Chaos in Belarus, Is Gnom Gnomych to Blame, Nalivkin Arrested

[music]

Good evening, everyone. In Moscow, it’s 8:00 p.m., which

means your favorite live

— or regularly watched — program

*Russia of the Future*, and I am its permanent host,

Alexei Navalny, or “the American shoelace”

as I was once again called by someone who appeared out of

nowhere — some random guy who crawled out of the woodwork

named Gabrelyanov. Remember the one who

ran that, and I think even owned,

that trash heap called *Life*

News.

And there he was, on the broadcast of my favorite blogger,

Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov, saying that

I’m an American shoelace. Six seconds, and the big

question is: “Lyosha, who the [__] are you, [__] hell?”

An American shoelace — interesting. In my opinion,

if anyone’s an American shoelace, for example,

it’s the son of that Gabrelyanov — Aram

Gabri-

-elyanov Sr., well, anyway, some kind of

younger Gabrelyanov, who also worked

in that whole operation, made money here from

placing all those commissioned

pieces, and then of course what did he do? He left

for America. Now he takes photos sitting on

the floor with the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan in the background,

and writes posts like, “Cool, I like America

very much,” writes young Gabrelyanov to us. But

for some reason I’m the American shoelace, even though

it was your money, which you paid in the form of

taxes, and then it migrated to

those two crooks, and they went there

quite happily — off to America.

Please send me your questions with the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter; your questions

will be put on screen, and I’ll answer them.

A reminder that you can become

friends and sponsors of our channel — you just need

to click the join button. There’s also

a link, and by clicking it you can

send all sorts of ducks flying across the screen. By the way,

speaking of which, have you noticed that in our

studio something has changed? Attentive

viewers are right: a reusable mug.

After every broadcast, people were absolutely

crucifying me

— environmentalists, I mean. I can see they’re already

putting messages up for me now. Bardak Obama writes to me:

“We ask you to switch to a reusable

mug instead of a disposable cup. We hope

we won’t see one on air anymore.” I have switched

to a reusable mug, and the disposable

cup will no longer appear here. That’s

the right thing to do. I can’t say that I’m,

you know, so advanced that I always

strictly follow

all the proper ideas, but there’s no need to

preach one thing and then demonstratively

keep putting in front of yourself

a disposable cup all the time if you can

use a reusable one. So yes,

I submit to your will, because

it’s a fair suggestion. I agree with

your fair suggestion. Twenty thousand

people are watching us live.

With that funny little lamp thing.

And remember, in one of the previous broadcasts I

was telling you — thirty thousand people are already

watching us live —

about Kalmykia, where it really looks like

— and this happens in all regions — they falsify

the numbers. But in Kalmykia they falsify them

— by falsify, I mean, of course,

the statistics on infection and mortality

from COVID. But in Kalmykia it’s just

the only region in the whole country where

completely unique people are in charge, and their

method of falsification is not that

they underreport or something like that — no,

it’s simply that nobody gets sick

on Tuesdays.

So I said that on a previous

program, and then I checked, and

the one Tuesday we had data for —

naturally, I went to look at

the next Tuesday too, and I saw that

the next Tuesday the numbers rose a little after

my previous broadcast, but then again

every time it’s Tuesday, it shuts off; every Tuesday

it shuts off. I really just want to

say to all the citizens of Kalmykia, and especially

especially to the Kalmyk

officials: are you

making fun of us? I mean, seriously,

the whole country is already watching this and laughing,

and you’re just bluntly making it look like

on Tuesdays in Kalmykia

nobody gets infected

with coronavirus. By the way, that is actually

an abuse of official

position — a criminal offense. But what’s more,

it’s done so ridiculously that it’s honestly

interesting who came up with exactly

this nonsense. Was there a meeting where they said,

“You know, in all the regions they just

knock 30 percent off and publish, I don’t know,

some figure,”

and then someone in Elista (the capital of Kalmykia) said, “No, we, we

will go our own way.”

We just won’t count Tuesdays.”

A lot of people are asking about Belarus.

About Belarus — we’ll talk about Belarus now.

But Sergey Volkov says: “I came across

your chance encounter on TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel) on YouTube

with deputy Tokar from Perm,”

Trapeznikov.

“Tell us, how did Kont react to your

parliamentary inquiry about corruption at

Russian Railways?” Yes, that really was ages

ago — an interesting story.

Probably some — I don’t know, many — remember

that there was this worker, Trapeznikov, who

became probably the main face

of Vladimir Putin’s presidential campaign

and, generally, the main face of the conservative

movement after 2012, even

more than Putin himself, because he was a factory worker.

which was coming out—we're taking it, guys.

from Uralvagonzavod (a major Russian tank and railcar manufacturer), walking around with them.

Moscow hipsters, and we accidentally

somehow ran into this guy on the air at TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel),

this turner. Well, I talked to him, all of this

was being filmed by journalists, and I said,

"I'm against corruption, I'm a man of the people,"

I told him. "But if you're against corruption,

then let's tackle corruption at Russian Railways (RZD) together.

At the time, since you had done a big

investigation—a lot of reporting—about

the matter of

Mr. Yakunin and where his fur coats were kept,

that famous story. And then Trapeznikov said,

"Of course, yes." Well, what do you think

it all came to? It came to nothing. I

am not even sure that he, in my opinion, didn't even

file a parliamentary inquiry back then. Today

something happened—a fairly important news item, and

politically very significant and instructive,

because Roskomnadzor (Russia's media and internet regulator) unblocked

Telegram. And how much talk there was—

remember when the FSB (Russia's security service) and

various anonymous and non-anonymous speakers

were saying that Telegram

was basically some kind of terrorist network,

and they were refusing to give us the keys

that would let us decrypt

everything we say, and therefore it would

be blocked. And so there began an almost

three-year, very absurd and very

pointless war by the state against

Telegram. And credit where it's due to Durov:

he was simply great—he said very clearly,

"I will not hand over any keys, and you will

go on blocking it.

I, meanwhile, will keep finding ways to evade you." And he

used various technical methods. I

won't pretend that I am

an expert, but this was a big

story, and Telegram's availability

kept growing. Many of us had

to switch to VPNs in order to

use Telegram, but in the end the authorities

gave up, and

so here we are: today

Telegram was unblocked. Three years—yes, it was

three years of struggle and three years of a fairly

uncompromising position, but they were

forced to unblock it because, well,

because they had no choice—including, by the way,

because it's a good service. All these, well,

all these—I don't know—Margarita

Simonyans, basically all

the Kremlin media that exist now,

where do they exist? In Telegram.

Because it's this separate,

special channel where you can't

post comments.

They really like that, because when

all sorts of propagandists—

really anyone, everyone who tries

to support Putin—opens an account on

ordinary social networks, there is

this thing called comments, and in those

comments people constantly show up

and write, "Well, you're lying here, and you're

lying here too," and basically no matter

what a propagandist posts, people come into

the comments and tear apart the propagandist's position.

But Telegram is very convenient

because it's like a one-way pipe: you

speak into it, but what people say back to you,

how they object to your words—you can't hear any of it. And

a huge

infrastructure has grown up there, or rather

an ecosystem of various pro-Kremlin

Telegram channels. They lived only on

Telegram, and that probably became one of the

reasons why they were forced to

unblock it—because they were all

sitting there the whole time.

Today there were several fairly

interesting articles saying that Telegram had been

blocked all this time, yet through

government procurement contracts

state authorities were spending

money to place information on

Telegram. So in the end this

absurd situation reached

a point where it simply could no longer

be tolerated.

So they unblocked it. And again, let's remember

how it all began: that same Margarita

Simonyan—show me her wonderful

wonderful—well, Margarita Simonyan's

wonderful—there, you see—

she wrote: "Guys, they'll shut it down

for sure, don't even doubt it." I mean,

this always happens when the authorities

do something like this: of course they have to

tell us that yes, any resistance is pointless,

boys and girls, of course

they'll shut it down, absolutely. You don't

understand—over at the FSB they have these

systems, there's this, you know, box

painted camouflage green, you press

the big Start button and that's it—Telegram

is blocked. Everything works, all done.

But none of it worked out, and already

today, of course, they immediately did a complete 180

degrees.

Margarita Simonyan is now writing new posts,

saying, "QED—exactly as was to be proved.

Congratulations to everyone on the lifting of the

Telegram ban—what a wonderful

event, everything is just marvelous."

You see? "And if you fight, then I

will bite"—but really it's just

a splendid Leopold the Cat (a Soviet cartoon character known for saying "Guys, let's all live in peace").

But really, it's simply because they couldn't swallow it, and

among other things, they couldn't because

there was substantial, broad public

support. Let's remember the rally, for example,

in Moscow in defense of

internet freedom—though the immediate reason for it

was, of course, Telegram.

[music]

By the way, remember how everyone laughed?

Like, why launch those paper

airplanes? I idiotically suggested back then,

let's throw paper

airplanes out the windows, and everyone was like,

what a stupid stunt. But in fact, the paper

airplane became a symbol of digital

resistance. People were saying: we are digital

resistance, and we are going to keep using

Telegram, and everyone was explaining to each other

how to use it, in a half-crazed

way, how to set it up, how to get access to it more cheaply,

so they could use Telegram, and in the

end the state backed down, because

in fact it always backs down when

a country is faced with this kind of

really, on the one hand,

resistance, and on the other hand,

the obvious illegality and

the usefulness of the thing they were

trying to ban. They were trying to ban

a service used by

several million people, and people said:

to hell with that nonsense, we are not

going to stop talking. Remember how there was

talk that they would practically inspect phones

to see who had Telegram? Everyone said:

no, we will not stop, we will keep

using it. And the audience kept using it,

it kept growing, and the state was forced

to retreat. So I congratulate all

the wonderful people I don't know personally,

who

many of whom you do know, who simply

worked on this campaign, supported

Telegram, or in any case did something,

wrote, spoke out, and refused to comply.

That is very important. So, now, about

Belarus. 'A State Department agent'

Comment on the situation in Belarus.

They say there's a velvet revolution there. How

would Lukashenko's overthrow affect Putin?

On the previous program I chose not to say anything

about it, because I don't want

to speak when I don't really

understand anything at all. I promised to look into it a bit,

figure it out, and explain here what

is happening, my point of view. But honestly,

as of this evening,

active events are still unfolding there right now.

It also has to be said that it's hard,

of course, for me to paint for you

any kind of complete picture or offer serious

expert analysis, because today in Belarus

there is, really, a full-scale mess going on

right now, just some kind of

political chaos, with arrests, torture,

detentions of basically everyone around. So,

what is it all about?

But let me say in advance, for viewers from

Belarus,

I am not claiming that I have some kind of

super-expertise here, that I am a great political scientist

who understands everything perfectly. And please, I will

try to say Belarus, but if

somewhere I say Belorussia, there's no need

to come running after me shouting, 'Navalny,

you're like the worst villain of all.' So,

the situation is this:

the last mass protests in Belarus

were quite a long time ago, in 2010.

The last elections, in 2015, passed

relatively calmly; there were no

mass protests. But it would also hardly be possible

to call those elections fair. Still, they

went relatively calmly because

my understanding is that, overall,

the country's residents kind of

understood that Lukashenko, against the backdrop of

what had happened with Crimea, would not allow

something like Crimea to be pulled off there.

He would not strike a deal with Putin, he would not let

the country be handed over, would not allow the country

to be annexed. So in 2015 there really

wasn't anything like that, no

protests. But time passed, and most importantly,

the economy

was collapsing. And now this

mass dissatisfaction with Lukashenko, which

obviously exists in the country, is of course

happening against the backdrop of an epidemic at the same time,

which President Lukashenko does not acknowledge

at all. We have different countries,

there is the Swedish model, and then in Belarus there is

the Belarusian model: the guy simply

doesn't recognize it, that's all. Says there's nothing,

that it's all nonsense.

So that factor played a role, and

of course the sheer destruction of the economy as well.

Any authoritarian leader who

has been in power for many, many years will sooner

or later find himself in a situation

where the economy is falling apart, even if before that

there had been some relative successes.

There were, but now there are no successes at all.

There were some points of growth there,

but now they will probably cease to exist,

like that famous

Belarusian internet sector and Belarusian

IT specialists. Many of you know about this,

or heard about it from the film about

Silicon Valley. There are astonishingly many

Belarusians there. They explain what it means

that this sector has been developing in Belarus.

So, the falling standard of living

of the population, economic problems, and

then suddenly, in these elections, a record number of

15 initiative groups are registered

to support nominations, essentially speaking.

That is the largest number

of initiative groups in the entire history. At the same time,

logically, polling in Belarus

is in practice, and in my view even legally,

prohibited. More than that, there were even

bans on

internet polls, because in

an online poll on any website, Lukashenko

gets something like 3 percent or 5 percent.

All the others are getting hit with lots of criminal cases.

Official polling also doesn't show those percentages,

in his favor, so for many years there

has effectively been a ban, and in fact no one really

knows the real numbers, and overall

the situation basically comes down to this:

there are three genuinely real

candidates there. One is candidate Tikhanovsky,

who is currently in prison, and

he would effectively have been seen as

the real candidate, but instead his wife became that candidate.

An interesting fact about Tikhanovsky is that

it turns out I know him — or at least,

on one of the channels there was

this funny video posted. Let's

watch: Tikhanovsky talks about

how he and I met, with

Alexei Navalny. He once even

ran into him by chance on a street in Moscow. We had

our office there nearby, and I knew he had an office there too.

I just literally ran into him face-to-face.

Whether he remembers it or not, probably not.

Maybe he doesn't remember. By the way, I told him

that I was planning to run for president.

I was joking then, but you see how it turned out, and how

he reacted.

Great. But he was shocked. I started talking to him like

to a friend, and he said, 'You don't know me.'

But I already knew him from some videos.

Well, that's how it seemed to me, but he

said, 'I don't. Write me an email,' and that was it.

Later I did write to him once. I made

a video message addressed to Navalny, and

no one replied to me. Well, it's a pity I didn't

reply, but the main thing is that when I

watched the video, I remembered — yes, really,

that did happen, near our office, I think in Taganka (a district in Moscow).

Some guy came up to me on the street — I don't

remember, I was on my way somewhere.

Honestly, people from Belarus quite often

come up to me. And there he was saying,

'Look, I'm going to run for

president,' and I thought, well, either he's some cheerful

guy, or maybe a little bit

crazy, or something like that. But then

it turned out I really should have

responded to Tikhanovsky and talked to him.

It's a pity that didn't happen back then.

It's just kind of a funny fact. Anyway,

this Tikhanovsky is an entrepreneur and

a blogger, and he basically built his whole campaign

and his whole public profile around the fact that

he traveled around the country in

some big vehicle and

just did live broadcasts, and people —

all kinds of people — simply talked about their

lives. Since censorship in Belarus

is much worse than in Russia, and

has existed much longer there than in Russia,

this had the effect of

a bomb going off. I mean, simply

people talking about their lives, speaking

the plain truth — the blunt truth — and that truth is

unpleasant for the authorities, but it is the truth, and

it resonates with everyone. That's why this all began there.

And in general, by the way,

YouTube

in Belarus is much more important and much

more distinctive than in Russia. There are

several opposition

YouTubers there, each of whom has several

hundred thousand subscribers, which for a country of 10

million people is a genuinely large

audience — a very large one, even bigger than

mine, for example. In Russia, even accounting for the country's

size, that's very significant.

And right now, one of the things

that is happening is that they are literally

jailing all these YouTubers. Those who didn't

manage to flee are all being imprisoned, and all of them are being

put under heavy pressure. And this is a very important

strategy of the authorities, an important strategy

of Lukashenko: to force them all into silence.

As for the situation with the Tikhanovskys, they

started locking people up — well, they did imprison him.

First, they opened

one criminal case against him, then opened

a second criminal case. They started arresting people,

harassing them, driving even people out of their jobs,

including those who had appeared on his livestreams. For example,

some woman goes on air and says that

'things are bad at our kolkhoz (collective farm),'

and then she gets fired from that kolkhoz. As for

Tikhanovsky himself, just

take a look and assess the degree

of this sheer lawlessness.

It keeps happening all the time. That's why the topic

is called 'Chaos in Belarus,' but here,

you're about to see the footage that

resulted in a criminal case being opened against Tikhanovsky.

Let's watch — 52

seconds.

[music]

[applause]

[music]

[applause]

[music]

You see, we

I myself have seen this kind of lawlessness many times,

in Russia too. I've been attacked at

practically every rally. Good Lord, no matter what

city I go to, at the airport they

throw eggs at me, some people come running up,

some provocateurs, and then they also say that

of course we beat them up, and then a criminal case

was opened against Volkov — you remember that happened.

It was opened.

They were shoving a camera right into his face like this,

he pushed it away, and then a criminal case for

obstructing a journalist's professional activity

was opened. But here, Tikhanovsky is literally just walking,

not touching anyone, and some woman comes up to him —

a provocateur — and starts trying to get a reaction out of him.

He turns away from her and walks off.

He understands what this is. They say, 'Woman,

you're a provocateur.' The woman goes up to

a police officer — or rather, I don't know, a militiaman (as police were traditionally called in Belarus and other post-Soviet states) —

and says, 'Look, see, he...'

The answer to my question is: this is a provocateur.

I mean, even there, in

lawless Krasnodar Krai (a region in southern Russia), it would be hard

to imagine.

After that, they start detaining Tikhanovsky.

Some police officer stages a scene,

throws himself onto the asphalt, and a criminal case is opened.

Today, on top of that, they opened yet

another criminal case against him — you'll laugh —

he is accused of, while collecting

signatures and running for president,

trying to seize power. You see?

That is, he used the signature collection

as a means aimed at changing the government, I mean,

it's not just absurd,

it sounds funny, but I stayed up late

and out of curiosity watched a couple of reports

on Belarusian television, and it

makes quite an impression — just look.

For example, any report there against Tikhanovsky —

Kiselev and Solovyov (well-known Russian state TV propagandists) are not just

standing off to the side smoking nervously, they don't even come

close. Even the Soviet Union

doesn't come close either. I mean, this is

I was just getting ready

to try to tell you something about

Belarus, and after those reports I literally

felt just how bad things are there,

how terrible everything is.

So, as of now, Tikhanovsky

has been arrested, all his associates have been arrested,

some for 15 days, some for 75

days.

Some people are genuinely being tortured.

His wife is constantly subjected

to pressure; they carry out all kinds of

obvious provocations, they conduct searches at

his dacha (country house), or at his mother-in-law's dacha, then yet

another search — three searches in all — and supposedly find

$90,000. Those $90,000

are shown everywhere. The second candidate, well,

I mean, it seemed to me, from a kind of

amateur's perspective, that Tikhanovsky was this

truly opposition-minded kind of guy, while

there were also some completely marginal figures, and there were

people who were more or less

connected to the authorities and were running

in the election, building their careers with

Lukashenko. In particular, there was

a candidate, Babariko, who is a former

head, the former head of the

Belarusian subsidiary of Gazprombank, and this

Babariko seemed like a completely

typical representative of the Belarusian

establishment. He had always been inside

the system and, until very recently,

had never expressed any

opposition views at all.

He has been arrested. What's more, literally 3

minutes

before I sat down here and wrote that I was going live,

I saw a tweet saying that even his

son had already been caught up in it — yes, his son is also

being held. That is, there they are simply going after his

campaign: they arrested him, they arrested

his son, they arrested members of his team,

they are detaining people — it all looks absolutely

monstrous. There is also a third

candidate, Valery Tsepkalo.

The very one who created that

Belarusian Skolkovo (Russia's state-backed innovation hub) — and quite successfully.

For now he is still free, but in general

most observers

believe that he too will be removed from

the election, because he is also very

popular, very popular as well.

These three candidates are being used

by the Belarusian people to

express their attitude, and in fact

that's why everyone in Russia suddenly started

talking about the Belarusian election.

That had never happened before; hardly anyone really

cared that much. I mean, those who followed it, followed it, but

for the mass viewer or reader to be paying attention —

that had never happened, because we all

saw these truly enormous

lines. Please show what

collecting signatures for candidates looked like — this was exactly

for, in my view, Tikhanovsky's wife. People —

I mean, during an actual epidemic, people

including informed, modern-minded people — they

understand perfectly well that there is an epidemic there —

formed lines stretching for kilometers, not only in

Minsk but across the whole country, just

to submit a signature. By the way,

this is important: the same thing, Tikhanovsky's campaign,

behind which stands a huge

number of people, which in a certain

sense

shook up this whole situation, was originally

a boycott campaign.

From the very beginning he said that he would be

for a boycott, because they would never register him.

I mean, you can watch his

videos. Nevertheless, all of this turned into

the very act of signing

turned into a kind of

act of civic courage, and for all

the other candidates as well.

Many people say that

any one of these three candidates, if allowed

to run in the election,

would actually have a higher approval rating than

Alexander Lukashenko. It is impossible to verify this

because there is no real polling.

And, frankly, hoping for any kind of fair

election there is absolutely impossible.

But why is Alexander Lukashenko doing all this?

Again, this is just my assumption.

I'm not some great political scientist, much less

an expert on Belarus. Quite recently, Putin

wanted

to carry out his own "reset" (a constitutional reset of presidential term limits),

to extend his time in office through the most

elegant, the neatest possible maneuver: through

union with Belarus.

Lukashenko did not let that happen in Belarus,

and it really was a brilliant move.

That option is much, much better than this one.

This whole clown show with the "reset" of term limits

doesn't appeal to absolutely anyone at all,

no one supports it, and people are questioning it.

It all looks ugly and pointless, but if there had been

a referendum on unification with Belarus,

then of course it would have looked much better.

Lukashenko refused that option. He understands

that Putin doesn't like him, and that Putin would

try to do something against him. And now

this whole Belarusian government is fairly

stagnant and outdated; all the people around Lukashenko

keep telling him, "Man, the whole world is against you.

The Americans are backing

Tikhanovsky, and the Russians are backing

this Babaryka — or maybe the Russians are backing

Tikhanovsky too."

And Lukashenko himself keeps talking

as if there is now a Russian threat,

not some kind of Western threat, and he

just started lashing out with completely unreal

brutality, cracking down and jailing everyone, and of course

it really does look bizarre.

It looks pretty wild. For me, there was also

also

a funny episode when Sobchak was interviewing

Lukashenko, and she asked him,

something like: if you had

your own Navalny... and as for Lukashenko, I said

this:

"If we had one, he'd be treating him

like a king — dusting specks off him, letting him live like cheese in butter (a Russian idiom meaning in complete comfort)."

"That Navalny would be living the high life." Let's

watch 43 seconds.

By the way, since we've started talking about

Russia bringing its own rules into Belarus,

would you jail Navalny? — No, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't jail him, no. I've said that before, and

I mean it sincerely.

If he were a Belarusian opposition figure,

never, never. Why would I?

What has he done that would justify jailing him? What has he

written about me? You know yourselves,

there's always something you can find, you can always

come up with a route through Kazan and Kirov (i.e., make a convoluted case), but if he asked you

for asylum — it seems quite possible that he

might flee to Belarus if something happened. Let's

imagine that. But better yet, let him come now,

so he doesn't create

interstate problems for me.

By the way, I always had

a backup option: if anything happened, to go to

Belarus — or at least

to hope that if I simply went

for a walk around Minsk, there wouldn't be

some strange people running after me

the way they constantly do in Moscow.

But of course this isn't about me. The point is that

a situation has arisen where, well, I don't really

know how appropriate it is to draw

parallels between myself and any of these

candidates, but they really are being jailed arbitrarily,

and that of course shows

just how far the authorities

have lost touch, are going mad, feel like

a hunted beast, and are simply ready

to devour and trample everything around them.

So of course I just want to express

my support for all the people of Belarus, and unfortunately I

think — people ask whether

a Velvet Revolution is happening there, but for now

no kind of Velvet Revolution is taking place.

I don't know whether it will happen. Belarus

is a country where there has historically been a very high level of

public acceptance — acceptance

of brutality toward opposition figures, and

whether that has now completely changed in every possible way,

I don't know. But I think

the country is, in a sense, facing fairly

unpleasant, perhaps dark times.

Because it's obvious that after actions like these,

all the achievements that existed —

Skolkovo-style tech growth, the IT sector — will come to an end.

There will be a new stage of mass emigration, which is already

huge as it is. I was in Warsaw, and

every other person on the street would come up to me

and say, "Oh, Alexei, hello, I'm from Belarus,

I work here." There are simply enormous

numbers of people leaving, and they will keep

leaving. There will be a brain drain.

A country that has jailed two or three

presidential candidates and imprisoned all their

campaign teams and so on, of course cannot

develop normally. It will be very

difficult. The last thing I want to say about

Belarus, and what I noticed — what I

paid attention to — seems to me very

important. It's an important thing that distinguishes

these protests from all the others that

came before, including those around 2010: this time

the opposition

there — well, it doesn't really

focus much on issues like

national symbols, the national

language, and all that symbolism.

Because before, all the opposition

leaders used to emphasize that

for them it was of fundamental,

fundamental importance — language, the

symbols. The main rally was the Chernobyl Path (an annual Belarusian opposition march commemorating the Chernobyl disaster),

so you can't say that

this was a nationalist position, and I'm by no means

saying that being nationalist is bad,

but they were very

focused on those issues. This time,

in fact, people there are more or less

indifferent about which language to speak.

Again, different people have different

views, and of course I have no

doubt that the opposition is

entirely patriotic, but

we can see that what is popular now are

more moderate candidates who

unite everyone, who don't fixate

on all these things connected with

symbolism. That is very,

very characteristic too. And by the way,

that gives Lukashenko something — but he uses it...

As far as I understand what he's saying and where he's going with it,

don't look at it as some kind of narrow position, because

in the past, our opposition used to be like this:

emphatically nationalist, these

of course, Russians are paying for all of this, and we need

to keep an eye on what's happening there.

Well then, I want to send my support to everyone who

has been unjustly imprisoned, to their families, their

relatives, and to those people who are, all the more often,

being subjected to various forms of torture.

Viktor Medved, please comment on the opening of the

Ministry of Defense cathedral. For what purpose did they decide

to fuse war and religion in one place?

And on top of that, this place is located in the middle of

an empty field where there are no parishioners.

Olya, Anatoly Dash, or Dukh Dash, and

please comment on Hitler's cap

in the main church of the Ministry of Defense. Seventy

thousand people—almost 69,000—at the parade, live on air.

Well then, as was recently said

on a broadcast: Stalin, the Gulag (the Soviet forced-labor camp system), yes,

we'll talk about that now, and about the disgrace. Let's start with

morality.

First of all, I lived there for much of my

life—half my life, really—in the place where

this cathedral was built. I lived in the settlement of

Kalininets, where the Taman Division is stationed.

My school was called Alabinskaya

Secondary School. All of this was built there.

So I really watched all of this

with a kind of fascinated astonishment.

There is literally nothing there, damn it. It's

an absolutely empty place, with just a few dachas nearby,

and a military town where

mostly military personnel live—people who, I assure you, do not need

this cathedral. And there they built

some kind of

gigantic monstrosity. And despite the fact that

now

the Russian Orthodox Church is trying to present this cathedral to us

as something—well, it's strange. I'm absolutely even ready

to put it more sharply, because when we saw

the opening of all this, it really looked like something

more like some kind of pagan

shrine, and they're trying to pass it off as

some kind of holy place, a new sacred

cathedral, with Patriarch Kirill strongly backing it.

All of this looks, to put it mildly, strange.

That is, as a local person and as an

Orthodox Christian, I want to say that, you know,

it seems that with this example

—show us some footage, maybe an aerial video of this cathedral or video of

a flyover above it, or video of how

it was opened—

with this example, they finally showed us

what kind of god they inserted into

the Constitution, the one they are asking us

to vote for.

This really is a god of war. It gives the impression

that this was not built in Russia

by Orthodox people, but by some kind of

—I don't know—Romans who came and literally started

erecting a temple to the god of war. And all

the symbolism, everything done there, consists of

endless allusions to that theme.

The idea is that we have a sacred Victory

that is as sacred to us as our

religion, and

that our Christianity is

roughly the same thing, in the view of

the architects and, apparently, those who

put this whole thing together. So let's combine them.

But you know, it seems to me that the position of

any normal believer,

any Christian, or simply any reasonable person,

is that, however sacred

Victory may be, forgive me, these things cannot

be compared under any circumstances.

Yet in official documents, with the help of lawyers,

they write things like

"altar of Victory." I mean, this

directly contradicts, forgive me,

the Christian religion. And to link and

directly compare Christ

and the soldier—that is blasphemy. That is exactly

the sort of thing that, back when

Pussy Riot were dancing and running around, remember,

all those bearded old men were shouting,

"Blasphemy!" Whatever word you said,

it was "blasphemy." My God, you were all

going on about believers' feelings—and yet all of this,

the way this cathedral was opened, the way it is decorated,

is an insult to believers' feelings.

Please show the photograph

of the Mother of God. We have the image—well, you can

see what's depicted here. It's a direct

copy of The Motherland Calls (the famous Soviet war memorial/statue),

it really is.

And they don't even deny it.

They say so openly: yes, we wanted to make

the Mother of God look like

a military symbol, like The Motherland Calls. But that is

real, genuine blasphemy.

And despite the fact that the famous poster

"The Motherland Calls" is

certainly one of the symbols of victory in

the war, something very close and familiar

to each of us, it is impossible

to compare it to the Mother of God, and it is impossible

to turn that into an icon.

This is real blasphemy. It's

some kind of utter nonsense, what is

happening there. And all this militarized

stuff—door handles shaped like swords and everything else—

this is supposed to be a church, a church of the Christian faith,

which is, fundamentally, about something entirely different,

about something absolutely opposed to war,

completely contrary to war.

Militancy, an altar of war, an altar

of Victory, the Motherland—this is simply what

is happening, and from my point of view the most striking thing is

well, it's simply

yet another direct indication that these

people don't believe at all. None of these people do.

And unfortunately, the top leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church,

which allows this, and the top leadership of our country—

after all, these are former CPSU members (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), former

official atheists. Of course, none of them...

They don't believe in God; they absolutely don't care about any of this.

They don't give a damn — they just want to rinse

our brains with some made-up

sense of holiness. They constantly want

to generate some new sacred

symbols so they can surround themselves

with some kind of sacredness. But this isn't

sacredness — it's really idolatry, it's

just shamanic dancing with tambourines, what's happening, and

of course the peak of this shamanic dancing is

damn it, Hitler's cap.

Yes, they say there, well, you know, there's

a church, and then there's a slightly separate building —

that's the museum. So it's in the museum there, it

is kept there. But in fact it was presented in a

completely different way. Let's listen to Timur

Ivanov, the deputy minister,

deputy defense minister, who actually

was the one dealing with all this

construction. He says outright there that

this is a relic for us. We used

the most advanced technologies possible. This

applies to the internal engineering systems as well,

including the security systems in particular.

A special air purification system was installed

of the kind now being used in all

modern museums so that they can

preserve the exhibits, especially items

of particular value. This also applies to the one that

is located there, as well as

such systems are also located

directly in the Road of Memory itself,

because there are genuine

relics there, unique items, including

even

Hitler's uniform, which has survived to

this day. There's Hitler's cap there,

there are unique exhibits there that had never

before been put on public display. You

see — he's pleased, he's happy, he doesn't even

understand how strange and absurd this

thing is. Well then, go pray to your

Hitler cap. Hitler's cap

is a historical object in a history museum.

Put it in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet-German front of World War II)

or in the Museum of the Defense of Moscow, I don't know.

We have plenty of museums where you could

put or hang Hitler's uniform.

But no, we had been saving it in our

storage rooms.

In a back room, in a huge safe,

there lay

the relic — Hitler's cap. And now we've

built the Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces, and

it has this Road of Memory, and we

solemnly brought Hitler's cap there and

put it there so that now we can go and

pray and be in the vicinity of

these wonderful sacred objects. When a

person says "relic," and that this relic

is kept in a church, that means

a religious relic. Notice,

by the way, that Germany above all,

first and foremost,

and of course the USSR and Russia as well, have always

done everything possible to avoid creating any places

that could serve as sites

for worship of Hitler. That's exactly why

there is no grave of his, none of that.

And of course only in Russia,

you understand, could we make a place where some

kind of — well —

They're not breaking down our office door, are they?

It's just that one thing apparently happened:

people were simply outraged by the fact

that Hitler's cap was hung in a church. In

fact, now any

Hitler fan or deranged

guy has a place on planet

Earth where he can come and pray

to his damn Hitler, and this was done by the

Ministry of Defense of the Russian

Federation. Putin, Shoigu, and

Patriarch Kirill did this. Great job, really.

I mean, a church is a church, even if it's the

Main Cathedral of the Ministry of Defense. In the

Main Cathedral of the Ministry of Defense,

presumably military personnel and their relatives

go there — they live there — but there is no one

there, no regular parishioners. It's all so pointless, and

it's a gigantic structure that will

consume enormous amounts of money. Well,

suppose someone does make it there — he can

pray, he can perform

religious rites there, that is, he can

do there what Christians build churches

for.

But if you're building a temple of victory

or a temple of war, maybe that's a temple

of victory — that sounds cool — but damn,

then build a temple to Mars or Ares or, I

don't know, someone else. But this cannot be an

Orthodox church. So of course I

am sharply opposed to it, I am sharply

opposed to the military getting involved

in all these churches in the first place.

I am sharply opposed to the fact

that the top of the patriarchate

is indulging all this nonsense and, well, not

just that — it is obviously trying not to notice

that everything, literally the entire context, the whole

atmosphere,

is just some kind of genuinely pagan

frenzy.

That's how I feel about it. There, I've answered.

You're asking about the veterans — of course.

This whole thing

frightens me a lot. There are also many questions about

my new criminal case.

People are asking about Georgia; for now I can't

say anything about Georgia, I don't know anything yet. But

there are a lot of questions about the quarantine for

veterans, and yes, I really did want

to move on to that topic. 75,000 people are watching

live right now, because, well, look,

this is at the same time a kind of

multilayered madness that we need

to pay attention to, and it's a very important part.

75,000 people are watching us live

and over the next 24 hours even more people will watch it, guys.

This is exactly what everyone needs to hear about, because

they are constructing this kind of

protective dome of sanctity around themselves.

And all the rest of these crooks,

swindlers, or just idlers, they, as

I already said, build around themselves

sacred symbols: the war and the veterans.

That is a very important part of it, and so in

any shady business they get involved in,

as I explained in one of my recent

videos, they always insert

a veteran, so that if someone calls them

crooks and thieves,

they can say, “You insulted a veteran.” But at the same time, what

else can you call it but a beastly

attitude toward veterans? We know that Putin

announced his parade, which nobody

needs at all, but he announced it anyway.

And everyone around is shouting, “How are you going to

hold a parade during an epidemic?” But

it is absolutely impossible. Even if you

do not admit that the number of cases is now rising,

you should at least

acknowledge the fact that

the peak was only just recently. In Germany, though, the peak

passed long ago, and restrictions there have largely been lifted.

For example, Oktoberfest, one of Germany’s most important

festivals, was canceled, even though

the decision was made in April and it is held in October.

But here, apparently, we have to hold

the parade right now. Everyone understands that

the veterans are all elderly people. If they are actual

war participants, they are all 94 or 95 years old,

the youngest among them are around that age.

They will get infected

and die. But no, we are told that is all nonsense, that nothing

like that will happen.

“We will take safety measures,” they say, and

in practice those safety measures are taken

to protect just one person—

Putin. These veterans, whom they fuss over,

are in reality treated like

props,

like some kind of extras.

They were literally taken somewhere for two weeks and

kept there, packed together like sardines

in a barrel, like some kind of plague suspects.

They are deliberately holding them there for two

weeks because they will be sitting

next to Putin, so that all these old men

do not infect Putin. Right—they’ve put them in a

boarding facility, as the mayor says.

But seriously, how is that supposed to be good for these

elderly men in those care homes? Every one of you

who has seen a 95-year-old grandfather, think

for a moment about how well a 95-year-old man

would cope with being torn away from his

family and placed in a boarding facility.

Half of them—let me say it plainly—

barely understand what is going on anymore; they are at a very,

very advanced age. They can barely

walk, they can barely move, yet they were sent there.

Of course, no one kidnapped them, but

in order to sit with Putin, you have to

sit in quarantine so you do not infect

the great leader. But if you, great leader,

are so afraid that in order

to get to you, people have to go through

a special tunnel—and they say, fine,

let’s hold the parade, let the veterans come,

let everyone watch—but in order

to get to Putin, you have to pass through it. Show us

this special disinfection tunnel

so we can take a look at it.

[music]

So, on the one hand, the state

admits that the risk of infection

for Putin is very high, and

that in order for him not to get infected,

everyone has to be sprayed in a special

tunnel, and everyone who comes near him

has to be kept in isolation for two weeks.

Like some kind of camp guards in a concentration camp,

some kind of special—well, concentration

camp—they concentrate them there and watch them:

“This one is sick, this one has a fever,”

“send him back home, and all the

others seem fine, so keep them there.”

These are the kind of enormous measures needed

to keep Putin from getting infected.

And what about everyone else, then?

What about those who come, those who take part in

the parade,

and those who, the day after the parade,

will go vote—what about them?

This whole apparatus involves hundreds of thousands of people across

the country, and now they are

marching through the streets of Moscow, and we are told,

“Look, they’re wearing masks.”

Let’s look at how the parade rehearsal is going. But

they are simply walking with their masks on

their chins. You can understand why—

you cannot really march in a mask because

it is hot and uncomfortable. Watch—27 seconds.

It makes you clutch your head.

[music]

For them, everyone here is second-class—even

their beloved army, the one they constantly wave around,

the one building the Victory Cathedral, is made up of second-class

people. For Putin, everyone has to be

kept in isolation for 12 days, but for these soldiers—

just give them masks to wear on their chins,

and that same vulnerable area

will supposedly be just fine. And of course

we need to talk about this attitude toward veterans.

And this herding of them—well, it is simply

outrageous. And one very important

thing to remember in the context of

this parade is why it was invented in the first place.

Because the parade creates a sense of sanctity,

and the next day that sanctity is

transferred onto the vote. Putin’s calculation

was that there would not be

enough brave people, or

enough outraged people, to

say: to hell with all of this.

their beards, because society as a whole

has to answer that, as you said about

the parade—to hell with the parade, enough with the parade

this is our so-called spiritual glue

now we’ll tear this apart into St. George ribbons

but it turned out that none of this works anymore

and please read it—you can go to

the website of the well-known sociologist Belanov

sky, or maybe his Facebook page—he

conducted a very interesting and quite

sensational study, actually

he asked people specifically how they

feel about what is happening in Russia

this very strange parade in the summer—the May 9 Victory Day parade

it’s our tradition, we really want it—I

like parades too, May 9 is great, but I

have said this many times already, and I’ll say it again

next May

the world probably won’t end, and we can also

hold a parade then—why have a parade in June? But they

decided to cram it in because the parade is

supposedly everything to us

it’s not “everything to us” anymore, not at all, so he

conducted a poll, and it was precisely on these

sacred topics—let’s show slide 1

they asked how information about

the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet term for the Eastern Front of World War II) in

the modern media is presented, and it turned out that a large

share of people say that everything is distorted

that it’s all pure propaganda, meaning they

spent years, through all these TV shows,

telling people that only on Russian

television

only Vladimir Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselyov

and some of these strange, shabby

vagrants who are presented as some kind of

historians in their studio know anything about

the history of World War II, the Great

Patriotic War, while everyone else

is falsifying it because they’re scoundrels

Poles, Americans, and so on—but

it turned out that the majority of the population

says that on television they lie about

the history of the war. Next.

The most important slide: is it necessary to hold

a military parade?

72 percent say no, that is,

an overwhelming majority of our

fellow citizens

are saying the obvious, plain

common-sense thing: there is no need for any

of your parade—there’s no money in the country, there’s an epidemic

you idiot, everyone just spent two months

without salaries—what parade? What are you even thinking?

That’s 72 percent, after all this

hype, after Putin was saying

remember, like some supreme buffoon

commander-in-chief: “I order preparations to begin

for the parade,” and he thought

everyone would just fall over backward at once and

say, “My God, how beautiful this is”

“I order preparations for the parade to begin”

but everyone said, “Are you crazy or what? What kind of

parade? What even is this?” It’s unclear. 72

percent are against all of this, and the most

important thing, actually, is that there was a separate

study of 800 people in the 75+

age group, because Belanovsky proceeded from

the idea that people over 75 really

did experience the war in some form, even if

only

as children and teenagers—they listened to those

people whose memories of the war were

very vivid, and among them an even

larger share—turn it, please—do not consider

holding a parade necessary in this

age group: 89 people, and on average

7 EC2

consider the parade an outdated attempt

by the authorities to unite the people by means of past

victories

95 percent. And as for Lend-Lease supplies,

they simply lie a lot—81 percent

believe they contributed to victory, but

the key point is that 95 percent

of elderly people, pensioners, people who

had the closest contact with

the war—except for those who directly

fought in it—are saying outright that you

are using the apparatus

simply in order to, in fact,

trade on those past victories, which

is exactly what Putin does—he

endlessly trades on past victories and

uses those past victories in order

to defend his agenda and

persecute those who speak out against

that agenda. Actually, on

there are a lot of questions about my criminal case. I

don’t know anything—I’ll say that right now, I mean

there were press releases on the website of the Investigative

Committee

those press releases said that against Navalny

a criminal case had been opened, and so on

so far nothing has happened yet, but I

am absolutely expecting searches to begin, or

something else, definitely, because, well, as

this all started, there was a video—let’s

watch this video

from RT (Russia Today), because of which, basically,

the whole uproar started

We, the multinational people of the Russian

Federation, united by a common destiny on

our land, affirming human rights and freedoms

of the individual

civil peace and accord, preserving

the historically established state

unity

proceeding from the universally recognized principles

of equality and the self-determination of peoples

honoring the memory of our ancestors, who passed on to us love

and respect for the Fatherland, faith in goodness and

justice, reviving the sovereign

statehood of Russia and affirming

the inviolability

of its democratic foundations, striving

to ensure the well-being and prosperity

of Russia, proceeding from responsibility for our

the Motherland before the present and future

generations, recognizing ourselves as part

of the global community

we adopt the Constitution of the Russian

Federation

that vile [ __ ]-style video was made by

disgusting, corrupt—by disgusting

sellouts who know exactly what they are

doing. They put a doctor in front of us, they

put veterans in front of us, and everyone else too, and

they lie that we are supposed to come

for abandoned reasons, although there is only one reason

Putin wants to stay in power longer

Putin's inner circle wants to steal even

more. They want to stay there until they die, and

then, when they die, they want to leave their

children in power. Every person

should speak out against this, and I

certainly consider all the people who

are dragging us into this “reset” (zeroing out presidential terms) traitors and

scoundrels, all of them. But you see how

they set it up: they deliberately put a veteran there

so that if you say this

they can immediately say, “How dare you say that about

veterans?” It’s interesting that regarding

everyone else, they forgot that what I

called them then means, it turns out, in

personal terms, lackeys and traitors. So

everyone else—Artemy Lebedev and

some whole company of them and everyone else

there, you can see, basically, this tweet of mine

this tweet was not, as some people guessed, aimed at 12 figures

in a specific screenshot with that orphan

the Kremlin started pushing this very

photo with the specific screenshots

of this pensioner, meaning everyone else

and in the end it turned out rather pathetically that

the Investigative Committee basically acknowledged that

everyone else, then, turns out to be lackeys

and traitors, but you insulted a pensioner, so

a criminal case is being fabricated, a criminal

case, which is rather funny because

it was opened for slander, and if you

slandered someone, that means you knew

you knew for sure that Petya Ivanov

is not, say, the husband of Petrovа

and somewhere you make a statement and say

“You know, Petya Ivanov is actually the husband

of Anya Petrova, he is deceiving you.” That could

be slander because you mentioned

Petya Ivanov

you knew for certain that Anya Petrova was not

his wife because you are acquainted

with Zina

Ivanova, who is actually his wife

I’m getting tangled up in it myself already, and

then there is intent to commit slander here, but

good Lord, here it is an obvious fabrication

for what? So they can run headlines like

“Navalny insulted a veteran”

there is no doubt that this was cooked up by

Simonyan

and all those people at RT (Russia Today), and look

at Meduza’s big analysis, where they

write that they even found some

relatives of this unfortunate old man

who started writing angry articles about

how someone dared insult our

grandfather, while at the same time they even gave the old man’s initials

incorrectly. In other words, they took an old man

I have absolutely no doubt that he

did not understand at all what he was

taking part in, and now they are exploiting this old man

and there will be a criminal case, and they will

be chasing after me. Near my house, a couple of them stand there

regularly, two clowns come up

stand there like this with a sign

take pictures and leave, and then they write

posts saying “Navalny’s house is constantly

being picketed by outraged citizens”

outraged that

a veteran was insulted. But from the standpoint of

a criminal case, a search, and another

conviction, for them of course this is undoubtedly

a mechanism, especially since I have

one suspended sentence left there everywhere Katie

the Kremlin crooks keep writing

“Navalny was twice given suspended sentences”

excuse me, please, one suspended sentence

has ended for me, and the second has almost ended

therefore it is extremely important for them

to come up with something else, and they

opened a criminal case. Please note

slander

this is a so-called private

prosecution case, that is, if someone

slandered you—suppose on my broadcast I

published something, slandered some fellow

Vasya Ivanov

Vasya Ivanov goes to court—not to file a statement with the police

yes, he goes to court, and the court opens

a criminal case, a magistrate judge, and I

was once tried in exactly that way, I was even

tried three times, and in fact once I was sued by

a United Russia party member named Lisovenko

whom I once, on Twitter, wrote about

calling him a drug addict. He sued for

slander, said “I am not a drug addict,” and brought

a certificate saying he was not a drug addict. Well, I won’t

bore you with all sorts of

legal arguments which

prove that of course all of this was

fabricated. So the court tried me for that

and held me criminally liable for

slander. Here it should be the same

this old man should have gone to court, or

his representatives, of whom there are many, as we

understand—there are relatives there, there are

lawyers—he should have gone with a

complaint, filed a statement in court, but he

did not do that. I do not know for what

reasons—whether he did not want to, or

something else—and therefore

the Investigative Committee, by force, recognized him as

being in a helpless condition. But

a helpless condition is a child

who cannot speak, or a person

who is lying in a hospital and cannot

moving his arms and legs—he doesn’t say that.

In such cases, the function of protecting these

people can be assumed, in particular, by

the Investigative Committee, and on their

behalf it can, I think, initiate—start

the procedure for opening a criminal case,

because the people are in a helpless state.

But there, it’s not a helpless state—the grandfather is giving

interviews, saying that he felt unwell

after reading it, because

some aide—his grandson—told him

about my comment, and that made him feel

bad. There are lots of relatives,

lots of lawyers, but nevertheless the case

is being opened by the local committee.

We all understand that, but

listen, a search of your home or

the seizure of computers or something else

is of course unpleasant, but that too

I’ve been through many times. And most importantly, I

can see from people’s reactions, from everything

else, that this issue just isn’t gaining traction for them.

Everyone understands that they’re lying, everyone understands

that they’re using this unfortunate old man

and, overall, the main reaction

that I see is that everyone writes the same thing there.

The framing, the spin—everyone writes, well,

basically, that Simonyan is of course spinning it

and they’re simply, actually using this

unfortunate old man in order to

fabricate a criminal case, and that is

completely obvious to everyone. And in that sense,

from the point of view of the struggle for public

opinion, I’m even glad in a way

that they’ve started dealing in this filth,

because everyone can see it, and there will be this

trial, and there will be proceedings, and they’ll be running around there

after me, with their pickets and

some supposedly outraged citizens

who were given 500 rubles each (about $5–6) so that they

could jump around me somewhere, shout at me,

throw themselves at me—I know how all this will go.

And you all know how it will go, and it will be

completely obvious to everyone, obviously,

exactly what this is.

The meanness of these people, and their—well, not

their manipulation and use

their use of a veteran—this is simply

ugly, unpleasant behavior, yes, to engage in that.

If it had been someone else, some doctor or whoever,

had come out with a statement and some kind of claim, well,

then at least we could have looked into it,

you know, investigated what kind of

doctor that was, or dealt with something like that,

or said something about him, maybe. But

here they deliberately dragged out this whole

campaign, wheeled out in front of them

a 93-year-old man, and are pretending

that he is deeply outraged by something.

[music]

A viewer asks: please comment.

Please comment: Krasnov called the Prosecutor General’s Office

and the FSB the best fighters against corruption. Well,

how can I even—if I had

that kind of theatrical talent, I could

burst out laughing right now. It’s funny when you

read that and just clutch your head—the Prosecutor General’s

Office and the FSB as the finest anti-corruption fighters.

Anti-corruption fighters? Well, and Prosecutor General Chaika

and the joint business ventures

of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation and his deputies with

the Tsapok gang (a notorious Russian criminal gang), murderers and bandits—is that also

wonderful, and a manifestation of magnificent

anti-corruption work? But on the other hand,

what do you expect them to say? To say

plainly, you know: we at the Prosecutor General’s Office, of course,

for the most part we

spend our time

providing cover for corrupt officials,

covering for Kremlin corrupt officials, and also, well,

whatever we manage to grab for ourselves, we grab,

we destroy people, we secure business for our

children, and in the time we have left

we sort of open criminal cases

against opposition figures and jail

people for likes and reposts. But yes, the truth

is exactly that. You don’t, I hope, expect

them to tell you that truth. 83 people are watching

the live stream right now.

Someone asks: Alexei, is it true that your

rating among the 40+ generation is higher than

Putin’s? This is according to a poll conducted by Levada.

I don’t really believe those figures, but I’m

a real person, yes, I’m a normal

If the question—if Levada showed that, in

asking the question, “Whom do you consider

a moral authority?”—and people, in my view,

not even 40+ but 55+, say “Navalny”

in first place and Putin in second, I

find that not very realistic, simply because

we conduct our own

polls too, and I know that 40 to 50

percent of people don’t even know that I

exist. It’s just that we live in a kind of

information bubble too, where

there’s lots of information and everyone knows everything, but

a significant number of people don’t even

watch any news at all. How would they

find out about me? Even from all this

whole

nonsense written by local

committees, RT,

Russia Today, and everyone else—

basically, you won’t see any of it.

You never watch a single Russia Today program,

because nobody watches them; they don’t

exist for you. There are Telegram channels, and you don’t

read them, so half the people don’t even

know I exist. I strongly

doubt that, even in this

demographic,

I could somehow be more

popular than Putin, simply for

objective reasons. Sergey Blinov asks:

Alexei, is suing your employer

an effective way to fight

coerced voting among public-sector employees?

That depends a lot, Sergey, on who your

the employer, but we can see that right now

this is happening on a massive scale, absolutely

people are being forced to take part in

this vote, if of course there will be one

working in the Moscow Metro, but I

I’ll tell you honestly, well of course, I mean

years of service and everything else, or rather not

everything else, and that’s the end of it. So my

suggestion is simply to refuse. If a

person refuses, then most often they

are in fact left alone. This is, well, this is a

thing that always works. But

suing specifically over this—if you

well, if you have some broader

strategy, if there’s a reason you’re suing, and if you

have evidence that you are being

coerced, then that’s probably a good idea. But

it takes a long time.

The court would only consider your

application several months after

that very vote. So right now

you need to do two things. First, refuse

whenever possible. Second, tell everyone

around you that you’re being forced. And third, if

they did force you after all

and coerced you, then go and vote against it.

There are a lot of questions about my bill. I

This bill for

veterans really is something important to me. I’ve

been wanting to speak out about it for several years

because every time before every May 9 (Victory Day in Russia, marking the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany)

two feelings are constantly fighting inside you—they

were fighting inside me. On the one hand, well,

it’s a great holiday.

I’ve said many times that for my family

it has always been a very important holiday.

My grandmother signed her name on the Reichstag (the historic building in Berlin captured by Soviet troops in 1945), and there was always

a cult of victory in the family too,

a cult of military photos, songs, somehow

of fellow soldiers and comrades-in-arms—this was always

very important. So May 9 matters, but

how infuriating it has been, especially in recent years,

this kind of false and

hypocritical, ostentatious

love for veterans, which is

limited

to being performative, while in reality—well, I mean

you need to love them, you need to respect them, you need

to make nice TV programs about them, you need

to pay them pensions. I kept thinking

about how I should speak out about this, and

now I am, because a good moment for

this has come, because they really did

deliberately

organize this parade, which, which

will unfortunately, guaranteed—you have to

understand this—this parade staged by

Putin will definitely kill several

dozens,

maybe hundreds, I don’t know, and

hopefully not thousands, of actual participants in the

war. Hitler didn’t kill them, the German

army didn’t kill them, but this parade will kill them

and these events that they are driven to attend

during an epidemic. I mean, you

understand that the mortality rate among people

in the 95+ age group is, what, around

80 percent. So if a 95-year-old catches

coronavirus, then almost certainly, unfortunately,

they will die. And that is what they are doing,

and that is what absolutely drives me mad.

I decided to put this idea out there, I wrote it up,

the lawyers, Ivan Zhdanov, and the other guys

helped draft this bill,

which is very simple: let’s pay them.

Let’s just pay them properly, because

there are so few of them left, you understand, really very

very few. And if you keep using them for political gain

like this all the time, then at least

pay them a pension. I’m not hiding the fact, of course,

that with this bill I am proposing

that everyone support it.

There’s a link in the description to the petition, and

please sign it too. I’m going to send it everywhere.

This is a way to torment

United Russia every time they

so much as mention veterans, and of course later

every time when they

start talking about their patriotism or about

how much they value victory in the Great

Patriotic War (the Russian term for the Eastern Front of World War II),

you need to ask every one of them: did you vote

for this? Because why is a veteran’s pension really only

34,000 rubles a month? I’m not saying that this is

some wonderful, huge pension for a soldier

who was on the winning side. 96—56 seconds from my

video, for those who haven’t seen it,

did pretty well—it spent almost, almost

a day and a half in first place in YouTube’s trending

on YouTube. Here are those 56 seconds:

Here in Russia, war veterans receive

from 35,000 to 43,000

rubles per month—that’s their pension. In the United States, converted

into rubles,

they receive from 190,000 to 430,000 a month.

In France, 99,000; in the United Kingdom, from 140,000

to 630,000 rubles, depending on

service record. And those were the Allies—but what about the

defeated countries? Finland: 160,000 per

month. Japan: from 80,000 to 470,000 rubles per

month. And finally, Germany pays

Wehrmacht veterans from 111,000

to 630,000 rubles per month, converted

into our currency. That is what it means to respect

veterans. I wrote a very short

bill. Its essence is that a soldier

on the winning side should receive a pension no

smaller than those he defeated.

Now many people are asking how United

Russia reacted, how United Russia deputies

reacted—they’re staying silent. They genuinely do not

know how to respond, because they’ve been

backed into a corner from every

side. It’s a good cause—so do it. No one

is against it: liberals,

conservatives, left-wing, right-wing, anyone.

It’s a simple question: let’s raise the pension

so that it comes to 200,000, like in

a German soldier, and even, you know, people like that

liberal ghouls who usually say

that no social spending is needed

to increase it—even they would not oppose

this, because, you see, because in

principle, let me be honest here, for the

next two years, all those people who are over

94 years old will, unfortunately, very soon all

die. So let’s at least do something a little

symbolic; you can’t refuse

to do that, and so they cannot

say no, and they do not want to say yes for

various reasons, because I proposed it

myself. First and foremost because

in reality, they do not care at all about all these veterans

they do not think about them. Secondly,

they begrudge the money, because this

money—well, it could be used, it could be

given out in contracts to some of their own

acquaintances and friends. But overall, because

they simply do not give a damn about these veterans

At the beginning of the program, I was saying, yes,

how pensioners are being gathered together for Putin

in a camp so they can be monitored

to see whether they got sick, and then drag them over to

him for a photo op. But that is just

disgusting. So yes, they do not care, and

this is a very vulnerable point for them. Then

at every election, at every convenient

moment, they come running to us with their

‘sacred Victory’ (the Soviet victory in World War II)

And we will keep saying: all right,

guys, with all your sacredness, but what about

veterans’ pensions—how did you vote on that?

How did you vote?

That is exactly what they need to be hammered on for, for

that undecided sector, for

the electorate

for urban people, for people who do not

follow the news, this is a very important

thing, because they simply will not understand

it is impossible to explain to them why United

Russia blocked this bill

What will happen to it? Well, frankly,

I think they will be afraid even to bring it up

for consideration. Just imagine: they

vote against it, and I will say that United Russia

voted against raising

war veterans’ pensions. They probably will not even

submit it, but then I will say that

they refused even to consider this

bill. So if they were

really very cunning

they would simply introduce it themselves and raise them

and say: what do we need Navalny for? You know,

actually, back in April

of last year, we introduced such a

bill signed by deputies, so

we are passing it now—and Navalny, come on,

take a hike, Vasya, you’re free. But they

will not do that because, well, because

in reality

they do not even have a think tank like that

that could pull this off, because

they are all busy with other things; they

are trying to steal something. So, Oleg writes to us

that in our country voting

works like this: you

get a phone call—yes, thank you, your vote

has been accepted. Dmitry Prozorov asks what

is happening now in Dagestan, where

doctors flew from Russia, where now

the largest infection clusters are. Excellent

question. This is another great example of how

they made a huge fuss, held a meeting with Putin

then announced that doctors from Moscow

were flying out—Dr. Protsenko flew to

Dagestan to save everyone—and

then somehow it all just disappeared

and nobody knows anything, and nobody

is doing anything. Well, of course we will not

find out anything, because any

information only reaches us

when someone somehow manages to record a video

like it was from Kabardino-Balkaria

from Karachay-Cherkessia, sorry, they recorded

I showed it in the previous program

so

that this point of view needs to be laid out

after the debate

what should be done about the vote? Well, let us

let us discuss it once again

whether to vote or not to vote—back to square one

starting all over again. There really were

debates this week with Maxim Katz, and

he is, well, an active supporter

of the idea that we should go there now

no matter what

that it is very important, that it is practically the most important

civic act that one

can perform. This is a point of view

held by a significant number of

people; there is some argument behind it. I

spoke out, and he started challenging me

to a debate, and all of this basically

turned into what is supposedly the most

important discussion that should

take place in society

on this subject. It is very important. I did not want

to hold a debate, and I still believe

that all of this is absolutely harmful

Why? I will explain my position

and my argument. By the way, let me mention

I will show you a good post on this topic written by

Professor of Political Science Golosov. If you

use Facebook, subscribe to

Golosov

He is one of those political scientists who

understands what he is writing and actually

knows what he is talking about. He rightly wrote that

the best gift the opposition could give Putin right now

would be to focus

not on the real issue, but on whether to vote

or not. This question in itself

is meaningless; it is of interest

only to a small, opposition-minded

small number of politically engaged

Runet users, and that is all

my consistent position

Well, I can see that I’m saying exactly this, and

that’s exactly what’s happening. There’s my show here, and

people watch it in different numbers.

It gets anywhere from 800,000 to 1 million viewers.

There’s Maxim Katz’s channel, and those debates there

were watched by, I think, 600,000 people, and

this whole discussion—

well, honestly, it really feels like we’re just

I don’t know, wandering off into the reeds—going nowhere, basically.

Why should highly motivated people who

are deeply interested in politics—if you’re

here, if you’re among these 82,000

people watching live,

that means you’re in the top half-percent

of the most politically active people in

Russia, and you’ve already made up your mind

—and you made it up a long time ago. There are already very

clearly defined groups: some are in favor

of a boycott,

others are for non-recognition, as we are,

and a third group wants to go in and

try to persuade one another. That’s pointless

nonsense, because our task right now is this:

not to direct these 2 million people we have

inward, by holding some kind of

debates for, who knows, one and a half diggers (a Russian idiom meaning “hardly anyone”)

who are watching. I mean, I don’t want

to offend anyone.

If someone liked it, I’m glad. I saw

some good comments—people were writing how

great it was to watch a discussion. Well,

it’s true: there’s no real political discussion,

no debates, no interesting talk shows,

none of those kinds of conversations. People are interested

in watching that, but to spend

real energy on it is pointless.

Because not one of you who is watching

this program right now, not one of those who

will watch it later, not one of those who

watched the debates, is going to be persuaded otherwise,

and that’s impossible. Maybe three people out of

600,000. What we need to do is

use our reach. I try to do that

with my channel, and here I keep

saying: guys,

1 million people are watching. Our task is

for those 1 million people to reach 20

million more people, explaining

what this vote really is. The biggest

mistake

that many of us make—the biggest

mistake—is that we assume

and are convinced that everyone around us

understands that this vote is for

resetting Putin’s term limits. No—they don’t, and polling shows that,

everything shows it. No, no, and

no—stop thinking that everyone around you

understands politics as well as

you do. Of course they don’t. And so the main thing

we need to do now is go around and

tell people that this is a reset,

that this is an extension of Putin’s time in power, and once again

based on polling—our polling,

which I trust, and I hope you trust too—

we see that a person says something like:

“Will you vote for the amendments?” and confidently replies,

“I’ll vote yes.”

“Why would I vote against them?”

They’ll vote yes because on TV they were told

it’s about pension indexation,

something about animal protections, well, generally speaking

that they’re improving the Constitution—there was a Constitution,

and they decided to improve it.

Why vote against that? What for? And even

if this person is, that is,

skeptical of the authorities,

they genuinely don’t understand it, because

they don’t talk about it on television, not

in any brochure either.

In the information space where

60 percent of our fellow citizens live, the issue of

resetting term limits simply does not exist. It is not mentioned in

any form, in any wording, and

we need to bring that issue into that space. It

lowers Putin’s real approval rating, and it

weakens his position both strategically and

tactically. But this whole conversation about whether we’ll go or not

is pointless—and doubly

pointless now, under epidemic conditions.

Under quarantine conditions, I wouldn’t have gone

to these debates because they’re harmful, and

if Maxim hadn’t written a tweet saying

that, well, yes, okay, of course

coronavirus exists and many people will die,

but those people will mostly, of course, be

election commission workers,

and for everyone else it’s no more dangerous than

going to the store.

Well, of course, after that I decided to debate,

because from my point of view, this whole

situation with coronavirus—some of you

believe in it, some of you don’t, but I

can’t not believe

the actual facts. It is real, and right now

200 people are dying every day.

Can you imagine? Every day, 200 people die.

If a plane crashed every single day,

well, then probably if every day we

turned on the TV and saw: a plane crashed, another plane crashed,

the population of Russia wouldn’t be shrinking because of it,

and yet people would still act like it was nothing

terrible. None of my acquaintances was on

that plane, and then they’d say that, generally speaking,

only old people fly on crashing planes anyway.

But think about it yourselves: would you want to end up

on that plane? And most importantly, any

any vote,

especially a seven-day vote,

is the most massive public event

you can possibly imagine.

It will involve around 1 million

election commission members

who, over the course of a week, interact with

other people. In other words, it is an ideal

situation for the spread of corona-

virus.

The probability of dying is 2 percent—what are you talking about?

Do you want to end up in that two percent?

For you, a young man, it may be 2 percent, but

when you go home and infect your

grandmother, for her it is already, excuse me, 20

percent. And if your grandmother

also has chronic illnesses,

then for her it could be 60 percent as well. So yes,

of course, there is that line of reasoning here, but

the coronavirus will be with us for a long time, and in

September it will probably still be there during the elections too.

Coronavirus will still be around in September, but in September

there will definitely be much less of it. Right now we

have the hard fact that in most

regions this is the peak of the spread

of the epidemic, or even

well, either the peak has just passed, or

the peak has not even arrived yet. Let me show you

a report from Tatarstan (a republic within Russia), Tatarstan

where the entire information space has simply been

scrubbed clean — an absolute, total purge is underway.

A television channel that

is half-owned by the state authorities

gave us a six-minute report, but I will show you

two minutes of it. Let's watch.

The piece, which is only now being prepared for

broadcast,

has sparked such broad public

discussion. On Monday, your humble

servant published on his social media

page a short note accompanied by this

very photograph. But the attention

was drawn not by the photograph, and the discussion was not

about it. The author's text, quite

unexpectedly for the author himself,

provoked an enormous response. What caused

such a reaction? The answer is simple:

candor. People saw and heard what

they had long suspected, and what

it turns out they had been missing so badly: the truth.

An infectious disease hospital.

Hospital No. 7, the largest in the republic.

It has 440 beds and a medical staff of 355.

And the truth sounds simple: they are barely

coping with such a number of patients.

The number of patients has not decreased.

The intensive care unit of Hospital No. 7

city hospital.

There are 30 beds here; all of them are occupied. Thirteen people

are on artificial lung ventilation

machines. There are no free places here

ever. This is everyday reality.

Victory is not near. There is no light at the end

of the tunnel. Doctors, mortally exhausted by this

battle, do not yet see it. For us,

of course, if at first all this was something

unfamiliar, all of it was frightening, now

everyone has become so used to it — this is now our

work. No one runs from it, no one

hides. Everyone goes. And in the morning, when I get up,

I receive

the 6 a.m. report and already see that from

the morning I already have around ten people

coming in — the numbers are growing. Unfortunately, this information,

if society is lucky enough to hear it

today, should help all of us understand

that turning a blind eye to something is not

the best way to solve problems. There is

no theater here and no actors here.

This is the truth of life.

Tatarstan is overregulated,

censored Tatarstan — its

state television, 50 percent of whose shares

in this TV company

belong, as far as I remember, to the republic's

committee for property management,

and they produce reports like this.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel. This catastrophe

is real. We are living inside it.

We really are living this strange kind of life:

on the one hand, packed outdoor terraces and people

walking around, and everyone has already given up on masks;

nobody cares at all anymore. But there is no need

to fool yourself — anyone can end up in those

whatever-the-percentage-is.

People are dying every day. What kind of

voting can there be, especially for members

of election commissions, for those very

people who will have to

spend a week — every day for a week —

meeting and talking

with all sorts of other people? Remember,

Ella Pamfilova (head of Russia's Central Election Commission) said at the very beginning,

when they had only just announced that they would hold

the vote starting on June 25,

that it was absolutely safe, but just

in case, they would test

all election commission members — nearly a million

people. And what did they say this week?

That they would not conduct testing.

Why? Because what are you going to do

with the results of that testing? Out of that

million people, there are already guaranteed to be

— no doubt about it — asymptomatic

carriers, or carriers with symptoms. Would you

replace a million people? You would find

300,000 infected there, and what would you do?

Send them all into quarantine? No. So they

understand that among these election commissions there are already

at least tens of thousands infected.

They will inevitably infect other members

of the election commissions. People sit

at the same table, listen, decide, and then

stay together — that is how the meetings work. Because

most often you only see them when

they are sitting there producing ballots,

but before that they meet, they

run around, they prepare — they will infect one

another, and then they will infect everyone else. That is

what will happen with them.

And that is exactly why now there

many election commissions

— I saw reports today, well, not that

many, but some of them —

are supporting this, essentially a strike

by election commissions. And today an election commission

in Yekaterinburg, in Sverdlovsk Region,

all 11 members wrote that

they refuse to work under these conditions.

You simply refuse because

it's impossible, especially if 11 people

refuse, the full lineup is gone

there's a United Russia member sitting there, and

a member of A Just Russia, a person who

was appointed by the local administration, but

health comes first, and besides, many

people simply do not want to take part in this

campaign of mass infection

of people. One of the election commission members put it very well

from the city of

Novosibirsk, who resigned before this

from his post. Let's listen.

Good afternoon, I am Alexei Nikonov, a member of Precinct Election Commission

No. 1910

in Novosibirsk Region, and I am forced

to join the open letter

declaring a strike by members

of election commissions during

the vote on the constitutional amendments, and I have

two compelling reasons for this. First,

I joined the commission to conduct

honest, transparent, and competitive elections

in accordance with election law. What

we are being asked to conduct is very

far from the standards of that law. Come on, guys, we

didn't find ourselves in a dump; we have

a standard of work quality. If you want

to boost your likes, go and hold

a vote on VKontakte (a Russian social network).

But leave us out of it, please. And second, we are

in the middle of an epidemic. In a week,

a commission will interact with 1,000 voters

and will almost certainly become infected itself

completely, and infect many of

our voters, many of whom

are in high-risk groups. Some of them

will most likely even die. In this connection, I

demand that the State Duma (lower house of Russia's parliament)

make changes to the law on voting

on the constitutional amendments so that

the voting procedure is as close as possible

to a normal referendum

and, secondly, I demand that the Central Election Commission postpone

the voting procedure until the Single Voting Day

in September. By that time

the epidemic should have subsided, and it will be possible not to

risk human lives for nothing

And of course I call on all members

of election commissions to join

this strike.

You see, this whole discussion

is taking place in the context of a very important phrase:

"some of them, of course, will die." But

you must agree, that changes the situation somewhat

and our whole discussion about whether to go

or not to go vote is becoming

somewhat meaningless, because the heart

of the matter is this: are you

personally afraid or not? Are you afraid

for your relatives? That is what

must be answered before

calling on anyone to do anything.

And this discussion needs to stop. That is,

of course I have my own opinion, and

I have expressed it here. I can explain at length and

in detail why

I will not go there, but

this discussion, again, would make sense

if not for this whole epidemic, this coronavirus

situation. This question

will partly still exist

in September during regular elections, because

there may be a second wave or something

else, but

right now, when we know for certain that in

the regions things are happening, and in some regions

St. Petersburg announced today that

they had run out of hospital bed capacity. Beglov

came out and said that in the city of

St. Petersburg, the country's second-largest

city, there are no hospital beds left and

they have nowhere left to place patients

who are dying. So what kind of

mass call to vote can there be? This is simply

absolutely immoral. I would like

first and foremost to speak from

a moral position, and only secondly

from a rational one, already

choosing which tactic is better, and

and then, well, simply

let me repeat: the rational position is

not to argue among ourselves within one

percent, but to go out to this huge, vast

Russia, to tens of millions of people, and

explain things to them and tell them about

what this "resetting" is, what kinds of

election fraud are taking place. Look, this is all

really a crazy story from TV Rain (an independent Russian media outlet); they have

a report, and I think this report is even open-access

so you can watch it

open in the sense that you do not need to pay

money for it. Their correspondent, a man by the

name of Bayev, started investigating something

that I also wrote about

because people were sending information to my Telegram bot

saying that they were buying up

SIM cards in bulk, and

with those SIM cards you can

register and, essentially,

well, sorry, but then

to put it plainly, they are simply buying

votes. In short, it turns out that

one vote through these

SIM cards costs 115 rubles (about $1–$2 at the time)

and through people who are paid 70

or 50 rubles, they simply cast a vote in

this electronic voting system, and we

understand that in this way some

SIM cards and some people who did it

many, many times at 115 rubles each will amount to

simply a huge number of votes

This story developed in a remarkable

way. TV Rain released it, and we have

a clip from the report, we might even show it

though perhaps we do not have a clip from that report

from TV Rain. Pull it up and show it. But the story

developed as follows:

TV Rain (Dozhd, an independent Russian TV channel) released a report that proved everything there.

How this happens.

What was happening there that night, so then to her...

The police started arriving and are trying...

to detain this Bayev, dragging him somewhere, well...

That is,

the attack on TV Rain began because they

exposed the pipeline schemes in the second program.

Skobeeva's report, and the claim that this means...

that TV Rain's report is a complete fabrication, all of it...

just a fake, simply because they showed

how Putin would reset his term limits, and that is...

Even TV Rain's report should be discussed

not in the context of

whether it makes sense to go vote or not,

whether it makes sense to go vote,

but in the context of this: let's show

other people just how fake this 'resetting' is,

how fraudulent it is, that all of it will rest

on a massive number of fake SIM cards from

the registry, on SIM cards — that's what we need

to be talking about. This is a fundamentally important

thing. I understand that some, you know, well, yes...

a group of people believe that going to

this vote is the most important act

of civic action. Yes, many people

think that.

And so, well, it's like — damn, coronavirus and all that,

a bunch of new excuses — but people still have to go,

because it's very important. Guys, if

you think this is very important, then I

want to propose something even more important, something

much more real, which may

not sound quite as cool as, 'We'll all go

and vote against Putin,' but in

reality, to a much greater extent,

that's where actually going and voting against Putin matters.

September will come, and in 31 federal subjects (regions)

there will be elections — in a third of the country, including

Novosibirsk, the country's third-largest city.

How about this idea:

to crush United Russia

in the biggest city in Siberia and the third-largest

city in the country? Well, that idea

seems pretty sexy to me, or at

least no less sexy than

'I'll go, and for my own peace of mind

I'll vote against.' Let's, across

all these 31 regions,

vote against them. Or if you live in

other regions, if you live in Moscow,

make a small contribution to

the real voting in Novosibirsk, and

I'm talking more about Novosibirsk simply

because the situation there is unique.

A coalition against United Russia has been created in

Novosibirsk. United Russia had an alliance there

with the Communists, and in response there is now

a citywide coalition. It includes all sorts of

decent, normal people,

opposition politicians in Novosibirsk, and

all of this was put together by Sergei Boyko,

the head of our headquarters in Novosibirsk,

who recently came in

second in the mayoral election. So he is clearly

simply, just by the numbers,

the leading opposition politician there.

He created a coalition of different people. Maria

London, a very well-known TV host and

— I don't know if you can call her a YouTuber —

but in any case, a very well-known person in

Novosibirsk, also joined this coalition.

It's a great coalition, and as the election gets closer,

we'll see how they try to break it apart, how

they discredit it, how they put up

spoiler candidates against it, how the authorities

will fight it. It will be an interesting process, but

if we do everything right, we will

wipe out United Russia to hell

in Novosibirsk, in Cheboksary, and so on,

and so on, across a third of the country. That's why I

just — for my part, it really can

even irritate me, I would say, this

focus on how important it is for us

to go right now and vote against it

in a situation where you may vote, but the likelihood

that your vote will simply be stolen — I mean,

it's some kind of strange voting process. But

then people say regional elections are nonsense, like,

'Navalny, why are you pushing these regional

elections on us? Leave us alone with your regional

elections. Let's go take part now

in the nationwide vote.' No — that way we

won't achieve anything.

Because in September there will be

real voting, at real

polling stations, with real candidates, with

observers who will be there. Yes, they may

throw them out, but even so, let's

take part there. Boyko asked

to record a special 50-second message for our

broadcast about what is happening there.

Sergei Boyko.

The head of our headquarters and a representative

of the coalition against United Russia in

Novosibirsk. Let's listen.

In this building sits an incompetent mayor

who is incapable of running the city.

That's why in winter we drown in snow, and in summer

we breathe dust. This is also where the city council deputies sit,

who could

fire the mayor or at least bring

his work under control, but instead

they are busy solving their own business

issues and carving up the city's

assets. We are not satisfied with this approach, and

we have created a coalition of independent

candidates, bringing together people of the most

diverse views and political convictions:

community leaders, activists, and simply

people who care. But most importantly, the coalition

is built on principles.

Each candidate signs a document specifying

exactly how and on which issues they will

vote in the city council. We are also

building feedback mechanisms with

our supporters so that all disputed issues can be decided by vote.

Support us, and we will...

we’ll drive out the United Russia deputies from there too, and

we’ll kick out whoever’s been living off you there and give the city back

to its residents

That is, one does not prevent the other, of course; in

there’s no contradiction here. If you want to go and you’re not

afraid of getting infected and you’re not worried about

infecting your relatives, then go and

vote in the ballot. But here as well

take part—if you’re a resident of Novosibirsk,

please, by the way, go to

the link nas2020.ru and leave

your signature there.

But this is where the real struggle will be.

So when it comes to that, honestly, honestly,

I’ll say this: it really pisses me off when

some people come running up and say, “You’re

proposing that we do nothing.” You know,

they were proposing that people sit on the couch, while we

are proposing that people fight Putin. Yes, we

are running these campaigns all across the

country; in 31 regions we are rolling out

Smart Voting

real politics, a real opportunity

to win

against United Russia. That is the work, you understand. And

what really is sitting on the couch

is typing out comments, going once

to vote in some kind of nationwide

Russian ballot, and then

waiting another four years.

That is what sitting on the couch is. So

let’s just look at the bigger

picture.

Right now, in general, it is important to campaign to everyone

around us and explain that this is a reset of presidential term limits

—that is task number one. Task number two

is for everyone to get involved in the work and, in September,

do everything possible so that at a very

difficult and vulnerable time for United

Russia, we strike a blow—not, so to speak, in the back, but

not in the back, head-on. We will hit United

Russia. Here we are—83,000 people

are watching us—well, let’s say 82,000 people

are watching us. That shows how sick everyone is

of hearing this endless drivel

about whether to vote or not vote. I’m

sick of talking about it too, but even so,

these debates were, for me—81,000

people may even be watching us live, and people

are literally running away from this

toxic topic.

However, there were two topics that struck me.

After these debates, I realized

just how much—and this includes me,

I’m probably overconfident already, because

it seems like, well, you said it once, you said

it twice, and everyone understood. But in fact,

it turns out people don’t understand a damn thing.

In those debates, there was only a passing

mention at all

of the issue of whether these amendments have or have not

been adopted. And I’ve already spoken about this, but I see

afterward just a flood of comments:

“Why didn’t you talk about that?” “Oh,”},{

“what an interesting topic, but we don’t know,”

“we’re arguing about whether these

constitutional amendments have entered into force or not.”

And this topic, and the topic of monitoring and

election fraud,

somehow are not being fully and seriously

debated and discussed by people, or

many people genuinely do not understand. So

this is, of course, an important

thing. Apparently, for my part, I need

first, to speak more clearly and explain it better,

really explain it,

and second, to keep repeating it.

It’s a basic point, my friends: these

constitutional amendments have already been adopted, and

there is no debate about that. There may, perhaps,

be debate among people who

are just running around the streets or read

something somewhere, but among lawyers—and especially

independent lawyers specializing in

constitutional law—there is no

debate here. So, well, and in

principle, it is actually very interesting

that even among various representatives

of the authorities on this matter, there is no longer even—not just

a debate about it—they don’t say it outright,

of course, but it has all been adopted.

But it has so obviously been adopted that

they constantly let it slip themselves.

Ella Pamfilova

—the best-known example is that 35-second clip where she

says that the procedures are there because the law

has already been adopted, and we all already understand that

this is merely a procedure in accordance with the currently

effective Constitution, which

is taking place only to legitimize

the amendments that have already been adopted. It is absolutely

legitimate already, based on the fact that

the legitimately elected State Duma

and Federation Council, and our legitimately

elected legislative assemblies

of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, by two

thirds, three quarters—by the required three- and two-

thirds majorities—

have already adopted this law, adopted these

amendments. This process in itself is already

legitimate.

Because this cannot be argued with: in

the Constitution, in the current Constitution,

there is a clear procedure for adopting

amendments.

That procedure is explicitly described, and it

has been carried out to the very last point. Putin himself

speaks and says, “Well, we

are beginning to implement some

norms, we are beginning to implement them.”

Why? Because it has already been adopted. Listen to Putin:

“There are three things we are already implementing

in practice even before the adoption of the amendments to the

Constitution.” And that shows

that the amendments that were proposed, including by the

working group,

are in demand—absolutely

in demand.”

the conditions of our life today

there you have it, that was Putin

the co-chair of the working group, well,

the woman, Taliya Khabrieva, who actually wrote it

and carried out all this rigging

but even she, when speaking, was forced

to say, you know, there is this legal

phenomenon: we are, sort of, still going to

vote

but the amendments are already in effect, they have already entered into

force. Listen, and here she is, the one who wrote all of this,

who wrote all this, introducing a new dimension, so to speak

and they have already proposed this formula, that is,

the amendments have already entered our

lives, and we are witnessing this unique

phenomenon when

a legal phenomenon, if you like: the amendments have not yet

officially entered into force, but they are already determining

the substance and content of legislation

you understand, a scholarly legal phenomenon

an amazing phenomenon being observed by lawyers

all over the world, though of course it has already been adopted in the first round, so to speak

well, and I don’t know what other, by what other

authority to cite here—Tamara

Morshchakova, a recognized

one of the leading specialists in constitutional law

a former judge of the Constitutional Court

who, essentially, was pushed out for

being too independent in her views. And in

her official letter there

to the cassation court, and in interviews, she

also says directly: guys, look,

if Article 136—please put it up—

Morshchakova points out that after

approval by two-thirds of the federal subjects (regions), it

enters into force, that’s it, it enters into

force

more than that, this is also completely

obvious: the Constitutional Court

reviewed these amendments and found them

lawful. But how could it review the amendments

before that? Okay, they had entered into force

it couldn’t have done that otherwise; it

reviewed them because they had entered into

force

this is this astonishing

legal riddle: the Constitutional Court was able

to take them up for review because

they had, in fact, already entered into force, that is,

they had entered into force. I mean, guys, you

drew up a contract, you and three of your friends

and that contract says that changes to

the contract can be made if we gather in

one room and vote. Then

some time later, one of you

suggests: let’s do it this way, we’ll

gather in one room and vote

and after that, let’s say,

someone does an erotic dance, and after that the

amendment will enter into force

well, sure, you can do that

and say that the amendments entered into force

that your contract took effect after

the erotic dance, but in reality everything

happened in accordance with your

procedure. You wrote it down that way, you

voted, and that was it—it entered into force. The same applies

here in the federal subjects (regions)

they voted, so it entered into force. And

really, again, this argument is pointless from

the standpoint of a person who

wants to go vote

for you, this should not matter

because if you say that for

me, going to this vote is simply

a ritual act—though I can see 80 people on

the live stream, people are dropping off

the moment I say this—but I’ll say it anyway

if for you this is about going there in order to

express your opinion, simply for yourself

to make up your mind, express personal protest, or

throw “against” ballots into the box because

you believe that falsification

won’t be able to outweigh it—we’ll talk about that now—

then go. For you, this is not—

that is, the fact that the amendments have already been adopted is not

a limiting factor. But stop

saying nonsense that they have not yet been adopted

they most definitely have been adopted

the second thing—actually, three things, even

though I was about to say the second thing—about

whether the authorities are suppressing protest turnout

there is this opinion, you know, everyone says

that I am supposedly some sinister agent

of the Kremlin because I am urging people rather

than calling on them to go, and that I am suppressing anti-

turnout, because the authorities are dragging their own supporters out, while

Putin’s opponents won’t come to these elections—

well then, let’s just

think soberly

let’s imagine we are the Kremlin, and we want

supporters of this vote to come out to

vote, Putin’s supporters, and vote yes

while those people who vote

against should stay home. What do we do

to achieve that? We drag to the polls

people in the national republics (ethnic republics within Russia)

people living in rural areas, people

living in small towns

older people, because they are

the most susceptible to

propaganda and the least

well-informed, right? It is obvious that

this is so. If we want to bring out the pro-Putin

electorate and keep the anti-Putin

electorate at home, we suppress turnout in anti-Putin

areas. That means under no circumstances do we

mobilize residents of big cities

especially not—we do everything

to make sure Muscovites don’t come, that residents of

St. Petersburg don’t come, that residents of

Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg

and so on don’t come. Those are our worst enemies, and

of course young people too. Right now,

run a poll on any social

network—Instagram, wherever

VKontakte—everyone is against the amendments, so

there is simply not the slightest reason

we should not take a single step toward herding these people in

So what is happening in

practice? We can see that in Moscow

they are forcing everyone, regardless of whether it is a workday

or a non-working day, pushing them to go. They are

selling it in Moscow

rather than rounding people up, even public-sector employees, but only

because Moscow public-sector workers are against all of this

Nevertheless, they are not refraining from rounding up students

they are rounding them up; VKontakte is absolutely flooded

flooded with ads. If they were trying to suppress turnout

if they were against young people showing up

then why would they simply

spend tens of millions, probably hundreds

of millions of rubles, just

to advertise all of this on VKontakte?

Because they do not care who comes

They are placing ads on Instagram; under

those ads there are a million comments

and all of them are negative, but they do not care. What matters to them

is that you show up, because

the result can be falsified

but faking actual turnout is very difficult

It is not about legitimacy; it is about the fact that

they want Putin to have

100 million people, or at least 80 million

people, so that everyone remembers that we went to

these polling stations. But if few people came, then

everyone who did go, I mean, they would all

know, and people would be talking about it everywhere, on the radio and all over

it would be obvious: this was nonsense, there was nobody there

nobody took part in this vote

That is what he is afraid of. But again, if you

are set on going, if for you this position of going

is not an argument

fine, let it not be an argument for you, but still

at the very least we need to stop

lying that the authorities are somehow suppressing

the protest vote turnout. No, they are not suppressing it; they are doing

everything to make sure people come. Moscow in particular matters

because the picture from Moscow matters, and that in Moscow there were

crowded polling stations, despite

the fact that in Moscow everyone is supposedly going to

vote against, and young people across the whole

country will vote against, but

they are still being driven there, because

how exactly they vote is not of great importance, and

this is the third point. At the risk of losing the remnants of my

audience, I will continue on this topic

The third thing, the most important one, regarding

whether it is possible or impossible to falsify

whether it is possible to stuff in enough votes

to outweigh all the votes

against. For this, just to make it

more visual, I brought you an evil duck

It is evil because I no longer know how

to explain this. Honestly, I do not know how else to describe it. I am

going to explain it to you with ducks. It is very

simple, listen: this is an evil duck, and it

wants to rig the election, and

this evil duck found it fairly difficult

to rig things in 2011

and in 2013. Every time it

rigged something, people noticed, and there were

protests. And the evil duck assumes that

if it now throws in 40 percent in Moscow

worth of fake votes, the observers will

notice it. At every polling station there are at least some

observers, and there will be a huge scandal

That is why, when we talk about

how elections used to be before, forget what used to happen

in earlier elections: now there will be seven days for this

and this duck has a ballot box for

voting. And suppose— I feel

as if I am hosting a program for

toddlers, sorry to anyone who

feels like I am really trying to

treat the audience like little kids, but damn, I

do not know how else to explain it. There is a ballot box

for voting, and there is an observer at this

commission. Let us suppose that somehow some

observers managed to get in. We have

a Superman who, by some amazing

miracle, became an observer, even though

becoming an observer is almost impossible. All

observers

are from the Public Chamber (a state-backed civic body); the Public Chamber

does not issue credentials to any third-party