Alexei Navalny’s meeting with voters in Moscow’s Troparevo-Nikulino district

Our meetings are always easy to find. You just have to follow

the sound of the music. Hello. Thank you

very much for coming. Please come

a little closer. We are very, and I am very,

very pleased, and it is very important that you

come to meetings like this, because

when we were just planning them, a great many

skeptics told us that

no one would come, that no one is used at all

to meetings like this. What kind of strange

idea is it, during an election campaign,

to meet with voters? Has anyone ever

heard of a candidate, during

an election campaign, meeting with

voters? But we thought,

that,

probably, meeting with voters is an important and major part

of an election campaign,

and our campaign is built in many

ways precisely around this

approach. I hold a great many such meetings.

Every weekday, three meetings,

and every weekend, five such

meetings. I believe this is the best part

of an election campaign, and it is the job

of a candidate. A candidate is obliged to show up so that

people can run into him on the streets

of the city, so that they can

look at him, so that they can

ask him a question: a pleasant one,

an unpleasant one, a tricky one, a simple one,

any question at all.

That is why I try to do my

job as a candidate well, so that

among other things I can convince you that I will do the job

of mayor well later on. I would

start by simply telling you

a little about myself, and then I would gladly answer

any questions you may have.

My name is Alexei Navalny. I’ll start

from the beginning. I am 37 years old. For the past

17 years I have lived in the Maryino district of Moscow. It is

in the southeast of Moscow.

I have a completely ordinary

Moscow family: a wife and two children.

My son is 5 years old, and he goes to kindergarten.

My daughter is 11, and she goes to a regular school.

I have two university degrees. I

graduated from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia

nearby. So the place where

I am speaking now is one of the

places in Moscow I know best, apart from

my own Maryino, because for five years

I came from the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station or walked

on foot to my university.

And I also graduated from the Financial Academy under the

Government of the Russian Federation.

I come from a military family. Throughout my childhood

and youth, I moved from one military

town to another. And my

parents still live in a military town

outside Moscow.

If you have been following what I have been doing

lately, over the past several

years, what do you know about me?

Rospil.

Rospil. And you know, sometimes at meetings like this

people say, "You stole the whole forest," or something

like that. Besides the fact that I supposedly stole the whole forest,

which is reported quite widely on

television, you have most likely also heard about

me that I demanded that

Gazprom executives be jailed, that I demanded criminal charges against

people from VTB,

that I am fighting with Rosneft, with Transneft, with

all these largest commodity

companies. I am constantly hounding them and

constantly demanding something from them.

Constantly demanding that they return

some money to someone. And very often

meetings like this

begin with people asking me

the question: "Why do you even do this?

You are obviously not making money from it.

Why are you so fixated on it? Why do you demand

that some money be returned to you?"

Do you really believe that

some money was stolen from you? Because

you take it so personally,

you get upset, worked up, call everyone names

and so on. I would like

to begin our meeting by answering precisely

this question, because, it seems to me,

it will simply make it clearer to you why I am here.

I really do believe that

I was robbed personally. Quite literally, that

the money being stolen by all these

Gazproms, Rosnefts, and all the

rest is, in the literal sense, my

money that is being stolen from me, from

my children, from my family. I even have

a special calculation on this. I will

share it with you. But first I have

a question for everyone. What does

Russia live on, really? What does it

earn its money from?

Oil.

Oil and gas. Oil and gas. Exactly

right. Up to 80% of our budget is filled by oil and gas.

And who does it belong to? Oil and gas,

actually belong to the people. Yes, that is the view,

at least in theory, that they belong to the people.

That is how it should be. Exactly. And who

knows how much oil and gas we sold for

over the last 15 years, during these Putin

years?

Hundreds of billions.

Hundreds of billions, you say.

Trillions.

3 trillion dollars over the last 15 years.

We sold 3 trillion dollars’ worth of oil and gas abroad

over the last 15 years. Is that a lot or a little?

Compared to what budget? What is the country’s budget?

Yes, yes, those are the right questions.

What is the country’s budget? It is not clear whether that is a lot

or a little. Has anyone ever seen a stack of money worth

3 trillion? I have not. It is not clear,

whether that is a lot or a little. In order to

To get a better sense of it, you can, for example, take

this amount and divide it among every

citizen of Russia, from nursing

infants all the way to centenarian

elderly people. And then we will understand that

each of us—you, me, all of you,

every single one of us—comes to 640,000 rubles. 640,000

rubles is due to everyone. That is each person's

share of the oil and gas sold

in recent years.

That is, over 15 years. Which means that for my

family of four, the amount comes to 2.5

million rubles. So that is what I do:

I go from Gazprom to Rosneft, from Rosneft to VTB,

and so on and so forth. And I ask them

the same question every time: "So, guys, where did you

put my 2.5 million rubles?" I really am

interested. I understand perfectly well that in our

country there is no system where you can

walk up to a cashier and say, "Hello,

my last name is Navalnaya, here is my passport. There are

four people in my family. Please give me

my share—2.5 million rubles."

That does not exist. But if my share of the oil was

sold, and the money came in, then that

money must have been reflected

somewhere. So I am at least trying

to understand what that money

was spent on. I see people of the older

generation here. Do you remember the times when

the Soviet Union was receiving a lot of money from

the sale of oil and gas? In the Brezhnev era

(under Leonid Brezhnev), there was also a flow of petrodollars. We

may agree with how they were

spent, or we may disagree with

it, but at the very least we know exactly

how Brezhnev's petrodollars

were spent. We can look at the apartment blocks, and

the residential districts were built with those

Brezhnev petrodollars, and apartments in

them were given out for free.

Industry—factories and plants across the

country—was built with Brezhnev

petrodollars.

The space industry was

built. Science, which we are still

proud of to this day. And science towns are still

scattered all across the country. All of that

was Brezhnev petrodollars.

Roads, railways. An army

of enormous size, one of the

largest in the world. All of that was Brezhnev

petrodollars. We were supporting the so-called

countries of socialist orientation,

remember? In Africa, in Asia, in

Latin America too—with Brezhnev

petrodollars.

But now, Putin's petrodollars,

which are actually greater in amount than

Brezhnev's, what were they spent on? There are

about 120 people standing here, probably. Tell

me, please, can anyone

name even one major

industrial enterprise built in

Russia over the last 15 years?

Excuse me,

really, none? I'll answer your question later. But

please tell me, well,

are you a candidate for president or a candidate for

mayor?

If you would show some respect for

the people gathered here, then you wouldn't be wasting time. You are

either running for mayor, or

did someone tie you down here?

Tell me, please, do you have weights on your

legs, or is it just me? Were you tied to

the chair? If you're not interested, then you

don't have to stay here—just don't insult

everyone who has gathered here with your

shouting.

Right, I wanted to continue. Tell me,

please, can anyone here recall

a major industrial enterprise

that was built in Russia over

the last 15 years?

The city of Sochi.

The city of Sochi. That doesn't really fit, does it?

The Bureya Hydroelectric Power Plant was completed, but construction started

back in the Soviet Union.

I ask this question at every meeting.

And I have never gotten an answer, because

there is no major industrial

enterprise built in Russia over

the last 15 years. It simply does not exist.

That is why I am trying to understand

where all those roads of mine are, those railways,

where the industry is, where the space program is.

We turn on the television and we see

a rocket take off and then crash. Russia builds as much

railway in a year as China

builds in a week. And China, by the way,

has neither oil nor gas.

Where is all of it? Where is healthcare, where is

education, where are the residential districts that

are built and handed out for free? None of this

exists. And when I go to court with calculations like these,

which may sound funny,

say, against Rosneft,

there sits this woman, a vice president,

who oversees legal affairs.

Her last name is Kolanda, I just remembered. She has

She works at the state oil

company Rosneft.

Her official income is 880 million rubles a

year. You can check her disclosure

from the state oil company. And she

looks at me and says, "What makes you think

that anything here belongs

to you at all?"

What makes you think that you, and people

like you, have any claim to anything here at all?

Why are you all hung up on this oil,

gas, these mineral resources supposedly

belonging to someone?

Nothing here belongs to you.

So, returning to the beginning of our

conversation—why do I believe that I personally

was robbed? Because I believe that when I am told

says a representative of an oil company

with a salary of 1 billion rubles a year, that

that nothing belongs to me. I literally

feel that at this very moment

someone is reaching into my pocket and pulling out

my 640,000 rubles that rightfully belong to me

from the sale of oil and gas. And at that moment, from my child too,

and from each one of you, they are reaching

into your pockets and taking that money out.

Because, you see, we have neither another

country nor another life, and no one will ever

bring that oil back. All of this is our

healthcare, our education, it is

the future of our children, which someone has simply

traded away. And when people like that tell me:

"Listen, why are you always

going on about the negative, the negative? There are

all sorts of rankings where Russia is doing

well, setting records." What rankings are there

in which Russia is setting records?

Corruption. Billionaires, right? Exactly.

In 2000, how many billionaires did we have?

Six. And how many do we have now?

121.

Do we really want to be proud of rankings like that?

Personally, I do not. These rankings give me neither

pride nor do they fill my pocket

with those 600,000 rubles, with that very money. And

most importantly, they give me neither

factories, nor plants, nor clinics, nor

roads.

That is why I take all of this very personally—

my whole fight against Gazprom,

Rosneft, all these

corrupt officials, the United Russia party

and so on and so forth. And here, before you,

I stand as a person

who is running for mayor of Moscow and

who would like to receive your support

in this Moscow mayoral election, because

I

personally want to change the things in our

city that I really do not like and

that I know how to change. They may be

simple things, perhaps, but they get to me,

they irritate me. I want

to be a mayor about whom everyone will know exactly

where his apartments came from, and those of his

children. I want to be a mayor who, like mayors in all

other normal cities, moved from his

apartment in Maryino to Tverskaya

13, served as mayor, and then moved back to that same

apartment for one very simple reason. Because

there are only four people

in my family, and under the law I am not entitled

to an extra apartment. I will move back

because I am not entitled to one.

Because as mayor, I know that in

Moscow, how many people are on the housing waiting list?

400,000 people. Nearly 90,000 families. And

as mayor, I would never be able to do

something like privatizing, the way

Sobyanin did, an apartment in the name of his underage daughter—

a 308-square-meter apartment. That is impossible.

Who has read my investigation into the apartment

of Sobyanin's daughter? What,

did I come here to campaign to you? You already know

all this.

But this is absolutely outrageous. How

can that be? We are all people worn down by

the housing issue. How many

square meters per person are we entitled to

under the standard?

18.

18. We all know it. If someone woke us up in the middle of the night,

we would remember how many family members you would need

in order to be allocated

a 308-square-meter apartment. About 20.

A lot.

And I want to become a mayor who receives nothing

if he is not entitled to it,

because there are people on the waiting list who should be getting it. "I want to become a mayor whose

"I want to become a mayor whose

press office will not answer people

the way Sobyanin's press office answers me now

regarding

another apartment belonging to Sobyanin's daughter,

which she bought for 116 million rubles. They

say: "Why are you pestering us?

It's just a 116-million-ruble apartment. She is already

25 years old, this girl is a grown woman,

all grown up. She earned it. Maybe she has been working since she was 18

and bought herself a 116-million-ruble apartment.

Come on, do none of you have

even one acquaintance who, at 25, bought

an apartment for 116 million rubles? Not even

one? Are there really no exceptionally talented young people

among your acquaintances?

Well, we know at least one person.

That's Sobyanin's daughter. I want to become

a mayor for whom, both for himself and for his

subordinates, and for all officials, it will be

absolutely clear where their

money comes from, and it will be completely transparent how

they do or do not receive apartments. And

in the mayor's office

no one—not a single city official—will receive

an apartment illegally or have

billion-ruble accounts. It may seem to us that this is

some kind of revolution, but it is actually a completely

normal situation.

I want to become mayor, and I came here to you

because I go to public clinics, just like

everyone else. It happens to people, you know?

They go to a clinic. And

apparently, the older I get,

the more often, unfortunately, I will have to

go to the clinic. That is why I am very

seriously concerned, you know, by the fact that

the clinic I go to is very

different from the clinic

they show me on television.

On television, there is this wonderful

clinic they take

Sobyanin to, and they tell him: "Sergei

Semyonovich, we have this electronic

registration system where you sign up and

get to see a doctor with absolutely no trouble in

the same day you apply." I can see some of you laughed.

There are people here who have apparently used

the electronic appointment system recently.

Does the electronic

appointment system at your clinic work like that?

Our doctors don't know how to use

a computer, so

Our doctors don't know how to use

a computer,

so it's impossible to book an appointment.

There are no doctors.

And a lot of the doctors are already newcomers from

Asian countries.

The doctors are migrants from Asian countries. And do you

know, my dear Muscovites, what do you

think? Or rather, let me ask you directly:

by what percentage more money is allocated to

healthcare for Muscovites?

Compared with other residents of Russia.

By how much? What do you think?

200. Go on,

a lot.

You said 200 as a joke, but I'm telling you

the truth: 300. Four times more money

is allocated for healthcare for each

Muscovite than for any other

resident of Russia. For outpatient clinic

care, each of us gets

20,000 rubles a year allocated. For my family,

which has four people, that comes to

80,000 rubles. Just out of curiosity,

please raise your hand if you

have been to your local clinic in the

past year.

Who has been to the clinic? What, is everyone so

sick? All right then. Well,

now raise your hand if you haven't been to

the clinic. Well, thank God, there are still more healthy people,

which is better after all, otherwise I thought that by September 8

I'd keep campaigning to all of you and none of you would

live to see it.

Nevertheless,

clinic

nevertheless, you understand, 20,000 rubles were written off for each person

whether they went to a private

clinic or a public one, for each person

20,000 rubles were written off. I want to become

the mayor who will make sure that

finally, in Moscow, with the enormous

amounts of money that are already being allocated,

general practitioners and primary care doctors are finally

hired — the doctors people actually need

in 90% of cases when Muscovites seek care. Since

we're talking about clinics,

let me ask: is it easy to get an ultrasound

examination at your

clinic?

What are you talking about? No,

it's difficult.

They don't have it there.

They don't. A mon...

you say a month, months.

Three months. I don't believe you — three months?

Three months. Listen,

don't say things like that. Right here there's

a campaign tent for Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin, and

under "Achievements" it says he bought

1,200 ultrasound machines for Muscovites. So

please don't lie here about three

months, because the tent

says otherwise. How is it possible

that 1,200

ultrasound machines were bought for Muscovites — about 10 per district,

roughly speaking, right? And yet you say three months.

I know why that happens. Because

our Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF)

investigated this

Moscow healthcare modernization program

worth 100 billion rubles. We can see that these

ultrasound machines and scanners are being purchased simply

so they can be bought at twice

the real price. I want to become the mayor who

will finally make sure that

equipment is purchased so that

people can actually get ultrasound exams, rather than

so that chief physicians can become

millionaires off these procurements. I know

how to do it. We track these

procurements. I know where the excess needs to be

cut out. I know how to make sure

things are bought at market price. I came here to

you because I am very

seriously concerned, you know, about the problem of

migration. I don't know whether it concerns

you or not.

Interesting — does it concern you? After all,

50% of crimes here are committed by

migrants. And here's a question for you. While

preparing to speak here in your

district, I looked at the crime statistics

for the area. Does anyone

know whether crime here has gone up or

down?

It has gone up.

It can't possibly have gone up.

And by how much do you think it has gone up?

Tenfold.

The number of especially serious crimes has risen by 480%.

Over what period?

in the first half of 2013

you can check it on the website of your local

police department,

because we have markets here, you understand?

Because you have markets here, and I have

exactly the same kind of markets where I am, because we all

know, and I came here because we

understand

that migrants come here in huge

numbers. Not because there are jobs

for them here, but because they are being brought in

so that money can be made off them. They are

an easy source of income for

officials. Let's take a quick poll right here

so I'm not throwing around some

numbers I made up myself. Just

tell me: who has asked their

janitor how much he earns? What is

the salary of a Moscow janitor?

How much?

15,000.

6,000–7,000.

No, no, not six—they don't give them 17, they give them 30.

On paper.

You see,

and 15. Well, because he's Russian, from

Mordovia (a republic in Russia).

You see how it works out. Every time,

when I ask this question, I hear numbers like

5, 7, 15, and so on, and then someone

raises their hand, like you just did, and

says: "Officially or unofficially?

"

It's a secret known to all of

Moscow. According to the calculation for the minimum

pay for a janitor, there cannot be a janitor with a

salary of less than 30,000 rubles. It simply can't be

any lower. That's the minimum. And we all know

that hundreds of thousands of migrants who are brought

here are housed in basements, 20 people at a time,

put up in buildings slated for demolition, and so on—they're

brought here because they can be kept

in conditions like slaves and forced, each one,

to kick back half of their salary.

And these hundreds of thousands of people, every day,

every month hand over 10,000–15,000 rubles from

their wages. Just imagine

this river of cash that

flows every month—hundreds of millions

of rubles. The district administration, the prefecture, the management

company, the housing services, and this whole river of money

keeps pouring. But we can see—and I can see, just as you

can see here with your markets, just as I see in

Maryino (a district of Moscow) with my own markets, with the housing and utilities sector

and everything going on there. I see

the other side of this river; I see

crime. I know women in my building

whose handbags were snatched from their hands by these

very migrants. The thing is, you see,

they don't come here simply as criminals,

terrible people somehow naturally inclined toward

crime. That's how the system is set up.

A young man from

Uzbekistan comes here—and those who come are mostly

people from rural areas. He gets a job

at a construction site,

then comes down with pneumonia. Well,

he caught a chill—it happens, it happens.

There is no workplace safety at all. He is

thrown off the site, and his wages are not

paid. He's a powerless slave. What is he

supposed to do—die in a ditch? No, he's

a human being, he wants to live. He calls

his cousin in Uzbekistan, and the cousin

brings him 200 grams of heroin. They sell it

just so he can, well, survive,

rent a place for another two months. And this is not

something I made up; statistics show

that Russia ranks first in the world in terms of

heroin consumption. In terms of

absolute heroin consumption, we are

number one in the world. We are the world's main

consumers of the heroin that comes in with

these migrants. I want to become mayor

in order to change all this, because

I don't want this, and the people around me

don't want it either.

I want to become mayor because over

the past several years I have spent a great deal of

time studying and tracking

all of Moscow's governance processes.

I have spent a great deal of time studying

Moscow's finances. I know what

Moscow's annual budget is. Can anyone remind me

what Moscow's annual budget is?

3 trillion.

1.6—1.63 trillion, to be more precise.

rubles. Moscow's budget is smaller only than

the budgets of New York and

Shanghai. All of us together live in

one of the richest cities in the world.

Paradoxically, the richest cities in Europe and

America don't even come close

to Moscow in terms of wealth.

As I said, third place by

budget. A question for everyone: where do you

think Moscow ranks

among the world's largest cities

in quality of life?

At the very bottom. Listen, whenever I ask this

question, the first answer is always:

last place. But why don't you think

it should also be third?

So what place is it?

154th. Correct. I don't know what

the very last place is, what number it has, but

154th

is a truly astonishing paradox, but

it's part of our reality: by budget, by the

size of the budget, we are in third place, while

in quality of life we are 154th. In

Moscow, we have everything we need to build

an excellent city. We have the city itself, we have

infrastructure, and we have a highly educated

population.

Few cities have such an

educated population. There is only one thing we lack:

just one thing:

belief in ourselves, because we have, well, simply

somehow come to terms with the idea that this is

the natural order of things. That what

is happening is somehow normal. Well,

look: in oil and gas sales, Russia—I mean Russia—is

first in the world, while

in standard of living it is in sixty-

ninth place. And I don't even see anyone

being shocked by this fact. We just shrug

our shoulders. Alexei, you forgot how much. Compare it with

Norway...

We shrug our shoulders and say that this is

all just, well, a natural

thing. For example, what is the largest

construction project here

near Moscow, near your district?

Well, the reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt (Lenin Avenue).

Let's take that one. It has been suspended.

How much does it cost? 40 billion rubles. And everyone

transport specialists say outright

that

in the reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt

half the money will be stolen, and the cost

has been inflated twofold. We shrug our shoulders and

say: "Well, this

reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt will see

20 billion rubles stolen. That's more than enough

to build

clinics and schools all across Moscow." But

we shrug and say: "Well,

yes, that's how they're building the North-Western Chord (major Moscow highway) for 70

billion rubles."

And everyone says the same thing in unison:

"Well, at least twice that amount, at least 35 billion

will be pocketed in the construction of the North-Western

Chord. Colossal sums. You could

double pensions for all

pensioners. But we shrug our shoulders and

say: "Well, that's just how life works.

It doesn't really seem possible

any other way."

I came here because I am absolutely

convinced that it can be different and

that it must be different. I came here and

I am speaking to you because I am

absolutely convinced that you are

the source of power.

It is not television that is the source of power, not

billboards on the streets, but people. And they can

change everything. And I am sure that

by talking to people, I can get across

the right ideas not only to you. Though

there are quite a lot of you, actually. I even did the math.

According to my calculation, if by September 8

I hold 100 meetings like this and

stay alive in the process—this is my fifty-

eighth one. And how much weight have you lost?

I've lost 5 kg. So there is still

some margin left, still room to lose more.

then I will have spoken to 1% of the voters. Is that

a lot or a little? It's a lot, actually.

1% of the electorate is a lot, considering

that everyone has friends,

acquaintances, relatives, neighbors on the stairwell landing.

To win

the Moscow mayoral election, you need 1.5 million

people. In a city of 15 million.

There are definitely those 1.5 million

people who know everything, who understand everything,

each of whom could stand up right

here and say exactly the same

things I am saying, each of whom

can read my platform and see

that it was written by the best experts,

that it contains answers to all the pressing

questions. And all these questions that we

ask ourselves about migration, transport,

health care—these are questions

that have been and are being successfully solved in other

cities. And we can do it too. We

just need to believe in ourselves, that we

are the power—not the television, not the election

commission. We are the ones here who appoint power

or send it packing. And we can do that.

We just mustn't shrug our shoulders after

every meeting, after each one. Someone comes up to me

and says: "Listen, you

said it all really well. I totally

agree, but to be honest, I knew all of this

even before you." But tell me honestly, deep

down, you do believe, don't you, you understand,

that nothing can be changed?

A lot of people say that. But I climbed onto

this stage because deep in my soul, and

even in the middle of my soul, and even on

the surface of my soul, I believe that everything can

be changed. What are we—the stupidest, the most

cursed, the most worthless country and

city on earth? We can do everything.

Show me where the troops are standing here

that have surrounded us and are forcing us to hand over

40 billion to some people for the construction of

Leninsky Prospekt. Where are the snipers sitting

on the sign of Snezhnaya Koroleva (a Russian retail chain)? Then I

don't even see a police officer here. He

is surely here somewhere just in case, but just

to be safe he stepped aside and hid there behind

the bushes.

Changed clothes

changed clothes.

You see, this thieving government,

inefficient and corrupt, survives not

because it intimidates us, but because

we shrug our shoulders, because

we ourselves think that it is impossible

to change anything. Everything can be changed, and we

will change everything. I am sure that through you I

will speak to tens of thousands, hundreds

of thousands, and millions of Muscovites. I

am sure that we will mobilize, we will come

to the polls, we will replace this government and return

power in the city of Moscow to the people so that

it works in our interests and

solves our problems. Thank you very much.

I'm ready to answer your questions.

A whole bunch of people shouted out. Who was shouting there?

Go ahead. Yes, please. We have the following

problem. Leninsky Prospekt. At one

point we managed to defend it. Now they are planning to build a similar

overpass on Vernadsky Prospekt

(likely Vernadsky Avenue). There were public hearings, and people voted

against it. The results of those hearings were

quite clearly falsified.

What are your thoughts on that?

My thoughts—I'll repeat this for everyone—my

thoughts on the fact that

the reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt now seems

to be frozen, but there is

the construction of an overpass, which also did not

pass public hearings. My

thoughts on that.

To begin with, just a short quote.

Sorry if it seems like I'm always picking on

Sobyanin, but after all he is the incumbent

mayor. I would like to replace him because

he is a bad incumbent mayor. He recently gave

an interview to the newspaper Vedomosti. And in

He was asked: "What do you consider

your most important achievement as

mayor?" And his answer, almost word for word:

"My most important achievement is

that we launched the three most expensive

road construction projects in the world.

And that was very difficult. It was

very hard to launch them because we

launched them in conditions of, in conditions of

having no strategy, no plan, and no calculations.

I'm not joking—read the interview. All

these giant construction projects, all these

Northwestern Chords, all these southern

arterial roads, all these reconstructions of Leninsky

Prospekt—well, if you don't believe me,

go to the website of the Department of

Urban Planning Policy, the website

of the Department of Road Infrastructure, and

find even a single calculation. Just one

piece of justification for these

projects. They get approved simply

because they cost twice as much. All

these decisions are made like this:

someone walks into an office and says:

"Listen, your budget looks a bit too

big. Let's cook up something worth

80 billion rubles." And then they start

reconstructing the Northwestern Chord,

building the Northwestern Chord.

That is why my platform includes a provision

that I will ban the implementation of projects

costing more than 1 billion rubles without international

expert review. I will forbid it for myself. I will be

a mayor who will never be able to launch

a road or construction

project

costing more than 1 billion rubles unless there are

international experts who have calculated all of it.

Otherwise it's just, well,

complete nonsense. How can you build like this,

with no clear destination and no clear

purpose? And even when you argue with them, with

these officials, and say, "Well, show me

the calculations"—there are no calculations even for your own

Leninsky Prospekt. First they

shouted that the reconstruction was absolutely necessary,

then residents got angry. And they said:

"It seems the reconstruction isn't really needed after all."

Well, is there some kind of master plan for the city's

development so we can understand whether it is needed or

not? Nobody knows. And that is

completely outrageous.

Why is this happening? Tell me,

please, who are the main road builders

in Moscow?

Who is the main contractor?

Khusnullin.

Well, Khusnullin is an official, but

the actual main builders are

the Rotenbergs. The very same guys

who in Soviet times were

Putin's judo coaches, and now they are

the main road builders in Moscow. And

who is our main contractor for

metro construction?

Timchenko. The same Timchenko whom

I am constantly suing, who, being

a friend of Putin's, became the main seller of

Russian oil, gave up

his Russian citizenship, is

a Finnish citizen living in

Switzerland, and an officially recognized dollar

billionaire who became a billionaire

by selling oil. And now he is building

the Moscow metro for us. Before Timchenko,

how much did the Moscow metro cost to build?

6 billion rubles per kilometer, which is very

expensive—twice as much as in Europe,

6 billion. But when Timchenko won

all the contracts, it started costing 9 billion per

kilometer. So they are simply skimming 3 billion

off each station. I want to become

a mayor under whom construction

projects will be carried out only if there is

a calculation and a real need for them, not

simply because there are friends who

want to make money. That is my

position on this. Sorry for taking so long

to answer. Yes,

Thank you. You are talking about international

experts. Of course, all that is fine.

International experts, professionals,

but the problem is that we also have

Russian personnel too, including

Russian experts and Russian

officials. And they are not going anywhere. They

will remain—the ones who constantly steal,

constantly deceive us. Uh—they are not going to

disappear. Uh, maybe—when will our

Russian officials learn to work

properly?

The question is when our Russian

officials will learn to work normally,

instead of everything resting on international experts.

They will learn to work properly—or at least try to—when

there is someone who starts forcing them

to work properly. Just listen:

how many Russian officials will directly

receive bribes and money

from that same Northwestern Chord?

What is it, a million people? Of course not—five

people. One will get a billion there, and

two others will get, I don't know, 500 million each,

while all the rest will obediently

carry out orders. The paradox is that

tens of thousands of people are involved

in running the city, and 85% of those

people are not corrupt.

Simply because they have nowhere

to steal from. There is no such

opportunity. They have no chance to

pocket anything. And these people

earn fairly decent salaries. And they

want what we want: an ordinary,

normal, stable life, to earn

a decent salary, and to live normally in

our city. So the goal is not

to purge 100% of Moscow's officials.

It’s pointless. They will operate under

different rules if those different rules

are imposed on them. There simply have to

be rules. Let me now

give you an example, because very often

when I talk about

principles and rules, people say to me: "What kind of

nonsense are you talking? Some kind of

principles, rules. That means nothing at all.

It’s all just theory. Let me give you an example of why

it is not theory. Please tell me,

what is the main corruption case

in Russia right now, apart from Navalny’s case?

Oboronservis.

Oboronservis. Correct.

Yes.

Remind me, please, Serdyukov is in prison,

right? No,

no, he isn’t. He rides around with a flashing official car light.

He rides around with a flashing official car light. Yes. Has he been formally

charged?

No,

no, he has not been charged. Strange. And

is Vasilyeva in prison?

No.

No.

Well, she is under house arrest, after all.

Maybe she’s sitting in a cell?

How many rooms are in her apartment? The whole country already knows:

13 rooms in the apartment and 3

hours a day for walks. What’s more,

lawyers know that house arrest is

a restriction of liberty that is later

counted toward a sentence at two days for one. And when

Vasilyeva, if she is sentenced to 2 years

in prison, is sentenced, she will be released immediately,

because she will already have effectively served the time.

Is this news to anyone? Of course not, everyone

knows it. If you conducted a poll, it would show

that 99% of the country’s population is simply outraged

by what is happening with Serdyukov and Vasilyeva.

The whole country is furious. But

nothing changes, because this is precisely

the most important personnel principle,

one that is declared and demonstrated

to everyone, both to us and to officials: that in Russia

everything must be arranged so that even

if you are an incompetent former director

of a furniture store who has looted and

wrecked the entire army, nothing will happen to you

even if the public is

outraged, as long as you keep quiet and

pay your cut. This is the most important principle

that has now been embedded in public

administration. My task is simply to introduce

a different principle: if you are suspected of

corruption, you are fired. If you are caught

taking bribes, you go to prison. Kuan (Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister) introduced

this very principle in Singapore, a country populated

mainly by Chinese people, who are also not exactly immune to

corruption. He told me: "In order

to defeat corruption, I had to

put half of my friends in prison." And I

will succeed too, because all my

subordinates at city hall will know for certain

that what Navalny shouts from the मंच and

what he says on television is

actually true, that in fact she has

nothing except this apartment in

Maryino, that in fact not one of

his deputies can be approached with a suitcase full of

cash.

We will do this. This is not some kind of

unique situation. There are many cities

and countries where this works. And in Moscow

it will work too. There will definitely be questions.

Yes, please.

We can move on to the next one. Yes.

So, you are talking about such

high matters, but now I want to ask a question

that may be of interest to

tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.

So,

your party is financed through

Yandex wallets. The Yandex

wallet system is anonymous. That

means absolutely anyone — a Russian,

a foreigner, an American, an Englishman —

can transfer money to these wallets.

And in fact that is illegal. So

you speak of lofty principles, yet already in these

matters...

This is important. They come, they come to

every rally and say that my

campaign is illegal. Let’s hear him out.

He asked a question. There’s nothing wrong — he is asking

a question. Let him speak. So, you are practically

talking about fair elections, yet you are already

breaking the law if you accept

money into your Yandex accounts from foreign

donors.

Young man,

your question, your question. How can I explain this?

Look here. No, no, no, no,

my friends, this is important. I

deliberately — well, I can see these

guys, they are the same people who come to all

the rallies. I could simply not give them the floor,

but it is important to me that they ask all

their questions and that you hear them.

Please tell me, did you hear this

on television?

Please tell me,

am I the kind of candidate whom the election commission

loves very much?

Will the election commission protect me?

?

No,

the election commission will not protect me.

If there were any formal

violation of the law there, your election commission

would have documented that violation long ago.

But that is not happening. And I,

speaking about funding, find this

to be the question I genuinely

enjoy answering. I am very proud

that my election campaign

is funded by ordinary people. And I became the first

the candidate in the entire history of modern Russia,

whose campaign is funded by 1,000 people,

sending 100, 200, or 500 rubles each. That is,

what is actually happening. And more than that,

we saw statistics that I

was looking at, and it literally brought tears to my eyes

Here he is, standing here and

telling us fairy tales about anonymous

donations. But there are people here

who have sent me donations.

I am from abroad. Why am I appealing to you here once again?

You are not just voting,

you are also all sending me money. So

that is your foreign audience for you. Who sent

a donation? You know that you have to

provide your last name, patronymic, passport

details, and even your year of birth. In that connection,

who is the main donor to our

campaign? So who, in your opinion,

is the typical main donor to our

campaign?

A woman,

a pensioner.

A woman between the ages of 50 and 57. You

have annoyed everyone so much that even women

between 50 and 57 are sending me

300 rubles so that I can run this

election campaign. I

am proud that mine is the most transparent

campaign. I am proud that I am the

candidate people send money to. And

since, as it turns out,

there happen to be so many people here who

have transferred money to me, thank you

very much. Next question.

Briefly, please.

Mr. Navalny, I am addressing you

with a small request on behalf of most of

these residents, who, like the characters in

Molière's play The Bourgeois Gentleman, still do not even

suspect that they are

victims. What is this about? Well,

starting in 2000, the Moscow city government

quietly, without holding public

hearings and in violation of all laws,

carried out land re-parceling in residential

areas of the city of Moscow and took away

land that belongs to us

by law, without any

registration

procedures. And from every apartment owner

here, in our district, and

this block here was re-parceled

illegally in 2003, that one in 2007, and from

every building up to 40-50% of its land has been taken.

And they do not suspect this either as

apartment owners or as

car owners, while hanging over them is a very

serious threat, a real sword of Damocles. And

so the situation is this: we are not talking here

about matters of taste connected,

say, with whether some avenue

should be reconstructed. Some say it should,

some say it should not. Here we are talking

specifically about violations of the law, during which

on the re-parceling process alone, over

the course of 10 years, about

60 billion rubles were spent unlawfully. And if

you look at the matter in terms of

the value of the stolen land, then we are talking

about tens of billions of dollars. And

this issue concerns not only the residents

of these districts, but absolutely all

residents of Moscow, and even many

owners of acquired land. So I would like

you to make this one of the

central issues of your election

campaign. And there is also a proposal,

on the 28th-29th in the Moscow City Duma there will be

a roundtable devoted to this

topic. And there is an idea to invite you

there. Will you come?

I cannot say yet about the 28th or 29th,

because all my time

is taken up by meetings like this. Let me

say that my position on this is absolutely

clear. I am a lawyer, after all. I see the law, and

it says in black and white that

the land under a building and around it

belongs to whom? To the residents, under the right of

perpetual, free use.

And as mayor, I will immediately do what

all previous mayors should have done

long ago. I will give it to the residents, and at the city's expense

land surveying will be carried out in such a way

that the land belongs to the residents. And

for me, this is also a mechanism

for fighting corruption at the local district administration level.

Because right now, when it comes to land from your

property, any little piece of it, the district head

can bite off a piece, tear it away, and make

$100,000 from it, that is exactly why he does not want

to carry out proper surveying. He wants to have plenty of

opportunities to grab $100,000 here,

$100,000 there.

I will give all this land to Muscovites, to the residents

of the buildings and courtyards, and that will settle

the issue. And the surveying will be carried out

as quickly as possible at the expense of the city

budget. This is one of the most important issues of my

election campaign. So thank you

very much. Next question, please.

A question: no matter where you turn,

on the TV, now even from a kettle it's all Sobyanin.

I will repeat it later for everyone: Sobyanin. But are you not

planning to make some kind of general statement at the TV debates?

After all, you are all

in completely different positions now.

Sobyanin opens a clinic, a kindergarten,

a toilet, and so on, and gets coverage for it or not.

And a second question, quickly. Here we are

now in a very symbolic place.

Look at this monstrous

architecture, at these—this is a minor question,

but it matters—at these ugly shopping

centers that have flooded all of Moscow.

Someone at your debates also said that

Moscow is one enormous shopping mall.

What will you do with these ugly

sentiments when

you come to power?

The first question was about equal access to

the media, debates, and so on. Well, you know,

Sobyanin refused to debate.

And you know, you said it yourself:

every time you turn on the TV,

he’s opening a clinic,

opening a school, and so on. As for me,

they did recently air a segment about me on

TVC saying that Navalny came to meet with

voters, but it didn’t happen for one

reason: nobody showed up. I’m not joking,

it really happened. They just filmed some

empty spot and showed it as, here they are,

Navalny’s voters, an empty square. And

some random guy walked through alone at the end of the

segment.

So yes, I don’t have access to television,

and that’s why I’m here meeting with people, that’s why

I’m working with you. Of course, we will

file complaints, we have made official appeals,

but I fully understand that they won’t let me

onto federal TV for one very

simple reason. They don’t want me

to repeat there everything I’m saying here.

Who here watched the latest debate?

Yesterday, listen, a lot of people watched the debate too.

They’ll be on again this evening,

but they recorded the debate; it was

live, and then when they

posted the recording, they cut out the first

few minutes where I talk about

Sobyanin’s daughter’s apartment. So these

people are just petty crooks.

We’ll only wrest control of television from them when

political power passes to us.

That’s why we have to come out and vote,

because this is our television. We

fund it; we pay 3.5 billion rubles a year for Moscow 24

(about $36 million USD). We pay about the same for TVC

as well. We pay for all

the district newspapers, all the neighborhood papers.

If all these are our media outlets, and they work

against us, they’re not just going to hand over their platform

because they understand perfectly well

that if I become mayor, their specific

contractors, all these Rotenbergs and

Timchenkos, will lose very real

billions.

For them, this is all very concrete too.

It’s not just a case of Navalny

winning an election. What a dangerous situation.

It’s not just dangerous. It

means they’re left without those

billions. It means that if

right now Timchenko, Putin’s crony,

is skimming off money from every kilometer of the Moscow metro

to the tune of 3 billion rubles (about $31 million USD), not 300 billion,

he’ll stop taking it because he’ll be

thrown out of here. For them, all this is very

specific. But I’m sure that even without

television—who here has seen me on

TV in the last five years in any kind of

segment other than one saying that I

stole the entire forest? No. But somehow

you know I exist, right? You found your way

here somehow. Friends and acquaintances

exist, yes.

the Dozhd and Echo of Moscow channels. The opportunities

we have available, we will

use. I see the biggest opportunity

in persuading you

so that you persuade everyone

else. As I’ve said many times,

there are studies showing that

the persuasive power of each individual

person is simply enormous. If you talk

to ten people,

you will reliably convince six of

them. People want to hear advice,

so this will definitely happen. The second

question was about this construction.

Shopping malls.

As I said before, I studied at

the Peoples’ Friendship University. I used to come

from Kuntsevo on bus 68 to that

stop, walk over here, and then

either keep walking or take another

bus to the Peoples’ Friendship

University. I look at this,

this mess,

I look at what has happened now, well,

where are all these people supposed to park their cars? All

these buildings weren’t actually here before;

this area was already considered fairly densely

built up by planning standards, and yet they crammed

something into every last space—what even is

that thing standing there? It’s completely unclear

why they built it here. There isn’t

any need for yet another shopping mall. Is it

really needed here, do you?

There are statistics showing that

in terms of the number of shopping centers of this

kind, we surpass European cities.

You can’t buy bread anywhere at night,

and there are no markets where you can buy meat or

vegetables at a reasonable price, but instead they keep building

these shopping centers. A year and a half ago

they wanted to finish it, but it still wasn’t completed.

None of this is just some kind of blunder; it’s not

simply urban planning mistakes. It’s that

the prefect is sitting there, the district head is sitting there,

and they simply made money off this monstrosity—

their half a million dollars in bribes. I

want to become the mayor who will tear all of this

down, because everyone is sick of it.

Well, listen, of course a residential building where

people already live can’t just be demolished now.

But at the very least, this further

madness of overdevelopment, when they try to squeeze money out of every

square meter—

who needs that money? Even if

we assume that this money isn’t being distributed

as bribes and actually goes to us, well,

what are we supposed to do, eat the money? We

already have a budget of 1.6 trillion rubles (about $16.5 billion USD). What we need is

living space. We need somewhere to

take a walk with our children. We need

cars not to be parked everywhere like this. I

want to become the mayor who will change that,

because I feel exactly the same problems

myself—they really wear me down.

Please.

Did I understand correctly that all your good

initiatives will face

resistance from the federal authorities, from

those who take bribes? And

I’ll repeat it for everyone afterward.

How do you imagine that

resistance? How will you

fight it? And what should we prepare for if we

elect you? What should we expect in return?

Good question.

Your worthwhile initiatives will obviously

also meet resistance from

the federal authorities. How

might that happen, and what should we,

Muscovites, prepare for? Well, many people have

this picture in their heads:

Navalny becomes mayor, and the next

day street-cleaning trucks move in columns

toward the Kremlin, and the street sweepers,

dressed in military uniforms with rakes

slung over their shoulders, march too. And

facing them is the federal OMON (Russian riot police), while

on my side are these Uzbeks working in

municipal maintenance offices, advancing in wedges against

OMON, and somewhere in the rear there’s cavalry in the form of,

I don’t know, paving crews.

I will deal with them strictly

according to the rules. You know, it’s like

living by the law and living on one official salary.

Everything will be done by the book. If I

become mayor, I’m not going to start any war with Putin.

If he asks me

to give metro contracts to his

Timchenkos, I’ll say: "Sorry, we have

an honest tender here—let them come and

win it at a fair price. Let them take those

contracts.

If he demands that I hand over

the road contracts to the Rotenbergs, I’ll say: "Sorry,

come, win, and work.

There will be no confrontation, because

I will do what is required and

interact with them within

the law. And most importantly, to make sure

the experience of Yaroslavl or other

cities, where an honestly elected mayor

was pressured, is not repeated, I will rely on the most

important thing—not even on Moscow’s huge budget,

which cannot be taken away from Muscovites

or from me. I

will rely on the support of the people. If

it happens that I am elected

truly by the votes of millions of people,

I will know for certain that they support

me, and then with me as mayor,

it will be impossible to do anything. They won’t

be able to push me around or jail me. On the contrary,

I’ll be the one putting them in jail. And it’s no accident that we

wrote on this banner: "Change

Russia, start with Moscow".

Because all change in Russia can

either happen or not happen depending on

whether Muscovites want it or not.

That’s how our country is structured:

everything starts here.

If we want something—like that one time when we wanted

me released from jail,

I was released. If we want it, they’ll release

the Bolotnaya Square prisoners tomorrow. By the way,

one of the defendants in the Bolotnaya case

is here today, Boronova. Let’s

give her a round of applause.

If we want it, they won’t sentence teacher Farber to

seven years in a maximum-security penal colony.

If we want it, corrupt officials like

Serdyukov will be the ones going to jail. If we want it, there will be no more

things like what we saw two months ago,

when the deputy prefect of the Eastern District,

Riykhanov, for embezzlement that was proven and

admitted—360 million rubles (about $11 million at the time)—was given 4 years

suspended, with no fine at all. Everything is in our

hands. Moscow can change everything. This

city accounts for 15% of the country’s population. And we

can force both the Moscow authorities and

the federal authorities to do whatever

is needed if we recognize our strength and remain

persistent

in our demands. You can’t say,

as many do: "But we already went out

to rallies, and nothing came of it."

But the question is for all of us: did we

really overdo it? What percentage of our

potential did we actually use? Did we

do everything we could? No. Maybe

we used 5% of what we’re capable of. When we

do even 30% of what we

can, we’ll see how power changes,

how we change the authorities. And it will be

an unstoppable process. My friends, I

have three meetings like this today, with one more

still ahead. Thank you for coming.

I apologize for not answering all

the questions. Thank you very much. I really

need your support. I’m counting on it

very much. I’m sure that together with you

we will win this election. Thank you very much.