Shooting in Zabaykalsky Krai (a region in eastern Siberia). Grandpa Putin Has Lost His Mind. Putin’s People: Tarasov and Simonyan

[music]

Good evening, everyone. In Moscow, it is exactly 8:00 p.m.

which means that live on air now is

the program *Russia of the Future*, and I am its host,

Alexei Navalny

or, as I was called this week by

the Kremlin media, a man who admitted to

"masochistic tendencies" or something like that. I became so

curious that I even tried to find

where exactly I had supposedly confessed to my

"tendencies." But I couldn't find it. They must know better. We

fixed a few things here, so we are

once again taking your questions with the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter. Please write in,

and they will be shown to me here on

this little screen. Your questions will come in live,

and I will try to answer them.

Don't forget to use the hashtag. I'll start,

basically through connections,

with Vitalik's story. First of all, through connections,

because, after all, Vitalik is

a video editor at the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

and the author of the videos. It's a truly

heartbreaking story. And third, with

Vitalik, nothing funny happened.

Though of course he still remains the target

of constant jokes and trolling because

during all these

searches, a lot of things were taken from people. From some,

it was a mobile phone, from others a computer, and from

him they took his apartment.

They literally took his apartment, because he

liked to keep his money at home. That is,

the man sold the apartment in which

he grew up,

the apartment his parents bought in

the Moscow region, a small apartment. He grew up

there. It was his apartment. Now he has

a wife and a child, and as usual everything is

complicated—a difficult life, a lot of problems. Vitalik

didn't have enough money, so he sold

this apartment of his, the only inheritance

he had. He sold it, spent part of the money,

and kept part of it—but being a clever

man, he kept it at home in a wardrobe. And as he

says now, he kept thinking, "I really should

take it and put it in the bank on

deposit. Well, it'll be safe in the wardrobe for now." And then

these idiots in masks came to his home and

literally took all his money away from him.

And now they claim it is material

evidence. So Vitalik—well,

good for him, really—has decided

to launch a public campaign, which

I am happily joining.

Despite the fact that I joke about it

a bit, this is genuinely outrageous.

I also urge all of you to support

Vitalik. The full video is available on the website and on

the Navalny LIVE channel. Let me

show you a minute and a half of an indignant

Vitalik fighting for his 2

million rubles (about $31,000). He's absolutely right to do it. Hi everyone,

my name is Vitaly Kolesnikov.

I do not organize rallies, I do not run

political campaigns, and I don't even appear

in our videos. But that did not stop

the apostles of the great Alexander Ivanovich

Bastrykin from bursting into my life and,

essentially, robbing me. Let me explain everything. Back when

I was little, my parents

bought an apartment in this building in

the small town of Pushkino in the Moscow region.

On August [date unclear], early in the morning, people burst into my rented

apartment—people in masks, together

with officers from the Investigative Committee,

and they found money in my wardrobe: 2.3

million rubles (about $35,000), and I had every

possible piece of paper needed to confirm

that this money had been obtained by me legally.

And along with my other property, my

money was taken away to the Investigative Committee.

It has now been almost three months. During that time,

I have twice filed motions for the return

of the funds. I repeat: in order to verify

their lawful origin, investigators

simply need to check the documents

which I myself attached to the seized

property. Explain to me for what reason your

employees took away my lawfully obtained

funds. The case against FBK is entirely

fabricated and politically motivated.

Our crime is that we dared

to tell the truth about corruption in Russia.

I am a completely ordinary person who works

in an office. I demand that Alexander Bastrykin

return my money to me. With this,

I am launching a real campaign

to recover what was stolen. Let's together

make posters saying: "Bastrykin, give the money back,"

and "Vitalik against lawlessness," and

let's ask Putin's top investigator

to simply do his job. And remember:

publicity is our main weapon. Good for

Vitalik. Of course, no normal

person can describe this situation

with any word other than outrageous.

In fact, on my cup today

I wrote a hashtag in support of Vitalik.

How many times have we told you on this

program or on the main channel about

apartments worth billions and

trillions,

about some watches worth hundreds

of millions of rubles, tens of millions

of rubles—and yet the criminal turns out to be

just an ordinary employee of the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

because of his

pitiful little two-room apartment

in Pushkino—this two-room

apartment in Pushkino that you are now

simply taking away from him. Once again, yes, in situations like this

I always say: think about it and

consider just how, in Russia, from anyone

at all, anything can be taken away.

You like some guy's company?

You just come in and seize the cash proceeds from

the store—I don't know—from the day's takings, from the safe.

The bank came and said this.

It was all declared physical evidence.

As if this is all perfectly normal, as if this is how things are done in court.

The prosecutors say, fine, it's physical evidence.

As physical evidence, they can really seize it.

They can take anything from anyone. That's exactly why

it's so important to show solidarity with those

people who have now found themselves under attack,

caught in this backlash. That's why it's important to support them. Even Talkov,

by the way, has even launched a petition on Change.org.

Good for him. But for now,

Vitaly Kolesnikov is dealing with Bastrykin (Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia's Investigative Committee),

over some measly,

with all due respect, 2 million rubles,

while here we're dealing with much bigger cases. We got some questions

about the astonishing

victory that was won in

a Russian court against us

by Putin's chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin,

who won from me, Lyubov Sobol, and the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation)

more than a million dollars — literally more than

a million dollars — in a lawsuit over honor,

dignity, and business reputation. One of

Prigozhin's companies, called Moskovsky Shkolnik,

filed the lawsuit. And, well, they

file lawsuits endlessly, demanding some

billion here or there — insane sums.

They throw around these numbers, and we understand that of course he

will win. But usually, what do "honor" and

"dignity" and "business reputation" mean? Judges

in Putin's system just stamp out decisions like a factory:

you must delete everything. But here it's obviously already

happening as part of a larger

campaign to freeze our accounts. This is really

an absolutely unprecedented ruling

that we owe 88 million rubles

in damages.

But of course this would outrage any

lawyer, and yes, it sounds bizarre.

And I understand that Sobol, I, and the whole

team now have some lovely conversations ahead with

the bailiffs, who will be carrying everything

out of our homes. But in fact,

the police have already won, what was it,

some millions, and the metro, and the Armenia restaurant,

our beloved one, and so on and so forth.

All of this is, of course, part of this

coordinated campaign. But this whole

story with Putin's chef,

Prigozhin, and his court victory

looks especially striking against the backdrop of

what's been happening. The sequence goes like this:

they win 88 million rubles from us.

That means Sobol, I, and the FBK have to

pay this crook, who supplied

Moscow schools and kindergartens

with rotten food. We said so before,

and we say so now — yet we are the ones who have to pay him

88 million rubles and delete all those statements.

At exactly the same time, the very next day, in

Moscow school number — let me tell you which one —

what number was it? No, I don't have it here, you'll see it

on the screen in a second — there is yet

another poisoning case. This was reported by

Andrei Orel. Ah yes, school No. 2403, in

Maryino (a district of Moscow).

Andrei Orel ran there from the Communist Party,

but unfortunately did not get elected because of

falsifications. Stebenkova, remember her?

She's fairly well known. In the end, she beat

Orel. Nevertheless, he continues

to defend the residents of Maryino. He

was one of the first to report that

there had been another mass poisoning and children had been taken to

the hospital with all the symptoms

of severe food poisoning. And once again, Prigozhin

had supplied some rotten food. Naturally,

all the Prigozhin trolls immediately

— the whole gang of them — started shouting

that nothing of the sort had happened, that nothing

had happened at all, that it was all a lie. But

before long, the next

day, it became known that there was full

confirmation: yes, it had all happened exactly as reported.

First of all, and second,

it turned out once again that the food supplied to this

school in Maryino came from a participant in

Prigozhin's syndicate — that is, the same network.

His monopoly works like this:

he created several different companies — Concord,

Moskovsky Shkolnik, and so on and so forth.

If you look into who supplies food to

the kindergarten your child attends

or the school your child goes to, there may

be some company with a name like

"Daisy LLC," but with 99 percent

probability that "Daisy" still belongs

to this syndicate — it is part of

the empire. Prigozhin simply divides up this

food supply market among his own

companies in order to get around

antitrust regulation that way.

He supplies food everywhere.

Let's watch 22 seconds of what

Prigozhin supplies to Moscow schools.

What I saw inside, of course,

didn't just surprise or astonish me,

it actually shocked me, because the quality

of the food leaves much

to be desired — it's literally third-rate meat,

compote made from sour,

repeatedly defrosted berries. This, by the way,

is a clip from that very

expensive video — one of the most expensive

videos in the history of the Russian internet — for which

we are now, essentially, supposed to

pay 88 million rubles. So yes,

he wins.

At the same time, a new poisoning happens.

At the same time, in the Moscow City Duma,

credit where it's due: for the first time, from the

Moscow City Duma podium, a deputy

gets up and says: what the hell, why is there another

poisoning, and why is there zero

attention at all from the

executive authorities? Pavel Tarasov

stood up and spoke — good for him, a young guy,

speaking out about yet another poisoning of children in

Marina, and to this day nothing has been done about those organizations

that we know are poisoning children; to this day

nothing has been done, and once again they will

try to bury their heads in the sand and persuade

parents not to complain anywhere that this is happening again

and, on top of all that,

just today, Lyubov Sobol

who now, together with me, is supposed to pay 800

844, and 40 from me—I won't even try to guess how many times in BK

although there's already nothing left to take there, 44 from me for

44—most likely, that's what the configuration will look like

It has finally, definitively

well, not entirely definitively—there is still a lot

that will still happen, but she really

got her way. As you remember, I talked a lot

about this—Sobol represented

the interests

of the parents of those children whose children were

poisoned. Class-action lawsuits are very difficult to bring in

Russia—practically

almost impossible, that kind of thing. Nevertheless, she

worked on it, filed these lawsuits, and Prigozhin

in response launched an entire war against her

and the whole internet was simply flooded

with all sorts of stories claiming that

she beats children, and that her husband is a necrophile, and so on

and so on and so forth. And besides all that,

she and all her family members were

constantly followed by people with

cameras, shouting various things and throwing

objects and all that. Nevertheless, through all

these months she held on, and today in court

she proved it: a Moscow court recognized that

Prigozhin's companies poisoned children

Moreover, they ruled that

these companies must pay the parents

compensation—ridiculously small compensation, but

still, this is a very important thing. It means

this is a legally established fact. And

by the way, remember that this same

Prigozhin had previously paid

compensation to parents simply under

pressure from Sobol. They did not want all this to

go to court, and they tried

to break up the initiative group

but they did pay some compensation, and

now they will be paying compensation

by court order. Let's watch for a minute

Lyubov Sobol, who in fact achieved

a major victory. So once again,

many thanks

for her persistence, and to all those people

who worked on this difficult project

The announcement of the ruling has just concluded

on two class-action lawsuits by the parents of

the affected children

The poisonings took place in December of last

year, and the court established that those responsible for

the mass poisoning of children were

the food suppliers and the catering operators

in the kindergartens—these are Prigozhin-linked

companies Concord and the company Vito-1

They

bear responsibility

for the mass poisoning of children. We

have finally secured this court

decision because we were seeking

this truth and justice. Since December of last

year, the parents have been fighting for it. Their children were given

test results in hand, they were diagnosed with acute intestinal infection,

quarantine was imposed, but the schools were not closed, and samples were taken from them

for a long time. We succeeded in getting

two criminal cases opened, which are now

under investigation, and in securing recognition of the fact that the children were infected

by the food suppliers. So this is

very important. I congratulate all the parents

who were frightened, intimidated, and even

bribed, but who nevertheless withstood all

this pressure from these supplier companies

and made it all the way to a court ruling

The court confirmed that they were right

20,000 people are watching us live

Let's all congratulate

Sobol once again—this really is a big and important story

After all, the entire mafia is involved from all

sides, and Sobyanin (the Moscow mayor), clearly, and his people

were skimming money off these contracts, and Prigozhin

who not only supplies spoiled

food to schools and kindergartens

but is also involved in military contracts

and in killings in Africa—he is, generally speaking,

a very, very close associate of Putin

and of the Ministry of Defense

So really, this whole

multi-layered mafia

showed itself perfectly in

this very case of kindergarten poisonings. Unfortunately,

yes, judging by the fact that this

happened again the day before yesterday,

this story is not going to end, and someone

will keep making money from it, while someone else

will unfortunately pay for it with their

health—and that will be our children. A terrible

thing. I'm being asked: and no one will be jailed, right?

Not even anyone at all?

Well, who would jail him now?

Jailing Prigozhin is probably impossible

He can jail anyone he wants, but

they won't do anything to him now

because he is one of Putin's closest

associates, and he steals a great deal from these

school contracts, and even more from

the construction of military housing complexes for

the Ministry of Defense, and we understand perfectly well

that he sends a significant share of it

up the chain

I wouldn't be surprised if it goes to Putin's family; moreover,

I even

am sure of it. Andrei asks:

"Why don't they conduct searches at Alexei Navalny's

and Lyubov Sobol's places? Are they afraid?"

They're not afraid. By the way, they do conduct searches at Lyubov's

They've happened, I think, absolutely everywhere

searches everywhere, even at some point during

her hunger strike, when she was sitting in some little storage room

and

there was even a search there. So yes, they do conduct them. At my place

indeed, the last time was in the region

It was about four years ago, but that’s beside the point.

They’ll carry it out, don’t worry.

They’ll definitely do it — no doubt about that.

At last, there’s some positive news in our

program — genuinely, truly

excellent positive news. Of course,

against the backdrop of all the negativity, but still,

we’ve all been waiting for something like this, and I

was really waiting for something like this, and it

happened: an honest police officer

has been found in Russia.

Vitaly Oksidov was one of the

police officers who took part during

the dispersals and detentions during these

during those summer protest

in Moscow, and

he was one of those who were told,

basically, “You write a statement,” and he was listed

in the fabricated case as the injured party.

A thrown plastic bottle —

a plastic bottle flew toward someone,

and they opened a criminal case.

They falsified a criminal case. Unfortunately,

there were several such criminal cases,

several episodes, and absolutely

shameless — really very

cowardly, very vile people who

think they’re tough guys from the National Guard (Rosgvardiya, Russia’s internal security force),

or police officers themselves, writing these

statements like:

“Oh, someone touched my helmet, and I felt

a sharp pain in the back of my head, you know.

“They pushed my arm, and so hard that

I suffered terribly — moral damages,

material damages, and now overall I

need two months of rest.” And this Maksidov

finally came out and said what

everyone is thinking — what society

expects from any normal man. He

came out and said, in essence:

“That bottle didn’t cause me any harm

whatsoever. Somebody just tossed

a plastic bottle. On the streets of Moscow, I

think that happens about 100,000 times a day.

Someone throws a plastic bottle. They threw one

maybe in the direction of police officers,

and by doing that, they expressed their attitude

toward the police.

Was anyone harmed here? No.” And he said, “I will not

take part in fabricating a criminal

case. I’m not going to ruin anyone’s life. This is

all completely absurd.”

“To hell with all of you. I’m

quitting your police force.” Ob-la-di-doo.

Hats off to this wonderful, honest

police officer. Let’s watch the video

from the outlet Baza, where they got his

phone comments: “I do not consider it a

threat, so as a person

who was useful to the police, I couldn’t

hold any kind of professional or ideological

position.”

But

now, as I understand it, he was against

preventing people from expressing

something genuinely simple and human, you understand.

Absolutely simple, normal words have become

a breakthrough in Russia, because, well,

yes, someone really did throw a plastic bottle.

Okay — that’s something nobody

would normally pay attention to. Only Putin,

Bastrykin, Chaika, Sobyanin (senior Russian officials) turn that into

a crime, and everyone stays silent. And then out came

this police officer — good for him. A million times

I’ve heard from these cops who detain us,

transport us somewhere, or guard us somewhere,

some words of sympathy, even words

of support — and all of them grumble, saying, “Damn,

how much longer can this go on?

To hell with them — the salary’s

too low, I’ll quit.” They all say that. With

any police officer you know, if you

talk to them,

if he’s not sitting in some

fat, cushy post where you can make

a lot of money, they all endlessly complain about it.

Many do leave — there’s enormous

turnover there. But this one actually came out

publicly — very cool. And against the backdrop of all

this, right now we feel especially sharply, of course,

what dishonest policing looks like.

At the same time, we are watching

events in Yekaterinburg, where the son

of a Rosgvardiya colonel was involved in

a traffic accident — a terrible crash in which two

people died.

They made a deal with the father, the colonel

from Rosgvardiya, that in order for his dear son

to get off the hook, he would submit his father’s test samples instead.

That’s the level of legal consciousness, you see.

That Rosgvardiya colonel probably also

went around during those major protests

at the square protests.

And he probably ran around shouting that

“You’re the orange threat here” (a reference to the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine),

“You want it to be like Maidan (the Ukrainian protest movement),

you want it like in Paris,”

“you want it like in Egypt,” and so on. They kept saying

all this nonsense, but in

reality, when it comes to

obeying the law yourself, you simply

go ahead and commit a criminal

offense — you hand over

someone else’s sample. I mean, it’s just an outright

forgery. Two people were killed, and then they commit yet

another crime in order to avoid

punishment. And this is the police, this is Rosgvardiya.

So compare them: two worlds, two pictures.

Honest police officers, dishonest

police officers. Of course, unfortunately, very unfortunately,

the typical law enforcement officer in

Russia today is more likely a crooked colonel

like Andrei Vasilyev than the wonderful

Vitaly Maksidov. Another one of Putin’s relatives

captured a lot of people’s attention this week.

A lot of people.

It’s a great story. It seems to me it didn’t

get as much attention as it

She can get it, and it's all because

the media outlet Proekt released

I'm addressing them live on air—they don't

make videos. Guys, start making

some videos already. If you go to the

Proekt website, read

the huge longread—it's all very interesting.

But for lots of people to learn about

your investigations, put out videos,

because, well, I do retell them,

here live on air, but it would be great

if you made them yourselves. They did

something really good. There's this guy, Mikhail Shelomov,

and quite a lot has been written about him in the media

because he's Putin's nephew—the son

of his cousin. And he was just some

random nobody, basically, and everyone saw

and understood that he was just some random guy, and suddenly

this random guy

turned out to own this, then he

turned out to own that, and somehow

just like that, gradually, gradually,

gradually, despite never having been known for anything

in big business, maybe sitting on some

board of directors somewhere, shares started appearing

out of nowhere. And now it turns out that

his fortune amounts to more than

$1.25 billion, and he ought to be

around 81st

on the Forbes list. And everyone understands perfectly well

why—it's obvious, because

he's related to Putin, because he's

Putin's nephew. So they shove him everywhere.

The guy is making use of all this,

seemingly stealing, but Proekt

did something really good: they simply

found where he lives and started

of course, watching him there

and investigating what he does. Before this

rise of his, he was a photographer in a photo studio—

a typical career path in Putin's

Russia: he was a photo-studio photographer, and then

your uncle became president, and boom—

you're a billionaire. He owns a stake in SOGAZ,

which is a major insurance

company—12 percent. In Bank Rossiya, 8

percent. You can see it on the screen now:

a whole scheme. So our photographer here

grew into this big, impressive

businessman who's in

the top hundred on the Forbes list. But the thing is,

it turned out that he still lives

in rather modest conditions. Let's

take a look at this billionaire's little house.

Show us the photos. There, there—you

can see it, actually. He was officially registered there,

and Proekt's journalists went

to take a look, went to talk to

the neighbors, and discovered that our wonderful

billionaire still lives in this

little house.

He still has everything there; he

repairs the foundation and fixes the fence himself,

rebuilt the stove himself, and Mikhail

Shelomov, the owner of shares worth

$1.25 billion,

has an outhouse in the yard. That's really something. And here, of course,

it would be nice just to be touched by

what a modest, wonderful

billionaire we have. But the truth, as we all understand perfectly well,

is that

someone—let's take a guess, who could it be—

is quite obviously using

Putin's nephew

to register assets in his name,

property and so on, worth more than

a billion dollars. Who could that possibly be?

Who could use Putin's nephew

like that? So I personally have no doubt.

Maybe it's Putin's own money directly,

maybe it's the money of some

close relative of his, or his wife, or

his daughter, something like that.

But the fact that this Shelomov is a kind of

temporary holder, like the cellist

Roldugin—remember him? Roldugin was just

a cellist, a talented musician, and then—bang—

it turns out he had, in an offshore

company,

$5 billion. Those $5

billion came from VTB

from

Rosneft and other state-owned

companies. It's obvious that this was Putin's

money, especially since Putin immediately rushed

to defend him and started talking about how

he spends it all on buying

unique musical instruments. But

obviously, with that kind of money you could have bought

pretty much all the musical

instruments on planet Earth. First of all.

Second, he didn't buy a damn thing there,

except maybe one

cello and one violin. That was Putin's money—

Putin's pocket. And here, the outlet

Proekt, it seems to me, has absolutely clearly

uncovered it. And here we are, 27,000 people

watching live, and without

fearing any risks at all,

I can say with complete certainty: yes,

this is another of Putin's pockets, a pocket

of the Putin family, and there's a billion in it.

In fact, it's a large sum, and a large part of it is in

this kind of financial structure,

the infrastructure of SOGAZ and Bank Rossiya. In other words,

people often say, you know, well, they've exposed this one,

they've exposed that one, but Putin—

show us where Putin stole something. Well,

here you go: this is where Putin stole

a billion. We've seen before that Putin, personally,

stole a billion and gave it to

his daughter's husband, and Kirill Shamalov

became Russia's youngest billionaire. In

this case, we've seen how Putin stole—or had someone steal for him—

for Putin, and then put it into

the box labeled

'Putin's nephew Shelomov.' That's where it was placed, and he

is the nominal holder, unquestionably.

This is something stolen directly for

a member of Putin's family, so

it will be very interesting to watch how this

all develops. I hope that Russian

journalists, when they are at the

Direct Line (Putin's annual televised Q&A), will ask

the national leader the following question:

Please explain how your nephew

went from being a photo studio photographer to becoming

a billionaire, while it is not apparent that

he actually

owns or really uses

or even actually himself really

understands how rich he is. So, Olya

asks me: on November 1 there will be a test

shutdown of the internet in Russia. What do you

think will come of it? I don't think

that this will be a test shutdown

of the internet in Russia. As I understand it,

the authorities have decided to conduct

internet shutdown drills in Russia once a month.

That means they will, somehow,

switch off certain segments in some

city — that is, they will somehow

play around with it.

But it won't be the kind of thing where in the morning

you wake up, open YouTube to, of course,

watch a recording of my broadcast, and

there's just a gray screen. No, that won't happen,

because then there would simply be an uprising in Russia.

But first of all, they will

buy enormous amounts of

equipment to shut down the internet, and

they will steal colossal amounts of money

through that equipment. Secondly,

well, that is, they will either

conduct command-post exercises or

use it in

small towns and regions. Ksenia

Ulyanova asks me: Alexei, what do you

think about the bill on the promotion

of drugs online?

I view this law very, very

negatively, especially given that it provides for

what, seven years or 15?

Well, how will all this end? Quite simply.

You see, the internet is now

global. For example, I follow on Instagram

this amusing American

millionaire or billionaire — his name is Dan

Bilzerian. I would show you if I had

thought to pull it up; maybe I'll show it again

later. Go to Instagram — he's very

entertaining. His feed is full of this guy — he's

also a bodybuilder type — constantly, constantly in

swim trunks, everywhere, always with cigars,

some booze, and around him a whole sea of

models in swimsuits.

His business is that he

sells —

he produces and sells marijuana. This is

an entirely legal business in the

United States. If you repost his Instagram post

where he is openly promoting

marijuana use, and what caught your interest

in that post was not even that, but

for example, I don't know, the girls in

swimsuits, or him firing his weapons,

some assault rifles, or the cars,

because he's always racing through deserts

in some jeeps — you could be

sent to prison for seven years for promoting

drugs. Well, apparently that's how it will

work. But in reality it's a meaningless

piece of nonsense that will, first of all,

make a huge number of films illegal,

drawings, books, cartoons, and so on. And

most importantly — I mean, to imprison

someone for propaganda? Seriously? Here,

vodka is sold quite freely in every

store, and we have a huge number of —

hundreds of thousands, millions, apparently —

alcoholics, that is, in fact the same kind of

addicts. But alcohol promotion

goes on completely openly, and

no one even comes close to objecting.

And probably there is no need to, in such a crude

way, advocate for

I don't know, cutting from feature films

scenes of drunkenness — I wouldn't cut scenes of drunkenness,

but scenes where someone rolls

a joint would be cut, and people would be jailed over those

scenes. So, without a doubt, I believe that

this is yet another stupid, idiotic, absurd

law that will simply lead to the fact that

some number of people will be imprisoned for

who knows what,

while some much larger number —

simply an incomparably larger number — of people

will pay bribes so that

these criminal cases are not opened against them.

And this will have zero

effect on the fight against drugs. Russia

does need to fight drugs. We have

an enormous number of users; in terms of

absolute consumption of

heroin, we are in first place in the world.

We have to do something about this, but this

law will do absolutely nothing about it.

Just another idiotic law. Torchu asks us:

If, theoretically, RT

were allowed to interview Navalny, would he agree?

I will talk more about RT today

— it will be quite interesting there. Anastasia

Krasnaya asks: Alexei, tell us, will there

still be a program about

police reform? As I understand it,

Sobol is working on recording

the pilot. It seems the Police Ombudsman has not

gotten scared and still wants to do it.

I can see you smirking here, Medvedev

is sitting there, and the director from Navalny LIVE —

when, please tell me, will there be

a program with the Police Ombudsman? He shrugs.

But we do want this program. I

hope it will appear, and I am absolutely sure

that it will be interesting. In the

police, an enormous number of things are happening.

very interesting things that are hidden from

the public, as is also the case in the army

I want to talk about the army now

Something absolutely monstrous happened

In Zabaykalsky Krai (a region in eastern Russia), conscript soldier Ramil

Shamsutdinov shot eight people

and now there are petitions online

in his defense, and everyone is saying that he should

be released, that he should not be punished

Of course, that will not happen; obviously, he will still

receive his life sentence

However, the fact that hundreds of thousands and millions

of people are either directly defending Shamsutdinov

or are ready to sympathize with him

to understand him, to put themselves in his shoes, speaks

to the main point: something is happening to our army

Some kind of crap is going on—or rather, that crap is even

coming back from the early 1990s, when

I was entering college, and all of that

had already been there in the late 1980s, when there was

a surge in dedovshchina (violent hazing of junior conscripts)

A huge number of books on the subject

came out, but it was not just books

These people came back from the army

and told how first they were beaten, and then

they beat others, and the whole country knew, and back then everyone

was very worried about the fact that

someone would go into the army because

it was practically guaranteed they would get beaten there

It seemed that the situation had improved a little

and now we are seeing it again

in full force—it is happening all over again

Why? Because the so-called

law enforcement agencies and all

power structures, including the army,

have completely and utterly slipped out from under

public oversight, just like in the 1980s, when

something happened and the relatives were told,

“Your soldier hanged himself, you know, his girlfriend

wrote him a letter, she left him, and he

got so upset that he hanged himself.” But in reality

when they brought back his body, it was covered in

bruises. And now exactly the same thing is happening

in Kaluga Region today

This evening, the parents finally succeeded in getting

a criminal case opened against

representatives of the military enlistment office, because they

were told the same thing: “Yours hanged himself.”

They received his body, and the body was covered

in bruises, poorly covered up with makeup

And everyone knows that dedovshchina is real

it is now growing, increasing, and dedovshchina

is, unfortunately, encouraged by officers

because they see in it, well, a way

of maintaining control. All my classmates,

all my neighbors—they were officers in the Russian

and Soviet army, and I myself spent my whole life

living in a military town; I know how it works

And when I ask, I say, “Why

do you need dedovshchina?” they tell me, “Without dedovshchina

you can’t manage, because the soldiers come in, they’re stupid, and

so I pick out three soldiers who are

a bit smarter, and they drive the stupid soldiers for me

I’m not going to beat them myself or

do something like that; I can maybe

line them up, pressure them morally

but if I don’t have such quick-witted

sergeants who beat the stupid

country bumpkins who simply don’t want

to work or don’t understand anything, then I won’t have

any discipline at all”

But that explanation, first of all, is

in itself monstrous and absurd, and in the end it

leads to things like this. And at first, of course,

naturally

the Defense Ministry denied absolutely everything and

said the same thing they always say

The first statement, then, was that

all of this happened as a result of his

simply having some kind of nervous breakdown, that

the man just fell into a state of

emotional distress, took out his rifle

shot two people first, then

three more, then told another five

to lie on the ground and shot them too, and then

tried to escape. But of course, later

it emerged that this soldier

had been beaten, and then it came out that the day before

he had simply been constantly enduring

verbal humiliation, and the day before he was

forced to clean the toilet, to scrub the toilet again

He refused, after which

in classic Russian army fashion—and, really, the classic pattern in

some Russian schools and elsewhere as well—

they started dunking his head into

the toilet, and then, damn it, they sent him

to stand guard. So why was he given

access to weapons?

The man simply could not take it anymore, he snapped and

shot everyone, and that is why now the whole

country, to one degree or another,

sympathizes with this killer. But he killed

eight people. I do not know whether all eight were involved

in the abuse; maybe some of them were not

involved. One way or another, he killed those

eight people, and this once again shows us

this strange thing

that is happening in Russia—what

the Russian army is, what Russian

education is. The Russian army, that is,

is a place no one wants to go, including because

there is dedovshchina there, including because

you are expected, simply because you are expected,

to do all sorts of strange things instead of

serving your country and defending the homeland

you are made to focus on scrubbing

toilets or building someone’s

dacha (country house)

That existed in the 1990s, then it seemed to disappear, and

now it has started again. Our entire system

of education, all universities,

exist not so that people can actually

study there, but so that boys can

in this way

avoid the army; they go to some

terrible, pointless, useless

fee-paying colleges

and pay money there so that

stay enrolled as students and thus

avoid the army, avoid military service

in the army.

Those who don’t have money, or those who aren’t even able

to get into even some

mediocre little college, go into the army, and then

we wonder why, well,

the army has such poor personnel, why it’s staffed by

nothing but, to put it bluntly, some kind of stupid

country bumpkin who gets mocked

by other soldiers, well

of course—because we ourselves created

what is essentially a class system. Very few people go

to serve from Moscow, very few from

St. Petersburg, because, honestly speaking,

those are wealthy cities.

People there find ways

to avoid military service by more

or less legal and illegal means. It’s rather hard to judge these

people. I am fundamentally

opposed to a conscript army; I believe

the army should be professional, contract-based. You need to

pay people properly, and those who want

to go there, run around there, and all that—I don’t

know, all this “if you didn’t serve, you’re not a man” stuff—

they go there, they get decent

money, and everything is fine. But here, all of this

works in such a way that they draft

these miserable, downtrodden

guys. But you’ve seen it yourselves: in any

social environment, that’s how it works. There’s always

someone at school, in a class,

who gets laughed at. Oh, oh God. Some people

take it good-naturedly, some are

just beaten down. In any group,

there is always someone who often becomes

the object of ridicule.

Some people can stand up for themselves, and some

can’t. And this whole idea that the army is

a school of life for men, that we have to send him there

and there he’ll start learning

to stand up for himself and become a man—hell, he

won’t learn anything there.

At 18, they’re basically children. Not only that,

some of these kids have only just come out from under

parental control, from under

the school principal’s control, and they start

throwing their weight around over the others. And if he’s

quiet and calm, or maybe even

quiet and withdrawn—after all, not everyone

has to be some kind of active,

aggressive, combative type. Maybe he’s just

that kind of person mentally,

a contemplative sort of guy. He just wants

to sit quietly in a corner

with his computer. Let him sit there—

that may be his calling. He’ll

work, find some kind of

profession, and find himself a girlfriend who

matches his personality. But instead we absolutely have to

shove him

into this army and say, come on, become a

man. And all this leads to is that he

just gets beaten there, gets his head shoved into

a toilet.

Nobody is better off because of it.

As for the country’s defense capability, it doesn’t

increase by even a second. All we’re doing is

tormenting and abusing a person,

and in one case out of a hundred, fortunately—or maybe

one out of a thousand—he just snaps,

takes an assault rifle, and shoots eight

people. And the reaction of the Ministry of Defense,

which is now sweeping it under the rug and

starting to tell us that all this

is nonsense, that it’s not really like that, that this is some

exceptional case—it shows that

this only makes things worse. We need to

acknowledge all these problems. It’s time, finally,

to say: either we move

toward a professional contract army, and then

there will be no draft, or, if—but they

are obsessed, Putin especially, he needs

this draft. Okay, if there’s going to be a draft, then

arrange everything in such a way as to

eliminate hazing and other unofficial abusive

relations one hundred percent. Of course, any group—

a male group especially—can always

be aggressive, toxic, and so

on. But it’s one thing to be a little

toxic and a little more aggressive

than some mixed group

of men and women; it’s another thing entirely

when there are beatings.

Then jail those who abuse people, fire those who

were supposed to supervise. And in general,

you won’t achieve much through repression alone; you need to change

the incentive system somehow so that there is no

dedovshchina (violent hazing of younger conscripts). It can

absolutely be removed and eradicated.

Maybe not by 80 percent or 70 percent,

but, as I said at the beginning, in

the Russian army, unfortunately, dedovshchina

is used as a method of control.

That is, you simply build a kind of

pyramid: here’s the officer, here are

some big, strong,

quick-thinking sergeants,

often also united into some kind of

regional clique, and they just beat people there and

force around the ones considered stupid. Like, if your

friend served in the army and you ask me

how it was, he says, yeah,

everything’s fine in the army if you’re not stupid,

he says. If you’re quick on your feet, then everything

will be fine for you. But if you’re not quick

and you’re stupid, then everything will go badly for you. Well,

damn, it just so happens that quite

a lot of people in our society are

commonly labeled as maybe not

quick, as stupid—but in fact they’re not; they’re just

quiet, shy, or

reserved, or for some other reason

they simply don’t have that kind of healthy

aggression. In that case, let’s just not

draft anyone into the army at all.

Carry out some kind of psychological

screening—who actually needs to be there and

The state has no task of sending them there.

So of course I would very, very much

like, first of all, for someone

in the Ministry of Defense to be punished.

Systematically—not just superficially. Of course they should

obviously be jailed, brought to criminal

liability. I think that is already

happening to some direct

commanders, but this is a systemic problem.

There, in the Ministry of Defense again,

there are heaps of these political officers,

political instructors, commissars—a huge, once again,

bloated segment that existed in the Soviet

army, then collapsed here, and then was

filled up again.

And so these political officers play an enormous

role. Well then, these political officers

who are supposed to work with the personnel,

let them be jailed then, or

fired, have their dachas taken away, have their

official cars taken away—someone must be

punished in a systemic way, at least

up to the level of deputy minister of

defense. Stress—2,000 people will be with us...

Live broadcast. A mid-level viewer asks me:

are you in favor of a professional army?

Absolutely, yes.

Russia has enough

money for Russia to have

a professional army. And modern

wars, modern methods of warfare, all of that

modern reality says that what is needed is

a professional army. It’s only us who are

engaged in some kind of

idiocy, like whatever Shoigu came up with

—these so-called scientific companies. So now we’ll

be processing students: if a student is from

some good university, it will be a scientific

company, and there they’ll ‘scientifically,’ so to speak,

wash floors,

clean toilets with mops,

but all of it will come with a label on their backs saying

‘scientific company.’ That’s the kind of

idiocy that needs to be abolished.

Is this possible under Putin and United Russia?

Ralph asks me about contract service.

I think it’s impossible, because Putin

belongs to that group of very stubborn,

very dense people on this issue who

for some reason maniacally believe that

conscription is necessary, and that conscription somehow

turns huge numbers of people—just

millions of young men in each generation—into

something better by passing them through the army, and then

there’s this idea that they were, like,

little boys with bags,

and then somehow, after all the marching and drills,

a year later they come out

of there as tough men. That doesn’t work at all

that way. Not to mention the fact that

Putin served, Medvedev served,

Shoigu didn’t—but still,

they think that everyone else

needs to be sent there, where of course

they get roughed up a bit, but afterward

they supposedly come out as real men and then

tell everyone: if you didn’t serve, you’re not a man.

Arthur van a superior—some tricky

message—asks me: what do you think about

the seizure of Grudinin’s sovkhoz (state farm)? Well, I think

it is, absolutely, lawlessness, and it is

completely illegal with regard to Grudinin.

It turns out this is connected to participation in elections. Konstantin

asks: Alexei, when do you think

funding for this kind of

cinema will end? And there was a wonderful investigation recently

published by Pozharsky/Dudinsky (unclear proper name): a major

study about how many films

that you and I financed through

the Ministry of Culture later earned

nothing—zero, or

The best example that immediately comes to mind is

one that practically begs for a lawsuit from the family—it comes to mind right away:

700 million rubles, and then there was

that Simonyan family—Margarita Simonyan and

one of them was the screenwriter of the film *Crimean

Bridge*,

the other was the director of the film *Crimean

Bridge*. They ‘used up’ about 100

million rubles on it, and obviously stole most of it.

Altogether, it took in at the box office

far less money than they were

allocated from the state budget for

the filming. So of course it’s obvious that this

will not stop; it will only keep growing,

because the tendency of our state

is to allocate more and more

money to all sorts of nonsense,

propaganda nonsense. I want to tell you

about something.

Something remarkable about the remarkable Kuban region (the area around Krasnodar) there

really illustrates this in a very vivid way.

Krasnodar Krai is always

a very special region. I like

talking about it; I often do,

because it’s like a strange Russian Chechnya (a reference to the North Caucasus republic known for its highly personalized power structure),

a region where there is a substantial amount of

Caucasian population, but overall it is

Russian. But the customs, the order of things, and the lawlessness there

are completely abnormal—impossible

to compare with other regions.

And this week they once again

became the subject of several absolutely striking

scandals. First and foremost,

there was an investigation by our штаб (campaign headquarters/team)

that told the story of one of the key

politician-businessmen of Krasnodar Krai,

a rather disgusting little character by the name of

deputy Remeshkov, who has been in

all the parties—United Russia, A Just

Russia—he’s been everywhere, he goes everywhere,

doing all sorts of absolutely astonishing

stupid things, making bombastic patriotic

statements, accusing everyone around him, saying that he

is the great patriot, while everyone else is of course

not patriotic at all and doesn’t know how to love the motherland.

To love it, that is.

And some rather interesting things came to light about him.

So, let's watch a short excerpt from our

investigation. It's a minute and a half long; you can

find the full version on our штаб (campaign headquarters) page

on our YouTube channel, our штаб's channel.

In Krasnodar, Remeshkov is a patriotic deputy, just as

all patriotic deputies are supposed to be, and

his children study abroad — in the United States, Austria,

and the United Kingdom — while the deputy himself settled

right in Krasnodar's

30th Anniversary of Victory Park, where there stands a huge, ugly

turquoise-colored house with white columns

and ornamentation. We'd call it a "bathhouse style"

for the nouveau riche, but Alexander Remeshkov

for some reason calls it the house of his dreams.

When investigators came to search the house, no one was allowed past

the garage.

Remeshkov's lawyer rushed over immediately

and declared that a search of the house could not be carried out

because a State Duma deputy was registered there.

Approaching from the sea:

a swimming pool measuring 117 square meters,

a three-story building with a sports

complex, and next to it a two-story guest

house of just over 700 square meters.

An open terrace with lawns and a fountain.

This appears to be the main building

of the residence.

The so-called rehabilitation center

has an area of 1,408 square meters. We are flying

over the estate in Dinsky District.

Here are three small structures: these are

guard houses, an ostrich pen, and a sports

ground with a tennis court. Here is the main

house with a greenhouse on the roof.

Nearby is a complex of two buildings housing

a swimming pool and a dining hall.

The area is 113 hectares, and the cadastral

value is 2.8 billion rubles.

Pushkinsky settlement. In March 2013,

the city administration, headed by

former mayor Viktor Khrestin,

included this territory in the city's master plan.

People connected to Remeshkov leased forest land here

and began selling it off

to third parties.

An ostrich-breeding farm. I mean,

seriously, just look:

a lifetime in public service, and property worth 3.5

billion rubles.

He sent all his children abroad and at the same time

keeps feeding us this line

that somehow we're all some kind of

foreign agents, that there's something wrong with all of us.

Meanwhile, he built ostrich-breeding farms here,

swimming pools,

I mean, it's all just so

typical of a Putin-era official.

Watch our штаб's (campaign headquarters') investigation, just

to once again appreciate, of course,

the vileness of all those people who

try to convince us that this is exactly how

Russia should be built, and that if we're against

their ostrich farms and all these

pools and assorted luxuries, then that means we're somehow

the problem.

Especially in Krasnodar Krai (region),

of all places.

They are constantly declaring that they are

some kind of foundation of spirituality and

statehood.

The Cossacks run around

breaking up rallies in Moscow — so why don't they come here

to Remeshkov's dacha

to break someone up there, or at least ask

the guy: where did you get the money for all this?

How did you build it? But better yet, many thanks

to our штаб in Krasnodar — great job, guys.

Excellent work. And it would be even better if they

went to another dacha, the one that

Gleb Pyanykh filmed this week.

Remember him, that legendary journalist

who worked on that very program

*Maximum* on NTV — scandals, intrigues,

investigations. He went there and was

detained, but nevertheless he filmed the dacha

of the governor of Krasnodar Krai. Roll it.

I may be standing near

the country residence of the governor

of Krasnodar Krai, Veniamin

Kondratyev. A huge area — 46

hectares. On the opposite bank you can see a church and

a small house right by the water. According to the documents, all of this

is agricultural land, and you are not allowed

to build on it — not even a single house or a church,

in fact, no permanent structures of any kind. But

that's forbidden for you and me. For Governor

Kondratyev, however, who is a great master of

land and property relations —

he spent 10 years as deputy head of

the Kuban administration (Kuban is a common name for Krasnodar Krai) for legal,

land, and property issues —

before I could finish filming, one

guard came through the reeds, another

drove up in a car, and they asked me

to go to the guard post.

The morning after my detention,

Governor Kondratyev was caught in the

corridors of power by the cool independent

journalist of Kuban, Vyacheslav Potapov.

Please tell us, why does your

dacha need a disco?

I've said more than once that I have nothing

to do with it. It wasn't me, and the house isn't mine — a classic

of the genre.

Maybe some people think it's wrong,

but come on, speak to people like a human being.

I mean, everyone knows it's your

dacha, that it's your daughter, and yet you come out to the public

and say: "It's not my dacha."

And I was watching and thinking: wow, I'd like

to be able to speak with those intonations about

Gleb Pyanykh, the governor's dacha. He is

of course our competitor on YouTube now,

but I'm happy to promote his channel.

Search for "Pyanykh,"

and you'll find his channel. He has around a hundred-and-something thousand subscribers.

We'll also put a link to it in the description,

because we

I like it when someone else does things like this too

— especially when they know how to do something

that we, in particular, don’t know how to do.

Like making such great lead-ins, with the right intonation.

And all sorts of other varied things.

Unfortunately, in Russia there’s enough of that to go around.

So Pyanykh is our competitor, but at the same time

he’s also, rather, a colleague as well.

So of course I’d like to encourage Gleb

and urge him to keep on

using that quadcopter of his that

filmed everyone and showed all

these things. But there was also a great third scandal.

And that same Governor Kondratyev

was sitting together with his deputy,

a man named Alekseenko, at some local

gathering — basically some kind of conference.

Some woman or man there

was, naturally, talking about all the successes

here and there — milk yields here, and

bees, hotels, foxes, all that sort of thing — while the

people at the presidium were, like, sorting out their little issues.

But they forgot to turn off the microphone, and

so all the journalists who were there

later, in the footage of the whole event,

you can see that some main speaker is

mumbling, but over that mumbling you can still

make out how the governor and his

deputy are, basically, sorting out their little issues there.

It’s quite a curious dialogue, but I’ve got just

27 seconds of it, while the full thing is nine or

ten minutes long — you can easily find it on YouTube.

I want to show you the part where they discuss

the political setup and, in particular,

assess the prospects of their beloved

party, United Russia, which in Kuban (the Krasnodar region)

still, well, obviously,

thanks to falsification, formally racks up a lot

of percentage points. Members of United Russia —

the governors of one of Russia’s most populous

regions — what do they think

about their own party?

[applause]

Wonderful words. We’ll clip them up and use them everywhere.

As captions: “United Russia

is dead.”

That’s it, it no longer exists, this party,

says the deputy governor to his

governor. So come on, let’s

come up with a different scheme. United Russia

is dead; we have to finish it off completely,

to finally kill off this bastard.

I don’t feel a bit sorry for it. It’s already dead in terms of

the real — rather, the actual

people willing to vote for it. But we

have to finish the job, shove

its disgusting corpse into some, I don’t know,

grave, dig it, bury it, and

sow the whole place with burdock or something, mm,

or do something else like that. And so

that’s why we will continue

to campaign against United Russia

directly in the elections. And this video

should

personally really inspires me. I

hope it inspired you too, so that

you simply understand how they talk among themselves

about their own United Russia: United

Russia is dead, dead and gone, United Russia.

The next matter is called something like this:

“United Russia is dead.” And we see the clearest signs

of why it

died in the city of Krasnoturyinsk.

Not long ago, there was a State Duma election there,

and they elected this guy there,

a guy who is a famous

Olympic champion in biathlon,

a wonderful, outstanding athlete.

Only for some damn reason he decided to run from

United Russia for the State Duma, and by doing that

he showed that while he may have been

a good athlete, as a person he’s a disgusting

crook. And not only is he a disgusting

person and a crook, but he also became part of

a vile fraudulent party. Apparently he

together with those people who matter there

was very upset that in the city of

Krasnoturyinsk

not that many people voted for him.

He was counting on more than 50 percent, but there

he got 39 percent, meaning

everyone else — that is, the majority of people —

voted against him. And they really

somehow punished all the residents of the city of

Krasnoturyinsk.

What’s more, the city’s mayor, right at a meeting

with residents, in the presence of, I don’t know,

microphones, cameras, everything else, just

said it outright: “Guys,

listen, we didn’t get

some number of millions of rubles

— our budget was cut because you voted the wrong way.

This is the ruling party, and if

we don’t support the ruling party, if we didn’t vote for

Shipulin,

our masters punish us, they punish us.

So let’s bow lower

to our masters like serfs, and then

we’ll get money.” Let’s watch: one minute thirty

seconds of something absolutely outrageous.

One statement after another, and we’re back to something like 2009

or 2012: just enough for maintenance, salaries,

utilities — and no investment at all.

My dear colleagues, on May 17 there will be

the next election — a by-election to the

Legislative Assembly of Sverdlovsk

Region.

Because Anatoly Petrovich left us,

and accordingly, if we vote

the same way or even worse, then

accordingly, you will get nothing. I am from

United Russia — I’m not naming the party, but this is

our reality.

And at the present moment, in the State

Duma, two-thirds are the ruling party, and they distribute

funding to the regions.

In the Legislative Assembly of Sverdlovsk

Region.

Two-thirds of the ruling party distributes

funding to the municipality.

And the authorities are asking us: support

our candidate. Dear friends, let us

support them.

I want to say once again: on the 8th, we

voted; on the 13th, we got the result. As of

today, we do not have two schools, and we do not have

the roller-ski track either, the one they

promised to build for us.

Today, Anton Shipulin was here; I spoke with him.

I asked him today, in

Yekaterinburg, regarding the work,

to raise these issues further.

But please understand this correctly.

And, dear friends, I want to say once again: we

may feel differently about this,

but this is the result of the attitude toward the city

of Krasnokamensk.

34,500 are watching live. Hello

to everyone who has just joined. I

hope you are as outraged as I am. This is

just some guy saying, look,

using these verbal constructions, well, you can

have different attitudes, like,

sure, it's clear that you may

be against United Russia, against Putin,

you may have some right-wing or left-wing views,

but guys, you still have to vote for

them, because otherwise, as he said, they will not

build us a school. [__] Quite simply, we

have to vote for them, otherwise they will not

give us our own money,

the money we paid in taxes,

to build a school. Yes, I do not know

how many people after this in

Krasnoturyinsk will vote for United

Russia, but I would like that number to be zero. Well,

this is simply beyond belief now. We all

roughly understood that this is how the system works,

but now they are just coming out and saying,

well, what, you did not vote the right way? Then no school for you.

You did not vote for a United Russia candidate,

so what school do you expect? You need a school? You

will be digging through garbage bins like

the people in the most widely discussed

— no, it became the most popular, the most

high-profile video, probably, this

week that I saw. It was in Yakutsk.

Someone filmed from their window how

a large family, as it later turned out,

a family with many children, and there were children with them.

It was actually a rather disturbing video.

They were literally digging through a garbage bin.

They looked decent enough, not at all like

homeless people or drunks or anything like that.

And they were digging through the garbage bin in order

to get a little food. This was in Yakutsk,

which is generally considered to have fairly

high salaries. Let us watch the 29

seconds that really, truly

shook social media. Any

person would have felt strong emotions

about this.

Here are people with children, with bags and nets and everything.

It did not look spontaneous at all; it looked like

a planned, apparently regular operation:

drive up to the dumpster, rummage through it,

pull out food products, and take those

products home. And the authorities' reaction was

immediate: they stated that yes,

it really was a large family,

and that they would finally

place two of the children in kindergarten, whereas before

they had not done that, and they would help

the mother find employment. Well, okay.

We can assume, sure, that

this may be a troubled family, or that alcohol

is involved, or something else, yes. But why then

could these children not have been

placed in kindergarten earlier? Why did it take

a video recording of people digging through

a dumpster to become both

a social elevator and a method of solving

social problems? Until you are shown

digging through trash, your children will not be

placed in kindergarten. Could this not have been done earlier?

Again, I think there

may be a whole lot of explanations here.

Maybe these people are somehow 'not the right kind of people,' maybe they do not

want to work, or there will be some explanation

that we tried to place them somewhere,

but they did not go to work, they do not want

to work, they want to dig through trash.

I doubt that is the case, but even if

it were, you understand, it is still impossible

against the backdrop of all this to have what

I am about to show you now, which you have seen many times:

38 seconds of how, in Russia, they continue

to destroy food.

[music]

[applause]

Hundreds of thousands of tons of food have been destroyed across

Russia in recent years. This is

the very essence of the so-called anti-sanctions: products

of high quality are destroyed because

Putin introduced his idiotic

so-called anti-sanctions, and the products

are destroyed, crushed, and everyone cries out, what the hell,

give them to the poor, for example,

give them to those who are digging through trash. But

no, that cannot be done. Let them dig through

trash. But people do not do that out of a good life.

They are still digging there; maybe

it is a troubled family, but probably from

society's point of view, we still do not

want to see this. And whatever the parents

may be like, maybe they are not sufficiently

hardworking, but surely we would want

that even if

they have introduced their idiotic

anti-sanctions and they do not want

European food to be sold in stores,

then let them confiscate it and give it to people like

those digging through trash. But no,

this state will never do

anything like that. Everything has to be kept separate:

here we will destroy it, and you who do not have enough—

you’ll go and dig through this garbage dump

that’s why United Russia has died off

as we were just told

as the deputy just stated

the deputy governor said, while the governor was nodding

his head—so, I can see that I have

someone with the username “Big Pfft” asks

Patrick Patriot from Putin 7—there will be something about Malkin

quite a lot has already been said about Malkin

but maybe I’ll tell you something more

interesting about it next time. This week I

had these two really striking

video interviews with Putin supporters, and one

Kuchinsky

and the other pro-Putin one was especially impressive in how

they showed themselves off. I wanted to show you

some clips from these interviews. I hope

the owners

of these interviews won’t get me banned. They’re

completely different: one is very pleasant

—that’s journalist Golovin from Sports.ru. The other

is Ksenia Sobchak, who I find rather unpleasant, but

they both did an excellent job in these interviews

with those very Putin supporters, once again showing us

—good Lord—who this regime actually

relies on. First of all, well,

there’s that, and secondly they’re just

genuinely such crooks. But first let’s

look at footballer Dmitry Tarasov

He’s a footballer, but those who aren’t really

interested in football probably know him first and foremost

because of this

famous photo, where at one of the

matches he lifted his jersey and it said “Putin”

“the most polite president.” He was so

proud of it. Later he was fined for it

because you weren’t allowed to do things like that there

but still, all we hear is that everyone here

loves Vladimir Putin—just absolutely

can’t get enough of him. And there was a really great

long interview—you can find

it on Alexander Golovin’s channel, on

the Sports.ru channel. But I want to

show you just over a minute from it so that we can

take another look at these

people and think: damn, so this is

his support group. Unfortunately, these are people who

really seem to struggle with

any kind of mental effort, and that’s why

we need to be ten times more

active, because somehow we need to

outvote them or persuade them

Maybe this Tarasov isn’t actually such a

bad person—maybe he just needed to be given

a few assignments, then handed some

book or article to read, some kind of image

to look at

Dmitry Tarasov, when you were asked this winter

about Putin, you answered:

“I like the way he governs the country.” And are there

any things about his leadership

that you don’t like? “Well, there are probably many

things, but he’s our president, I love him.” Could you

name three examples—three complaints about

what you don’t like? “I don’t even want to

go down that road, but I respect him

and support him. That’s enough. Why criticize him?”

According to Rosstat data from July 2019

—that’s the official statistics agency—

it turned out that in Russia, 21 million

people are poor. What do you make of that

statistic? Who is to blame for it? What do you think?”

I asked you whether someone is to blame. Do you think

someone is? “Well, it’s probably in the regions

where people—it all happens there, poverty in

general is worsening, and of course he can’t

keep track of absolutely everything, simply

physically—it’s just too much work. I mean, you

just think about what his

workday must be like. Sometimes I just

try to imagine it somehow

—how his day starts, to picture it

with the sheer amount of things he has going on there

the headaches, everything that happens—and

it’s completely impossible to keep track of it all”

Look, here’s another statistic: in

Russia, around 10 million people live

without a heated indoor toilet. Do you think

Putin is to blame for that too? “A heated

toilet—when you don’t have to run outside the house

somewhere, and it’s not pouring over you, and it’s not

unheated either—is that what you mean?”

If you think about it further, you could list a million

more things about how people live and what

has been done for people—how many centers,

how many churches have been built

What, isn’t that progress? Why not churches?

Why not?

He’s done a lot for Russia. How many churches

have been built? We have 10 million people

below the poverty line. “Well, somewhere out in the regions

you can’t argue with that.” Well done,

Dmitry figured it out: it’s in the regions, yes—

in particular in Yakutia (Sakha Republic), where people are

digging through garbage. And who, exactly, is to blame for that?

Well, of course it won’t be him. Of course Trump

is to blame, of course. The ones responsible, damn, for the fact that

someone in Yakutia is digging through trash

are, naturally, some other people

“Gayrope” (a derogatory Russian slang term for Europe) is to blame for the fact that in Kaluga or

Oryol people work on collective farms for 12,000 rubles (about 190 USD at the time)

a month. Well, whatever, somewhere out in the regions—that’s

how it is. Meanwhile, our footballers

—look, this one has a Lamborghini

and that one has a Bentley, all with red leather

interiors. Nice.

Putin is doing right by us. Just look:

in the description of this video there will be a link to

the full interview. Watch it, and just once again

think about whether you want your

future, and the future of your children, to be shaped

for a very substantial period—20 years—by people like this

That’s what it comes down to: footballer Tarasov wants

to rule over you. And Putin, after all, represents

the interests of footballers like Tarasov and others like him

and they determine everything. You really don’t want

that, do you? Really, let him just play

football. Footballer Tarasov shouldn’t be given

Let him play football, win medals,

and bask in the glory, and we will all

shout, and I will stand in the stadium

shouting, "Go, footballer Tarasov!" Well,

I would simply like it if

the political interests of the country's development

were ultimately guided not by the thoughts, not by

the single thought of footballer Tarasov

about churches, but by something else.

At this point, that is not even a question for him. That's just who he is.

He is what he is, and he too has the right to let them

come out, after all. You can all go to hell,

while he is a footballer.

I'm speaking politely about the man, but our duty

is to be far more active than that.

team

Malkov, Tarasov, and other wonderful

people, including Margarita Simonyan,

who seems to have had some kind of split

in her interview with Ksenia

Sobchak, because this is exactly

two

two completely different Putin-era archetypes.

There is footballer Tarasov, and with him

everything is very clear. He is, how to put it,

to be polite, someone who knows very little,

has read very little,

loves churches, and thinks that people in the regions are just...

that Putin works very hard,

that he has a lot of different

issues to deal with, and therefore the fact that millions

are poor is not Putin's fault. And then there is

another type.

Another Putin-era—or supposedly Putin-era—

slick, somewhat crooked, very smart

and sophisticated Margarita Simonyan.

A generalized Margarita Simonyan was cultivated

as a response to certain Western

propagandists—a seemingly cunning

auntie who is never at a loss for words,

yes, she could eat them alive, but nevertheless

the moment she comes to an interview,

she is supposed to destroy anyone, including Ksenia

Sobchak, who is herself quite a Putin-era

operator.

But it turned out—good Lord—that even

the leader of the Putin-era crooks,

journalists, and PR people is simply not

capable of answering a single question

that is not on the list. In fact, a condition

of the interview, as we later found out—and there will also be

a link in the description to the full

video—they actually demanded from

Sobchak the questions in advance, received them, and then

started getting up and leaving when Sobchak

began asking—quite rightly—

some other questions. A minute and a half

of absolute failure from what is called

the best Putin-era journalist. But you know,

this story about

burgers.

Was it Putin who gave the order?

Did he fire them, or did he reprimand them there, or

did you already know about it? And again:

"Let's put it this way: next time I will simply

get up and leave." But this is just mind-boggling.

A fighter.

"We didn't have that, you don't know, that's

nonsense. You remember the questions." But they

simply wanted to make sure that we

stayed within our rights, and she herself said

that we could talk more. I had agreed this topic with you.

"No, but..."

"Listen, I am not deceiving you in any way, I am not

asking any questions that would

compromise you. Why are you even... why

are you cutting the interview short now? You know,

I had approval only for what we

had agreed on. Do you want to

smuggle in, one way or another, those

questions that we had not agreed on?

You have become some kind of policy manager.

"Listen, but I am not asking any such

questions that would make you leave, Marg...

It's strange to walk out in the middle

of an interview, and I am not asking you anything right now

that is out of bounds.

"Fine, yes, I mean, listen, I absolutely...

I don't even have... I...

The finale, well...

Good Lord, honestly, it is hard for me

even to imagine this,

because first of all,

journalists approach me quite often,

I give a great many interviews,

and yes, it is hard to imagine saying

to any journalist: "Okay, I agree

to the interview, but guys, send me

the questions first." First, you would never say that.

And second, if you say that

otherwise they will tear you to pieces,

well then if they send the questions

for the interview,

you read them, and then they ask you a different

question on camera, you say: "Guys, look,

I agreed the topics with you.

Why create hype here over topics that were not agreed? Well,

that is simply impossible. Then why

get involved in anything resembling journalism at all?

And then she proudly declares that our channel, Russia

Today, is somehow fighting Western

propaganda.

There are people who believe that there is

some kind of organized Western

propaganda. Margarita Simonyan

talks about this constantly, that we are fighting it.

Well, at the very least, one would assume that

if 20 billion rubles are being spent to fight

Western propaganda, then for those

20 billion rubles we would see a person

capable not only of eating a beaver

but also of answering some simple

questions without preparation. Something like:

"Did your people take part in this or not?

We never lie here..."

The main thing is not to laugh while answering

that question. All she had to do was

Margarita Simonyan

but she couldn't even do that, and yet

a film made with 100 million rubles in state budget money

parachutes for 20 billion, and so on, and

and so on and so on, and so on, so

on and on—this is, of course, absolutely, well

an astonishing file, and once again, Putin's

Tarasov, Simonyan—that is the

far-off... right now there exists the largest

in operation

country in the world called Russia, and they

its owners—Putin is, of course, the

main beneficiary there, but this whole

retinue will keep ruling over us endlessly until

the moment when we become a hundred times

more active than they are. But their rule, their ruling,

will look more and more

problematic, because their chief

grandpa has, of course, just completely

slipped into senility

and now, well, I'm not trying to insult him

actually, it's simply a real thing, and

I'm trying to convince you of it—just think about it

really, no jokes, no snide remarks

I mean, it all sounds funny

it looks funny, but seriously, without any mockery

I insist that, unfortunately,

at this point he really is senile, and he himself

said many times that if you spend 10 years

in power, you'll go insane. He

has been there for 20 years, for 20 years people have been singing his praises

for 20 years his inner circle has been

footballer Tarasov and Margarita Simonyan

just imagine spending 20 years in a

room with Tarasov, a byword for that type, and

Simonyan—you'd go mad, of course, and he

did go mad, and simply

at the latest meeting in Kaliningrad there was

a meeting on healthcare

you know, healthcare has enormous

problems, absolutely enormous ones, but what Putin said there

really showed that, of course, he

is already—well, he's not in touch with reality, he's fallen into

senility. In particular, one of the ideas that

came to him right there in

Kaliningrad about how to fix Russian

healthcare—well, let him say it himself

I can't even repeat it

here, just listen to what he is proposing

Vladimir Putin is proposing that we make a breakthrough—he loves breakthroughs—

in the field of healthcare

by the way, what a thought occurred to him

that medical students could

organize something like student

clinical construction brigades—there are

specialized brigades

they too could travel around the country and

provide help to people at a lower level, at the kind of level

that, of course, they are not actually able to

do

thank you very much, do you understand, but

basically, why is grandpa sinking

deeper and deeper into senility? Because

there have to be some obstacles

in the way of your senile actions

if I were here doing—that is, if I kept

hosting while he keeps ruling there, and no one

if I kept doing these live streams endlessly

and spouting some senile nonsense, you

there are 300,000 people watching me right now

live—there would probably be a signal that

something was wrong with me, that I'd gone senile

there would be a sharp drop in views, I mean

there is some kind of barrier, and your comments

would be pretty harsh. But he

has no such barrier. He said this, and my God

and no one reacted like this, and no one

said, “How did that thought even enter your head?”

what the hell kind of

medical students

how can they possibly treat anyone

medical students

sent around in the form of mobile brigades

medical students are all kinds of people, there are

studious medical students, there are ordinary ones

cheerful drunks, and

slacker medical students, so out of all these

different kinds of medical students, in the end

after many, many years of study and

unlike lawyers, who are done in four years

or even two, a doctor needs

about nine years of training

only those who have gone through all that

serious training and passed the exams become doctors

what kind of medical students does Putin think these are, really?

Seriously

his idea of healthcare seems to be that

all across the country people are standing in lines

this one needs a bandage here, that one

has a hurt finger, this one needs a plantain leaf applied

and those two got into a fight, so he, well,

needs some iodine dabbed on here, and someone else

needs a vaccination, and of course

medical students will arrive, this kind of mobile

work brigade (a Soviet-style student labor brigade), like in those old

brigades—you can ask

your parents, maybe someone themselves

was in one, or you've seen them in movies too: cheerful

slightly tipsy guys in these

camouflage jackets and those hats

that tie up like this, and they

come out and start

taking temperatures, dab iodine on this one

give that one a shot, and off they go

to the next village. What incredible

healthcare organization. Let

Putin himself, in his own Fourth Directorate (the elite Kremlin medical system),

while they build some kind of super-mega

hospital that will serve

officials—maybe that super-mega

hospital should be made for ordinary people, and

officials can be served by flying

medical student brigades

made up of students, and there they are

arriving to treat the governor here

and the minister there, driving around the country like that

It's genuine senility. And it's serious

senility, because he's saying this not

just as some kind of joke, even though you

She laughed there, told a joke, I can...

show it, and the joke, which also, basically...

well...

here, this kind of list...

of signs of senility, this joke...

can certainly also become an unspoken...

great-grandmother... he adores his great-grandmother's horses.

This reminds me of a conversation at a legal

consultation, when an old woman comes in and

asks the lawyers, 'Do I have the right?' 'You do.'

The old woman says, 'Well no, I want to ask whether I have the right'

'whether I have the right.' 'Yes, you do...'

'Can I or not?' 'No, granny, you can't.'

And everyone laughed.

You see, a construction brigade joke about

an old woman.

And that's how the meeting on

healthcare issues went, while at the same time

the Doctors' Alliance is heading to Sochi.

Krasnodar Krai is a rich, fat region.

In any case, it's the place where Putin spends

probably most of his time during the

year, and for the most part he runs the whole

country when he's hanging out there in those...

in Sochi itself, and with the Sochi hospital...

Let's watch a few seconds

from there and just estimate whether

these mobile

medical student brigades will help with anything.

So it turns out that, uh, what are you supposed to do when there isn't...

time... how do you treat patients? Did you buy it yourself

or did they buy it? Wait, your salary is 26,000 rubles (about $280),

and you buy the medications needed for

the patients yourself?

[music]

Let's go.

Valentina, it seemed that this was one in your

department... to worry, and constantly... I

worked from May to August... yes, we have

a problem: doctors' salaries are 25,000 rubles (about $270), plus

they have to buy bandages and expensive

medications for patients themselves. And how do we respond

to that? Mobile student brigades?

What was still needed was, like in my favorite

cartoon, *The Simpsons*, when the kids

were pitching different ideas to the school principal,

someone should have come out and said: 'Chocolate

microscopes.'

Double guitars. Well, it's just that someone has

some really strange ideas.

A state meeting on

healthcare issues, the president is sitting there, and our

healthcare system has simply fallen apart

to the point that doctors buy bandages themselves,

and there they are, joking around, and this idea

came into his head about

mobile student brigades. That made me

furious, and that's why right now I

we have 37.4 thousand watching us live, and later even

more people will watch online. Guys,

think about this. He really has, unfortunately,

slipped into senility.

It's a natural evolutionary process.

How far they've all gone there...

Margarita Simonyan is still in her right mind, and she

gets a lot of money, several times more than a footballer...

they're all... but the old man is senile, and they

are taking advantage of him, various people, and we must

be active. We must save our country from

senility.

Wake up. We will keep working on this

constantly, and in particular next

Thursday we will, at the very least, make

some new contribution of our own to the fight against

this senility. Thank you very much to everyone who

watched. Bye.

[music]