Text version
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Today I have a very instructive story for you
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about two ducks.
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One of these ducks lived in England, and it was a homeless
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duck.
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It suffered, and it desperately wanted a little house of its own.
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And a kind man came along—he was a member of the British
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Parliament, Sir Peter Viggers.
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He built a little house for the duck, and the duck was terribly happy,
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but then MP Viggers decided to include the cost
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of that little house—£1,645—in his parliamentary
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expenses.
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The duck didn't care, but the voters
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absolutely hated it.
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They asked the parliamentarian: dude, did you really
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want to spend £1,600 of taxpayers' money on
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buying a little house for a duck?
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And he said: well, yes, I did.
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After that, the entire British press and the voters spent
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several months tearing that MP apart.
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Every newspaper ran photos of his house and the infamous
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duck house.
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Here, for example, is one episode: activists even made
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an enlarged copy of that little house and floated it along the Thames
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near the Parliament building.
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The public was so outraged that it triggered
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a mass review of the expenses of other MPs, and that is how
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other violations came to light.
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As for Peter Viggers himself, he was utterly destroyed,
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and he resigned.
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He will never again take part in politics,
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because he tried to spend taxpayers' money
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—not that much, really— on his personal needs.
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The other duck lived in Russia, near the town of Plyos on the
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Volga River.
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It too had no little house, and it too dreamed of one.
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And then fortune smiled on it too.
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A cheerful fellow appeared in those parts by the name of
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Dmitry Medvedev.
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He is friendly with animals and loves ducks, so without any
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trouble he built a little house for our Russian duck too.
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And while he was at it—since he was already building a little house—he also put up
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various small additions for himself around it.
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An estate of several thousand square meters, a house
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with a swimming pool, a ski slope, several guest
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houses, helipads, a pier, and all sorts of other
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small things.
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All of it spread across 80 hectares (about 198 acres).
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Most likely, all of this was so the duck wouldn't feel
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lonely and bored.
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Such a massive construction project, as you can imagine, required
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funding, and so Dmitry Medvedev, through a charitable foundation
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controlled by his wife, received a bribe of several
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tens of billions of rubles, which paid for all of it.
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And what happened to Dmitry Medvedev when all this
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information was made public?
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When we released a video with footage of the estate, when
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we proved that the money for it came from gas oligarchs,
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that the property was being illegally guarded by the Federal
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Protective Service—meaning, when Dmitry Medvedev
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and his entire scheme were fully exposed?
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Nothing happened.
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Well, that is, our video was watched by 3.5 million
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people, a couple of the independent newspapers still left in Russia wrote
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about it, but in the election Dmitry Medvedev,
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albeit with fraud, of course, still won, no
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public outrage descended on him, journalists did not
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bombard him with questions at press conferences—everything
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stayed exactly as it was.
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And the moral of this story is: the ducks are the same, but people's attitude
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toward the problem of corrupt duck houses is different.
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And only when people get angry, make a fuss,
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demand a fight against corruption, and vote against corrupt officials
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in elections, does anything change.
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But if corrupt officials are not pressured relentlessly, they will continue
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to steal.
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Why would Medvedev refuse to keep accepting gifts worth billions
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if society is effectively giving him permission to do so?
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That is why every day we must remember these facts
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of corruption, remind others about them, and every time
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we hear "Medvedev" or "United Russia"—automatically
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say, "Ah, that's the one with the duck house?
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He belongs in the dock."
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When all citizens of Russia say that—then it
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will happen.
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Subscribe to our channel— this is where the truth is told.