“Zolotov’s marines,” the millionaire mayor of Klintsy, died for the oligarchs

[music]

It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow. Hello everyone, live on air

is the program *Russia of the Future*, and I am

Alexei Navalny, or rather,

well, I’ve had a lot of names this week. No one

from the long-banned Gazeta.ru

— better not even mention who exactly there —

called me “destructive elements

operating in the region.” That’s what

the Interior Ministry directorate for Rostov Region called me. Of course,

the best title — and the one that really topped it off — came from my

favorite, a regular guest on our

program, General Zolotov

who said that I am “this subject,” and that certain

individuals should be dealt with — and quickly at that.

We’ll take a brief look at that. I want to state, to examine

this “subject,” that my dacha (country house)

and what exactly his connections are — and besides, never

mind, yes, I’m doing this now from Omsk, on

Telegram, under the leadership of

the man who once again made our

country mighty and great, and I will do everything

to ensure that

certain individuals do not plunge us, do not

drag us back into the 1990s.

General Zolotov says he will do everything

so that certain individuals do not

plunge us into that. We’ll discuss him in some detail now.

I wanted to remind you that

you can ask me questions on Twitter

— please write with the hashtag #Russia

OfTheFuture, and I’ll try to

answer them. Zolotov, Zolotov, and rappers — rappers,

freestyle, Zolotov — these are probably the two topics I’ve discussed

more than anything else this year. It’s

some kind of nightmare. But if there was no getting away from one,

there was no getting away from the others either. And if rappers

were being harassed by someone, I was forced

to sort of defend them — a defender

of rappers, you might say.

But many of you probably didn’t really

understand who I was talking about — some

musicians being offended. But with Zolotov, the situation

is a little different. We have to

talk about him because, well, because he

is part of the state, because we pay

his salary. And remember how in *Alice in

Wonderland* they say, “There they go again,”

and Zolotov is at it again.

It’s already ridiculous. He just can’t let it go.

He recorded another video address. True,

this time he took off his red

dress cap with that

fantastic cockade, and before that

I thought, well, maybe he just got carried away

in the heat of the moment when he recorded it, or something like that.

I thought — and everyone seemed to agree —

that some PR people had advised him

to do it. But now he’s getting back into it again,

trying to remind everyone about himself and

argue with us, which suggests that he

apparently isn’t a very smart man. But still,

at the same time he is someone who

is very upset, because there is

probably no one left inside the Russian

Federation who would still be on

Zolotov’s side.

Because really, how can anyone

defend some fake general

who is also a billionaire and lives in a dacha

belonging to Mikoyan A.I. (Anastas Mikoyan, Soviet statesman)

and on top of that buys these products at

some unimaginable prices?

I think even his closest

friends, associates, I don’t know,

secretaries and aides, whatever

they’re called,

his military adjutants,

hardly support him all that strongly. But still,

someone is apparently advising him to do this, or

maybe he’s doing it himself — he recorded another

video address.

And I thought that maybe, after all, he had come up with

something, when I saw that

*Komsomolskaya Pravda* wrote:

“We accidentally ran into General Zolotov,”

somewhere, “accidentally met him in the corridors, and

spontaneously, spontaneously recorded an interview.”

This “spontaneous” interview looks like this: he

is sitting in exactly the same place, only now

behind him there are some of those guardsmen

or orderlies in the background, but at the same

desk, only now without the cap.

He addresses someone — you often hear

this: “What is this? Please tell us, Comrade

Army General...” It’s a seven-minute address.

Of course, I’m not going to show it to you

in full — you’ve probably already watched it

on YouTube. Interestingly, at first the comments there were

open, then the comments were

closed, and I’ll show some fragments that I

still think are interesting to analyze.

I’ll show them. And the main thing we need

to start with is this:

I thought he had figured out

how to finally explain to us why he

was buying products at twice the price

they sell for in stores. But actually,

once again, dear General

Zolotov, who will of course be watching

this video very carefully —

for heaven’s sake, answer us: why does cabbage

cost 25 rubles in the store, while you buy it

for 46? Come on, just tell us plainly. I don’t

know whether you personally sort it with Putin

or what,

and that’s why it’s so expensive, or whether

the National Guard is guarding the warehouse

and the cost goes up because of that. Because what

we heard before was just pathetic babbling

about logistics and warehouses. But the cabbage

sold near my house also

has logistics, it also has a warehouse, and

it’s brought from somewhere, and there are sellers who

sell that cabbage — and I still buy it

retail for 25.

And you buy it by the thousands of tons at 46, and

so I was waiting for when Zolotov would finally start

to respond, and he was even there with her

that kind of opening—well, let’s start with the main thing

let’s listen to a few seconds—37 seconds

Zolotov

blood and Rosgvardiya (Russia’s National Guard) in the past year

Mr. Navalny challenged me, here, on television

in your address, you spoke about me

you said that I put on the uniform

of someone who robs the personnel and the budget

go ahead, speak

ran around shops and vegetable stalls

pulling out

my photo and saying that he

is feeding off you—he, so to speak, wants to present

let’s go through the points that he

outlined—he challenged me on his

TV debate, so let’s go through

everything he mentioned; let’s start with the first point

he stated some kind of claim

so, Navalny insulted me—he ran around

vegetable shops and pulled out my

photographs. That’s absolutely true. Let’s

go through the points: Mikoyan’s dacha and

wait, wait—but there was

a huge, glaring point here called

cabbage at 46 rubles

please explain, because I was running around

the store—indeed, a Pyaterochka supermarket

I think right across from our

office near Avtozavodskaya metro station

and to this day, any of you, going into the

store, can verify that the products there

are sold cheaper than to Rosgvardiya (Russia’s National Guard)

please explain. And no, this is not

an explanation—there is no explanation for it

please explain why you chose

some obscure Crimean contractor

plant. Please explain why

the FSB now has the same complaints against you

regarding sausages, and somehow

General Zolotov

forgets about it and immediately moves on to

the Mikoyan dacha

let’s discuss Nemtsov’s murder, tra-la-la-la, and

somehow the cabbage disappeared, and I say, I’ve got

he called me a thief, and I have to say

well, what else am I supposed to call you, guys?

really, what else am I supposed to call you

if you buy products at twice the

price? So

I called—and continue to call—thieves all

those who take part in this scheme

and every one of them belongs in the dock

right now, and

and later we will abolish the statute of limitations on

this case, even when they are—sooner or later

because sooner or later such a thing will happen

when your Putin is gone or comes to an end

somehow—we will abolish the statute of limitations

and send everyone to the dock, and

we will finally enjoy

ourselves—we’ll really get into discussing the cabbage then

not other questions, and he himself also

gave a very interesting answer about the murder of

Boris Nemtsov, though he sort of laughed it off

but in fact it’s a sad subject. Let’s

watch 21 seconds. But in your video

about Nemtsov’s murder—you know, I want

to say that, generally speaking, even with all sorts of experience

let me at least say that I learned about Nemtsov’s murder

literally from the news

that came out, and naturally

I have absolutely nothing to do with it

these are baseless accusations

Sir, you were accused of Nemtsov’s murder

You know, that is a baseless accusation. I do not

have any connection whatsoever to it

that even sounds better

I have no connection whatsoever to this murder

but obviously others do

have a connection. I just wanted to clarify that

it was not I who accused Mr. Zolotov of this

let’s put it that way, because it was a Russian

court—I would even say a Putin court. A judge

of the Putin regime issued an official

submission addressed to General Zolotov

where he writes that it was precisely violations within

Rosgvardiya (Russia’s National Guard), failures to perform

official duties, that led to the fact

that the murder was committed by personnel of

well, then the internal

the Internal Troops, excuse me, which

were commanded by Zolotov. Therefore, I certainly

that is, the judge believes that Zolotov

is connected to this, and I believe that

yes, Zolotov covered for the people who

committed the murder and those who ordered

the murder, and helped them evade

responsibility in an active way. Therefore

without any doubt, of course, he is implicated in Nemtsov’s murder

Nemtsov’s case is a separate, really excellent

perhaps the best moment of this interview. I

really enjoyed it—it was about

350,000 bayonets behind General

Zolotov. It seems to me that his first

address—the one with the oversized cockade

—made so many people angry because

Zolotov appeared in the image of a

banana-republic general with his own personal

little army of up to 350,000 men

whom we feed, whom we have effectively put on

the payroll, and who exist on

taxpayers’ money. And Zolotov so

emphasized that this was his own personal little

army. And in this interview, where he supposedly

decided

to justify himself for the matter

of me calling him a fake general, I

know that among Rosgvardiya personnel

and among military servicemen in general, any kind

even police officers too, but

a lot of people don’t like it—on what

grounds did he become an Army General? Who is he

to suddenly be an Army General?

and so he needed to defend, well,

this rank of his, and this is how he

defended it. Let’s listen to a short

video that quite seriously called it into question

The title is very simple, Mr. Navalny.

After graduating from the academy, in fact, we...

At first, he was appointed deputy commander.

...post, pillar... them, command... what is behind my...

behind me stand 350,000 bayonets.

How did you become an Army General? It's very simple.

I was the deputy commander-in-chief, and...

then I became commander-in-chief. Behind my...

back were 350... 300,000 bayonets.

Be quiet.

Great answer. Those 350,000 bayonets are not standing behind you.

350,000 bayonets.

They are hanging around the necks of the citizens of the Russian

Federation—a small army.

Though, not really that small.

And we allocate an enormous

amount of money to this army, including for food,

which you embezzle. And behind your

back, no one is standing. You simply stepped out from behind

someone else's back—

Putin's—and just turned into some kind of

strange guy

in a peaked cap. And you know, at that moment

when I was watching the bit about bayonets, and it was very

interesting—pay attention, there is such

great camera work by

*Komsomolskaya Pravda* (a Russian tabloid newspaper). If you

watch the whole video, it's posted on the

YouTube channel

of *Komsomolskaya Pravda*. There, with Zolotov,

he is sitting there, and sometimes they show him like this, and

a chevron, a close-up... some blurred shot...

in the corner, yes, the eyes...

there, hands with a pen—so apparently this

editing

is meant to show the man's power. And I watched and

thought: I've seen all this before. The first

address was similar, and back then

it was compared to the famous character by comedian Sacha

Baron Cohen, who plays and

parodies those Middle Eastern and South

African dictators. Here it's about the same thing.

That is, here you have a person—

some man sitting in uniform, covered all over

with various insignia that he

didn't earn. He is asked one simple

question, something like: why are you buying

cabbage, or how did you get your name?

And he says: 350,000 bayonets. And I

remembered where this comes from: a person is asked

something simple, like

"Please pass the fare,"

and in response says: "Natalya, the Marines."

That very meme. I adore it. It's probably not

quite old, maybe many of you

today don't remember it, or have forgotten it, or

have never seen it at all. For a full minute

of airtime—I have watched it a million

times, this meme—but now you are seeing

General Zolotov before he became

an Army General and head of the Rosgvardiya (Russia's National Guard).

"Natalya, the Marines."

[music]

[laughter]

No, 200,000—excellent, all of that goes...

But you can't deny it—it's just a godsend.

He is pure Viktor Zolotov.

Absolutely. By the way, even from the city of

St. Petersburg—the amazing Natalya,

"the Marines."

It's exactly the same. Remember the first

address?

"I'll smack your backside," and here it's the same thing: if

I start shooting... And these same people

watched this YouTube video with

General Zolotov, and it is no different.

Well, maybe it's even

more comical, but unfortunately also

much more expensive, because the amazing

woman from St. Petersburg—we don't have to pay

her anything, but General Zolotov we

do have to pay

an enormous amount of money, and he spends

that money on his fantastic dachas (country houses),

in particular Mikoyan's dacha. I need to dwell on this

because Zolotov, well,

is of course awful,

and a brazen liar. And in this video of his

he said that the dacha where he lives

has absolutely nothing to do with that

old Soviet, legendary

communal dacha where Mikoyan

and Dzerzhinsky and all the others lived. A short

clip with Zolotov earlier—he stated:

About Mikoyan's dacha—so, I want to say, he

in a somewhat pompous style,

with such fervor, such pathos,

spoke about this dacha: "I want to state and

disappoint this individual: my dacha

has never had any relation whatsoever

to the dacha he is talking about.

It is located in a completely different place.

At that dacha there really did live

Dzerzhinsky, and... Voroshilov, and

Mikoyan. But once again I repeat: it is in a

different place. And as for

the property itself, this is

a continuation of the conversation about the dacha, and so

on. I want to say: he valued

my family's real estate there at 3.5

billion rubles—several times

higher than its actual price—and I want

to say that all the property was

declared before 2008, and has no

...

connection whatsoever to the budget...

absolutely no connection.

That's a great statement. Let's start with

the last part. When Navalny

said: he valued my property at 3.5

billion rubles, but in fact

he overvalued it—ah, so now we're already

haggling. So it turns out General

Zolotov disagrees with me about

the market valuation of his property,

but is no longer even trying to dispute that this

dacha—this very dacha—these hundreds of millions

worth of dachas, located in the most...

in elite parts of the Moscow suburbs belong

to his family, but he just says, well, well

this plot there is worth three-point-something billion, well

then let's

Comrade Army General, discuss how much

is there—a billion, 2 billion, 2.2 billion

well then, in any case, explain to us where

you got this billion from

returning, after all, to Mikoyan—a small

just a brief digression, let's move a bit to the right along

Rublyovka (an elite residential area west of Moscow)

or rather, not even along Rublyovka, but through this

settlement, Kolchuga—let's take a look

at what it looks like. So, all of this that

you see is that very Kolchuga, and

we studied everything there very carefully

we watched all the documentaries, and

there are many of them, about these historic places; we

read all the memoirs, spoke

with everyone who had been there, and I

assure you that we are right: there are basically three

groups of buildings in that whole forest there

you can see on the right the Zolotov group, and I

that group of buildings is what is now his dacha

Zolotov's private dacha, and what

is called Mikoyan's dacha; below is the former

what they call Shevardnadze's dacha—it was built

for Shevardnadze; now it is a property that

looks kind of semi-abandoned, and

on the left, with the largest

forest plot, is what is called

Stalin's dacha, and unquestionably that group

of buildings where Zolotov is located is exactly

the one that now belongs, by unclear means,

under ownership rights

to this Zolotov—that very collective

that is, one collective dacha there

has several buildings, though perhaps Zolotov

owns one and lives in another, but there is no

doubt that Mikoyan's dacha

was grabbed for himself. I could now

show you some documentary

films and compare the buildings and everything else; I

will show you one simple thing. So, Sergo

Mikoyan, the son of Anastas Mikoyan (a prominent Soviet statesman), that very

People's Commissar, writes in his memoirs:

"Since the time of Zubalov—Zubalov, that is,

what it used to be called—the Zubalovo dacha, the kitchen was in

a separate brick building about 35 meters from

the house; there was an ice cellar there

for ice, which we brought by horse

from the Moscow River in April, and it melted just

at the beginning of summer

because refrigerators did not exist yet. Now

with a wave of a magic wand, we see

General Zolotov's declaration, and what do we see there?

We see an ice cellar. Dear viewers, on the program

Russia of the Future—but this is probably not a very

common kind of property

real estate. You don't have an ice cellar, and neither do I

have an ice cellar

but General Zolotov does, and you understand

and Sergo Mikoyan had an ice cellar too, and it seems to me

there can be not the slightest

doubt that this very same ice cellar, which

was once in the use—and not in the ownership—of

the top leadership of the Soviet

Union—Mikoyan, Dzerzhinsky, Bukharin, even

others were there at this dacha, and so on

has now ended up in the personal private

ownership of our remarkable

Army General, with some unclear

income that he

tells us about. So once again

if General Zolotov wants to, well,

prove to us that I somehow, in some

way

am misleading people, that some other dacha

belonged to Mikoyan, then show us

come on, show it—make the same kind of

satellite image and show us where

the historic dacha is located

If you simply grabbed for yourself a piece of

elite land there that is worth

an unimaginable amount of money, and not the historic plot

of land that is worth an unimaginable amount of money

then show us where it is, where

Mikoyan's dacha is located. Better not

show it—and he never will, because

he is lying, just as he is lying about

his income. This is their classic

theme, with them

you know, the line is: I declared everything, I have

my son was in business, my son is in business

my son-in-law is in business

well then, tell us what kind of business you are all

actually engaged in. They all, all of them

do the same thing. Volodin, with his

85-year-old mother who bought herself

a 500-square-meter apartment, so apparently she too

was in business; Surkov's wife, too,

was a businesswoman. No matter where you look, they all

have relatives who are somehow

amazing businesspeople, and they take

mine—according to the declaration, we show an income of 200

million rubles from

explain to us where you got these 200

million rubles from

what kind of business are you in

if you tried to explain it, we would

see that there is no business at all, and this is

simply the legalization of stolen money, well

what you managed to do is

take the money you got in kickbacks from procurement

of food supplies, run it through somewhere, and

funnel it into some LLC 'Daisy' from 'Daisyville'

or 'Buttercup'—well done, you've arranged it all. In

Russia everyone knows how to do this, but that does not

make you businesspeople, and therefore

don't tell us here that just because

you declared something

it somehow stopped being illegal income

for you, or stopped being corruption

of course it is corruption, and sooner or later

it will be proven

one separate thing I want to say is that

I have already been discussing General

Zolotov for 23 minutes, and this is very important because in

At the very end, he said something important:

it struck me too, and I saw that in the

comments, a lot of people were writing about

this topic. It was about General Zolotov's grandson

who studies in England. 17 seconds.

Zolotov, let's take a closer look at this

individual. I'll ask: with whose money is

your grandson studying in England? My grandson really is

studying in England. I want to say, he studies

with top marks, and I'm proud of him.

His father pays for his education. In three years he

will return, and I'm sure he will be a good

and useful specialist. General Zolotov's grandson

studies in England, and that's what he tells us.

He says he'll come back and be a good

economist. And you know, here's what really

characterizes Zolotov:

the fact that his grandson studies in England means he is

a good grandfather, a normal

grandfather. He loves his grandson and

sends him far away from the monstrous

education system that Putin

has wrecked and destroyed. But the problem

is not that Putin—

sorry, I misspoke—not that Putin sent his grandson,

that Zolotov

sent his grandson to England. The problem is

that at the same time he sends his

grandson to England, and at the same time meddles in

all of our lives and tells us that we are, supposedly,

foreign agents. Here's from his

Let's watch a few seconds from

his first address, where he

makes some kind of complaint that we

go traveling around the Baltics again.

A few seconds more. Zolotov, so after all,

it turns out you have this kind of route through

the Baltics?

Are you meeting there with some secret sword-and-plow society

and discussing among yourselves the division

of parts of our state?

At first I didn't even understand what that

remark was about—'running around the Baltics'—and then

I realized: this summer I spent 10 days with my family in

Jūrmala, so apparently that means I'm 'running around'

the Baltics, meeting with someone there and

planning the breakup of Russia.

But when Zolotov sends his grandson

to study in England with stolen money,

that's perfectly normal. Just look at how

their minds are wired, and how clearly

this shows that all these

people do not connect their future at all with

Russia's future. Because here they

destroy education, here they tell us

that any connection abroad

is bad and unpatriotic,

while at the same time sending their children to

England. Send them if you want—just don't be hypocrites.

Good Lord, anyone wants their

grandson to study in England

given that education in Russia is poor.

Where would I want—though I don't have any

grandchildren—where would I want my children to study

in higher education? Well,

of course abroad, because I

open the university rankings and once again

see that Putin has been in power for 18 years, so surely

the position in that ranking

of Russia's main university

after 18 years can no longer

be blamed on the 'cursed '90s'—this is Putin's

achievement. Let's see where Moscow State University is in this

ranking.

153rd place. Can you imagine? Our

main university is in one hundred and fifty-

third place. Of course any

normal person would be happy if their

child got into any of the one hundred and

fifty-two places above it. That's a normal

desire for any parent. Everyone would want

their children to study at decent universities,

not here where—well, on the one hand—

it's a decent university, probably one of the best

or among the best in Russia, but come on—

if it didn't have a United Russia party member as

rector, if Putin's daughter weren't on the academic council of

MSU,

if MSU weren't involved in some kind of

dubious, endless commercial

development schemes under Luzhkov (former Moscow mayor) and

now, it would probably be much better.

It would probably be much higher in the

rankings, and then perhaps Zolotov

would want his grandson to study at MSU.

But he doesn't want that, and at the same time

they are destroying it. And what is happening

right now—today I

read a press release. There is a university in St. Petersburg,

ITMO University—the University of Information

Technologies, Mechanics and Optics.

And this university is known because its teams in

competitive programming

consistently place very highly—

first place, fifth place in the world.

Super talented guys, and we're proud of them. And

Rosobrnadzor (Russia's education watchdog) revoked the license of

one of its faculties. Do you know

why? Because their stadium doesn't have

an obstacle course. Seriously, I

am not joking. You can go right now

and read the press release: at the University of

Information Technologies, Mechanics and

Optics,

there is no obstacle course, so one of the

faculties lost its license. Are they

out of their minds? You're destroying

Russian education. Well, maybe

the rules say there has to be an obstacle course there,

but if so, just look at who studies at

Mechanics and Optics.

These people have glasses with lenses

this thick—they can live without an obstacle

course. Give them a Kuznetsov applicator

for scoliosis instead—that would be more useful than an obstacle

course. I mean, look, I don't want

to offend all programmers,

of course, but these are great, smart people.

who are right now winning for us

first places in Olympiads in

competitive programming, and you

come in and take away their license, you

are destroying Russian education

every day, every day, little by little, you

are making it worse and worse. Send

your children abroad, while to us

you make accusations because we, well,

are a foreign agent. You still are and always will be

a foreign agent. It’s just

some absolutely astounding

spectacular hypocrisy, and honestly

it’s impossible to tolerate. And I hope, I’m

sure, that’s why for 29 minutes of this

program I’m trying—I want more

people to take another look at this Zolotov

so that you understand how broken he is and

how beyond repair this whole system is. But

the guy doesn’t even

well, if he were a bit smarter, probably, he

wouldn’t have started talking on air about his

grandson in London. And, well, I would remember

he also went after someone there over the Baltics (the Baltic states)

or something like that. In those circumstances, I probably wouldn’t

talk so proudly about

London if I were making accusations

at someone over a ten-day trip to the Baltics (the Baltic states)

then probably he wouldn’t be saying so brazenly

that behind me stand 350,000 bayonets (troops), and because

people probably wouldn’t like that

because they’re the ones paying for all of this. But he

thinks it’s right. That’s why they’re

all beyond fixing—absolutely a gang of brazen

thieves, very stupid thieves, very

self-assured, very, well, that kind of

arrogant people, intoxicated by this nonsense

—these cockades behind my back, standing there. Well, Natalia

Marine Infantry

if you take this Natalia Marine Infantry

and put her in command, well, that’s basically what happened

—she did it, she became the head of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), and

you got General Zolotov. So

folks, take part in Smart Voting

in order to fight these people.

I’m being asked—Krov Zeus asks me

the question: has it occurred to you that all this

Zolotov business is urgently distracting

attention from Putin?

From his stupidity with the rocket? No, I don’t think

that at this point it works in such a subtle

way. There is such a huge amount of

fantastic, varied, astonishing

stupidity happening there that Putin has clearly already

lost control—or if not Putin, then whatever

main information

conductor there is, he lost control long ago

over all of this. That’s exactly why

this is happening—it’s just some kind of

nonsense. Yesterday’s Putin says

that this rocket, which all

physicists are laughing at and saying is a complete fake,

is a New Year’s gift to the country. Zolotov

is spouting something, and then these

regional officials, some kind of

bureaucrats—all this nonsense is just pouring

out, because the regime is decaying. They’ve been

in power for 18 years; they’re physically

wearing out, they’re sinking into senility. I

spoke about this in detail on the previous program.

Guys, don’t take the issue of

senility off the agenda—they are senile

senile people, and no one can even

hint to them, like, what are you

doing here? No, because, well, they’re

like: we’re cool senile people. Well, in the

case of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Soviet leader), the guy would come out and

be shown to the whole country

and he would say something completely incoherent, and he

would repeat the text. The whole country laughed

—people told jokes, did impressions, everyone did

but he was the General Secretary, he was the head of the largest

largest

country on Earth, while being in

a state of complete senility

and being completely incapacitated. Putin,

Zolotov, and all the rest of them haven’t yet reached the state of

Brezhnev, but the fact that they are already

quite deep into senility

is a fact. Just understand: it’s a fact. They are already

medically, mentally

senile, and unfortunately things will get worse

and worse. I’m being asked a lot about

what kind of envelope that is—I see people writing about the one on

my desk. No, that’s not money from General

Zolotov. It’s a postcard that will be received by

everyone who signs up by the end—everyone who is already

subscribed to a recurring donation, or

who signs up by the end of the year for

a donation to FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation). These people

have supported us

and thanks, thanks to you, we have existed

all this time. And also, if you

sign up, we’ll send you a postcard and

these two cool magnets that you can

put on your refrigerator. And if

General Zolotov suddenly comes to your place and, walking

into your kitchen,

he sees these magnets on your

refrigerator, he’ll be very upset and

will most likely leave your home.

So sign up, arrange

a recurring donation, and there will be a magnet

that protects you from Zolotov

Klishas, and all the rest of them.

Let me answer a couple of questions. Yuri

asks: you managed to become a destructive

element in the regions—what is that, something

specific?

Well, I’m very proud that I became

a destructive element in the regions

because we have 42 headquarters in the regions, 42

YouTube channels, and throughout this year we have

spent a lot of time, energy, and money

to create this

broadcasting system, and we really

have succeeded—in every region, our

YouTube channel, in some places better, in others

Some do it better, some worse,

some worse, but this is still a significant

mass media outlet that

can influence local

politics, and I’m very proud of that, very

grateful to all the people in the regions

who help promote small

YouTube channels, not just mine. That’s

very important. And of course the local authorities

hate local YouTube channels because they expose

thieves in local government.

But obviously, to them we’re destructive

elements, and they hate us

intensely—possibly much more than

General Zolotov hates me.

Some local crook from Rostov

hates and fears our YouTube channel because

otherwise no one would pay any

attention to him. In their own region-level

media space, at the level of their region, they’ve

long since cleared everything out—no one dares peep

at all.

And then suddenly some Navalny guys

or just some guys on YouTube with

an audience of a few thousand people

show up and tell the plain truth anyway.

Of course, they’re extremely unhappy about that.

Two stories.

They were small, regional stories, but they were

very important, and this week I saw

that everyone was writing about them, all the media outlets.

Despite the censorship, they made it into the news on

Yandex.

Naturally, Twitter was flooded, social

media and everything else too. This is our old friend

Olga Glatskikh, the very one who said

that the state owes you nothing. But

it turned out that the state owes us nothing,

but apparently it does owe little Olya Glatskikh, some

strange young woman who, as we learned from a

recording we listened to,

was basically appointed minister while people were drunk.

Now, as it turns out, the state does owe her quite a lot. First,

let’s recall how she said that

the state doesn’t owe anyone anything.

As of today,

it has somehow come about that among young people,

among the rising generation, there is

for some reason this understanding that

the state owes us everything. No—it

doesn’t owe you anything at all, in principle.

Your parents owe you, not the state.

But the state didn’t ask your parents

to give birth to you.

As you remember, that statement was, let’s say,

pretty outrageous. It infuriated

the whole country. Everyone went crazy over it, even all sorts of

people were saying, well, who exactly are you

to say that? You hold a

government post, and you’re basically

some girl who came out of nowhere,

with no experience, no background, no

nothing, sitting in public office and telling us

that the state owes us nothing. She was almost

forced to resign, but because she is a member of

this rather remarkable

Russian phenomenon—a group of gymnasts in

politics—there are lots of them there,

all kinds of them. I don’t even know what they do there

or how exactly they earn

their various positions in government, but

this Olga Glatskikh turned out to be a rather

powerful young woman, and they couldn’t

remove her. I don’t know, maybe Alina

Kabaeva was backing her up, plain and simple,

or

Irina Viner, or some other heads

of this remarkable—I’d better choose my words carefully here—

so as not to offend anyone—

remarkable group

of rhythmic gymnasts. They couldn’t

remove her; she stayed in office.

She apologized, but then

right after that, now it has emerged that

the state does, in fact, owe Olga Glatskikh

something: Olga Glatskikh was placed

on the waiting list to receive an apartment.

At that point, everyone was stunned.

And then people rushed to look at her asset declaration—well,

which is what I always do: you run and

check the declaration, because

a declaration can often tell us a great deal

about what this official is really

like. In the declaration we see that she already has

an apartment of 116 square meters

(about 1,249 square feet), two land plots, a garage,

a Mercedes-Benz M-Class, and

so who exactly needs another apartment when they already have 116 square meters,

a Mercedes, and yet you’re put on

the list for a special subsidy—that is,

the state pays for you, as an

official supposedly in need of improved

housing conditions, 70 percent of an apartment.

Has that ever happened to you? Has a kindly wizard ever come to

you, or maybe a fairy godmother,

or whoever, and said:

“Life is so hard for you there in Kol—

or in Pechatniki, or Maryino (districts of Moscow),

let me pay 70 percent of an apartment for you”?

No? That’s never happened to you?

But with Ms. Glatskikh, apparently, it happens all the time.

The fact that she already has an apartment was explained away

by saying that the apartment is in another region,

so of course she needs one in this region too, at

the state’s expense. After that, of course,

everyone completely lost it.

This level of sheer impossibility, this level

of brazenness,

audacity, and nastiness from these

regional officials, and specifically

Governor Kuyvashev of Sverdlovsk

Region,

crossed every conceivable

line so thoroughly that she was finally thrown off the waiting list,

and a few days ago she submitted her

resignation and left her post. She’ll spend another month on the payroll

and receive her salary, after which

she’ll be gone, and I’m very curious where she’ll end up.

there’ll be this sense that we, too, are somehow involved somewhere

that comes with public service

or around public service, this whole

amazing mafia of rhythmic

gymnasts probably won’t leave her

without a source of income, that’s just

guys, in general this is basically

you have to admit, this is a strange setup

no one is saying that officials should

live on the street. If you work properly,

an official should have the opportunity

to buy housing, but this is a super crooked

scheme. It should work like this: we pay

a decent salary to any person—Olga Gladkikh

if she’s doing her job properly, a janitor, Petya, a doctor

a colleague, and everyone else—a decent

salary, and with that decent

salary they can rent themselves

decent housing, just like it happens

all over the world, or easily get a mortgage

and buy decent housing. After all, they’re

a working person, they pay taxes

they receive a salary and can buy

housing. That’s how it works in developed

countries, and that’s how it should work in Russia

but here what we really get is simply

a separate sect of some guys for whom

everything is bought for free

despite the fact that they already have

apartments, while for us a mortgage means

you’ll be paying some insane

interest rate. This really is nonsense, and

it seems that in the Beautiful Russia of the Future (a political slogan referring to a hoped-for better Russia), this

cannot exist, because, well,

a direct subsidy is always better than

an indirect one. If you want officials

to be able to buy apartments or

to afford them, then give them a salary, like everyone else

pay a decent salary, and from that

salary let them buy for themselves through

a mortgage, without all these

crooked schemes. And another very

interesting thing on the same topic that I

noticed: there’s a criminal case

under way in Tomsk against two Interior Ministry generals

from the MVD (Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs) who were gaming this same

system. You know what these guys did? In the case of the

former head of the MVD in Tomsk

Region—that is, a top general there—

and his deputy, they simply went and

bought an apartment located in

Kolpashevsky District, farther north

where northern benefits apply, meaning

these guys bought an apartment, registered there officially

and started receiving a pension with northern

allowances. And by the way, that pension—you

will never get anything like that

66,000 rubles a month

while the average salary in Tomsk Region

is much, much lower. I mean, you really have to

have some nerve: an MVD general deliberately

registering in some apartment without living

there. But this whole idiotic system

allows this kind of cheating, and that’s what

everyone does: they register themselves

in another region so they can say,

“Sorry, I don’t have housing in this region,”

and then they’re either given housing or their purchase is subsidized

with all these various

coefficients and other strange gimmicks. This

whole perverse system really

just needs to be abolished. There should be

a normal pension for everyone, simply a direct

pension payment without any tricky schemes

No one is saying that a general, a former

head of the regional Main Directorate of the MVD,

should get a pension of 5,000 rubles, but maybe

66,000 is what he should get—then just pay him that

and stop messing everyone around. But then the same

kind of pension should also go to a doctor

a teacher, a manager, a lawyer, and a sales clerk

at a small Pyaterochka grocery store (a major Russian discount supermarket chain), taking into account

how much tax they paid over the course of their life

they should have a normal pension, and

there’s no need for all this cheating around it

I said there were two topics that really

captivated everyone and made them furious, and it seemed to me that

the next topic, about the mayor of the city of Klintsy,

did so even more. For two days I

saw that Twitter was absolutely flooded

with this mayor of Klintsy. I went to Yandex

News—well, it’s a pretty specific

thing, I’m almost never there—and

Klintsy was all over it, because

a truly astonishing

situation had really happened in the city of Klintsy. A charity foundation

was operating there, and this

charity foundation was sending, supposedly,

sick children for treatment and recuperation in

Turkey, and it turned out that

along with some sick children, or

just ordinary children—the children of ordinary

citizens—

the children of all the local bosses went too, including

the mayor of Klintsy, whose annual

income is 67 million rubles. We’ll talk about that separately.

But first, let’s watch

a short video. When they were asked,

“Guys, have you completely lost it or what?”

they said, “Yes, everything is fine.” 1

minute 4 seconds

I’ll interrupt here. And the parents were outraged that places in these

very

trips somehow ended up going

to certain children only, the parents say

there was a real battle over it. But wait,

let’s stick to the facts: why were the children

of administration employees there?

The children of administration employees are not somehow separate from the city of

Klintsy. Jesus... Mochalov, how can you say that? The whole

work that was done has been

cheapened and vulgarized by this whole affair.

I’ll tell you that it was you who cheapened it

We see absolutely nothing improper here

nothing improper in the fact that these or those

children went. You understand, there are 7,000 children in

the city, and 50 of them went. Should

the administration’s children be forbidden to go?

Now it has to—no, it has to, you’re ill, it won’t happen.

to stay voluntarily—not, well, somehow.

After—after an event like that, that’s it.

Normal.

Your opinion—I lost them, no, not all of them.

all the same, maybe three of you, we subtract and—

with fastening, and then, personally, my opinion is—

none of that.

29,000 people for an inspection on live air.

On air—but this short clip that

appeared on some website

Bryansk Online—this isn’t even Bryansk

this is Klintsy.

It’s far away even from the city of Bryansk.

I mean, this is really—I don’t want to offend

the city of Klintsy—let’s just say it plainly.

It’s the kind of town that is, frankly speaking, in

the deep, deep provinces, naturally.

Of course, all this is just so you

can see where Klintsy is.

It’s definitely not Moscow. The Bryansk Online outlet

described it,

and the whole country went furious—and rightly so.

It went furious, but that fury

was only the first part of the outrage.

The woman—the lady from the video—was fired, but

the second wave of outrage came when we

found out that the mayor of Klintsy

apparently makes 6 million rubles, and I saw

that Twitter was absolutely flooded.

People were even stealing this post from each other,

but still getting thousands of retweets.

They were comparing the salary of the mayor of New York and

the salary and income of the mayor of Klintsy,

the U.S. president’s income and the income of the mayor of Klintsy, and in

all these comparisons, Klintsy confidently won.

In all these little contests, and generally, I mean,

that’s about US$1 million in income in

Klintsy.

How the mayor got that—by the way, nobody

wrote about it properly, nobody did

the simple exercise that I did.

I just went into the official database and

looked.

Where, exactly, did the mayor of Klintsy get his income from?

I’ll show you how I did it—I simply

told our guys there, the ones who

went into the database with me and looked, and I

said: one hundred percent, he’s some kind of

utilities monopolist living off markups

and government contracts. Let’s just

look at what the mayor

of Klintsy has or used to have. Here, you can see it all:

LLC Blagoustroistvo, Zhilkomservis,

Klintsy, Gidropro, Don-Stroy, Kommunalshchik, and

so on. In other words, we can see that one

of the companies is still

owned by the mayor of Klintsy; all the others

he transferred to some other people.

But we understand perfectly well that this

man basically owns the city of Klintsy.

He just, somehow—I don’t

know exactly how, I didn’t conduct a detailed

investigation—but this is simply a typical example,

absolute proof of what

the source of wealth for officials is, and

really the source of wealth in a

small, poor town like Klintsy in Bryansk Region

—a poor region. I think Klintsy

is a poor town even compared with

Bryansk. He simply owns the entire

utilities sector there; he basically controls

all of it, and everything is totally interconnected:

the budget of the city of Klintsy

and the companies that belonged, and

still belong, to our

wonderful, youthful-looking mayor,

who first, so to speak, took all the utilities

money from the residents of Klintsy, and

then also, using charitable funds,

sent his own children off—what staggering nerve.

The nerve of it—later you get 66 million from utilities,

and then from a charitable

foundation you squeeze your children into some

program and get them this

trip to Turkey. They surely travel

to places more interesting than Turkey,

but you just can’t do that, you understand, as they say.

That’s why they’re rich: they don’t spend their own

money. What, are they stupid, to spend their own

when they can travel on charity money?

And off they went. It’s just an astonishing example.

And he still didn’t resign, despite

the colossal public outrage.

Even all the officialdom rose up, despite

the fact that he was, in effect, discrediting his

local United Russia party (the Kremlin-aligned ruling party). Of course he is

a member of United Russia, and of course he didn’t

step down; his deputy took the hit, while

he himself stayed. Why? Because what’s at stake is

millions of rubles, a million dollars—that’s

66 million in official income.

Because maybe even if the governor

was outraged and wanted somehow to remove him or

demand his resignation—if you can’t do it directly,

with one decision in Klintsy, well,

they brought something there, and from those 66 million

they reluctantly peeled off 6 million for this one, 6

million for that one—and he stayed in office.

Because the scandal will pass and be forgotten,

but the utilities setup in the city of Klintsy

will remain. People will still

need hot water turned on, people

will still be paying

for garbage removal, landscaping, and so on and so forth.

Little by little, as the saying goes, the hen pecks grain—and then bam:

66 million in the declaration. Nice, very nice.

Our authorities have set themselves up nicely.

Our United Russia people have done very well for themselves. Let’s

look at a young woman in prison garb.

Even though Nadezhda

Tolokonnikova has long since been released from the

penal colony in Mordovia where she was imprisoned,

it’s still rather unpleasant to look at

this photograph. An innocent person

was shoved into prison. You’ll agree it would be

much nicer, so to speak, to look at if

instead of her, I don’t know, the mayor were here.

Klintsov or Zolotov or, or Klishas, about

whom I will still say a few

words today. But here, an innocent person is sitting in prison, and

when this innocent person was serving time in

prison in IK-14 in Mordovia (a Russian republic known for its prison camps)—the prison colonies there are horrific.

It's cold, a real nightmare. From there,

being a brave and selfless young woman,

she was not afraid that there, excuse me,

she might simply be stabbed either by the administration or

by cellmates or something else. A person in

prison is absolutely without rights. She

wrote letters saying that in our

penal colony there was slave labor. This was several

years ago. There was major attention to the letter then on

Lenta.ru.

It said: "I demand respect for human

rights, and I demand that people be treated

not like slaves. My brigade works

in the sewing workshop 16–17 hours a day,"

and when she wrote this, I remember very

well how the entire FSIN (Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service), all these brazen

faces, all these bureaucrats—they were like, this Ella Koni

someone who had insulted our

Orthodox faith, danced in a church, but

of course she's a shameless girl. And over there,

they don't work, they sleep on soft couches,

the shameless liar, and so on. They poured

an enormous amount of filth over her.

And in fact, nothing much there

really changed. There were all sorts of corrupt

journalists, pro-government bloggers,

and of course all the officials—no one there

could help her then. That is, only

her husband went to that colony, and Agora (a Russian human rights group) then

stood up for her, along with a

small number of human rights defenders.

Public opinion was on her side,

but only among those who knew what was happening. And

so Tolokonnikova wrote, and, and, and everyone

insulted or humiliated her. But this

week it suddenly emerged

and something absolutely astonishing happened.

The Investigative Committee literally stated—not even just

that they said there was slave labor in the colony,

slave labor.

They said verbatim that Tolokonnikova

was not so wrong after all, and that the facts she spoke

about had found their

confirmation. That is, the investigators came and

said: yes, it turns out that in our

colony there is slave labor, and people work—not

it doesn't matter that they are inmates—they are not inmates, but

slaves, they are slaves there who

sew, they say, off-the-books

orders of unclear origin from businessmen,

which then went on to be sold for profit. And

when Tolokonnikova was telling you all the same

thing, why were you all silent? And for me,

it's simply important to say all this

because it is a kind of restoration

of justice, I hope.

I hope they imprison that scoundrel who

ran the colony. And Tolokonnikova

hopes so too. And we have a little

exclusive: we called Nadezhda and asked

her to record a short video for us. She

recorded one that wasn't short at all—7 minutes—but from it we

cut out 2 minutes. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

on what she thinks about what was happening

then and what has happened now.

Tolokonnikova: Hi guys, today I

want to tell you about a very evil and bad

man: Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Kupriyanov,

the man responsible for

building the system of slave labor in IK-

14 of the Republic of Mordovia, the penal colony where

I was serving my sentence. When I arrived, this

colony greeted me

with Kupriyanov's words: "You know, in terms of my

political views, I'm a Stalinist." Kupriya-

nov liked summoning me to his

office and telling me that no one

here would help me and that I was completely

in his power. But now, what is

astonishing in the recent news from the investigators

is that the situation is being turned

upside down. Now I am being heard, and I

am speaking about the crimes

of Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, while

Kupriyanov himself may soon

be sent to prison.

So what exactly should he go to prison for?

The female inmates in IK-14 work entire

days, from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m.

The production quota is set at simply

inhuman levels. The question arises: where

did all that money go, the money that

the state apparently allocates

to somehow maintain and feed

the inmates and carry out repairs in the colony? By all

appearances, it all goes into the pockets

of Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov and the people around

him.

I very much hope that

Colonel Yuri Kupriyanov will answer all

these questions from the defendant's bench, and that

he will not be working on the title of his

little prison library, as Reimer is doing now,

and that's all.

And I hope someone will imprison him

right in front of a sewing machine and tell him: 'Sew,

Yura, sew.'

One can disagree with Nadezhda on only

one point. She says: we don't know where

this money goes. When she released her

statement, I also wrote about it, and I think

it was our investigations department that found it, and I

won't lie, maybe it was someone else

who found it, but I wrote that these

people, these businessmen, the very ones

who sell work uniforms that are

made by convict slave labor,

there was a group of people there, and they

of course immediately had, figuratively speaking,

apartments discovered in Miami. So the

money earned by the slaves—30

percent goes straight into people's pockets, and 70

percent, it turns out, is simply laundered.

Abroad, things really are very different.

I really want this very Kupriyanov

to end up not in a library

but working in a garment factory, and at the same time

to work exactly as much as labor regulations require

that is, eight hours a day with

a lunch break, vacation time, and everything else

he is entitled to. Our beloved senator

Senator Klishas, whose middle name now seems to be "cliché"

is now "I stole it and I'm proud of it." You’ve probably seen

my investigation into Klishas

our FBK investigation into Klishas

about this man who is trying

to steal the internet from us, to destroy

the internet in the literal sense. He introduces

the most disgusting bills. We

simply explained

a little more about who he is, how much money

he has, and where that money came from.

It seemed to me that this part

about privatization—I saw people writing to me that

the video dragged on, that there was too much detail, and

but privatization is important stuff to me.

It seems to me that for the opposition movement

it is super important to finally cross

that line

and stop being afraid to criticize

privatization and the 1990s, when at one time

we defended Chubais and said

that privatization was good because

we were afraid that Yeltsin’s government

would be brought down by some red-brown

coalition and Zyuganov (leader of the Communist Party) would come to power, so we all

had to defend Chubais and the loans-for-shares

auctions.

But

why should we defend that? Because

Klishas bought himself 20 watches, and because

Chubais

is a multimillionaire and works at

Rusnano, and now says that

privatization was great, but actually

it’s also very good when

the state owns everything. What matters for us

is simply to say that everything that happened in the

1990s connected with the loans-for-shares auctions, and all

those people involved in it, are

disgusting crooks. The opposition does not

like them, just like the rest of the people do not,

and we are not going to, for some reason

of politeness or because, say, Tanya

thinks they somehow don’t look like thugs

and speak more elegantly, therefore

we should love them. No, we do not love them, and

we consider it all robbery. Let’s

watch a short excerpt from my video about

Klishas—about one minute and thirty seconds

and after that I’ll say

a couple of words about it. Remember him well:

he is Putin’s chief foot soldier

in the fight against the internet. While still

a student,

he got his first job at

the Russian Federal Property Fund.

As a lawyer, he gave these schemes

an appearance of legality. That is where the main

work of his life happened: he handled the paperwork for privatization

—that is, he helped steal.

The state announced a loans-for-shares auction for Norilsk Nickel

at which the whole

of Norilsk Nickel was bought for

a laughable $170 million. Our

hero, much slimmer back then,

was the one formalizing all of this on behalf of

the state. And obviously his efforts were

properly rewarded, because immediately

after Norilsk Nickel was stolen from us

he left public service

and went to work

where? To Onexim Bank, to the oligarchs

Prokhorov and Potanin. We are approaching

the Swiss dacha (country house)

of the Russian

official. Before us are thousands of

square meters of precious

Swiss land, and on it a 432-square-meter house

(432 sq m).

The houses themselves are hidden behind trees; their total

area is about 2,000 square meters (2,000 sq m).

The total area of this plot is more than 13

thousand square meters (13,000 sq m).

1.3 hectares. This time the plot is even

bigger—six times bigger: seven and a half

hectares. The area of the building itself is,

hard as it is to believe, 9,000 square

meters (9,000 sq m).

Senator Klishas is not our bro,

not only because he is a crook,

not only because he is destroying

the internet, a little bit also because he

is obsessed with real estate, watches,

and dogs—fine, no problem, we have no complaints

about his dogs—but also because

he took part in this

entire privatization process and thinks that this is

perfectly normal.

When he was asked a question about

our investigation, he gave an absolutely

astonishing comment in its arrogance and candor.

Let’s read it: "I have a lot

of what

Navalny writes about—indeed,

much more. A Maybach, an offshore company,

expensive watches. In my collection

I have 32 tourbillons, which are kept in

a special safe next to my office, and

everything was earned legally, taxes paid." And

this whole watch issue matters, it

really matters. Let’s also just

watch a few seconds specifically about the watches.

Let’s watch. And it is precisely using the example of the watches

that I want to talk about Klishas. Klishas’s watches—this is

a special insert in our main

video, and now we are going to

simply scroll through photos of the public official

Klishas and count how much his

wristwatches cost. So, these ones

at the very bottom cost 12 million rubles.

Next in our hit parade is this specimen.

It costs 18.5 million rubles.

And this, on the wrist of our

"servant of the people," is a watch worth 20 million rubles.

"What a square monstrosity," you might say, but

you just don't understand anything. It costs

26 million rubles. And this one is interesting—

how much is it? We quickly find the answer: 28

million rubles. And these are almost as much.

And this is a Patek Philippe, by the way—

apparently the only brand name he could

pronounce himself. It looks modest, like, well,

but no—these are the most expensive: 32 million

rubles. But really, why shouldn't

a person who, on a government

salary, writes draft laws for you

buy himself a watch for 32 million rubles?

Let him buy it, everything's fine. In total, the watches

Klishas has—we counted—come to 63

million rubles on the table.

And that's far from all of them. Join in yourselves:

take the photos, compare them with sellers' websites,

and be jealous.

So, we found a certain number of watches

and say: all this is worth 162 million

rubles. And he replies: I have everything

—thirty-two pairs of watches like these. So you

can accordingly estimate the total value.

If it's the same thing, then it's a billion overall.

Everything's fine, I declared it all. I just

want to say that even if we

set aside the issue of how he privatized all this

stuff—even if we assume that

Klishas, I don't know, invented something

brilliant and has a ton of money, and can

he buy himself thirty-two pairs

of watches worth a billion rubles?

Yes, he can. Can he sit in the Federation

Council? No, he can't. Because

everyone, of course, has the right to go

crazy with their own money, but if you've bought

a billion rubles' worth of watches, you're sick, and you

shouldn't be in government.

It's impossible to imagine that even

in a super-rich country like Singapore or

Luxembourg, a person involved in

politics would own a billion rubles' worth of watches. Because

if you run for office, if you're

elected, if you sit in the Senate, it's assumed

that you're better than everyone else. I mean,

this is supposedly a person who said,

"Guys, I know better than you what should be done.

Elect me, and I'll pass laws for you,"

and everyone says, "All right, let's do it—he's

an example for us, we'll elect him, and he can sit there.

But he sits there, and he has watches worth

a billion rubles. Is he an example for us?

Is he the best Russian citizen? No. There's

something wrong with his head. Some kind of

complex, and this is how he's

compensating for it.

Or something else. Maybe someone hurt him in

childhood, or his life just didn't work out.

Well, each of us has our own

quirks, our own cockroaches in the head (a Russian idiom meaning personal hang-ups), but

damn—thirty-two pairs of watches worth

a billion rubles, and that's also

many, many millions of dollars, in a

poor country—something is seriously

wrong with you, and you cannot be in power.

The journalists in Krasnoyarsk are amazing. I

watched this report by Krasnoyarsk

TV—sorry, I couldn't quite make out the outlet's name—which came out today,

and I thought what a blessing it would be if

all journalists were like this. So there in

Krasnoyarsk, what did they do? They caught

Klishas off guard. As I understand it, today he

arrived—he is formally the senator from Krasnoyarsk

Krai (a federal region in Russia)—he came to Krasnoyarsk, and

let's take a look.

Just over a minute. Please comment

on Navalny's investigation. —No, I won't.

—Why? —Because there is no

investigation there. It's all declared—

property that has always been in

my disclosures. —Do you think it's normal that

you present yourself as a patriot,

yet you own foreign real estate, cars, and

what are you wearing now—how much do they cost?

One more time: what watch are you wearing right now?

And how much was it? Let us in on the secret—at least

an approximate amount.

So, in other words, you don't want to

comment at all?

Can we... canceled.

—And you... no? So you absolutely

have nothing to say? —What am I supposed to say?

—That you don't think this is a double

standard? —Look, I have property that is

declared.

—And what about the "godless West"

you talk about?

[music]

And about the "godless West," he still never

answered. You see, this guy isn't just

some random uncle being trolled

over his watches. He gets a salary from you. You,

the viewer of this program, pay him a couple

of kopecks a year so that he can receive, on top of

his own

millions and billions, another 450,000 rubles

a month, and you cover his expenses

when he flies business class from Moscow

to Krasnoyarsk.

You pay for that business class ticket. They ask him,

"So then, how much, roughly, does

your watch cost?" "Very expensive," he says,

walking along all pleased with himself: "I have everything

declared."

They've set themselves up nicely. This is exactly

what I was talking about at the beginning

of the program: they legalized this corrupt money

and now they're lecturing us about morality.

He says, "I have everything declared,"

as if that somehow made the money

honest.

A person like that cannot be a senator.

It's simply, simply staggering.

Such casualness, in the sense of: who are you, anyway?

Who are you at all? Just some serfs.

I, the great and mighty one, will write laws for you,

I’ll decide what to ban and what not to ban,

this program, your VKontakte (Russian social network), and your

messengers. I’ll write a law under which

you’ll be chatting with your grandma in

a messenger app, and I’ll have the right to

read it, because I’m such a big-shot senator. I’ve got

thirty-two watches, which means I’m important. I

drive around in a non-existent Maybach, too.

The sheer nerve is astounding. But then you

show up in that Maybach at the Federation Council

(upper house of Russia’s parliament).

You get photographed; Moscow traffic cameras

and municipal cameras also capture you driving around in

that Maybach. Then on the Federation Council website you say:

No, I don’t have any Maybach, it’s not in my declaration.

No, I registered it to some offshore company, I’ve got

nothing. I mean, sure, I arrived in it,

I use it, it should be listed

in the declaration, but it’s not there, and you

can’t do a thing to me.

You won’t be able to do anything because I’m such a powerful

senator—Klishas. We need to go after them, guys,

all of them. We need to talk about this.

Right now, this program is being watched by thirty-

one thousand six hundred people.

And over the course of the day, 700,000 people will watch it.

But people need to take at least one step,

spend just one minute helping spread

the information, and then instead of two and a

half million views, there’ll be 20

million views for this video.

So that your grandmother knows about Klishas,

so that your uncle, so that all those Putin lovers,

his fans, know and see this—this

face saying: yes, I have an expensive

watch collection, so back off.

What accusations? Everything’s been declared.

And then there’s Norilsk Nickel.

You see, Vladimir Milov has written a lot about this.

It’s the dirtiest

enterprise in Russia. I mean, on the one hand, it’s

a jewel, something we built there

that’s worth insane amounts of money, but

at the same time it’s the biggest polluter

in Russia, and it pollutes so heavily

because they cut costs on

treatment facilities, they cut costs on

capital investment. Why? So that they can

make quick cash.

And people pay for it with their

health, so that senators like Klishas

can have their watches, and somehow that’s considered normal.

That’s what passes for normal, apparently.

Continuing on a similar theme.

A much sadder story: nine

people died in Solikamsk, in a mine

owned by Uralkali, and I often talk about this on my program

because Uralkali is one of

those very telling enterprises, but also

an absolutely invaluable asset

that was created in the Soviet Union.

So, nine people died, and Uralkali

announced that it would pay each family

of each victim 44,000

U.S. dollars, that is, 3 million rubles.

Forty-four thousand dollars—I read that

and I was furious. How can you be such

shameless bastards? Those families won’t even be able

even in their regional center, in

the nearest major city, Perm, to buy

an apartment.

Not to mention that they’ve

lost the breadwinner, they’ve lost the person

who was the main earner in the family—he

died. And with $44,000, you can’t even

—

live on that money for any meaningful length of time.

And meanwhile, Uralkali—

let’s just look at it—

after privatization, it belonged to

Rybolovlev, and Rybolovlev became

a billionaire, worth $6.8 billion,

because he made his money from

Uralkali. Then it was owned by various

people. Kerimov owned Uralkali, and Kerimov’s

fortune was $6.4 billion.

Then there was another billionaire from the

Forbes list. Right now, Uralkali’s

main owner is the oligarch

Mazepin, who is closely tied to

Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov; many believe

he’s simply a front for Shuvalov.

Mazepin bought Uralkali in 2014,

and Mazepin’s fortune in

2015 was, according to

the official Forbes list, $1.3 billion,

and in 2017 it was $7.7 billion.

In other words, Mazepin’s fortune grew

fivefold.

So give some money, you bastard, to the families

of those who died. After all, they’re the ones who

made your money for you.

You became five times richer, you’re a

dollar billionaire.

Give these people something. I’m not saying

you have to pay tens of millions, but

some standard level of insurance—as in the U.S.,

if a person dies in a mine, the insurance

company pays out a decent

sum. But here there’s no payout, do you understand?

It’s not enough for them just to become

billionaires—they need to be

billionaires who make money off

the poor, and when those poor people die so that

Mazepin can profit, and this is not

some kind of hellish populism or

anything like that. I genuinely believe this.

I’m not some wild-eyed populist; I’m a

market guy. I believe in the market, in the free market, but

what’s happening there has nothing to do with

the market. It has absolutely nothing

to do with business or with a market

economy. It’s just

plain and simple robbery.

That’s exactly how all these people became what they are.

They got rich off Uralkali because you

have seen photos of that hole many times,

that giant hole in the ground. The whole setup there

works in such a way that half of the

production cost consists of

taking this rock out,

processing it, extracting potash

fertilizers from it, and then putting the rest back.

That is called backfilling. It is

quite expensive, and they simply

stopped doing it after privatization.

They cut costs on that, and because of it

they enriched themselves fantastically, because

their production costs dropped sharply. They

sold these fertilizers abroad, and they

cost next to nothing because no backfilling

was being done. But then the years passed, and

bam — a hole in the ground.

The ground keeps collapsing and it keeps getting bigger because

for years they did not do the backfilling.

Already in the 2000s, the state

started pressing them on it, and the state

could no longer ignore it when, in the city of

Berezniki, there was a giant hole in the ground.

The state started giving them money for

backfilling, and again nothing

happened — the money was simply siphoned off.

Everyone around them became billionaires, while in Berezniki

there is a hole in the ground, and the families of dead miners are paid

44,000 rubles (about a few hundred U.S. dollars). You cannot buy anything with that money

substantial for a family, enough to

Of course, you cannot compensate

for a person’s death, but at least to somehow

stabilize their standard of living.

You cannot do that with this money. But they are all

billionaires. This capitalism that

exists in our country is not capitalism — it is

some kind of absurd, incomprehensible mess.

Something deeply unhealthy. These oligarchs are not businessmen, not

entrepreneurs, but simply a source of endless accidents,

along with brazen and shameless lying.

In our program, we appealed to

the management of Uralkali:

have some conscience, give these people

proper compensation, insure your

workers for a decent amount, so that if,

God forbid, something happens to them there —

they are killed, lose an arm or a leg, or lose

their ability to work — they would receive insurance

payments of the kind

that workers at the same kind of

enterprise in a developed country receive. Why

can’t this be done? It can be done — you simply

do not want to do it.

Mazepin might have ended up with

a fortune of not 7.7 billion,

but 6 billion. I mean, let’s be honest,

he still would not exactly be a poor man. But

the workers would at least be paid properly.

And then, somehow, in Berezniki or in

Solikamsk, the standard of living would rise. That is

what they should do. But I am afraid they will do

it only when our

Beautiful Russia of the Future (an opposition slogan about a better future for Russia) arrives, and

in the Russia of the future, they will not simply be forced,

but by perfectly normal market methods they will

insure people, they will pay

proper wages. My angry

remarks

somehow distracted me from the time — it is already

9:17 p.m., and there are thirty-one

thousand six hundred people watching us. I wanted to talk

about the “baby generals.” This is kind of

my last program this year, and

well, we need to sum up the year

and talk about some significant

phenomena. I mean, we discussed

all sorts of madness and all kinds of things,

we talked a lot about corruption and all sorts of

horrible, disgusting phenomena. But

the “baby generals” — it seems like such a small topic, and

almost nobody noticed it — but it seems to me

that it perfectly reflects what is happening

in our country and where our country is heading,

and it perfectly reflects what we must

fight against. Who are the “baby generals”? They are

Putin’s bodyguards

who became governors, and clearly this

so-called personnel reserve consists of people who, well, simply

worked as security guards. That is a perfectly

normal job. There is nothing

demeaning about working

as a security guard, nothing bad about it — it is a normal

ordinary job. But you should not

somehow become a governor after

that.

Let’s put it this way: if you went to work

as a security guard, you chose a certain profession.

That is perfectly normal, and you bring

benefit to society. But most likely you should not

end up becoming a governor. And, as you know, they become not only

not only

governors,

but great military commanders too, just like

General Zolotov (head of Russia’s National Guard). You can see on the

photo now

Yevgeny Nikolayevich Dyumin. He worked

in Putin’s personal security detail from 2006 to 2015.

Then, for a short time, he was

governor of Kaliningrad Region,

where he failed completely and could not even hold

a single press conference. Then

he went to the FSB, and now he heads

the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and just the other day an order was issued and he

received the rank of

Colonel General. And yet, only

recently — just recently — he was a Lieutenant General,

and now he has become

a Colonel General. Very impressive. In what war

did he win? What feats did he accomplish?

Was it years of service or what? What exactly are his merits

before the country, such that we should give him

a military rank? They appointed him head of the ministry — so why

couldn’t he just remain

a Lieutenant General?

Why did he need to become a Colonel General? I mean,

the fur hat has to be taller, all the insignia

have to be of the highest rank — I mean, that is how it works.

and shine ever more brightly. I myself simply

come from a military family, and I know that in

that environment there is, after all, a certain

attitude toward rank. Those ranks—they

should mean something, they should carry

some weight. You were a

lieutenant general and became a colonel general—

that is supposed to mean something.

Here in our country, unfortunately, in 2018

it means only one thing:

officer ranks, officer honor, and

the officer hierarchy mean nothing.

It has turned to dust—just window dressing for

Putin’s entire retinue. This retinue

has taken political office, and it

is now, in the worst traditions of the USSR,

when Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev hung medals on himself,

they are now starting to—they have imagined

themselves to be some kind of ultra-cool,

military leaders, commanders, and in general

figures of historical significance.

Such towering personalities that these little

generals have started appointing colonels general

in place of actual generals. Look at this:

Dyumin, 46 years old.

Governor of Tula Region, a lieutenant general.

Also one of Putin’s bodyguards. How did he become

a lieutenant general? Explain to me why.

Why the hell does he need to be

a lieutenant general? What is he doing there in

Tula Region—I don’t understand.

Has he built an army of, I don’t know,

geese or cows and is leading it against someone?

Or some miracle-workers from Tula’s factories? Why

is he a lieutenant general? Since when?

Why are all these people becoming

lieutenant generals?

Sergei Morozov, governor of Astrakhan

Region, 45 years old, a major general, also

one of Putin’s bodyguards. A major general—come on.

You can’t hand out major general ranks to people

simply because they used to walk

behind your back carrying a pistol. Fine,

let them have a military rank,

let them get a military pension—but why

general? Did they command anything?

Did they make some significant contribution?

Did they devote their lives

to the armed forces? No, they devoted

their lives to guarding Putin. It is important

to guard a high-ranking official,

of course—but that is not

a general’s job. Dmitry Mironov, 50

years old, governor of Yaroslavl Region,

a lieutenant general.

Why a lieutenant general? We do not understand.

Why lieutenant general? And this perfectly

reflects, in general, the essence of

where everything is heading: this brazen

elite. Once they can no longer become

more important, they compensate for it with watches,

with all these status symbols, and with

general’s ranks. In other words, Putin’s circle

will go on grabbing everything for itself.

It’s not cheerful at all. My outlook

for 2019 is not cheerful: they will

keep pulling everything toward themselves. Money and influence

are no longer enough for them—they want honors too. It was not for nothing

that Senator Klishas introduced a bill on

arrest for disrespect toward officials. They

will hang more and more on themselves—

trinkets, gold aiguillettes, a scepter and

orb, the Cap of Monomakh (a symbol of old Russian tsarist power)—they’ll have

some kind of invented ritual

positions for themselves, and we will be expected to

respect them for it. And this group will continue

to fashion itself as some kind of super-

elite, a new nobility. But we, friends,

in 2019 must do everything we can

to fight this advancing new

feudalism, this kind of

perverted version of nobility.

Because we are not serfs. I absolutely do not agree that

in Russia there should emerge, in this way,

some new aristocracy. I certainly do not need

any of it, and I do not need any nobility.

I do not need all these chamberlains,

falconers,

colonel generals, lieutenant generals—

when their only merit is that they

carried briefcases for Putin, handed

him papers, and held out his jacket so he

could put it on and not catch a cold.

These people are not our

leaders. In 2019 we must

continue explaining that to them. I want to

thank everyone who, in the past year, 2018,

in this now ending 2018, watched

this program, watched our videos,

subscribed to us, supported us,

worked in our regional headquarters, helped build

this YouTube media

empire of ours, which God knows how

actually functions, but has become quite

influential. We are a major force, and we

will keep working, will keep pursuing

our goals. Elections await us—regional ones in

September 2019. We will take part

in organizing Smart Voting,

and we know that Smart Voting will help

us

hurt United Russia. United Russia is not stupid either,

and it will resist. We

will persuade everyone to take part in this.

All of this is one of our main

projects. We will continue developing this

social direction—social

reporting

on our channels. We will fight

corruption and release investigations. I

hope that in 2019 you will be with us,

and we will be with you. And our

beautiful Russia of today—it is still

beautiful, in my view—will also be with us

and will surely, someday, become

the beautiful Russia of the future.

Thank you all very much, and sorry for my

rambling New Year’s address. Happy upcoming New Year!

Happy New Year to you!

See you next year. Bye for now.

[music]