travel, trips.

Trips—because I don't really have any other major expenses,

so traveling is our form of entertainment.

And I was deprived of it for almost six years, when they wouldn't issue me a foreign passport.

Now I can travel somewhere, and so we do.

Can you name the top three most impressive places

you've seen in your life—Cambodia among them?

For me personally.

Back then it wasn’t nearly as touristy.

Now there are huge numbers there.

Tourists in Cambodia.

Back then it was really amazing.

And the whole place is mountainous jungle.

It’s incredibly interesting.

Altai made a huge impression on me.

Going there is more expensive than going to Europe.

That was also during the period when I wasn’t being issued a foreign passport, so I traveled around Russia

and discovered that traveling around Russia is much more expensive than traveling abroad.

Actually,

third place.

Altai in different places, and a Tibetan lake.

And the Katun River absolutely blew me away.

I didn’t expect that such a huge river

could flow with such speed, such a roar, and such noise.

It’s practically like the sea.

I used to think that a mountain river

was some little stream you could cross with a bit of effort.

You could just wade across it.

I found out that’s absolutely not the case.

If someone is already fed up with Russia,

if they can’t live under this Putin regime, this regime of corruption.

And if, say, they’ve obtained citizenship in the Baltics, Israel, or Spain

and want to leave.

What would you advise them: stay here and fight, or leave after all and live elsewhere?

The world is big now—do what you want with your life.

But I believe you should always remain involved.

But if your work or something else is connected with another place, you absolutely can

live in the Baltics, but

still remain a normal citizen of Russia.

And help make Russia better—you just shouldn’t cut your ties, you shouldn’t

think of yourself as cut off.

Like a severed piece that left, and therefore

you now have to hate everything here, or

hate those

who stayed, or something like that.

You just need to be a normal Russian person, a citizen of Russia—whatever you want to call it.

This isn’t the 19th century.

This is the 21st century, one global

big world. What difference does it make where you live?

I was there recently, when I took my daughter to Stanford, in Silicon Valley.

There are 200,000 Russians there. They’re perfectly normal.

Russian guys—they want to come back here.

And many live both there and here.

They’re our people, and they

can and will pay taxes.

And they feel like citizens of Russia, despite the fact

that it takes a 16-hour flight one way to get to them.

I don’t see any contradiction in that.

In the fall, you launched your own store.

Whose idea was that?

We’d been thinking about it for a long time.

We just couldn’t make it happen before.

We live on donations.

We collect them, we run the ACF,

we send out mailings, and launching the store is one of the ways we raise money.

That’s what keeps us going, that’s what makes us

independent, that’s why we don’t care about any of them.

Not officials, not oligarchs—nobody matters to me, because

it’s ordinary people who send us money.

And that’s exactly why we launched it.

And who designed those wonderful pink T-shirts and sweatshirts?

We have a wonderful guy, Vanya, who runs the online store.

We also have,

there was Lena Moroz, who worked as our art director.

Maria Mikhailova. No, I don’t get involved in that, because just like with football,

I don’t understand it—I really don’t know anything about design or any of those things.

There are professionals,

people who do this professionally, and they handle it.

Does your wife Yulia handle that?

No, but she wears those T-shirts with pleasure.

And your clothes—does she take care of that?

Yes, she takes care of my clothes—I’d even say much more than I do. And

there’s this traditional

morning phrase of mine: “Please give me some clothes.”

And do you go shopping together too?

I hate shopping, so

unfortunately, my arms are too long.

I can’t just buy standard clothes—I have to try things on.

If I didn’t have to,

because of the length of my arms, keep trying things on.

Why do you always roll up your sleeves?

Because most of the time

the sleeves are too short.

If it were possible,

I dream of the day when you’ll be able to step into a 3D scanner,

scan yourself for clothes, and order them online.

Because I hate going shopping and try to do it as little as possible.

You must have some favorite brand.

Do you?

Everyone laughs that I have a lot of Brooks Brothers clothes.

But I really do.

First of all, their shirts have fairly long sleeves.

And in general, I like the brand. Unfortunately, there isn’t a store

here; there is one in the States, but now you can order online.

I got scared for a second—I thought you were going to bring up that

bear, when we

go there with my wife, she just buys a whole pile of clothes.

You went to the concert in support of Husky, and I saw a photo.

Someone wrote something like, “Damn, I came to the concert,”

“and there’s Navalny singing along with a beer in his hand.”

How often do you drink?

Well, I do drink alcohol,

but in fairly limited amounts.

Still, I do drink.

I mean, if the question is whether I drink anything—I drink everything.

How often? About once a week.

It used to be less often, before, much less often.

I’m actually a big fan of it.

But now probably a little more often than before, because I’ve started

drinking more wine,

and before I didn’t appreciate it at all,

though really, it’s still quite rare.

So, wine and beer?

No, I drink anything, really.

If you’d brought something with you and

if it were 4:00 p.m.—or later—

whatever you brought, I’d have a drink with you.

When was the last time you got really, seriously drunk?

Well, some birthday of mine, when

when

I was in my twenties.

There was an episode—Yulia likes to remember it—when, I guess, it was warm out,

and she was dragging me somewhere.

But it seems to me that happens a couple of times in anyone’s life.

To me, it would actually be stranger to meet someone who has never in their life

I had never experienced such severe intoxication.

You need to go through it once so that you simply never do it again.

And lately, when you do drink, do you hold yourself back, well,

I mean, so that you...

It turned out that I don't even...

need to—everything just happens naturally.

No, not really.

But if I go somewhere with, I don't know, friends, if it's someone's birthday,

then in that sense my, as you put it, "pop" today

is absolutely standard alcohol consumption.

I'll have some.

If it happens that I'm watching football.

I'll get a beer. If it happens that I'm somewhere with friends,

having dinner or

lunch, I'll have a glass of white or red wine, if others are drinking.

If people are celebrating a birthday here, I don't know, with whiskey or vodka,

then that's the kind of scale we're talking about.

There's no need to control anything.

Still, I do try to restrain myself and

drink only to the point where the people running

around after me with a camera won't capture anything amusing.

A contest.

How much money would you be willing to spare for this program?

How much would you be willing to give?

It depends on how many views this video gets.

If you...

If you get a lot of views,

and if you'll be gathering information too, then I'd send you something.

Can you name some kind of range?

Well, I have a standard amount that I send

to projects I like—Mediazona and so on.

I send 1,000 rubles a month (about $11), so...

Let's say 1,000 rubles (about $11) at minimum, for three months.

I'll send it to you if you have a good, useful

program—if I see that you're interviewing people whom

federal television won't talk to; that way you're fighting censorship.

If important, interesting content like that is being distributed,

I mean, that's why I donate money to Mediazona,

but I don't donate to just some entertainment YouTube channel,

I donate to those who need the money and are doing something useful.

Even if Alexei doesn't pay us anything, we'll still pay anyway, even so.

If...

We'll still give 5,000 rubles (about $55) from the sports side, even without a contest,

so what needs to happen to make it a contest, Alexei?

Well, honestly, you...

I'm not going to do pull-ups or push-ups right now, I'm telling you that upfront.

You still haven't really convinced me with your arguments when it comes to

whether your videos about Ovechkin and about Putin turned out to be useful.

It still seems a bit weak to me—too weak for someone

who is aiming for the presidency and considers himself a politician.

You've had much stronger videos, believe me.

I think that's how

most of your supporters probably see it too.

So we want to help you, and we want people who watch

this interview to write in the comments a story—a corruption story,

maybe

about what's going on in their sports team, or maybe in their region.

Maybe they've heard about some kind of lawlessness,

and they should describe that story briefly in a few sentences in the comments,

and then perhaps together with you we could even choose one.

Make me play ball.

Or Ovechkin will walk through that door right now and say that Alexei spoke badly about me.

That's what he said.

It's a great contest—write things like that.

If you know of a genuinely corrupt story,

one that can be verified, we'll dig into it.

A lot of people write to me: investigate corruption in this team,

or in that team.

Sports in Russia are very corrupt, and we've wanted to tackle this for a long time.

We're not very knowledgeable about it.

As you know, but we want to learn more about it.

So write to us. It's a great contest.