Alexei Navalny’s meeting with voters in Moscow’s Kotlovka District

Hello, please come a little closer.

Please, have a seat, we still have some free

seats. Thank you so much for coming.

I understand that you probably have plenty of other things to do on a Sunday morning,

but nevertheless, here we are.

You came here to attend

this meeting, and for us that is very important,

because a very large part of

our election campaign is built around

meetings like this. I hold three of them

every weekday and five meetings every

weekend, because both I and my team,

which is running in this election with me, we

truly believe that any candidate

is obliged to hold meetings like this. A

person cannot want to become mayor, cannot

be an incumbent mayor, cannot run

in an election, cannot seek

power, if he does not meet with

people like this. And everyone must have the

opportunity during an election to always

meet the candidate in person,

talk to him, ask him questions—comfortable,

uncomfortable, any kind. First I wanted

to say perhaps a few words about

myself.

I am 37 years old. For the last 17 years I have lived in

the Maryino district with my wife and two children. In

that sense, I have a completely ordinary

family. My son goes to

an ordinary local kindergarten, and my daughter

studies at an ordinary local

school. By profession I am a lawyer. I have two

higher education degrees. I graduated from

the law faculty of the University

of Peoples' Friendship and the Financial Academy

under the Government of the Russian

Federation. I was born in a military

family and traveled around various military

towns. My parents still live in

one of the military towns outside

Moscow. If you have followed my

activities, or at least heard something about them

over the last few years, then you

probably know that I am that very

minority shareholder who gives no peace to

Gazprom, Rosneft, and all those

officials and corporations of ours. You have probably

heard that I created the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF),

which is engaged in

investigating

corruption.

And we constantly demand that criminal cases be opened

against these people who are

half officials, half

businessmen. We are constantly exposing their

corruption schemes, and so on. And I am

very often asked why I do this.

And every single meeting we hold, I

begin by answering that question, because

once I answer it, perhaps it will become clearer to all of you

why I am so focused on this

issue that is happening, that we all

know about, and which has an enormous

scale. I applied it to myself, and I will explain it with

simple

examples. Over the last 15 years, over these

fat Putin years, Russia from the sale

of oil and gas received approximately 3

trillion dollars. That is an enormous sum

that is very hard for us to imagine. Well,

because it is simply too large

for any person to fully grasp, but

we can break it down per person, for each

one of us. From this oil and gas wealth,

each of us gets about $50,000, or

about a million rubles, each of us from

the oil and gas sold to the West

is owed about a million rubles. So for my

family of six, that is 6 million

rubles, and I constantly ask myself:

where are these 6 million rubles of mine that

I am owed? I understand that they cannot be taken

as cash, but I would like to understand what

they have translated into. I see many

older people sitting here; you

remember very well how the Soviet Union

also received a lot of money from selling

oil, primarily in the Brezhnev era

(under Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet leader), but we understand where that money was spent.

We can argue about whether it was spent well

or badly, but we know for certain

where it went. We can turn

our heads and see the residential districts that

were built, and where apartments

were handed out for free back then. We see that

they built things; we saw the space

industry, they built railroads,

they built enormous

projects, they held the Olympics, and so on and so

forth. They built a gigantic army, they supported

African countries, they supported

Latin American countries, and so on.

And yet, in general, less money came into the Soviet

Union then than is coming into

Russia now, and I keep asking myself

this question: the money that we

have received now—where is it? Where are the railroads?

We build

fewer roads in a year than China does in

a week. Where is the space industry

that belongs to me and to you from these petrodollars? I see

space rockets falling. Where is

the infrastructure? Where are the new residential districts?

If new residential districts are being built, then

the apartments in them are sold; it is commercial

development. Where is our education,

our healthcare? I do not see any of it. I

understand that

I

cannot see where all of it went. It could not

have simply evaporated, and I think that

you, like me, have an answer to the question

of where it all went, because we

look at the list of billionaires in 2000

In that year, Russia had dollar-denominated

billionaires; in 2000 there were [so many] people, and

now there are 96 of them. It seems like nothing is being

built, nothing is being produced,

mil

lion [things] are being bought by Russian

officials. Our Russian officials

even at the lower levels live completely

open lives. These dollar-denominated

millionaires—and I understand: there they are. Where are

my 6 million rubles, and there is your half a million

per person that is supposedly due to you from

oil and gas revenues? These people simply took it.

All these people. That is why I

do this—because they robbed me.

It is as if they had reached into my

bag on a trolleybus—it is exactly the same thing.

When I see a situation in which

the main trader of Russian oil—who do

you think is selling it? Who is the main

trader overall? Who is the main seller

of Russian oil? Do you think it is

some state-owned enterprise? No.

The main trader of Russian oil is

a friend of Vladimir Putin who gave up

his Russian

citizenship and lives in Switzerland.

He trades our oil—my oil and your oil—

became a billionaire from it, and I understand

that he robbed me personally. I take this

very personally, and that is why toward

these people I

make my accusations completely openly.

Everyone knows about it.

They know.

I believe it is Timchenko and all

those Rotenbergs and all the other friends

and classmates who suddenly became

billionaires—they robbed me personally, and

that is why I am standing here on this stage before

you as a candidate for mayor of Moscow, first and

foremost because I am the most ordinary

Muscovite, facing the same

problems as you, and running in the election

because I want to solve these problems for

myself, for my family, and for you. I am standing on

this stage and telling you that I want to be

mayor of Moscow in order, for example, to

solve the problems of

housing and коммунal services (public utilities), simply because for my apartment in a

panel apartment block I receive a bill

for 9,500 rubles, and I understand that

that cannot be right. And this bill

keeps increasing all the time. This

amount of services is not being provided to me for such a sum,

and it just keeps growing and

growing. I think that here in the

Kotlovka district this is especially clear to you,

because you had that case—when I

was preparing for this meeting, I carefully

studied the material about your district, and I know

that in your district last year there was

an official from Kotlovka caught after 15 million rubles

allocated for beautification were transferred

to an intermediary company, and the money disappeared.

And they did not even open a criminal case. And

we pay for all of this in our utility bills.

I want to become the mayor who will carry out

an audit of tariffs, an audit of utility services, and

then we will all see that in this

piece of paper there are 9

rubles

for annual sponsorship aid to United Russia (the ruling political party),

200 million rubles are included as so-called investment

components, some supposedly planned construction projects

that nobody is actually carrying out. I

see that the only result of these

bills is that the head of the district administration

becomes

a millionaire. Maybe about

a month ago

they removed from office the head of the district where

I live, the head of the Maryino district. He was removed because

his wife, driving an SUV, ran into

pedestrians. It was all caught on video, and

that is why he was fired. You are nodding your head—

you saw it on television. But what kind of SUV was it?

You saw a Range Rover with the license plate

999. Stolen money bought that fancy plate, stolen money. You

know, I watched that report, and I also

thought something strange was going on with

this district head, because before that he had been

head of the district administration in the

Nekrasovka district, then head of the district administration in

the Lyublino district, then in my district, Maryino. That

is, he has spent his whole life in municipal

service. He has, generally speaking, a fairly large

salary, but nevertheless his

official income in no way allows him

to live that kind of life. Based on his official income,

he ought to live more modestly than I do,

but I can see that compared with me he

simply lives in absolute luxury.

He is an open dollar millionaire, and I do not

want to receive a payment notice from which

it is obvious that I am paying for his wife's

SUV. That is why I am running for mayor. I want to change this.

I am standing here on this stage before you because

I am 37 years old, and I too sometimes

go to the local clinic. I do not, unlike those on

Rublyovka (an elite, wealthy area near Moscow), live there—I live in Maryino and go to

an ordinary neighborhood clinic. And my wife

goes to an ordinary children's clinic with

the children. You can show me as many

television reports as you like about

this electronic appointment system—I have

tried again and again to book through the electronic

registration system, the electronic

reception desk—it is impossible to get an appointment.

So show me as many of these

reports as you want about how wonderfully everything works,

about what marvelous healthcare we have in

Moscow—I know that is not true, because

I have experienced it firsthand. I am running for

mayor in order to change the situation, and

looking at Moscow's budget, I understand

that Moscow allocates for

healthcare far more money than

than for any other citizen of Russia, well,

what do you think? Just guess, by how much

more

is spent on healthcare than on any

other citizen of Russia? By how much?

per

50? By

100? Three times more, three times more. I

will now give you the absolute figures. We will also

three times more is allocated for a Muscovite

than for any other citizen of Russia.

With

you wanted practical figures, so I’m telling you:

for outpatient clinic care

for every person sitting here,

for every Muscovite, 20,000 rubles a year are allocated

that means for my family of four

people, for example, 80,000 rubles a year. But here’s my

question to those present: please raise your hand

if you have been to your local district

clinic in the past

year. All right, I see. And who would

clinic

... I want to dwell on this because I want

to solve this problem, because a lot of money

is being allocated. I want to become a mayor

who will finally hire general practitioners,

internists, and so on, who

in 90% of cases are the doctors Muscovites actually need,

the most essential doctors. I will not

keep endlessly buying these scanners

and carrying out major

equipment purchases. Sobyanin likes

to declare that in terms of the number of

scanners, for example, we have surpassed all

European countries. But what good are these

scanners to me? I, for example, tried to get an MRI

done. I can see you’re all immediately

nodding — everyone knows that in theory there are plenty of scanners,

but just go and try

to get an MRI — it’s very difficult. And if

you go for a private MRI, you’ll have to pay

60,000 rubles. There are lots of scanners, but people

who are dealing with all this

cancer patients, they know that, well,

it’s a nightmare. We have no prevention,

no early detection, no effective treatment — but we do have

scanners. And in the program they write to me:

"Moscow has been given a scanner, I’ve been given

a scanner." If it’s impossible to get a scan

and people are not being treated, I want

to become the mayor who will make sure

that this money actually works. I understand how

to do it. I

... for me this is absolutely not an empty

phrase. Here, when I was once again

preparing, yes, I learned that last year

the whole district was in an uproar because here

a citizen of Tajikistan was caught

who had raped

a minor. I see the crime statistics

showing that crime is rising, and in your

district it is rising at an accelerated

rate. And where I live it’s the same, even worse.

In Maryino, women are afraid

to leave their apartment building entrance in the evening. So I want to solve

the migration problem, because it concerns

me and my wife.

I personally know people in my building whose

bags get snatched in the evening, and I

understand that migrants come to Moscow not

because there are jobs here, but

because it is profitable for the city. That is because

who is the main employer of migrants?

City organizations. Here’s a question: have you

surely all asked — who has asked their

janitor what his salary is?

How much? I heard

10

thousand.

[applause]

... and so on. I am telling you,

my dear beloved residents of the

Kotlovka district, that according to official standards,

if you even read interviews with Biryukov

and Sobyanin, you will learn that janitors

supposedly in Moscow do not earn less

than 30,000

rubles. But I asked my own janitor,

and all the real, actual janitors we

talk to will all tell you: 8, 9,

10, 15, well, 18,000 rubles. And all of Moscow knows

that these migrants are brought here because

they can be kept here in conditions like slaves

and 10,000 rubles can be collected from each of them

and this creates a colossal flow

of cash — hundreds of millions of rubles

that gets kicked up to the management

company, to the housing services, to the district administration, and so

on. And this river of money

flows off somewhere, while all we get

unfortunately is the rape of

minors, we get only

crime connected with this. I very much want

to solve this problem. It worries me, it

poisons my life. I know all these problems

not because someone brought a report

to my mansion on Rublyovka (an elite, wealthy area near Moscow), but because I have been dealing with

these problems for 17 years.

I am standing here because

that

... trillion rubles; in size it is second only to

the budget of New York. So, friends, we must

understand very clearly that we live in

one of the richest cities in the world. I mean,

in theory, there is an enormous amount of money

in the budget. In prosperous

European cities there is nothing even close to this

amount of money. With the money that

exists in the Moscow budget, we could have

quality education, excellent

healthcare, a small number of

traffic jams, and excellent development of

public transport. But for some reason we

do not have that. Instead, we have a different situation in which

all the giant, for example,

transport interchanges are built not because

they help fight traffic jams, but because

because they make it very easy to steal money,

very easy. The nearest one here is

transport infrastructure.

At the same time, all transport experts

say that it costs twice as much as

it should cost—twice as much.

Just think: on a single construction project

they will steal 3 billion rubles, and to

provide the Southern Administrative District

with additional outpatient clinics, you need less money

than they will steal on one

construction

project. We have everything we need for

Moscow to become a wonderful,

prosperous city. We just lack

one very important thing: faith in

ourselves. For some reason, we think—I hear this very often

at meetings like this—that nothing

can be changed. Well, we all understand that, we

know everything, and we can explain it all ourselves, and

we can get up on this stage and talk about

corruption—but nothing can be changed anyway.

They’ll somehow cheat us anyway, the elections

will be rigged, and on television they’ll

deceive us. I wouldn’t have come up on this stage

if I didn’t believe things can be changed. I do not

think we are the stupidest. I do not think

that we are somehow cursed or doomed.

We can change everything. We just need

to believe that power is given by the people themselves—not

the election commission, not Churov (former head of Russia’s Central Election Commission), not

the crooks in your election commission.

Power is given by the people, and we take it ourselves. In Moscow,

in order to elect a new mayor, given the turnout,

we need about a million people—just

about a million people.

Moscow has those million people

who know everything, who understand everything,

who have enough education,

enough life experience simply to

tell one thing from another. It’s just that

somehow we don’t believe, and we don’t go to the polls.

Why go vote? It’s all

meaningless anyway. But it all does matter. These

people stay in power and

rob us every single day—not because

they forced us to, and not because

there are millions of them.

They understand as well as we do—I’m saying, they’re people

just like us. These crooks stay in power

because we allow them to

remain in power. We can come to

the elections and choose a different government—a government like this,

a government that considers it its

duty to meet people in courtyards and

talk to them. Through meetings like these,

meetings,

every day I will

personally speak like this with

60,000 or 70,000 people. Sixty or

70,000 people—that is a tremendous force. We

can reach millions of people,

tell them that there is another

candidate, that there is a sound program, that there is

a program prepared by the best

specialists. We have everything we need

to solve our problems. We just need

to wake up just once and truly

make this government change, and then we

will build the city in which we will

live with pleasure—along with our children and our grandchildren.

But I have been talking for a long time now about what interests me.

Now let’s talk about

what interests you. I am ready to answer

your questions.

[applause]

Thank you. As for the team—

that’s an excellent question, thank you very much. What matters here

above all are the principles for forming a team.

First and foremost. But if I

became mayor, would you want me to build a team out of my

former relatives? That is what is happening now.

And my former classmates?

No? And my former university friends, like now?

Right now, we have a government of old university friends.

Look: judges, prosecutors,

the Investigative Committee, state companies, Gazprom,

Rosneft—everywhere you look, it’s classmates

and university friends, the Ozero cooperative (a dacha association linked to Putin’s inner circle). Yes, a dacha

cooperative. Is that what you want from me? No,

you do not. So the main thing is: I am not now

going to appoint ministers from this stage.

I am talking about the principles

of appointment

of people. I intend to become

the one who sets such rules of the game for

personnel decisions under which

all officials know that stealing is difficult,

stealing is dangerous; if you are suspected of

stealing, you are immediately fired; if you are

caught stealing, you are immediately

sent to prison. This is a very important principle, and it is not

theoretical. I will simply give you

an example after which you will understand that

declaring principles publicly is

very important. Please remind me:

what is the biggest corruption case in Russia right now?

in Russia?

Serdyukov. Please remind me:

has Serdyukov been formally charged?

No. And please remind me:

what is happening with Vasilyeva?

Is she in pretrial detention?

No, she goes shopping while under

house arrest. She is given three hours a day

for walks, and she is regularly

photographed buying jewelry

somewhere in stores. Well,

the person made money, so she buys herself bracelets,

rings, and all the rest.

By the way, I want to remind you of one thing

that many people do not understand, and only

lawyers do. This house arrest

is formally a restriction of freedom, and it

will later be counted at a rate of one day for two, and if she

is sentenced, for example, to two years of actual

prison time, she will be released immediately because she

will be considered to have already served a year under house arrest.

with arrests. Well, people have sort of already resigned themselves to it.

And that's it. And it's already time to

come out and say this directly to the authorities.

Like this: steal, skim off the top,

grab what you can, tear it all apart completely in the open.

The main thing is political loyalty.

Hang the right portraits on the wall and

kick back your share.

All right, another example—you've probably heard

about that teacher, Ilya

Farber. For some dubious and clearly unproven

embezzlement charge, they pinned 132,000 rubles on him

and gave him 7 years in a maximum-security penal colony.

And a month ago, we all saw

on television the trial of Iosif Khanov,

the former deputy prefect of the Eastern District.

For embezzlement of 360 million rubles, proven and admitted by him,

how much did he get? Four years

suspended. You yourselves tell me all this.

Everyone knows it. I'm not revealing any secrets here.

This is

completely

absurd. I want there to be different principles

of governance instead, principles that

[applause]

were declared in his city. Despite

the fact that Chinese people live there—people

quite prone to corruption, as he put it—he

said: in order to defeat corruption,

I jailed half my friends. I am running

to become mayor and

to establish this: whether you're my friend or whatever else, if you

did wrong and got caught, you'll go to jail, and I

will absolutely do it. I proved in my

Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) that I can

build teams. Not a single one—not

a single person who works for me now

did I know beforehand, but I have

people working for me who all graduated with honors.

Everyone works impeccably. For each

employee on the RosPil project, which

fights corruption in public procurement, we have

10 billion rubles' worth of corrupt

tenders canceled. Everyone works like crazy because

principle matters.

Vova, excellent question: if you became mayor, wouldn't

this system break you? Wouldn't you yourself become

the same?

[applause]

[music]

corrupt. The important thing is not that I would

stand here and tell you, I promise you, residents

of Kotlovka, if I become mayor, I won't become

corrupt. That's nonsense—everyone promises you

the same thing. So I promise

something else: my first steps will be to create

a system of power where you will immediately see if I

become corrupt, and you'll be able to

throw me out at once if I become

corrupt. I gave the example of that

company here in your district that

received 15 million rubles for landscaping

and disappeared, and no one can be

held accountable because

it's unclear who owns that company.

When I become

mayor, every ultimate recipient

of state or city

funds will be known. Right now, if you go and

check all your district contracts, you'll

see that they are won without competition by

companies owned by offshore

entities—that is, by who knows whom. Well,

actually, we do know.

We know that behind all these firms stand the husband

of the district head, the prefect's son, and so on, but

all of it is hidden, and nothing can be done about it.

I will make sure that every

kopeck is traceable, so we know exactly which

individual receives it. And if I

turn bad in six months or a year

and want to slip my relatives into

some position, you'll see it immediately. I want, in

principle, to reform the system of power so

that all power is not concentrated in one office,

so that the mayor does not have that enormous

amount of power that allows him

to be corrupt and pushes him

toward corruption.

Because, look, here's an excellent example:

Moscow's budget is 1.6 trillion rubles.

What percentage of that money do you think

out of that 1.6 trillion is distributed at the

grassroots level, where your local

deputies work,

municipalities—the people who

directly

deal with what is happening on the ground?

[music]

Any

ideas? Someone says 10? Who knows?

1%. Out of 1.6 trillion, 1%.

is distributed

at that level. In no country in the world does that

work, and it cannot

work in Moscow either. Who oversees it? Great question.

Who oversees it? No one.

No one can oversee it, because

Moscow has a population of 15 million people.

Moscow's population is larger than that of

an average-sized country, and no one

can keep track of things if everything is being

all

distributed from a single office.

This

must be transferred to the grassroots level,

where it will be overseen—by

you, by your local

deputies, and so on. I had

an amazing meeting with your neighbors in

the Zyuzino district, at exactly this kind of

stadium. I keep bringing up

this example.

A local deputy came to that meeting. By the way,

he is here now—Konstantin Yankauskas.

He showed

that there was a fence, basketball hoops, and

a lot of other equipment, and I and everyone else

The rest of us residents stood there and saw that

it was just a bare playground, there was nothing there, but

the acceptance certificates say that everything is there and that

everything has been paid for, and the officials say: you’re not

looking properly—look over there at the nonexistent gates

there must be something wrong with your eyesight, look here

at the paper—the paper says they exist

the gates. I don’t want to give you

some kind of slogan; I want a system in which everything will be transparent, a system in which

residents can immediately see what is supposed to

be built, how much money it is supposed to

be built for, and if it isn’t built the way it

should be, then any local deputy immediately

opens a criminal case against those who

stole those several million

rubles from a site like this. That’s why the system

has to be changed. We need a system in which

I will not be able to be corrupt

and if I can, then you will

...city. I live in this city and

I face these problems myself, that’s all.

Next.

[music]

Question.

Excellent question. If you became mayor, how would you

fight this hydra, specifically

in the sphere of public utilities

because it seems impossible to

cut it all off there—it’s so

corrupt. They stole those 15 million rubles

allocated for improvements. How exactly? Once again,

let me repeat:

transferring money to a shell company, setting up a com...

uh...

What I’m saying is that I will make it so that

it will be impossible to transfer money

to a shell company whose owners

are unknown to anyone. We will know

the specific individuals who are behind it

and

hold them accountable. I’m saying that if I

become mayor, I will make it so that if you

look out the window and see someone building something, you can

click twice on the internet and find out who

is building it, what they’re building, and with what money

who won the tender, how many workers there are

how many migrant workers may be working there, their migration

cards, and all the acceptance certificates for the

work. I know exactly how, for example,

to save money on public

procurement. Do you know how much money is spent in Moscow

every year on

public procurement? 600 billion rubles.

Of that money, the authorities themselves admit—these are

official figures—that 150 billion rubles a year

...

are skimmed off through public procurement. From you

30,000 rubles are stolen every year. Again, I

calculate that for my family of four, that’s 120,000

rubles just from my family alone.

By the way, at the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF)

we have been dealing with this problem for years. We

legally

as a small nonprofit organization, I have managed

to get corrupt procurement contracts canceled

worth 59 billion rubles. I know exactly which steps and

measures are needed—I have them written out down to the level of

draft laws—what needs to be done so that

those 30,000 rubles are no longer stolen.

The point is that many cities and many

countries have faced problems like this.

Countries have dealt with it, many cities have dealt with it.

Look at South

Korea—in the 1990s it was

a monstrously corrupt country, with

corruption so entrenched that it seemed impossible

to defeat, because people said crooked Koreans

would always remain crooked Koreans.

But no—they started introducing new rules,

and now it is one of the least

corrupt countries. I know exactly how

to fight this. What’s needed is simply

transparency. We need the head of the district administration

to answer to the people, we need

local self-government, and everything must be

absolutely open. Right now, go

and run a simple experiment tomorrow:

find any contract work around here

and try to obtain the documents for it.

Has anyone ever tried to do that?

I have, many times.

It’s impossible. You cannot get them.

You can spend a year trying and still not get the acceptance certificates for the

work. Here, at your site, we

simply have some guys here with me who came along

who specifically monitor

all these various improvement works

and compare how much money was spent with what

was actually built. They came up to me and first

said: on this site, the double

rubber

surface should not be there—they simply wrote off money for it

improperly, and technologically it was done wrong.

It will have to be redone, and already

there are holes near those gates—they cut corners there and

stole money through that.

What’s needed is a mayor who will

simply open all these documents immediately, and then

you who live in the neighboring buildings,

deputies, any concerned people, I don’t know,

even quarrelsome pensioners—they will all start

monitoring the authorities every day.

Once they start monitoring, it will be impossible for us—for them—to steal.

That’s how it works everywhere, and here it will work

the same way. We’re not any stupider than

everyone else. Next question.

Yes, how are we going to fight rising

gasoline prices? Unfortunately, gasoline prices cannot be tackled from the

city level.

That is a federal issue—excise taxes

and so on. My task as mayor is rather to fight

the cost of everything. You know that

Moscow is a very expensive city. In Moscow,

everything essential is very expensive. There are direct

calculations—not mine—made by various

specialists, who say that up to

30% of the cost of any

of a product, in a carton of milk, in a kilogram

of meat, in a liter of gasoline in Moscow, this is

the corruption component, all of it

everywhere, corruption drives up the cost

of any product by 30%, and there is

direct evidence of this. But these

weekend markets, again, while I was

preparing for your meeting here, I looked at

what people are writing about the weekend markets in

your district here. Everyone writes that each

spot costs 2,000 rubles. Formally it's 100

or 200 rubles, but in reality it's sold for

2,000. So do the math: the vendor

paid an additional bribe of 1,800

rubles for the spot, and all of that was built into your

kilogram of meat. That's all. So my

job as mayor is to make sure there are no

these middlemen who take 1,000 rubles here,

1,000 rubles there, 5,000 rubles here, and then we

end up paying for all of it. And I myself pay in exactly the same way

too. My wife buys the same meat at

the same market. I studied in the United States for six months; there

salaries are high, it's a developed country, but

all food products there are twice as cheap. So

how can it be that in Russia, where

low

salaries are low, where not everything is so expensive, all

products cost more

This is an anomaly, and this anomaly is simply

built on corruption. I want to become

mayor in order to solve this, including

for myself—I buy that same meat. Next

question. I think it's starting to rain

please, yes

for a long time, regarding support for large families

in particular, you promised plots for large

families, but some time ago, not long ago, the mayor of

the city of Moscow, on many information portals

and in newspapers, they write that there is no

land in the city

Land for large families—an excellent

question. And before that, please

be quiet, because you know perfectly well that I

am going to ask the audience a question. What do you think:

what benefit in Moscow does a large

family with four

children receive? 3,000

rubles. As I already said, they steal

30,000 rubles from each of us through public procurement, while

the benefit is 3,000 rubles. And with this land, it's

an astonishing situation: ahead of

the next elections, they said, "We will allocate land to all large families,"

and there seems to be plenty of land

indeed—if there's one thing our country has plenty of,

it's land. But they allocate it to no one. I

know this—mothers from large families came to me

and I dealt with this issue myself. Even in

Zelenograd, where there is much more land, it

is not being given out. Now we have New Moscow (the expanded territories of Moscow)

and in fact they are not giving it out, they are not giving it out because

they want to sell it. You understand the logic

of this government. Why did I end up on

this

stage? I know: I do not want to have a government that

wants to make money off everything. And they

will not give you anything for free. These people

didn't give before, and they won't give now. And

people on the waiting list get nothing for free either. So

take this: it's not just large

mothers and their land—it's a broader problem

of waiting lists. Can anyone go online right now

and see who, in what

order, is being allocated an apartment

which waiting-list applicants get them

It's impossible to find out where the waiting-list applicants are, where the

benefit recipients are—it's an absolutely opaque

system. And why? The lists exist, so go ahead

and publish the lists so everyone can

check them. Why? Because

apartments are allocated not to people on the waiting list, but to

some TV host like Vladimir

Solovyov, who gets an apartment as

someone in need on Novoslobodskaya, and is given

the opportunity to buy it there, I think, for 2 million

rubles when the apartment is worth 30 million rubles

Those are your waiting-list applicants. Andrei Malakhov

recently got an apartment on

Kropotkinskaya. That is how officials

take care of one another. I think we should hand out umbrellas

and raincoats for temporary

use. That is why I want to change this government

because the most basic, elementary

transparent things need to be made

truly transparent, and then everything will work

much better. Next question

please. The party that

votes as a minority during the course of

the year

so to speak, our problem is that it will block

the decision—whether it will be the Moscow City Duma. As for

the Moscow City Duma, indeed this is

an astonishing thing: in Moscow everyone knows

that United Russia is hated, and no one confirmed this better

than Sergei Sobyanin himself

who is running from United Russia—well, no,

he is running as an independent candidate, as if

he is a little embarrassed by his own United Russia and

so he is running as an independent. But despite the fact

that everyone hates United Russia, it has in

the Moscow City Duma 95% of the seats

95%, and that really is a major problem

for any mayor. But there are two things

that need to be taken into account. First, the elections

will happen in a year. And second, look

at these deputies: they have all been sitting there

for many years. They were once in Democratic Choice (a 1990s Russian liberal party), and

were great democrats, then they all

joined Our Home Is Russia (a 1990s pro-government party associated with Viktor Chernomyrdin)

then they all joined SPS (Union of Right Forces)

then they joined Fatherland, then they

joined Unity, and finally they

ended up in United Russia. In fact, these are not

really party-based deputies at all

these are, unfortunately, it must be said, simply

greedy opportunists and swindlers who will sit in

any duma, in any party, as long as they get to sit

in deputies' seats. And they will—well, this

may not be a nice way to put it, but that's how it is

They’ll be licking the boots of any authorities, and

so if there’s anyone I expect no problems with, it’s the Moscow

deputies.

They always take their cue from whoever is in charge.

Next.

Question. Yes.

Please, what will you do about nighttime

construction noise?

When I become mayor—I had a construction site right next to my home myself—

exactly the same thing, after

11 p.m. When I become mayor, I promise

one thing: I will

enforce the rules, including in cases after

that. Simply put, when I become mayor, there will be no

situation where builders bring

money to the district administration and say, “Just don’t

pay attention to the calls from residents who

are complaining about the noise,” and then nothing happens.

This too—excuse me, maybe

I sound like a parrot always talking about

corruption—but this is a typical manifestation

of corruption, because under the law

it’s absolutely clear: at 10 p.m., that’s it.

You’re forbidden from banging a hammer on rails, yet they

bang a hammer on rails. Well, not

for no reason—it’s because of money.

When I become mayor, they’ll stop banging

because they’ll be fined for it,

because I won’t have people working for me

who are taking money for that.

Next question. Yes.

Please, about benefits—will you raise child benefits?

For children? As I already

said, here’s a simple example, on the scale

of the Moscow budget:

30,000 rubles (about $340) are stolen from each person through public procurement alone.

From each person. Here, the two of you standing there—

you and your child—that’s 60,000 rubles (about $680) taken from you

just through public procurement, straight out of your pocket.

Moscow has enough money

to pay additional social

benefits to everyone who needs them. There’s money for

mothers with many children, there are additional

payments for pensioners, and it is absolutely possible to

cover medication costs for everyone, and so on, and so

forth. So with the money saved

through fighting corruption, I will raise

payments for everyone. Yes, next question.

Please, over here.

What do you think about... and what do you think about

your own

fate? What do I think about Khodorkovsky, what do I

think about my own fate? A philosophical

question. As for Khodorkovsky, I think he is

an oligarch who did the same thing as

the other oligarchs. But because he got involved

in politics, they

[music]

jailed him. If they want

to jail oligarchs, fine—I want

to see a trial where Abramovich

Deripaska, Potanin, and everyone else

on the list are in the dock. But they’re not in jail.

They’re living perfectly well,

and they’re on the list of the richest people

in the United Kingdom. Look at the list

of the richest people in the UK: the first

“British” surname there is Usmanov, and

the second “British” surname is Abramovich. I

would like the law to apply equally to everyone.

If people are prosecuted for

tax evasion, then let the whole

oligarchic crowd be held accountable. Instead, it was all just

some kind of sentence handed down from above,

and that was that. As for my

fate—well, I’m not afraid. To answer your

question, there already was that episode—you know

I was even jailed once already, yes, and

then people came out into the streets and I was

released. And at every meeting where people

ask me about it, every time I say

to the audience: thank you, my dears, for

getting me released, because it was thanks

to you that I was freed. I don’t have the ability

to rely on the support of some

security officials, oligarchs, or any groups,

but I don’t need that as long as I

can rely on your support, as long

as you trust me in some measure, I

am absolutely not afraid of anything. Next.

Question. Yes, please. First of all,

thank you for

your support. First question: do you plan

to form a government of people who

have—or should have—the knowledge,

skills,

and abilities...

As I just outlined, the general

principle is that it’s not about names; it’s about

how we recruit people. I have

people working for me at the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF)

whom I consider the best employees, and

about each of them, by the way, you

can go and find out their names, how much

they are paid, and what work

they are doing right now.

For each person, you can go online

and see what a given staff member

is specifically working on at this moment.

That’s simply the principle of the team: there are

normal, honest people in Moscow. City officials

are paid fairly high salaries.

We don’t need to drag someone in by force

and beg them, “Please, please come work at

City Hall because we need people.” There are

people. The main thing is to build the right principles.

As for the second question, about the security services

and whether I’m afraid of them: we know what happened

recently in

Yaroslavl, when they arrested and jailed the mayor

who had been elected against United Russia.

This happens in many cities

quite often.

I believe that won’t work in Moscow,

first and foremost because in Moscow, as

I already said, there is a very autonomous local public...

a large budget, and because of the specifics

of the Tax Code, it is impossible to take it away from

Moscow—you cannot take these funds away. And

most importantly, the mayor of Moscow, an elected mayor,

of Moscow, will rely on millions

of Muscovites. The peculiarity of our country,

the peculiarity of Moscow, is that any

political reforms in

if those in power want to change something, it

will change, and if they do not want to, it will not

change. That is precisely why, on our

poster, we wrote: Change Russia—start with

Moscow. That is how the country is structured: all, all

issues are decided in

Moscow, and the 15 million people living in Moscow

decide everything. And I am sure that if they

support a mayor who was elected

truly as a people’s mayor, a mayor

who was elected not through television and

the brainwashing of the population, but through meetings like these,

meetings

who governs in the interests of everyone, and not

in the interests of his own country-house

cooperative (a reference to an insiders’ circle of cronies), then they will do nothing with him,

nothing—no security forces, neither the FSB

nor the police. More than that, I am absolutely sure that

in the FSB and in the police there are many

people who are just as

fed up with what is happening as we are.

What is happening—85% of people, in fact,

officials, are not in positions

where they can steal something, and they

basically also want to live by the rules. Well,

they are ordinary people. As I said here

about outpatient clinics and housing and utilities—the same applies. They

have outpatient clinics and housing and utilities too; they all

want to live a normal life. When we

see that 200 families are getting rich and

receiving 90% of all oil and gas wealth,

everyone sees it—the FSB sees it, and the police

see it too. We simply need to believe again. You

change this government, and then this power will no longer

be able to—none of these 200 ghouls who

keep grabbing and grabbing and grabbing everything—they will not be able to do

anything to us. It just seems to us

that they are, you know, all-powerful villains.

What kind of all-powerful villains are they? Where do you

see troops with machine guns here that

are intimidating us? There is nothing like that. It is

simply that even workers in the Urals, I assure you,

Ural workers would drive out United Russia

faster than

support for United Russia in that same Nizhny

Tagil and in Yekaterinburg is much lower than

in Moscow. So they are not relying on anything

real—they rely simply on our

passivity, on the fact that we

stay silent. That is why I am standing here:

to convince everyone, my friends, that we are far

stronger than we ourselves think we are. We

can change everything, any government. We can

change it—we simply need to believe in ourselves.

When

it comes to us, we are a million times stronger than any

television set. Talk to ten friends,

ten relatives, acquaintances.

Talk to them. Call ten people, and

you will create your own personal little army

that will come to the elections and, in general, can

vote anyone out. That is why I am standing

here, because I believe that a gathering like this

is 100 times more powerful, in the end, than any

propaganda program on Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel).

Friends, on my day off today, on

Sunday, I am holding four more such

meetings. I have to go to the next

meeting. I want to thank you for

coming. Thank you very much—it is very

important to me that you came. I truly have no one else

to rely on more than ordinary

people just like me. But I would very much like

to receive your support, your votes, your

help. I am sure that together we

will build a city that is comfortable for us, for everyone,

a city in which we, and

our children and our grandchildren, will live. Thank you very much.

Of course Putin has to be removed. I agree.

Thank you.

22, Kurskaya metro station. If there are any

questions about the work of the campaign headquarters or about your help,

you can come up to

me. Look, let’s do it this way: you

for now, because I need to

not delay Nikolai, and we

will then wrap up today’s meeting.

Yes, there is contact information there, at the bottom there are

phone numbers. This is the initiative group of three

buildings. If someone did not receive a newspaper,

you can take a newspaper. Thank you.