Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #013. Nemtsov, Turovsky, Strelkov, medal winners, and Krasnoyarsk deputies

[music]

Hello everyone in Moscow.

20:18 That means I’m here in the studio.

Alexei Navalny, and at long last I’ve

ended up back here after

a four-week, well, forced absence.

Thank you very much to everyone

on the FBK team (Anti-Corruption Foundation) who hosted these broadcasts

instead of me. Thank you very much to all of you who

watched those broadcasts. Thank you very much to everyone

who’s watching now. I hope I’ll be able

either to tell you something

interesting or answer some

questions you care about. That’s what

our programs are for. You can

send those questions using the hashtag Navalny2018

and ask them on Twitter. A lot of people have been asking me

about how my time in the

special detention center went. So, those 25 days—

25 days is longer than 15 days. That’s

the main thing

I realized during that time: 10 days

go by very quickly, almost unnoticed.

After 15 days, it starts to get a little old. But

with 25 days, you just keep thinking constantly,

“My God, this is taking forever.” But at exactly that

moment, you think about those people

who are locked up for years. And I don’t have to look far—

my brother has been imprisoned for 2.5 years,

two of them in solitary confinement, and immediately

that feeling disappears. In any

case, one way or another, the authorities have decided

that at every rally

they’ll arrest not only me but also

FBK staff, not to mention

ordinary random people. So

interruptions like this in our program may

happen. But I hope you’ll treat that

with understanding.

One more amusing fact about my detention center stay: I

was locked up with a celebrity this time.

The celebrity in the detention center was the famous Mara

Baghdasaryan, and that’s when I really

understood, guys, what

real fame is. I was

in the detention center and was kind of the most

well-known guy there. People asked me for

autographs and so on. Then Mara arrives,

Baghdasaryan, and my star set

instantly. If maybe

50 or 60 percent know me, then literally

everyone knows her—absolutely everyone, all the Russian

migrants, Tajiks, anybody at all knows her

and knows her exploits well. So

television really is a powerful thing. Once again I

was convinced how easy it is

to turn someone into a celebrity. Though,

to be fair, she’s actually a fairly modest

young woman in person. We sort of chatted

a little through the bars

when there was a chance—when she was out

for a walk or I was out for a walk. Today we have

several topics with you today

that I wanted to discuss, and since

I’ve been flooded first and foremost with questions

about my debate with Igor Strelkov and about

that, I’ll say more a bit later. But I decided

to try holding a poll during this broadcast.

Look, right now in your

left or right—

right, they’re prompting me—in the right corner

of the screen, a little icon should appear, and

if you click it, a poll will pop up

about whether I was right

to agree to debate Strelkov

or whether I was wrong. For now we’ll discuss

some other topics, and then I’ll

try to answer that

in great detail. But I’m genuinely very interested in

your opinion, so please

vote, and we’ll see what you’ve

voted for. But the main topic

of today is, of course, the verdict for the

murderers of Nemtsov (Boris Nemtsov, Russian opposition politician),

the murderers of Nemtsov—but not the organizers

of Nemtsov’s killing, and certainly not the people who ordered

Nemtsov’s murder. I’ve said here before, and I can

repeat it again, that this trial,

despite the fact that the man who

pulled the trigger got 20 years today,

which is not much, really, because we remember that

Oleg Sentsov got 20 years for an alleged attempt to set fire to

a United Russia office, which I don’t think

even happened—it was all fabricated too—

and here the man who

directly shot Nemtsov

also got 20 years. The others got

various shorter sentences, and still I’m

not satisfied, despite that. I’m not satisfied with

the course of this trial, nor with

the investigation at all, because neither

the people who ordered it nor the organizers even

appeared in the courtroom. There is an

opinion that, well, at least this is something, because

at least the actual shooter

was imprisoned—20 years, fine,

let it be so. But as for me, it would have been better if

the shooter had escaped responsibility

and was somewhere on the run, while the people who ordered it and

the organizers were sitting on the

defendants’ bench and received those sentences. But look,

just let’s remember—let’s once again

take in what exactly the court of the Russian

Federation, the court of the Russian Federation, decided with this

verdict. It decided that there was this

Ruslan Mukhutdinov, who is currently

on the run—he was not convicted of anything—

who is the driver

for Geremeyev, one of Kadyrov’s

relatives—that is, a police-driver, and

this police-driver organized everything.

His salary was, what, 35,000 rubles a month (about $600 at the time),

at most, and yet he spent—

and this is not my speculation right now, this is

the official court ruling, what’s written

in the verdict—he spent 15 million rubles (about $250,000 at the time)

on preparations. He rented several

apartments in Moscow over the course of several

Over the course of several months, he bought several cars.

For several months, he

organized surveillance of Nemtsov, and all of it

was done by him—he came up with all of this and

carried it out—just some driver, supposedly, and

the system of the Interior Ministry

of Internal Affairs. Do you believe that? I

categorically refuse to believe it. And

that is precisely why the results of this

trial—the verdict—do not satisfy me.

Because I understand—I mean, I think you

and everyone else understand that

an ordinary driver could not have organized all of this.

We understand that Geremeyev

his direct employer and

supervisor, at the very least,

Yereyev was directly involved in all of this.

And we can see from the case materials that

he and the shooter were constantly

moving around together, flying together, uh,

riding in the same cars,

and so on and so forth. But

for some reason, the investigation showed very little

interest in this figure. One of, probably,

the most shameful chapters, generally, in

Russian justice, and specifically in this case. One

of the most horrifying episodes

was how FSB officers

explained to the jury, the prosecutors, and

the broader public why, exactly,

Yereyev

did not even appear in court. They said, well,

there was, yes, an order issued for

his arrest, for him to be brought in. They said, but

we went to Chechnya, knocked on the door,

and no one answered. So we

turned around and left.

Well, I have several times been inside

apartments like that, where

FSB officers, Interior Ministry officers, or investigators from the

Investigative Committee wanted to get in. You know, not once have I seen

a situation where they knocked, I did not open the door, and

they just left. Every single time, they cut through the door, and

every single time, a whole crowd of OMON riot police ran in,

along with all kinds of force support and everything else.

Every time they needed

to put me under surveillance, it was so intense

that even my children noticed it: “Dad,

why is that car always following us?”

But with Yereyev, you see, the

FSB officers somehow ‘couldn’t manage it.’ Well, how

could they not manage it? They ‘couldn’t’ for

a very simple reason. I do not know,

and I cannot say for certain whether

Vladimir Putin gave a direct order to kill

Nemtsov. But the fact that Putin personally and

directly

gave instructions to ensure that in this trial

Kadyrov, Geremeyev, and the real masterminds

of this murder would avoid punishment and would not even

end up in court—that I am one hundred percent certain of. I cannot

imagine how, in any other way,

the Investigative Committee,

the FSB, and the prosecutor’s office could have developed such

a selective blindness, you know. Here

they see one part of the picture, while another

part they completely fail to notice, paying no

attention to the fact that an ordinary driver simply does not have

15 million rubles (about US$250,000 at the time). They write, yes,

he spent 15 million rubles (about US$250,000 at the time). They do not want to see

any of this, they do not want to notice it, and

of course this is a direct instruction from Putin—not

from Zolotov, not from some—I do not know—nor

from Prosecutor General Chaika, nor from Bastrykin. I am

absolutely convinced that Putin personally

bears responsibility now for the fact that

the organizers and masterminds of Nemtsov’s murder

have escaped accountability. For now, unfortunately,

that is the case. And unfortunately, this is

the kind of fact that probably lends support to

the conspiracy theory that he

may have been involved in the murder itself. I

still do not think that is the case.

I hope it is not. It seems to me that

Kadyrov and the rest of that crowd

more likely misinterpreted some of his

phrases or wishes or something else

of that sort—something like, “Come on, guys,

good job, you’re fighting the opposition.” They

thought, well, probably he wants us

to kill someone here, and they chose

Nemtsov. I assume that is how it happened. But

in any case, the court did nothing to investigate

any of this, and the investigation itself

was conducted outrageously badly.

Despite the fact that the best investigators

were working on it—which, by the way,

perfectly characterizes the entire

Russian law enforcement system: if

this is what the best investigators did,

what can we expect from ordinary

investigators?

So yes, that is why I believe that in this

trial, in this disgusting and

shameful verdict, Putin

Debates, debates, debates, debates—I’ll talk

about the debates. Guys, ask me

some other questions for now. And the second

topic I wanted to discuss, which we

were dealing with all day today, is

the situation with Alexander Turovsky, our

volunteer. Since June, he had already been a staff member

at the headquarters—a wonderful, excellent guy

whom we have known for several years. He

worked as a volunteer for a long time and only

started receiving a salary at headquarters in June, just

like the small number of people who, in general, in

our headquarters—at our Moscow headquarters, I think

about 10 people receive a salary, while

we have 17,000 volunteers. In a typical

regional headquarters, two people receive

a salary. Turovsky worked there and was

an excellent guy, a very reliable person. And

today we had a meeting at the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation). We

were discussing various things, and suddenly someone

said, “Hey, take a look at

Turovsky’s post.” Of course, for us that had

the effect of a bombshell and a shock.

Because—please put the text on screen.

Alexander wrote a post that, well,

looks quite strange. It’s basically about

how, essentially, no one helped him during

this difficult—really difficult—

situation, when police officers

knocked him down right at night at our headquarters, and so

he is disappointed, and very deeply disappointed in me personally,

disappointed, and from now on he

is no longer with us.

Why did this shock absolutely all of us?

And why, honestly speaking, we actually

didn’t believe at first that he had written it.

Although later he confirmed to certain

media outlets, and we still

believe that he apparently wrote that post under

some kind of pressure, or because of

extraordinary circumstances about which

we also very much want to protect him, but we

just need to get in touch with him. Because

Alexander was in this studio the day before, on

Lyubov Sobol’s program *Cactus*, and on

Monday he was—someone is prompting me—and

basically

he was firmly determined to continue

working. Sobol asked him whether everything

was all right, whether he needed help. He said

everything was fine. I myself called him as soon as I

got out of the special detention center, I called him before the

court hearing.

And I asked whether everything was all right with him, whether he needed

any help. I knew that he was being given

a great deal of help. Listen, but I

would like us to be able to help everyone

the way we helped Turovsky. I personally understand

that any help is insufficient in

a situation like this, when you find yourself inside it,

but we hired three lawyers for him, that is,

we hired them from outside; they were not even

FBK lawyers (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) at all. Constantly

live broadcasts were organized on

this channel, there were live streams, we

did everything so that he would not, well,

be handed over when the police tried to take him

from the hospital. In other words, all the media

support available to us, we, uh, gave to him

and did what we could. Probably

there were many things we could have

done better; that applies to most situations,

uh, mm, to most situations

it applies. But nevertheless, the mechanisms available to us

we used, and we will continue—we

will keep using them. And I just once again

wanted to address Alexander and

tell him that we know how vilely

this government behaves, we know what kind of

disgusting tricks they use to intimidate

people, they can blackmail people. Well,

good Lord—taking your phone when you’ve been

detained by the police, looking through the phone for

photos and videos, and then

blackmailing you with them—that’s the simplest thing they

can do, and what they do constantly.

We know how they get people on the hook

and force them to work for them. But we—I

once again urge Alexander to come. If

any help is needed, we will provide it. And, well,

who knows who wrote what there, but we

still consider you our comrade

and ally, and I invite you to, uh, come to the

foundation and talk with me. Everything that we

can do, we will do. Any situation

we will understand. We are all human, so please come.

However, all of this overall

that is happening

aside from the situation itself

is, of course, quite unpleasant and

painful for us.

It brings me to a broader problem

that I wanted to mention—

not even a problem, but a situation in which

I constantly find myself, and about which I can honestly

say that this is probably, in my

work, the most painful of the

things. I got out of the special detention center, and

they send me messages when I had already taken

my phone in hand and was able to use it.

A screenshot of a private message on Instagram—

I never read them at all, but simply

because other people have access to the account,

they send them to me to look at what was

written to me. It’s from the mother of one of

Mikhail Golyashkin, one of the people

against whom criminal cases were opened

in connection with our rallies.

She writes something that is, basically, correct:

“Alexei, why didn’t you support

Mikhail—not verbally, not morally, not in any way?

After all, he supports you all the time.”

Well, I’m not going to write back to her, “You know, I myself

just got out of the special detention center, where I spent 25

days.” Because that doesn’t convince

a person at all. When you are in

that situation,

you want to be supported. And

no excuses about who is sitting where,

in a special detention center—they don’t work on anyone.

We now have several people

who are defendants in the March 26 and June 12 cases, and I

really

have never even said many of their names

out loud. We

did help some of them in one way or another.

For Alexander Shpakov, we raised

substantial funds together with you. By the way,

on June 22 we passed everything, all of it, to his daughter.

Well, that really is true: I did not

speak about every single person. Yes, about many I

didn’t speak. Listen, arrests are happening constantly for us.

Just today, an hour before going on air, I

was reading the news: in Tambov, a volunteer was arrested for seven days

simply because he was

filming

the police’s unlawful actions, and how they

raided our headquarters and seized

leaflets. Here I am now telling you

about a volunteer from Tambov—I don’t even know his last name.

And this really is, well, you could say…

Such a horrifying thing there, well,

it haunts both me and anyone

who is involved in organizing things. Here in

Kazan, the entire headquarters staff was rearrested

several times. I didn't even mention the head of the

headquarters there, Elvira Dmitrieva,

who is simply under constant pressure,

or the other guys. But I didn't

say a single word about them either. In

Vladivostok, there is terrible pressure on

our activists as well. I also, uh,

didn't say much, because as monstrous as it

sounds, there are many people, and every

day there are more people who are under

illegal criminal prosecution, and those

connected with our work—this is

still only a small part. I want to talk about

everyone, all of them. I want to keep talking about

everyone, but this Leviathan devours people at such

a speed that it is simply

impossible to support everyone anymore.

Once again, for their relatives and for them personally,

forgive me, what I'm saying is no consolation at all.

Everyone wants their

last name to be at the center of attention.

Everyone is right to count on

help and support. We will do everything in our

power, uh, to try to provide our

support, but we need to understand that the speed

with which this system consumes people cannot

be matched by the speed

at which we, when we try to organize

support for them... Well, here's something very personal.

Today is Vika's birthday—my brother's wife.

So what am I supposed to do, call her and say,

"Hi, Vika, happy birthday"? She is, uh,

now, in effect,

a single mother who for 2.5 years now has been with

two small children, and my

sympathy, you know, is no use to her at all. But still,

that is how things are arranged, and

of course, do I bear full

responsibility for all this? Of course I do.

And are these people entitled to expect and demand

support from me? Of course they are.

Of course they should do that.

Should I do better in this respect?

I should. But can I simply

speak about every single person? As monstrous as it

sounds—no, I can't.

They

do this deliberately. They are simply

trying to repress such a

large number of people that we simply don't have time

to deal with everyone. Look, a young man in

Kaliningrad is being expelled from university because

he was one of the organizers of the June 12 rally. Yes,

the lawyers have instructions to contact him and

help. I just asked—have they contacted him? No, they haven't,

because there is a queue, because there are

hundreds of appeals, complaints, and petitions.

Just walk into the lawyers' office—it's a madhouse.

There are only a few people, and many people

and volunteers are dealing with this, but

in principle, we just cannot cover it all.

Despite the fact that repression in

Russia has not yet taken on a super-mass

character—it's still not thousands of people but

dozens—even these dozens of

people, we unfortunately cannot work with each one

individually. Although,

once again, I repeat: we will do everything

possible to help, but

guys, we must not allow ourselves

to live in this Stockholm syndrome.

We need to kill this Stockholm syndrome

within ourselves.

What happened—the situation with

Turovsky: the police attacked him and

beat him lawlessly. The police are to blame for all of this;

Putin and this regime are to blame. The people

who are in jail—yes, they are entitled to receive

more sympathy. Yes, they are not interested in

our difficulties. But the ones to blame for

all this are not those who call on people to come

to a rally, but those who illegally

arrest people. Remember there was a

car caravan

of farmers traveling from Kuban (a region in southern Russia) to Moscow

to complain about the lawlessness

and land seizures? And now criminal cases have been opened against them.

So who is to blame?

Shall we blame the person

who came up with this car caravan

and was absolutely right to head to Moscow?

A student who was expelled—

who is to blame, the student or the vice-rector

who arbitrarily expelled him?

Surely the vice-rector is the one at fault, not

the student. The Beslan mothers (relatives of victims of the 2004 Beslan school siege)

who came out to hold a picket demanding

an investigation into what happened

that day at that school, when their

children were killed—they were all arrested there and

jailed for several days. So who

is to blame: the ones who made the arrests, or the mother

who decided to organize that picket?

Well then, shall we say: you put people at risk and

brought them out to an unauthorized protest?

Of course not. It was her legal right, and

they did the right thing by coming out. And

environmental activists who are constantly being crushed and

jailed—who is to blame, those who jail them

or the ones who

organize this environmental

movement? We must not, you see,

blame ourselves. This regime is to blame, and

it must be fought. Of course, we must show

more solidarity with everyone.

You understand, in a situation where

a police officer is dragging someone into a police van

and smashing their head against the asphalt, don't say:

"Well, look how awful this is. It must be

the rally organizers' fault that

this is happening." No, it is not the organizers

of the rally who are to blame. The ones to blame are

the bandits and corrupt officials sitting in

the Kremlin and in specific regional

the administration, and situations like these, when

intimidated, planted, or deceived

volunteers start saying things — there will be

more and more of them, with every passing day,

because for the authorities, especially when it comes to

working with young people right now,

it is fundamentally important to make sure that

they do not go out, and so they come up with

all kinds of things. Just look — this is practically

a so-called *temnik* (a centralized media talking-points memo). First they

said, “Don’t get involved in politics, son,”

partly because “you don’t need this,” and

“these rallies are nonsense.” Then they

said, “You’re working for Navalny,”

who gets money from the West, and is

a puppet. Now they have started following

the talking points: “Navalny

calls everyone to rallies and then abandons them.”

By the way, right before the program,

I checked YouTube’s top videos

to do a search and see

whether my video had made it into

the trending list — and in second or third place

in trending there was this absolutely amazing video,

I’ll show you a little clip of it.

Because there’s Alyoshka (a diminutive, slightly mocking form of Alexei), and he has

dreams — he spends money on this and that and

flowers.

[music]

You understand, thousands of children have suffered because of

Alyoshka’s actions across the country, and they

are now going to push this stuff and

amplify it, pouring huge amounts of money into it,

buying up journalists, public opinion,

and so on and so forth. Because they

have run into a strange thing:

it turns out that in Russia there is an entire

generation of newly grown-up people

who are not afraid of them, who are ready

to come out to these rallies, who, yes,

may be jailed for 15 days, and then they

go out again — people who are not afraid. And right now

it is critically important for them to intimidate, deceive, manipulate

them, do something to them. But we simply

have to be smarter and understand how all this

works.

Protect Turovsky — he is clearly being pressured.

Of course he is being pressured — Turovsky.

They pressured him, or they broke the guy psychologically, and

the cops know how to do that — they can break anyone very

easily. That’s how it is. So once again, every

situation is complicated; each person has their own

circumstances. We will try to give him

all the help we possibly can. And why

are they doing all this so

aggressively right now?

After all, they could simply ignore it.

As many people rightly say, with all these

arrests, detentions, and raids on the headquarters, they

are kind of giving us publicity, right? They could

have done that. They could simply have let it

slide. But no. And the typical explanation

for why they are doing this is our campaign

volunteer day that took place in cities

across Russia this weekend — and huge thanks

to everyone who took part in it. They

thought our campaign was

just make-believe — maybe Moscow, maybe the big

cities. But I can see it — they gave me the statistics:

3,000 volunteers

came out. The weather was awful. I myself — well, we

can’t say that we really

promoted this event heavily — but 3,000 people

came out for free and handed out

newspapers and leaflets in many cities.

They distributed more than 200,000

copies. And meanwhile, only

207 — or rather 217 — people were detained. “Only” is the wrong word; that is a lot.

They managed to detain, overall, about 8%

of all participants. But it has an impact.

They want to intimidate a larger number of

people because in fear, horror, and

panic they realized that you and I, by raising

money and doing this organizational

work, have actually created a political

structure — huge, extensive, and

real. We now have headquarters in 80 cities,

including so-called people’s

headquarters, which people open themselves, entirely

without any money at all. And this kind of

structure works, campaigns, and they

realized that if all this is not

stopped — because in fact,

if people keep walking around the city, then in that

city the political landscape will gradually

change, and it will

change no matter how ironically we may view

some guys standing in the rain

with two leaflets in their hands.

That is the strongest and most devastating form of campaigning:

when people who live somewhere nearby,

in your neighborhood, stand there handing something out.

They are terribly afraid of that — absolutely terrified.

That is why there are raids on our

headquarters, and why there are these ridiculous

statements about — what was it they said there?

In Moscow, that by means of single-person

pickets we held a concealed mass

event. That is where all this nonsense comes from

about how Volkov committed an outright criminal

offense — that the chief of staff

Leonid Volkov spread

malicious software, a virus, and therefore

in all cities, and specifically in

Krasnoyarsk, leaflets must be confiscated. They

want to take away these leaflets so that this

sheet of paper does not end up in the hands of

a pensioner, does not end up in someone’s hands,

because first of all, a pensioner will be

shocked that, suddenly, for the first time in their

entire life, actual campaigners are

handing out these little newspapers — that there is

an alternative, that there exists an entire

structure that finances itself.

They are terribly afraid of this; they are shaking.

The sheer number — more than 100,000 volunteers

in our campaign — throws them into utter shock and

panic. That is why all this is happening, but

That is exactly why we will, uh, keep pushing our own agenda.

We will keep increasing the pressure, and I urge you once again

not to be afraid of anything and to sign up

as volunteers, collect signatures, and fund

our campaign. Well, we have created

something truly powerful, the most

important political force that is happening right now.

What do you think about Roizman?

I fly into a rage at the very thought of

what is happening now in Sverdlovsk

Region.

The mayor of the city of Yekaterinburg—he is the mayor, he

was elected, and by definition he is one

of the most popular politicians

in Sverdlovsk Region. Again, he was elected;

hundreds of thousands of people have already voted for him,

and now some obscure people,

nobody even knows who they are,

the presidential administration, the administration

of the governor, Ella Pamfilova (head of Russia’s Central Election Commission)—all of them are basically

telling him: well, you filled out

the paperwork incorrectly, you did not collect enough signatures

from municipal deputies, and so Roizman

is supposed to run around like a madman collecting

some signatures just in order to be

nominated for governor. Yes, he has

the right to do that. Who are you, anyway? And those who

are blocking him—nobody elected you, while he

is a genuinely elected person, regardless

of the fact that, well, on many

issues he is not especially close to me

politically. I consider him a political

ally, but even if he were not

a political ally—have you lost your minds?

He is the mayor, the elected mayor of the city—how can you

keep him out? In the beautiful Russia of the future,

the head of the election commission himself

will be running around collecting

signatures for him, because it is in the interests

of the people for someone like him to take part in

the election. That is political competition; it is

useful and right.

But as it is, I just see questions about

Strelkov in such huge numbers.

And please tell me, I just cannot

see on this screen what the voting results

are.

Oksana, can you tell me—do you see anything?

81 percent say that I did the right thing by

agreeing to the debate. Well, I am glad that you

support me, although the 18 percent who

think I did the wrong thing—that is

also quite a substantial number.

So, Igor Strelkov

is a field commander who fought in

Donetsk Region and one of the political

and military leaders, one of the main

ideologues of this war. He challenged me to

a debate. Let us watch a short clip.

Let's take a look.

And I address Alexei Anatolyevich

Navalny

with a challenge to a public debate

on a whole range of issues that deeply

concern

Russian, and more broadly Rossiyan (citizens of Russia), patriots and

nationalists.

So, you saw it—that was a public challenge,

which they even recorded while I was in

a special detention facility. I got out, and a few

days later, when I sort of got through my mail, I saw

people had been sending me messages saying: you have been challenged to

a debate. And I accepted that challenge, after which

the full force of liberal outrage came down on me,

and everyone started explaining that I had made

a catastrophic mistake and acted

completely wrongly. Basically,

I tried to read the arguments carefully,

all the arguments against it, because

that matters to me; any criticism is important

to me. And the arguments mostly fall into

three categories. First, that he is a war

criminal, and if so, then of course you cannot

debate with him, and he should be seen not

at a debate but in The Hague, in the dock,

and so on. The second argument is

that he is a minor figure,

not on my level, and debating him would amount to PR

for him, a way of reminding people about him again—

everyone has already forgotten him.

He was insanely popular in 2014,

but then people forgot him, and now you, Navalny,

are dragging him back out from somewhere again. And

the third argument is that he does not actually

represent any nationalists

or else represents only a very narrow group, and

therefore a debate with him would

give us nothing in political-strategic terms.

Because there is no significant group

of people who would come over to me if, say,

even if I managed to beat him in

the debate.

What can I say about that? Of course I

thought about all these arguments. But, guys,

when I saw this challenge, I immediately understood

that I had to accept it

for this reason:

I am not fighting specifically, at this moment,

for any one camp. I am fighting for every person's vote,

but I do not think in terms of whether I

must get

the votes of nationalists, or nationalist

imperialists, or Strelkov-style nationalists,

or anyone else. I am fighting for your entire

audience, for the broader audience. I understand perfectly well

that there is no such thing as people once

and for all deciding to support me,

to vote for me. This is

a political process. A politician must every day

prove to people that he is worthy

of their support. And one of the most important things

about me, I hope, as a politician,

is that I stand for open

dialogue. I am not afraid of debates. I am ready

to take part in debates. I am ready

to go live on air. I am ready

to answer questions. I am ready to do all of that,

and you can see it. Well, who else is?

He keeps challenging me to debates.

He calls me out, and I keep showing up.

I go on Pozner's show and to debates with Tyoma Lebedev (Artemy Lebedev, Russian designer and blogger). I want

there to be debates. We want to launch

a debate program here, because this is

political dialogue, it's an argument. I'm not

going to have shashlik (barbecue) with Strelkov, not to a birthday party.

He comes here in order to

present me with a whole set of complaints,

reproaches. Many of his views,

his political views, are absolutely repulsive to me,

and I intend to argue with him about that.

Argue. And for that, of course, debates are necessary,

and a political process is necessary. This whole

theme about being a war criminal—well yes, if

uh, go to the Wikipedia article on war

criminals: if it turns out

that he killed non-combatants, then of course

he is a war criminal. But

those who endlessly write on Facebook that he is

a war criminal and that you must not

sit at the same table with him—

guys, let's be honest: the people who write that

are simply afraid to say with the same

frequency that the war criminal

is Putin. Because if Strelkov, again,

the man who pulled the trigger, is a war

criminal, then of course Putin is a war

criminal, and so is all of United Russia (the Kremlin's ruling party), and

Matviyenko, who initiated the decision to

send in troops—they are all war criminals.

So what now—are we not supposed to debate them at all?

Not with anyone? Not with any member of United Russia?

And all those TV hosts—Solovyov, Kiselyov (pro-Kremlin television personalities)—

they may not be war criminals, but they are

war mongers.

They have done more harm than the person who

actually pulled the, uh, trigger—not that this excuses

the person who pulled the trigger. They are all

war mongers, they are all war

criminals, whether we like it or not.

This is a problem for any large country. That means

the people who supported the war

in Donbas, that criminal war, who took part

in the war in Donbas, will remain part of

the political process for many years to come.

By the way, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future (Navalny's slogan),

yes, it will be beautiful, of course, but you will see

Strelkov and all the other nationalists

on the ballot, because when I become president

I will let everyone run in elections, including

people with the most cannibalistic

views—even worse than Strelkov's, if

such people exist. They will take part in

elections, they will run for

the State Duma, and they will have the right

to participate in debates, and all politicians

will have to sit with them in those debates. And

Milov wrote a correct post about this. Look

at some countries—the former Yugoslavia,

in all the former republics of Yugoslavia,

half of the political establishment consists of

people who are recognized there as

war criminals. Nevertheless, well,

they are part of those countries' history; they were and remain

part of the political process. As always

in Russia, there will be people who think that

yes, the war in Donbas should be fought. Yes, we have

some

double-digit percentage

of the population who believe that

we should immediately start dropping atomic bombs

on Europe, the United States, and the whole

world. Well, it seems to us that these people

are crazy, yes, because they do not

understand what nuclear winter, uh, and

nuclear catastrophe mean. But nevertheless, they

exist. They want to run for the Duma,

they will say their vile and

stupid things. Look at Zhirinovsky (Russian ultranationalist politician), and

we will have to debate them

one way or another. If we endlessly

keep focusing on these

external displays and symbols—oh, he's sitting

at the same table with him, will he shake his

hand, and all that—remember when there was

the first meeting between Poroshenko and Putin, and there was

this endless hand-wringing: should

Poroshenko shake Putin's hand, and what would that

mean? It would mean nothing.

Of course he should meet with him and

shake his hand, because that is

protocol. It is not

the essential thing. What matters is

the statements made, the words spoken, and concrete

actions. People should be judged by their actions,

by their actual political practice. They are

held captive by this endless

ritual symbolism: how could he possibly

have ended up standing 2 meters away? We need to

take part in all of this. Probably the most

important thing is why I could not avoid

these debates. Well,

what does it say under my name? You see, in white

on light blue: candidate for president

of Russia. And quite soon I will be challenging

and demanding debates with other

candidates, including Vladimir Putin, and

they will answer me with roughly the same

thing that some of you want me

to say to Strelkov right now. They will tell me:

well, he's a minor figure. Who is Navalny

compared with the great, the greatest

Putin? He just wants publicity,

because everyone has already forgotten him, but he

wants to raise his profile. He's just a scandal-monger.

He has no constructive proposals. He is

a criminal—just as we say someone else is a war

criminal. They will say: but he, you know,

he's a criminal, he's been convicted three times, with him

there are always some scandals, he's a slanderer,

Alisher Usmanov proved he was right, and all the

rest of it will be said as an explanation

for why these people want to avoid

debates and want to run away from a real

political process. So I want

to be a politician whom no one can

accuse of dodging

...debates and avoids discussion. Well, yes.

When people challenge me, and it’s already become a trend,

to invite me to debates with all sorts of...

...idiots and random people. Rapper Ptakha

challenged me to Versus (a Russian rap battle platform). Well, of course,

things like that can be ignored. But when

it’s

major politicians who, uh,

represent a significant category of

voters—even if I want to win

the sympathy of that category of voters or not,

whether I want to or can or can’t—I will debate him,

and I demand that people debate me.

But everyone keeps avoiding it, while I

will take part in all of this. I’m not

afraid of losing at all. Victory in

a debate is a fairly relative thing.

Look at how debates actually go.

Take the last Trump–Hillary debate: she seemed

to win everywhere in the polls, but the margin of victory

was always something like 55 to 45. There will always be

half the people who say that

someone lost the debate. And that is one of the

main obstacles, because in Russia

why do Russian politicians, including

opposition politicians, fear debates? They

are afraid of debates, they are afraid of this

discussion. I’m not afraid, and that’s why, yes, I will

appeal to you, and I will say:

vote for me, I’m the best politician,

because I’m not afraid of debates, and no one

can reproach me for that. I have something

to say on all the issues that

Strelkov specifically raised in this situation.

Strelkov.

And—

people write: but he did debate Fyodorov, didn’t he?

So what’s the difference? Well, yes, but I

did debate Fyodorov. By the way, that

debate was very useful. The famous

phrase, uh, about “crooks and thieves”

it, uh,

it was born exactly there. Quite a lot of questions are about

...

the attack with green dye (brilliant green antiseptic). Today I saw

that a video was released saying that

there will be no investigation. The police

have suspended the investigation, but

that in fact means they’ve already shut it down.

Several months have passed, and basically

what happened is exactly what I predicted. Yes,

it wasn’t hard to predict.

In this program, we have a 30-second clip,

let’s watch it.

I have serious doubts that this case, too,

will end in nothing.

For one simple reason: we understand

that this was not the work of some

lone individuals, nor simply the actions of

some random lunatics. Lunatics can’t

know which

trains I arrive on, right down to the compartment

and carriage. They can’t know details of my

air travel, where I’m

departing from and arriving at.

And all the other information—they always have it,

in any city. Of course, that information can only

be supplied by

the special services.

Still, I really did have a cool and

stylish pirate eye patch back then, and apparently

1.5 million people watched it, yes.

An eye patch is a cool thing.

Basically, it happened for two, actually

two reasons. First,

the attackers are, of course, connected to the

authorities. Second, and no less important,

is that today they mainly

I said in the video that simply

the police in Russia do not investigate

anything at all, ever.

In principle, this system is incapable of

investigating anything until

the victim comes in and brings

a little envelope of cash. Or unless it’s not

some especially high-profile crime.

Otherwise, nothing happens. I think

many people watching this broadcast

have had an apartment robbed, or

a car stolen, or wheels taken off their car, or something

else. You went to the police, and the police

did nothing. They are incapable

of doing anything at all. So here,

it gets assigned to the local police officer, and he says,

“Yeah... but why should I do this at all?

No one pays me extra for it, I won’t get any promotion,

I’ll just get a headache from it. So I

don’t want to investigate anything, and

I’ll suspend my investigation, despite

the fact that, yes, they’ve all been identified. So what?

You’d have to question this one, look for something with that one,

but why bother? I’ve got

a ton of my own work, piles of paperwork—I don’t want

to do it. That’s it.”

Only

financial incentives, or through

connections, through the bosses—only then do some

gears start turning in our

law enforcement system. Otherwise,

they don’t. And that is absolutely terrible and

monstrous, considering how much money we

spend on it, considering how many

police there are in Russia. In the video I said—

I’ll show this figure again—that we

are now spending almost 2 trillion rubles

and will spend 2 trillion rubles in 2019.

In terms of the number of police officers per capita,

we rank first in the world.

An unthinkable number of police officers.

We spend enormous amounts of money so that

we could have an ideal police force—well, not ideal,

but at least on the level of

a good European country. We should

have that level of safety. We should have

police officers with very high salaries,

the kind everyone likes because they’re great,

driving modern cars, with the best

equipment, and all of them provided with housing. But...

And for all this enormous money, we get nothing.

And that is why this government needs to be changed.

This regime has to go, because Putin, over

his 18 years in power, has increased spending on the police

by almost twofold.

The personnel of all the security services

has grown by nearly two times as well. And what does he get in return?

Nothing. We still have terrorist attacks, and all sorts of chaos

going on. In terms of absolute consumption of

heroin, we are in first place, and also first in

intentional homicides as well.

We are at the top of all the worst rankings. In other words, nothing

is improving. So why do we need any of this at all?

And most importantly, the money is there.

This can be fixed right now.

In the 1990s, there was no money.

It was impossible to make police officers

work properly because their salaries were simply

ridiculously low. Now they can be paid

a decent salary, and we will change all of this.

Vote for Alexei Navalny.

A small

but amusing topic.

Yesterday I read in the newspaper *Moskovsky Komsomolets*

and decided to say a few words about it,

because

at all my meetings in the regions, whenever I travel

somewhere, I am very often asked about

the Unified State Exam (Russia's standardized school-leaving exam), schools, and everything else.

The catastrophe in school education

is perfectly illustrated by these figures from

several Russian regions,

mostly in the south, though Mordovia also

somehow made it onto the list.

Every fifth graduate became a medal winner.

This includes Stavropol Krai,

Karachay-Cherkessia,

Kabardino-Balkaria, Krasnodar Krai,

and Rostov Region. Everywhere I look, I see figures from

14 to 20 percent. My friends, we understand

that this is a colossal scam.

There is no way that 20 or 15 percent

of schoolchildren earned gold medals. This

shows that the entire Unified State Exam system in Russia

does not work. It shows total

corruption, total disregard for any kind of

exams.

It shows how a bit of money—even in

republics that are obviously not the richest—

is enough. They simply brought in a little money, and there you go:

your son got a medal. That is how it

works. It shows how badly

the school education system

has decayed. But

is our Ministry

of Education concerned about this? Look at what the minister is talking about:

"Let's bring back shop class/labor lessons.

Let schoolchildren study from a single, unified

history textbook." Instead, they are busy with nonsense,

meaningless nonsense. Just look:

your examination system, in principle,

your system for evaluating students after 11 years

of schooling, simply does not work. You have

gold medals being sold on a massive scale,

sold en masse, do you understand? This is not some

story where a friend of a friend heard that

someone got a gold medal for money.

These are entire regions, and in every school

medals are being sold in bulk. And this

does not interest our

Ministry of Education in the slightest.

They are taking no action and do not want to take any

action in response to this. None at all. But again,

this speaks to a catastrophe. And after that, it

drags everything else down too: higher

education, postgraduate education,

the quality of these people's work, the salaries

they will earn, the taxes

they will pay. In other words,

once we have broken something at the foundation,

everything else will naturally

fall apart and crumble out of our

hands. Therefore,

it is critically important, absolutely critically important,

to have genuine, real reforms in

education, including a fight against

corruption. Every time I am told

that fighting corruption is not the most

important thing—well, what is this then? Yes, this is

an issue of education, but it is also clearly a question of

corruption. Obviously. So

corruption is a phenomenon that has penetrated

everywhere, into every sector, and it prevents every

sector from living and developing. It prevents

the real top students in Karachay-Cherkessia, where 20 percent

are supposedly straight-A students. Because there really are kids there,

real top students, and this corruption

and this fraud gets in the way of the genuinely

deserving top students from getting anywhere,

because all around them there are, well, a whole lot of

fake straight-A students, a whole lot of fake

medal winners all trying to push their way forward.

Then why should you be the one person who studied excellently?

Why bother?

This undermines the very basis of competition. It

gets in the way and destroys people's motivation

to study properly. Why study properly

if in the end everyone is going to

get gold medals anyway? And until

we defeat corruption in this

sector, we will achieve nothing.

We still have time. Let's, let's

definitely, please, watch this. It is

a wonderful video, almost two minutes long. I am sure

you have seen it, but please

watch it with me one more time.

And this news is absolutely wild. If you do not

like bad news in the morning, if political news

annoys you, then honestly I recommend that you

go brush your teeth right now,

because deputies of the Krasnoyarsk

Legislative Assembly have increased their own

salaries twofold.

[applause]

Guys, please applaud off camera.

Well done, well done, Legislative Assembly,

you fully deserve this.

This is wonderful. You are moving in exactly the right direction.

It’s great to get elected somewhere and then

give yourself a raise. If right now

the people’s representatives are making, on average,

100,000 rubles a month, then it’ll be almost 200,000. I

thank you—don’t deny yourselves anything.

How did you even live on 100,000 rubles?

We can’t even imagine. Well done, really.

Thank you for your worthy work, deputies.

Legislative Assembly deputy Ivan Serebryakov said

that he did not vote for this decision

because—well, why?—he missed it earlier.

So now he’ll be paid 200,000 rubles too,

but he had simply left early. According to him,

the issue was considered at the very end, when

usually nothing important happens.

Quote: “We discussed this legislative

initiative in committee, but it did not

concern deputies. It was about civil servants,

heads of municipal enterprises,

librarians, doctors, and so on, and then

this kind of substitution of terms happened.”

Guys, we’re just amazing: we wanted to raise

doctors’ salaries, but raised our own instead. They thought, doctors—

too much; libraries—

not that much, but still

it’s a significant figure. And then there are

all those civil servants—ah, forget them. We’re

the ones still here in the chamber right now,

at the Legislative Assembly, so why don’t we raise

our own salaries? And then the deputies’ hands—or

however they vote there, with those tablets—

shot up, or they immediately started pressing buttons.

And just like that, for the salary increase

they voted unanimously. We voted

for these people, and the decision has already been signed by

the regional governor, Viktor Tolokonsky, in no time.

Look how quickly everything happens

when it concerns their own salaries.

What’s great about this video isn’t even that

the host very skillfully, in just two

minutes, said it in such a way that everyone shared it

all around and everyone found out about it. This video

worked, because the deputies canceled

this decision, and the prosecutor’s office, as they

reported today, has already taken an interest

in the fact that the deputies assigned themselves a salary

of

126,000 rubles per month. And the deputies are now массово refusing the raise.

That is to say,

public opinion affects a great deal.

We keep suffering and saying

that nothing can be changed. It can.

Very often things can be changed, and they do change

simply through spreading

information, through stirring up

public opinion, through the fact that

millions of people will say, “They’ve completely

lost it,” and send these

links to one another. That is exactly why we need to

spread this information, we need to

believe in public opinion. And in

the case of Anton Mamaev, a disabled man,

who was accused of robbery,

it was purely public opinion—not any

human rights ombudsmen,

of course, purely public opinion—

that made the prosecutor’s office today already

say: “Let’s actually look into this.”

How could it be that a wheelchair user whose

arms and legs do not move could suddenly

have committed a violent robbery? Before, this

wasn’t obvious? These questions—

once everyone got worked up, it started to work.

So don’t give up, and be sure to

always take part in spreading this kind of

information. Pavel Tokarev writes: “Here in

Orenburg, one school has 14 finalists.”

Angelina Bezladnaya: “At our school, 20

students received medals.”

The only question is how many of them

honestly earned those medals. You’re right to write that

with lots of smiley faces,

because, well, everyone at school knows how

those medal winners became medal winners.

Imagine how unpleasant and hurtful it is for

the two or three genuine, real medal winners.

And of course this sounds like one of those

“back in my day” stories, but in my time too,

yes, in my school,

as funny as it may sound, we had

two medal winners in the whole year. There were four

classes, and there were two medal winners: one with a gold

medal—or maybe two gold medals, and like two

silver ones—and they practically killed themselves

to get those medals. They really

worked for them, begged teachers, and everyone

helped them. But that was four

people. To imagine 20 medal winners in

one school—that was impossible even

to imagine. Though, to be fair, I studied in a military

town. People here are looking at me, giving me

terrifying looks. I studied in an ordinary school

in a military town; perhaps in your

elite Moscow schools things are different.”

Oksana asks me about Maltsev

what I think about the opening of a criminal

case and his emigration. It’s a rather complicated

situation; I haven’t fully figured it out because

I was in a special detention center. But I mean,

Maltsev was under unprecedented

pressure. If he left the country, then he

left for real reasons. I

completely understand that, and

I never criticize people who

are forced to emigrate. There are many of them, and

around me there are several staff members who

are definitely in forced emigration.

I have no complaints at all; I’m not going to

make any—only support. I

hope that somehow Maltsev and his

associates will be able to organize

normal work, including from

abroad.

Probably the last topic we’ll

be able to cover today, but it’s important and

it’s connected precisely with the previous

story about how a TV segment

really did have some effect. Do you remember

I was talking about what we were going to do.

On renovation, we conducted a large

telephone survey, but after that we also

carried out

door-to-door apartment surveys in several buildings.

Our sociologist, Biryukova,

wrote to me that our wonderful

volunteers—thank you all so much—

conducted surveys in several buildings across

ten districts, and in 50 buildings there was a

door-to-door survey. So, we

found out very clearly what people think

about renovation. I’ll say right away that we did not find

major discrepancies with the surveys

conducted by the Moscow Mayor’s Office.

In other words, we did not notice any kind of massive fraud here.

But the thing that struck us

was something we couldn’t understand for a long time—

why this was happening at all. We tried

to find some kind of correlation, you know, between

why a person is in favor of

renovation or against renovation. Well,

obviously, we thought: is it because the apartment is good or bad?

No.

Expensive or cheap? No. A good neighborhood

or a bad one? It doesn’t depend on that either. We couldn’t understand it.

Who a person votes for—it doesn’t matter.

Whether they support the opposition or are a Putin supporter—no.

We found no relationship at all between that and

political views and support for, or

opposition to, renovation. Education level—

nothing. We looked at everything, all sorts of things.

We even thought maybe ethnicity played a role, but in the end

we identified the factor, and it is an extremely

important thing that concerns all of us,

our whole campaign. So, the only

factor influencing this—let me

phrase it correctly—

the only factor that affects whether

a person is against renovation or in favor of

renovation is whether there are neighbors in the building who

campaign against the program. That is, if in

a building an activist appears and starts

“stirring things up,” as the Moscow city government says,

then gradually, if the neighbors are against it,

the whole building becomes opposed to renovation. If

there is no such person,

then everyone simply, well, basically follows

the option proposed by the Moscow city government.

No one fights, no one

pushes for better terms for themselves. No one there

gets into any kind of struggle. And it all

comes down to this kind of

self-organization, starting with one active

person on the ground. And I’m already publishing these figures

specifically on my blog; it’s just that

in the format of a broadcast it’s rather difficult

to bury everyone in numbers. But this is an

amazing thing. It’s an amazing thing

that tells us that small

but active groups of people can

persuade anyone of anything. But listen,

even for the people directly involved,

this matters more than whether it’s Putin or not Putin.

These are their apartments, their homes, and so they either

just go along with the slide,

or follow the beaten path, excuse me. Or they

resist simply because

some neighbor is talking to them about it, and

I’m sure the conversations there are the same:

nothing can be changed, you can’t break a whip with a butt end (a Russian proverb meaning you can’t fight overwhelming force),

blah blah blah blah blah, all the usual things

we know. But nevertheless,

that person changes the situation. A person

votes, persuades the building, the building votes against

renovation, and then they are either left alone

or offered better terms,

offered places closer to the metro, offered

more money, simply because

some active guy or girl

is dealing with all of this. And so, my friends, I once again

urge you to be that active

person

who, despite the apparent indifference,

can change the situation around them. And

that is exactly how we will win. Thank you very much

for being with me and watching this first

broadcast. And the poll results—sorry,

Oksana, please, I was wrapping up so nicely already,

and I already had my closing line. Go ahead,

tell us please, what do we have there in the poll?

83 to 16. Eighty-three said it was right that I

agreed to the debate; 16 said it was wrong.

You see? I persuaded 2 percent—exactly what

I was just talking about.

Forty minutes, and I persuaded 2 percent. And you know,

after a few broadcasts, there will be very few

percent left against me. Agitation works—campaigning works.

Let’s campaign. Thank you for

being with me. Until next Thursday.

[music]