Chemezov vs. Petrovich, Putin’s witches, Peskov’s family in NATO

[music]

Good evening. It is 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, live on air.

This is the program *Russia of the Future*. I am

Alexei Navalny, or “the naked king,” as

one publication and one journalist called me. I

really do ask you: please write on Twitter using

the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, ask your

questions, and I will try to answer

them in between our main topics. And

the main topic, of course—the one I want to

start with—is, of course, Chemezov and the investigation

we released about his apartment, because

it is power—real

imperial power, demonstrating

what a rich, grand,

perverse state we have. But we have seen many

different apartments before—people from Gazprom and

Rosneft, apartments and yachts alike.

But the head of Rostec—and this is the head of a loss-making

thing, you understand—well,

Sechin, the head of Rosneft, and Miller, the head of

Gazprom, drive their companies into

debt, but we still understand that oil

is something that brings in

a lot of money, it fills the budget. But

Rostec

is where they gathered everything unprofitable,

terrible, suffering, and very often dying—

Russian machine-building is dying,

the Russian defense industry

is mostly dying. All of this

is in terrible condition, with tiny

salaries. And just imagine: it is precisely this

man, who heads all this

dying

who has the biggest apartment. I’ll play you

27 seconds from Vladimir Milov’s program

that aired today at 4:00 p.m., just

so he can give a few figures

to help us better understand what Rostec is.

This is Appendix 20, for example, to the law on

the 2019 federal budget. It lists

direct subsidies to major

state corporations, and this year

the state, from the budget—from our

money, including from this increased VAT,

which is pushing prices up—will transfer almost 3.5

billion rubles

to Rostec in the form of additional contributions to

its charter capital. 3.5

billion rubles is less than the cost of

Chemezov’s apartment. To understand how this

works: every year Rostec comes to

the Duma, to the president, and ultimately to us,

and says: guys, we have a lot of

enterprises here, and things are very bad there.

People are paid very little, all of it

is on its last legs, so please

take money out of your own pockets, out of

tax revenues, and give it to us so we can survive,

so they don’t go bankrupt this year.

As you heard, as Milov said,

they asked for

just this kind of direct transfer: 3

billion rubles. And at the same time, the

man has an apartment worth 5 billion

rubles.

How can that even be?

It would be really great if Sergei

Chemezov—if they made some kind of

thing, you know,

maybe ask Elon Musk for it—so that all these

people, when they came to speak in the State Duma,

would stand at the podium and ask for

money: please give money to our dying

enterprises. And next to them there would light up some kind of

well,

holographic gadget displaying

the words: apartment cost—5

billion rubles. And we would all see it,

and Russians would see that a man asking for a little more

money for loss-making enterprises

is someone who somehow managed

to come up with

money he cannot find for his factories, but somewhere

he schemed and found enough

to buy himself an apartment—and what an apartment, for 5

billion rubles, by the way. Overall,

as Vladimir Milov just explained about

direct transfers just to keep it alive,

for Rostec as a whole, this year it will receive

subsidies from the federal

budget

of 10 billion rubles. That is an enormous,

colossal sum that we will give Rostec

so that it can develop,

because they do not have enough

money. But somehow, to enrich

the head

of that very Rostec—they somehow did have enough.

And of course this case struck us because,

well, remember

the poem: “From our window, Red Square

can be seen”? And every time you read it, you

thought: come on—“From our little window,

only a bit of the street.” That is the truthful

part of the poem. But people from whose

windows Red Square is visible—those people don’t exist. I

remember being in school and thinking, damn,

what nonsense—nobody can see

Red Square from their window. But now, having lived to the age of forty-two,

I now know whose window it is visible from.

Red Square. Let’s take a look, from

our investigation, at a minute and a half of

these magnificent panoramas—what

our Sergei Viktorovich

Chemezov, who begs us every year for

money, sees from his windows. I am standing, as they say,

in the very heart of our motherland. Here

everything opens up, and all the main

landmarks are in view. Look there—

the Kremlin,

behind me is the Zhukov monument,

the State Historical Museum, the entrance to Red

Square,

the Hotel Moskva, and the apartment we

need is located less than 100 meters away

from this point. And you will say: well, that’s impossible.

No one can live here; there are no ordinary people here.

You probably, like me, thought that

there simply couldn't be any apartments here.

I myself always thought that inside there was

only the Four Seasons hotel

the most expensive in the city, and some shops, but

it turns out the most luxurious spaces

in this building belong not to the hotel, but to

the richest people in Russia and the world. You see,

there are lights on in those little windows.

On the 12th and 13th floors there are

gigantic 1,400-square-meter apartments

belonging to state official Sergei Chemezov

and his wife, Ekaterina Ignatova. But

of course, that kind of luxury is expensive. For a view like that

you have to pay, and Chemezov paid

a fantastic price for it: 5 billion

rubles. By the way, where do you think he got

that money?

Another apartment in this building, with a smaller

floor area,

and a worse view, set a price record

on the market: the price per square meter

came to more than 3 million rubles. But

Chemezov's apartment is far better than the one

that was put up for sale, and the simplest

calculation shows us that its value is

around 5 billion rubles.

And there's also this astonishing ease about it here.

That's very important, because even

when they talk among themselves there, each one

brags about his apartment, and probably

invites people over,

the rest of Putin's friends, who are also

fantastically rich people who stole

fantastically much. And there they are, standing there,

they have, what's it called, a corner

office, yes, a corner room.

You look one way and see

Alexander Garden,

and if you look this way, you can see Red Square, and

they stand there and say, 'Listen, Seryoga (diminutive of Sergei),

come on, someone is bound to find this. It's

registered directly in your wife's name, and through

Rosreestr (Russia's state property registry) it's visible. People will find it, they'll

ask: man, 5 billion? Let's look at your

declaration, give us the declaration, let's see. He

has a lot of money there that seems to come

from who knows where, but still it's 193

million rubles, and we have 193 million

questions about where those 193

million rubles came from. But the apartment costs 5 billion,

and if you buy an apartment for 5

billion, then of course it's fair to assume

that you have several more

billion stashed away somewhere else.

You didn't spend your last penny on it, right? How can you

I mean, you could have been modest, or at least

hidden it, or at least been worried,

anxious about something. But no, it's the exact opposite:

it has to be done with full swagger, so that you

look out over Red Square and from your

window spit on those who come up

to that Zero Kilometer marker, because

the tourists who come there arrived from those

same mono-industrial towns,

where your Rostec factories are located, where they don't

pay decent wages. Salaries are 20,000 to 25,000

rubles even for qualified staff,

for engineers, for those very specialists

everyone is always shouting about — the specialists

of Russia's defense industry.

Pathetic salaries, pathetic — and against the backdrop

of all this, people are pulling out — can you imagine —

they simply had to ruin

half the enterprises there to steal 5

billion rubles, and most likely more.

In reality, thousands of people were left destitute there,

a huge number of enterprises,

empty workshops everywhere. Five billion doesn't

come from nowhere. If they got it

here, then it means someone else went without it.

Something got shut down — that's how this works. And

this is also, of course, a very important thing about

Putin's friends: how little they care

about any of this, how well they understand that

the courts are corrupt, the FSB (Russia's security service) is corrupt,

the police and so on are under their control, and they

won't ask even the slightest question.

This report of ours was supposed to be

much more entertaining. It was

delayed

for quite a long time because

we wanted to show you the inside. We ourselves

were curious to see what

it looked like inside. Of course, we understood that into

Chemezov's apartment, obviously, we wouldn't be

let in, and breaking in shouting

'Down on the floor, FSB!' — well, we can't do that. But there was

another apartment in the building listed

for sale, right there in the same building, so we

wanted to come to it posing as buyers

and photograph the apartment, see how

the entrances and elevators were done up — probably

made of gold or whatever, who knows —

and photograph those views from the windows. You understand,

to get in there

you still have to look like people

who buy apartments for

however many billions of rubles.

That apartment that was up for sale

wasn't quite that expensive — there are more expensive

apartments there than Chemezov's.

But still, we're talking about who knows how many billions, and

so when we tried to get in,

they took one look at us.

'You? Pretending to be buyers of apartments worth

billions? Ha-ha.' In short, we didn't manage

to get in, we didn't manage to film all that splendor

inside. But at least this way we've shown you something.

It's very impressive, and in general it's astonishing.

By the way, I know Chemezov. He's one of the

few subjects of our investigations

whom I know personally — well, 'personally' is a big word.

That sounds grand. I saw him once

and said hello, because when I was a member

of the board of directors of Aeroflot, where

I was elected by minority shareholders,

Chemezov is also on the board of directors, but he didn’t

ever attend. He came once—at a stress-inducing

meeting, I suppose. I saw him once: he was sitting opposite me

and was mostly silent, so I can’t really

say much. The only amusing thing I

can say about him

is that he is very—this is going to sound

ambiguous—very handsome, and actually

you know, genuinely very

well-groomed, polished, velvety-looking person. I mean,

it’s not like I was staring at him and saying,

“Sergei Viktorovich, how handsome you are,”

but I mean it without sarcasm, without any

mockery—just, well, he’s an attractive

man, clearly takes care of himself, probably goes

for massages all the time.

He just looks like an absolutely

impeccable, polished gentleman of leisure

or a Hollywood star or something. And I

remember thinking what irony it is: the most

well-groomed person in the world I’ve

ever seen is the one in charge of all those

engineers and workers,

turners, welders—those people we

picture as being, well,

people in work overalls with dirty collars,

actually making things. And this most

well-groomed man on earth, the one with the

best looks and the finest manicure, is the one

running them all. So apparently Chemezov himself

more or less treats this with a great deal of irony

as well.

And an apartment of that size is, of course,

also a manifestation

of that irony on his part—or maybe even

sarcasm, aimed at all of us.

And what struck me even more, absolutely to

my core, was that after we had already

figured all this out, someone sent me on Twitter

an article saying that in Irkutsk Region

every year they adopt a regulation on

honorary citizens. So Chemezov is an

honorary citizen of Irkutsk Region, and

on that basis the region pays him

20,000 rubles (about $220) a year. I mean, that’s

great. It’s not that 20,000 rubles is

a lot on the scale of Irkutsk Region—

it isn’t—but do you understand what that means?

I took a billion here, three there, eight there,

I bought myself an apartment for 5 billion rubles

(about $55 million), and another 20,000? Sure, sure, sure,

I’ll take that too, 20,000 will do just fine. It’s just

completely surreal. I’m simply

appealing now to the deputies in Irkutsk

Region.

I honestly can’t say whether they’re

regional or city deputies, but since it’s Irkutsk

Region, probably regional ones. And the

governor there is a Communist Party member, and as I understand it,

in Irkutsk Region it isn’t

United Russia that holds

the majority. Guys, let’s at least

strip him of his honorary citizenship of

Irkutsk Region, because I’m sure

not a single resident of the region is willing to give

even one kopeck so that this 20,000-ruble

payment can happen—not one kopeck, not half

a kopeck would they give to a man

who already has an apartment worth 5

billion rubles (about $55 million).

As you can see, the segment about Chemezov

is titled “Chemezov Won,” and

for me it was very important that it

connect with the next topic, which is called

“Petrovich Lost.” This 56-second

video that I’m about to show you

made an enormous

impression on me, because I saw it the

day after we

published that video about Chemezov.

And “Petrovich” is just a placeholder name. In this

video you won’t learn

the man’s surname; unfortunately it isn’t

mentioned there. Otherwise we would have found him and maybe

even tried to arrange some kind of

legal support for him.

Remember how there were lots of jokes about

collecting deadwood, and everyone laughed when

the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) allowed people to gather

deadwood. Everyone said, “Ha-ha, right,” as in,

“They took away pensions, they took this and that away, but hey,

what an achievement—they allowed people to collect

deadwood.” There were lots of jokes about it.

Please watch this report from

Transbaikalia (a region in eastern Siberia). It’s 56 seconds long.

State inspectors from Buryatia’s Forestry

Agency have begun fining

villagers for collecting deadwood outside

the areas designated for that purpose. During a

raid in the Zaudinsky forestry district,

agency staff found two

residents of the village of Arango who had gathered stumps and

tree trunk remnants in a forest area

where doing so is prohibited.

As it turned out, the republic’s residents did not fully

understand the essence of the law, but they still

face fines under articles covering petty theft

or theft.

The state inspectors say:

“They were acting unlawfully.”

“They didn’t chop anything down with their own hands; they were collecting what

was left from felled timber.”

“You…”

“Even though…”

“…”

“It may not rise to criminal liability, but the reason is simple:”

“you can’t just go wherever you like, collect it

and haul it away.”

So on the one hand it’s funny, but on the

other hand, I mean, this

man in the village of Arango—don’t be lazy,

go google “Orongo village” and

“Buryatia” right now—you’ll see it’s just

outside Ulan-Ude,

about 100 kilometers (62 miles) toward Mongolia,

and some man—let’s call him

Petrovich—picked up a stump there and was dragging that

stump away, and then the state came down on him for it.

Petrovich says to himself: you have no right

to just go around collecting things like that

in, so to speak, the Barguzinsky District

where there’s basically no one there except you

and yet even there, this deadwood is somehow off-limits to you

You go out, gather some deadwood, some stump,

and then you have to justify yourself.

But I didn’t cut anything down, I was just collecting it.

This man, after all, has run into

the state. And then there’s Chemezov (Sergei Chemezov, head of Rostec), with

Putin and Medvedev sitting in front of him, this whole

gang looking at him and saying:

so, you’re collecting wood in the Barguzinsky District,

aren’t you? — I didn’t cut it, I collected it. — You have no

right. This could mean criminal charges,

and so they open a criminal case against him.

A charge of petty theft or larceny.

But they reassure Petrovich: all right, don’t

worry. Sure, you did break the law,

collecting deadwood here and all.

[music]

Out there, where only bears roam and

nobody lives at all, we still somehow feel sorry

to part with that deadwood for you. You collected it, but don’t

worry, we won’t lock you up, we’ll just

fine you. In Buryatia, the average salary is

35,000 rubles (about $380) a month in Buryatia.

Every fifth resident of the republic lives below

the poverty line. Good grief, it’s all

And over in Irkutsk Region, in all those areas

closer to China, they’ve simply cut down

everything. You’ve all seen those drone videos

over and over again — the taiga there has been clear-cut.

It’s not supposed to look like that, I’m telling you

as someone who knows forestry. I’ve

studied all this. You cannot log like that, when

you just go in and clear-cut everything

so that it all gets wiped out just like that —

hectares and square kilometers, leaving nothing but

stumps.

They hauled it all away, sold it all to China, and

somehow, damn it, all of that turned out to be

legal, and nobody went to jail. But then, of course,

they spot a man dragging, on a sled or

some little cart, I don’t know,

a stump home to heat his stove because

he’s poor — and there, every

fifth person is poor — and now what, we’re going to

write him up?

What a truly, well, just beastly

government this is. Leave Petrovich

alone. But if you won’t react, night after night,

to an apartment worth 5 billion rubles (about $54 million),

we released that video yesterday,

and it’s still sitting in second place

on YouTube’s trending list. It’ll soon hit two million

views. You know that millions

of Russian citizens are outraged and don’t understand

how this can be happening.

At least say something. If

Chemezov

were defending himself, or said that I had

slandered him, or called me an idiot, or said that

his wife honestly earned those five

billion — don’t show off, we

earned 5 billion honestly, we

managed it because we’re smart and you’re stupid — but they

won’t even say that. You understand? There’s no

FSB (Federal Security Service) or Investigative Committee, but for this

guy in a knitted cap, they’ll come

and say: well then, what do we have here?

Petty theft or larceny? Well, 5 billion is a bit

different.

For Sergei Viktorovich Chemezov — nothing. For this man — let’s file petty theft.

Don’t worry, your fine will be 7,000

rubles (about $75). As for Chemezov, there will be

nothing. As for Petrovich, there will be the full force of the law.

They’ll devour him.

I don’t know — a fine for

a stump stolen from whom, exactly? From the squirrels?

A stump. But there’ll be some kind of fine,

several thousand rubles, and he’ll end up with

a criminal record. He’ll have to

keep reporting,

to the penal inspection service,

checking in regularly, and this man will have to

give up several thousand rubles from his salary

to the state budget, and then they’ll

be cleverly redistributed, and

part of that money will be taken by the wonderful

Sergei Viktorovich Chemezov, who

I don’t know, will probably add something else

to his collection — maybe buy himself a beautiful marble

horse with wings, and

with a fountain too, and golden

hooves, and then a special

cloth for polishing the golden hooves of that

horse — and that is what the money taken from

Petrovich will go toward, because in the

Barguzinsky District he ‘stole’ a stump. This is a very

important point. I talk about this

all the time, you know that yourselves, but we must

hate these people, we must fight

them by every possible means, in particular through Smart

Voting. Look, I’ll show you now

the link,

the new link for

registering for Smart Voting, where we

will all fight together against United

Russia, against all of them, and against Chemezov.

It seems we made the right

decision. So far Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media regulator) cannot

block this link, so

join us. These are the people we need

to fight by every method available.

Including at the ballot box. So, Ilyushkin,

I’m being asked: today there were reports

that Colonel Kvachkov (Vladimir Kvachkov, a Russian ex-military officer)

will be released. What do you think of him? Well,

what do I think? Colonel Kvachkov is

a strange guy, and

the fact that he keeps being moved from one prison to another

right now has nothing at all to do

with any of his criminal

offenses. I don’t like Chubais (Anatoly Chubais, Russian politician and businessman), but

obviously, an attempt to blow up or

kill Chubais is a crime. Chubais

should be dealt with according to the law; proceedings should be brought against him through legal means.

to give him the opportunity to turn to

lawyers

and then put him in the dock and

try him fairly for what he did

there in Rosnano or somewhere else, absolutely

fairly, by a jury trial. But blowing up

Chubais is wrong, but what is happening now

to Kvachkov, simply dragging him through prisons, is

just because he is, well, that kind of

active, uncompromising, and strange person

and our state believes that he

belongs in prison

Well, I’m certainly not a fan of Dmitry

Chirikov will ask me. As for Jehovah’s Witnesses,

I will definitely say something about that in

the Ulyanovsk Suvorov Military School

Obsanaga7 writes:

there has been an outbreak of echinococcosis. I hope

I pronounced that correctly. In the cadets’ lungs

worms were found. It’s a monstrous case, really.

In fact, this is the largest outbreak in

the history of Russia. This is not just, you know,

some kind of situation where someone somehow

picked up parasites, took a pill three times,

and everything is fine. This is a very

dangerous disease, with a deadly

risk. In some cases, it almost

requires surgical treatment. It is very

dangerous, and once again this shows that

despite the huge number of

all these oversight agencies, consumer protection watchdogs,

agricultural inspectors, and so on, in practice

they do not work. And in our supposedly wealthy

state, in Ulyanovsk, children are being fed, well,

simply some rotten, contaminated food. I don’t even

know where they could have brought these

worms from

with the food. And I very much hope that what remains

of medicine in Russia will help these

unfortunate teenagers, whom I saw today

from Venediktov, I think on Twitter

or on his Telegram channel, and quotes from them like,

“we’re waiting until we die.” I mean, this is

monstrous, absolutely, absolutely

a monstrous situation. And, by the way, it

strongly echoes

what happened in Moscow with

the poisoning of children in kindergartens

caused by the company Concord

owned by Putin’s chef, and I was very

often asked this week whether I met with him.

I did not meet with him. The thing is, Concord

poisoned children in Moscow. Lyubov Sobol

is conducting an investigation into this, and

Concord

Prigozhin’s company supplies every year

23 billion rubles’ worth of food to kindergartens and schools

(about 250 million USD). They are effectively

a monopolist. They are the monopolist: all food in

schools and kindergartens

is supplied by Prigozhin. Prigozhin poisoned

these children. Fortunately, there were no such severe

consequences there as in Ulyanovsk, but nevertheless

children were hospitalized there with

fevers above 40°C (104°F) and were at

death’s door for some time. It’s just that Moscow

medicine probably worked better

because it’s a big city. But obviously

for Prigozhin this issue was

very painful. He does not want to lose these

contracts. He should be stripped of them because

he poisoned these children. And besides, next

year he is already planning

to supply healthcare institutions with

his rotten products

so for him this is very important. And, honestly,

a strange thing happened

we laughed at first and didn’t even

understand it. I came to St. Petersburg for

the opening of our headquarters, for the launch of the campaign

for the municipal deputy elections

Everything went really well. I thank

everyone who came. There were a huge

number of people. It was genuinely nice

to come to St. Petersburg

the enthusiasm, everything was great. I’m sure we

will run a major campaign there. Already about

2,000 people have put themselves forward and want to be

deputies. I was explaining how everything

would be organized. We arrived there

with several people from Moscow, eight of us

in total. We checked into a hotel

spent the night, gathered in the morning and

went out with our things, loaded into a minibus

and went to a meeting. After the meeting we got

on the Sapsan high-speed train and went back to Moscow the

next day. There are photos, but you see,

there was some surveillance tailing us

some police, as usual, they are always around

I don’t even pay attention anymore

they photograph us, taking pictures of how

we are dragging things through the snowdrifts

the St. Petersburg

snow into the minibus, our bags, and then the photo is

presented as if it were from the hotel, and

the sensation is: Navalny met with

Prigozhin at such-and-such hotel. Well, we

all laugh, because we know what was actually there

and at first it wasn’t very clear whether this

was spread through one of those

corrupt, paid-for Telegram channels

not Nezygar, some anonymous one and it was unclear whether

this was aimed against Prigozhin. Here it is clear

that it is aimed against me. I mean,

actually it’s a funny idea to try to

discredit me by saying that I am in league with

the Kremlin, and that same Prigozhin, Putin’s chef,

sits there on the boards of

the Defense Ministry, he is one of Putin’s closest trusted associates

he sends military personnel, organizes

and maintains all these private military

companies. In other words, he is a Kremlin

crook. And the compromising material on me is that

I supposedly meet with a Kremlin crook

The way they assess themselves is very

funny. But the funniest thing, actually,

is that nobody really paid attention to the

obvious lie

But then Prigozhin himself, well,

confirmed that we had a meeting with him

and said that yes, I had met with him

and had asked for his support, well,

in the St. Petersburg elections in exchange for us

ending our campaign about the poisoned

children, and at that point it would become clear, actually,

what was really going on.

Where this is really coming from is that he wants to, well, take this

scandal around the poisoned children

and drown it in a much bigger scandal. After all,

for journalists, for example,

it is harder to go and figure out what exactly

happened with the poisoning of the children, so

they do not write about that. But the topic of

whether Prigozhin met or did not meet with

Navalny

is so clickable, and it requires no real work,

so naturally everyone writes about it

to collect clicks. And well, what can I

say? I mean, of course they are absolutely

crooks,

absolutely liars, and here I am not even that

interested in dragging Prigozhin through the mud or

sorting out that situation, but it seems to me

completely obvious that this is a lie.

For any normal person, it is important not

to forget the main thing: that very case

of the poisoned children. It was a mass

dysentery outbreak.

Hundreds of children ended up in the hospital, and someone

has to

be held responsible for it, and

the victims should receive some kind of

compensation, and at the very least their medication costs

should be covered. That is only logical, it is logical. That is

what we are fighting for. And well, of course I

believe that the contracts and everything connected with Prigozhin

should be reviewed and terminated. But

he poisoned those children, yes, and he must

answer for it.

And as for that, by the way,

we requested the video recordings from that hotel

where I was, because, well, there it will all be

there.

If they give us those recordings, it will all be

quite simple: how we went into the room,

everyone who was staying there went off to their rooms,

gathered, and then left.

We will see whether the hotel gives us those

recordings.

And if it does not, then on what, on what

grounds will it refuse us? But the whole thing is very

funny—the very idea that I supposedly

asked for some kind of loyalty in the elections

for municipal deputies in St. Petersburg

Why the hell would I need the loyalty of that pathetic

Putin's cook (a common nickname for Prigozhin) when I have

the loyalty of the main United Russia politician there

who is running in the gubernatorial election,

Beglov, the laughingstock, as many now

call him, because I have not seen a PR

campaign like this in a long time. St. Petersburg

is buried in snow, and they are not clearing it away there.

They are trying to clear it, but it is absolutely not

working. There are literally giant mountains,

mountains of snow. By the way, that is directly

prohibited by law. They are supposed to

remove it; they have no right to leave it lying

on the ground or on sidewalks. They are supposed to

haul it away regularly. But those piles are there,

people are taking pictures on them, playing

king of the hill. It is all very funny. Our headquarters

in St. Petersburg even filed a lawsuit against city hall

because they are not clearing the snow, and

in response to this crisis and

the obvious inability to cope with

what is, let's be honest,

a basic municipal task—snow

falls every year, for many, many years, over

the city of St. Petersburg,

over St. Petersburg, and even before there was

a St. Petersburg, over this area

snow still fell.

Every winter it snows. This has become news

only for United Russia members—they cannot

cope with it, and Mr. Beglov

is reacting very strangely to all of this because

at first he launched this shovel-wielding

Beglov act, like, 'I'll come and clean it up now,' well

of course he could not clean it up, and now he

is busy driving around the city and

taking pictures with people, literally.

There he is helping a pensioner across

the street, and naturally everyone immediately noticed

that he was doing it in the wrong place.

His security guard illegally stopped

traffic, and then, just a bit later,

he personally leads the pensioner across in an unauthorized

place. There are these red ribbons

that mean 'do not walk here'

because snow or ice could crack your skull.

And there is Beglov personally going around and

adjusting those ribbons, and then these

funny photos get circulated, like,

'Look, people of St. Petersburg, what an energetic

governor you have—he personally came out and personally

helps pensioners across the street.' And all of this would be

very funny and ironic, but on that very

day when Beglov was circulating

photos of himself helping pensioners across the street,

near the Hermitage Museum, right by the Hermitage,

a tourist from Britain fell on the sidewalk because

it was icy and broke her leg. The

next day, an outright tragic

story happened there: a student simply had

ice fall from a roof onto his head—they are not clearing anything there either—

and he died, to everyone's great

regret. I mean, this simply

shows what the authorities in

St. Petersburg are like, how utterly

incapable and pathetic they are. So why would I need

Prigozhin's loyalty there? Smolny (St. Petersburg City Hall)

is working for me—not for me personally, but for

the candidates who are running against Smolny

through its own stupidity and lawlessness,

because the coordinator of our штаб

Denis Mikhailov—this Bogdan Litvin from

The Vesna movement was fined this

week 7.3 million rubles (about $80,000) for the fact that

during the rally "He Is Not Our Tsar" they

had filed an application.

So, supposedly, someone trampled the lawn — that is,

it's a completely outrageous thing.

An utterly lawless court: officials brought in

some papers and said, well, people walked there,

they trampled the grass, so let them pay 7 million.

Let these people pay. It's obvious why this is being done.

First they kept jailing Mikhailova over and over,

he served 30 days, then another 30

days. The guy isn't afraid, so now let's

hit him with 7 million and bankrupt him, and so on.

They're trying to intimidate everyone. I believe that

in St. Petersburg, people will properly judge

who is good here and who is bad,

and everyone will come together and vote against

this head of the city,

and against all the United Russia candidates who run

in the elections. Let me see what I'm being

asked here. She's asking you — or rather, asking me:

do you plan to come to Rostov-on-Don?

Our governor is also aiming for

an endless term. Governors everywhere

want to stay in office forever. To Rostov

on-Don, and to the south in general, I would very much like

to come. During the presidential campaign

we weren't able — I wasn't able — to find

any venue at all, nothing for

a public event.

Specifically, not in Krasnodar and not in

Rostov-on-Don. I will come there — well, I'm trying

at least to come. So, about Navalny, I'll

say this. Darya asks why everyone is so

calm about the fact that the internet in

Russia will be cut off from

the rest of the world, and that between

2 and 20 billion rubles (roughly $22 million to $220 million) has been allocated for it.

So,

no, we're not calm about it, it's just that

we have so much

idiocy happening every single day, and

you simply can't react to all of it.

Good Lord, it's like Pavlov's dog:

idiotic news comes out every second, and you

say, first, "What the hell is

going on?" then, "Damn, what's going on, what's

going on?" because you're just sitting there and

there it is — 18 billion has already

been definitely allocated. But today our

beloved Senator Klishas said that

cutting Russia off from the rest of

the internet would cost 2 to 20

billion, and that this money needs

to be allocated. As if there were nowhere better to spend

money than on cutting all of us off

from the global internet. Of course everyone

is unhappy about it, and I think much more

will be said on this subject when all this

takes a fully concrete form,

with actual funding and a bill on it. We'll talk about it a lot.

So, Christians.

In Russia, Christians — as you know —

come in different kinds, including

the kind of Christians we see

going door to door, knocking on houses

and asking, "Would you like to talk about God?" You

may like that or you may not.

You may like Jehovah's Witnesses

or not like them. Maybe you don't

believe in God at all. Maybe

no Christians are close to you. But in

the Zheleznodorozhny District of Oryol, they sentenced

a man named Danish to six years in a penal colony

after finding him guilty of extremism

because he had led the local

Jehovah's Witnesses congregation and committed

terrible acts — truly terrible acts. He

prayed. You understand, they hand out this

little booklet, and on it is written: "Will there be

an end to suffering?" Damn it, many people

in Russia suffer — because

their personal lives aren't working out, or something else,

and for them, for many of them,

religion is the only comfort.

People go to church in the first place because they

are suffering, because they want to talk

to God, because they have a desire to

talk about it. There are people who

joined neither the Russian Orthodox Church nor the Baptists

nor the Catholics, but Jehovah's Witnesses,

and here they are simply being imprisoned. And what is happening

in Russia now is complete lawlessness,

because this is what Hitler did. Jehovah's Witnesses

are known for the fact that they are

against the state in general, against service

in the army.

They do not recognize the state. So what if they

don't recognize it? They sit in their

prayer house

and pray, and say to each other, "So, Petya,

do you recognize the state?" "No, Kolya, I do not

recognize the state." Why should we care what

goes on in their prayer house, so long as it

is not connected with violence?

But what is being done to them is

simply outrageous lawlessness.

Six years in Russia is about the average sentence for murder.

Robbers get less than seven years,

muggers get less. Six years is a very

long sentence. He got it for praying.

I saw a video — I'll show it to you now.

I saw it: 42 seconds, in Khanty-Mansiysk.

A search is being carried out

in a place where something terrible is happening:

Jehovah's Witnesses are gathering and praying.

But this just — it looks as though

they've busted a gang of terrorists. 42 seconds.

Khanty-Mansiysk.

Maybe.

I am getting married as the hearth Ukraine without such

remove direction to train from

the federation.

Lieutenant Colonel of Justice Shaimukhametov.

On the basis of the order for

the conduct of a search, dated February 1, 2015,

year.

I am conducting... in the district court.

a search of a residence

a military-style operation, and you can see there, behind

the back of this unfortunate Jehovah's Witness

there's someone standing there in some kind of cap, and

only the eyes are visible. But that's dangerous, because

you know, Jehovah's Witnesses will just fill out... and then

lie in wait for you face-to-face and stab themselves with a knife under

the rib — that's what they always do, isn't it, and not even

just a group of quiet little people who

sit somewhere and pray without bothering anyone

these are terrorists, after all, and this is how they should be

treated

This is the city of Uray, in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug

and I am sure that in the entire history of the city of Uray

there has never been a police operation on this scale

like the one they decided they needed

to carry out against people who quietly

pray. This really is, in relation to

them, fascism. Hitler did the same thing

— Jehovah's Witnesses were thrown into

concentration camps and tortured, or to

death. In Russia, of course, they are not being tortured to death there

yet, fortunately — they are only being imprisoned for

terms that are actually longer than

those given, it turns out, to participants in murder cases. This is

absolute lawlessness. At the same time, though,

well, it's clear that Jehovah's Witnesses

are hated by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)

— it considers them somehow dangerous and

calls them a destructive sect. But first and

foremost, it is worried that they are

taking away its parishioners. In general, in the Urals and

in Siberia — we don't know much about this, but

there, Protestants have taken a huge

number of parishioners from the ROC, because

the ROC does nothing.

It does not deal with matters of religion; it deals with

matters of money, unfortunately. And if we

knew the real size of the

Protestant community in Russia, we

would be very surprised, because

it is very large. And in terms of practical

religiosity — simply in terms of observing

rites, praying, reading the Bible —

I think the day is not far off when they

will catch up with the ROC, if the ROC keeps

doing this kind of nonsense. But at the same time,

Jehovah's Witnesses somehow don't bother anyone

— or rather, they bother people a great deal, sorry — but

Putin's witches don't seem to bother anyone, and

this happened this week in

Neurochny

In Neurochny, there was a magic circle, so to speak

— urgently. And there, regarding Vladimir Putin,

something happened, and the witches of Russia gathered

to conduct a circle of power in order to

support Vladimir Putin and curse

his enemies. I don't know whether I have fallen under

a terrible witch's curse, but if

something happens to me now, and it's not

some kind of horror-movie thing, then know

that the witches from the witches' circle are to blame

— 36 seconds of a ritual in support of

Vladimir Putin and a curse on his enemies

[music]

[music]

[music]

Look at that — bewitched and cursed, by the way

It's funny, amusing, but we know for sure

that in the Kremlin — I've said this many times

on this program —

they've all gone a little off the rails over

occultism and all sorts of rituals. There, in fact,

really,

they do consult shamans, really

— six thousand real shamans somewhere in

Siberia, there really are such people there

and astrologers who really do advise

the country's top leaders. Well,

because they're nuts. I mean, even judging by

the size of their apartments — you can see that these are

crazy people who have lost touch with

reality. And where there are crazy people

who've lost touch with reality, of course

there will be shamans, there will be

fortune-telling with coffee grounds, and here we have witches

casting spells and curses

Do witches have the right to gather?

Absolutely. That right extends to

witches too — they can do whatever they want

even jump around naked on a broomstick

as long as no

underage children are watching. But there is always

some kind of rivalry between confessions, and

you'd think the ROC would say

something like: dear parishioners, witches do not exist,

dear parishioners, witches do not exist, and

all this discussion should not concern us. But that doesn't bother them

— whereas Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand,

are the wrong kind of Christians, and therefore

they are enemies

We started talking about this kind of

fake terrorism, fake

extremism

So, let me say a couple of

words about fake terrorism, because

we saw that in the Pskov Region

and in Moscow, our

FSB guys decided to pad all their

statistics with cases that are simply, just

absolutely outrageous. In the Pskov Region

— and let's watch four seconds, you'll

see now

a search, and there are people standing there literally in

camouflage smocks — that is,

snipers, some kind of scouts. You can't just detain a person like that, I mean

you can't just detain a person like that, that is,

for his detention, people came out in

white camouflage suits. That means that

during the detention it was quite likely they'd need

to fall into the snow so that the enemy

wouldn't spot them, and with precise shots

neutralize the offender. Just four seconds

Who were these Voroshilov sharpshooters

detaining — I don't know, mountain rangers

or some super FSB special forces?

It was Svetlana Prokopyeva from Pskov

I know her as a journalist; I went to

Pskov, where she worked for the newspaper *Pskovskaya Guberniya*.

Now she works for Echo of Moscow.

She’s a great, smart woman, a real

journalist, very pleasant. And her so-called offense—

why they are detaining her like this—

consists in the fact that she expressed a

fairly obvious thought when she was

discussing the terrorist attack in Arkhangelsk,

where a student set off an explosion in an FSB building. But

she said something obvious, and I’ll repeat it

now: the state bears

responsibility for this act.

Of course, yes, of course the state bears

responsibility for it. Terrorism is horrible,

but the state, and the FSB in particular, bears

direct responsibility for the fact that

young people are losing their minds

over the torture to which the FSB subjects people

right before our eyes.

The situation with Azat Miftakhov is unfolding.

He is a mathematician, an anarchist—an anarchist in

his political views. So, he was

detained,

allegedly for assembling an explosive

device. He was tortured, he was beaten

with electric shocks, and he was threatened

with rape using a drill, and all that sort of thing.

By the way, the guy did well, because they

demanded that he confess

his guilt, that he was a terrorist, and in such

circumstances, well,

under torture, a long time ago, many

people would have admitted guilt. He

still endured that torture.

An unprecedented number of people signed in his support—

Russian and international

representatives of the mathematical

community, and all sorts of technical specialists from

all the best Russian universities.

Hundreds of people signed.

And today, it seemed, we had already started

to celebrate because he had been released, but it turned out that

he was released only to be immediately

detained again, because the case was so

fabricated, and there was so much attention around

it,

that now they’ve come up with a different case.

The alleged arson of a United Russia office. And by “arson”

of a United Russia office, they mean that someone broke a window in

Moscow and simply threw a smoke bomb

inside.

That is not called setting a United Russia

office on fire; it’s called throwing a smoke bomb into a

United Russia office. But yes, they broke a window, and it’s not good

to break windows.

But that is minor hooliganism, certainly

not arson.

But Miftakhov is now being kept

in prison on a completely new case. I

want to say that Prokopyeva

is being arrested by these armed

men in camouflage, while Miftakhov is

being tortured, threatened with rape, dragged around, and

so on—and they are all called terrorists, all of them

are labeled terrorists. At the same time, in

Moscow, together with Maria Zakharova,

with balalaikas and dancing to “Kalinka-Malinka,”

they are welcoming members of the

Taliban movement”

officially recognized in Russia as a

terrorist organization, until

very recently.

If, in an article, you had written “the

Taliban movement”

and had not added that idiotic footnote—

“a terrorist movement banned on the

territory of the Russian Federation”—then

Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and communications regulator) would have come running and issued

a warning, as they did to many others.

You were supposed to say: ISIS, a banned

organization, blah blah; Taliban, a banned

organization, blah blah. And now these Taliban

people, who are not throwing smoke bombs into

a United Russia office and are not

writing articles in Pskov newspapers, but instead

kill people, cut off heads, shut down

schools, and in fact pursue

an absolutely terrorist policy—they

are sitting in the Foreign Ministry.

So now they are these respectable

guys with whom we are conducting negotiations. Fine,

I understand: for the purposes of our foreign

policy, we need to establish some kind of

relationship with the Taliban. Fine, today

terrorists on one side are terrorists

in theory, perhaps.

A country is a country; they control it.

Let’s discuss something with them. But if

you have discussed something with them,

then leave Miftakhov alone,

leave Prokopyeva alone,

leave in peace people who have

done nothing.

So I would certainly like to express

my support for Prokopyeva

—Prokopyeva, sorry—

and for Miftakhov, and indeed for all the other people

who end up in situations like this. I call on

everyone to show them support—simply

write about it, talk about it, and so on.

Alexei Lavrinenko asks: it would be interesting

to hear statistics on the Smart Voting project

and on the trade union. I’ll talk about the trade union later,

but as for Smart Voting, let me

prepare the statistics for the next

program. What can you say about the Smolensk

governor?

I can’t say anything; honestly, I don’t even

remember who the Smolensk governor is right now, to

my shame. But if we find anything

interesting about him, we’ll definitely

tell you. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,

President of the Russian Federation,

crushed the food of Kemerovo children with a bulldozer.

Two programs ago, I had a segment

called “Tuleyev

Ate the Food of Kemerovo’s Children,” but now we

We understand that Tuleyev ate this food, and Putin ate it too.

Vladimir was out there crushing it with a bulldozer.

Vladimir Vladimirovich just left everyone a little bit

stunned yesterday when he simply, outright,

supported an absolutely unpopular idea:

the destruction of sanctioned food products. Do you

know that in Russia, 30,000 tons

of high-quality food products from Europe

were destroyed? They were literally

run over with bulldozers. It looked wild,

sometimes it even looked ridiculous. Remember

the famous video?

In some region, these guys showed up at

a stall, basically a tiny little

shop,

listed three geese, and then on camera

drove over those three geese with a bulldozer or something.

But all of this is insane, because

22 million people are living below the poverty line,

a huge number of people simply do not get enough to eat, and yet

Putin said that all of this is very

great and economically

justified. Like, let's watch the 39-second clip.

Putin:

Sometimes, from the point of view of economics,

it is better to put something

under the knife

than to simply give it away, strange as

that may sound, because that means

preserving jobs, preserving

a certain level of profitability

in production, and price, price

policy, and so on. It may sound,

you know, not very comfortable or

pleasant,

but from the point of view, from the point of view

of the economy as a whole, and therefore

creating factors for development, and so on,

and ultimately for people.

Well, that's economics, son. So when I

say that destroying food seems wild to me,

this is economics from the point of view of

development.

And the thing is that this week facts were confirmed:

an official statement was already released

listing names,

confirming the fact that in

Kemerovo Region

children were fainting from hunger. This was

announced several weeks ago, then

of course the local authorities said that

it was horrible, false

information, and they gave hell to

the children's ombudsman who had reported it.

An inspection was carried out, and it was confirmed:

children were fainting from hunger because

they had no food, because their

parents could not give them money for

the purchase of a school lunch.

I would like Putin to come to

those Kemerovo children and tell them the same thing:

"Yeah, guys, it's economics. You, you—

you're fainting, kid? Well, that's the law.

You see, that's the invisible hand of the market.

You're fainting because Adam

Smith is giving himself a slap upside the head, and you

black out. That's how the economy works.

This country's development will continue, and

for the country's development, you have to fall into

a hunger faint."

30,000 tons of food were destroyed.

That's 30,000 tons—meaning thousands,

hundreds of thousands of times when people could have

had something to eat, when poor people could have

eaten something, when those Ulyanovsk

students I talked about today

who were fed some rotten food and are now

infected

with some monstrous disease connected

to parasites that live in the lungs, in

the brain, and everywhere else—they could have been given proper

food. But no: for development, for economic

what else did he say—for economic

laws, it has to be crushed with a bulldozer.

And you just stay hungry—that's the

hand of the market.

Brazen, disgusting hypocrisy.

Unfortunately, not that many people will see this little video about Putin

online.

The internet will see it,

but I wish everyone would.

Because we still expected Putin,

understanding the absurdity and insanity of this

idiotic decision that food should be crushed at dumps,

to say something more evasive.

Like, sure, we wouldn't want to, of course,

but as he usually says,

"Have you seen the U.S. national debt? These are our

Western partners

forcing us to take such decisive

measures." Fine, nonsense—but okay. But instead the man

just says: yes, food must be crushed.

He doesn't think about anyone else after that.

He doesn't care about anyone. Not everyone lives in

apartments worth 1 billion or 5 billion rubles

(roughly tens of millions of U.S. dollars), and they don't even—what, they crushed

some geese? You can't just go to the store at night

and buy a goose. Go on, come up with 3,000 rubles

(about $30–$35) too, and spend every day on

food 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 rubles—walk into Azbuka Vkusa (a premium grocery chain),

load up your cart, and roll out. That's how they

live. They think everyone lives like that.

And those who can't live like that—well,

they think those people deserve nothing. And here

we smoothly move on to my favorite,

Dmitry Peskov,

who commented on the lovely new

terrible piece of news that according to the latest

polls, 41 percent of Russians

between the ages of 18 and 24

would like to emigrate from Russia.

Honestly, that's a total catastrophe.

Here we have young people who have entered

their most fertile

years—they should be getting married, having children,

giving birth to our children, their own children, for themselves

and for Mother Russia—they should

be getting jobs, they should be living and

Basically, everything is being done for these people’s lives and well-being,

so that they can live comfortably.

And 41 percent of them want to leave altogether,

to leave Russia, and Peskov was asked, well, what

he thought about that. And Peskov replied

to this by saying, well, yes, actually that’s not such a

big number. I read that and thought:

“Not a big number? Compared to what,”

is he comparing it?

And then I remembered our little

inside joke at FBK (the Anti-Corruption Foundation): that from

Peskov’s family alone you could assemble

a controversial platoon of NATO soldiers. I spent

some time trying to tell Miki

from Deni, and now I’ll show you this

photo, this nice family photo

of the Peskov family, where all his children

from different marriages are gathered together. Let’s just take a look.

So, from my side, that’s the left side, if you’re

looking at the screen. On the left side we

see, I think, Miki.

The smaller one is Deni. They

live in France, as does the girl

standing on the far right side

of the photo. You’ve seen her many times before—

Elizaveta “Lisa” Peskova. So they’ve already left, they

live in France. The grown-up

dark-haired young man is, well,

the well-known

Nikolai Choles, about whom we did a whole

investigation. He is a British subject, he

lived in Britain for a long time,

served time in prison there, he has a British

passport, and for much of the time now

he stays in Russia because

here he can

live off his daddy’s corrupt money.

So really, he’s not someone you can

count as Russian either. Next, there’s this girl—

let me not mix this up—

the girl standing next to Navka,

she’s hugging her by the shoulder. I really hope

I haven’t gotten all this mixed up. That is

Navka’s daughter from her first marriage, Alexandra

Zhulin. Apparently, as far as we

understand, she is a U.S. citizen. And then there’s also

the daughter Peskov and Navka have together,

we don’t know much about her, but obviously she lives

with her parents.

We don’t know anything about her citizenship, but

looking at this Moscow family,

we can see that more than 50 percent

have already moved abroad.

Most likely even more. These people are all clearly

going to leave the country, so Peskov just shouldn’t

be asked—don’t even say it.

Man, 40 percent of people, because of people like

you and your damn Putin, want to leave

the country. He thinks: is that a lot or

a little? Who’d think so? In my case, basically everyone

has already left. And here there are still 60 percent

of fools who supposedly want to stay. In my family

everyone has cleared out. I work for

Putin, but no one in my family

wants to live in a country where the president is

Putin, because they want to live in Europe,

where there is education and healthcare,

and safety, where I’m not there,

where there’s no mustachioed Peskov, no scum like Chemezov,

where there’s none of this whole gang, where there’s no Maria

Zakharova kissing up to the Taliban

movement, where journalists aren’t jailed. They

have already left. They made their choice.

They live in NATO countries, and everything is very

good for them.

And that’s why, that’s exactly why,

our Peskov ends up with statistics like these.

But in fact, something much

more serious has happened.

Because of it, we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation

will once again demand tomorrow

that

Peskov be dismissed. Because the newspaper

*The Guardian* and the Dossier Center

—an investigative outlet—

published a new

investigation describing

Navka and Peskov’s real estate, much of which

they took from our investigations,

for which many thanks to them. They once again

reminded everyone and reported that now

Navka is building or planning some kind of

grand palace outside Moscow,

something new, and it’s unclear where she got

the money for it. And most importantly, Tatyana

Navka,

Dmitry Peskov’s wife, still

has an account in Switzerland. And these

wonderful patriots passed

a special law under which

officials and members of parliament are forbidden

to hold accounts in foreign banks.

People are expelled from parliament over this, they

are removed from office if you open

an account in a foreign bank. Say you went

to Georgia for a month and needed to pay

your utility bills, so you went to a bank and opened an account,

and, and, and didn’t notify the tax authorities

or the central bank about it—you’ll have big

problems. If, for example, you work as

some kind of programmer for

foreign clients and your salary is paid

directly into your foreign account because

it’s more convenient for them, then you can

be fined for the entire amount that was

credited to that account. In other words,

our state goes after everyone who

has accounts in foreign banks, and at the same

time, this wonderful family of ours,

which has practically all moved abroad, some of them to

NATO countries, has an account in Switzerland. Information

about this account was published back in

the so-called Panama Papers,

but they never closed it. And there was a test

carried out by journalists: they

transferred a small sum of money, and that

sum was credited; they received

confirmation that it had gone into Mrs.

They transferred that amount of money to Navka.

That is grounds for Peskov to be fired.

Legally, that is grounds to

once again say that this is, excuse me,

simply one of the most brazen, arrogant

how can I put this politely,

human specimens sitting in

the Kremlin, a shameless guy with a watch worth

hundreds of thousands

of dollars, who hangs out on a yacht

paid for by oligarchs, who lives

in some billion-ruble estates

and on top of that he has Swiss bank accounts and

has sent his whole family abroad, yet lectures us

about loving Putin and tells us how

patriotic they all are, while we are not real

patriots, that we represent Chinese groups

of influence, the West, or whatever else, and are a fifth

column—while they, with their bank accounts and

children

living abroad, are supposedly Putin-style

patriots. I think it will be quite funny

when we start corresponding with the Presidential Administration

when we demand

on the basis of information circulated

in the media that Peskov be fired.

How they will twist and squirm yet again

like a worm in a frying pan, and defend one another

instead of

paying salaries. My dear viewers, now we have

Instagram—Instagram is very good.

Ksenia Borodina's Instagram, because

if you want to think about whether

our trade union

project has worked—the one within which

we are defending the right

of public-sector employees at this stage to higher

pay—

then if you are wondering whether it is working or not,

please go right now

to Ksenia Borodina's Instagram, one

of the most famous, heavily promoted

and expensive accounts in advertising terms,

and we will see that Ksenia

Borodina suddenly—well, that is, she

used to advertise some sneakers or I don't

know what else they advertise there, because she is

an attractive woman, and with her great

photos, very beautiful, with her

beautiful family,

she attracts people. They look at her

lifestyle, and they buy into various

products she advertises. But this time

Ksenia Borodina was commissioned

to run an advertising campaign—there is not the slightest

doubt about that—

and they commissioned not an advertising campaign for

let's say, promoting high

salaries for researchers in Russia, and

she writes a post saying, you know, guys, how

great it is that researchers have started

receiving huge salaries in Russia. I

mean, let's just show a few comments,

the most liked ones, what people are writing

to Ksenia Borodina—only the ones that are still fit to print

can be left on screen.

I mean, this is as detached from

reality as it is possible to be, and separately

it is simply amusing to discuss how this

could even have happened.

Just imagine a meeting in the Kremlin.

They are saying: so, Navalny has decided

to score all the political points by

defending public-sector workers, and he will run around to

these public-sector employees, helping them and squeezing

their salaries out of us, because we promised them

the moon and the stars,

but we are not paying the salaries. So how do we respond?

How do we respond to Navalny? And someone

says, you know, like in that famous

meme, someone says: maybe we should sell

Chemezov's apartment, and in the next

frame that person goes flying out

the window. Then someone says: let's pay Ksenia

Borodina for a sponsored post, and says

the Presidential Administration, Peskov,

I don't know, Margarita Simonyan—whoever it is there

that makes such decisions—decided

to prove it. They apparently simply decided

to convince researchers that they

actually do have high salaries. But

I can see that researchers' salaries

are supposed to be 200 percent of

the average wage. Let's take a look.

People write to us from Sverdlovsk Region:

we see 15,000 rubles instead of 75,000. Let's look at the city of

St. Petersburg.

There, a researcher's salary should be

120,000 rubles, but he receives

10,027 rubles. So what are these

people supposed to be told? Dude, don't look at

your payslip—are you stupid or what?

Look at Ksenia Borodina's Instagram. We

paid her 1 million rubles, and she

has explained everything to you—how great it is

for you to live as a researcher, how well off you are. This is, of course,

just completely insane, as they say.

And Ksenia Borodina's post proves

that our trade union project is going well.

Join it. We have received

8,000 requests so far, of which

6,000 already have confirmed email addresses.

We had an attack as if the Kremlin

had unleashed some bots on us, and they

dumped 2,000 fake emails on us, but we cleaned it all

out.

It took some time, but we already have

a huge amount of work there, and we are carrying out

meticulous work so that every

person who has come to us receives

legal assistance. And for the person receiving

10,027 rubles instead of 120,000,

we will fight for him. And in the course of this

fight, we will see many, many more very

amusing and very obviously staged

situations, when they hire someone

because they do not want to pay salaries, while

apartments are apparently what they need—but that is what they will do.

all sorts of sellouts there, I'll wrap up this business

cultural figures and so on and so forth

and so on, and of course I see they didn't put it up

so, Kiselev and Dud — did you watch the interview?

Kiselev's interview, friends, did you watch it

Kiselev, Kiselev, Kiselev — a million questions

are you freezing, or is something wrong with my stream?

Vladislav Statsenko, everyone keeps asking, so I'll say it once

I've already started talking about sellout stars

but of course I watched the Kiselev interview

with Dud

and there are, yes, there are two absolutely

stunning moments — though really, everything there is

stunning, I mean, it's just a person

who doesn't say a single truthful word, and

it's very interesting how he handles that lie

like that, and then it's like, "What kind of

pension do you have? New pants? Take them off, show me

your dick, then I'll answer you"

Dud's eyes were this wide, like, he clearly didn't

expect an answer like that, I mean

it's a pretty contrived kind of lying. Two

moments. Let's first look at the clip

26 seconds long, about how

well, poverty and rising prices, they're not

of a dramatic nature — some things

went up by 5 percent, some things

got cheaper. I'm not an economist, and I

don't pretend to be an economic commentator

I think this isn't some dramatically

serious economic problem, and rising prices are not

dramatic in Russia right now — not dramatic

for whom? Well, for most people

for the overwhelming majority of the population

of Russia, it's not dramatic

I have no complaints about Yury Dud because

because, well, if at that moment he had

grabbed a chair and just

smashed Kiselev with it, people in Ufa would later be asking

"Excuse me, Yury, are you definitely a real

host?" Kiselev lives in an apartment

worth 160 million rubles (about US$1.7 million), in this, how do you even

call it — it's not even really a residential building

it's some kind of ultra-elite

thing called "Legends of

Tsvetnoy"

one of the most expensive buildings in Moscow; the only place more expensive

belongs to Chemezov (Sergey Chemezov, head of Rostec)

His apartment costs 160 million rubles (about US$1.7 million)

Where did he get that 160 million from? Obviously he

got it in the form of some kind of

fees they pay him, and in the form of an official

salary from a loss-making TV channel

that's state-sponsored, and he sits there saying

"well, of course it's not dramatic"

Man, Rosstat (Russia's official statistics agency) says there are officially 22

million people below the poverty line

When we say "below the poverty line," that's

a euphemism for saying people are destitute, living in poverty

Several tens of millions

of Russian citizens live like that, and this brazen mug

tells us — tells Dud — it's not dramatic at all

not dramatic, nothing like that, no problem

Sure, in Kemerovo a couple of kids

fainted, but it's not like — do you see

people lying in the street in hunger-induced

fainting spells? No? Then it means it's not all that

dramatic

But the great moment, the very best moment

was the blitz round, of course. Friends, I've been on

his show myself, and a blitz round is usually

when they ask you several questions

briefly

and you answer them, and the way Dud plays

with that format is pretty interesting

Kiselev's blitz round lasted 14 seconds. Let's

watch. "I'll ask briefly, you

answer — not necessarily briefly. Money

or honor?" — "Honor." End of round

[music]

Come on, admit it, you can clearly hear: "Money

or honor?" — "Honor." That's it, end of round

That, that was simply the best moment

the quintessence of the entire program, you understand

there sits the most corrupt toad on planet

Earth — "honor"

You see, he should have stood up and then

started singing the Russian national anthem

or maybe that song, "Officers, officers

your hearts are under fire," or "Of the heroes

of times gone by, neither names nor

faces remain," and he should have burst into tears at that moment

instead of just sitting there like this, with his

mouth open, staring at him — "honor." Since we've started

talking about sellout toads, despite the fact

that I've already gone over the time for our

program

33,800 people are watching us

as far as I can see. I'd also like to talk about one more

sellout

woman, because she really

made me laugh hard. Mr. and

Mrs. Bottom

that's Tigran Keosayan and his wife Margarita

Simonyan, regular stars of my show

but Mrs. Bottom really amused us

Let's move on to Dud — he has a

popular YouTube channel, right? I have a

YouTube channel too, and we both understand something about

YouTube channels. And Margarita Simonyan

decided to try to pull the wool over our eyes. She

posted a triumphant tweet yesterday saying

that our channels, RT (Russia Today),

well, they have several channels there

have 8 billion views on YouTube, and we still

remain in first place among

international news channels. Well done

guys, I'm proud." And of course here we should

point out that RT's budget is

18.7 billion rubles (about US$200 million), and we've always

been asking why billions are being spent on this dump

instead of sending that money, I don't

know, to medical treatment or to building

a bridge in Yakutia, but no — it's spent on this trash heap. Well

they told us: 8 bil

lion views. Come on, Margarita

Simonyan

and she's feeding this to those blockheads in the Kremlin

they boast and say: 8 billion

views

Be happy, apparently — be happy that

what is 8 billion views, anyway? Well, first of all,

the *Masha and the Bear* channel has 18

billion views. Second, my main channel has

half a billion

views, but I didn’t spend, and don’t spend,

16 billion rubles a year (about $175 million), and most

importantly, I just got curious, so I went and

did this unpleasant little thing — and you can

repeat it right now on YouTube

while sitting there: type in RT and you’ll land on

the main YouTube channel out of this whole

laundromat-like conglomeration, namely

Margarita Simonyan’s main channel, and there

click the Videos tab, and then

click the Sort by tab

by popularity. And to see this

content — this high-quality content that

you

you and I paid 16 billion rubles for (about $175 million)

every year — what is it, exactly?

Are Russia’s interests being promoted there, maybe?

Putin? Maybe some shocking

investigations, or some information

that Western media are hiding? But no —

Margarita Simonyan, Mrs. Bottom-of-the-Barrel,

drags out this information and delivers it to

viewers? Let’s

look at a screenshot. What’s in first

place? We see: “The golden voice”

of a homeless man from America found work after

his video went viral. I can’t

show you this video because

because

disgusting RT will block

our program — that’s what they do. Well,

it’s just a story about an American

homeless man who speaks in a very

funny, announcer-like voice. But this

video — this account, this video that RT

stole, a viral video — and

then told everyone that the homeless guy had a cool voice

and got hired because of it. 43 million

views. And this is their top video,

their main achievement,

of Margarita Simonyan for 16 billion

rubles a year (about $175 million)

— a stolen video of an American

homeless man with a cool voice.

Let’s see what else is there — little videos

from users: a meteorite in Russia,

just a compilation of dashcam footage, some cameras

— they stole it, dragged it onto their channel,

gave it an English-language

clickable title. Next: tsunami,

earthquake, collapse, some kind of accident,

then another tsunami, some ship

capsized, and so on and so on. In other words,

it’s just stolen funny

videos — or dramatic videos

like the kind shown on the +100500 channel

(+100500, a popular Russian web show).

And they don’t take a single kopek of budget money for that.

Margarita Simonyan drags all this stuff in,

renames it, collects clicks — I’m sure

they simply buy clicks — and then tell us:

8 billion views.

Well done, guys, I’m proud of our team.

Some random clowns sit there getting

400,000 to 500,000 rubles a month (about $4,400–$5,500) for God knows what,

blowing billions, and then they tell us

this is a great media business. Let’s

take a look. Here’s a picture of their real

audience reach.

In the UK, their reach is 120,000

people, while Al Jazeera’s audience is

300,000, and 25 million — that is

pitifully small.

It’s pathetic television that nobody

watches. It annoys everyone because they

lie, and of course foreign media regularly

write: what is this idiotic thing that

we have airing here? It lies every day.

They write about it, but that doesn’t mean

the channel is influential. It means that when

they lie in especially outrageous ways — and with

these views,

they’re lying in an especially outrageous way too.

She wrote this on Twitter, after all, where people

understand one obvious thing: on the internet,

it’s obvious when something doesn’t add up.

But nevertheless, Mrs. Bottom-of-the-Barrel, having eaten

another beaver head — as you know, she’s fond of

that sort of culinary

experimentation — why am I describing this in such detail?

Because talking about this kind of thing can

sound heated. I’m not attacking her personally,

though I can’t stand her. She’s simply

a thief — a person who grabs

a gigantic budget, shows us videos of

American homeless people, and says: yes, this

is all worth 16 billion rubles (about $175 million). She

created the most pathetic television network in

the world and is trying to convince us that it’s very

cool. In the Beautiful Russia of the Future (an opposition slogan for a democratic future Russia), there will be

a separate public trial of the

Simonyan spouses — crooks and thieves.

We will definitely make that happen. But

next Thursday, we’ll meet again.

See you. Bye.

[music]