Nastya Rybka, Elon Musk, and Putin’s Watches

[music]

Hello everyone in Moscow.

It’s 18 minutes past the hour, and in the studio is Alexei Navalny, or

“baby,” as the main heroine of today’s story called me.

And with me in the studio today is, well,

if not the drone itself, then that very drone you paid for.

Thank you all so much.

It was delivered. We wanted to pull the same

trick we did on the previous show—well,

the one before last—when the drone flew

right into the studio. But unlike the previous drone,

this time there were concerns that it might

scratch me or injure me. The crew told me

that if I made even one wrong move,

it would chop me to pieces instantly,

so instead it’s just standing here.

It’s magnificent, beautiful, enormous,

like some kind of robot from Star

Wars.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped fund it.

Special thanks to Mikhail, Ekaterina, and

Dmitry, who helped us, gave us a discount,

helped arrange delivery, and sent us

a wonderful letter of support.

Thank you very much, everyone. Let me remind you that on

every one of our programs, we raise money

to make up for what

this evil, this state that

fears our investigations, has taken from us.

And we keep making investigations. Today

we released another one—quite by chance—but I think

it’s rather excellent, and it perfectly

shows what is really going on among

our elite, their lifestyle, and the circumstances

under which they

carry out their disgusting

corrupt deals. I’m almost sure that

all Navalny LIVE viewers have seen this

investigation, but for those who haven’t,

here’s a brief summary—literally two

minutes and eight seconds.

The deputy prime minister,

the head of Medvedev’s staff, spends

his vacation on an oligarch’s yacht in the company of that

oligarch and, excuse me,

several prostitutes—yes, there were several of them there.

Let’s calmly

analyze this bacchanalia. An oligarch

takes a top-ranking official out on his private yacht.

That is a bribe.

The oligarch pays for this whole party,

including women from escort agencies. That,

believe it or not, is also a bribe.

And again, Prikhodko had to somehow get

to a fairly remote

Norwegian peninsula where there is only

one small airport, and on the dates of our

trip there, two private jets arrived

at the same time, and both

belonged to Deripaska. One of them came from

Montenegro,

where Deripaska has a villa and business interests, and one from

Moscow. And of course I don’t have the passenger

manifests or lists of who was on

each jet, but it can’t go unmentioned.

If it turns out that Prikhodko flew in on

Deripaska’s plane, that too, my friends,

is a bribe. Next, the aggravating circumstances.

You probably already understand what we’re

flying toward. Right there in the foreground

you can see the house of an official who has never worked in

business—Prikhodko. One and a half thousand

square meters (about 16,150 sq ft) on a plot with

garages, gazebos, landscaped

grounds, and servants or

guards running along the paths.

Just look at the size of the property—almost 3 hectares (about 7.4 acres).

All of this is located in a gated

residential compound of United Russia party members in the Moscow region, and

even by the lowest estimate it is worth more than 300

million rubles. And while we’re on the subject,

it’s impossible not to mention Sergey Eduardovich’s apartments

—he has two of them,

adjacent to each other, in this very building.

This elite building is in Shvedsky Tupik, where his neighbors include

the families of the heads of Rosneft and

Transneft—Tokarev and Sechin—as well as Putin’s

cronies Chemezov and Timchenko,

and a whole host of other ultra-wealthy people.

The total area of the apartments is 350 square meters (about 3,770 sq ft),

with a market value of 480 million

rubles. This is truly a very strange and

stunning story. Right now, one of the questions I’m often

asked is: “Alexei,

explain to me how this could be the same

person—how that girl,

the one who ran around our campaign offices and

recorded videos about sex and a hunt for

Navalny, and

let’s say, was obviously not

top-tier,

as an escort girl—and the woman who

was actually hanging out with an oligarch,

a billionaire oligarch, and

high-ranking officials on a

yacht—why are they the same person?

How could they use an instrument of that caliber

for something like running around

after you and doing—I don’t even know what.

I can only chalk it up to the fact that

in our state, everything is driven by

idiocy and inefficiency. No one

understands why so many things are arranged this way,

and it’s hard to figure out,

including why something like this

would be used in this way. I don’t even know how

to put it—you can’t exactly call them tools of the trade,

or instruments of crime. In general, with this

investigation, we had an enormous

problem with words. There were many things we didn’t

know how to name, how to formulate properly.

We didn’t know which pieces

of video to leave in the investigation and which

to cut. There was a serious discussion

about whether we could leave in the video of

girls kissing. But then again, they weren’t

just kissing.

And the campaign against our headquarters was very characteristic.

were kissing, we ultimately decided

to cut it out. I mean, it was very, very

very strange, but probably this time

the extra advantage for us is that

there definitely can’t be any

conspiracy theory, because usually when we

release an investigation, it starts with:

“the FSB (Russia’s security service) tipped him off,” “they threw this out there,”

“so they went after Deripaska,” meaning

“Deripaska ordered it,”

or Fridman, or Sechin, or someone else — but here

no one, not a single person in the universe

can accuse me of that. And in general,

neither the Anti-Corruption Foundation nor the campaign headquarters can be accused of

becoming interested in this girl because

well, she was recording videos and

all sorts of things. Let’s spend literally

53 seconds talking a little more about what

that is.

If you go on YouTube, you’ll find

something interesting: there are 47 videos there called

“Sex Hunt for

Navalny,” but I’m not going to

torture you with all of that right now. So, 53 seconds.

And let’s go.

But damn.

Jamaica.

So, basically, the girls have already

done everything they wanted today. Come on,

let’s go.

Enough — the guard is gone, go in.

[music]

—

Actually, this

kind of thing had flooded the entire internet. I’ll

honestly admit to you now that I

got a little tense, because when

they film close-ups and say

“Navalny, we’ll find you, and one of us

will

have sex with you,” well —

just think about it: what are you supposed to do? I walk

the streets, I ride the metro, I use

public transportation.

Sure, they can hit you over the head,

throw a brick, splash you with brilliant green antiseptic (zelyonka) — those are

things you can at least understand, and there are cameras, witnesses — you

know how to react. But here you’re walking down

the street and suddenly five girls in

latex come up to you with batons and handcuffs.

What are you supposed to do with them? Four of them are basically kids,

and one of them might just throw herself on the ground.

Fight them? Hit them? Run away from them?

And meanwhile everyone is filming with cameras, so

whatever you say, you’re going to look

pretty strange and end up in a stupid position.

So I really didn’t like all

those ideas, and naturally we

decided to look into who this Nastya

Rybka was, the one all this fuss was about,

who they were in general, and we started looking at

Instagram, and indeed, in

one of those videos that she had

posted, we saw Prikhodko.

How could that be? First of all,

at first we were surprised that there was actually

a real oligarch there, and then also

Prikhodko in one of the recordings. But of course, people

who follow Nastya Rybka on Instagram

also read such “amazing” books as

— though that book is a whole separate story. Some of

us had to read it a couple of times, and it contains

descriptions that are really very

graphic.

Maybe the book is selling in large

print runs, but I urge you: don’t read it, don’t

read it. But anyway, in reality

Prikhodko is being filmed by a girl

of a certain profession on some

yacht, and of course we were simply

completely shocked. You have to remember

that Prikhodko is an old subject of ours.

We filmed his house. That house is worth hundreds

of millions of rubles, and several years

ago we accused him by saying: man, you’ve spent your whole

life in public service — you cannot possibly have

that kind of income. For us, Prikhodko was one

example of illicit enrichment, and

of course, when we saw him in that kind of

company on a yacht with an oligarch, it became

completely clear to us that there would be

something interesting there. So we started digging, and

then came the whole American story

and everything else — absolutely astonishing. But I

just want to say once again, to emphasize

this point: this is not

an entertainment video, really. Yes,

of course we all laughed, but what

Prikhodko did

is taking a bribe, and we documented

that, because a bribe is

not necessarily cash in an envelope.

It’s not necessarily some kind of building or asset

being provided — it is the receipt of any services,

material or non-material, when someone pays for your

private jet. And we have no doubt that

Prikhodko flew there

on Deripaska’s plane, because it’s

a small town with a small airport.

We can see that no one else flew in, and

Prikhodko could only have gotten there on

that plane.

He could only have arrived there on Deripaska’s plane, and we

understand that a yacht trip, three days

with girls — even if we assume that

all of that was free, though we understand that

it wasn’t free — still, staying

on the yacht, the flight on the plane — that one

charter flight alone costs tens of thousands

of dollars. All of that

is a bribe. It has been documented, and of course

we are now demanding, and will continue to demand,

formal consequences. This whole issue

with Nastya Rybka — let Prikhodko discuss that

with his wife. Frankly, that interests us

only secondarily, of course. But first and foremost,

what interests us is the fact of receiving

a bribe, the fact that it was received.

The very fact that there were some kind of very strange negotiations

on that yacht, of course, you know, it's like

there's this favorite Putin-era saying now

that these aren't the 1990s now—but this is worse; even in the '90s

there really wasn't anything like this. It's some kind of total trash; we couldn't

have imagined it, and yet

Prikhodko, a bureaucrat of the old

Soviet school, on a yacht with

well, it's simply unimaginable, some kind of

complete nonsense. But you have to realize

just how brazen these people have become

and how badly their money is burning a hole in their pockets, and

because all these habits—they think

it's stupid to be secret millionaires; you need

to be the kind of millionaire who has all

the formal attributes, like

a millionaire in the movies. Movie millionaires—

haven't they seen anything? That film with

Leonardo DiCaprio, where he's on a yacht with

girls—we want that too. And that's exactly what they do

and they do it without much embarrassment

Fine, if they were just cruising around somewhere in Sochi

where their security detail could protect them,

but they do it perfectly openly in Norway.

I'm now going to

steal a bit of the credit from our news team. Our news team

did, after all, get responses from the wonderful

Nastya Rybka, who sent video

answers to their questions. She's actually a rather

complicated young woman—sharp, and in terms of

PR she doesn't want to give interviews, so

it's all Q&A.

With her, everything is very precise and in writing: please send me

the question, and I'll record a video reply for you. And

our news team did get answers out of her, but

she took a long time to send them, so they didn't make it into

the news. So now I'm going to steal their

thunder. We asked Nastya just two questions.

These files have only just finished uploading, so I

am basically listening together with you. I roughly know

what they're about from what I was told, but now I'll

listen together with you. We asked

several questions.

She sent two files to us. The question was

whether she understood who this "papa" was,

whether he really was Prikhodko, and

whether she is afraid to return to

Russia. Let's watch everything she

answered. So, here are Nastya Rybka's words

on the second question, about hype.

Thanks to Alexei, of course, everything is wonderful,

but in the summer we had sex on the embankment

and that generated much more hype, so

despite Alexei Navalny's lovestruck eyes for me,

despite the fact that he

speaks about me so tenderly there—thank you very much,

I'm very pleased—but the situation needs

a little more. Because when I

opened my Instagram after the sex on

the embankment, new followers were just pouring in

by the hundreds. Now it's more like

dozens, and some kind of stale

samey comments. I mean, well, you could

do better, basically. So I understand that

after everything that was said and everything that was

done toward you, you spent a very long time

thinking about me, studying my Instagram together

with your team, and people tell me that

lately you're talking only about me.

With your experience in

politics and all these backstage games,

you really could have tried harder, honestly.

So, looking at Instagram—no, unfortunately,

so far it's not quite enough.

So, in the first video Nastya says that

she is very disappointed in me, but of course I can't

compete with the hype of sex on

the embankment, and honestly I'm glad

about that, because if somewhere in this

whole context of what's happening there had also been

sex on the embankment,

that would have been too much.

Let's watch the second video, ladies and gentlemen. This is the answer

to the question

of whether she understood who this person was

whom she called "papa." As for

Prikhodko and "papa," I can say one thing:

I did not look at papa's

passport. Sergey Eduardovich—whether he was

the one or not, you can prove that yourselves; for me

it doesn't matter. In my case, he was simply

a person whom the target I was interested in

—the victim—treated with very great

respect.

That meant I could play my victim off through

competition only with this person. In other words,

I couldn't use, say,

some yacht employee

or someone who had simply been invited

just to be shown some minimal

respect, because he wouldn't be

an equal rival. So what interested me

was only his status in the eyes

of my victim. Who he really was

in reality—I couldn't care less. Nothing

would have changed; my behavior would not have

been any different regardless of whether

he was the country's chief janitor

or the president. And if you need

to dig into specifics,

then beyond what is written in the book, I

have nothing more to say. Read it

carefully; perhaps you'll find

something interesting there. Yes, thank you, Nastya. We

read the book quite carefully.

Some things in it, including those

Some things in it, including those

concerning that very same "papa" and certain

subtleties of her relationships with other

girls, we did not include in our

investigation because, after all,

those are only Nastya's words, and we have no other evidence.

But I can't help

joining Nastya in giving the advice once again

to say: read this book. It's

available online; you can download it—you don't

have to buy it—but

it's not an easy read, I warn you.

So Deripaska was his target.

And she was communicating with Prikhodko in order to

seduce her target.

I don’t know what will happen to her. She didn’t

answer our question about whether she is afraid

to return to Russia. For the investigation, we wanted

to interview her first

in person, really ask her some

questions. But Nastya is almost never

in Russia; she lives in Thailand.

And in that sense, I don’t know, maybe she

feels safer there, or less

safe, but in any case, right now

once again, including publicly, I

am directly demanding action from Vladimir Putin.

Because this is a high-ranking

official, Prikhodko. Despite the fact that he

is not very well known, he is one of the

most senior officials, and

probably in the hierarchy of our foreign

policy he ranks either first or second.

Many believe that, from the standpoint

of foreign policy, he is even more

influential than Foreign Minister Lavrov. In any

case, officially he is the Deputy

Prime Minister, and let’s

ask ourselves: can a

Deputy Prime Minister

like Prikhodko remain in his post after

all this? It seems to me the answer is

obviously no. Some of these questions

need to be discussed with his family; some of them

he needs to discuss with the prosecutor’s office,

the Investigative Committee, and with his

immediate superiors—Medvedev and

Putin. But one way or another, he should not

and cannot remain there.

He probably also owes all of us an

answer as to where he got the money.

Is his obviously luxurious

lifestyle—because even if we

add up the value of his real estate,

it’s clear it amounts to tens of millions

of dollars—are those tens

of millions of dollars connected to the fact that he took

bribes in kind from Deripaska,

or took them

in cash? That is the question

that we hope Mr. Prikhodko

will answer for us. But it will be interesting

to see how the authorities behave

this time. Usually they totally ignore

our investigations. Sometimes it’s not total

ignoring—remember the Chaika case? And then

they said it was all a foreign hit job,

the work of intelligence services, and so on. In

the case of Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev), they were silent for a couple of months

and then said it was nonsense.

But now they can’t really

say that—let them say it was Nastya, then,

who basically published all

this information herself in a book, on Instagram,

and so on. In any case, these are rock-solid

proven facts of their being on the yacht—

an absolutely proven fact—and we will

demand consequences. We very much

hope that you will demand those consequences

together with us.

Join us. First of all, we

need you to help us right now with

spreading this video, because

there is this kind of information blockade

growing around us, around any form of

independent information. And we can see

from one investigation to the next

that the number of media outlets covering them keeps shrinking.

I never thought in my life that I would say

this, but we have released an investigation

containing, you’ll agree, socially important

information. I see foreign journalists

writing about it everywhere. *Vedomosti*—not a word.

*Kommersant*—nothing. *Dozhd* (TV Rain, an independent Russian TV channel)—you won’t believe it,

zero information. As of

today, maybe they’ll write something

later, but the investigation was published at

1 p.m., and usually *Dozhd* is quick.

Zero from *Dozhd*. *Republic*—same thing.

Owned by the same people as *Dozhd*—zero there too. *Novaya Gazeta*—

zero information. So some kind of

double solid line is already turning

into a Great Wall, and even those media outlets that

claim to be independent and

get very offended when they are

criticized for failing to cover some

information—they are somehow

quite demonstratively not writing about this

investigation. I understand that they are afraid.

Maybe in the case of *Dozhd* and *Republic*,

Deripaska, or Polina Deripaska,

or that whole family somehow

helps or finances them. But the list of media outlets

that did not publish the investigation

looks even more telling than the list of media outlets

that did publish this

investigation. It will be very interesting to

watch this unfold. Please help

us.

us spread it. People are asking where the

computer is for answering questions on Twitter.

There won’t be answers on Twitter.

You can ask me here instead.

I really don’t have a computer, but

I do have this little monitor

that displays your tweets with the hashtag

#Normal2018. You can write, and I will

answer your questions.

‘Elon Musk failed, completely failed,’

‘a total fiasco, bro,’ said all of official Russia

about him and about the launch.

They seemed to be mocking Elon Musk.

Even though the whole world was simply watching

this in awe, and many people in Russia

normal, sensible people were following it too.

It was a tremendous victory for humanity. It was not

about Americans, it was not

about Elon Musk, it was not about any particular nation—it was

humanity that successfully launched a heavy-lift

rocket. Well, in that launch there were

There were apparently some problems with the main stage.

As I understand it, it broke apart, and those engines

kept running a little longer, but overall this

happened, and now the red car with the open

top is flying around the Sun — that is

an absolutely astonishing event, and

probably, perhaps, even more astonishing

than the launch itself was the landing

back on Earth of the two boosters that

were recovered. Let's take literally 14

seconds to watch and enjoy this once again,

this fantastic spectacle.

Well, it really is amazing, and this is

an achievement of humanity, and it belongs to all of us.

It belongs to the person who lives

in New York, and to the person who lives in

Novosibirsk, and to the person who lives in any

village — we all did this together. By the way, I'm being told

that the TV Rain channel (an independent Russian TV network)

did in fact publish something half an hour ago,

and if they did, then good for them,

well done. All right then, in that case, as far as TV Rain is concerned,

that settles the questions. Prikhodko will say

that it's nonsense, Multicam Put writes, Sergey

Babichev — but Deripaska

actually said exactly that an hour ago:

that this is a pseudo-investigation and

that it only discredits its authors — meaning

me. So, returning to Elon

Musk: it's an amazing situation. Any of our

successful launches

is an achievement of humanity; any of our

failures in space are a defeat for

humanity. The same goes for the Americans, and I

see it that way, and it seems to me that any

normal person ought to see it that way too.

But our officials and our so-called

public crowd that likes

for some reason to call itself the democratic

public — they're just losing their minds.

It's as if they're experiencing

some kind of defeat, as though they were personally beaten by

this flying red car.

The Tesla — everyone finds it amusing to think about,

everyone finds it interesting to talk about it, everyone

is happy, but only Russian

state officials are suffering. Right now they absolutely want

to remind us that Tesla is losing money,

that it has quarterly reports. Of course, Igor

Burenkov, the PR director of Roscosmos

— yes, Roscosmos has a PR director — speaking on

a radio broadcast, simply told us

that

of course this was a major failure

for Elon Musk. Let's listen — 1 minute 4

seconds.

So for you, is this a success for, let's say, our

competitors, or is it some kind of

universal human success? How should it

be interpreted? We need to be very careful.

The thing is, you have to understand, there are private companies

that are very much engaged in business

and are generally interested in

bringing in additional investment

into their business, and naturally they

therefore organize various kinds of

promotional stunts.

If you noticed, this launch

was accompanied not by some empty

dummy payload or some kind of cargo

that, in principle, it wouldn't be a pity

to lose in case of failure, but specifically by

an actual automobile, and

there's surely another reason there too — if you look

carefully, we'll immediately

guess what it means: this

car isn't exactly unrelated to us either — Elon Musk was

advertising Tesla, and soon there will be

another shareholders' meeting, so somehow they need

to improve the situation. Things are bad at

Tesla, everyone knows that firsthand. Well, I don't know

how much of that is PR, really, but it's a very

good trick, actually a wonderful example of

private enterprise, but, well,

you know.

They have to put on a show, you understand. Things are bad

for Musk, he's taking losses, so they

do stunts — that's what Roscosmos is telling us.

Guys, you've mixed up your cosmodromes.

It was your Rogozin who said, 'Oh, we

launched from Vostochny, but the settings were

for Baikonur' — you mixed up

the cosmodromes. What can you possibly say to

Elon Musk about his losses after that?

Well yes, his company is losing money right now, but

it's a private company, it launches rockets — it can't

be profitable right now. Here, with

Roscosmos, everything else is generally

planned loss-making activity, and it

is supposed to be loss-making, yes. Those are the losses

that humanity

— taxpayers — compensates for so that we

can develop. That's how it should be. But

it's ridiculous to watch this, and in that

sense, well, of course, you just

want to say to them:

'Why can't you be happy

along with everyone else? Why are you, why are you

doing this?' Because if we keep doing this, then

we'll simply turn into, you know, some kind of

strange people who will try to interpret any

piece of nonsense

as if it were our achievement. So Musk launched something

into space, did he? Well then,

'You're cool, Elon Musk, so you think

you can do cool

things — but can you do this?

Can you appoint a deputy prime minister's son

as CEO of an aviation enterprise — just

some random guy who has never

had anything to do with it? Bet you can't

do that, Elon Musk. We can do that.

That's what you'd call rubbing Musk's face in it.

You're cool, you launched a rocket — but can you

do this with a dachshund

— drown it? Can you, Elon Musk? No, you can't.

All right, if you think that your

red Roadster really impressed someone that much...

He surprised everyone by flying around that thing, but what do you think of our

robot

Bet you couldn't launch a robot like this

Elon Musk, somewhere into space, or put it

behind the wheel of his red Tesla — and we can

do all that too. And, well, this is roughly the kind of

dialogue we're seeing now. It's completely, well,

completely bizarre, and, uh,

a deputy prime minister of the Russian government

in response to Musk launching his

rocket said: you know, well, of course that's

good, but still, the Russian people are

more talented than the Americans.

Okay, what is he trying to say with that? What is that

even supposed to mean?

They launched a rocket, and in response we have

prisoners

who made a tractor — or rather, made a rocket,

a full-scale Topol-M missile out of snow

and painted it.

And this is how we supposedly demonstrate

our talent in response to them. I mean,

these are just some very strange discussions,

comparing things that are not comparable. No one even

understands why we should even be discussing this.

It's some kind of... actually, if

you look at the designers and engineers

who work for Musk, there are actually

huge numbers of Russians, Russian-born people,

former Russians, all sorts of people — this is our

shared achievement. Why do we, why do we as a

state, make ourselves look like such idiots

right now, arguing over this and nitpicking at everything?

We had

tremendous, tremendous successes in space,

and those successes in space were, incidentally,

achieved in part despite the idiocy, so to speak,

of the Russian state, which certainly would not have

been able to do it itself.

Elon Musk would never have been able to launch rockets

with two broken jaws, the way

Sergei Palych Korolev, our great

designer, did — who, as is well known, was imprisoned in

the Gulag (the Soviet forced-labor camp system), where he was beaten, where he was

tortured, and yet still remained a

great designer. But let's

talk instead about our achievements, about

what we are capable of doing.

The problem is that there aren't very many achievements

right now. I'm about to show you

a rather grim infographic.

This is the number of satellites. As you can see,

this is the number of satellites

of various types belonging to the U.S., China, Russia, and

other countries. The light blue

satellites are commercial, the orange ones

are military or state-owned. You

can see that we have, basically,

very, very few of them — fewer than China. I mean,

yes, more than Burkina Faso or

more than Zimbabwe, but far fewer

than the U.S. and far fewer than China.

So in that sense, we have not been leaders for a long time

already.

And most of our satellites are

military, state-owned satellites. So

from the standpoint of commercial spaceflight,

from the standpoint of development in this area,

we are simply hopelessly behind in space,

and the blame for that lies specifically with Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin, who over these

18 years

has wrecked the space industry. Here it's impossible

to blame anything on the so-called "cursed '90s".

The "cursed '90s" ended a very long time ago.

Incidentally, in those supposedly cursed '90s, our

enterprises were functioning normally; the Proton rocket

was the most reliable

launch vehicle in the world, and we were quite

successful in carrying out commercial

launches. We were leaders then, and

now we have lost that leadership. And in that

sense, the Russian state should

not be clinging to Musk right now,

talking about how Musk's showmanship has some $400

million in losses, or making jokes like that. I

looked at what is called

patriotic Twitter: "Sound doesn't travel in space,

so what you

did by playing David Bowie in the car doesn't

work from the standpoint of physics. Great, Elon Musk failed —

sound doesn't travel in space."

But he did something cool:

he attracted the attention of millions of people

because there's a red car, an astronaut sitting

behind the wheel,

music is playing — yes, sound doesn't travel

there,

aliens and the inhabitants of Mars won't hear

those sound waves — but it's a cool

thing. Let's applaud him for it.

Let's do something just as cool ourselves. And we

can do that — look, our cosmonauts

run great Instagram accounts and take selfies

from orbit, from the International Space

Station. Let's do things like that too, and

stop picking on Elon Musk, and

stop engaging in this really

disgusting

and stupid business of trying

to compete where there is no need to compete.

These are achievements of all humanity.

All right, from space let's return to the bottom —

not even back to Earth,

coming down from space, but back into

Russian politics, into the part of it

that has to do with elections. And there we're lower

than the Mariana Trench, lower than the very bottom, because

everything there is just awful. I wanted

to tell you about the latest ratings of the so-called

candidates, because every

week we prepare honest

polling for you. Let's take a look at what

has changed there. If the election

were held this Sunday, how would

those poor souls who

will go — those who are so deceived

that they will still go to these polling

Polling stations. On the first slide, you can see that

Putin's approval rating is still at 80 percent.

The ratings of Zhirinovsky and Grudinin

have barely changed — that's seven

percent and eight percent.

Sobchak, Tsvetov, and Yavlinsky are completely

invisible figures to us, and they are basically not

seen at all — around one percent,

still within the statistical margin of error.

The only intrigue, such as it is — a pitiful, hardly even

an intrigue, a tiny, pathetic one — is who

will take second place: Zhirinovsky or

Grudinin. Is it interesting to you who will take

second place? Probably it is, because

if, after all, second place goes to

the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and Grudinin takes it, it won't collapse, whereas

if Zhirinovsky takes second place,

he'll soar afterward and become very

powerful. Right now, Grudinin still has

eight percent, while Zhirinovsky has seven, but with

the statistical margin of error taken into account, it's

still effectively the same result.

Negative ratings — let's look at the negative

ratings. They remain the same; the same

dynamic is preserved — or rather, the same lack of dynamics.

Nothing is happening in this election

campaign. Nothing is happening, so

everything remains the same. Sobchak still has

an absolutely enormous negative rating. It's hard

to say whether it has risen or fallen; taking

the margin of error into account, it has stayed about the same.

Yavlinsky is the second most unpopular politician,

followed by

Zhirinovsky, and then, with a large gap,

come Grudinin, Tsvetov, and Putin. Everyone

either loves Putin very much, or rather is afraid to say

that they do not like him, because, well,

our country has already reached a stage

where people, speaking on the phone to a stranger,

are not prepared to say, 'We don't like'

Putin. Let's move to the next slide.

This is more interesting. Let's take a look. We

added questions about whether people had

seen any campaigning at all — that is, whom

they had noticed, who was campaigning to them, who was doing

anything. And it turned out that 76 percent

of people do not notice any

campaigning by any candidates at all. Well,

that's simply true. For example, I don't see

any campaigning either, and I follow things quite closely.

I do see billboards for Putin,

which are now guarded by the police in every

city. Everyone else is doing roughly

nothing — just some small little

videos on YouTube, some livestreams

that are watched by 20 or 30 people.

Fifteen percent noticed Putin's campaigning,

apparently those same billboards. And

eight percent of respondents said

they had noticed Grudinin's campaigning.

For Zhirinovsky, it was the same — eight

percent. Seven percent saw

campaigning for Sobchak; for Yavlinsky, 3 percent

noticed Zyuganov's. And here's the funny thing: 2

percent somehow noticed

campaigning for Zyuganov — and another 2 percent

for Mironov, who is not even taking part in the election; one

percent. But the most interesting thing we see is in

the right

the right-hand column. This is just

the perfect

absolutely perfect illustration of the fact that, first of all,

there is no need to go to these elections,

because they have no meaning whatsoever,

there is no real contest. Second, this explains

why

we are doing the right thing. We asked

people whether they had heard

about our nationwide action on January 28.

Nine percent of people know quite clearly

what happened on January 28, and 25

percent of people had heard something about it.

This is despite the fact that 66 percent of people

tell us that they heard nothing

about the January 28 rallies.

Still, a significant number — indeed,

a huge number

of people know about the January 28 rallies. This is

an amazing result; we ourselves did not

expect it.

That is a lot. Let's look at

the next slide. If we convert this into

absolute numbers, into millions of people: 40

million people know or have heard something

about it; 12 million people know specifically about

the demands of our rally; and 5 million

people — so there is this kind of funnel —

support the demands of the participants in the

strike. Guys, this is, well, these are

results that are a huge reward for all of us who

have been actively working for the strike, who went

to these rallies, who spread information

about them, and so on. We can see that

despite the fact that everything is being completely

blocked — not a single word on television,

not a single word in the biggest newspapers —

despite the fact that all

administrations across the country are busy

blocking the event, and the entire police force

across the country is busy blocking

the event, millions of people know about it.

A large number — as many as 35 million

people —

support it directly, and

tens of millions know about what

is happening. This shows that our

work is extremely, extremely effective.

Let's continue building on this success. I

just want to remind you once again that our

polling is very honest, and we could never

manipulate even a single figure, because

we know that if we start somehow

deceiving you or twisting anything,

you will stop supporting this

polling. So I simply congratulate

everyone who took part in our action.

Since I've started, since I'm already at the bottom of

the chart talking about politicians on the right.

ratings and everything else, but being here

at rock bottom, we’ll dig an even deeper hole so that

we can sink below even this bottom — and there we’ll find

the ballot

which was published today by the Central

Election Commission

and it was really an astonishing thing

they actually published the ballot, and

it includes candidates whom they haven’t even

registered yet, or for example

Sobchak — on an officially approved ballot

Sobchak is on it, and all the journalists immediately

said: dear Ella Pamfilova (chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission),

you haven’t even registered them yet. No answer.

No — it’s just one more example of how, well,

this whole production is a staged performance, a spectacle

where everything is known in advance, everything

is clear in advance. The only thing they need

is an audience — people who will fill this

hall, these gullible fools who will come and

take part in all of this, thinking it’s

real life, when it’s just a performance. So

the ballot, in any case — let’s

take a look at it. It’s amazing, it’s

something else, something completely fantastical

I mean, well, you can see it — maybe

some of you, even those who haven’t put on

their glasses and are looking at a small screen, probably

can still guess without fail and see which

line Vladimir Putin is on. Well,

as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin used to say,

from a formal point of view, everything is fine, according to

the law — but in reality it’s a sham, well,

it’s cheating, obvious rigging

everything was arranged in such a way that even

an old grandmother who

doesn’t understand anything at all

could quickly figure out where she’s supposed to

vote. They might as well have simply

circled it with a red line

or put a check mark there in advance, or draw

dotted lines, or just an arrow

saying: put it here

The only comparison that simply

comes to mind — well, not just some random one; today

a lot was written about it on social media, but

really

there can be no other comparison here

than this wonderful

ballot from another very

well-known electoral procedure

this is the famous ballot from the referendum on

the annexation of Austria, and as you can see here

it also very subtly indicated

where to mark yes and where no — very, very

similar, as if it was taken straight from there. I know

that this is considered bad form, and in any

argument you automatically lose if

you start, in that dispute, to

draw analogies with Hitler

but it’s impossible to draw any other analogy here

but good Lord, this doesn’t even require much thought

at all. So these re-elections are already

set to happen, and Putin is guaranteed 80

percent, because you put forward such

candidates who do nothing and

don’t say a single word against Putin

they don’t lower his ratings, they engage in no

real activity at all. As you can see,

people in Russia see no campaigning whatsoever

Try this experiment: find

the most critical statement made by these

so-called candidates about Putin. The

most critical statement will be something

like: Vladimir Vladimirovich

does a poor job choosing the people around him

something like that. Or: Vladimir

Vladimirovich has, of course, been in

power for a very long time, he should leave. Nothing

more critical than that has been said up to this

point — absolutely nothing. And in this

situation, you’ve already won, so of course

you need to make the ballot in such a way that

it’s just blatantly, obviously visible, with

extra emphasis. It seems to me, guys, that

this ballot alone is reason enough

to refuse to recognize this as an election

and not to go there — it’s impossible

to go there. It’s humiliation, truly. But

a person who signs to receive

this ballot, takes it, and then

puts a check mark anywhere on it is simply

humiliating himself. He’s saying to himself: my God,

I deserve to have this spat

in my face. Don’t go there. This is

simply absolutely impossible. Let’s keep

digging: we’re already at the bottom, but there’s still

one more topic I have

So yes, there was that awful ballot, and we

still decided to see, how should I put it,

what could be even worse, what could be even

more disgusting, even more revolting, more

brazen and shameless than that

It’s Vladimir Putin’s income declaration, which

was published. You know they have to submit these; I

submitted one too

I prepared a whole pile of documents, heaps of

materials, because a candidate has to

provide information about their income for

six years, and Vladimir Putin also

provided that information. So, over 6

years he earned 38 million rubles (about 633,000 USD at roughly 60 RUB/USD), and I

look at that and I have a kind of

cognitive dissonance, because even I

I mean, I’m not a poor person, and I

live perfectly comfortably, but I definitely don’t

feel especially rich. I live in a

rented apartment, I don’t really have any

property — no real estate, no country house (dacha)

my wife has a decent car, a Ford

Explorer, but that’s nothing special either. And yet my

income is higher. So does that mean I’m

richer than Putin? Can anyone believe that?

Of course no one can believe that. And here

let’s do the simplest

experiment. I’m not even going to start

listing his dachas

or palaces in Gelendzhik, or anything else

items and a rattan-trimmed jacket

Let's take a simple example.

Just the things he cannot deny are

in his personal property and in his

personal possession: wristwatches.

I mean, he has them,

and he can't say, "Oh, I found them," or

"They were a gift." They couldn't have been a gift, because

he is required to declare and refuse

all gifts worth more than 3,000 rubles

(about $50 at the time), so this property is the personal

property of Vladimir Putin. So let's

just calculate how much

the watches he has appeared wearing recently

actually cost. And let's start with this watch.

This is the very watch that he gave away twice—once

he gave one away, and another time he tossed one into wet concrete

at the Nizhne-Bureyskaya Hydroelectric Station.

The price of each of these watches—you'll

see it on his wrist right now—there it is, there it is, and

here he is giving it to a boy.

A herder's boy, a shepherd boy.

A shepherd, so to speak.

A watch like that costs ten thousand

dollars—$10,000. One at $10,000,

another at $10,000—$20,000 total.

Now let's look at the next watch. Here we see

a Patek Philippe, and that one already costs $60,000.

The next watch in which

Vladimir Putin appears—we don't really know what

the brand is, something like Alan Johnson or something

like that—the price is $25,000. All of this

I took from the official website that

sells the watches. In other words, these prices come from perfectly

legitimate, verified watch dealers. And then

moving on.

The crown jewel of Vladimir

Vladimirovich's collection is

a watch from the same company as the previous one,

only not slightly more expensive, but $500,000.

Five hundred thousand dollars for a wristwatch.

And in that sense, the math is very

simple: if we add up

the value of all these watches, we get

36 million rubles, while his entire income over

six years was 38 million

rubles. In other words, apparently he somehow

asked to be paid six years in advance and

spent it all on watches. Can we

believe that? Of course not. It's just

another mockery. The man is simply,

simply laughing at us. He walks around in watches

worth $500,000, and obviously

he can't say

they were a gift. He can't say

he bought them. He just wears them and simply

says to you, "Come on, guys, I earn

less than people like Navalny, the opposition figure, or Saakashvili

running around in the street—even he earns

more than I do.

And here I am, just wearing a watch

worth $500,000. If you want, don't

pay attention to it. And by the way,

that's exactly why you shouldn't go, because the other

candidates don't ask about this. Not one

of the candidates—from Yavlinsky (a liberal Russian politician)

to that businesswoman Sobchak, to Zhirinovsky and

Grudinin—why is it that not one of them

is outraged? None of them releases a video

that would tear Putin apart over this. None of them,

speaking before crowds, shakes a fist

and says that Putin is corrupt, because

he cannot explain the origin of this

money. They stay silent. There is no fight, nothing at all.

So this is just one more reason not

to go to these elections, because they are

laughing at us, and there is no candidate who can even

push back and say, "Have you

no shame?"—someone who would hit back somehow or

at least try to, or shout into the void

if they won't show him on

television. There isn't even anyone trying

to do something. So, lots of questions about

me again, I'm sure. Let's go to Twitter.

Show me three—I promised I'd answer.

Let me answer a few questions. In

Krasnodar, stickers have been put on all the trolleybuses:

"Progress in Russia will not come

until television, radio, and newspapers

are freed from state control," writes gleb us gleb us.

Well, I already gave you the example

of media outlets that did not

publish our investigation. RBC right now,

for instance, is silent—not a word. And they do not

belong to the state. Komsomolskaya Pravda

does not belong to the state either. Even

Channel One, formally speaking—not even Channel One

now, yes, the state has a large share there,

some share—but NTV also,

for example, is also not formally

owned by the state; it belongs to certain people. That's exactly why

in our platform we have included

a provision stating that oligarchs

should not own mass media either,

because in Russia this

always turns into manipulation. Business

is so monopolized: there are maybe ten

richest people, and they all depend on

Putin. Take Deripaska, for example—he

and his ex-wife's circle have media assets,

and Deripaska needs

state subsidies.

Why does he pay bribes to Prikhodko?

Because one plant belonging

to Deripaska receives state subsidies

worth billions of rubles, and without them it

would go bankrupt. Obviously, in his own

newspapers he will always be praising Vladimir

Vladimirovich,

and those newspapers will always stay silent if

someone releases an investigation about him.

So the issue is not even just the state.

The issue is the state, the oligarchs, and

the monopolies. Alexander Abdulov asks:

"Will there be a splash screen about Prikhodko?" But that seems to me

like using a cannon to shoot sparrows. Where

are you holding rallies? Come join us—

that's what matters first and foremost right now.

share this video so that millions

of people learn that this even exists

Andrei Prikhodko asks whether there will be

a list created of ordinary Russians who

help with election fraud. Well, what do you

mean — make a list of all the teachers,

school principals, and heads of clinics

who falsify the protocols? But that list

already exists. Go to the website of the Central

Election Commission, select all the

polling stations where Putin received

90 percent and turnout was 90 percent — that is

all fake, and there are lists of the commission members there,

teachers, and all of them are helping with

the falsifications. So a list like that

already exists, basically.

Uran, really, he flew away. What do you think

the situation in Dagestan is connected with?

Damir asks. I wanted to

talk about Dagestan in detail, but I need

Arnova.

I just won’t have much time, but it doesn’t

seem to me that this is a fight against corruption, that is,

of course this campaign is an attempt

by Vasilyev, the new governor, the head

of the republic, simply to intimidate, to terrorize

the local elites with these active measures

in order to simply clear

the field for himself and start doing something.

So they grabbed some random people and

locked them up. Well, not random — they are corrupt officials.

Is it news to you that in Dagestan there is this kind of

corruption? Without a doubt, all the top

officials in Dagestan are corrupt — take

any one of them and jail them on any charges. These

charges that have been brought now, well,

to be honest, don’t really look especially

convincing: abuse of

power in connection with some kind of

land plot over there worth 80

million rubles (about US$1.3 million) — a laughable sum compared

to the real corruption in

Dagestan.

But this is that kind of campaign: the

FSB officers and the Investigative Committee are piling on

in order to terrorize and scare the locals so that

some new people won’t start doing

something. But it won’t work. Well, they jailed

Amirov, the mayor of Makhachkala, was there too —

they jailed him, and what, did corruption decrease?

First of all, it is impossible to defeat

corruption in a single federal subject

of the federation. That’s first. Second,

all the corruption that exists in Dagestan

in fantastic quantities can

exist, and does exist, exclusively

because of Moscow. Moscow allocates these

billions, in Dagestan they are stolen, and

part of it is kicked back to Moscow.

That’s the only way it works. So if you want

to defeat corruption in Dagestan, first jail

those in Moscow who protect

the Dagestani officials and send them those

funds. That isn’t happening, so

I do not believe in any such anti-corruption

operation being successful in

Dagestan.

This does not look like Operation Clean Hands

as it was in Italy, because we do not even

understand in detail what is

happening there. Back then they explained what

the point was, what Vasilyev wanted to do, but here

it’s simply, well,

just this kind of pressure on all sorts of

Dagestani bosses in order

to make them scared of Vasilyev, that’s

all. So, you’ve got a whole zoo gathered there

— fish, seagulls, and a bear, is that right?

Fish, seagulls, and bears — all our cheerful

friends. These cheerful friends are very

unhappy with what is happening and with the fact that we

are conducting investigations against them, so

they are constantly inventing all sorts of investigations

against us. And the day before yesterday and yesterday —

the day before yesterday, or two days ago — I went in for

questioning at the Investigative Committee. The last time I went

for actual questioning at the Investigative

Committee was probably in 2013,

because after that all these cases kept

going and going.

Actually, no, I’m wrong — it was in 2014, because

in 2014 there was the case

of Yves Rocher. So, basically, in the last couple

of years, for questioning

specifically at the Investigative Committee, I hadn’t gone

at all.

It brought me right back to 2012, when after

the rally on Lubyanka Square they opened as many as four

criminal cases against me.

The same thing is happening here.

What really infuriated them was, well, our

rallies on January 28, and what enraged them was that this is not

happening just locally but on a nationwide scale. They

are now frantically trying to cook up

some new criminal case. So I came

to the Investigative Committee for questioning, and they

showed me a report, a little piece of paper,

and there was a line there: a report by some

police officer, Officer So-and-So,

stating that citizen Navalny, during detention on

Tverskaya Street, resisted and

struck me. I reread it several times,

just to make sure I had it right:

“struck my

right leg in the knee area with his left leg, thereby

causing severe physical pain.” I mean,

even the investigator can’t

read it without laughing. But in fact, the report is there,

along with a whole stack of materials like this,

forensic medical examinations have been ordered,

this poor suffering police officer

will now have a whole volume there too about some kind of

hematoma,

the degree of pain, and everything else. And I even

found that police officer on video. In a moment

we’ll show you a short clip; we have

published 32 seconds of confusion, and you can

see this police major whom you

So somewhere in the middle of all that was happening,

they claim I brutally struck him with my

left leg against his right leg for three

seconds during the scuffle, flash.

He was apparently quite a distinguished... well, never mind.

Only.

You see, this major was marked in red,

this major.

and

where it said that he was experiencing

acute pain because I was kicking him.

Well, you saw what happened there: they simply

grabbed me, threw me to the ground, and

dragged me onto the bus. How could I possibly have

kicked anyone there? It's all ridiculous.

These very same videos, exactly the same ones published

on my Twitter or Instagram, they

added to the case and said, well, these are

supporting materials, absolutely.

It's going to be a fantastic criminal case.

But the charge is for using violence against

a police officer while he was on duty.

That is, basically, this means

they consider that I committed a serious

crime. And what's interesting is, the major—I

thought, why a major? Why not a sergeant?

Someone from the senior officers, apparently.

Then I got it: an apartment.

They give them apartments for writing

these kinds of things. We know from the Bolotnaya case (the prosecution following the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protests)

that these idiots who write

their fake reports later get

apartments for it, and there were probably plenty

of people willing to file a report

saying that I beat them with my left leg. But then

they said: by rank, then, let it be a major.

You're a captain here,

you're... no, actually you're a sergeant, and I'm a major...

I suppose someone needed an apartment. By the way,

in the statement I gave there,

I said exactly this: write down that I

believe he said all this because, on

orders from his superiors, you are fabricating

a politically motivated

criminal case against me, and this major specifically is trying

to benefit from it, namely to improve

his housing conditions. That's written right there in my interrogation record.

It's all written there. Very interesting, very

naturally. What happens next? They tell me

while we were watching the video that Nastya Rybka

had posted a new video on her Instagram

where she said there were mass

rapes on the yacht. Well, I don't even know how

to put it—on that yacht, in the presence of Deripaska

and

Prikhodko, the deputy prime minister of the Russian government,

we need to watch it ourselves and understand what

that means—whether she is accusing them

of gang-raping her and her friends

or of something else. I don't want to joke about

rape; it's a completely stupid

subject to joke about. But in any

case, it seems to me that all of us now should

demand proper explanations,

and if Prikhodko doesn't want to explain—

Alexei, you were asked whether you'd listened

to Pornofilmy (a Russian punk rock band). Sorry, I haven't

listened to them—I know that's the name of the band,

Pornofilmy, not actual porn films.

I still haven't listened; I just haven't had

time. I've been busy with Nastya Rybka—it's almost

like listening to the band Pornofilmy, and even

watching those, well... and the book, damn,

the book—you have no idea what we had

to go through, and the kind of descriptions in it.

Prikhodko may not want to talk about

the details of his connections there;

he has the right not to. He can say,

"I'll sort it out with my family." But at the very

least, he must explain what he was

doing on that yacht and who paid for the whole

trip. I hope they do all that.

That's that. I'm out of time.

There's no computer, and so they're showing me

the case file and gesturing like this, like this, so that

I, you know, wrap up. Thank you very much

to everyone who watched this live stream. We'll see each other

next Thursday. Once again, thanks to everyone

who funded our work in huge numbers.

Help us spread the video about

Nastya Rybka, because we really want

ordinary Russians to know a little

more about how things are really done

in the Russian Federation, how wonderfully

oligarchs who made their money

on raw materials and officials who possess

millions of unknown origin communicate with each other. That

would be very important, and this is real

campaign work—the kind of work we

are doing, and which unfortunately our

candidates are not. Don't forget to sign up as

an election observer; there's a link in the description.

We're not going to vote for them, we're agitating against these elections,

but we are monitoring them. We need

observers all across the country. The

more remote and out-of-the-way your area is, the more

we need you. And note that in the description

of this video there is a link to a leaflet about

the investigation. Put it up, so to speak,

distribute it among the residents

in your building management area (ZhEK, a local housing maintenance office), so that some guy, stepping into

the elevator, reads it and gets

interested, goes to YouTube, and watches

the investigation. Thank you all very much. Goodbye,

see you next Thursday.

[music]