Navalny: Putin Is Waging War to Distract Everyone from Corruption

BBC Russian Service correspondent Olga Kuzmenkova asked Navalny whether he agrees with those who see his current campaign to ratify Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption as a PR stunt meant to keep him from being forgotten as a politician. (Editor’s note. The interview was recorded in November.) BBC: Alexei Navalny: House arrest only seems tolerable for the first two weeks: you get a rare opportunity, in adult life, to lie in bed for two weeks and do nothing. But that gets old pretty quickly. I try, as much as possible, to continue my work. After the terms of my house arrest were eased a little, it became somewhat easier. I’m trying to maintain rather complicated communication with the Anti-Corruption Foundation: they send me questions where they need my opinion, and together we prepare posts, publications, and investigations. All of this looks fairly strange, amusing, and often very stupid. I’m forbidden from using the internet, so it has to be done through my wife or someone else. Yulia reads all the periodicals, then tells me what’s useful, prints things out for me, and I read them. She reads Twitter to me, and I tell her what replies to write. My press secretary Kira comes over, and together we write posts. Or I pass a [request] to her through Yulia, she prepares some materials, and then I edit them. Mostly, of course, everything goes through Yulia, my wife. That’s how we work. It’s difficult for the first month, but after that you can get the system running. In fact, when you came to interview me, you caught me in the middle of a meeting about the Progress Party, with Leonid Volkov, the head of our foundation, and the head of the Progress Party. Right now it’s possible for people to come to me, and we hold meetings here. Of course, it’s not ideal to turn your home into an office, but we have to do it. BBC: A.N.: Most often they take me to court and back. Also, since, like everything else in Russia, their equipment works rather badly, they periodically come by to check whether my ankle bracelet has broken or not. They’ve already replaced it three times; they just come and say, “We need to replace the bracelet.” Honestly, I suspect it doesn’t work very well. Or maybe all the equipment works perfectly when it comes to listening in on what’s happening in this apartment. How it works in terms of tracking my movements, I don’t know. I regularly get calls from the Federal Penitentiary Service asking, “Alexei Anatolyevich, were you at home last night or not?” I don’t understand how it works, and they don’t tell me. On officials BBC: A.N.: There’s the RosPil project, which checks everything related to public procurement. Everything else either comes up by chance or because people send us information. Besides that, there is monitoring. I’m not going to reveal our professional secrets, but we use a certain system to run checks by surname, across different jurisdictions, looking for specific names. There are State Duma deputies, there are officials, government officials. It is absolutely obvious that there are officials for whom it’s not just a matter of suspicion of corruption—their corruption is simply plain to see. You can tell just by their lifestyle: these people live in palaces. So it’s obvious that these people have offshore companies, bank accounts, and so on. I think you know perfectly well, even without me, which officials have no compromising material publicly available, nothing has been published anywhere, but we know 100% that they are corrupt and that they are thieves. We look. We have a list of names, and we know for certain that we’ll find something somewhere. In Switzerland, in Luxembourg, in Cyprus. There will be something somewhere. BBC: A.N.: Unfortunately, since we’re talking about present-day Russia and its current level of corruption, that list is enormous. BBC: A.N.: Hundreds. Hundreds, of course. For us, the entire leadership of United Russia, the entire Federation Council, and the entire State Duma are in the risk zone. Especially if we look at the number of millionaires in the State Duma—it’s a record number—they’re all in the risk zone. We understand how this works: a person was in business, then went to the Duma, and remains in that business. Formally, they’re supposed to give it all up, transfer it into some kind of trusts, and step away. But nobody steps away. Besides that, we understand that in United Russia and other parties, a significant number of seats are simply sold. And if some deputy bought that seat, then during their term they’ll be earning that money back. You can simply go to Rublyovka (an elite residential area outside Moscow associated with Russia’s wealthy and powerful) and other places with concentrated luxury housing, pull property records and registry extracts, and see who owns the land. And we’ll find a huge number of officials or their relatives. BBC: A.N.: Of course there are people who attract heightened interest. In fact, we started looking into Yakunin long before his reappointment, but of course the moment of reappointment was very important for us. Everything we had accumulated, we dumped out before his reappointment, because we did not want him to be reappointed. And we understood that this was a lever for attracting attention. Unfortunately, in Russia it often works the other way around: the more the Anti-Corruption Foundation and I personally expose an official, the stronger that person’s position in power becomes. There are people who are not just crooks, but crooks who are ideologues and pillars of this political system. For them, corruption is not just a way to steal money, a way to enrich themselves—it is a method of political existence. We pay special attention to these people because, I repeat, they are the ideologues of this regime. They sit there and pontificate about Russia’s destiny, about how all this is the right thing to do, about how Putin should remain a constitutional monarch—in effect. They like to say they are honest people in power, even though we see these fur storage rooms, we film them, photograph them, we uncovered all these offshore companies. Of course, Yakunin concerns us very much. That’s a separate project. (Editor’s note: Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin said in an interview with the state news agency Rossiya Segodnya that the accusations against him were part of a campaign to discredit people close to the government. “This is absolutely targeted work aimed at discrediting very specific selected figures,” he said. Yakunin also denied reports that he had a “fur storage room.” “There are fur hats. There is not a single fur coat. My wife is an elegant person, but even she does not have enough fur garments to require a special fur storage room. Someone very much wants to compromise people who have advanced, to one degree or another, in public life, business, and government service,” Yakunin said in an interview with the online publication Gazeta.ru.) On the opposition BBC: A.N.: I understand many of these needs quite well, because I myself am constantly under pressure from law enforcement. In our Progress Party, there are seven people on the political council, and criminal cases have been opened against five of them. I understand very well that these people need moral support, informational support, and, well, they need money too. Perhaps above all, their families need that money—for lawyers. Khodorkovsky and I came up with this idea. We call it a “prize,” although that word isn’t quite accurate; it’s just hard to think of what else to call it. Basically, these are one-time donations that will go to people who are fighting this system and are under pressure from it. So that no one could accuse either me or Khodorkovsky of distributing the money arbitrarily or being one-sided, we decided that neither he nor I would have anything to do with allocating the funds. That will be done by a committee independent of us. A group of 20 people will be assembled to make the decisions, openly and transparently, about how and to whom this money should be distributed. We understand that these people have been hit by this and that they need money. This will be a legal mechanism, if the funds come as Khodorkovsky’s personal donations. I obviously don’t have any money; Khodorkovsky agreed to provide these funds. BBC: A.N.: It seems to me that we have long been in such a coalition with RPR-PARNAS that there’s nowhere closer to go. So I don’t really understand what additional meaning Boris is putting into this new project. It seems to me that we already participate in every coalition with every sane political force, so there’s really nowhere further to go. BBC: A.N.: Honestly, when I first heard this news, I had a sense of déjà vu from 2002: I’m a member of the Yabloko party, and the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Boris himself keep endlessly raising the issue of uniting the democrats. We need to say very clearly to ourselves that there will be no formal, final unification of the democrats. There will always be some party that does not want to join any alliance. It will probably be Yabloko, as it has been for many years. If all parties joined such an alliance, the Kremlin would create some fake party that would again refuse to unite, as happened with Prokhorov and Civic Platform. I think trying to unite everyone is a utopian idea and a waste of energy. But interaction is still necessary. It seems to me that we need to unite around specific projects. Our party is more about practical things: here we are running Project 20 for the ratification of Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption—let’s all do that. There’s an election—let’s all go to the election. Nemtsov is running an excellent anti-corruption project in Yaroslavl Region and going after his governor. Let’s unite around that. Around con-creteness. On Project 20 BBC: A.N.: You are absolutely right that this has been debated for years. We raised the issue because we want to put it on a fundamentally different level. What is Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption actually about? It provides for the introduction into the criminal code of the concept of so-called illicit enrichment. If an official received 1 million rubles but bought himself a house worth 3 million rubles, we can see that his income and spending do not match, and that effectively gives grounds for criminal prosecution of that official. All our experience in fighting corruption tells us that, unfortunately, we will not be able now—and probably not even in the future, when a new, free Russia arrives—to prove that a specific official, Ivanov-Petrov or Yakunin, took bribes. We simply won’t be able to prove it, because there will no longer be witnesses, no one. But we can prove that an official, while receiving a certain amount of money, lived seven times better—or 37 times better—than his actual income would allow. And that will be the basis for criminal prosecution. It is critically important for us now to make the demand for criminalizing illicit enrichment and monitoring officials’ lifestyles into the most important political demand for everyone. We conducted opinion research on this and found that 87% of Russian citizens support the idea in general. But no one knows about the existence of Article 20, or about the specific anti-corruption mechanisms involved. Four percent is just the margin of error. We want everyone who supports us, everyone who protests against corruption in Russia, to keep in mind that this is what we are demanding. We are now collecting 100,000 signatures to formalize our bill. We will spread information about it. We want several million people to know very well that such a thing exists and to demand it. We fully understand that the authorities are, naturally, categorically opposed. They cannot pass a law against themselves. Under this law, they would have to jail half the government. BBC: The Communist Party had exactly the same initiative. A year and a half ago they collected their 100,000 signatures, submitted them to the Duma, and introduced the corresponding bill. A.N.: Not exactly. The Communist Party introduced a bill specifically on ratifying Article 20. Our bill is about ratification and introducing an article on illicit enrichment into the criminal code. The Communist Party bill exists, we know about it, and we welcome it. We’re very glad that the Communist Party likes this idea, but we want the idea to become something bigger. We are calling every deputy and getting a specific position from each one. I can tell you that even within United Russia there are many deputies who say: “Yes, we are ready to vote for this.” For example, my favorite deputy, Trapeznikov—a well-known worker-deputy, who was actively used during Putin’s election campaign, traveling to rallies and shouting everywhere: “We workers will come and crush these white-ribbon protesters” (a reference to participants in the 2011–2012 protest movement in Russia). Well, we got through to him, and he said: “Yes, I’m ready to vote.” We want to survey everyone and then put them in a position where we can say: “You publicly say that you like Article 20, that you are ready to ratify it—so ratify it, and don’t look at the faction’s opinion!” We have formalized the positions: the Communist Party—the whole faction votes “for” (but they introduced the bill, so that’s easier with them); A Just Russia—we obtained an official response from Mironov that the whole faction votes “for.” We are working on the LDPR. In United Russia, we are already collecting them one by one. And we won’t stop there; we’ll go one level lower. There are several thousand deputies of different levels in the country. We will get an answer from each of them—are you for it or against it? We want millions of Russian citizens to know very well what this is about and to put it forward as the main political demand. BBC: The Communist Party believes you are trying to steal their issue and simply use it for self-promotion. On the party’s website there is a response from the Communist Party to an appeal from a young woman from your foundation, who asked for help collecting signatures in support of the initiative. They write that this is “completely empty PR, since the signatures have long since been collected, printed out, and submitted to the State Duma; moreover, the bill has been introduced in the State Duma, and there is absolutely no point in collecting signatures on ROI (the Russian Public Initiative website, an online platform allowing citizens to submit various proposals for consideration by state bodies — BBC), because ROI will respond that such a bill is already in the Duma.” A.N.: That’s a normal position for a political party. Everyone gets jealous. When we were collecting signatures for the introduction of a visa regime, all the nationalists were outraged and said: “Why are you doing this?” People feel that their bread and butter, their political agenda, is being taken away from them. In the Communist Party there is a group of deputies who believe that no one but them should deal with the issue of fighting corruption. At the level of the Communist Party leadership, our relations are completely normal, and the people in the leadership distinguish between things. They understand that they introduced one bill, and we are introducing another. On declining interest in him BBC: A.N.: That’s a question for you. How long has the fight against corruption been associated with me? Quite a long time. You can’t really say that I suddenly appeared out of nowhere with some anti-corruption projects. We’ve been writing anti-corruption projects for a long time. As for the “20” campaign, it’s simply an attempt not to address something through narrow political means. The Communist Party introduced a bill, but how many people know about it? Only Communist Party deputies know about it. But we want millions of people to know about this concept. BBC: A.N.: I understand perfectly well, and I take it philosophically, that interest in my work has declined. That is connected, first and foremost, not with me, but with what is happening in the country in general. The war that Russia is waging against Ukraine—not formally, but in reality—has taken up 99% of the news agenda. It would be foolish to expect the whole country to be following my political trial with bated breath when 4,000 people have been killed in Donetsk and it is completely unclear when all this will end. I’m not claiming that everyone should keep watching me endlessly. People are tired of the political cases against me too. Everyone followed the Kirovles case. Now there is the same kind of case, Yves Rocher—an even more absurd one. How many times can journalists come to my trial and write a column saying Kafka must be turning in his grave? He keeps turning and turning, and the cases against me just keep going and going. BBC: A.N.: And what’s the alternative? Why keep pushing the issue of corruption when you can just pick up a rifle and go fight in Donetsk? Is that the question? BBC: A.N.: If my goal were to have constant media attention, I probably would have turned into Nikita Dzhigurda (a Russian actor and media personality known for flamboyant self-promotion) by now and gone into show business. I do this because I have certain principles, views, and goals. I originally started by investigating corruption in state companies. Putin started a war to distract attention from corruption, but that does not mean we failed to understand what was happening. We understand it very well, and we will continue doing this. Yes, before, we would publish an investigation and 3 million people would read it; now 1 million will read it. But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and say, “Well then, let there be corruption.” On the crisis in Ukraine and the situation in Russia BBC: A.N.: I’m not very good at making predictions, but I do not believe Putin will end the war. Despite the sanctions, despite everything. Apparently, sanctions did influence Putin to stop active combat operations. If there had been no sanctions, especially sectoral sanctions, they probably would already have taken Odesa. Nevertheless, for Putin’s regime, as I see it, it is fundamentally important to wage this war and not allow Ukraine to succeed as an independent and successful state. They want Ukraine to have a permanently anti-war agenda so that it cannot focus on state-building, economic development, fighting corruption, lustration, and so on. Putin didn’t just change the political agenda in Russia. First and foremost, he changed the political agenda in Ukraine. Everyone there is running around discussing the anti-terrorist operation, Crimea, and everything else, instead of discussing what a new young country ought to be discussing. The optimistic but realistic scenario is that, at the very least, troops will not be sent in there and it will not turn into a full-scale blaze. The pessimistic scenario is probably if the madmen making decisions about actions in Ukraine prevail after all. The DPR and LPR (the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics”) cannot exist in a static state. The life of all these regimes exists only so long as there is some attention on them. They need conflict in order to get attention, because with attention come money and bargaining leverage with Kyiv. BBC: A.N.: I think all this will continue for as long as Putin remains the ruler of Russia. His struggle against Ukraine and—through Ukraine—against the European choice, against Europe, against the very idea that corrupt rulers should be overthrown: that is now the key idea of his rule. I think that as long as Putin remains in the Kremlin, these events in eastern Ukraine will continue. He will keep trying to break apart and destroy that state. BBC: A.N.: I disagree with that. I spent 10 years saying everything I wanted to say. What difference does it make to me where I say it from? So I ended up under house arrest… Ever since the active phase of my anti-corruption investigations began, from 2007 onward, everyone has been telling me: “You’ll be jailed.” I was told that seven times a day. You could say I held out for seven years without being locked up anywhere. BBC: A.N.: Yes, of course, I would have liked things to develop differently. If there had been fair elections, I would have gone into those elections and I have no doubt that I would have been competing for the leading positions. But things turned out the way they turned out. Somewhere I fell short, somewhere something should have been done differently, but I am sure that in the end we will change everything. I know that my colleagues and I are right, and that historical truth is on our side. People often say “Russia will be free” and then smirk sarcastically or ironically at the end. I believe it, and I am doing everything I can so that sooner or later it will be free. How would you like me to reason now? “Well, if I had run away now and abandoned all this, and lived in Switzerland or England, then I could be walking down Piccadilly and, I don’t know… eating English biscuits.” But for me that would be a more inglorious end than ending up under house arrest in Maryino (a residential district of Moscow). …I ask no one to take that personally.