FBK labeled a “foreign agent,” the warrior-shaman has returned, paying officials for dental care

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow.

That means we are live on air

with the program *Russia of the Future*, and I am Alexei

Navalny.

or “a man worn down by failures and back on”

“cocaine,” as I was called by

those wonderful Kremlin media outlets. Great

name. In fact, I’m already sure

that the people who come up with such

headlines will invent all kinds of

funny names for me. They really do it

so that I’ll simply take

their little phrase and use it as the title

for my own program. Big hello to you guys,

it’s a great name. Come up with something

even more creative, and I will definitely

give you a shout-out here. I don’t mind.

It entertains me, and I hope

it entertains the viewers of our program too.

Although, really, the most

legitimate title I ought to use

for this show is, of course,

“foreign agent,” because the main

event of the week for us, at least

for the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

and in general quite a significant event,

is that the Anti-Corruption Foundation

was triumphantly, pompously, loudly declared

a foreign agent. And many people have already

said, “Well, finally,” because, you know,

everyone had been waiting for when they would try

to stick this label on us, this stamp, this

seal, because they endlessly

lie that we are supported by some kind of

Western forces, and it seemed logical

for them to declare us foreign agents. But

the truth is, guys,

the reason this had not happened earlier is that

it is actually quite difficult to do. Organizations

of various kinds are mostly declared

foreign agents because they

really do receive perfectly legal,

ordinary funding from abroad.

With rare exceptions—for example, the Foundation

Sreda was declared a foreign agent completely arbitrarily

because they classified

perfectly Russian money as foreign money.

You can look into that. But more often than not,

there really is some kind of

grant or something similar, because

for non-profit organizations,

charities, any such organizations,

it is extremely difficult to survive in

Russia.

There are no donors at all—you simply cannot find them—and so they

receive grants from the West. That is not some kind of

terrible

activity. They receive the money and spend it

for the benefit of Russian citizens. But then

the men in checkered uniforms come running in: “Look,”

“they’re foreign agents,” and they force them

to file some enormous amount of

reporting. But from the very beginning we were in

a much better position, because

you are the ones who send us money. We live quite

modestly, and we have, essentially,

your support. So we

never needed any

foreign money. We are perfectly

satisfied with the fact that you send

200, 300, 500 rubles (about $2–$5) each. When we don’t have enough

for something, I come on this broadcast

and say, “Guys, we’re short,”

“please send another 200, 300,”

“400 rubles (about $2–$4).” If we say that

our accounts have been blocked, I come

onto this program and say, “Guys,

today we have Streamlabs, today we’re

using Streamlabs—please go to

the description of this video.”

We need money today; we are raising funds

to support foreign agents, since that’s what

they call us. We have never had such a

problem. And when someone tried

—whether as a provocation or by mistake—and well-meaning

people tried to send us foreign money, first of all

it is very hard to do, because

from abroad you cannot send

rubles: a bank abroad will not open a

ruble account for you.

And you cannot send us dollars either—we are not allowed to receive them.

We do not have foreign-currency accounts. And then we

look at who is sending us money, and such

payments are simply rejected.

But now they had to do something, they needed

to do something, because criminal cases

had been opened against us.

They claimed that we had laundered billions, carried out

a huge number of searches everywhere,

seized phones and laptops.

In a standard situation, they judge by themselves:

if you conduct a search, say,

I don’t know, at the home of some crony or at someone from

Rosneft or some other state company, and so on,

or even at Miller from Gazprom,

and at several legal entities connected

to them—there, in those legal entities

and with those people—you would find a mountain of compromising material

on all of them.

Enough to lock them up for 30 years. But they also

thought that when they searched us,

they would find something.

As if they would uncover something. But what can they

possibly find here?

Our work? You can come in here,

find me, my board, the people who

help make this broadcast, and that’s it. In fact,

our money is exactly this money—

the money that you, in particular, send through

this Streamlabs right now, online, and later

offline too—it keeps working. That’s all.

And as I understand it, they carried out all these

searches in huge numbers, starting

back at the end of August, all these operations, and

discovered that there is nothing—there is no

secret, dark, or hidden

story behind the Anti-Corruption Foundation. There is absolutely nothing. After that

They staged a provocation, but one that

honestly, even left us a little

disappointed. We were expecting some kind of

scheme that would be difficult

to fight. For example,

I don't want to give them any hints, but all right.

You take some foreigner—whatever his

name is—open a ruble account for him here, and then he

sends us money over a certain period of time

from that foreigner's ruble account. Let's say his name is

Kolya Ivanov, and we see that the money

was sent by Kolya Ivanov from some Russian account—

everything seems fine. And then, a year later,

they say, wait, it turns out Ivanov has

only Israeli citizenship, not

Russian citizenship—so they're foreign agents.

Well, we expected something along those lines—some

kind of trick. But it turned out, my God, that

this entire Putin system of security-service people

and PR operatives

and various political technologists in the Presidential Administration

is really just a gathering of

idiots. Let's watch 24 seconds

from REN TV, which with its own

"exposé" of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

actually exposed the whole system, this entire

pathetic setup against the Foundation

for Fighting Corruption. Twenty-four seconds.

How did they prove that we are foreign

agents? The list of foreign agents includes

the Anti-Corruption Foundation. It was confirmed

that this organization receives foreign

funding while engaging in

political activity. In our

possession are payment documents showing

foreign transfers in favor of the Foundation.

Except that

the payment order for 110,000 rubles (about €1,700) from Spain is from

a legal entity.

Moreover, the Anti-Corruption Foundation

was carrying out political activity and, in

particular, organized rallies using

foreign money.

Foreign funding was confirmed.

A payment order ended up in our possession.

Any of you who has ever

made a payment and sent it anywhere understands

that it cannot end up in anyone's

possession except, well, except the bank's.

In this case, that would be the Spanish bank. We

very much doubt that a Spanish bank

would violate every rule imaginable

and risk its license just

to hand this payment order over to the TV channel

REN TV.

We don't have it, even though, as they said, that money was transferred to us.

That's what they claimed.

It became completely clear—finally

the whole scheme became clear,

and this entire cunning plan. First,

criminal cases were opened. As part of

those criminal cases, they froze

our accounts, and that served two

purposes at once. First, they simply don't let us

use the money that you

donated. A huge amount is stuck there. On the

one hand, we are potentially

wealthy—we have money there. On the other

hand, right now we can't even pay

people's salaries, because we

simply cannot use that money.

They blocked all the accounts.

If an account is blocked, you can't do

anything with it. Money comes in,

but we can't withdraw it. And then they

blocked them, and at the same time

they launched raids on the accounting offices.

Our accounting is handled through so-called

outsourcing, and instead of keeping

accountants on staff here—because there's

nothing to hide—we simply hire

accounting firms, give them all our

documents, and they prepare our

financial reports. And then something happened

that I experienced personally.

I myself am

registered as an individual

entrepreneur, and the money that

I receive, basically, I receive

through this sole proprietorship.

I'm Navalny, and then they send me this

notice—I can even show it to you now.

The notice I personally received said that

our accounting firm informs

you that it

is terminating its contract with you—with me personally

as an individual entrepreneur. And there, either in that same

or a similar organization called Fabrika,

they terminated the contract. I was like, what happened?

I pay you properly, carefully, something like

15,000 rubles (about $160)

or 20,000 rubles (about $210) a month for

accounting services. It turned out that

there had been a search—that some FSB officers (Russia's security service) came

and seized documents. Naturally, no

organization engaged in bookkeeping

needs that crap at all. Some people just showed up,

took everything,

including documents of other clients, poking around where

they had no business being. But of course they

told them that as long as Navalny is your client,

things are going to go very, very badly for you.

So they sent me

a termination notice. Fabrika sent exactly

the same kind of notice terminating

the contract. At the same time,

the director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

Zhdanov, was arrested, and then the truly

"brilliant" part happened—this very

scheme that was devised by the Presidential Administration

and obviously approved by Putin himself,

because, well, a lot of agencies were involved here

and they were acting

in sync. While the Investigative Committee

was freezing our accounts together with

the Basmanny Court, on absolutely invented

fabricated grounds—yet the courts

froze everything anyway—the FSB rushed in and

blocks our accountants

forces donors to turn away from us

at the same time, they go ahead and

send 20,000 rubles first, and then

110,000 rubles to a blocked account, that is,

to a blocked account. So if you are

right now a terrorist from ISIS (the so-called Islamic State), or I don't know

someone like Chikatilo (a notorious Soviet serial killer), you can easily

find that

blocked account and send your 100

rubles, or I don't know, your 10 pieces of silver, and

say, "I am financing Navalny," and then

REN TV, NTV, and all the others will put out

a report saying that he is being financed by ISIS

and Chikatilo, and so on. And there is nothing I can do about it

and the Anti-Corruption Foundation

can't do anything about it either.

The account is blocked; we cannot take

the money out of it in order to return it, and

since at that time we also didn't really have an accounting department yet,

we didn't really know what

was happening. But once the accounts were blocked,

we were busy with everything else. But in

any case, the bank would have seen it. And later,

of course, we saw all of this, and we

would have returned it all, but now it cannot be returned.

And now we are in a situation where

indeed some kind of

unclear Spanish guy with a name

I don't remember exactly, something like

Sanchez, Rodriguez, something-something-something,

sent those very 140,000 rubles

and they immediately, right away,

got the Justice Ministry involved, they rush in and declare me

declare all of us foreign agents.

That's the thing here — I mean, the scheme is

obvious. But you understand what

amazes me separately is how, basically speaking,

this huge swing ends in a complete dud.

After all, our case is being handled — the case is being handled by

well,

112 major-case investigators.

Don't think I'm mistaken, and don't think that

I'm exaggerating or misspeaking. In fact,

it really is 112 people — one hundred and

twelve healthy grown men, idlers, receiving

salaries of around 100,000 rubles

who get official apartments or at least

official housing, and what they do is

investigate a case that does not exist.

And the main thing they ultimately

managed to stage is simply this:

send someone in Spain, transfer

140,000 rubles here, and then claim some

strange thing about how some other

American company trading in

doors sent us 10,000 rubles. We do not

see them. I don't know whether some glitch

happened, or whether they stole those 10,000 rubles on the way,

or something else happened.

In any case, no company trading in

doors, American or otherwise, sent those

10,000 rubles. We do see the two Spanish

payments.

The recent ones to the blocked account, we can see.

And first of all, this is all they are capable of.

With this, they hope to deprive us of

funding; they hope to convince you — well,

let's be honest here — yes, in order

to deprive us of funding, they probably do not need

to persuade REN TV viewers that

we are bad, because REN TV viewers

are not exactly the ones constantly sending us money.

The people who have just now sent

already — I can't see the exact

amount right now —

somewhere around 70,000 rubles already

have already sent it. Here, they are writing to us: 21,000

900 rubles. So you, the people

who send money — is NTV really supposed

to somehow convince you not

to do that? Well, that's exactly the point.

Did they not understand that I would come on this

program again and write in my blog and

show you the payment slip, and when you

see all this, you will react like this

and simply send us even more money

because how the hell can anyone

put up with this government? But fine,

Putin hates us; we beat him

in the last elections. Obviously, he

really is stamping his feet, he is shouting,

"What the hell is going on?" I can

reconstruct what is happening there.

He gathered his Presidential Administration,

the prosecutor's office, everyone else,

and says, "What the hell is going on?

Some people who have neither money nor

media resources, they have nothing at all

except criminal cases against them, and they beat my

party, United Russia, in Moscow,

hit us hard in St. Petersburg, beat us in

Khabarovsk, and so on." Well of course they

are furious and want to destroy us.

But damn it, first of all, in such a strange and

so obvious a way to us; and second, you understand

how easy it turns out to be in Russia to do

something like this to anyone. Here, yes,

Putin personally has a political motive, but there may be

some similar investigator in any

city who simply wants, I don't know,

to seize someone's bank and make

a billion rubles. These

famous Interior Ministry colonels, Zakharchenko, FSB colonels,

who had billions found on them —

that money comes from somewhere too.

And the truly maddening thing, besides

this whole FSB machination, is that

in Russia, in general, it is impossible

in principle to expect any independent

court, any normal

law enforcement system. If they openly

openly

carry out schemes like this, then they can

pull them off against anyone. If you have

a store, then the local police chief,

having made a deal with

the local court, will simply take it away from you.

they're seizing assets all across the country

a bank, some IT company you own

really, anything can be taken from you easily, but

if this kind of crap works, car rental—I don't get it

what this all means in the end, and the media should talk about it

they'll show it on TV, they'll

have some people acting outraged

others will defend them, but they do it anyway, I mean

it's literally an organized criminal group

in the beautiful Russia of the future

which will come sooner or later, there won't

be any need to prove anything at all—you'll

just submit their own

documents to the court, and any normal, honest judge will say

of course: this was an organized

criminal group made up of people

from the Investigative Committee (Russia's federal investigative authority), people from

the prosecutor's office, judges, and people from

the Ministry of Justice—they exceeded their official

powers, they falsified documents, they

made unlawful decisions—ten years each

10 years each. That will happen sooner or later, but

they're not even remotely ashamed, not

one bit. How can anything in Russia possibly

develop? How can people

put money into this country, bring in

investment, if they know that with such damn

simple, elementary schemes you can

take absolutely anything from anyone? Well

and it's just infuriating—the largest

country in the world, and some people sit there, and we

are supposed to think they're smart people in

the Presidential Administration. And this is all it

is capable of, even with its super-mega

law-enforcement machine. We didn't think they

were only capable of just coming here, arresting

everyone, dragging them away, throwing them in a cell, and

explaining nothing to anyone. But still, everyone

expected from them some kind of

vile but at least slightly elegant

scheme. But no, nothing of the sort

no scheme at all. We, on the other hand, do have an elegant

scheme—well, relatively elegant

scheme. Though I am getting a lot of

questions

about what we're going to do

next. So let me read a question now

all the ones we have. If there is no fundamental

difference between a foreign agent and

an agent of foreign intelligence—

Nadezhda Baranova asks you. Well, listen,

there is something to that idea, essentially, because

the label "foreign agent" implies that on

all printed materials, for example, you'll have to

put

a disclaimer: "Produced by an organization recognized as

a foreign agent." And "foreign agent"

in people's minds, of course, sounds like an agent

of foreign intelligence. I don't really understand

whether they want me, on this program, to

say that this program was produced by

an organization recognized as a foreign agent

at the end of every video. I mean, what is the point?

What exactly is the objective?

And if I don't do it, they will

fine us 300,000 rubles (about $3,300) for each episode

300,000 rubles. But here's the problem I want

to convey to Mr. Putin and everyone

else, including Mr.

Bastrykin of the Investigative Committee: it will

sound like this: "This program was produced by

an organization that was illegally designated

a foreign agent by crooks, bandits, and

members of the Investigative Committee, which is

headed by a thief, an alcoholic, and a [__]

Bastrykin, whom we caught hiding the fact that

he has a residence permit in the Czech Republic and

an undeclared apartment in the Czech Republic, in

a NATO country. And this [__], this alcoholic and

criminal, is in fact

a corrupt official and a traitor to our country

because he concealed his residence

permit—not just failed to come forward

and say, well, you know, I have one—he

hid it."

So that's roughly how we're going to

say it, and we'll see who benefits

from all of this. And the funniest

thing is what's happening right now: our

lawyers went to the Ministry of Justice today and said,

look, you've announced everywhere

that FBK (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) is

a foreign agent, you posted it on your website

put up a notice saying FBK is a foreign

agent, and immediately told some

story about some company that sells

doors from the United States

Spanish payments, some payment order somewhere

ended up in your possession

so presumably there must be some official decision, of course

you have it ready—you designated us on the website

it's posted there

give us that decision and we'll appeal it immediately, and

we'll deal with it. But they won't give it to us

they don't have it. It hasn't been written yet. In the Kremlin

they told these crooks: right, here's

our scheme—here they arrested that one,

that one's blocked, now it's your turn to declare them

a foreign agent. So they declared it, but on

paper nothing has been written, because

they themselves don't know what to write there. And that

will become completely obvious when they

themselves write down what I'm telling you now

on paper, and everyone sees it. They'll also need

to explain it to the broader public

how Spanish payments to a

blocked account had just arrived here

they don't want to do that. They want

it to sound somehow substantial, but they don't have that either

there is no paperwork at all. They tell us, basically,

yes, we've recognized you as a foreign agent, but

so far there's nothing except the announcement on the website

there's no document, so we can't give you one

no paper at all. It's absolutely astonishing

What do you expect, asks Roman

Zubov, from the sovereign internet

that was supposed to start working in November? I think that in fact

in fact, Roman, nothing will start working in November

There will be no such thing as a sovereign internet.

Partly because you can see what kind of

crooked and bizarre schemes

these people are using—they simply really are not

workable when it comes to the internet; you still need

a proper technological setup. So, on the question of

how we are going to live going forward,

listen—do you remember how

the Anti-Corruption Foundation and the

RosPil project

started? The RosPil project began when I

said, “Guys, I’m ready to do

broader investigations,”

investigations not just by myself alone as some kind of

lawyer—I would hire

people who would work on

public procurement, if you

would pay their salaries, because I

can’t pay for that work myself—I don’t have the money.”

So I opened a Yandex wallet (a Russian online payment service), and people

started sending money, and then we

hired our first employee: Lyubov Sobol.

The producer of this channel I’m

speaking on now—and after that we started

hiring more and more people. And the Kremlin’s idea

is basically just to

come down on everyone, deprive us of funding,

and paralyze our work. They think that

our work can be paralyzed by blocking

accounts and doing various things. Yes, it can be

made substantially more difficult, that’s

true, but it cannot be paralyzed completely,

because you still exist. Even if

they block absolutely all our accounts,

and there is nothing left, no money at all—well,

listen, there’s a link down below,

I’ll keep coming back, I’ll keep bothering you,

of course it may not be

very comfortable for me, but I will simply

turn this weekly

program into a kind of fundraising

marathon. I’ll ask you for money, I’ll

open Bitcoin wallets, I don’t know—people won’t

work at the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

I’ll hire them personally

as lawyers to investigate

corruption, or in some other capacity—we’ll make it work.

Because the main thing is not our paperwork,

or our formal structure, but the people who are ready

to fight corruption, and the people who are

ready to finance this fight against

corruption, to pay their salaries.

That’s what matters. And as long as that exists, I hope it

will

continue to exist for as long as our

work remains understandable and transparent.

You know everything about us. At the end of the

broadcast, you’ll see how much money we raised.

That means I’ll only be able to spend money

because of the trust between me and the audience of this

program, and the audience of my channel

on YouTube, and my blog.

That is enough for us to keep working.

As long as I have that trust, we will

we will keep going.

I see people joking around—Mishka asks:

“Alexei, when should we expect you to swap the tie for a

bow tie? After all, as a foreign agent, well yes,”

in theory a foreign agent ought to

look a little more extravagant

somehow, so I should probably

put on some sort of velvet jacket and all that,

with those little accessories—you know, the kind those stylish

foreigners wear.”

Damir writes: “Alexei, watch the film

by Alexei Pivovarov about Boris Nemtsov.”

I will—I just haven’t had time yet. Sergey Golubev:

“Alexei Anatolyevich, please congratulate your

regular sponsor—that is, me—on the

birth of my son.” Congratulations to you,

Sergey. See? That’s how I’ll

make money.

I’ll

sit here congratulating people, singing songs,

reciting poetry, performing at weddings—

I don’t know what else. I can see that there are

a significant number of people who

are ready to support us, so that means you and I

will find some way

to keep going. Maybe it will always

look, I don’t know, a bit tiring

with me constantly asking for money, but that’s

just how life will be. There’s nothing so terrible

about that. For us to continue to exist at all,

I won’t be too proud or too embarrassed

to ask you for money on every program.

But for now everything is still working; there’s a link below

to Streamlabs, and there’s the website as well.

For now, all of this is very complicated

to set up. I’m not going to go into

the technical details—it’s very complicated.

What matters is: we need you while all this

is still working.

We don’t care what they call us.

We know that they are the foreign agents, they are.

And we are going to come after them hard.

Even harder now, because, of course,

we’re furious about this whole

situation. We put so much effort,

so much effort, into making sure that not

a single kopeck of foreign money came in, and

with their crude little scheme they still managed to

force their way onto us. So yes, of course

we were upset, disappointed. We’ve already raised 52,000 rubles (about 52,000 RUB)

for this just online alone;

and, let me remind you, you can also

transfer money offline as well. But the money story

of course doesn’t end there.

The courts froze things too. At the same time as this

“foreign agent” designation, there was

probably, from a legal point of view,

the most remarkable invention yet

in the lawsuits against us. I think nothing will top

the Armenia restaurant case anymore.

When the Armenia restaurant sued us,

they claimed that every visitor

ate an average of 4 kilograms (about 8.8 pounds)

—4.3 kilograms (about 9.5 pounds) of meat because of us.

The restaurant was shut down, so now we have to

compensate for the losses, and now, basically, we

owe Restaurant Armenia, Sobol, Yashin, and several

other people 400,000 rubles (about 4,400 USD).

But now it turns out that we also owe money

to the Moscow police. Seriously.

Those of you who are lawyers, or simply

interested in the law, are probably

doing this right now and saying, no,

that’s impossible. A state

agency can’t sue us for doing its job. That’s

impossible in principle. But the police

have said, well, you know, you

organized protest rallies, and to them

the police showed up.

So we decided to send a very large

number of police officers there.

They came, and now you have to pay

for the police’s work. And the questions are: first, we

already pay taxes for that. Second, why the hell

did you send such a huge number of

police? It was a completely normal

peaceful rally.

But even so, there’s a lawsuit there for—what was it—84

million rubles? No, 18 million rubles (about 198,000 USD).

So right now,

Ivan Zhdanov and the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

have calculated that as of today

the total amount of lawsuits they

have filed against us is 40 million rubles (about 440,000 USD). So

of course, in this cheerful little

company of ours—Zhdanov, Sobol, Yashin, Solovyov,

and, I think, also the former candidate

who was not allowed to register, Galyamina—

well, that means we already owe 40

million rubles, and apparently this is all going to

lead to the personal bankruptcy of each

person who got caught up in this strange

legal scheme, because

obviously there is no other way

you can possibly pay 40 million rubles.

It’s absolutely impossible to pay. But this is just

astonishing, of course. Let’s look

at the photos—what a colossal

number of police officers they bring there

every single time. Those of you here in the East who go out

to rallies can see that it’s just, well,

frankly, insane—paddy wagons everywhere (police vans for detainees),

hordes of police, hordes. And now

it turns out they can bill this at 18

million rubles (about 198,000 USD), and for the next rally

they’ll send an invoice for 118 million rubles (about 1.3 million USD).

And then, I don’t know, they’ll bring in

tanks, and helicopters will

circle over the square, and they’ll say, well,

of course you’ll have to cover the cost

of the helicopters from which we

flew. And that, of course, will be an interesting

legal process. For all the previous

cases there—Restaurant Armenia and all the rest,

maybe Mosgortrans (Moscow’s public transit operator)—I didn’t go to court. But for the case with

the police, I will definitely go. More than that, I

will discuss this with you a lot, and I will

urge all of you to sue as well

over this. I mean, listen—the police are saying

that we have to pay them, in addition to

our taxes, for doing their jobs. So what now—

a local police officer comes to your home, checks

that you’re there and not violating

the law, and then you’re supposed to pay the officer

500 rubles (about 5.50 USD)? Then they stop you

near the metro and check your documents,

and immediately say, please pay

for the document check. Then a traffic cop

pulls you over, first extorts

a thousand rubles (about 11 USD) from you, and then says,

please, for my work in extorting

this money, kindly pay me right

here, into the cashier’s desk.

74 rubles and 23 kopecks (about 0.80 USD). It’s exactly the

same thing. These sound like absurd, almost joke

examples, but it is exactly the same. And

we are going to sue the police too.

Excuse me, let’s look at

the chart, the graph of the number of

police officers per capita. Russia, as

you can see, is second only to North Korea.

We have a sea of police officers, and they

don’t do a damn thing. So we are already

feeding this whole horde—an unimaginable

number of generals, an unimaginable

number of desk staff,

while there are very few district officers, very few

actually useful operatives, and a huge

number of pointless loafers

who take bribes, extort people, or

just don’t do a damn thing.

What the hell are you even there for if you just do

nothing? We keep paying for them, and what do we get?

Now let’s look—since we’ve just seen

that in terms of police per capita

Russia is, after North

Korea, second in the world—let’s

look at the number of murders per

capita. You can see

the Russian Federation is sitting there between

Panama and Barbados. There’s also

El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela,

and then there are some normal countries. In other words,

in terms of intentional homicides per

capita, we are an absolute disgrace. So what then

are all these police officers doing? Yes, later

I’ll sue them, and I will call on you—completely

seriously. And then after the lawsuit I’ll make a statement and

send it to everyone. Let them

reject those statements if they want, but it’s a matter

of principle. If they are suing us over

the fact that they are supposed to police

rallies, then let’s sue them too.

Solve intentional homicides. Why the hell

are we supporting you idlers if you are not

capable of working even at the level of some shabby

European country? You are not capable

of solving these intentional homicides.

We’re going to sue. Start giving the money back.

And you know who else I’m going to sue?

The local committee—they also

brought in a huge number of people.

Investigators keep getting raises endlessly.

Their salaries go up more and more.

More and more—and on top of that, they hand each other

pennants, commemorative badges, and appoint

"best investigators" all the time.

In the last program, I told you about

the best investigator in the Moscow region

who was dealing with car thefts. Now let's

take a look at the best investigator

in the Oryol region and see what he looks like.

Just now—we've found the best investigator

in the Oryol region, surname Put-Agent.

Let Bastrykin (head of Russia's Investigative Committee) pay us for this.

Why is this drunk mug—this person, that is—

a person in their free time from work—

please, alcohol is a

legal drug, he can have a drink there if he wants.

But he's getting wasted right there in the office, and

another one just like him is sitting next to him,

filming it.

And then he posts it on social media. Let

Bastrykin pay us for that. Why the hell

were we paying him? They fired him after

after

that video was published, and only then.

Please, for that day when he

was on duty in uniform—whether drunk

or high—please return

to every taxpayer in the Russian

Federation, please return a few

kopeks for this clown we were

paying for. Yes, they're all like that, yes.

Look, with rare exceptions, in what are called

law enforcement

agencies, it's just a huge

number of drunks, or

well, maybe not drunks, but people

who are doing God knows what. Maybe

they would like to do something good,

but instead they're engaged in some bullshit.

Shuffling papers, while deliberate

murders go unsolved. Let them pay.

And do you know who else should pay?

The police. Let's look at who brought in

an abnormally large number of

police forces there, almost on a scale

comparable to—well, let's

watch these 18 seconds.

Uh.

[music]

[applause]

Thirty thousand people are watching us

live right now, and my question to everyone is:

what are these absurd excesses? Couldn't they

guard Vladimir Putin a bit more modestly?

Let them pay us back. Let them submit

the bill to him. If he wants that much security,

if he needs some additional

police forces around him, if he needs streets

blocked off, traffic cops walking around and shutting down all

the streets, with someone stationed at every crosswalk,

some loafer in a cap with

a striped baton—why are we paying for all of that?

Then let Putin reimburse us, or let

the Interior Ministry reimburse us. Let them come out and

explain why the hell we spend 30

percent of the budget on a law enforcement

system that does nothing. We have

a growing number of terrorist attacks, we have

an enormous number of murders, and in road accidents

how many die now—let me think, 30, I mean

no, still around 20,000

people, 20,000 people a year. That's a whole small town

dying in traffic accidents.

And a significant number of those, those victims

are simply the result of poorly designed roads

and badly organized traffic.

And that's what the Interior Ministry is responsible for—the one we keep feeding and

feeding, this insatiable

black hole

of a law enforcement system, which can

afford to assign 112 investigators

to investigate—well, they'll probably sue us over that too.

They'll sue us and say, you know, we had

such an insanely complicated

criminal case that we were forced

to assign 112 investigators, and they, and they, and they

played Monopoly, and cards, and poker, and

got completely smashed, lay around in their offices,

got bored, stared at the ceiling, and

generally found ways to keep themselves occupied. But at the same time

they were all getting salaries, each one about 100

thousand rubles a year. Please, let's

make them pay for all of it, this whole process

of the courts, the Interior Ministry, and the prosecutor's office.

The prosecutor's office, acting in the interests of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya),

filed a lawsuit. Rosgvardiya itself didn't file it—

they're afraid.

Afraid of us—Zolotov (head of Rosgvardiya), who steals from

carrots and cabbages, but filed it through

the prosecutor's office against us. They're demanding, I don't know,

something like 10 million

rubles. We will turn this wonderful

trial into a broad public

discussion of what is happening in our

law enforcement system, what we are

paying them for, and what we should be getting in return.

And I think Kolokoltsev (Russia's interior minister) and all these

prosecutors, with the gangster Chaika (former prosecutor general) at the head of

the prosecutor's office,

this pointless crook and thief Zolotov, and

ultimately Putin himself, who put

these old idlers, fools, and thieves

into all these positions,

are not going to come out of this looking the way

they think they will, probably, of course.

Yes, maybe it will lead to them getting angry too

and putting even more pressure on us, but

listen, guys, it's not that we're like this—life is

like this. Everything is already blocked for us as it is,

constant arrests, constant

attacks, seizures of equipment—okay.

If we want to talk about the rights of

law enforcement agencies,

then we will talk about law enforcement agencies

right now.

Public trust in the police on various issues is

at the level of 20 percent—one of the lowest.

one of the lowest levels of public trust

is in law enforcement agencies. I

think that after our

campaign there

even 2 percent won't remain there. But as for

the blocking, well, look, we

have just, in 37 minutes of my program,

already raised 95,000 rubles (about $1,000) for the stream

labs

I see that YouTube Super Chat has brought in 96 rubles

modest, sure, but we're getting by

and somehow that's how we'll keep going. There won't

be a studio — we'll broadcast from home, but

we do not intend to put up with this

brazen behavior. And if someone

thinks that they can keep pressing us

and we'll just keep giving ground and only

defending ourselves, that's absolutely not the case, because

we have plenty to talk about, including,

by the way, I just flew back

from Warsaw. I spent two days there

at the Boris Nemtsov Forum, which was

held on what would have been his 60th birthday

A great event. Nemtsov's daughter, Zhanna

Nemtsova, did a terrific job — she invited

a whole lot of very interesting guests. I went there

because I was tempted — I don't

really like all kinds of forums, but I was tempted by

a panel discussion with Francis Fukuyama,

probably the most famous political scientist in the world

It was great, a very smart guy. We had a good

conversation there. But all this is also a reason

to remember the Nemtsov case — the most high-profile

political murder to take place in

Russia. As we've been told, Putin was furious,

well, because I can still

state my version clearly: Putin knew about it

The murder of Nemtsov was ordered and organized by

Ramzan Kadyrov and his closest associate

Geremeyev

They were the ones who did it all. And now this most

high-profile

murder was investigated in such a way that

they showed us some poor

man who pulled the trigger, and

supposedly this guy

was just a Chechen police officer

who, by the way, at that time served in the

Interior Troops, now the National Guard (Rosgvardiya)

and somehow personally paid 24 million rubles (about $250,000) for

the preparation

organized several vehicles,

constant surveillance in

Moscow. We all understand that this is absolutely

ridiculous. And we understand that Putin personally, and the heads of

the Interior Ministry and the FSB (Federal Security Service) personally,

as well as the Investigative Committee,

even if they did not take part in Nemtsov's murder,

then they at the very least

actively participated in ensuring that

the organizers of this murder were not brought to trial

The famous

— you could say legendary — document about how the

FSB, which comes after us

without any trouble, supposedly tried to help the Investigative Committee

question Geremeyev, who was also an officer

serving in a military unit — today that would be a

National Guardsman

Yes, they came to question him, arrived at his place,

knocked on the door, nobody

answered, and they just left. But with the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), you know,

that doesn't happen

They knock — if we don't open,

they immediately saw through the door and 20 people storm in

But over there, nobody forced their way in

and somehow nobody wants to look for

the real organizers, the real

masterminds. And that too is a question for our

law enforcement system. So then

surely Nemtsov's relatives, and all of us,

have the right to demand — whether we like

Nemtsov or not, whether you liked him, whether I liked him or not,

we probably all agree that this is

something strange and unacceptable

when a well-known public figure — or really any person —

is simply

shot in the back 200 meters (about 650 feet) from

the Kremlin

and all they caught was the gunman

But who gave him those 25 or 27

million rubles for organizing this

surveillance and everything else?

That remains unknown. The Investigative Committee does not

want to establish that. We'll talk about this too

In my previous, previous — Lord — in my

last program, I said that

in the Rostov region there could be

one of the most monstrous verdicts

in modern Russia. There have been

a great many monstrous, absolutely

unjust verdicts there. When I

said this, I was trying to draw attention to it

we wrote a lot about it in the hope that

the authorities would feel some kind of public

pressure. It was clear the verdict would be

guilty, but we still expected

a lesser degree of monstrosity. And once again

we were convinced that this government is a government

of thugs and cannibals. Let's look at the photo

In your opinion, how many years of life is this photo worth

for the people standing in it?

You'll probably say, let's

keep this photo on screen a bit longer. But

some of these people would more likely deserve

to be rewarded. You remember the scandals in

the city of Rostov-on-Don

when there were deliberate, intentional

arsons of private homes in a

highly attractive area for investment,

because people refused to move out,

saying, we don't want to sell our

property so you can put up

a high-rise here. Go to hell — we're not

leaving. So the houses were simply burned down, and

that was how people were forced out to other places

The authorities then decided that since

the house was gone, the land could be

taken from these people and handed over to developers

There was a huge scandal over this whole issue.

You know, in Rostov-on-Don...

this was happening, and these two people went out

to the administration building, literally

with this placard.

This placard wasn’t something journalists

just photographed — it’s from the case files.

Looking, damn it, at this placard,

the judges, who are obviously

just criminals, and simply

some kind of dangerous perverts from the point

of view of any normal person,

handed down a sentence to one of the people in this

photo: 6 years and 7 months in a maximum-security penal colony,

to the second, 6 years and 6 months in a maximum-security penal colony, and to one

other person, 3 years suspended.

And maybe that’s even more revealing,

because when I first heard about it, I didn’t

really know all the details of the case. I knew

that people had come out with a one-person protest picket, and they got slapped with

some made-up accusation that they were some kind of terrorist

group. Well, southern Russia — the Kuban region,

Krasnodar, Stavropol Krai, not to

mention the North Caucasus republics — period.

Lawless zones. And Rostov is a zone

of lawlessness too. But still — 6 years for this?

It’s insane, just completely insane. They’re just

monsters there, all of them. I thought maybe someone got

3 years suspended because he’d, like,

snitched on them, gave

false testimony against them, and that’s why they

arrested the three people in the photo.

Like, there were two of them, and maybe one was standing nearby and he testified

against the others, and that’s why he got

3 years suspended. No — this was literally a guy

who just happened to be passing by.

This is Vyacheslav Shamshin — literally,

he didn’t know anything at all, he wasn’t

acquainted with these people, he was just passing by, and they

scooped him up. Well, of course they’d already

reported to Moscow that they had detained three

dangerous extremists. Then they started

looking into it and realized the guy had simply

been passing by. He didn’t know anyone. There wasn’t a single

shred of evidence that he knew them.

He literally explained there that

he was just walking past, knew nothing about any

protest action, knew absolutely nothing, and it became

completely obvious. But they couldn’t exactly declare him

innocent — they couldn’t admit that

the Investigative Committee, the FSB (Federal Security Service), whoever else

was involved, Center "E" (the anti-extremism police unit) — that this was all just

[__], and that the people who fabricated

the criminal case — that would be an admission they couldn’t make.

So to an absolutely innocent random guy

who had already done time — when they realized that

he was completely innocent, they kept him no longer

in prison, but transferred him to house arrest.

He spent time under house arrest, and

an innocent man was given 3 years suspended.

Well, because — because they can’t admit it.

The authorities

are man-eaters, lunatics. They could have said

something like, I don’t know, they acknowledged somehow that

he’d already served enough time, and that was it — he’d sat there already.

That still would have been absolutely

illegal, but if he’d spent half a year or a year

under house arrest, they could at least have counted that year,

but instead they gave him 3 years suspended.

I’ve had a suspended sentence myself, so I know

what that means.

It’s a huge burden: you have to keep going endlessly

to check in. Second, you’ll

of course have all kinds of difficulties when

trying to get a job. In your

personal file it’ll say, yes, you were prosecuted

on criminal charges. Either way,

you’re a convicted person. You’ll be registered with this

inspection office, standing in huge lines

with guys who, more often than not,

have been in prison many, many times, and you’ll

have to go two, three, four times a month, like I did,

spending half a day each time

just waiting your turn in some line and

checking in there, while being an absolutely

innocent person whose only "guilt"

was that he happened to be passing by. And these others

came out with a picket in support of fire victims, damn it,

stood up for people in Rostov.

Six years and six years. This government should be

hated by every normal person.

And

I’ll repeat my point once again: in order

to help these people and

fight for their release, we need

to simply talk about it. Let’s

look: this week they upheld the sentence of

Kirill Zhukov — 7 seconds for what

got him 3 years.

And those of you who asked, “Is that all?”

Yes, that’s all. That thing there,

what he did with that mask — 3 years. Meanwhile those who

torture people, kill people — there are huge numbers

of cases where police officers,

FSB officers, investigators torture and kill

people, and for that they get off with dismissal

or with nothing at all. Three years — we

have to tell people about this, because there isn’t

a single normal person on

planet Earth, inside the country or outside it, who would

consider this normal. And any ordinary

person — not someone being paid

as a propagandist — would not consider this

normal. And today on the website of

Krasnoyarsk television I saw

a striking report about a man who was

a fervent, fervent admirer of Putin

and he simply said that these

recent events, all of them,

had led him to the point where he,

a man who in 2015 got

a tattoo of Putin, has now

covered it up. Let’s watch this clip.

You see? Though it was kind of a strange video — he

had this Putin tattoo on his arm, and

he just went over it like this in order

to turn it into a black blotch there, but

it seems, on the one hand, yes, you know...

part of it, maybe some particular case

It’s a curiosity, but the man explains how he

he explains it literally: he said that you can

go out for a survey, for a peaceful rally, and end up in prison

for longer than they give to murderers, so

so he covered it up as a kind of

simple, straightforward political gesture — he went ahead

and covered up his tattoo too, because he does not

want to put up with such a state of affairs

in the country. It’s true — these people very

often, the ones who are commonly called

*vatniki* (a derogatory term for hardline pro-Kremlin patriots) and so on — yes, they may

support certain unlawful things

with regard to Ukraine

or in general have some kind of

conservative, or strange, exotic

or simply foolish view of many things — of

the economy and politics — but they, in fact,

most often, being people who are a little

less educated than everyone else, they

have really had their fill of their own

dealings with the police, the courts, and

everyone else, and they see just how

monstrously unjust this system is to

everyone, and they probably even more quickly

than your average liberal on Facebook

or a hipster with a cup of coffee

feel it — this situation really gets to them

when someone like Zhukov gets

three years, or Podkopaev

by the way, Ivan Podkopaev also

had his sentence upheld — well done to him, he

withdrew his confession

and they reduced his sentence from 3

to 2 years. But still, that means

an innocent person was absolutely sentenced

to

two years. But this once again

shows that under no circumstances should you

admit guilt. When we

talk about such things, then

those *vatniki* or just ordinary people

get furious, they cover up their Putin

tattoos, they change their

political views. That’s very important, and

of course, Sobol will also run

a campaign based on

well, on comparison — that is, we will

compare one thing with another, we will

show

a person who got six years for this

placard

we will show Zolotov, who got

nothing for stealing billions

from the National Guard (Rosgvardiya). Likewise, we will

show

a person who got three years for this —

he lifted a helmet visor. We will

show investigators and police officers

who tortured and killed people and got

nothing for it. This really works

so we need to spread this

information. I’ll take these questions now

We’ve started — we have 37,000 people watching, thank you

very much. In total, we’ve raised

117,000 rubles (about $1,300 USD) on Streamlabs

and 132 through YouTube Super Chat, which is great

excellent. Let the Justice Ministry deal with all these

‘foreign agents.’ So, Evgeny

asks: Alexei, do you think

the people serving in the police and the National

Guard are really convinced that everything

will be fine for them, and that all

this uproar is temporary? I assure you one hundred

percent that the people who work in

the police and in the National Guard do not think

that everything will be fine, because in

the police and the National Guard there are colossal

problems. Maybe in the Investigative Committee

where salaries are high, or in the FSB

where salaries are high,

there are people who have a more

optimistic view of life. But the cops

are 40 percent understaffed there

there’s horrific staff turnover, and those who

do work are stuck doing pointless, unpaid

busywork, and it is very

hard

an enormous amount of paperwork has to be filled out

every day, there is endless

pressure on you, people are constantly demanding things from you

constant meetings, briefings

dress-downs — pointless. The cops

do nothing and get very low

pay, and on top of that they suffer endlessly

because, in some paradoxical

way, their job, which consists of

doing absolutely nothing useful

is still fairly difficult and very, very

stressful. It’s a dog-eat-dog world there

they hate each other and are constantly tearing each other apart

Ask any acquaintance of yours there,

any police officer, and he’ll tell you about

it. Timofey Platonov asks: when

will the joint video with StalinGulag (a well-known Russian anti-Kremlin blogger) come out?

We really did make a joint video

I think it should turn out interesting, well

he’ll release it when he releases it. They

said it would be in about three weeks; one week has already

passed

Daniil Burak asks: Alexei, how

do you show a police officer your passport without

letting go of it, because they

insist that they can’t assess

its authenticity otherwise, and I don’t want to hand it over? More often

than not, this is one of those situations where, well, if you start arguing

with the officer — ‘I’ll put it in your hands, I won’t

put it in your hands’ — well, go ahead. There’s nothing

that complicated about it. You’re simply

defending your actual rights. But you’d be better off

just handing him the passport

and then taking out your mobile phone and starting to

film him, and that immediately makes the police officer very

— very much so. About the shaman

people are asking us; I’ll say more about the shaman later

Huk Uzh writes: if there are people who

want the truth, the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) cannot be shut down

That’s true. Because what is FBK? It’s simply

as a community of people, they’ll drive us out of

our offices altogether, and we’ll be stuck working out of apartments

doing things as a commune, basically, so it will be

difficult, but it’s still a model that works

Dima Smirnov writes something very true

Alexei, I’m an individual entrepreneur too, I’ve been operating for a little over

six months, with turnover of less than 1.5 million rubles

and I’m already under a full-scale inspection from the

bank—they’re demanding receipts for what I spend

my own cash on in stores

about how to run your business properly—Dima is right, and

all these things that are happening, damn it,

they simply show that even in a

high-profile case—well, the newspapers write about us

the papers write about us, everyone discusses us, and when

the police do something to us, they

still try to carry out illegal actions, well,

while observing some basic rules of decency, at

least—they come here to us and

so far, it seems, they’re not beating anyone there

over the head with batons, because all of this

is being filmed. Yes, if they can treat us like this,

they can treat anyone like this, and go after absolutely

anyone—they can do whatever they want. Not

a single normal person here is going to

do business—those who do only do it because

they have to, or because they’ve already built a business and

can’t abandon it. But to build something here,

to create something here—you can. There aren’t many smart people in

Russia, but taking things away—well, they’ll simply

take it away. Some thug like that decides he wants it,

that “best investigator from Oryol” (a Russian city) they caught on video

that drunk sitting there intoxicated at his

workplace

and instead of firing him, at first he was

deputy head of a department, then became the head of the department

the head of the investigative directorate’s department

then he moved and became a deputy to

Bastrykin (head of Russia’s Investigative Committee)—that’s the kind of people who work there

pointless, drunken fools—and if he decides he wants to take

something from you, you may have built some great

startup, but then the Investigative Committee shows up at the registration office

and simply

rewrites your names, swaps things around

writes in the surname of some relative

of Bastrykin—and that’s it, you’re done, and you’ll be running

in circles around the courts, and you won’t

be able to win anything

that’s how it works—or rather, doesn’t work. But at the same time, for

themselves they create an absolutely

—officials, I mean—a stunningly

amazing life: communism

One of the stories that just

blew me away is called

I read it today on

Twitter from our lawyer, Palisandr

Golovash—who, in fact,

was the one who dug this up in the Moscow Region

Let’s first take a look at the central

hospital—we’re going to talk now about

healthcare. So, officials in the

Moscow Region

are, among other things, responsible for

organizing healthcare in such a

way that

the free healthcare that we

pay a great deal of money for somehow

immediately falls apart. And the central hospital

of the city of Voskresensk, a major city in

the Moscow Region—43 seconds

[music]

a hospital in a major

city of a large, oil-rich country

an oil-rich nation—and these same people,

the Moscow Region officials who

offer us this kind of

healthcare, have built for themselves

genuinely excellent healthcare. They’re going to

spend nearly 2 billion rubles

of our money on voluntary medical

insurance policies for all 16,000

officials working in the Moscow

Region

So, roughly speaking, what does that mean?

It means that healthcare is supposedly free for us, and

this is what we get for free, as it

looks now

and they understand that they have created

terrible free healthcare, and

specifically for themselves they made excellent,

high-quality paid healthcare

by buying each person a voluntary insurance

policy. So, roughly speaking, that

means you go to a private clinic

and they do everything for you there—the terms of this

policy cover everything

It’s absolutely incredible. Dentistry—

have you seen dentistry in a

prestigious clinic that was

free lately? Of course not. It’s all paid

Go to a dentist—no one will do anything for you for free

almost nothing

Officials in the Moscow Region

are paying for their own dentistry. You’ll

laugh—and rhinoplasty too. So if

these girls and boys have a crooked little nose too

and want to make it slimmer and

straighter, they just go and get themselves

rhinoplasty. [__] They cover that for themselves

this rhinoplasty. There are also terms under

which, if there is a need for urgent

intervention, they treat any infections

including urogenital ones. If a

Moscow Region official—God bless his

health—

comes down with syphilis, he goes to a private clinic

and gets treated at your expense. Two billion

rubles—we paid that. I mean, I wouldn’t be

against the idea that

officials in the Moscow Region, in this

very wealthy federal subject (region), should be

beautiful, with straight little noses and nice white

teeth, veneers and all, and not suffer from

any

sexually transmitted diseases. Great—I’m all

for it, with both hands. But could it be that

everyone else could be roughly the same, so that

any resident of the Moscow Region could

to get at least something roughly similar

medical services, so that he could have something

treated for free. But you can see how

wonderfully everything is arranged. First of all, all of this is

illegal crap, and we will definitely

appeal all of this

but the sheer brazenness, the absurd brazenness of these officials

they effectively admitted

guys, they gathered themselves together and said

guys, our healthcare is so damn bad that

healthcare is just so bad that if we

get treated in ordinary free public hospitals

then God knows what will happen to us, not to mention that we won't have

nice white teeth, straight little noses, and

we'll come down with terrible diseases, so

come on, let everyone else, all the ordinary people

who pay our salaries, let them

get treated in those awful hospitals, while we

will pay for the most expensive, the most

top-notch, fancy policies for ourselves and our children

voluntary medical insurance

policies. In other words, for themselves they

set up excellent paid

healthcare at our expense. It's just

it really makes you explode, it drives you crazy

a situation like this, such unbelievable arrogance

if you're so concerned about

healthcare, then stop funding your

lousy regional newspapers, or cut back on

the governor's upkeep, and so on

then pour much more

money into healthcare, and then you can

fix your teeth, your noses, and everything else

but no, they don't want that; it doesn't even concern them

all that matters is that they build a little paradise

for themselves, and what happens to everything else

they couldn't care less

16,000 people — every official, every

family member. It's literally a caste, you understand

a caste that has it all good: get into it

and you'll have a big salary, you'll have

an early pension, you'll have everything

set up nicely. And everyone else is supposed to

just pay for this wonderful paradise

since we've started talking about doctors

I want to give an update, unfortunately a rather

sad one, about the situation with the Moscow

oncology center, which I urge everyone

to keep an eye on, because what's happening there is really

a very telling situation involving the new

management, which is clearly planning to

skim off / embezzle

huge amounts of money from this oncology center. Enormous

resources are being allocated there, absolutely colossal ones

but they are simply firing doctors

who are outraged by all this, and so far

unfortunately the doctors

aren't really winning. I specifically asked

the leader for our program

of the doctors' union

Anastasia Vasilyeva to record a brief

update on what's happening there, to let you

hear it. Employees of the children's institute

continue to resign

At this point, six people have resigned, including

today, when a resignation letter was signed by

the head of the department of

chemotherapy for hematologic malignancies

Professor Alexander [name unclear]

As of today, the Health Ministry commission's conclusions

about high salaries

and the low effectiveness of the work of pediatric

oncologists, as well as the treatment protocols being used,

have not been confirmed by any facts

by any facts. Moreover, the commission

consisted of people who themselves appointed

the current management, which means

they were effectively investigating themselves and absolutely could not

be objective. The staff of the entire

oncology center, as well as the patients' parents and

many of our other colleagues, are outraged

by the Health Ministry commission's conclusions and in the near

future intend to make open

statements

and after that, if there is an absence of any

action to resolve the situation around this

nationally significant center

they are ready to organize and seek approval even for

public events — rallies and

pickets

So, in short, the doctors came out and said

there is a real, serious threat. You

know, we'll all resign despite the fact that

we will finish and see through the children's treatment

but overall, we will resign. And we perform more than

half of the transplant operations

but they don't give a damn, because for them

skimming the oncology center's budget is more important

than some doctors or some patients — what the hell

is this place even for? It's certainly not for doctors

or for patients, not at all

they are resigning, they are being fired, and by the way

remember I told you a funny

story — and a pretty outrageous

story — about a doctor who also, by the way,

is from the Doctors' Alliance union, Anastasia

Tarabrina. She posted a photo on

Instagram with a basket — let's look

again at this photo of a beautiful bouquet

this photograph, and so

it's basically a comical situation, and for her

union activity they told her that she

had to explain who gave her

the flowers, because it might be corruption. Everyone

laughed at that, and we understood that

the chief doctor there was just trying to make trouble

but no — they actually issued the doctor a reprimand

for this basket of flowers

that said "To a wonderful doctor"

calling it an act of corruption

They steal hundreds of millions and billions

through free medications that we

are supposed to receive. In a huge number

of cities and hospitals, there is no free insulin

A person will die without insulin

but the state will not provide it for free. And there

that's apparently no problem at all, but here

they slapped someone with a reprimand for this. We'll be watching them over it

There’s some good news, I just—

it’s just a small example, but I

it shows that you have to keep pushing

and I myself am very happy to

support union-based social

activity. We do a lot of work here

with doctors and teachers, and in the Kostroma

region, Olga Smirnova—I think I

even showed her on this program—she

kept hammering away over salaries, kept pushing and pushing

and pushing, she didn’t give up, and for 49

seconds, here’s how she fought for it:

Hello, my name is Olga Smirnova

Sergeyevna.

I work as a social educator at

a secondary school in Kostroma, and I achieved

justice.

For September, I will finally receive

the salary mandated by the May Decrees

of the President. I spent three years trying to get

this from the school administration and city

officials.

But everyone ignored me. I was only able to win

together with the Teachers’ Alliance

For September, a decent salary

was received not only by me, but by all my

colleagues at the school. I appeal to Kostroma

officials: do not break the law, do not

cut our salaries. We work with

your children.

Colleagues, join the union.

The truth is on our side.

Water doesn’t flow under a лежачий stone (Russian proverb: nothing happens unless you act). No one

among these officials will ever give you anything

whether you’re a public-sector worker or anyone else,

because this concerns not only salaries

but all rights, because these people

who seized power take everything

for themselves, and if you don’t keep pressuring them, don’t

unite, don’t work together, then you’ll get

nothing, ever.

But if you act, you will get results. I

know how much they hate our entire campaign

around these May Decrees

and always said we wouldn’t achieve anything, not even for a single

person. But we are achieving things—specific

people are getting much higher salaries

than they used to get, because

because, as we say, water doesn’t flow under a lying stone

and you have to keep pushing.

And now, on our side, once again there has appeared

our great ally.

The shaman has returned—the warrior shaman is with

us again, and he is once again marching on Moscow. 31

seconds. Warrior shaman: I will follow my own

path, even if a billion

Putin supporters stand before me.

Even if the whole earth is for him, I will keep going.

For me, God is more important than him, even if there are

billions of people, even if all the galaxies’ worth of people

are against me. What matters to me is God’s will.

I am protected—this is my protection. The people are my

protection, my detachment. Regardless of

whatever the courts decide,

I must go to Moscow and complete the march.

In 2021, Alexander Golyshev,

the man who calls himself the Yakut

warrior shaman, really blew up the entire

information space and scared the hell out of

the Kremlin—literally.

They were genuinely afraid of this shaman. I mean,

a normal person would understand:

okay, a shaman comes, fine—shamans are part of

traditional beliefs, and on Red Square he

says that not a single drop of

Putin’s blood will be spilled, that he’ll simply

light a fire on Red Square

dance around it, and Putin, together

with the forces of evil he represents,

will leave. So what, in theory, should the supposedly

great tough guys in the Kremlin do?

They should laugh it off and forget it. Instead, they got scared

and started shaking.

They caught this shaman, tried to

lock him up in a psychiatric hospital, accused him of

extremism, opened a criminal case against him,

took him away somewhere, gathered some

men

who called themselves Buryat shamans

and were pro-Putin, who tried to catch

this Yakut shaman on the road and nearly

beat him up. It’s just

an astonishing story about how there is, in fact,

this real grassroots

unwillingness to tolerate this government, which

has been sitting there for 20 years—twenty years—and it

breaks through in all sorts of rather exotic

ways. And in the Kremlin, they understand

they understand that things are bad: salaries

are low, prices are rising, and things will get even

worse. And they really sit there and think:

a shaman is coming, and in one region there are

two people with him, then twenty-two—who the hell knows,

maybe by the time he reaches the Kremlin something will happen, and then

there’ll be 2 million people. Oh, Navalny, what

YouTube? No, the shaman will come—and that’s where

the revolution starts. Rationally, they understand that it’s

unlikely, but they are still panic-stricken

with fear, including, by the way, because

they themselves—I’ve said many times on this

program—

are hellish Satanists, pagans, and here

they were with Shoigu gathering pinecones somewhere in the

Tuva taiga, no doubt

and down in the Kuban they themselves were dancing around

a fire,

worshipping Mother Marzhy (likely a garbled reference to a pagan or mystical figure), wrapping themselves

in the blood of some deer or other and calling on

spirits in order to defeat this

Yakut warrior shaman, because

the Russian authorities are a community

of fairly crazy people

obsessed with all kinds of esoteric

stuff—red strings,

astrologers, and everything else. They really do

engage in this, and now against

them goes the warrior shaman. Wonderful—let him go.

For any person, whether he is a warrior shaman or

On the contrary, this shaman is not a warrior.

He has every right to walk from Yakutia (a republic in northeastern Siberia) to

Moscow, and we will—look, we will

defend his lawful, ordinary

rights, including Alexander Gabyshev’s right to enter

Moscow. And it will be an amazing,

wonderful duel between this one

shaman and a whole bunch of crooks who are terribly

afraid of him because they saw in him

the embodiment of certain irrational

beliefs, and simply an ordinary Yakut

man who is simply walking to Red

Square to come and say: you are evil, you are

bad, get out of here. I think that phrase

resonates with all the viewers of our

program. So, from 33,000

people, we raised 150,000 rubles on

Streamlabs, and we raised 180,000 rubles on

Super Chat—for a total of 327,000

rubles. Huge thanks to everyone who

took part, and to those who will still contribute offline

when they watch this video. But

this was just a test fundraiser—look,

we didn’t even raffle anything off. It shows that

the Anti-Corruption Foundation

even when they declare us, I don’t know,

agents, or whatever—alien

agents—we will still exist

as long as you support us.

Thank you very much for that. We’ll see you

in the next one. Bye.

[music]