Some kind of “election” in Moscow, July 1 — the battle over the retirement age, and still no sign of showing up with the guys

[music]

Hello everyone. Moscow, 20:18. Alexei in the studio.

Navalny, or

a rebel, a rebel — that’s what

a certain political analyst, Sergei Starovoitov, called me. Hell if

anyone knows who he is, but he came up with this funny

quote: “We have entered an era

of vertical power. There is no more opposition,

there is only power,

there are rebels, and every one of

the political players has to decide

whether they are with the authorities or with the rebels.” And

decoded,

that means Navalny, terrorists, and others like them. So

make up your minds, my friends: are you with

the authorities or with the rebels? And of course I

am calling on you to come over to the side

of the rebels. Come join the rebels — we’ve

got cookies. On July 1, in 27 cities, and

on June 30 in Irkutsk, there will be protests against

raising the retirement age. In

the description of this video there’s a link — go

there, find your city, and take part. We’ll talk about this

about the retirement age, the battle over

the retirement age, a little later.

I want to start with the fact that it didn’t work out again.

On the last program I said that we had almost

reached the point where, for the first time in a year and a half, we

would have no one under arrest. One

person had been arrested, he was supposed to serve seven

days, get out, and by the next program I

would finally be able to say: everyone is free. And it almost

happened. But Vladimir Dubrovsky

let me down this time. He’s our coordinator

from Vladivostok. He had served — how long was it, I

don’t remember — ten or fifteen days.

He got out, and right at the threshold he was detained and

jailed again for ten — no, eight, sorry,

for eight days for insulting — for insulting

a police officer. When they started выяснять

exactly how he had insulted the police officer,

they told him — I’m not joking — “Right now, on

your VKontakte wall there is a song posted

that insults a police officer,

so it’s eight days under arrest.” That’s all. They’re

naturally

very interesting, and we’re just dying

of curiosity: what kind of song could that be

on VKontakte that could insult a police officer

so badly that a person gets locked up for

eight days. But

who knows — apparently they’re afraid, and

of course this song will instantly become

so popular that it will be on the wall in

everyone’s VKontakte account, including

police officers. I don’t know — chanson? What could it

possibly have been? Probably not chanson, because

the main consumers of chanson

in our country are police officers.

They listen to it far more than any

representatives of the criminal world,

former inmates, and so on. Anyway, I don’t know.

When our Vladimir Dubrovsky gets out,

we’ll ask him to conduct a careful

screening of his posts and music on

VKontakte so we can finally find this

super-song that in Russia gets you jailed

for eight days. In Moscow, some kind of election is going on,

some kind of election, and people ask me about it

and say, “Alexei, what do you

think about the Moscow elections?”

It’s very hard

to even notice that any kind of election is happening

in Moscow. I spent a month living in

“grandma mode.” What does “grandma mode” mean? It

means you’re cut off from the internet,

from social media, and from your quick-witted

grandkids who might come by and

tell you what’s going on in

the country these days. In other words, I was sitting in a cell, I

read newspapers.

I read all the newspapers. They brought in five, six,

maybe ten newspapers every day, and I listened

to the radio. Well, a grandma — what does a grandma do now?

She watches TV. I didn’t have a TV,

so all right, I was in semi-

grandma mode. And I want to tell you that in

semi-grandma mode

it is almost impossible to notice that in

Moscow, the largest city in Russia,

the largest city in Europe, some kind of

election campaign is underway. But sometimes on Echo

of Moscow (a Russian radio station)

they would report something like, well, Ilya Yashin has put himself forward,

and Sergei Mitrokhin with Yabloko (a liberal political party), something

or other, and there’s some kind of internal squabble going on.

At first it was interesting, then less so,

then not interesting at all, and no one

is following it. And probably I’m one of

the few people in Russia still curious

about what’s happening in the Yabloko party, because

I was a member of the party for many years.

I know all the people there, but even

I’ve stopped following it.

So that’s what it’s like: in Moscow

some kind of election is happening. I don’t really

want to praise anyone, and of course on this broadcast

if in the previous Moscow election

some other politician had taken part,

I would probably compare the current

election campaign and the situation to some

other person. But as it is, I’ll have to

compare it to myself, sorry, because I

was a candidate for mayor of Moscow four years

ago. And I ran a simple experiment. Today is

June 28, and on June 28 —

tomorrow my brother gets out of prison,

a bright day, June 29. So today is the 28th, and I

just went online and decided

to see what we were doing on June 28. Maybe

we had a lull then too, especially since four

years ago

the election was sudden, a snap election; it was

just suddenly announced on June 4 — on my birthday, no less —

they announced that Sobyanin had stepped down

from the post of mayor of Moscow in order to run

again

for mayor of Moscow, and so from the 4th onward we were doing something.

the 28th, and probably the other candidates too

who had been preparing for these elections for years

because for them this isn’t just another routine one right now

they should have done much more, properly

much more. In fact, not even on the 28th—on June 27, we

announced it. I’ll show you the news item now

so you don’t think that I

lied to you when I said we had already opened a headquarters for

volunteers. We got to work. These

photos are coming up—this is our headquarters for

volunteers, which we had built up over the years, and it instantly

started filling up with people. We opened it

on the 27th. So, well, I don’t know whether

any of the Moscow mayoral candidates now

have anything like that—a place where

people are swarming, volunteers are coming in, and everyone

knew the address: 22 Lyalin Lane. And now

you can easily google a million

of the coolest, most vivid

photos from there.

But right now I don’t see any

candidates

opening public campaign offices. But again, it’s not

that I’m trying to say, “I ran a great

campaign, and these people aren’t running campaigns.”

Actually, that is what I want to say: yes, we

ran a great campaign. I’m proud of everyone

who worked on my campaign, and these people now

aren’t campaigning at all—there’s absolutely nothing

noticeable.

Not even a little. I decided, out of nostalgia, it would be nice

to look back at what we did back then. They’re

all filing their documents now—I typed into YouTube

you can do the same—“Navalny

files documents as a candidate for Moscow mayor,” and you’ll

see this video. Let’s watch 38

seconds of me filing documents when

I was running for Moscow mayor exactly

four years ago.

[music]

4

[applause]

Oh, the signatures are falling.

I’m off to file them, and meanwhile you think about what

we’ll do if they don’t accept them from me.

[applause]

My team corrected me while the clip was playing: it was five

years ago, not four years ago.

Time flies.

But that’s how I filed my documents. Google it

now: “2018 Moscow mayoral candidate

filing documents,” and you’ll find a

photo like this of Dmitry Gudkov.

There’s a bit of a difference. It’s not

that I’m demanding Dmitry Gudkov

absolutely has to come with a huge crowd of people

and volunteers to file his documents.

The other candidates don’t even have

a photo like that. But it seems to me this is

a pretty vivid and obvious example

of the fact that they’re doing nothing, quietly—and that means

there are no real Moscow mayoral elections, to my

great regret. I absolutely am not

planning to, and definitely really do not want to,

boycott the Moscow mayoral election.

I really don’t want to boycott a second

election in a row, and we shouldn’t boycott

a second election in a row. But guys, if you’re not even doing

the bare minimum in the election itself

or in the political struggle, then I’d like

to see at least some political struggle from

these candidates against Moscow mayor

Sergei Sobyanin, because we know that

a significant number of Muscovites

are against Sobyanin, against United

Russia. Moscow is probably, in Russia,

the best city in which to run

an opposition election campaign.

I want them to run one. Yashin, up until

the point when he

realized that he still wouldn’t get through

the municipal filter (the requirement to collect signatures from municipal deputies to be allowed on the ballot), was running that kind of

election campaign on at least some

scale. I was glad about that, and on this

broadcast I always praised Yashin for it. But now, dear other candidates,

now, dear other candidates,

I demand that you engage in

political struggle, because closer to

the election I know what will start, it will start:

“Why is Navalny ignoring our

election campaign? Why

isn’t Navalny tweeting about us? Why

isn’t he doing this or that?” And after the election,

when they all get 2 percent each,

they’ll start whining, the way Sobchak did, the way

everyone else did after the presidential

campaign: “Why didn’t Navalny say anything

about us? We got two

percent because Navalny didn’t urge

his supporters to vote for us, because he did nothing.”

So here is an official appeal to

all Moscow mayoral candidates: I will

call on everyone to come, I will

call on everyone to vote. But guys, please

give us some political struggle.

Show the voters that you are

fighting.

Sobyanin, Sergei Semyonovich—it’s clear that

the municipal filter is impossible to get through

without help from United Russia.

But five years ago, every single day

I wrote a report on how many signatures

I had collected. I sat there with the phone myself

calling these municipal deputies.

At our headquarters we had this big wall chart hanging up—now

we’ll remind you what it looked like—on

which you could see how many deputies there were,

how many we had called, who had

promised us

their vote, who still hadn’t promised,

who we could approach and persuade,

and who was impossible. In other words, I myself, together with

the headquarters, together with our great team,

collected a large number of signatures.

So what’s the situation now? They say, “We’ll go

to United Russia.” Of course, go to United

Russia, demand

that it give you the signatures you need.

We don’t recognize the municipal filter anyway.

As for the municipal filter, who even cares who it is.

Where those signatures will come from is another matter, but I’d like

for us to get some kind of information about

what exactly you’re doing, right.

There are, like, around 8 million voters here,

and if you want to compete

for votes, give us something.

Nothing is happening. I don’t even know whether there will be

a candidate from the Yabloko party at all—this

weird situation where Mitrokhin is suing

his own party, and the party is suing Mitrokhin,

or they’re trying to remove him and not

nominate any candidate at all. Well, Rusakova seemed

to be a decent candidate for them, almost

I can’t really see what Gudkov is doing. Then there’s

that strange candidate named Krasovsky,

who is actually the most useful candidate, by the way.

The most useful candidate because, well,

he’s an absolutely hopeless crook and

a political hack, but still the most

useful candidate so far, because

we can look at the photos and

write down everyone involved in his

campaign headquarters, put them into some kind of

Excel spreadsheet called

“Disgusting Crooks and Their Crew,” and

never deal with these people again.

By the way, the overwhelming majority,

as far as I could tell, the overwhelming

majority of the people on that campaign are

former Sobchak campaign staff. In fact,

he himself is basically former Sobchak staff, and we can see

this pattern: if in the

presidential election

Putin needed a caricature

liberal candidate and they found Sobchak, then now,

one level lower—or higher, depending how you look at it—

well, no, not higher, but you know what I mean,

one level lower,

the Moscow mayor’s office needs a candidate who

is a parody of a caricature

of a liberal—and that’s Krasovsky for you. But

again, I’ll repeat:

the best, most useful content you can get is to

simply make an inventory of the most

disgusting crooks working in

his campaign. So I’ve gotten a lot of questions

about whom I’m going to

support, whether I’ll go, whether I’ll come

out to vote. My short answer is this, at the end

of my long ramble:

I want to go to the polling station, I

urge everyone to vote. These are elections

that could go to a second round, so in

principle, voting for anyone except

Sobyanin lowers his rating. The main thing

is to keep him from winning in the first round. I’m ready

to campaign for candidates, I’m ready

to talk about what great things they could do—

they just need to actually do those

great things. And I urge all of you

to put pressure on these candidates,

to tell them: guys, either you actually do something,

or we’ll consider you spoilers and stooges.

And the fight over the pension age—

it really is a fight. We can see that

this is the main political process in Russia

right now. Every day, even rallies not organized by us

are taking place. Today in

Novosibirsk there were more than 1,000 people;

yesterday there were crowds in Siberian cities, today in

Irkutsk. Across the country, despite bans,

there are rallies much larger than

there had been before. There are two very

important dates ahead. The first is July 1, when

there will be rallies in 27 cities

organized by us. On June 30 there will be a rally

in Irkutsk.

In some cities, the rallies are not

organized by us; there’s a list, and a link to the list

is in the description of this video. Be sure to

take part, because, basically,

the Kremlin’s plan—their strategy and tactics—

is simple. Look: they have put forward

the harshest, most vicious proposal,

raising the retirement age to 65 for men and

63 for women. Now they are waiting and

watching our reaction, and they’re waiting for July 1.

What matters is how many people

will come out, and

they care how many people will come out too. If

a lot of people turn out, then on July 18

they’ll probably introduce at least a somewhat softer

bill.

If, as it seems to them, not that many people

turn out, then on July 18 they’ll submit

the harshest version—the very same

bill—and then they’ll wait

until September to see whether the situation heats up by

September, whether any politicians will

join in, whether you and I will be actively

involved, and

whether there will be public outreach on these issues, resistance,

and defense of our rights. Based on that,

in September they’ll either adjust it

down to 63 for men and 60

for women, or, if we are not

active, they’ll leave this super-

predatory provision in place. Even 63 for

men and 60 for women is just as

outrageously exploitative—absolutely exploitative.

That needs to be understood.

We need to do explanatory outreach, and we are doing it

as best we can. I’ve been recording videos about the pension

age all day long. I

put out my video—you saw it, the one with

the funny beard. Vladimir Milov released

a video where he explains everything in great

detail and lays out our constructive

agenda.

Today Kira Yarmysh released a video

on what is actually a crucial topic,

namely that women are the ones who, to the

greatest extent, are being robbed

and

hit hardest by the increase in the pension

age, because

Why do we keep talking about men?

Men, generally speaking, don’t live to 64,

we won’t make it, while women will live to 64,

according to all the statistics.

But their lives will be very poor, and

women certainly cannot find

work in their 60s; at 55, and even at 50, it’s nearly impossible

for a woman to find a job, and that is where

the enormous deception lies. They

tell these unfortunate women,

who are supposed to keep working from 55 to 63,

they say, “Ma’am, go work,” but the woman

has nowhere to work. There are no jobs, even in a big city, and

in a small town, a woman will never

find a job at all. Ask your

grandmother, your mother—or you know it yourselves

perfectly well. Go to any website where

jobs are listed. That’s why we

will campaign against this. There is also a campaign being waged against us:

all the newspapers

are packed, absolutely packed, with

these websites,

with various articles about how

wonderful the increase in the retirement

age is. Or, by the way,

articles saying that these liberals,

that Navalny also once wanted

to raise the retirement age. And just

a couple of hours before our broadcast, this

one of the

online outlets, *CIT Journal*, published

a whole investigation. They

found—and wrote a whole piece about—

a company that is engaged in

placing this paid-for nonsense claiming that

Navalny also once supported it,

that Navalny was on the same side as Putin and

Medvedev, that he supported raising

the retirement age. It’s taken out of

context—a single phrase from

the platform of the Progress Party, the

People’s Alliance Party.

You should understand that all of this is, of course,

a complete lie. Over the last

year and a half, I’ve traveled all over the country, everywhere

I’ve spoken, and everywhere I was asked about

the retirement age. Our position is absolutely clear: we

unequivocally believe it cannot be raised, given

life expectancy.

As for the Progress Party’s platform,

well, there we wrote that it was necessary

to encourage a voluntary increase in

the retirement age—when a person

is told: you can retire now,

at 60, and receive 15,000 rubles, or you can

retire at 62 and receive more.

Voluntarily—decide for yourself. That is what we

proposed. In any case, these

proposals

were tied to an increase in life

expectancy. The proposal explicitly begins: when

life expectancy rises, then it will be possible

to do this and that. But

life expectancy is not rising. I’ve

recorded videos for 44 regions. If you

live in one of those regions, you will probably

soon see this as YouTube advertising,

where I speak. And this is for those

regions where life expectancy on average

is less than 65 years—that is,

the average man there does not,

in fact, live to retirement. And there are at

least four regions where men do not even

live to 60—the current

retirement age. Take, for example,

the Republic of Tuva (a federal republic in southern Siberia).

Fifty-eight—the average life expectancy for men is 58.

That’s a young man. And that is the average, the average

age at death. So we simply cannot

stay silent; people need to get involved.

Public opinion is completely and

entirely on our side. Absolutely everyone in the

country is against Putin and Medvedev’s plans.

And our task right now is to

bring these people out into the streets,

so that they speak out and express their outrage.

Please, let’s do this very

actively. Meanwhile, let me first

answer a few questions. I see Vorobyov

asking: Nikolskaya Street has been completely

closed off. Do you think this will change

the festive mood in the country and among fans,

including foreign fans who came for the World Cup?

Nikolskaya Street—

I was promoting it on Instagram,

I was talking it up on this program too, and

I myself was skeptical at first, when I saw the

photos and videos, but I went there a couple of times,

and it was the best thing to happen in Moscow in

recent years. It really was

a street-long celebration,

a spontaneously formed place where

huge numbers of both locals and foreigners

were bonding, hugging, and as you walked along, you

saw people from Iran chanting

their Iranian chants, here people from

Nigeria, over there Germans, over there Danes, and

everywhere among them Russians shouting

“Go Russia!”

and all the rest—it was

great. And today the news came that

the Moscow authorities—apparently the Kremlin’s doing, since

Nikolskaya is right next to Red Square—

well, as usual, stupid people

saw something good and decided

to break it. Nikolskaya has already been cordoned off,

there are metal detectors or barriers set up,

apparently there will be a line to get in. I mean,

what is this nonsense for, really?

This whole part of the city center

should be made completely pedestrian and

Red Square should be opened up.

A million foreigners have come here—what

do they want to do in Moscow? They

want to go to Red Square and take

selfies

with Saint Basil’s Cathedral in the background,

of course. And the city of Moscow should

to give them that opportunity in full

come by, take photos, and do it

by spending money, by buying beer, you’re putting that money

into our country’s economy

we love you, but damn, right now

our authorities are acting so stupidly that even

here it shows itself like this. Pio, Maksim

will sort you out. Again, we forgot about Denis

Mikhailov from the St. Petersburg headquarters. He is still

being held in a special detention center

forgive me for laughing, because Denis

Mikhailov is a great guy, and he really

has reached such a level

of confrontation with the crooks at the mayor’s office

of the city of St. Petersburg

that he practically never gets out of

the detention center. So Denis Mikhailov

is in the detention center — that’s become such a

constant for our headquarters. He has probably

served more time than I have, and more than Volkov

during

this election campaign. He’ll be released

in a couple of days. I hope that on

the next broadcast I’ll be able to say that Denis

Mikhailov is free and will truly continue

his fight. He has really locked horns

with these people. Well done. All residents

of St. Petersburg — Petersburgers, help

Mikhailov and our headquarters, because they are doing

great work. In a year, you’ll have elections

for local deputies, so let’s get to work

and do all of this together. And now let’s take some questions

from Twitter and see what people are asking there

write with the hashtag Navalny

2018

Dargod64 asks: might it be worth spending more time

drawing attention to the VAT increase and trying

to get it repealed? Dear Dargod, we

have discussed this quite a lot within our headquarters

A lot of people write to us saying, basically, why do you

keep talking all the time about pension

reform and say nothing about

the VAT increase

Even though that is also very important. Of course, it

is very important too: raising VAT will increase

prices across the board, and inflation will rise because of it

That’s not me saying it — the Central Bank says

they

they changed their inflation target because of

the VAT increase

But you can’t really build a broad campaign against raising VAT

because people don’t understand what

VAT is. To them, VAT is some kind of

strange thing, some tax

that some businesspeople pay

it’s not clear how. People who understand it

know, of course, that the specific feature of VAT

its economic meaning, its financial structure

is such that it is in fact a direct

increase in prices for everything at every stage

of a product’s production. So raising

VAT is a terrible thing altogether, which

the government has done from the standpoint of

raising taxes, despite the fact that during

the election campaign Putin

said that he would not raise taxes. But

it is extremely difficult to explain this to people

So VAT should be discussed

with businesspeople, with sole proprietors

with entrepreneurs, with people who

understand taxes. But with the broader

public, it probably doesn’t make much sense. But

rest assured, in two or three months

when all of this kicks in, people who do not

understand anything about VAT

will understand perfectly well how much

prices have risen because of its increase

They’ll go to the store for some milk

for food products the VAT is lower, but they’ll still go

to the store in any case for some kind of

food, goods, and so on and so forth

and then they’ll see — whoa, the prices

have gone up. And that’s when we will talk about

rising prices, we will talk about VAT

Of course, we will keep talking about this constantly

The word “pension” has become taboo

I saw a truly astonishing piece of news

from Stavropol, where they really did

in order to avoid public unrest, all media outlets

were forbidden from publishing any

critical articles about the increase in

the pension age. It is absolutely

astonishing. Even in the local

newspaper that belongs, as I understand it,

as far as I understood

to the administration, it is called

Blagodarnensky. There, a regional

government official first gathered the chief

editors and said, guys, please

don’t write anything

about raising the pension age, otherwise

there will be unrest here. But one editor-in-chief

said: you know, we already have an article here

already prepared

under the headline “Will We Even Make It to Retirement?”

It has already gone to print. Well, it’s out, nothing can be done

And the officials told him: well, what can you do

And they confiscated and destroyed the entire

print run of that newspaper because it contained

an article about pension reform

Can you imagine how afraid these people are

just imagine how much these people fear

any activity on your part, even the smallest

activity. You may think: well, at night I’ll

post some videos, some

posts, and they’ll be seen by

50 people on my friends list. And if I share it with

friends, then 500 people will see it. But how do you

think — does Blagodarnensky have

a much bigger circulation? No, these are the same

tiny

information streams. But from these

tiny information streams

a huge wave emerges that

cannot be ignored

That is exactly what needs to be done, and please do not

forget that. For the second or even

third program in a row, I have been

He asks about Shestun — he is the head

of the Serpukhov District in the Moscow Region.

He got into a very real battle,

and a highly unexpected one at that,

a battle with the FSB and people from the Presidential Administration.

And stubbornly, all through this fight, he records them

using some kind of hidden audio recorders,

and posts it all directly on YouTube,

telling the blunt truth, tearing into them, calling them all sorts of names.

They are basically just the governor

of the Moscow Region, Vorobyov,

whom he accuses of being,

well, a villain.

He accuses the Presidential Administration, he

accuses the FSB leadership, and this is really

quite something. You can see Vorobyov here now

in the photo — the governor of the Moscow Region,

who is now running for re-election, and before that

he controls all the districts and removes their heads.

He installs loyal district heads, and so he

tried to remove Shestun, but Shestun was one of

the few in the Moscow Region who said no.

And

he launched a full-scale war. What I

want to say about this is: I am not

a fan of Shestun. In fact, anyone who followed

the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

will easily remember the post

I wrote about Shestun

when he

started buying for his administration

some Mercedes at an absurdly

high price, and we went after Shestun

full force, making special

leaflets against him and distributing them

throughout the Serpukhov District. That is, we

were actively fighting against the head of the district administration, Shestun,

and generally speaking, we did not like him much.

And he also answered us rather brazenly. Let's

watch a 52-second video

where he says there is nothing

wrong with the car, and that he also needs

a helicopter and will buy one. I submitted to the council of deputies

of the Chekhov District administration

a request to purchase a car.

They are allocating the money for it now.

I asked for a Mercedes; that request was not approved.

We are now announcing a tender,

and I should already be choosing

the configuration. Why a Mercedes?

Because this car can handle a very

large mileage — it can do a million

kilometers, and I use it very heavily.

I can drive up to 100,000 kilometers a month

(about 62,000 miles), and on top of that I need

high speed because I

am constantly on the move, and

I need four-wheel drive as well.

I travel in winter too, whereas a Mercedes here

is rear-wheel drive. To be honest, I have even

thought about getting a small

helicopter, because sometimes in a single

day I travel around 200 kilometers

(about 124 miles) just within the district.

Why such injustice? That's why, when it comes to him,

regarding Alexander Shestun, I

am being completely objective now, because

there is a whole history of how we

fought with him as well. But I want to say

very clearly that I can see

that the case against him is fabricated, that the man

simply — I do not know who he is connected to,

some say that behind him stands the

Investigative Committee (Russia's main federal investigative body),

that he is protected by Bastrykin of the Investigative Committee,

and that is why he is not afraid to go after

the FSB brass. Others say that he

is connected with Kadyrov and with Chechens, and therefore

he is also not afraid to go after the FSB brass. The FSB

hits back hard, but I see one thing clearly:

the man wanted to run for re-election as head

of the district, and he has every

right to do so. Let him run in the election, let him

answer for his Mercedes too,

let him face uncomfortable questions,

let him lose the election or whatever else.

But apparently

the authorities realized he would not lose it, and

so they started brazenly removing him just like that. And I

hear the audio recordings — he

recorded them, you can find them on his channel — and there are

the deputy head of the Moscow Region administration

and people from the Presidential Administration,

in particular an FSB general,

who simply

says: you have to leave, we

have to appoint other people to your

position. And when he refused, his home was

searched.

He has now been arrested, he was arrested

obviously on some, well, laughable

absolutely laughable, completely

baseless grounds. But from this it is clear to me that the

system

just wants to devour him simply because he

refused to give up his post to some

people. More than that,

officials come to him and quite

openly say — as far as I understand about Shestun,

there are recordings, or at least he says so in an interview —

that they tell him directly,

well, we have promised your

position to the Podolsk people. So, do you understand?

An official comes to you — another official —

and

says, listen, you have to leave because

we promised your position to the Podolsk group.

Amazing, what can I say. It is like

one gangster on top of another, gangsters helping gangsters, and in

this gangster operation to make sure

that the Podolsk people seize the post of head

of the Serpukhov District, the FSB,

the Investigative Committee, and the judicial system are all involved.

Well, somehow this really

bothers me a lot. We should have a short video.

Oh, let's watch how FSB General

Tkachev

directly threatens him and tries to force him.

step down from office, and we’re at 44 seconds now

there isn’t any on the channel, I’m shocked, I can send a message

serves, and how is that a problem for you—for your wife?

this is a dictatorship, well, he doesn’t have long either

we’ve eaten

I’m not hosting

that’s not true, so the best

problems sometimes have the best solutions

paper

it gets resolved if you just leave it

the problem, the court, dying—this all gets resolved

it’s uneasy here, you sit calmly until

by September you step down, come on now

let’s wait, absolutely—how can this be here

like this, until the court’s decision, sort of

to back out of life then—the court lost, but

it’s clear that I’ve already lost completely

I’ll write it down on paper—it goes that the court and you

a win-win game

General Tkachev told us how

the judicial system works—well, come on

make it so the court and all of them come out winning

fine, you resign and become an adviser

you’ll be appointed, and if you don’t go, there will be

problems for your wife and your children

a general, you understand, says to an official, the head

of the administration: listen, want a problem

for your wife and children? Then right now we’ll

arrange it—you’ll lose in court, but if you

will

be a good boy and hand it over to the Podolsk group, then

you’ll win in court. I keep saying this, but

nevertheless, it must be said, well

what other arguments do you need

to fight this government? They’re bandits

bandits

idiots, crooks, con artists—a gathering of

some of the worst people—what the hell, damn it

some head

of the Serpukhov district administration, well

whether he gets elected or not

they remove him there in the course of a special operation

his family is being threatened, his children are being threatened, but what

can be said about that? Therefore

without question, Shestun—I couldn’t have imagined

that I could call him

a political prisoner—well, yes, a political prisoner

because he is imprisoned for political reasons

yes, he’s quite an unpleasant person to me

I would never have voted for him

in this election; I would have campaigned against him

probably, and if some

other candidate had come to me and said, let’s

work against Shestun, I would have said fine, he’s there

making improper purchases, buying things he had no business buying

sports Mercedes cars with

taxpayers’ money, but now he is clearly a

political prisoner, because for those

purchases he should have been held accountable precisely for

those purchases, and before his constituents. They

would simply not have re-elected him. But for some reason he

has to leave office not because of buying

Mercedes cars, but because the Podolsk group needs it

you understand—or I’ve established to get in touch with you

let me stay on a bit longer and answer questions, so

right, about VAT, I’ve already answered that—I see three

come on, show me what other

questions we have here about the historian Dmitriev

“Please say something,” someone is asking me

all right

well, it’s an absolutely monstrous story, really

a monstrous story is unfolding right now in

Karelia. I’m not doing a separate segment on it

because, generally speaking, nothing is clear

except that it’s lawlessness and a monstrous

story. There is the head of the local

Memorial branch (the Russian historical and human rights organization), Dmitriev, and he

goes around and

excavates

abandoned burial sites—he simply searches for them

the people who were once simply

shot—our fellow citizens

simply destroyed and buried somewhere out in the

forest, with no cemetery, no graves, no

information, nothing. And he has documented

the existence of several such burial sites

and documented that thousands of people

were executed during the Great Terror

and naturally, because of this

he had a serious falling-out with the local

security officials, who categorically do not like

his work, plus the fact that Memorial

is bold—and I like that organization

and so they decided to imprison him and

set about doing it in the vilest

way possible

they accused him of pedophilia, and since

now even the Supreme Court—good Lord—

the Russian Supreme Court acquitted him

on that count, and people around me are rejoicing

there was supposedly some pedophilia—some photographs

were found of his adopted daughter naked, and indecent

acts were alleged, that is, they

brought some monstrous

absolutely horrific charges against him, charges with which

it’s hard to find people who will

defend you, because people will think,

who knows, they probably wouldn’t accuse you of that

for no reason—better for us to

stay away from this case

as in a classic

FSB-style story, he was acquitted on those

counts, and the Supreme Court said that

it was nonsense, having reviewed all the case

materials, including a conversation

between a psychologist and his daughter, and all of these

materials were examined by the Supreme Court, which said

that no, this man should be released

this man, the historian Dmitriev, and he was released and

was free for about a week or two

and yesterday he was detained, and somehow

during the detention some police officers

stopped him on the highway and allegedly found

some belongings, and said, “Aha, these items were found—you

want to flee, while against you there is

once again the very same case under investigation”

and now they have arrested him for two

months

someone ended up facing similar charges over the same

materials—that is, they simply

want to show: we don’t care about

the Supreme Court, we don’t care about anything, we

want to rot you in prison. He is an elderly

man,

and he won’t survive prison, not for a long

stretch, and we understand what

a Russian prison is—especially in regions

like Karelia. We’ll rot you in

prison, and we don’t care about anything—and they are

carrying this out in a state of total lawlessness. This

man is being imprisoned.

And of course, this case needs to be watched closely.

Unfortunately, it is covered only in what

are called the liberal media, yes,

while in all the other media it is simply

forbidden to talk about such things. But, but

something monstrous is happening: they have brought

such charges against you that you know

you’ll carry them with you for the rest of your life. There will

always be someone saying: that’s the very person against whom

there either was a pedophilia case or there wasn’t,

whether it was pedophilia or all of it was made up—you’ll

spend your life running around proving to everyone: but I

really didn’t do anything. Well, somehow, maybe

it happened, maybe it didn’t—there’s no smoke without fire.

And on top of that, they just keep him endlessly in

a cell. And I watched the video of the arrest—

good Lord, the man is driving some kind of

tiny cheap foreign car,

and then they stop him, drag him out, put him in—

the whole system is occupied with this. For what? Well, this is what

we say to these people, by the way: we are going to

pay higher pensions to all these

investigators, prosecutors, FSB officers (Federal Security Service),

who are busy with nonsense instead of

investigating, there in Karelia,

corruption and actual murders,

real crimes. Instead, they chase after

this Dmitriev case, and later we will have to pay

for it.

With higher pensions—they retire early

and start receiving them ahead of time. So what is to be done?

I ask Valentinovich,

apparently: will you be meeting

your brother from the penal colony tomorrow? Of course I will.

I’ll meet my brother from the penal colony. I just don’t know—

they are always pulling tricks. Will they release him

directly from the colony, or will they

transfer him somewhere else and release him from there

so that the people meeting him won’t see him, as they

usually do—like they did with me. More often than not, they

do it even from a special detention center. The main thing is

that they release him. Of course I miss

him very much; the whole family misses him. The man spent three and a half

years behind bars simply because

he is my brother. He was held there in a fairly

harsh environment; they were constantly throwing him

into various punishments,

into solitary and

he went through all, all of those stages

of pressure that are laid out

officially in prison regulations—how

you can make a person’s life

worse. He went through that entire ladder. We

all, of course, miss him terribly.

So, our next topic is about one

person whom we were all waiting for

here in Moscow,

but he never showed up. There was a man

named Igor Kholmanskikh,

and to all of us—to me and everyone who came out to

Bolotnaya Square (a major Moscow protest site) and all the other

rallies, to huge numbers of people across

the country—this

Igor Kholmanskikh, speaking on Putin’s behalf,

said and shouted: I and the guys from

Uralvagonzavod will come and

break you all up there. Let’s watch this

legendary video.

At 31 seconds, once again, I want to say about

these rallies:

if our militia—or whatever it is called now,

the police—doesn’t know how to work, can’t

handle it, then we men are ready

to come out ourselves and defend our stability,

of course within the framework of Russian law.

Question, look.

The work of our police is clear because

of the events on the square. Come by—but not

right now, and preferably not for that reason.

And somehow we kept waiting for Igor Kholmanskikh with his

guys, wondering when he would arrive. And he was preparing,

and he created a movement called

For the Working Man, and of course he

was greatly favored by the authorities; he was

appointed presidential envoy. They simply took

some random nobody—he had been, what,

a shop foreman or something like that. Well, judging

by the way he speaks, an obvious fool—

and appointed him presidential envoy, that is, a person

who oversees the security services

and governors in a giant industrial

region. But all the locals,

even the opposition figures, didn’t really

have many complaints about him, because he

didn’t do anything—nothing at all—because

he was just, well,

a strange, not very smart person,

a random man whom they put in front of

a camera and told: just say that we,

speaking on behalf of the workers, say that all these

white-ribbon protesters, we’ll disperse them. So he

went out and mumbled this nonsense, Putin

boosted him, he was appointed, and he immediately

of course moved into some

main palace in the city of Yekaterinburg,

and lived in that envoy’s palace and basically

did nothing. And I remembered him—

why? Because he was removed from

his post. I mean, this is such an ideal

case—not even just a career, but

the whole context around that career is simply

perfect: a man from Uralvagonzavod

declares that he will come and disperse

those who are against Putin, and for that he is

appointed presidential envoy. He flies around on

on state charter planes

lives in a palace

a wonderful life in the meantime

Uralvagonzavod is literally collapsing

it has practically gone bankrupt, and the salaries there

are low

one of the most crisis-ridden enterprises

go to the arbitration court database and you

will see a huge number of lawsuits

that threaten to bankrupt

Uralvagonzavod; you can read all about it

the appalling condition

of the enterprise

by the way, in Nizhny Tagil

where Uralvagonzavod is located

male life expectancy is 62 years

that is, also

and there, men do not live to reach retirement, and

this man, who supposedly stands up for the common man

for the workers of Nizhny Tagil, he has not

done anything to improve

the lives of these people, while he himself, having first been

what he was, moved into a palace and flew around

on planes, and now he has been removed from

his post and appointed chairman

of the board of directors

of Uralvagonzavod, an enterprise whose

turnover is 132 billion rubles, and again I

read today on some local Telegram channel, and there

on some local one, yes, and it really captured

the right thought from Nizhny Tagil

they just took some random guy

who once blurted out some stupid thing and that was it

first they appointed him presidential envoy, and now to the board

of directors, where again

he will have private planes and a luxurious

life

secretaries, a huge salary there, a million

rubles a year—why? Because he

was just, you know, some clown who ran out

said something, and the tsar liked this clown

and so he had

a meaningless government career, but

once you are already in the inner circle, then you

simply have to be handed some sinecure

like Uralvagonzavod; you will sit there with this

board of directors, and you will have one this size

a leather chair, an office the size of 10

of these studios, an oak desk like

you know, in the movies, the kind from which planes could

practically fly in, and next to it a

small green table under which

two people can come up and sit down

you will have all of that

because, because you are

an incompetent person, but you really love

Putin and are ready to say all sorts of strange

things—that is what a Russian official is

the question is: can anything develop? No

how can anything in a country

develop with people like this? The question is whether

Uralvagonzavod will develop normally

of course not; how could this man, who

from being a shop-floor manager

to becoming a presidential envoy, failed at all the work there

and has now effectively become

the head of this plant—will he really be able

to manage it properly and competently? Of course

not, of course not. This is exactly the kind of

rule of the worst—negative selection

fools are promoted upward

fools are seated in these chairs and

given private planes; these fools rule over us

because fools publicly

say that those who do not want

Russia to be governed

by fools should be driven out. It is an interesting and truly

important topic, and follow it—I will

be watching how he manages this

Uralvagonzavod. There was also a great story

in Rostov Region—the funniest

the funniest story this week

happened in Rostov Region: there

an entire police precinct was dealing drugs

I mean, literally, police officers

were making dead drops, like the ones you see on

the internet in those funny photos, where someone

is walking around with some—what do you call them—

stash men, and yes, I know in quite a lot of detail

the method and how all this is done because

I am around such people all the time; they

tell me all these addict stories of theirs

I find it interesting, and I know fairly

well how this system works

so they go around burying things; I will not

go into detail—you can

find it yourselves if you want—but these stash

guys who were burying drugs and then

selling them over the internet—you

buy them and then go to some place

and dig them up—were police officers. Not one

officer, not two, but an entire police precinct

was involved in this, and they had

what was it they found there

seven kilograms of drugs and scales

special ones

that they used for all this

it was just like in a movie

like *Breaking Bad* or any other film

about drugs, with, you know, these tables

with powder on them, scales, and all that

and they are packaging everything into little bags—these

police officers were sitting there. Damn, I hope they

were doing it in uniform; I would really have liked to see

that video of them sitting there

Comrade Captain, please pass me

200 grams of batch number one, and you, Comrade

Senior Lieutenant, what is that, hashish, and

you have scattered it around—come on, do it carefully

this

and roll it into somewhat more

proper little lumps. Comrade Major, this time

said that we need to dilute

our heroin in such-and-such a proportion

and such-and-such, so come on, comrades, let us

do all this

more neatly—and there they are, sitting and doing all of it

and what I have just said is

Apparently, that’s not an exaggeration — that’s really how it was.

Probably, that’s how it really was: they called each other

“Comrade Major,” “Comrade Captain,” while

among themselves they called each other Vanya, Kolya, but

literally, police officers — an entire

department. Everyone in the department knew it. They

packaged drugs, brought in drugs, and

sold drugs to specific

users. They were caught because

the cops couldn’t help but realize that, after all,

some kind of operation was underway. Naturally, there

were drug addicts there,

and very often some of them turn out to be informants

or police agents. Someone ratted them out, and

the police came and arrested them.

They disbanded them, apparently, but what really

struck me was this: when I was reading about

it in an article, there was a comment there

from one of those high-ranking police officials

who said that “the question is being considered” of

opening a criminal case.

Seriously? “The question is being considered”? You catch some

16-year-old idiot with hashish,

one gram of it, and if he passes it on

to another idiot to smoke,

you drag that idiot off to prison for five years. You

do it simply to create so-called

performance numbers.

You catch these addicts, take them for

testing, lock them up for 15

days — I end up sitting with them afterward.

That happens instantly. But here, an entire department

was dealing drugs, and you’re “considering”

whether to open a criminal case? Come on.

The entire police force of Rostov Region should be

disbanded — and not just that, the whole Southern

Federal District: all of them should be thrown the hell

out. The entire central directorate,

everyone who deals with

drugs within the police system should be

dismissed for this. The scale of the scandal is

indescribable: a police department was selling

drugs. Who knows how long they’d been

selling them? Who knows, in the course of

this risky business, how many

people they may have killed, for example, or what else

they did? It’s always a business tied

to violence and all sorts of things like that. And they’re

“considering” whether to open a criminal

case.

No high-profile resignations, no

nationwide scandal — we see none of that.

But we should. This is just one more example

of what the Russian police are, and every

time something like this happens, it

goes beyond our idea of what is

even possible. Could we have imagined

that 400 kilograms of cocaine would be found at the embassy in Argentina

(about 882 pounds)? I

seem to recall people saying our Foreign Ministry was involved in that kind of

operation. Turns out it was possible. But you have to admit,

what a system: diplomats

supply the cocaine, and our cops distribute it here through

their departments.

“Distribute” is the right word. What a wonderful

state system — and everything is secret.

These ones have state secrets, those ones have

state secrets, and everything is kept inside

the state system, from wholesale

purchases

to those lower-level operators — it’s all run by

state employees.

And we pay them for it — with higher

and early pensions.

It’s the perfect system. I may sound like I’m joking now,

but who knows — maybe the very same

cocaine that diplomats were bringing from

Argentina was being sold too. Why not?

What couldn’t happen? What isn’t possible?

Anything can happen in the Russian system, because

the unbelievable is right there beside us. And this week I had

some absolutely

astonishing court hearings. First,

I was tried in the Simonovsky Court. You know

that I’m a twice-convicted repeat offender,

and so I have to report regularly to

the inspectorate.

Every first and third Thursday,

sometimes those first and third Thursdays

coincide with trips I have — for example,

I go on vacation with my family. Over all these years

that I’ve been reporting,

there were two or three times when I couldn’t make it.

My lawyer submitted a document saying that he

was on vacation, so he couldn’t come, but

the system is unhappy that it gave me

a suspended sentence five years ago, and now

those five years are almost over, and

under the law my suspended sentence

would expire, and that would be it — gone.

And then they wouldn’t be able to just

snatch me up at any moment and throw me in prison for five years.

They can, of course, at any moment

throw me in for three and a half years on

another case, but not for five years anymore.

That would have changed in mid-July, and so

these clowns arranged a special

court hearing for me — first the detention center, and then

this time they suddenly summoned me by subpoena. So

I hire a lawyer,

the lawyer falls ill, and

that’s a normal thing, just everyday life. I

come in and say: let’s postpone everything for

five days or so,

because my lawyer is sick. Actually, that’s not even

how it happened. I arrived, and the court already knew that

my lawyer was ill, because they had called her

and she said, “I’m on sick leave.” I come to

the court, I’m standing outside the courtroom, the room is locked,

then after a while someone comes

— a bailiff opens the room with a key. I

go into the courtroom, and sitting there is

this woman, in the place where

my lawyer should be sitting.

I ask, “Who are you?” And meanwhile a whole crowd

of journalists is coming in. And she says,

“I’m your lawyer.” Just like that: “I’m your court-appointed lawyer.”

Court-appointed. The hearing hadn’t even really started yet...

It hadn’t even started yet; no one had officially scheduled it at all.

From a formal

legal standpoint, the judge had not even yet

been able to consider the issue that

my main lawyer had fallen ill, that

the proceedings had not yet begun. I have no idea where

this lady came from—whether she had been sitting there already or came in

from the judge’s chambers through the deliberation room,

but something obviously happened.

The judge comes out, and I say, in utter

astonishment: here are the documents,

here is the medical certificate, here is everything you need.

We are postponing the hearing. Even the prosecutor

says, well, of course the hearing has to be postponed. No—

here is a court-appointed lawyer for you. Honestly,

I don’t even remember the last time I yelled at

a judge like that—and I really was

yelling. She couldn’t even have me removed

because she needed to carry through

this lawless outrage right there and then,

to extend this

probation period—which is what she ultimately

did, several times, despite the fact that

the prosecutor objected. The prosecutor

agreed that I should go to my lawyer,

my sick lawyer Olga Mikhailovna, who

was there

with radiculitis and simply could not move, and

bring back additional documents from her. No.

No, the judge said no and issued

an absolutely astonishing ruling. In the

absence of all the lawyers, there were a million

different violations.

She not only extended my

suspended sentence by a year,

she also ordered me to report to

the inspection office every Monday. That means I

now have to, every single week,

go there and check in, and I even

did the math for her there—this is absurd.

Look, it’s a 40-hour workweek in

Russia.

You want me to check in once a

week. That means five percent

of the workweek—but an hour there and an hour back

to the inspection office, I have to spend

just on traveling there. You understand

that this is impossible to comply with.

And you could read it right in her eyes:

I understand exactly why a ruling like this

is being made—so that you cannot comply with

our idiotic conditions, and we can endlessly

keep extending your suspended sentence so that you

cannot run for office,

and so that you are always on our hook; we

can put you in prison at any moment.

That was one astonishing court hearing. And the second hearing,

which I no longer made it to, was with

billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.

I had prepared and brought for you

such beautiful things—red stripe,

blue seal, and look at these

great stamps here. These are notarized

translated Italian

documents that directly proved we were

right, and we understood that now we would

go in and win the case against Mikhail

Prokhorov, because we simply could not

lose it. We open them—you see, there’s a bookmark

placed there—and we see it says that

Mr. Khloponin, former deputy prime minister

of the government, first bought his dacha (country house) for

10 million euros,

11 million euros, and then sold it in

the next document, we see, for

35.5 million euros.

So there you have it: in one document it says

in black and white, 11 million euros,

and here it says 35.5 million

euros.

Obviously, if you sold your

house for three times its market

value, then this was not a market transaction.

It is obvious that this looks very much like

a bribe, and with these documents, basically,

we could quite reasonably have

hit Mikhail Prokhorov and the official Khloponin

over the head with it. But the court said that all the same

—and for the first time, this happened to us:

they removed

our lawyer Ivan Zhdanov from the hearing.

For what?

Well, he had various motions,

and he started reading them out. She said: read them all.

But by law, they have to be considered one by one.

First I ask the court for this,

it says denied; fine, then I ask the court

for that, it may deny it, and then about

something else—and that one may be granted. That is how

the process works. But the judge said: read

everything together. He said: I won’t do that.

So they ordered him removed from the courtroom, and he was removed.

Zhdanov was gone; one lawyer did remain, though,

and they issued a ruling under which I now owe

Mikhail Prokhorov 1 ruble.

Which is, of course, just wonderful. But that’s not all:

not only do I owe him a ruble,

I also have to record a special video for

Mikhail Prokhorov and post it on my

YouTube channel. It will be interesting to see how

the bailiffs will enforce

that—I don’t know. But quite possibly,

my friends, I may even record

this video myself—for Mikhail Prokhorov, for

Khloponin, for all these judges—in

accordance with the court ruling. But I have

a feeling that they won’t like my video

either. On June 30 in Irkutsk, and on July 1 throughout

the rest of the country, come to the

rallies against raising the retirement

age.

Our program will go on break until the end of

August or the beginning of September,

and we will try—in fact, we are already

trying to do something like a relaunch of the

Navalny LIVE channel, which we plan to complete by

September. But in any case, our

program.

As the show goes on vacation, I’m saying goodbye for

a longer time than usual,

but I hope you’ll come back to us in September.

Then we’ll once again be discussing

all sorts of serious, sad, cheerful, and

funny things on this program. Many

thanks to everyone. Goodbye.

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