The Autumn Tour. Rally in Yekaterinburg

Young man,

young man,

please.

They have

they need that angle. You're near them

try to get through there, because those

who don't have accreditation, they're there

they have it

I didn't prepare.

Just like that, right?

If you want to ask a question,

that's a loss of garbage.

If you want to ask a question, you can

raise

Ah, friends, a request to those who have already passed through

the metal detectors, who are outside, please have

German patience and understanding. We cannot

affect the speed of the screening and

the work of the police officers. We will wait

for everyone so that everyone gets through. All right. Thank you.

I understand,

I already went through.

Why will it take another half hour?

Navalny is here

Please explain how we're making

the corridor exactly, who stands where

and how

right here, just ask all the people from here

to move now

my Instagram

we're generally going to need this space now

The guy is filming

same from this side, or do we just

move everyone forward from here.

We just need to stand along the barriers and

that's it

there.

But why are we moving so strangely?

It's fine. What's good to film? Come on,

however you want. [ __ ] how they fell.

I don't know. Let's just somehow, it seems to me,

we need to.

I don't really understand what I'm starting with right now.

Meet.

I'm going to the meeting.

Oh,

came from there. What the hell? What's this deception?

Go over to the people.

Organizer, let them through. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Organizer.

Well, thank you very much. Write to me.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.

with a camera. The man went somewhere.

organizer

meet,

so that here it could somehow be calmer,

well, to control

the corridor.

Well, if he was going there.

Right.

This is

wait, wait, wait. All right, friends,

please step behind the barrier.

Please move, please, behind

the barrier.

What, what about them? Well, those are guys from

the administration, so there's basically nothing we can

do about them.

Well, I couldn't exactly

you can write

This is still only an organizational

announcement. I was asked once again

to make it. And while everyone is coming through, I'll

remind you once again: this is a meeting, we are without

slogans and banners. Please treat this with

understanding, and this will avoid delaying

people's entry. If you have any

I don't know, homemade signs,

the police officers will ask you at the entrance

to hand them over. That's the arrangement we made with them.

Thank you very much.

Second,

if

something goes wrong,

someone is behaving badly, provoking people, uh,

trying to start a crush or something, I don't know,

or something like that. It happens.

We'd like it to happen less often, but sometimes it does.

Please, don't

go hitting anyone yourselves or anything. You need

to report it to the nearest police officers.

They will carefully escort the person out. We need

to follow safety rules, because

we have a lot of people here, and if

someone suddenly runs somewhere, that crush

could simply be dangerous. Therefore,

please, let's keep everything orderly and civilized

here, and our wonderful square

of Defense will remain just as beautiful and

clean after our meeting. And we will

begin soon. Well, once everyone has

come in as much as possible

thank you very much. And I really copied it down.

I understand. Well, it's a rally—what else

can you do?

Where? Here. The rally participants are here.

Sorry, there's no room there in the pen. Stand

nearby.

Thank you very much.

Oh.

For now

I can [take] my place.

So, are we going to stand here?

No, let's move over there somewhere,

so you can't see a damn thing.

Oh, that live

TV again

let's go to

let's get together later.

My money is piling up there. Piling up.

So, can we get through or not?

Can we?

No, no. organizers

Hey, brother. People

wrote about you.

No, I was looking for this congress guy.

was ranting,

basically,

I don't want to

watch

was the first one.

saw it.

2 sec

Can you

Hi,

friends. Can those by the metal detectors hear us? There are

several thousand people there.

Raise your hands if you can hear.

Great.

So there are several times more of us here

than there were yesterday in Murmansk, and

we thought that was a lot.

Friends, our rally is open. Hooray!

I'd like to give the floor to the head of Alexei Navalny's campaign headquarters

Leonid Volkov.

Hello, Yekaterinburg.

So, can those behind the barriers hear us?

I can speak louder, in principle.

You should.

Good evening, Yekaterinburg.

It's been four years since I left my hometown,

where I lived my whole life, and now I'm only there

for brief visits.

But on the other hand, my entire social media feed is

all Yekaterinburg,

and most of my friends are from

Yekaterinburg too. So it creates

this kind of dual situation. On the one hand, I'm

immersed in the life of the city, and on the other

hand, I also look at it a little bit

from the outside.

And that probably helps me see

certain things, how they change

over the course of several years.

Well, for example, inspired by this morning,

this morning

just three years ago, probably, or four years

ago

we didn't have a Ministry of Public

Security,

and now we don't have public

security.

But we do have a ministry. Oh,

it's somehow

strange to read about our city in the

news and see that someone drove into a movie theater,

uh, in a UAZ vehicle loaded with barrels. And you

realize that no ministries

are going to help here; probably the issue is

something else. And of course, you'd like to read

different kinds of news about Yekaterinburg.

After all, our city has always been the most

free, the smartest, and the most

forward-looking. In many ways, you want the

news to reflect that.

So. But today there was a rally on Labor Square

where students were invited for 1,000 rubles

to stand there in support of your governor

candidate. Well, the students stood there; they'll buy

themselves something with it, not bad either.

But we remember why they can

gather on Labor Square.

Because back in the day, we defended it together with

you in 2010, if anyone remembers.

Back then we gathered there, but now

things are a little different.

In 2011, sorry for the historical

digression,

if anyone remembers,

Alexei Navalny spoke in Yekaterinburg for the first time

right here,

in this very spot,

on Defenders' Square.

Back then

Yekaterinburg was still a city where

you could win in court when you were

unfairly removed from an election.

Now that no longer works either.

All in all, if you look from the outside

at these past several years,

there are things that have changed in a

direction we never wanted them

to change, things that don't suit our city

because that's not what it's like, because

there is one thing that has not

changed. I can see it perfectly with my own

eyes.

It's the people, the wonderful, remarkable

people of Yekaterinburg,

who are just as free, just as

proud, just as smart, and who also want

to live calmly, normally, and well.

So the people are the same, but life

has changed in the wrong direction.

Well then, we need to turn it around.

And I want to hope that this

turn,

will finally begin

this year, with this campaign, with this

meeting here again on Defenders' Square,

because we have something to offer

the city and the country

in order to

make life at least normal again,

and then try to make it better,

so that the city becomes prosperous, so that

local self-government gets its

rights back, so that money returns

to the city budget, so that people can

gather wherever they want, win

court cases against the authorities, express their views,

decide for themselves what will be built

in their city and what will not, so that people

are heard again.

It seems to me that when I see so many people

here today on Defenders' Square, I really

believe that this is the turn

we are beginning together today.

Thank you so much, Yekaterinburg, for coming.

I'm incredibly glad to see everyone, both familiar

faces and new ones. But of course I won't

stay on this stage for long,

because the main event is still ahead of us.

Friends, raise your hand if you were at

our headquarters at 13 Vaynera Street?

That's not all,

friends. For those who don't know, our headquarters is located

at 13 Vaynera Street, and I'd like to ask

the volunteers of our campaign, who

work their hearts out for this campaign and devote all their

free time

to this cause.

Well done.

And now, friends, I'd like to give the floor

to the candidate for President of the Russian

Federation, Alexei Anatolyevich

Navalny.

Thank you, Ruslan. Hello, capital of the Urals.

Uh.

Hello, Yekaterinburg. A beautiful,

wonderful city that I adore,

and often visit. Guys, I am genuinely

happy to see so many people here. And

I can already imagine the pleasure I'll have tomorrow

or even this evening,

when I read your police reports and

your local news saying that

no one came to Navalny's rally

again. Once again, no one came. Uh,

he stood

before a half-empty square. But why are you

laughing? Yesterday we spoke in

Murmansk.

One percent of the population came to the rally. It was the

largest rally in the city's history.

Two hours later I read that the

criminal opposition figure

stood before a pathetic little handful of people.

And only a few passersby

looked at him with contempt. And then went on,

apparently in neat rows,

to vote for United Russia.

I read in the news—tell me, is it true

or not? Did you see the report

that your children's ombudsman released

special guidelines titled

"How to Keep Schoolchildren Away from Navalny's Rallies".

"

Yes, that happened.

Yes.

I'm just curious, are there any

schoolchildren here? Raise your hand. And

they failed to keep schoolchildren away from

Navalny's rallies. Now I'm going to teach you bad things.

Now I'm going to teach you extremism,

because it's a simple thing. And our campaign

is precisely about this simple thing that they

are so terribly afraid of. That's why they

shake with fear, hate us, and don't

want either schoolchildren or pensioners

to come to rallies. They are afraid of

one simple thing:

the truth

one truthful word. And it throws all of them

into a fever and a panic. Because this entire

system of power is built simply on

endless lies. They sit in those lies

like in a swamp, and they want to drag us

down into it too. Schoolkid, do you want to climb out of there?

No—they grab you by the pant leg and pull you

back down. Stay here with us in this lying, in

this endless falsehood, in this hypocrisy. Be

like us. It doesn't matter whether you're a schoolchild,

a pensioner, a member of the technical

intelligentsia, or a worker. Be like

us. Lie constantly, be hypocritical constantly.

But our campaign is about the fact that quite

a lot of people in Russia

refuse to live by those rules.

Right?

We refuse to live by those rules.

We have the right not to lie endlessly

to ourselves.

And if telling the truth in Russia has become

extremism, fine, then I am an

extremist. But I will not give up

this right to call things by their

proper names. Last weekend you had—what should we call it?

How do you even call it?

I'll be fined if I say what it

really ought to be called.

A lottery is probably the right word. But tell me,

raise your hands, those of you who boycotted

these, well, "elections."

Good for you.

And raise your hand if you still went

to vote.

I see some people. Now tell me, guys,

you went because, well,

it really does feel like a civic duty,

which probably makes sense. After all, we do want

people to go to the polls—but it should be

a decent process.

But it was disgusting. I'm not a resident

of your city. It's not as if I'm trying

to feed you a line here either,

as someone standing here before you. I live

in another city, but I know that

Yekaterinburg is, as your mayor rightly says,

a city of thinking people. I

know that Yekaterinburg is the city, the capital

of the technical intelligentsia.

I don't understand why your governor here

is a man without a higher education degree.

Is that normal at all, or not?

How can that even happen? They're

all laughing at us, mocking us.

It's an insult.

And it's happening, and what do they expect from us—

that we just accept it?

No, that's not going to fly.

Even if no one had come to this square,

I'd probably still be pacing this stage

saying all this here by myself. But there are

so many of you,

and I believe, I se

Even this broke down from my anger at

a man without a higher education degree.

Oh,

I understand,

how many of us there are. Listen, today I

arrived today, uh, and as we were driving past

at Labor Square; that’s also where the governor’s

rally was,

Really?

How much were they paying people to take part?

1,000

1,000 rubles for taking part in the rally.

People are saying 300. They published 1,000, but

that means they cheated them again.

I really don’t want to, guys. Honestly,

I just don’t get it. My mind is

blown. How is this even possible? They’re taking

cash from the budget somehow.

Where did they get that cash from?

How did they get their hands on that cash,

that cash? Officials brought money in a briefcase,

and handed it out to people in exchange for

attending a rally in order to

justify their fraud, to justify

the election of these idiots. And that’s why,

maybe they’ll call me an extremist. Maybe

the police won’t like it. They

asked people not to chant too many slogans

today, but I want

to say honestly and directly that I see

this government, sitting there in your

main government building, as a government of crooks.

That’s what they are; there’s no other way

to describe them.

And the people sitting in the Kremlin are

also a government of crooks and thieves. We understand everything about

them.

Raise your hand if you’ve seen the film *He

Is Not Dimon to You*.

YouTube works. Thanks a lot.

So, do you believe these facts?

Well, if you have doubts, then, well,

you probably think these facts

at least need to be investigated, right?

So here we are, me and the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), we

all did everything we could. We

already photographed everything, filmed all those yachts,

attached the documents. So here you have

proof that the country’s prime minister is

the biggest corrupt official. It’s proven that in a

poor country—one that in places is truly destitute—

one man received money through charitable foundations,

80 billion rubles, and spent it on palaces and

yachts. And what do they do? They simply

turn away and pretend that nothing

is happening.

As if it’s just nonsense. Total gibberish.

Yes, I want to say: it’s you who are talking

complete gibberish.

What else can we do? How else

can we prove it? What other documents

do we need to bring for the fight against

corruption to begin? For there to be at least

a basic investigation.

Here I am,

running in these elections that they don’t

want to let me into, but I

want to be a candidate, and I want to be your

representative.

And I’m saying here, on this stage in

Yekaterinburg,

that, guys, when I come to power, everything

will be different. I will put all these people on the

defendants’ bench. We will

really put them all in prison. They deserve

it.

Yes,

But are we really going to keep endlessly

watching them loot our

country?

No,

this isn’t just corruption, it’s, well, it’s

hopelessness.

Look,

Yekaterinburg is a city of technical

intelligentsia. You have universities that

graduate people who are, well,

truly highly advanced

programmers; they work successfully abroad

and so on. So, everything

seems great, but tell me,

please answer this question. If you

graduated from Yekaterinburg’s best university,

what salary can you realistically get?

20. What was that? 40. No, wait a second.

You graduated from the best university, in an in-demand

specialty. What kind of

salary can you get?

30–40, I hear.

40 is the ceiling.

Well, don’t exaggerate. Don’t

play along with me. Honestly, tell me, what

is the maximum salary? 19, 20?

What do you mean, 25? Excuse me, your

official average salary is 47.

Yes, of course,

I looked at the statistics today,

the official statistics.

Well, that’s exactly the point, folks,

that corruption is a government that

has been sitting there for so many years. It’s not just about

a palace or a dacha. It’s about the fact that no one has

any prospects. And if there’s no

prospect of a decent salary for

someone who graduated from the best university here,

then who could possibly have one?

In

countries that are far more backward

than Russia, the average salary is

70,000 rubles. The average salary in a country like

Estonia, for example.

Does Estonia have oil?

No.

Does Estonia have gas?

No.

Does Estonia have Uralvagonzavod and all

your other factories?

No. There’s nothing there. What they do have is simply

a change of power. But this is genuinely

humiliating, awful, and, well, it simply

really, once again, deprives us of any

prospects. You graduate brilliantly from university and

you can get a job for 40,000 rubles a month,

a salary of less than $1,000. For

For that kind of salary, in more or less developed

countries, people wouldn’t even sweep the streets.

But we think—we’ve somehow sort of accepted

that, well, that’s just how it’s supposed to be. We

somehow seem to think we deserve this kind of life,

but that’s not true. And why does it have to be

this way? My election campaign—you can

call me

a populist for it too, because, well, people say

it’s a primitive approach. You keep

talking about wages all the time.

But I believe that first and foremost we need to

talk about wages in real terms.

I’m running in this election so that everyone

can have higher wages, because I

believe that in modern Russia, at

its current stage of development, people can and

should live much, much

better.

And using your region as an example, we can see

that people in a city of the same size, with

the same level of education, earn, when

converted into rubles, no less than

90,000 rubles.

Someone who becomes a programmer

in America will immediately earn, in

rubles, no less than 6 million rubles

a year. Is it possible here to honestly earn

that kind of money?

Well, why not? I’m not talking about

some kind of, you know, crystal castles.

We’re not even talking about crystal castles anymore.

Not that long ago, we were laughing at China,

right? We said there were millions of

poor people in China, that China had such

bad-quality products. In China, pensions weren’t paid

until quite recently. Now the average

wage in Russia is lower than in China.

How could that have happened? What is it

they know how to do that we don’t? Work.

And the answer is simple. There, there is even

corruption there. But there is turnover of

power. Yes. Yes.

Those leaders of the Chinese

Communist Party—they change

every 10 years.

But here, these people have dug in—Putin has already been

in power for 18 years. How much longer can this go on? I’m

going to quote one person now,

who said the following. You can look it up

online later: after 10 years in

power, any person goes mad. Who

said that?

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

And according to his formula, who is now sitting

in the Kremlin?

A madman.

A madman. Well, there really is a madman

sitting there. They’ve gone crazy over all this

money, this wealth, all of

it. They don’t care about the country. They don’t

care about development. Putin has been

in power longer than Brezhnev (the long-serving Soviet leader) was.

That’s why we are so poor. That’s why

we laughed at China, but it has overtaken us.

All our lives, we thought Kazakhstan was

some kind of, well, underdeveloped republic

compared with us. But in Kazakhstan

the average wage is now higher than in

Russia.

Is that really how it should be?

No.

Are we really doomed to permanent

poverty, to constant scraping by,

to mere survival? Are we really doomed to have, in

the most technologically advanced city,

wages of 20,000 to 40,000 rubles?

No, I know we are not. And I see the

amount of oil and gas that

is extracted in this country. It is still

enough to solve the basic

fundamental problems of the population, to

at least improve healthcare a little

bit. Tell me—I ask this question in every

city, and I’ll ask it here

too. I just see quite a lot of

older people here.

There are queues at the clinics.

Here’s a little experiment. You go to a clinic

and say: "I want to get an ultrasound quickly and

for free." How long do you have to wait?

A week.

20 minutes

and 1,000 rubles.

Two hours.

Four days.

10

A month. And if you come in and say: "I want

to get an MRI?"

Are you kidding? Are you kidding, guys? We’re in the

21st century, in a developed country that

launched satellites and rockets, that

possesses nuclear weapons, that, I don’t

know, has Rosnano, Skolkovo, Medvedev

with an iPhone, and we ourselves laugh when answering

the question: "Can you even get an MRI?" Well,

that’s exactly why

living in Russia is practically impossible.

Male life expectancy here is 65

years.

When someone dies at 60 or 65, everyone

says, "Well, he lived a full life."

How can that be in Russia? What is 65 years old?

Like an old man, a very old man, died?

In any more or less normal developed

country, that’s still a relatively young person

who will live at least another 15 to 20

years, but here all of this has fallen apart.

Why, your city shocked all of Russia quite recently

when it emerged that here there was

an HIV epidemic.

It’s monstrous. And right now it has simply

come to light in Yekaterinburg. It turned out that

in terms of the number of HIV cases

we are ahead of almost all African countries.

So the question is: what the hell, then? Who is all this

oil for? Who is all this gas for, if

we can’t even solve such elementary things

we can't, if we're somewhere down there

at the bottom of this ladder

of developed countries,

I don't want us to be here.

I live in Russia, and my children live here too. I

hope they won't leave anywhere. I don't

want them to leave. I know

for certain that we can change everything,

that Russia can live differently. I

know how to defeat corruption. I keep

being told, oh my God,

it's so difficult. It's almost

impossible to prove anything when fighting,

when you're combating corruption.

To hold people accountable.

I become president. I introduce a law

on combating illicit enrichment. And

Governor Kuivashev. Kuivashev.

Kuivashev

comes in and starts explaining

where his wife gets an income of 10 million rubles

Can you imagine where she gets an income of

10 million rubles a year?

No.

No.

Per year.

We take his property, we take his

income, and compare them. And if the

official can't explain where he got this

country house worth 100 million rubles on a salary of 3 million,

a criminal case is automatically opened against him.

No need to prove anything

else. This works in all

countries, and it will work in Russia too.

Thank you.

When people tell me it's hard to fight

corruption, I answer very, very simply.

Let's create an institution of independent

prosecutors who will be able to open

a criminal case even against the president.

Yes, I want to become the president who

creates a special prosecutor's office that will be able to

investigate even himself,

because that's the only way to win.

Because this government, as you can see,

does nothing but create for itself

immunity. Do you remember what Putin's first

presidential decree

was

about guarantees and immunity for President

Yeltsin? That's what they want endlessly—this

arrangement where they grant immunity to their

family, to themselves, to their friends, and

so on and so forth. But we will become

the government that refuses this

immunity and says: well, we're the

same as everyone else. This is a basic condition for fighting

corruption. Once we apply at least these two

measures, we'll see how much

more money is freed up in the budget.

Every year, in public procurement alone and

in state corporation procurement, 7 trillion

rubles are stolen. That's not my estimate. It's the estimate of the

Accounts Chamber. Seven trillion. You could build a new

country with that; you could send all of you

to the Canary Islands. As you may remember, there was that line in a

film: while workers from Central Asia

fix up Russia, the entire population

gets sent to the Canary Islands.

We have a sea of money. There is still an enormous

amount of money in the country. But what

does that money turn into?

Into country houses,

into yachts

and into the Forbes list. When Putin came to

power in 2000, how many

billionaires were there in Russia?

Six.

Four. And how many are there now?

More than 100.

The question is: how did they make their money?

What exactly did they create from 2000 to

2018 that made them all billionaires?

So where are they? Show me where these

new enterprises appeared—what exactly happened?

This is an industrial region here.

Please name for me the new

enterprises that have been created over

the past few years. New, powerful, impressive

enterprises.

There aren't any. Krasnoye & Beloye.

Krasnoye & Beloye—what's that?

Judging by the name, it sounds like a wine

store. And that's exactly what it is. I guessed right.

That's not much, is it? Really not

much. But let's remember,

guys.

During the Brezhnev years, oil prices were high too,

and Brezhnev's petrodollars,

basically, built everything

we see from the 1970s. All of this

industry came from Brezhnev's

petrodollars. And where are Putin's

petrodollars?

In Syria,

With Roldugin, the Rotenbergs, and Timchenko.

By now all the judo coaches, the neighbors from the

dacha, former colleagues—everyone is a billionaire in the

literal sense of the word. The most

unpleasant thing is that I'm not even exaggerating

when I say this.

In the literal sense of the word, they are all

billionaires, and they are trying to

convince us that this is how it should be.

But is that really how it should be?

No.

Are we going to put up with it?

No. I know for certain that on these issues

it's not they who have 86% support, but us—86%

support.

Everyone, the whole country,

young and old alike, whoever you like—nobody

likes this. It infuriates everyone. And people will

follow us.

The whole country.

Whether they know me or not?

Whether they're savvy and watch YouTube or

less savvy and watch Dmitry Kiselyov.

They understand that something is wrong

with our law enforcement

system, right?

But we already spend more than a third of the budget on

these security forces.

And yet, in terms of the number of

premeditated murders per capita in the

world, we are at the level of African countries. But

is that normal or not? No.

And why is this happening? We rank

second in the world in the number of police officers

per capita. And in murders, we are also among the leaders.

And that's because what does the police

actually do?

Look in the bushes.

Look in the bushes.

What's more,

I'm sure

that every police officer right now—I,

guys, I'm talking to you—is standing there thinking:

"My God, what idiocy. Why are we

standing here? Why are we spending this

Saturday evening just

standing around guarding people who simply

came to talk and then go home?"

Just think how much money this

costs. And there stand these police officers, with

helmets put on them, as you can see. They're

hot. They're going out of their minds and thinking:

"Damn, it would be better if they

just gave us a raise." Yes,

higher,

guys. President Navalny will raise

your salaries.

And he won't force you to do

this nonsense.

You'll work properly and be paid

properly. Our budget for

law enforcement is such that

you really could give everyone apartments.

They just need to stop stealing endlessly.

Please, everyone, look. I can see

police officers over there nodding.

The investigation into how the Interior Ministry bought buses.

Billions were stolen—billions.

And this is happening right before

all our eyes.

Tell me, please, who

here has ever—there are a lot of people here, a lot.

You can't see it, but I assure you, there are

really a lot of people. Who here has ever taken out

a consumer loan? Bought

a washing machine, I don't know, or just

a car.

So, what interest rate were you able to get

from the bank on that loan?

16

28

25, I hear

16

24

Listen, this is interesting, right? So it turns out

you borrow money from a bank at 24% interest.

And that bank, in turn, gets money from the Central Bank. But

there's something strange here. For example, Putin's son-in-law

somehow managed to get a billion

dollars at 0% annual interest.

How on earth did that happen?

And now it has come out that Otkritie Bank

has a hole in its finances, and that hole

is being plugged. There's a hole because billions were stolen.

And those billions are being covered

with our own money by printing more. And then

it lends again at what rate?

0% interest.

So here's what I don't understand.

I want to become president because of this. It all comes down

to money. Even they have felt it

deeply, because it's completely unclear why the hell

the hell

some people can get loans at 0%, while others

have to pay 24%.

I am going,

I am running for election with a simple idea. If

inflation in the country is 4%,

then with a small subsidy we

can and will provide our citizens with

mortgages at 2%. Would you

turn down a 2% mortgage? And everywhere

in the world this works—in any

European country it's 1.5–2%.

In Denmark, they even give loans at negative

interest rates, because people need housing.

In Russia, people live with their parents until they're 40,

because buying housing is impossible.

And I know that I will bring all of this down. I

will scrap a huge share of

construction permits, to hell with them. That way

I will lower housing prices.

Business is developing in Russia.

And why isn't it developing?

It's being strangled, because the moment someone starts

to grow, the moment they earn something,

the fire inspectors come, then some other agency comes, then

the local cop comes, everyone descends on him. Then someone

comes to him

and says: "Come on, make a contribution for the holiday." Then another one comes

and then another comes,

all with their hands out.

By the way, let's congratulate Evgeny

on his fiftieth anniversary

Zhenya, you'll watch this clip later

of the video. People support you in your

city.

In Russia, there are 2 million

inspections every year.

What?

What is there even to inspect in a hair salon?

From this platform

I raise my hand and promise you. Once again,

you understand, I consider these inspections

altogether,

because all the taxes from small business

amount to 0.5%

of GDP. They are completely insignificant.

Administering them

costs more

than any revenue they bring in.

Thank you, my dear, for earning

something that brightens someone's day. It's

very easy to do. Very easy. I

did it on the first day.

You know,

we often joke that right now, here in

2017, we joke about how

North Korea is closing in, some kind of dystopia

gets compared to it, but we sort of understand that it's unlikely

that North Korea, of course, will really happen. But

then I have a question for everyone. Could

we have imagined

in 2011 that in Russia, every day,

there would be criminal cases over likes

on VKontakte,

over reposts,

reposts, reposts,

people

post pictures from cartoons about

war, and somewhere in them there's a swastika, and against

them criminal cases are opened, they are thrown into

prison. It's insane, it's nonsense. And standing at

this podium, I am telling you that I will repeal

Article 282. In Russia, people will not be

persecuted for their beliefs.

Standing here, I am telling you that

I may even come personally and

shut down Roskomnadzor (Russia's state media and internet censor) once and for all

— a harmful, disgusting organization,

that raves at us, that pushes us around,

that steals from us. We will do

all of it. There are many simple, obvious,

elementary things that can be done and must

be done in Russia. And we will do them.

Guys, here's something important. In a moment, in a moment, I

will start answering questions. And for anyone

who says to me, listen, this all sounds great, but

you do understand that

there's no way through, you understand that anyway

you can't break through this wall.

Well, I want you

to know what I feel, and to feel it

with me. We will be able to break through

it. Today, the politically active part of the population

is on our side in such numbers

that it is plain to see.

United Russia can only gather people,

Putin can only gather people.

Medvedev can gather people.

All change

is made by the politically active part

of the population.

And within that politically active part

of the population, we are the majority.

We must feel our own

strength, our own capabilities. There are so many of us

for us

the people standing in this square

can win over the entire city of

Yekaterinburg and the whole Sverdlovsk Region

in two days. If you spend 20 minutes

telling people about this rally,

telling them that you were here, that

you were here in the square, that

if you spend just 15 minutes on

campaigning across the city,

then after all, back in 2013 you already

elected what was effectively an opposition

mayor here. Right? So it can be done,

because they understood they could lose,

yeah, damn it, there were speakers right nearby

and they would lose — and they did lose.

And they will lose to us, because on our

side is the truth, because we do not pay anyone

to attend rallies. Because

in reality, everyone is with us, even

officials and police officers. First they bring

papers saying what a terrible person you

are, and then later they say, "Well,

all right then, hang in there."

But every time the police detain me,

drag me into a police van,

lock me in that thing. Then all the police officers come over

and say, "All right, now we'll tell you

about our lives."

Am I their boss or something? Am I a police

general? No, but they tell me

how terribly everything is set up, how

awful it all is, how hopeless it is, the miserable

salary, no chance of getting an apartment, and all

the rest of it. We simply have to be active, we

have to work every day, we must

create such public opinion

that they understand: it is impossible not to let us into

the election.

They cannot bar us from the election, because

this is not just some Navalny.

Navalny is just a function. A person

temporarily standing on this stage. Who is going into

the election?

You, us. We are going into the election. And they cannot keep

us out of this election. Right?

Yes.

Guys, I believe in you.

I promise I won't let you down. So please,

you help too. Get involved in the work.

This government is not a monolith.

It's a lump of butter — and rancid butter at that.

We will go in there and take as much power

as we want, if we believe in

ourselves and keep working. I believe in you. Do you

believe in me? Yes.

Then we will win and achieve the Beautiful Russia

of the Future. Thank you. I am ready to answer

questions. As promised,

easy ones, uncomfortable ones. Aren't you tired yet

after about an hour here? Not too cold, not too hot?

Ready to stay a little longer?

Yes.

Hey, just like at a rock concert. Thank you

very much.

Ah, Ruslan, help me out, please. If anyone

has questions, come up, I'm ready to

answer them.

Alexei, I'm here. A question from this side.

Go ahead.

And the question is: what should be done with the Ministry of

Culture?

No, then everyone will think I’m answering

pre-prepared questions.

No, no. Who asked the question about peace?

Then let him ask it himself. And what about what to do with

the Ministry of Culture?

I wanted to ask what you are going to do with

the Ministry of Culture and the obscurantism

around the state film fund.

To be honest, I don’t really understand

why the Ministry of Culture is needed at all. At

least in its current form, it consists of strange

people who have nothing whatsoever

to do with culture. Who heads our Ministry of

Culture? Medinsky,

a man with a stolen dissertation,

a man with three of them.

And

here’s what I would do. Right now the situation with

the Ministry of Culture is interesting. There we

have one set of crazies—Medinsky—who is

fighting another set of crazies—Poklonskaya.

And first I would help Medinsky defeat

Poklonskaya, and then I would fire him and get rid of

all of them.

I believe officials should not regulate this.

Officials should not

run the film fund. Fine, suppose I become

president—do you really want to trust me

to decide which film

gets funding and which one does not? I

don’t think so. I’m not an expert in this. I

don’t claim to be. I don’t think

some people sitting in offices, even if they are

good, honest officials, should

be making those choices. The film fund, which we

will finance, should be run by

people from the industry who actually understand

films, as is done in

France, for example, and then all of this

will start working. The Ministry of Culture, instead of being

a giant, incomprehensible bureaucratic

system, will become a compact

ministry that distributes

state grants among

cultural institutions. That’s all.

Next question.

Hello, Alexei. I have a question.

Do you think Russia needs

reform of the housing and utilities sector

(housing and communal services)? If so, what kind? Thank you.

Let me ask you: does Russia need

housing and utilities reform? Yes.

I’d say not just yes, but absolutely yes.

Because—well, let’s look at

utility rates. We were just discussing how

the official average salary there is 47,000

rubles. But what is the real average salary in

the region?

25,000 to 30,000 at most. How much do you have to pay

for utilities for a two-room apartment here in

the city?

10,000. 10,000. You’re probably exaggerating,

5,000. 5,000.

That’s what people here pay.

And that’s exactly the point. A person earns

25,000, and for a two-room apartment they

have to pay 5,000. And are utility rates

going up or down?

How did it happen that when

state monopolies were privatized, we were

told that this was being done to create

competition so that utility prices would fall?

Did that happen?

No. Instead, a giant state monopoly was created in

everything. So the main reform that the

housing and utilities sector needs is ending

the monopoly. In fact, there is nothing

super complicated about this. Humanity has been using

pipes

for hundreds of years. Humanity has been cleaning roads

for hundreds of years, and supplying hot water

to homes for the last hundred years. In every

country this is done. This can and

should be handled by small businesses. And

electricity is generated everywhere. This is not

rocket science, not nuclear physics.

So the housing and utilities sector needs demonopolization

and, once again, an end to theft.

Because I have said, and I keep saying, that

a significant—the biggest—part of my

economic program is the fight against

corruption. You know that in the housing and utilities sector, in

Russia, unimaginable sums of money are simply being stolen.

And it’s impossible to track any of it.

We pay for our apartments, and we pay for

various charges, things like cleaning

the garbage chute.

Washing

the windows in apartment building hallways. Have you ever once seen

the windows in a hallway actually being washed? No.

No one has ever seen that. In my building

they’ve never been washed. At least, I

live in a prefab apartment block. So

demonopolization, fighting corruption,

and relying on small business in the utilities sector, the way it

works all over the world. Then everything here

will start working too. Let’s take a question from this

side. Ruslan, a question from this side. And

the youth

the youth,

Hello. How are you planning to make

more state-funded university places and scholarships

can’t even formulate the question properly?

He’s just an ordinary mortal.

Do we need more state-funded places,

what do you think?

And make them all free.

And when I say this—and it is written into

our program—I’m not saying it

just to say something popular

so that teachers or

students or anyone else will like me. This is global

practice. My reasoning here is simple and rational.

These students whom we

educate for free, without spending

that much money on them, will tomorrow become people

who work and pay taxes. The

better the education a person receives, the more

in taxes he will pay into the budget of his

city, his region, his country. That is how

developed countries work. Money and brains

generate profits in the modern world.

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the founding of a company

that is now worth more than

Gazprom, Rosneft, and all the others put together.

It was created by our former

compatriot. What is the name of the

company?

Google.

They built it with their brains

without oil, without gas, without any of that. So,

of course, yes,

education needs investment. We

will raise education spending

to the level of the countries of the Organisation for Economic

Development, that is, by about one and a half to two

times. This will allow us to increase

the number of state-funded university places today, and

tomorrow profit from those students,

who earn more and pay more

taxes. Question.

Will we finally have a secular

state, where the church will not

interfere in the affairs of the people, as we

see today in the example of our city with the

church on the water?

You just can't see who is asking this

question. As I understand it, you are

a clergyman.

A graduate of the theological seminary

in Yekaterinburg, Viktor Nor

a graduate of the theological seminary. You see,

they have pushed things so far that

a seminary graduate is asking

when this obscurantism will end and what we

are going to do about all of it. Exactly.

And it is the right person asking the question, because

what is happening now, well, it is

not faith at all, it is not

Christianity at all. Are we seriously

supposed to believe that all these people, former members of the

Communist Party of the Soviet

Union, former members of the Leninist

Komsomol (Soviet youth organization), have now become the most devout

people, the most conservative

Christians? Of course not. It is just brazen,

hypocritical crooks,

who stand in churches, bowing and crossing themselves,

They have never read the Bible in their lives,

never even held the Gospel in their hands, yet

they try to teach us how to live and try to teach

us faith. So, I believe there must

be freedom for religious organizations.

The Russian Orthodox Church is a fine, respected organization.

They raise money for themselves and

spend it on themselves. They have their own charter, their own

monastery, they operate independently. But

we will not allow the church to put people in

prison.

We will not allow the church,

you understand, to simply seize plots of land from

cities and regions, to simply say: "Well,

we want a church right here." And basically

not give a damn about you, about anyone. We

want to take this pond for ourselves, fill it in,

and build a church here. No, that is not how

it should work. There are believers, and they

have their own opinion. There are people who do not

want to see this church there; they want

the pond to remain,

they want this church to be in another

place.

Both sides have the right to their own

voice. That is how it should work.

So, they should go to a referendum.

Whoever gets more votes than the other,

wins. That is how it should work,

right?

The democratic majority wins

for me. I am a believer. But I do not want

to watch the church start ordering around

the Investigative Committee. I do not want

to watch people, hiding behind faith,

actually trying to burn things down here. I mean,

across the country they write that it was a movie theater. But this is

not a movie theater you have here, right? Kosmos.

It is a huge concert hall in the center of the

city. If he had driven into it instead of

crashing into a chair, he would have burned everything down.

It really was an attempted terrorist attack.

Yakone

look,

neither the police, nor the FSB, nor your authorities

call this by the word it should

be called. They are afraid of the word terrorism, they

are shaking. But if we see that a person

for political motives and motives of faith

prepared for it, bought a car, bought two barrels of

gasoline, bought gas cylinders,

crashed, and set it all on fire, what is that?

That is a terrorist attack, right?

And we will call it what it is: a terrorist attack.

And I say that the FSB officers missed

this terrorist attack, and Poklonskaya inspired

this terrorist attack. These crazy people

inspired this terrorist attack, and because of them

people could have died, and they must

be held accountable for it. Therefore, we

respect the church, we support

the church, it is separate from the state and

cannot command the state.

Question.

Question.

Chechnya—Kadyrov.

So, Chechnya, Kadyrov.

I can say

completely honestly and without fear,

that I believe Ramzan Kadyrov

was the person who ordered the murder of Boris

Nemtsov.

All the case materials point to that.

It appears he is involved in other

murders as well. Therefore,

there should be this kind of investigation

conducted into Ramzan Kadyrov.

an investigation into his involvement in

contract killings, torture, and so on.

I will become president. It will happen. And

there's no need to listen to tales that

war will immediately break out, there will be explosions and

clashes—nothing of the sort will happen. Remember,

there was once a mayor of Makhachkala, Said Amirov, about whom

people also said that he had seized

power so completely that he controlled everyone. Removing him

was impossible. He killed people. Everyone

knew he was killing people, but there was

nothing anyone could do about him. Then they decided to act,

that group arrived, arrested him,

took him to Moscow, and that was it. And nothing

happened. And the same thing will happen in Chechnya.

And Chechnya, like any other republic,

needs something simple. What people really need

is wages and income. Billions are

allocated there, but they never actually reach

ordinary people. Salaries there are even

lower than here. People there earn around 8,000

rubles. So what Chechnya needs is a functioning

judicial system, a fight against corruption, and

proper regional governance. That's

all. Next question.

What will we do with the NKVD and KGB archives?

The one-word answer: open them.

The NKVD and KGB archives—we will open them, because

well, because this is our history.

Look, we still have documents from

1920.

Documents from the 1930s are still classified.

Why are they classified? Who are these

secrets being kept from? This has nothing to do with

active intelligence officers or

operational work. It's just nonsense.

So we will declassify all of it and provide

more funding to our historians so that

they can study it and publish it. Next question.

Ruslan, a question.

Yes, Alexei, there's a question from this side. We

haven't been over there yet, and they're asking to hand it over. Can we

pass it along? I'll read it out.

All right, the microphone is gone. We—will we get it back? Yes,

yes, I'll definitely bring it back. Will

same-sex coupl—same-sex couples get the right

to register a marriage and take children into guardianship

and adopt them?

All right, we've reached the question of gay marriage.

Listen, please, just don't

ask me in a city where Roizman is

the mayor about legalizing drugs, or I'll

end up in a very awkward position.

So, I believe that when it comes to

same-sex marriage, we should follow

the path that the United

States took. We should hold

regional referendums

and put the question there. If the residents of that

territory—for example, St. Petersburg—

are ready, they will legalize it. The residents of

Makhachkala are unlikely to be ready, and

so legalization there will probably happen

later. So I think we need to move

in that direction and allow people

to hold referendums. Of course, this is

a major issue, but they are partners, they are

couples, and they cannot formalize their relationship,

they can't even grant each other powers of attorney,

and all the rest of it. So yes, of course, this is

a problem; it needs to be discussed, it needs to be

put to referendums and voted on.

Obviously, it will vary greatly

from region to region. Ruslan,

develop business.

What

how will you devel—develop

just about

How will I develop small business? As I

already said, small business does not need

any special development. Nothing special needs to be done

for it. It just needs to be left

alone. We will abolish taxes on small

business. And most importantly, we will abolish

reporting requirements.

All small businesses are drowning in endless paperwork.

Four times a year you have to

file reports—what is even the point of that?

When I become president, it will work

simply. You want to become a small

business owner, a businessman. You write to

your city administration: Hello,

Yevgeny Roizman. Starting tomorrow, I,

Petya Ivanov, will be a businessman. Roizman

sends you back a little token that says

"Petya Ivanov,

businessman." That's it. That's it. Then a year later he

meets with you and gives you a certificate of honor

for doing it.

No other kind of relationship with small

business is needed. Let's leave it alone.

It will develop on its own. And how about answering

about big business?

Alexei,

Ruslan, where are you? Where? Who has the microphone?

Yes.

Yes. What do you think about the situation in

the Barnaul campaign office?

As for the situation in the Barnaul campaign office, I

think there is a conflict in the Barnaul office,

obviously, as there is in many

public organizations, in all kinds of

campaign offices, and in any election

campaigns. And, as I understand it,

Leonid Volkov, the head of my campaign, he

simply removed from their positions all

the participants in that conflict.

Question.

Yes, friends,

ask the pensioner.

Alexei Anatolyevich, you say

wonderful things, but how will you avoid

a situation similar to October 1993

when the president is new, but

the parliament is fundamentally old?

Excellent question. Thank you very much.

Let's think about that.

We have a parliament now, right?

I'm not exactly hearing a confident answer, am I?

Well, let’s put it this way—let me rephrase.

So then. There are some people who

call themselves a parliament,

and get paid 450,000 rubles a month (about 450,000 RUB),

per month,

ride around in official cars,

and it doesn’t look like we elected them, right?

And it certainly doesn’t look like they

represent our interests. But they do represent your

interests.

But they represent—why, they don’t even represent the interests

of the communists. They represent no one’s

interests except their own.

So let’s, well,

imagine this is a popular plebiscite.

I’ll act according to how you vote.

I’m putting the question to a vote. Who is in favor of

President Navalny dissolving this

parliament and calling new elections?

Everyone.

Who’s against?

Abstentions?

None.

Passed by an overwhelming majority.

We are dissolving parliament. Those

powers exist. We are calling new

elections in which everyone will be able to participate.

Everyone. Left-wingers, right-wingers, nationalists,

liberals, pro-gay marriage, anti-gay marriage,

for legalization, against legalization.

Anyone will be able to create their own parties through

a simple notification procedure, go out and win

their share of the vote, whether large or small. I’m sure

that in such an election I’ll be able to assemble

a majority and govern the country,

relying on a parliament that can

investigate me,

that passes laws, that

is independent, that can create

parliamentary commissions, and where there is room

for political debate. Next

question.

Well done, Lyosha.

Alexei.

And I’m not

I’m here. Maybe me—here, here, here,

how many? Ah, all right, I know.

Hello.

Hi.

I’d like to ask you: are you afraid of

criticism? And when you become president,

do you want to restore freedom of speech?

Am I afraid of criticism? Turn on the TV and

see what they say about me.

Open the internet and look at what they say

about me there. I think many

Kremlin political pundits probably just

hang my portraits in their homes because

I’ve been feeding them for years.

All they do is write

some nonsense about me. Well, I’m a normal

person. When people praise me,

it feels good. When they criticize me, it feels less

good. But I’ve adopted the following,

so to speak, formula. People criticize me. I

try to understand: are they criticizing me

fairly? If so, I’ll try to improve.

Why? Because I want to be

president for four years, and then, if I manage

it, for the next four years as well. But in order

to be re-elected, I need

to listen to criticism. I want to be

president, and I promise you that I will be

the kind of president who, after four years

in office, will come back here to this

stage again and will stand before you

to report back,

will speak before you.

without any preparation and without any

censorship. How many other

candidates are there like that? Who else would come here to you?

There was that Stanisyuganov standing there,

Yevlinsky,

Zhirik

was here.

He was good,

Putin.

In a normal country—the kind we will turn

Russia into—candidates will be

obliged to do this, because public

opinion will be such that, man, if you

didn’t come, didn’t speak, and didn’t answer

questions—pleasant or unpleasant—you

can never win, anywhere. Right?

If you didn’t take part in debates, then

goodbye. You shouldn’t be involved in

politics at all if you’re afraid of debate.

What business do you have getting into it?

Find another job if you’re afraid.

I’m not afraid, I do this work, and

that’s why I will always seek your

support and will always listen

to your criticism. Question:

what will relations be like in for-

eign policy? Will there be a thaw with

the West?

Foreign policy.

First, we will stop all wars, overt and

covert.

We don’t need them. Uh,

they’re expensive,

they make us poorer.

Second, we will be on friendly terms with everyone,

because that brings in money. Third, and

most importantly, you could say this is

Alexei Navalny’s foreign-policy creed.

I will stop forgiving debts.

I will stop

financing all this Aleppo, all this

Palmyra. I love them all. But listen,

today I read the news that President

Putin said that Russia, through Gazprom,

will invest 100 billion rubles in gas infrastructure

in Kyrgyzstan.

Forty percent of Russia has no gas infrastructure.

Here, your rate of gas access is lower

than the national average. Why are we spending

money for Kyrgyzstan?

Who here has a dacha, raise your hands.

Well, your parents—tell me, please,

is it easy to get a dacha connected to gas?

Impossible. And how much does it cost?

About how much does it cost?

A lot.

rubles.

And you have to wait, too,

let's just say, an insane amount of money. It costs

more than anyone has.

It's impossible. Entire settlements aren't even

connected to gas. Look, we're allocating 40

100 billion rubles to Kyrgyzstan. And three weeks ago

the governor of Tomsk Region ceremonially opened a

street standpipe

for water.

Great. Just great. We gave money to

Venezuela, we gave it to Mozambique, we

gave it to Cuba, and then we take a bucket, go

to that standpipe, fill it with water, and

carry it home.

That will not happen under President

Navalny. So we will be on good terms with all

countries, we will trade with them, we

will work with them, but this is our money, this is

our citizens' money. So,

please return it, and we will not give any more

because we simply cannot afford it.

Next question.

Let's take this one

the question from the very edge.

What should we do as voters

to at least get you registered?

Do you understand?

Excellent question.

For you to get me

registered, you as voters

need to say:

"We demand the registration of Alexei

Navalny." You need to say this to yourselves, you

need to write it on social media, you

need to say it to friends, acquaintances,

relatives. This is not a naive approach.

It's not some kind of nonsense. It's not like

nothing depends on me.

This government is afraid of public opinion.

No matter how much they puff themselves up, in essence,

they always follow the polling. Here they

checked here, in Svetlovsk Region, and

realized that if we mess around with the election,

well, everyone will be unhappy. Ten percent

of people will boycott it, but overall

it'll pass.

And it worked. So we need to make it so

that in the very next poll they

conduct, they understand: it won't work. No one

will go to these elections. Guys,

we don't have television, we don't have big newspapers.

But you have something far more

powerful. Every single person, therefore, is a

super-unit of campaigning. We must create

such a mood in society that they

understand: he has to be registered. Yes, there will

be problems, yes, he will demand airtime in

debates, yes, he will expose

corrupt deals, yes, he will be the kind of

candidate who is not afraid to come on

and make it personal, but he still must be

registered, because otherwise it will

be worse. I'll tell you honestly,

I don't have some cunning plan, I don't have a Plan B, I don't have

any grand concept. Basically, all

I have is your support. You

are financing this campaign, and you have also

come here. I have acted, and I act, head-on.

I travel from city to city,

gather people, and say: "Guys, let's

demand my registration."

If I can travel to enough places,

if I can convince enough of you to spend

your time on this, then we will achieve

what we need, and then we will also

win." Next question.

Cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency. Do you have a position on it? Go ahead.

Cryptocurrency. An interesting thing. Well, it existed

—cryptocurrency existed, and that was that. And then suddenly our

authorities got all concerned about it.

It needs to be regulated, it needs to be

banned, it needs to be allowed, it needs to

be licensed. My position on

cryptocurrency: leave it alone. Don't

stick your nose in. The state should not

be involved there at all. The state has

an ordinary currency called the Russian

ruble. It should be dealing with that

currency and not wasting time on nonsense like

regulating cryptocurrency. It is a

complex market, and for many people an incomprehensible one,

but it definitely does not need any kind of

regulation. Now

let's take a question from over here next.

Good evening.

We're very glad to see you. At the very

beginning of your speech today, you mentioned

that the region ranks first

in some negative indicator. And right now

there is no adequate treatment in Russia.

That is, we are being treated

with some kind of third-generation

drugs. Tell me, can this issue

be solved at all?

We conducted an investigation specifically into

the medications that are given

to HIV-positive people in order to

prolong their lives. As you know, for now

they cannot be cured, but in the West these

people live for decades.

In fact, anyone in Russia

is living amid what is effectively an AIDS and HIV epidemic. Therefore,

anyone could become infected tomorrow at a

dentist's office, somewhere else,

or through ordinary sexual contact. This

is truly a problem for everyone. African-level

rates. So, we conducted

an investigation and found that

Government agencies buy these

medicines at three times their actual

cost. So once again we return to the

issue of corruption. These medicines

exist, and they are used effectively in all

Western countries. All we need

to do now is establish basic

oversight so that people stop stealing.

And there will be enough of these medicines

to, well, provide them at low cost

to everyone infected,

which is, essentially,

the only currently available

program for humanity. There was a question about pensions.

A question.

Please tell me, do pensions

in any way match the subsistence minimum?

Not at all. And do you know what our government proposed yesterday

to solve

this problem? Look,

the problem is that

the consumer basket, its cost,

is rising, while pensions are not. And yesterday our

clever, crafty government came up with

a way to deal with it. It said: "We

are freezing the cost of the consumer

basket".

Well, prices are rising, but we will not pay

attention to that. We will freeze it, and it will

look as though pensions are adequate. So,

first.

I will stop lying and saying that this

poverty-level amount that is called

the consumer basket is real; we

will set a proper subsistence

minimum. Second, I will make

all these

wonderful Gazproms of ours finance the pension fund.

Rosneft, Norilsk Nickel, and all

the rest. They do not pay dividends,

despite being state-owned companies. They

do not pay proper taxes.

Look at the taxation of

American oil companies and ours.

They pay nothing. There are calculations, and

our program includes calculations showing that

when we make state corporations pay

proper dividends and taxes, we will

have enough money

to raise pensions to the real

subsistence minimum. And we will definitely do

that. The money exists. And our

government is simply lying when

it tells us to hang in there while taking the money

for itself. Question. Alexei, sit with

us, a question.

Alexei, what will you do about

the inefficiency of the Russian army,

defense spending, and mandatory

conscription? Thank you.

Conscription?

For many people this is a pressing issue.

So, on conscription my position

is simple.

Conscription is harmful. It should be abolished.

Conscription.

Conscription in Russia has turned into a tax on

the poor. Because which regions do not

send people to serve in the army? The North

Caucasus and Moscow. Because everyone there has the money

to buy their way out. People do not go

from wealthy cities. From villages, from

small towns, low-income people

are swept into the army. And these people and their families

lose even more income. We now have,

and in fact have had since 2005,

calculations showing that since 2005, in

the Russian budget, taking commodity prices into account,

there has been enough money

to abolish conscription and move to a

professional army. A professional

army is always better. They receive proper

salaries, they can properly

use complex weapons systems. And we do not

need to draft these

poor, awkward schoolboys right after graduation,

who get beaten there, forced to build

summer houses, and pulled out of normal life for a year.

There is no point in that. So we will abolish

conscription.

Question.

Alexei.

Please tell us, how do you

envision the process of changing the elites in

the country? Will the current ones leave peacefully?

How

Of course they do not want to leave peacefully,

but on the other hand, you understand,

just imagine,

do you really think officials will literally

—

come running at you here with weapons in their hands

to fight everyone?

Of course not. If there is

political will, these elites will be

replaced. It is not such a difficult task. In fact, not

that many people actually need to be

removed from power. The main tool

through which we will sift the entire

bureaucratic apparatus and its leadership, is

illicit enrichment. As I said, we compare

your income with your property. If it does not

match, welcome

to the investigator. The door is open

for a search warrant.

That is all. That is how we will run everything through

this sieve and filter out most of the brazen crooks

in the country. The second sieve is the people

who made unlawful decisions. Those

judges who had people arrested for

coming to a rally. Those judges

who put someone on trial for likes or

posts will themselves go on trial.

Officials who made those

decisions will end up in the dock. There is

really not much to think about here.

They violated current

law. And therefore

under the law, we will confidently put them in prison.

We’ll jail them, send them where they belong. And in this way

through these two filters

the state apparatus, its upper ranks,

will be changed by 80%. And in our country

there are enough people who

are ready to take part in public administration

properly. After all, officials’ salaries, as

you know, are quite high, right?

Back in the 1990s, we used to say:

"Well, officials are so poor, they always

take bribes." Now officials aren’t poor,

they have high salaries, and they can

work honestly for those high salaries,

if we make them do so, if from the

top there is such an instruction. Next question.

Hello, Alexei Andvich. So, you

have repeatedly spoken today about when we

and how we will get off the oil-and-gas needle.

When and how will we get off the oil-and-gas

needle? That’s a very good question, because

our government, every year,

has been saying for 18 years in a row that the goal for

the next year is to get off the oil-and-gas

needle.

All that needs to be done for this

is to actually start doing it.

First, free all other business

from endless regulation,

reduce payroll taxes, because

they crush any business. It’s practically impossible to make money from anything

other than oil and gas

in real terms. It’s hard, because you hire

a person, pay them a salary, and then you

still have to pay another 43% on top in taxes.

No one can sustain that. No business in

the country can develop under those conditions. Therefore

we must remove excessive regulation

from all business, give it freedom,

and get rid of these endless inspections. We

must invest in human

capital, as I already said,

healthcare and education. And this is

a standard, normal path, nothing unique

about it. All countries that

diversified their economies did it

this way. Ruslan, pass the question over here. That person

has been holding up a backpack, their arms are probably

about to fall off. Yes, thank you very much,

Alexei. Two short questions. One

There are a lot of people waiting. Pick the main one.

All right, fine. In 2005, in Ukraine

the Orange Revolution took place, when against a backdrop of

similar democratic

protests there was also a popular candidate for

president, Viktor Yushchenko, who

relied on the people, on democracy, on

liberalism. And the people elected him, came out

against the corrupt regime. But then

the president spent five years in power and left with 5%

support. Why did that happen, and could

the same happen to you?

Well done.

Excellent question.

The Ukrainian revolution—the first, second,

third, however many they’ve had—

was ruined by oliga-

oligarchs, who controlled politicians,

who bought politicians, who

corrupted them. New people come in, and they

still buy them all off. They buy up

newspapers, buy up television, and

manipulate everything. Our program contains

clear measures that will make it possible to

avoid this.

First.

We will introduce a compensatory tax on the results of

privatization. Do you consider privatization

fair?

It is obviously unfair. We cannot

nationalize everything overnight,

but we will impose a serious tax on

those who privatized things like

Norilsk Nickel

and various other Ural enterprises. They will

have to pay the difference between the real

market price and the price at which they

bought them. Second, we will ban oligarchs

from owning mass media outlets,

because they manipulate public

opinion.

Third.

Most importantly, as I already said,

we will introduce the institution of independent

prosecutors who will be able to investigate

me. We will introduce a procedure under which,

if I become bad, corrupt,

right now it seems to me, well, I mean,

I know myself, I’m a great guy, I will be

an honest president. Well, it seems that way,

right? But maybe not. Power corrupts

any person. Therefore there must be

a main restraint. If you become bad,

you can be easily removed from power. If you become

bad, right? Protests take place across the country.

Your party loses. In the

next term, goodbye. You are

impeached. You end up in the defendant’s

dock. You go to prison.

You have no immunity. The main thing

that must be done so that there is no

usurpation of power, so that there is no

failure of government like in

Ukraine, is to create such a system

of checks and balances. If I become

bad, then you remove me from power.

That’s how it will work. Next

question. I want to ask you a question—please answer

it. There is no answer here now. Will you stop the mass

closure of rural schools across the country?

Excellent question.

An excellent question and a huge, monstrous

problem. As you know, look at the

chart of school closures—not only rural schools,

but also in small towns. They are simply

closing by the dozens, by the hundreds

every day. In my view, as I have already

said, and I will repeat, this is

is foolish, because today it costs

a kopeck, and tomorrow it will bring in a ruble.

Education

for me is not an expense item in the budget.

It is the part of the budget on which we

make money. Once again, because we

closed the school in this village, a person could not

even complete eight grades, and he

could not get a decent job.

He earns a lower salary, he pays

less in taxes. This is my deep

conviction, and the experience of every country shows it. Investing

in education

is more profitable than investing in any other sector.

You just need to look ahead not 2

years,

but 22 years. If we are thinking about the future

of our children, then of course we need to continue

funding education. And the money for

that exists.

A question.

A question about the law on responsible

treatment of animals. They still cannot

pass it today. When you become

president, will you help ensure the passage

of this law? Thank you.

Thank you.

A question about the law on animal cruelty.

I honestly do not understand what the problem with it is.

I really do not understand why

for years we have been unable to pass it. We

can see that public opinion is entirely

on the side of this law. Every time

we see some monstrous footage

of animal abusers torturing animals, the entire

internet rises to defend them. Right? And

without a doubt, 95%

of Russians demand this law, yet it

is obvious. We need a law protecting the rights

of animals. It has been drafted many times, and it

will be passed immediately, because it

has public support. I do not understand why it has not

been adopted yet. There is no

rational explanation for it.

Hello, a question.

Yes, what do you think—these Rotenbergs and all

the others moved huge amounts of money abroad; how do we

get it back into the country so that it

works here, so that it is ours again?

Excellent question, probably a good one

to end our meeting on, otherwise

the police are probably already getting nervous. We

have run over time.

How will we make the Rotenbergs and all

the other Timchenkos,

Sechins, Roldugins, all these hundreds

of billions of dollars bring it back?

We have reached the point where

a month ago Western economists and

Western experts told us that,

dear Russians, 80% of your GDP

is sitting offshore. Will you do

something about it? The Russian government

pretends not to notice any of this.

Can we bring this money back? I am sure

and I know that we can. Many countries

have done it.

Switzerland, France, and all the others—they

have returned, for example, the money of African

dictators that had been taken out of

their countries. But how does it work in our case now?

I myself sent requests to the Swiss

prosecutor's office regarding money that

was moved abroad by the sons of Prosecutor General Chaika.

We write to them, and the Swiss reply:

"Guys, we would be glad to start

an investigation and return the money, but for

that we need the consent of your prosecutor's office."

"It has to recognize this as a crime." And

your prosecutor's office, where by some

amazing coincidence the prosecutor general

has the same last name as the person

who stole the money, says: "No,

no, no, no, no, no, no." Artyom

Chaika, Igor Chaika, are the most honest people, and

they stole nothing, so there is nothing

to return. I will become president

and to all these countries—Liechtenstein,

Luxembourg,

Panama, Cyprus, Switzerland—we will send not just

requests, we will send our own people,

who under international

law will obtain these banking

documents, and we will bring back to Russia

a significant amount of the money that

was stolen from us. It can be done. We

will do it. When they tell us that this is

impossible,

that is a complete lie—it is the job of the Russian

authorities to return to Russia what was stolen.

Right.

Are you setting me that task?

Yes.

Then Alexei Navalny will carry it out

when he becomes president. I will do it.

I will adopt all those obvious, simple,

quite straightforward laws that need to be adopted.

Look, today we discussed

many different things. But did I really

tell you anything fundamentally new? Probably not,

because it is all plain to see.

Russia simply needs a normal,

conscientious president who does not

promise miracles and will not perform miracles, but

will simply do his job properly,

do his job honestly.

Surely at some point in

Russia's history there must be a normal, honest

president.

I want to be that kind of president.

That is my political ambition. I want

to become that person. I promise I will not let you down.

Do you want someone like that? Yes.

I will be that person. And if I stop being

honest, you will remove me from office.

Promise me that you will remove me from

office when I stop being that way.

I will be afraid of you, and I will remain honest.

Thank you very much, dear friends.

Thank you very much.

Great meeting, absolutely amazing. Thank you

so much. You’re the best. I’m leaving

here for Omsk, realizing how many of us there are and

that we can defeat all these crooks

and thieves. Russia will be free.

Thank you, guys.

hold on,

over here.

They’re asking questions over there for now.

Lyokha, don’t get too lost.

Who took a photo? Step back.

They’re asking questions over there, over there. All my

statements

the opposite

very understandable, условно кото

disagreements

the main thing

preparation, let’s proceed to the questions.

Let’s get ready.

He’s leaving.

Just hold on to me, that’s all.

Thank you very much.

Hello.

I think, right now

Vova,

Vova, you’re an unfair person.

Vladimir,

Vova, hi, Vov.

Vova,

would you like to? Yuri from the Chelyabinsk headquarters. From

Chelyabinsk

Hi. What don’t you like?

You’d have taken a place in the sun.

You would’ve been a staff member. I don’t know. Lyokha

don’t leave.

Through connections, sure, damn it. What are you talking about? What kind of

payment? Red Russia.

But it doesn’t exist now, so it’s possible. So

Oleg, hi.

Friends, please organize yourselves somehow so that

people can get out of Presnya.

What is it? I was with us until the end. Friends,

please clear some space for the people who

with cards

I still didn’t understand what they said there.

May I, I don’t know

for the children for now.

So, if you’re looking at the stage, I’m on the

left

And he’s standing right over there, see?

for rubber

ordering meat

Absolutely don’t

know.

I you