In Russia, a ruthenium cloud; in France, Senator Kerimov

[music]

Hi, this is Navalny. It’s 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, and that

means I’m back in the studio, live on air,

to answer your

questions and to discuss

the latest events of the week, and to tear into everyone

who deserves our criticism.

Please send your questions with the

hashtag #Navalny2018 on Twitter, and I’ll

pick them up and try to answer them.

And please don’t forget to like

this video, because we—you probably know—we’ve been

fighting for many

months now in an unequal battle against Putin’s cook

Prigozhin, who uses dislikes

to constantly drag down

our video’s rating and make sure it

gets fewer views. So

we’re counting on you—please click

that button. Today I have several

topics, but two main ones

that are causing

me a lot of emotional turmoil, so I’ll

probably be swearing a lot. The second topic

is our Suleiman Kerimov, who has found himself

in certain difficult circumstances, and we’ll

talk about that a bit later. But at the start

of the program, I wanted to launch a poll so that

when we get to it, I’ll already

have a sense of what you think about it.

So, Kerimov—

his lawyers paid 350 million

rubles, roughly, so that he could be released

on bail and get out of jail.

We know where Suleiman

Kerimov’s money comes from, so we can safely say

that it’s our money. We paid his

bail for him. For each of us, for each

viewer, that comes to two and a half rubles. The question

we’re asking on VKontakte, on

Facebook, on Twitter, and even on

Odnoklassniki, on the Navalny Live program, is:

Do you begrudge two and a half rubles

for Suleiman Kerimov’s bail?

Please answer, and a little later we’ll

discuss all of it. But the first topic

I wanted to talk about is, of course,

the radioactive cloud over Russia.

A huge radioactive cloud is drifting across the country.

It’s astonishing, because no one

still really

seems to understand whether this is a real story or not.

It’s barely being discussed

in the media. Even now,

some time after

it all happened, as is customary in

Russia, even in the uncensored

segment, it’s being discussed with a kind of haha,

hee-hee tone.

Thanks to our media,

I think it was Vesti.ru,

which put out a wonderful story saying

that over Bashkiria (Bashkortostan, a republic in Russia) there was

a safe ruthenium rain.

And of course there have been lots of jokes about it. We’re all

trying out our humor—will we get

superpowers from being

rained on like that, will we become

stronger and healthier?

And basically everyone is trying

to outdo everyone else, while in fact there has been no

serious or substantial reaction

from the media,

from state media, or from the

state authorities themselves. We don’t see or

hear anything, we don’t understand anything. I think this is

an important issue.

In fact, it’s an extremely important issue, and

of course you can joke about anything.

Let’s joke, sure—but at the same time

while we’re making lots of jokes

about our superpowers from

ruthenium, let’s still discuss this

seriously, because it concerns

millions of people. If this cloud

—if you looked at the dispersal map now,

published, incidentally, by Western

agencies—had affected Moscow, I

assure you, the whole discussion would have been

completely different. First of all, we would have seen

planes and officials taking

their children away for a while on

vacation to Europe, and we

would also, in fact, have heard far more

worried comments from

the authorities. After all, we’re

Moscow officials—our kids walk

on the grass, dig in the dirt or in the snow.

Sure, physicists told us

that ruthenium is completely safe, and

that even a thousandfold increase wouldn’t

have any effect on our bodies at all.

But you have to admit, that sounds a little

unpleasant, so just in case we’d

take some measures. But since this affected

Chelyabinsk—well, whatever, who cares.

Let’s just keep joking

about it. I’m going to Chelyabinsk, I’ll be in

Chelyabinsk on Sunday. No, that’s not

the main reason why

this irritates me. It irritates me, among

other things, because of everything happening around it,

because my father was born in

the village of Zalissia in the Chernobyl district

of Kyiv region (in Ukraine).

Naturally, I’ve been there many times. I’ve

been to the town of Chernobyl many times, I’ve been to

Pripyat. I was there before the accident, I was there

after the accident, and many of our

relatives lived through everything

that happened back then in 1986, and

well, it was—it was

a colossal catastrophe for the Soviet Union.

It was one of the reasons why

the Soviet Union collapsed: it simply could not, in general,

financially sustain dealing with the aftermath of

that disaster. I saw all of it, and what

is happening now with this ruthenium

This cloud strongly reminds me of everything

that happened back then with Chernobyl. God forbid,

I am absolutely not trying

to prove right now that a disaster has occurred

on the same scale, or that

the authorities are hiding such catastrophic

consequences, such catastrophic

radiation contamination. I simply

want to say that the pattern

of behavior—I’m not just, how can I put this to you now—

I can prove it—is absolutely the same, and that

shows that these people can easily

cover up any crime, and

in this situation, trusting the authorities

is impossible for even a second. And it seems to me

it is extremely important for the residents of Chelyabinsk, for the residents

of Ufa, and for the residents of the entire Urals and Volga region

who are under this supposedly harmless

ruthenium cloud, to understand this, and

it is important to force the authorities to say something

and somehow comment on all of this,

to make them carry out various

independent assessments. Now look, let’s

simply reconstruct the chronology of events

and where we learned all this from in the first place.

So, on October 6, the German agency

the German agency for

radiation protection stated that

there was, on the territory of Russia,

a serious increase in

radiation contamination. Then on the 11th

—on October 11—Rosatom stated that

this version was unfounded. But in effect

they were refuting what Germany had said. On October 13,

Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that no

radiation cloud had been detected—that is,

there was nothing at all. They were lying. That was when

they were officially, outright lying. After that,

a French institute

published the results of computer

modeling and indicated that there was a cloud,

its source was ruthenium-106, and

the epicenter of its origin was most likely

the Chelyabinsk region. After that, many days later,

after quite a long time, Russia’s

hydrometeorological service was forced

to publish a bulletin stating

that radiation levels had indeed exceeded

normal conditions, and

that a release had been recorded and the excess over normal levels

was a thousandfold. After that, on November 21,

something completely

beyond belief happened. There were a lot of jokes about it—you

saw those headlines—but the governor

of the Chelyabinsk region said there was absolutely no need

to worry; we should drink beer

and watch football—it would help us

fight this very ruthenium cloud.

After that, Bashhydromet released its

report saying that a harmless

ruthenium rain had passed over Bashkortostan (a republic within Russia), at least

that is what they acknowledged—a kind of ruthenium

rain. And even now, to this day, we still do not have

a clear explanation of where all this

came from, what the final and definitive

position of the authorities actually is, and

whether there are any mechanisms

for independently verifying all of this. That is,

we have established that while they were lying that

there was no cloud, the cloud did in fact exist. It

had its epicenter on the territory

of the Urals. All of this has been proven. But as of

today, the authorities are no longer

denying these facts; what they deny is that there is

any harm to health. Let’s go back

to the terrible, catastrophic

year of 1986.

On April 26, an explosion occurred at night, at 1 a.m.

On April 27, the next day, 36

hours after the accident, it was announced over

the radio in the city of Pripyat, and

on April 28—I simply looked up the chronology—

after several days, a short

TASS statement said that an accident had occurred,

that one of the reactors had been damaged.

Meanwhile, people were going to work, children

were going to kindergarten,

while a real cloud of severe, massive

radioactive contamination

was spreading, radioactive dust

was settling,

people kept going about their lives, children kept going out, and the authorities continued

to lie. On April 29, in Poland they began

distributing iodine-containing medication, and in

Germany, in some cities,

playgrounds were closed. In other words, after three days,

in Germany and in

other places they were already dealing with the consequences, while at the

epicenter of the events

nothing had supposedly happened. On May 1, across the country, across

the entire Soviet Union,

May Day demonstrations took place. In Kyiv and in

Minsk, people marched through the streets because

it was very important for the authorities to show that nothing

had happened—that in Germany some fools

had stirred up panic, but our Soviet people

would march through the squares with banners,

breathing in this radioactive filth and

with every breath increasing the likelihood

of terrible cancers

for themselves—all to prove, supposedly, that nothing

had happened. Just from the history of my

family:

during the May holidays, they were all sent out

specifically to dig potatoes and do

farm work, in order, among

other things, to demonstrate—well, rumors

were spreading—they lived in a village, not in

the city of Pripyat,

where nuclear specialists understood what

was happening and left fairly quickly. But

ordinary

collective farm workers around those towns knew

that something was happening, that there was some kind of

evacuation, some kind of commotion, excuse my language, but

they were told: right, you will go

and dig around in this soil,

this radioactive soil.

to stir it with your finger, and the same kind of thing

this radioactive dust, but we will prove it

which supposedly means that nothing serious happened

so that everyone, so that everyone could see what happened next

it is interesting what happens after

international herald of the child on May 5

published a map of the spread

of radioactive fallout and decided to respond

to foreigners, Russian scientists, and on May 10

two weeks after the accident, an academician

of the Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Shandolu, stated

that on May 19 the radiation level would return to

normal, and everyone said... and that

what is happening in Chelyabinsk right now, when

they tell us, "So what are you even discussing? An order has been given."

"You do not understand anything; now we will

show you scientists, and the scientists will explain everything to you"

they will clarify everything

exactly the same thing happened in 1986

scientists came out and said, well,

"We are scientists, trust us: on May 19

the radiation level in Kyiv will return to

normal." On June 10, the Soviet Union's media said

that in the city of Kyiv there were no grounds

for taking any

special measures, and at that very moment, as we now know,

the radiation level exceeded

the normal level by 10 times. Once again, I do not

want to stir up any panic, I do not want

to say that in Chelyabinsk right now

something similar to what happened

in Chernobyl has happened, but I am simply talking about

the fact that the authorities lie as a matter of habit, and to believe

even a single word now from these chief

oncologists or these participants is simply

impossible, impossible

judging by experience in that very same

Chelyabinsk, by the way, you probably, if

you know your history, know that in

1957 there was an accident at the

Mayak chemical plant, which in fact, by

its scale, exceeded even

Chernobyl, but it was hidden from everyone

simply no one knew about it; we learned

about this accident, I mean the general public learned

only when Perestroika (the Soviet reform period of the late 1980s) began

we... this should be here

a note from the newspaper *Chelyabinsky Rabochy*; we

can show it too, because on September 29

1957 there was a column

of smoke and dust up to a kilometer high

it shimmered orange-red, and everyone

was watching; it was impossible to hide it

we do not have the screenshots, unfortunately, so I will read it to you

here is the note from October 6, 1957

in the newspaper *Chelyabinsky Rabochy*: "On

last Sunday evening, many

Chelyabinsk residents observed a special glow

in the starry sky. This rather rare

glow in our latitudes had all the

signs of the northern lights." Just think about it: they

knew an accident had happened, they knew that

radiation was spreading, they knew that

people would get sick and die as a result

of it, but in the Urals they said it was the northern

lights. Can these people be trusted? No,

it is absolutely impossible to trust them

Chelyabinsk Region

is, frankly speaking, already a troubled region in terms of

disease rates, but in fact

the entire Urals, and Chelyabinsk Region in particular,

there, there... I looked it up today, well, I pulled up

the specific statistics: there are currently

90,000 people registered at cancer

centers. That is more than two and a half

percent of the population registered at oncology

centers — every 39th person

If this cloud — God forbid — even if it is

not that terrible, I hope it is not

I hope it is not terrible at all, but

still, the radiation level rose a thousandfold; if

this increases the rate of oncological

diseases by even one percent, that

already means that thousands of people will have

their lives broken, and thousands of families in the coming

period will be running around trying to find

medicines, trying to arrange surgeries, and

so on and so forth. People need

to be given proper information

either they need to be reassured, including

by bringing in independent experts

foreign ones if you like, because we

as we have seen

historically, foreigners here lie less

than our own people. Or, if there are

grounds for concern, then we should not

act on the logic of, "so there will be no

panic, let us hide everything," but honestly

say: "Guys, go outside less often,

stay off the streets

spend less time out in the precipitation, close

the vents/windows

let the children stay indoors for a while"

Let us tell people this so that they

can protect themselves a little and reduce

the risk of disease. Our

government does not do this. Once again, this

shows just how

disgustingly deceitful it is, how little it

cares about people at all. Besides

by the way, this is a very good example

that shows how thoroughly we have

destroyed all independent environmental

NGOs, and how they were all purged and declared

"foreign agents," so now

there is no such parallel

opinion. Even if they were

alarmists, these ecologists always seemed

inclined to exaggerate things — let

them exaggerate now rather than

downplay it, right? Because it is better

to spend an extra three days at home

with the windows shut than to later treat

blood cancer. Again, I hope that no one

will face such consequences

but nevertheless, I would be very

interested if you, if you live in

the city of Chelyabinsk, would write to me

Please, here’s what’s happening there, what’s going on in the city.

in your communities, what you personally think

about this, because, well, frankly speaking,

Hello, Alexei, I’m under the red haze.

Under the toxic rain—when are you coming to Ufa?

What should I do if I’m 15 and my parents won’t

let me hand out leaflets?

My name is Danil Abubakirov.

Danil, first of all, you don’t need to ask for

any permission to hand out leaflets.

Well, I mean, if your parents are strongly

against it, just talk to them,

find out why they’re against it, what you could

Being out under the toxic rain is bad—no, no,

you shouldn’t be standing in the rain. What matters to me is

that everything is safe, even with the toxic rain,

and that it’s safe. If you can’t hand things out without getting soaked, then don’t.

And I’m planning to come to Ufa very soon,

because right now we’re working

with a private venue. The local

authorities are terribly afraid of my visit.

They absolutely refuse—we’ve filed hundreds of

applications to hold a rally there,

and they haven’t approved a single one.

They won’t give us permission. Let me just say right away

which regions I’m going to, since we’ve started

talking about it. So, this week

tomorrow morning I’m flying to Perm, then I’ll

be in Vladimir at 12 noon on Saturday.

It’ll be a packed day: at 12 noon in

Vladimir, and then in Nizhny Novgorod I’ll be at

5:00 p.m. It’ll be a difficult day, difficult

rallies, and in both places they gave us terribly

bad venues, but we decided to go ahead anyway.

It’s especially important to hold one in Nizhny

Novgorod—I’m finally coming there after all.

I already served 20 days in jail over the rally

in Nizhny Novgorod, and then on Sunday I’ll

be in Chelyabinsk, and probably there we’ll, well,

also all gather together.

We’ll discuss all these things there.

Please come to the rallies.

Of course, the most problematic situation for us

in terms of pressure is in Perm.

What happened there, even by the standards of the usual

lawless chaos surrounding

our rallies and meetings,

was really something extraordinary.

The police simply came into the campaign office and

just took the equipment—for example,

the mobile phones of the people who were

there. They just seized them, loaded them into

those lovely plastic garbage bags

you can see, and carried them away. And right now you

may be thinking, well no, surely

Navalny is exaggerating,

there must have been some criminal case,

even a fake one, and maybe they filled out some

documents. But guys, I’m not exaggerating.

That’s exactly what it was: the police just came in,

said, “Put the printers in the bags,” and, “Oh,

there’s a phone lying there—take it, we’re confiscating it, into the bag,”

and they carried it all off. That’s called

robbery. People in police uniform simply walked in,

with police IDs,

and robbed the office, without any embarrassment, in front of cameras,

without any embarrassment in front of the people there, without any

documents, without any legal grounds.

Why are they so furious? Because

in Perm too—well, how do you say it properly when talking about someone going

there on Friday?

There too,

some brave local residents were found

from several homes who gave us their

private plots of land, so in Perm

my rally will take place

on private enclosed property.

I invite everyone to come. But the authorities

are going crazy because

they kept denying us permission for a rally,

and then residents said, “All right, fine, we’ll just

offer our own land for a meeting with

Navalny.” This is very important. I’m waiting for all of you

at these meetings. So, what are you writing to me about?

Some of you are writing about Chelyabinsk, some about

Perm. Valeria writes that teachers in Perm have been ordered

to make all schools

organize celebrations, class

events, and evening activities

tomorrow during your meeting. So that’s what

democracy looks like in Perm. Interesting, right? And that’s where

they have that supposedly progressive new governor,

Reshetnikov.

I keep saying it: all these

“progressive technocrats,”

these people in square glasses, are a hundred times worse

than the “red governors”

of the Yeltsin era—they’ll steal more and

be even more lawless. That’s exactly what

we’re seeing very clearly in Perm right now.

Mikhaila Badyuk writes: “I live in Chelyabinsk,

and for several years we’ve been fighting against

the construction of the mining and processing plant.

The environmental situation is terrible, and the authorities aren’t responding.”

Will you be at the rally on Sunday? Yes, I will.

I was at the previous rally against

the Tominsky GOK (a mining and processing plant near Chelyabinsk). I was there, I spoke there, and I’m

very glad, and I congratulate

you—cautiously, because after all

this is a success for the residents of Chelyabinsk, because

they forced Putin to say that he

also opposes this project. By the way, I

as a shareholder in Sberbank and

VTB, also wrote—trying to make my own

small contribution. I wrote to the

heads of these banks, which are supposed to

finance the Tominsky GOK project,

which is harmful, unprofitable, and unnecessary for the region,

asking them not to do it.

Indeed, Chelyabinsk has monstrous

environmental problems, and then on top of that this

toxic cloud—well, it would be out of place in any

region, of course, but in

Chelyabinsk it’s an outright

catastrophe. So, Chelyabinsk, Chelyabinsk—I live

in Chelyabinsk.

After Putin’s visit, there was basically a

full-scale smog episode here—the factories were working at triple capacity.

smoldering routine and Alexander Sokolov

writes: well, no, they probably didn’t switch them on

additional factories for Putin’s arrival

as far as I know, it was the other way around there

when Putin arrived, they stopped them

before that, all the hazardous industries

that produce those kinds of emissions

I saw a great many messages from

residents of Chelyabinsk saying, “I’ve lived here for many

years, and for the first time I’m enjoying clean

air. But Putin left, and they probably

switched everything back on

in order to make up for it

make up for it, so it’s back to the usual mode in

the city—who knows, we’re living with radiation as

we always have,” Jackie P. writes to me

so apparently, as I understand it, this is communication

from a person at Moscow State University who is somehow connected with

this field, and he points out to us

that there are, in fact, such

problems. So, Chelyabinsk is absolutely blowing up on Twitter

and so it’s hard for me

to quickly pick out all your questions

Dear Alexei, all right then, you

say that everyone in the government, all the heads

of the regions—in general, all corrupt officials—

should be jailed, but could you name those

who are now at the top and deserve to remain

and could genuinely help Russia

asks Novy Pelmeni on

on a slightly unrelated topic. I’m not saying

that I’m going to jail everyone—well, I’ll try to

have them jailed, or more specifically, I’ll

send them to the defendant’s bench. Your

president should not have the power

to throw everyone in jail. As for

the people who are currently

at the top of the government

most of them are corrupt. There is

some portion of them that is not

corrupt, certainly, but they are not

fit to govern right away

the state, because they are

part of this system. He may simply not

steal for himself, but he enables

the stealing

done by someone else. In other words, it’s

a strange idea of accountability

like, “I won’t be corrupt myself, but I’ll

keep quiet about all the corruption

going on around me.” It seems to me

that such people are not right for us

Eduard Sukharev writes that with Dzhabrail

there’s a hellish injustice in trying to recruit

new judges and deputies after you

dissolve them. Eduard, it’s not that hard to recruit

new judges—millions aren’t needed. A judge

is still a highly specialized profession, and we

have a sufficient number of people

to, first, recruit new judges

and second, what matters more here is not recruiting

new ones, but changing the system. Right now there is

a special personnel commission in

the Presidential Administration that

de facto appoints judges. These

commissions are the main instrument explaining why

judges are kept under control, and they

need to be abolished, they need to be abolished

along with this kind of serf-like system inside the courts

when judges are slaves to the court chairman

then they will begin

begin

to work better. Arslan N. asks me

Alexei and Natalia, don’t be afraid to come to

the Chelyabinsk cloud of ruthenium

of ruthenium. Arslan, if this is the same

Arslan, he is one of the winners of our

blogger contest. Arslan, if it is you

writing this, I’m waiting. I hope that in

Chelyabinsk, and I hope that you will

open the rally before I do. No, I’m not

afraid to go into the cloud of ruthenium because

the whole country has environmental problems

that are monstrous. A resident of Maryino—you know, I lived

for many, many years, and now I rent an apartment

here on Avtozavodskaya; I used to live opposite

an oil refinery that had

such a flare and so much smoke that at night

it was simply impossible to breathe there, so

of course you people in Chelyabinsk are tough with your

ruthenium cloud, but I want to

tell you that Kapotnya

our oil refinery

is no better at all. I’d like to see how you

Chelyabinsk folks would come to us in Maryino and

breathe this here. Suleiman Kerimov

has been having very bad luck in the city of Nice, and I

wanted to say a little about Kerimov and his

case, but today I had this

additional emotional charge, you know

on this topic. I did a very simple thing

you may not be ready, because I’m going to

tell you about Mr. Kerimov briefly

but I went and looked up his

declaration on

the Federation Council website, because Kerimov

is an official. For many years he was a State Duma deputy

from the LDPR, then from United Russia

and now in the Federation Council. So, in

general, in recent years he

has been a government official. He receives from us

a salary, and he is prohibited from engaging in

business, and generally speaking

that is his main defining characteristic

because everywhere in the newspapers they write

“businessman Suleiman Kerimov.” Guys,

what kind of businessman is he? He is forbidden

to engage in business. We should say

official Suleiman Kerimov

That is exactly why I asked whether you were ready

to give your two and a half rubles toward

his bail, and here are the first responses: so, yes

it’s a shame, yes, a shame—or no, not a shame. But our

question was: would you begrudge two and a

half rubles for Kerimov’s bail?

So, on Twitter, 89 percent of people

say they would begrudge it; on VKontakte

91 percent say they would

I feel sorry for 96 percent of people on Facebook and 90

percent on Odnoklassniki — the most

heartless people this time are on

Odnoklassniki. They feel sorry, you feel sorry, and on

Odnoklassniki — sorry, on Facebook — they feel sorry for

giving

money for Kerimov's bail. That's how it is.

I feel very sorry too. I can say that

I simply feel sorry for two and a half rubles

for him. I'm sorry that he was arrested in

France. If he had been arrested in Russia, I would be glad

that he was arrested in France, and I

regret only one thing: that he was not

put in prison here in Russia.

Let's first take a look at

Kerimov's income.

Here, today I pulled up his income for

the last several years. Well, as you can see,

there are some substantial amounts: 199

million rubles, 95 million rubles, 12

million rubles, 12 million rubles. That

is his latest figure. Well, I mean,

it's much more than the average

person earns. But this is his income over

four years, and it's less than what he

paid for himself in France as bail.

So basically, if you add up his four-

year income and assume he didn't eat

or drink, didn't drive a Ferrari around Nice

through the city of Nice, then even so he still would

not have had enough money for this bail. But he

paid it, and then I decided to look at what

he has in real estate. Again,

an oligarch. What is he accused of? That he

owns some astonishingly

large and astonishingly expensive villas

near, I mean,

Antibes on the French Riviera. Let's

take a look at the houses and see which of this

he registered and what he failed to declare.

Please show just a screenshot

of the declaration. And here, we should

just, guys, burst into tears. We should simply

cry, because it turns out that according to

his property declaration, Suleiman Kerimov

— a permanent fixture on the Forbes list, of whom

it is plainly written in black and white

in every issue of Forbes that

Suleiman Kerimov

has a fortune of six billion

rubles — has nothing. As it turns out, you know,

he has a one-room apartment of 37 square meters (about 398 sq ft) and

some other two-room apartment. He's poorer than me,

because I, after all,

do actually

have a share in an apartment measuring seventy-

eight square meters (about 840 sq ft). Marina,

right now I'm also renting an apartment

of more than 100 square meters (about 1,076 sq ft), by the way. And in that

sense, Suleiman Kerimov is simply

a pauper compared to me. He

must envy my living conditions and

is utterly poor compared to everyone

else. This, frankly speaking,

is just infuriating. Forget France — over

this man there should be running

the Prosecutor General's Office and the Investigative Committee (Russia's main federal investigative body),

because, well, the scale of the thievery is

fantastic.

The man is constantly in the news: one moment he's

buying football clubs, the next he's involved with some

charitable foundations, then he gets into

some kind of car accidents in vehicles worth

hundreds of thousands of dollars, and so on and so

forth. And all he shows us is this: for many years now

he's been looking at us

like some official sitting on a salary, and there are

his colleagues around him, and he says, 'Guys, my name is

Suleiman Kerimov,'

'and in my ownership there is

an apartment with an area of 37 square meters (about 398 sq ft), and'

And we say, 'Yes, we believe you, Suleiman, that's exactly how it is.'

Suleiman says it, and Valentina

Matviyenko (chair of Russia's Federation Council) says, 'Yes, that's exactly how it is.' Suleiman says it, and

the Federal Security Service (FSB) tells him,

'Dear Suleiman, we believe you,' says

the commission for reviewing the income and expenses

of state officials: 'We believe you,' says

the Presidential Administration. What kind of

system is this? Well, obviously it's all lies. Here

they write about him here that he has 6 billion

dollars in wealth, and he declares

to us an apartment of 37 square meters. Are we supposed to

believe that?

So yes, of course, I am glad that he was detained

in France. I hope he will face

real criminal prosecution.

I very much hope so. I would like

the Russian Federation

to also somehow pay attention to this

and say, 'Well now, it turns out

goodness me — under the weight already

of the French legal evidence. But

we also took a look at him and tried

to recover some amount of our money.'

Because this money — this money laundering

that took place in France — where did the money

come from? Presumably, we were the first

to suffer from it, and only secondly

France.

The French latched onto these several

million — they accuse him of

having

bought this villa at an artificially low price and thereby

failed to pay several

million euros in taxes. And the French say:

'With several million euros, we can

build a new school, or we can build

a new hospital, or perhaps we can spend it

on our army or police, and maybe

we'll build a new road. So come on,

Suleiman, pay this money to the French

state.' And we — we know how

Suleiman Kerimov made his money: he effectively

robbed Sberbank for many years. He bought

Sberbank shares, took loans secured by those

Sberbank shares, and then bought more

Sberbank shares again. This is just... this is simply

It was a scheme that was legally prohibited.

It existed even before Gref, but he made money from it, and

then invested all of it—essentially

stolen money from the privatization of raw-materials

companies. His $6 billion is

effectively money stolen from Russia, and

it turns out the entire Russian state

simply does not care. The only thing

the Russian state says on this subject is

that it is trying to prove that he has

diplomatic status and diplomatic

immunity. In other words, we are protecting

the person who stole our

money,

launders it in France, and the French decided

to collect a bit of tax from him over it.

We are not even trying to collect our own taxes; we

are protecting him with some kind of official

passport. If these houses belong to Suleiman

Kerimov,

we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation are absolutely

convinced of it.

We know, and we believe that we can

prove it, including the fact that he has

this property. Let's take a look at

this wonderful image: here we see three

villas—actually, three villas in Cap d'Antibes most

often in the media you

see information only about the villa

Hier, which is in the middle, and

Suleiman Kerimov is accused of being

the owner of that villa. You can

basically repeat the

exercise that we at the Foundation

for Fighting Corruption carried out: take the documents

from the recently published so-called

Paradise Papers, in the published

portion.

There is a special website there that is convenient

to use: enter the name Suleiman

Kerimov, and you will find an offshore company that belongs to him,

and you will also discover that

the manager of that offshore company, the director of those

offshore entities, is a certain Mr.

Studhalter. We know this man's connection

to Suleiman Kerimov, and we know it because

the first sad episode involving Kerimov

was when he, together with Tina

Kandelaki, got into a car crash, as you may remember.

It was a Ferrari, some kind of

super-expensive car—I don't remember

exactly which one anymore.

And that car belonged to this

Mr. Studhalter, and he is connected to

all of his companies. And the same Studhalter

manages the special legal entities

that are used in France

most often for acquiring real estate.

These three villas that you saw

belong to companies that are under

Studhalter's management.

Their compact location, and quite a lot besides,

which I won't burden you with right now

in the form of various legal details,

as it seems to us—and we are convinced of this with

one hundred percent certainty—shows

that all of this belongs to Mr.

Kerimov.

And he did not declare any of it. He bought all of it

at an undervalued price and violated

French laws. He violated Russian

laws too. As I already said, he violated

half the reporting rules, violated

tax rules here, he had offshore assets, and not only did he fail to declare them,

he not only failed to declare them,

he also had, and evidently still has,

bank accounts undeclared in Russia,

and violated a large number

of all sorts of absurd rules introduced

by the Central Bank that apply to ordinary

people, but for some reason do not apply

to Kerimov. In other words, the French

were the first to say that this man

is a criminal, that he broke the law. We are now

checking again exactly what laws he broke

in fact. We believe that he has

four villas. Today, once again,

we had in our

investigations department a discussion on

this subject, and a joke came up there:

that

why does Suleiman Kerimov have four villas

on the French Riviera? Because

under Sharia, a Muslim man may have

four wives, but each wife must have

her own house, so he bought four villas

on the French Riviera.

So this man is a criminal. Russia, unfortunately,

is not making any

claims against him.

We will try to make sure that Russia

does at least take some steps on this

issue. Therefore, now, based on the

circumstances uncovered by

the French police and made public through these

so-called Paradise

Papers, we will be appealing to

the Prosecutor General's Office, the Investigative Committee,

and the Federation Council,

which are currently doing nothing

to formalize this

process and force Mr. Kerimov,

when he returns to us—I don't know whether

from under travel restrictions or from a

French prison—to explain how, with

a relatively modest income,

he came to possess these

wonderful, magnificent villas

worth tens, perhaps hundreds,

of millions of euros.

What do you think about the interpreter? I got so

carried away that I stopped answering your

questions. Let me take a look. So what am I

going to do about the large number of churches?

I am not going to do anything about the large

number of churches. Let them remain,

a large number of churches. I am not going

to carry churches around, and so, guys, this in no way

It’s connected to the kind of madness that’s taking hold in the country.

It has nothing to do with any large number of

churches there or anything like that.

They’re asking whether Ulyukayev will be acquitted. I

just think that Ulyukayev will get

a suspended sentence, or he’ll get credit for the time he’s already

served. He’s been sitting under house

arrest for a year; they’ll give him, say, one year of actual

prison time, and that year of actual

prison will be counted as already served because of the house arrest.

The defense will count it as a year of real prison time.

Suleiman Kerimov is in France, so there are no dislikes.

Yulia Gnedina writes: there are no coincidences, none at all.

Suleyman Kerimov is responsible for the dislikes.

Prigozhin is responsible for them, don’t worry.

They’ll bring us another batch of dislikes again.

That’s what I mean—they’ll deliver them in full.

So, they’re asking about Yavlinsky.

What I can say about Yavlinsky is that he

has every right to run in the election.

It’s just that, unfortunately, he isn’t running any

real election campaign. Polygraph Sharikoff

writes: no big deal, Kadyrov will cure everyone of

cancer if anything happens. If you

missed that news, I talked a lot

about cancer-related illnesses.

It really is an astonishing thing.

What happened is that Kadyrov received

the highest award given to doctors—

to oncologists. I honestly no longer know

whether to laugh at it or grieve over it. It’s some kind of

complete absurdity that keeps happening there.

That’s really how it was, and we saw the video.

There are doctors sitting there—apparently they really are

doctors, apparently really

oncologists—and one of them says, ‘Dear

Ramzan Akhmatovich,

we would like to present you with the highest award

of the oncologists,’ and they all sit there nodding,

saying, ‘You have done so much for the development of

medicine,’ and Kadyrov just sits there

nodding his head. I mean, it’s a farce.

On the one hand; on the other hand, of course,

it’s

an absolutely insulting thing.

So, Alexei writes to me:

‘Please wear a hat to the rally,

so you don’t catch cold—it just seems like you might

get sick. And for Chelyabinsk it would be good

to take a dosimeter with you.’

That’s not stupid at all—quite the opposite, it’s not stupid

to take precautions. But

how exactly do you imagine it? I’m standing on

the stage in Chelyabinsk with a dosimeter, meaning

it starts beeping and then what?

Do I wrap myself in foil and run off the stage?

That would be hard to pull off. But

the hat, by the way, is a whole problem.

There

it’s already so cold. If you’re going to come

to the rally, dress

warmly. Speaking without a hat is

stupid.

But in a hat you look like an idiot. You just can’t

give a speech in a hat—it looks rather strange.

So honestly, we don’t know

what to do in this kind of complicated situation.

It’s unclear what to do about the hat. Alexander

asks how to take Kadyrov’s medal away from him.

No need. Don’t take away the medals they handed out—let that

be the least of our problems. What needs to be taken from Kadyrov

is the money, the illegally

acquired power he seized. The medal

can stay with him. Let’s say that of everything

Ramzan Kadyrov has, this

medal from the chief oncologist can remain.

When are you planning to go to St. Petersburg? Sklyarenko, I

have been planning to go to St. Petersburg for

many, many months already, but

St. Petersburg, in that sense—we and

the authorities have gotten into a complete

deadlock. Well, you know the whole story.

In St. Petersburg they flatly

won’t give me any

approval for holding

a rally there.

Lasse asks me—actually scolds me:

‘Alexei, I’ve been asking for four programs in a row now:

will you simplify the adoption procedure?

Well, I’m not ready right now

to say off the cuff that I’ll just simplify everything.

I know there is a very, very big

problem there—even close relatives

have a hard time going through the procedure

of adoption. It

is complicated, very bureaucratic.

It is not really aimed at

protecting the rights of the child. But to say that

I would just abolish it all right now—I’m not ready to say that.

I know the problem exists and I’m trying to study it better.

Alexei, is Mikhelson an oligarch?

I’m being asked—meaning

Mikhelson from the company

Novatek. Well yes, he is an oligarch, like any

very wealthy person

directly connected to the authorities.

Of course he is an oligarch, and you remember very well

that one of the forms of connection

between oligarch Mikhelson and the authorities was that

he directed money to that very fund from which

the dacha for Medvedev was built

(a reference to Dmitry Medvedev).

So without a doubt, Mikhelson is probably,

compared with other oligarchs, a fairly

likable guy, but nevertheless we

can see that he is implicated in all these

corrupt schemes, and of course

he is an oligarch, and his

activities, of course, should be

investigated. Alexei, tomorrow in Perm, at the rally, will you

be available, or

will it be possible just to take a photo with you?

I love taking photos, asks

Daniil. So Daniil, come, and

we’ll take as many photos with you as I can manage.

The only thing is, in Vladimir there will be

a problem with timing—in Vladimir we’ll be

in a hurry, and

go to Nizhny Novgorod—Sechin and the court don't...

ask too much about this, because

everyone is interested; it has turned into

a kind of sport—people are placing bets

on whether Sechin will show up in court this time

He was summoned to court as one of the

key witnesses in the Ulyukayev case, and obviously

he is supposed to testify in this trial

because a large part of the

materials is directly connected

to Sechin—the wiretapped conversation

between Ulyukayev and Sechin directly,

the conversations

inside the room—Ulyukayev and Sechin

the money being handed directly to Ulyukayev

by Sechin under the guise of some of his

sausages or something like that, so

of course the court cannot limit itself to

simply reading out his written

testimony; it has to summon him. But Sechin

is not coming. This is an interesting situation for me

It's doubly interesting, because

the first time I learned that Sechin

wasn't coming to court, I happened to be in

that situation—I had just arrived

from some region, and it was already 9 a.m.

I had just woken up; the night before

we had arrived, and I was lying there reading

this news on my phone, and at the same time

someone was ringing my apartment doorbell

and just pounding on the door with a fist

and this went on for several

days in a row. It was court bailiffs

trying to serve me some kind of

paper over and over. They send them to me,

bring everything to my office, and for some reason also come

and bring them to my home too. And this is their

routine: they come at seven in the morning; one

person starts ringing and just keeps

holding down the bell

while another person literally

beats on the door with a fist. And by now, I don't know, I

don't pay attention to it, and my wife doesn't

pay attention either; they go out with the children

in the morning to take them to school and say

the kids now just walk right past these

bailiffs without even paying attention, straight to the elevator

It's all become completely routine.

So, just feel the difference. We know

how the bailiff service works, and

until you pay them, they don't deal with

any court decisions, any

collections or enforcement actions.

But around me, they just run

in circles—at seven in the morning sharp, they're already there

showing up with some kind of witnesses,

people who are supposed to certify that

I supposedly refused to accept

their paper.

They stand outside the door for hours. I'm not

hiding from them—please, I'm here at the office, they

know that I'm about to leave the apartment and

go to the office.

They can run after me and hand me

whatever they want, but what matters to them

is to pound threateningly with their fists

on the door—in the literal sense

they knock for 40 minutes straight, an hour straight, like

they never get tired. And here I am reading that now

they simply can't get to him at all

and can't serve him documents at Ros

neft; they can't manage it in any way

can't even find a way to pass anything to him. This is

very interesting. I think he will come

only in one case: if Putin

personally tells him, basically, 'All right, Sechin, come.'

Because otherwise, everything is arranged in such a way

that no one is going to force him

The court won't even dare issue

an order for compulsory appearance, which it

should have done long ago. Well,

fine, say it issues the order—then what?

Are they going to storm Rosneft? You can't even

get close to Sechin

There is a huge security service

that stands above any police force, above

any FSB (Russia's security service), and certainly above

the timid bailiff service, which

stops being timid only when

it's pounding on my door. And I think he

will keep ignoring all of this, ignoring it

and ignoring it, and saying all these

amusing things like, 'I can't come

to court because I'm extremely busy.'

I even want to run an experiment:

the next time bailiffs come to

bring me in by force

or escort me somewhere—they've come here many

times to bring me in by force, I remember

they took me to Kirov, escorted me, even on the plane

they traveled with me

There in Kirov, I remember, at the hotel, they

had brought me in by force, and then sat there

while I stayed overnight before the court hearing

that night in the hotel, they were on duty under

the door. Sechin won't do anything like that, and

so the next time they try

to bring me in, I will write

a statement where I will repeat word for word what

Sechin wrote: I will write that due to

a very busy schedule that was set long ago,

I unfortunately cannot take part

in your various court proceedings and

you should leave me alone. And then we'll compare what

happened in Sechin's case with what happens

in my case. It will be very, very interesting

whether it will be the same or

whether it will be different. Looking at your questions now.

Sechin, Sechin... what should he take, and a session of

life-giving inhalation—I don't know what that

is.

Andrei Kasyanov asks: do you consider Gundyayev's

gang to be thieves, and should the

church be taxed? I don't think the church should

be taxed. Most

priests and clergy are

absolutely poor people, and of course

I do not consider all of them thieves.

It's a different matter that the Church should

be separate from the state, and my main

complaint right now against the

leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is that

it seems to me that not many of them

actually

believe in God at all. Markova asks me, Alexei,

from "Mir Spas Transformatsii," about the fact that you

left Russia for Europe permanently — is that

true? It's true, and you see, right now I'm broadcasting

from Amsterdam, and when tomorrow

morning I go — not to Perm, I will actually go

in fact not to Perm but to, well,

and then not to Chelyabinsk, I will go to

Luxembourg. But there's no need to believe

all this, all this terrible

nonsense they keep writing about me endlessly. I

live in Russia, my children live in Russia,

my family lives in Russia. I would very much like

for that always to remain the case. Alexei, you

were talking about these emissions in Chelyabinsk and

not only there, but what then do you plan

to do with all these factories? Simply

shutting them down isn't possible — those very

people would lose their jobs. Maybe move some

production out of the region? asks Maxim.

Excellent question, Maxim. Well, look,

what the state should do right

now, in real life — because we're not in

a fairy tale but in real life — so as far as

this cloud over Chelyabinsk is concerned,

the state is obliged, first, to disclose all

the information it has; second,

to invite independent environmental

organizations, including foreign ones, in order

for them to conduct monitoring

independently and report to the public

independent data on what is happening.

And in that way, probably, we would be able

to explain to people what is going on. As for

the factories and the terrible environmental

situation in Chelyabinsk — well, the situation

now

is bad, but from a bad situation

the authorities are trying to move toward an even worse

situation, for example by building that very

Tominsky mining and processing plant, which will pollute

the sources of drinking water for all of

Chelyabinsk. So at a minimum, we need

to start by not moving in the

direction of making things worse. Of course, we

must look at what is happening with

these Chelyabinsk factories, who owns

them, and I assure you that in nine

cases out of ten we will find a situation

where huge amounts of money from these

factories are being siphoned off to offshore accounts, and one

tenth of that money would be enough

to expand

the treatment facilities, to improve them

in a truly radical way. But they

don't need to do that. What is happening in

Krasnoyarsk is also happening in many

many other cities: there are these

various oligarchs

about whom we learn from newspapers that one

bought a yacht for 100 million euros, another bought

a yacht for 200 million euros, and at the same time

they say, "We can't spend 30

million dollars to build

new treatment facilities because

the economics of the enterprise don't allow it."

The economics of the enterprise do allow

it. Therefore, in the beautiful Russia

of the future, people will have the right

to file lawsuits against

enterprises for worsening the ecological

situation. In order to avoid these

lawsuits, enterprises will build

treatment facilities because that

will turn out to be cheaper than dealing with these

risks, and enterprises will insure

their workers, including against various

illnesses and deteriorating health.

I mean, this isn't rocket science — that's how it

works in many countries.

An enterprise and the oligarch who owns

the enterprise must understand that

investing in environmental

safety is more important for him than

buying a new yacht, because otherwise

residents, through their lawsuits, will

bankrupt him. That's roughly how I

see it.

A question — she asks me

this:

how would you comment on the situation where

Putin said that enterprises

must be ready to switch to a wartime

footing?

He really did say that, and there were many

comments on the subject.

It's just that Putin also said it like this: every

private enterprise must be ready for a transition

to a wartime footing, and there were many jokes — go

switch to any tracks yourself, lie down on them —

but still, I will defend Putin here.

A surprising situation. First of all, he

said it at one of the defense

meetings. Secondly, the overall context there

of the discussion was that the economy should

be ready for mobilization, so

he didn't say anything especially terrible. It's just that

overall, of course, the context is such

that right now our military-industrial complex and

the state have swallowed the entire economy, and

surely the first priority should be to care

about something else, not about whether

enterprises should be ready

to switch to a wartime footing — as it is, everything

is already running on those tracks anyway.

Ella Pamfilova and the Tatarstan referendum

I want to say a few words about this because

I still have a few minutes. This is

an extremely important situation where we legally

once again proved

better, in fact perhaps even better

than in other elections, that

We have shown just how heavily they are rigged,

elections in our country in general.

In Tatarstan, there is this thing called self-taxation,

or self-assessment. In fact, it exists in

several different republics; it’s just that in

Tatarstan the authorities are especially

fond of it. What does that mean? It means

that you are supposedly asked to decide for yourselves:

we need to repair the school roof, but there is no money

in the budget of our village, our

specific locality, so

come on, everyone, let’s all chip in a ruble (about $0.01) each.

And the state, as an incentive, for every

100 rubles we contribute, adds 4 more rubles,

and then we will have enough money

to repair the roof of that school.

Generally speaking, that sounds reasonable in

the Russian context, and especially in

the realities of Tatarstan, it sounds less

reasonable, because if we look at

the budget and at the people who

feed off that budget, we will see

that all this fuss around the referendum on

self-taxation amounts to just 2–3

percent of what is stolen outright.

If they simply stopped stealing that money,

there would be no need to hold such referendums.

But in any case, they hold these

referendums and make decisions

about what is effectively a new tax—sometimes 100

rubles, sometimes 1,000 rubles (about $1 to $10)—that we all have to

chip in to fix something. And

we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, in our

headquarters, together with observers from Golos (an independent election-monitoring movement),

conducted a fairly simple experiment.

There were almost 900 such referendums in different

localities, and we sent

observers to several dozen

of these referendums. And it turned out that

everywhere our observers were present, those

referendums did not pass, and turnout there

was everywhere much lower than the officially announced

figures. The average turnout announced

by the republic’s election commission

was 66 percent. We measured it

and saw that at least 46 percent

of that turnout was simply fabricated. It went so far that

as you can see on the chart now, the red

line at the top is the official turnout

that was reported.

And the bars fall nowhere near

as you can see, 66

percent—that is where observers were present. And

at those polling stations where our

observers were, there was no falsification there,

there was no ballot stuffing—they were afraid

to do it, afraid of a scandal. Well,

the turnout was not there, and those referendums

failed almost everywhere as a result.

By the way, those people will not pay

the additional tax. But where

there were no observers, people will

pay a tax they did not

vote for.

This once again shows us very clearly

how made-up

all these figures are,

the ones the authorities use to intimidate us with as proof of their support.

They keep saying,

“Why are you fighting us? Look, we have

60 percent everywhere. Of course, not

only do we have falsifications, but

even without falsification we would still

beat you.” And my answer is: no, you would not.

Hold a vote without falsification, and then

we’ll see. And this situation in Tatarstan, I think, very clearly

demonstrates that. Now we are very

interested to see what our

friend Ella Pamfilova will do. She talks so much

about standing guard over fair

elections. She so loves talking about

how, for example, I should not be allowed to run in

elections because that supposedly contradicts

some non-existent law. But what happened

in Tatarstan, where

we did manage to get several

dozens of referendums canceled, but most of them,

the overwhelming majority, still went ahead

with falsified turnout—and

the mathematical probability of that—I was even sent calculations—

it was something

astronomically tiny, but they

gave one example: the probability

that in one and the same

villages, turnout at some polling stations would be 90 percent,

even reaching 100, while at other stations in that

very same village

turnout would be 20 percent—the probability of that

is like if right now, here,

a character from the film *Star Wars* suddenly appeared

and said to me, “Alexei, I am your

father.” In other words, it is impossible, impossible

for this to happen. And we very much want

the deceitful Ella Pamfilova, together with her

deceitful, utterly hypocritical

Central Election Commission,

to tell us something about this. Will she

recognize the results of these referendums

in Tatarstan,

or will she not? Or will she once again tell us

that perhaps

such a thing just happened, some kind of coincidence,

and mathematics is one thing, life is another?

After all, strange things can happen—

lightning struck some salty

water solution on Earth, and suddenly DNA began

twisting in a particular direction.

It happened, hallelujah—and in Tatarstan

roughly the same thing happened for the second time

in the history of the world.

We will formalize our complaints; we will send

complaints to the republic’s election commission

and then to the Central Election Commission.

And we are very, very interested to see, and

I urge all of you to watch closely

what these wonderful people from

the election apparatus will tell us.

If you have a plan to bring the ruble back to

to the old exchange rate, or do that

it would be impractical. Gosha, if I were to become

president and, by administrative means,

try to return the ruble to some previous rate, then we

would end up with a Soviet Union-style situation. Like,

just open any reference book and

you’ll find that formally the exchange rate was 60

kopeks per dollar — a dollar cost 60 kopeks. In

practice, there was a black market where the price was

completely different. After all, the exchange rate is something

that should be determined by

the economic situation, and bringing it back

administratively is not just

inadvisable — we would simply destroy our

economy.

Andryukha, by the way, that’s a great question.

Where is the promised Year of Ecology, where are the

trolleybuses, where are the trolleybuses with monthly passes?

The authorities, of course, would rather stay silent.

Can the trolleybuses be brought back?

Trolleybuses — in fact, when you’re on a plane,

you hear: “Ladies and gentlemen, dear

passengers, the Year of Ecology has been declared in Russia.”

So there you are — the Year of Ecology, clouds outside the window — it’s

just wonderful, it all lines up nicely.

But as for trolleybuses, yes,

Sobyanin deceived people. I remember there

was a situation where a rather silly group

of cheerful urbanists who actively

supported both Liksutov

and Sobyanin on various issues

said they were such very good

public figures. And then Sobyanin went and

deceived them, and Liksutov deceived them too, and here

well, what can I say except:

I told you, guys, I told you that

they are crooks and thieves.

If Sobyanin and Liksutov steal

money on procurement — for example, on metro carriages —

for the metro,

if they manipulate the traffic congestion data in

Moscow — and traffic jams in Moscow haven’t

gone anywhere — then you’re not going to get them to implement

normal projects. That’s not how it works.

They can’t be crooks over here

and over there normal people who

care about trolleybuses. That’s what you

were supporting.

But I’m not saying that Andryukha specifically

supported them — the one asking the question.

Sobyanin and Liksutov, but among other things

support for these characters led to the fact

that, without any significant

public outrage,

they wiped out the trolleybuses. Alexei, in Russia

more than 200 million

abortions have been performed. How do you feel about that?

Nikolai Lopatin asks me that.

This is a huge problem for our country. It is actually

an excellent illustration of the fact that all this

talk about Russia being very

conservative is a lie. Russia is not

that kind of country. Russia is a country where there are many

problems on this issue. Friends, I am absolutely

against banning abortion, because it would simply

lead to women having these

abortions tomorrow in illegal clinics, and

they will die. We’ve been through this many times

in different countries. There should rather be

a different approach to this problem, including

sex education, including

the distribution of contraceptives,

various means of contraception, sexual

education in general, working with children,

working with young people, and of course fighting

poverty. Why does a woman have an abortion?

Because she understands that she will never be able to

raise that child in Russian realities.

So this is a big, long-term

job. All right, I don’t want to end

on abortions. Let’s move on — it’s already 19... I’ve already

gone one minute over. Alexei, what will you

do if you are not allowed to run in

the election? And if you lose it?

That’s asked by Seryoga3000 — a frequently

asked question.

A great question to end

this episode with. If I lose this

election, whether in a fair or unfair contest,

then I will still continue fighting for

change in this country. Also, if I lose, then

there will be more corruption, there will be

more injustice, and the authorities will still

keep getting worse. So I

will continue my work anyway. I

don’t know in what capacity, whether I will have

more people supporting me or whether they will

support me less, but I will continue.

What will I do if I am not

allowed into this election? Well, guys, then

the question is for you personally. I will not recognize these elections

if I am not allowed to take part in them. I

will call on all of you to boycott

these elections, because they will not be real elections.

And I hope that you will support me

in this and say to the authorities:

guys, we will not let you decide for us who

our candidate should be. We will not

allow you to put forward some

figure and say, “Here you go,

this is the opposition, vote for him.” If we

agree to that once — but we already did

agree to it once, when there was the situation

with Prokhorov (Mikhail Prokhorov, businessman and former presidential candidate) — then they will keep moving

along those same tracks, and

that’s exactly what they’re doing. But it seems to me they don’t realize

that those tracks lead us only into a dead end.

Thank you very much for listening. This has been my

program. I’ll be in Perm,

Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, and

Chelyabinsk this weekend — come to the

meetings.

And until next Thursday on the

Navalny LIVE channel — bye.

[music]