Zelensky: good or bad? “I’ll kill you, understand that.” Russians do not surrender

[music]

Hello, everyone. It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, which means

we're live with the program *Russia of the Future*.

Your host is Alexei Navalny.

Or, "a petty demon," as one

wonderful person and regular

hero of our program recently called me.

And why am I a petty demon?

You blockhead.

He shouts, "How can you be Orthodox? You

were saying all that stuff about churches..."

"How you were ready to send a cruiser at every church..." And I

read that I'm some petty demon, just like

my servants and henchmen.

You brought out those snot-nosed kids, someone smearing things with blood...

He was even ready to say it outright about

Navalny, as you just heard, of course.

It's hilarious. I rewatched that

video many, many times. Just a wonderful,

truly remarkable man: Vladimir Solovyov.

All right, I'm a petty demon.

The next time he starts trashing Yekaterinburg,

by the way, maybe he dislikes

that city so much because I got curious

and looked it up.

I checked on Solovyov in Yekaterinburg and discovered

that his most recent appearance there

ended in fiasco: he simply couldn't

sell enough tickets

and had to cancel it. So maybe the residents

of that city don't like him either. Let's begin the program.

I want to congratulate all school graduates and

their parents. In my family,

my daughter had her *Last Bell* today (the traditional Russian school graduation ceremony). Across

all of Moscow there were Last Bells, and probably across

all of Russia as well. In short,

if you have a graduate in the family, or

if you are a graduate yourself, I wish you a wonderful

journey through life, one that leads

without fail to the beautiful Russia of the future.

A million times—well, not a million, but many

times—I have started this program with a

tragic, tragic, but serious

opening. And now, as I begin my

program, my live broadcast, my colleague

Leonid Volkov

is under arrest. And once again I say it:

my colleague Leonid Volkov

is under arrest. Yesterday he was jailed

for 20 days. I mean, of course this is

an unpleasant, disgusting thing, but I

say it fairly calmly because,

well, Leonid Volkov is a tough guy.

He knows why he's in jail. He knows that

the authorities hate him and fear him.

He'll do his time, he'll get out, and we'll

keep working here. Let's start by

listening to the farewell words

he gave us from the courtroom: "Well, hello

everyone. See you in 20 days. The situation is

normal

and manageable. Don't worry. I've proven that I can

scratch a car in Moscow with the power of thought

from afar. I'll keep leveling up that skill

and we'll try to do something

to teleport Putin out of

the Kremlin.

Actually, I don't have time to get bored now.

There's a ton of work on the elections in Moscow and elsewhere,

and that's all I'm focused on.

My arrest itself is absurd, of course, but I will

do my share of the work from the detention center.

Write letters. And of course the guys

working on the campaign now will have

an even heavier workload."

So what actually happened, and why

did Volkov really, by force of thought,

scratch a Camry from

several thousand kilometers away?

During the livestream of our rally against

raising the retirement age, he

was not physically present at that moment on

Tverskaya Street; he was running the broadcast from

another country. But we understand perfectly well that

wherever in Russia we organize a

broadcast, they break down doors,

seize equipment, and so

broadcasts are now simply organized from other countries.

By the way, they even turn out cheaper

than broadcasting from Russia. And Volkov had been abroad;

recently he was abroad as well.

He was studying in a program at

Yale University, where I also studied.

He finished the program and came back. A lot of nonsense was written

in Telegram channels: that Volkov wouldn't

return, that he had emigrated. Obviously,

that's nonsense to anyone who knows him,

or knows our organization. He

came back. But the thing is, the deadline for

bringing him to administrative liability

had expired. And in any case, he couldn't be held

liable because he

was on the territory of another

state. There is such a thing as

the place where an administrative

offense is committed.

If you violate administrative law,

say by speeding in the United States or in

Brazil, they're hardly going to revoke your license here

for that. But with Volkov, that's not how

it worked. He came here, and for several days

he was being followed.

I mean openly followed, driving after him, and

apparently weighing their options, and then

in the end they decided to jail him for 20 days.

This is a very important moment right now

because candidate registration is underway.

Why is Volkov in jail? Because you and I,

specifically you and I, without exaggeration—and the

people who are, I don't know, in this office,

the people watching this

program—are, in fact,

right now

the core of political life, if you want to put it that way,

in Russia. You and I are organizing this

campaign against United Russia,

and if it

achieves even a moderate degree of success...

Hundreds of deputies from United Russia across

the country will lose their seats

if this goes really well here.

Thousands of deputies will lose their seats, and

of course the Kremlin

is afraid of that, really does not want it, and

is trying in every possible way to make things harder for us.

As for this Smart Voting campaign,

so, guys, I’m urging you once again—I understand

very well that, well, the very idea

of elections right now is very... but it is not on

the political agenda. Nobody ever

discusses the upcoming elections in Moscow

a little bit in St. Petersburg, a little bit, but overall

people do not even know that in 22 regions

there will be elections in the country, and, well, they just do not care.

Nevertheless, if we are conscientious

people,

600,000 people will watch this episode; 200,000

of them need to be the most responsible

and civic-minded, register, and

carry out this campaign the way we

planned it, which I keep talking about.

Right now, the first thing you need to do is register,

first and foremost.

And then several million people

will take part in all of this by September, and

several United Russia members will lose their

seats, while several deputies from other

parties or independent candidates

will take those seats instead.

That is our task: the fight against

the monopoly. They are deeply worried and afraid in

the Kremlin, deeply worried and afraid in

Moscow. Zhdanov is running in the Leningradsky

district—Sokol, Aeroport—and his campaigners

are detained every day, every single day, even though

they are just going door to door. But they are so

afraid that the director of the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) is running that

literally every single day Vova Tatarov

gets picked up.

First they tail him—can you imagine?

They put ordinary people who are just carrying leaflets

around apartment buildings under surveillance first,

with external monitoring, and then the police

catch them in those entryways.

They detain them, take them away—they are very afraid.

That is why we really need to

act in such a way that we get

a good result, like the one we are seeing now.

The result in Yekaterinburg, of course, is

the biggest and most important

political news story there has been—a

huge slap in the face for the Kremlin

and for Putin personally. You need to understand: this is not

just some local victory. Well,

strictly speaking, we should not overestimate it yet;

it is still too early to say it is a victory. We know

how they usually operate, with this

step forward, two steps back routine.

They concede, stall, retreat—so of course

in a month or two we should expect

the Kremlin and the Sverdlovsk regional authorities

to try

to reverse all of this

somehow and deceive everyone. But for now

the Kremlin has taken a major blow, and

the decision has been canceled. It has already been said many times that

in the square that people

were defending, the church will not be built. This was

the main federal issue, and so

on the main political issue

on the national agenda, the people won.

That is why this is the most important thing, period.

Congratulations to everyone—and to myself too. Our

headquarters congratulates you; we were quite actively

involved. Well done, everyone.

We need to answer the question: why? What

was the most important thing there? The most important thing was

this phrase, this attitude: “To hell with them,”

which was voiced by

several thousand people in Yekaterinburg.

Several tens of thousands were saying it

and several thousand were saying it

in that specific square and showed real

persistence. That was the key element. Simply

put, they said: we are going to come out into

the streets, and to hell with your

permits. Nobody even asked us for those

permits. They just came to

that square, and they called in the police, and

they brought in those thugs, those titushki (hired provocateurs), and let’s

watch again those few wonderful

seconds of this: “Anyone who comes up to the fence

will go down.”

What happened in Yekaterinburg over that fence,

over all of this—why was it all happening?

They came, and I’m putting it plainly so that you

understand for the future.

This is the Kremlin’s main yardstick in any

conflict, in any situation: they measure

the main thing. Guys, remember this—just as

Erik Davydych said

in his interview with Dud (Yury Dud): hear me out, the main thing

the Kremlin measures is how many people

are ready to keep coming out to

an unauthorized protest

despite intimidation and all the rest of it.

If people keep going, if there is persistence,

they back down. But why the hell would Putin need

to push it that far?

They sent in those titushki (hired provocateurs), all those goons,

they sent in the riot police, they arrested

several people, they arrested

the head of our headquarters—and still people did not

disperse. Usually all this works.

They send in thugs, and then, you know,

30 percent of people think,

“Forget it, I’m not getting involved,” and go

home. Then they sent in the National Guard (Rosgvardiya),

detained people, arrested them demonstratively, in a blatantly

lawless way.

Another 30 percent of people thought, “Ah, whatever,”

“what is this even?”

and went home. And of course the whiners immediately jumped into

the discussion. It was very interesting

to watch, and honestly it was extremely

infuriating—all of this, all these...

Several days of confrontation in the park in

Yekaterinburg (a major Russian city in the Urals): on one side, every

day more and more people came out; on the other

side were people who were basically whiners and

defeatists, the paid-for ones,

the whiners and defeatists—and over all of it they just

kept smearing this whole “it’s pointless, for God’s sake,”

“we support you, good people, but we all know”

“it’s pointless, it always has been”

“pointless, and it’ll be pointless now too,”

“so why even go out, it’s all just some kind of”

nonsense, oh look over there—”

“did you see all those cool videos, let’s

watch, I love how everyone drags the fence for 10

seconds.”

[applause]

So they watched videos like that, and instead

of admiring people’s courage,

they said, “Well, this is childish, nothing

is going to come of it. Guys, you know

nothing’s going to happen.” And if you wrote, you write

something like, “Yekaterinburg, come to the rally

on such-and-such a date, we support you,”

then in the comments there were always those

same people—and on the radio too, political analysts

everywhere would say, “Oh God, well,

it’s obvious nothing will come of it.” But it

did work out—because of persistence.

Several thousand people came out, and in fact

the people who know this are those in

Yekaterinburg, but most people outside

Yekaterinburg don’t know that this

persistence had been there for

several years. And this oligarch-backed

church was being shoved into several—

four or five different locations—and

people kept coming out and holding what were

called “hugging” the parks and ponds,

when they formed a human chain and

held hands, and those

whiners would always say, “Oh, look at them,”

they came out

and held hands instead of

fighting the cops and throwing

Molotov cocktails”—that’s what some

armchair dudes wrote to us, guys who hadn’t even

gone to a single protest. “They held

hands.”

“That’s defeatism, nothing

will come of it.” But it did, because

persistence, not asking permission

for these actions, and not listening to whiners

made it happen. Of course, it could have failed,

of course it could have. The situation could have turned out

so that nothing came of it. But even so,

you still must not listen to these whiners, under any

circumstances. What’s interesting is that VTsIOM

(Russia’s state-run public opinion center)

published data in order

for Putin to get a slap in the face—but so that this

red mark wouldn’t stay on his cheek,

it had to be covered with some little leaf, and he

covers himself with a leaf that says

“overall, the poll results…”

They already knew perfectly well, they knew

what the results would be, but

so that Putin could put on

a brave face in a bad situation and say, “Well, I

suggested a poll, and the poll showed this,”

look—VTsIOM says

that

77 percent of people are against

having their park taken away. They’re not against

the church—they just don’t understand why, in their city,

a park has to be destroyed. And now there are poll

results that, basically,

provided a kind of quasi-

legal, political basis for

moving it. But I want to say that in

one of my broadcasts last year,

I also talked about this: that now

we’ve ended up in a situation that is actually

unique, where the defenders of the park won,

but even this whole

crowd that really wants

the church could also very well win,

because, as I understand it,

the priority project now is to move

this church to the main square opposite

City Hall.

Because that’s what a European capital looks like,

or a Russian capital, a major Russian

city has always looked like: there’s

the town hall or mayor’s office, the governor,

the city head, and the main church stands

opposite it. Right now that square

basically looks like a parking lot.

The only thing I want to say, yes,

is to address the oligarchs,

to Altushkin and Kozitsyn, well, to everyone concerned,

to all Yekaterinburg residents: this is a

very unique situation. If that church is built there,

it’s a super-mega

unique situation in which, in a very

large city of over a million people,

a new church will be built on the central square.

Let’s build one, let’s make it beautiful—not

like what you’re about to see now in

this picture here. I’m not saying

it’s outright super-ugly, but why should we

try to copy the architecture

of the 12th century in the 21st, when we have

new technologies? Everyone says,

“Look, these are Novgorod traditions, these are

Pskov traditions.” But listen, those

traditions were mostly dictated by the fact that

construction capabilities were extremely limited,

many building possibilities,

building materials, and so on, back then—

the 12th century, the 14th century. Why not build in

Yekaterinburg something that could truly be

the most beautiful Orthodox church in the world,

something tourists would come to see and say,

“Now that—well, like St. Basil’s Cathedral

(the famous cathedral on Red Square), only better than St. Basil’s,”

you really could

build something amazing there. I hope

that, in the end,

to somehow convince the public

these oligarchic sponsors

to build, with all this push and effort, not just

a church, but a very beautiful church, and for them

that very monument they

want to erect for themselves could actually be

really impressive. That monument—I

I continue, continue, sort of to provide

informational support, if you like, and

to insist that in the city of She-

-yes, and in the Arkhangelsk region in general,

right now

is, in a sense, the center of political

life. I can even prove it to you right now.

There were rallies in Arkhangelsk

this weekend, and they were quite large.

There’s a district there, Solombala, where I

spoke—a kind of outlying district. I held

a fairly large rally there, and it was somehow

considered a record-breaking

rally in terms of size for the city’s outskirts

of Arkhangelsk. But I’m very glad that the

record set by my rally was broken—there were even more

people gathered there to speak out

against shipping Moscow’s waste to

the Arkhangelsk region. But even more impressive

was what happened in the city of Kotlas.

Let’s take a look at footage from there.

A town with a population of 60,000.

Officially. In reality, fewer—but definitely 6,000

came out to the rally. That means at least 10 percent

of the population turned out. And there’s a great

moment when these people are asked:

who here supports Putin? Let’s see.

Raise your hands if you trust him.

That way it’ll be easier to count.

Please, I can’t see you—go ahead, raise

your hands.

Even the police officers dressed

in civilian clothes don’t trust him either.

Raise your hands... It seems there aren’t any.

So how does that happen? The president isn’t

trusted at all, and that’s really the crux of it.

If everyone can see it, then maybe he ought to

do something to win back

our trust somehow. I don’t know. They ask him

a question: we’re against Shiyes (the landfill site), but

they ask openly, and he replies:

I’m not aware.

And the 25,000 signatures we sent?

He ignored them completely. He said:

I see no reason to dismiss Orlov.

How can you not see it? That’s not a matter of eyesight—

something else must be wrong. I just don’t understand

what’s going on.

I haven’t understood for a long time. Just look at how

the rhetoric has changed. Before, it was some kind of

environmental rally, and I know from

my own experience: activists organize it, but they tell me,

we need informational

support, but when something like this happens,

you simply can’t avoid politicizing it.

Here it’s a rally about the environment, and you—don’t go

too hard on the politics, okay?

Of course. But then one of the organizers comes out

and says: our rally is not political, we’re

here for the environment.

And we have different political forces here. All of that

no longer works in the Arkhangelsk region.

You can see that 10 percent of the city

came out for an obviously anti-government

demonstration, and that’s really great.

I’ll repeat what I said in the previous program:

it’s just far away, the Arkhangelsk

region, so we don’t feel that same

political pulse.

But it is there, and it’s very important and interesting

to see what comes of it, because

the confrontation on the ground, including

physical confrontation, is even greater there than in

Yekaterinburg. And the reason for what’s happening there

is far more

offensive than in Yekaterinburg. I mean,

they are literally spitting in people’s faces.

They said: well, we’re not going to build

waste-processing plants in Moscow or

the Moscow region—we don’t have time for that.

So let’s just take this garbage

and haul it over there and dump it on them.

Those people out there—well, whatever, they’re just

some people wandering around, they won’t even notice. It’s very important

to pay attention to what’s happening there. So once again, the best

support is for everyone to keep following

the situation. Another region that I

can already imagine will cause quite a

storm in the Russian and Ukrainian sections

of YouTube and the internet—yes, another region

where it’s very interesting to follow

political events, and where there are quite

strong protest sentiments, is Crimea.

It’s very interesting to watch what

is happening there. Naturally, there was

tremendous enthusiasm there, yes,

and obviously the majority of the population

supported joining Russia, but all of that

is now changing at a furious pace,

with furious irritation directed at the new authorities who

came in there and are behaving like outright

bandits. In fact, they really are

bandits—people from the old criminal circles. They even

had their own local nickname for him: “Goblin”.

But let’s just say, the amount of money

they’ve already stolen

far exceeds

anything we imagined. We understood that the new

guys who came in would get huge sums of money

allocated to them, and that they would steal

quite a lot—but they really went all in

on the job. Insider published an excellent

piece explaining that

the entire family of this Aksyonov (Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea)—I won’t

retell it all—his son, daughter, wife, they

have simply seized everything. His 20-year-old son,

Oleg,

they’re all involved in business on the territory

of Crimea, handing out left and right all sorts of

pieces of property quite openly. But the best part of all this

the most striking thing in all of this

that Aksyonov's mother-in-law bought in Moscow

an apartment worth 400 million rubles

400 million rubles — can you imagine? But

just recently he was still some kind of

marginal politician who, by the way,

said that Crimea should

be part of Ukraine. That's the part that

really gets me — the sheer, absolute

hypocrisy of the new Crimean elite, and then there's

Poklonskaya, who during the Ukrainian period

was a Ukrainian prosecutor and demanded

that people be thrown in jail who, so to speak,

represented the Russian idea back then

when they came there. These are simply legal

documents showing that, while serving as prosecutor then,

she demanded prison terms, saying: you are acting against

Ukrainian statehood, you are undermining

our foundations, and she waved the

yellow-and-blue flag, and now

she's done a complete 180, and Aksyonov

is like — let's look at what he said, and

24 seconds, literally a year and a half before

all these Crimean events

Sergei, your predecessors in the cause of

the Russian idea in Crimea — among them there are

quite a few who at the time were actually

not opposed to the idea of joining

Russia. How do you feel about that?

I think the time for that process has already passed.

Today we live in Ukraine. I have

a Ukrainian passport, Ukrainian

citizenship.

Therefore, all problems must be discussed

only within friendly, brotherly

relations. And Aksyonov doesn't even live

'on Ukraine' but 'in Ukraine.'

The time had passed, blah blah blah — but then the time

did come. A new time came for him — a time

not for any kind of joining Russia, but

a time when his mother-in-law buys

a luxury apartment for 400 million rubles

Can you imagine how much money they stole

if he's able to legalize 400 million? How much

did his family steal?

How much did all the rest of this

gang steal? How much did the FSB people and all the rest

who oversee all this take?

The police officers who are also there, doing

their bit — all the others too.

It's literally a hellish pack of greedy grabbers

who, well, are all clustered around these little houses

because supposedly they can't be

jailed.

Because if you start jailing these

various clownish Aksyonovs and all the rest

who run around the most and

shout, 'We are the heroes of the Crimean Spring' (the pro-Russian events of 2014), then, well,

everyone in Ukraine will laugh, everyone who was robbed will start

gloating, and in

foreign newspapers they will write

unpleasant things. That's why they were given immunity.

They understand their immunity perfectly well and

have simply latched onto this

budget like bulldogs, and they don't nibble off small

pieces like piranhas

— they tear out billions outright. It's very

interesting to watch, though it's sad

because all of this is our

money.

It's all collected across the rest of

Russia, sent to Crimea, and

stolen there, and of course this

will lead to protest sentiment in Crimea

growing stronger, and I don't know

— well, they are growing there. The other thing is that

they are being crushed very hard there, but they

are growing. My forecast is that

from the standpoint of social,

economic, and political protest,

Crimea will become

fairly quickly one of the most active

regions — at least if they don't remove

all these people whose

mothers-in-law, you see, buy apartments for

400 million. Let's move on to questions about

— please comment on the dispersal of the

May 1 demonstration in St. Petersburg.

Sasha3 asks me — I talked about this

on the program — but that crazy Beglov, I

see another message: Nikita Lyovkin writes to me,

'Alexei, publicly support the campaign for

'Anyone But Beglov.' I supported it,

I support it, and I will support it. Well,

listen, this crazy man is a crook

and a thief. This is a man who wrote his

dissertation — he's simply insane. I've

spoken about him quite a lot. You can see

right now on the Smart Voting website

that in St. Petersburg, of course, it's anyone but

Beglov. Beglov will try to make sure

the candidates there are worse, but of course I

supported this campaign. You can't not

support it when a crazy

person wants to run the city. Permission had been

granted for the May Day demonstration.

People got that permit, they weren't

hiding anything, they marched with their slogans, after which

some of these people came running after Beglov

gave the order to the police, and the police rushed in to

knock people down. The question is: is he completely sick

or what? Well yes, he disperses rallies — they're all sick

there in the Kremlin.

You disperse a demonstration on a day when it was authorized, violating

freedoms and so on. First you give

permission, and then on the holiday,

on the May Day holiday, you go and simply

beat up a huge number of people — they're

real perverts. So of course, yes,

it's anyone but Beglov, and in St. Petersburg people need to

take part in Smart Voting in order to

kick United Russia members out of the municipal councils

so as not to let Beglov

win in the first round.

Absolutely, yes. So, Olya 'American

Spy' asks: 'Alexei, what will we do

if your magnificent five are not allowed into the Moscow City Duma?

We will still

take part in the voting. The main task is

to make sure there are fewer of them there

United Russia members there, so that there are

genuinely great deputies, not

just people who aren’t from United Russia

but truly good deputies need to be elected

there—well, at the very least, these five people

for each one

of whom I’m ready to vouch for personally

each of whom I know to be

excellent and brave

won’t back down, know what to do, and have

a program, and so on. That’s Yashin, Zhdanov,

Sobol, Milov, and Jankauskas, running in different parts

of Moscow. Naturally, they’re all

really excellent candidates. But there will be

45 districts in total, and in each district we will

support a candidate. Some of them

won’t be amazing, but they still will be

not from United Russia, which is of course very important

Sobyanin is terribly afraid of this. I’ll explain in detail

at the end of the program. We have a very

funny story unfolding in

Yashin’s district—you’ll soon see what’s going on there, and with

Sobol too, you can see what’s happening. Well,

of course Sobyanin is scared, the Moscow

authorities are scared, and they do not want

to see debates like that on their turf. But we have to, folks,

support this magnificent

group of five together—not only to help them

but independent

candidates in general, even those we won’t

be urging people to vote for. Yes, we want there

to be independents, and we will open

a special thing—a signature collection center

so that you can come

to one specific place and leave

your signature for any independent candidate

running in your district. After all, many

people don’t live where they’re officially registered

Besides, say you live somewhere—I don’t know,

in Sokol (a district in Moscow)

and you don’t feel like going to look for Zhdanov’s campaign office

or meeting his signature gatherers, and so on

You want to support him—you’ll come to

a special place in Moscow. If you live in

Sokol, you can sign there for

this person; if you live in Tyoply Stan (a district in Moscow), then

you sign for another; in Konkovo (a district in Moscow), for a third

in Beskudnikovo (a district in Moscow), for a fourth

We will provide this infrastructure to many

I don’t know—almost, I can’t say almost

everyone, because many people calling themselves

independent candidates will

be complete nobodies or frauds

But if we can see, if it’s clear that

they really are independent, then we will provide

them with the opportunity to leave their signature sheets

so that a person can come and leave

a signature for them. In that sense, we will

help everyone. And now I want to address all

independent candidates who are going to run and

are thinking, my God, how am I supposed to

collect these signatures? Collecting them is very

hard—really very hard

it’s practically a prohibitive procedure, and

we won’t collect them for you, but we can offer some

help. So come to us and

say that you want your signatures to be collected

at your signature collection center as well

One of the most important, most

unjust, and most politically

significant criminal cases happening right now

is the case of Roman Udot (a Russian election monitor and activist)

It’s unbelievably outrageous, truly

So here’s what’s happening: there is an organization

called Golos (an independent Russian election-monitoring movement), which travels around the regions and

makes sure there is no election fraud. You understand

that the Kremlin

really does not like such an organization, and it constantly

tries to discredit them. They get harassed—even

more than we do, actually. They keep trying

all the time to catch them taking foreign

funding, or they barge into

their offices, search everything, confiscate things. These are people

who are under constant pressure, and so

this Roman Udot, as he travels

around the regions, is constantly followed by

these peculiar goblins who

just keep following you around with a camera

two or three of them, and they just

rattle off all kinds of stupid

questions like, why is your organization

funded by so-and-so? I’m used to that kind of

thing, but the day before yesterday I walked out of

my apartment building entrance and there were these two

goblins standing there, and as I was walking to

the office they started asking me,

why did you vacation somewhere for 7

million rubles, why did you spend all

or steal all the donations, why is your

organization funded, again, by whoever

and so on—and if you don’t answer something

you’ll look like an idiot, so you

end up engaging while trying to keep

your composure, because they’re getting right

in your face and filming. But if you

make a move or push them away

there’s immediately a scandal: you assaulted a

journalist. And these people kept following him

around like that for months

Well, at some point he simply couldn’t

take it anymore, because they were also going after his

mother all the time, and then this happened

This is the video you’re about to see—49

seconds

Well, it’s amateur footage

They took the phone and said something like

‘off you go.’ Did you hear what she said?

Sir, file a report—call the police

Call the police immediately. You said

this was amateur video, you said this was

amateur footage

I have it recorded that this was amateur

filming. And now just imagine

that some creeps showed up at a press conference

and started talking to me, provoking me

and you understand me—I’ll kill you, understand

me, for what you did to my...

I'll kill you someday, please.

First of all, someday I'll kill you.

That was a year and a half ago, I mean,

they pushed the man to the limit, following him around, and anyone

can snap and say, "I'll kill you," well, you know.

These Prigozhin people are following me around there.

You can also find videos online

and see him getting in my face, and I say,

"Don't come near me, I'll tear your head off."

That's also a death threat, and in fact you

will see something like, "I'll kill you out of grief for

what you did to my mother."

They were harassing his sick mother, and they

waited until the elections started now, and

because of the fact that he

to that, uh, how to put it politely, that

young lady from NTV (a Russian state-aligned TV channel),

said, "I'll kill you for what you did

to my mother," they actually opened

a criminal case against him for making

death threats, which of course should be impossible to do

because "I'll kill you" or "I'll kill you"

"I'll kill you right now," "I'll rip his head

off"—well, these are phrases that in

Russia are said fairly often.

Everyone understands that they're rhetorical, and they

still opened a criminal case.

They arrested him and kept him for several

days in a pretrial detention center, and now they've released him under

house arrest. But what kind of house arrest is that?

He isn't allowed to use the internet,

he isn't allowed to meet anyone, he isn't allowed to do anything,

he isn't allowed to go for walks, and so on

and so on. And in court, moreover,

there was a separate clown show: he was tried in

Khimki, and there, into the little room

where the judge sits, some of his

supporters and journalists came well before the hearing,

and all the seats had already been deliberately occupied.

They had specially gathered

plainclothes police officers so that

they could sit down and take all the seats in that

little room so that no one could get into

the hearing. So it was supposedly

open, but in reality it was closed.

Roman has now been placed under house

arrest. He is one of the leaders of Golos (an independent Russian election-monitoring movement), and

in effect they disrupted it. It's clear that before

the elections they won't release him. They disrupted the

part of the monitoring that he was supposed to

organize, and that's important for us because

our Smart Voting

will naturally work much more

effectively in the absence of

fraud. They will use fraud to

override that Smart Voting. That's why Golos and all the other

observer-related structures are so important,

and now look

at the vile, disgusting

methods they use: first they follow you around,

then, you see, they catch you in a store, shove a camera

in your face, and if you snap and grab it away from him,

they start trying to lock you up over something. I know

someone will write to me now,

"If you're involved in politics,

then you have to be

cold-blooded and not lose your temper, and not take anyone's

camera away." First of all, he isn't

in politics; he's simply monitoring

the elections. He's a private citizen. If

for months and

weeks they harass him and his relatives so much

that they follow him around and stick a camera in his face,

then he may snap. That's

completely normal. And legally speaking,

the law allows for the fact that

a person, in a state of intense

emotional agitation, may say to someone,

"I'll kill you." There is nothing

problematic about that; it is definitely not

grounds for opening a criminal

case.

So there you have it.

That's how they act, and we shouldn't demand

that people remain absolutely

calm. I'd like to see not just

Putin, but any of these crooks—

Chaika, Bastrykin, Volodin

or some other one of them—if someone

followed them around constantly and kept saying,

"Excuse me, could you tell us where your mother-in-law got

400 million rubles (about 4.4 million USD)?

What would happen to him and his mother-in-law

after two days of such entirely legitimate

questions? So I simply want to support

Roman. I just want to support him and once again draw everyone's

attention in the election-monitoring community

to the importance of this. You see, if

they got so scared of the September

elections, then that's exactly where we must

act, in order to make United Russia

pay for all of this. Well, I see

quite a lot of

people asking me—Roman Zubakov

for good reason—"Alexei, could you comment

on the cloud-seeding for May 9 (Victory Day)? Well, what can I

say? On cloud dispersal, how much

did they spend there—300 million

rubles (about 3.3 million USD), I think? There was still very heavy rain.

Moscow City Hall steals a lot,

it steals colossal amounts of money, and

it would be strange, agree, Roman,

to assume that, you know, they steal on paving tiles,

they steal on major renovations, they steal on

parking, but when it comes to cloud

dispersal they somehow wouldn't steal. Well,

of course they would. The cloud-dispersal thing

involves planes flying around and dumping cement

or a special compound—some kind of dust—over

these clouds so they release their rain

somewhere over Moscow Region. But obviously,

just like with curbstones, you can procure it at ten times

the price, and then do the job ten times

worse. Likewise, you can buy the mixture

more cheaply and of lower quality, or send out fewer planes,

or steal in some other way in the process—

there are plenty of opportunities

for that. So yes, they stole.

That’s why they became insanely rich.

So they put out a film called

**Help, I’m Insanely Rich**.

I hope you’ve already watched today’s

investigation. If you haven’t yet,

watch it, and you’ll help spread the word.

It’s quite an

interesting thing. People asked me—I saw

a lot of questions like, “So what, it kind of

felt small-scale? Usually you talk about how they’ve

stolen billions,

trillions even, and here we’re talking about

20 million rubles, 15 million rubles

(about $220,000 and $165,000), and somehow it seems—well, for you as a

Russian Orthodox Christian,

isn’t it strange? You yourself said, even in

Vladimir Solovyov’s program—let’s once again

listen. I’d like them to play Vladimir

Solovyov, who we had at the beginning,

where he explains that I’m a demon and recalls

my interview with writer Boris Akunin,

where I really did say that I am

Orthodox, that I cross myself when I pass churches,

and observe fasts, and everyone laughs at me

because of it.

Vladimir Solovyov saying once again that I’m a demon,

shouting at Navalny, “How can you

be Orthodox? Didn’t you say

that?”

How you cross yourself at every church, and I

read that you’re petty, just like

your servants and henchmen,

those punks you’ve brought out, someone smearing blood...

You even said it plainly about

Navalny just now.” Of course, well,

that is basically what my view sounds like.

And yes, lately you’ve been going after Alexei

too much—picking on some kind of

Russian Orthodox Church establishment

or government officials who are doing something there

that, in your view,

may not be very Orthodox at all.

Well, I can answer that

honestly. This is, if you like, my personal

position, including as an Orthodox Christian:

I don’t like them as an Orthodox Christian.

Because

listen—they’re crooks. They’re not

Orthodox at all. As an Orthodox Christian,

I’m not saying I’m a deeply churched person,

certainly not, but I do consider myself

Orthodox. At the same time, I fully understand

why some Orthodox believers may feel a bit uneasy about me.

I don’t impose it on anyone. I’m calm about it. I

work in an environment of atheists; in my family

most people are nonbelievers.

At the Anti-Corruption Foundation, more than 90

percent are probably atheists. I have absolutely

no problem with that. They have their own

set of ideas in their heads, and I have my own ideas in

mine. But

as an Orthodox Christian, I understand that

“do not steal” is actually

a commandment, and it disgusts me to see that

the main Orthodox figures in Russia right now

have become simply thieves,

crooks, and even murderers, plain and simple.

They’ve practically violated every

commandment on the list, and then they come out and talk about

what great Orthodox Christians they are,

and made this video. I really did

look into who belongs to this Russian

Athonite Society (a group connected with Mount Athos in Greece).

It literally includes the Chaikas

along with the Tsapki gang and Beglov—this

nightmare. And all the others—how can they

be in an Athonite society? How can they

represent Russia in these

relations with Athos? I can’t imagine it.

I mean, it’s obvious they’re trying to atone for their sins.

They know they are thieves and murderers, and they’re

trying to pray away their sins.

Well, okay, it’s always been like that. There have always been people

who

who committed outrages and then, at

some point in their lives, started

becoming very devout. But

I’d like them to at least

mix it up a little. I mean, can’t you

find some decent priests or something

to include there—normal human beings,

without Mercedeses, without all that

mad excess, and without yachts?

They do exist, don’t they? Or what—some kind of

Orthodox thinkers,

people who write on these topics,

Orthodox publicists—yes, they exist.

They’re decent people who

don’t live some kind of super-

monastic life, but the ordinary life

of normal people. Couldn’t you include them? No—

it absolutely has to be people with stars,

with billions, the biggest mega-ghouls. So

yes, absolutely: precisely as an Orthodox Christian,

I believe I have even more right

to speak out against these people.

Let’s watch one minute from my

film.

Well, let’s first watch one

minute from the film they made.

There’s a short description there, and then later

it goes on, but the essence is in this one minute. You know, my

wealth always seemed to me my curse.

All his meetings, all his dealings at that time

turned out to be poisoned by money. The constant

arguments among students about whether science

or religion should prevail wearied him. Holy

Scripture was then under attack and

criticism. These new Western trends at the end

of the nineteenth century

had a suffocating effect on Innokenty, a deeply

Orthodox man. There is practically no plot.

They show us

the trial of a Siberian patron, and then he

goes to Athos, and a few years later

he leaves with Father David to...

The climax of the film is the death of the main

character.

whose skull the monks place in a special

place. And now, listen for yourselves: the color

of the relics is said to indicate the action of grace.

The darker the bone, the closer the monk was to

God, according to tradition. Of the one and a half thousand

skulls collected in the ossuary of St.

Andrew’s Skete, only three stand out

especially: they have a honey color and give off a fragrance.

One of these three skulls belongs to the schema-monk

Innokenty.

It’s not that I’m laughing at this

cult of relics and everything else, but

I definitely belong to that part

of Orthodox Christians who, let’s say,

are rather wary of these

ritual things—like when they carry the fire around

Russia.

It looks strange to me when they

literally have a train carrying the fire, and

Orthodox believers come to bow before the fire.

Something is seriously off here. Or when

they bring out some saint’s finger or whatever—

and then there’s all this kissing of relics,

the belt and so on—it seems to me that this strongly

smacks of paganism. People bow

and worship material objects,

which, it seems to me, somewhat

contradicts the Christian idea. But I’m not

insisting on that. What I’m mainly

speaking out against is this: I don’t want

these films

—which are pretty low-quality—being made

however anyone likes, I don’t care; everyone

has the right to make their own films. My

videos also, as you understand,

are low-budget, slapped-together videos

with no great dramatic structure

or cinematic quality.

But still, I release them using

donations that are collected. I don’t

make them at the state’s expense.

I don’t screen them in France at the state’s expense. That’s

what I spoke out against. And separately, as an

Orthodox Christian, I’m genuinely infuriated by Minister

Medinsky, who at the same time buys

these penthouses of his for 300—

Aksyonov really bought one for 400 million

rubles, this one bought an apartment for 300

million rubles. Civil servants—

how does this happen? What is going on

in the security services? I’m genuinely curious—

how do they discuss it among themselves, how do they

explain to each other why Aksyonov can’t be jailed

for corruption, why Medinsky can’t be jailed

for corruption? Because a person somehow

gets money from who knows where and

buys a penthouse for 300 million

rubles—completely inexplicable. And I

don’t want them, on top of that, to use my money to

push their films.

Putin’s masseur, Goloshchapov, got rich on

Gazprom contracts, makes moralizing

films, and still he needs to steal this lousy 15

million from the budget and somehow

appropriate it for himself. That’s what I’m against.

That’s why I released the film—well, all of us together. I

repeat: if someone thinks that

as an Orthodox Christian I shouldn’t

be doing this, you’re mistaken. This is

my own little personal war, including as an

Orthodox Christian, against these

people. Alexei writes:

The State Duma rejected a bill on

liability for officials insulting

citizens. Yes, indeed,

the Communists introduced this, you could say,

a trolling bill under which

if officials insult citizens, they too

could be held accountable. Well,

the fate of this bill was obvious

from the start, because officials would never

agree to such a bill. So,

rappers and hip-hop artists were beaten up.

Some people probably like the sound of that, right?

It sounds almost comical: thugs beat up rappers at a

concert. But there’s nothing funny about it.

Let’s watch 43 seconds. On May 1 there was a

concert,

and there, again, for reasons that are unclear,

some group of young people did something,

threw something, broke something, after which

the police came and started beating random

people. Really, just beating them. Let’s watch 43 seconds.

Let’s watch.

I’m just blown away.

[music]

[music]

2

ah

[music]

[applause]

Why have I only now decided to talk about this?

Because something remarkable happened.

I mean, these

beatings—you can see that this again goes beyond

the bounds of what is even now considered

acceptable. Can the police now

just beat up innocent people for no reason?

Ladies and gentlemen, we saw this in St. Petersburg:

a political demonstration,

they ran in on an authorized rally

and beat everyone. But here what happened was

they were just grabbing random people—basically,

they say, even kids. This wasn’t even

a political rally at all.

Completely at random, they literally just

formed a circle and beat people with batons.

And realizing that things were starting to smell

like trouble—not even in the sense that

these police officers would be jailed; of course they

won’t be.

Because our state allows

the security forces to beat people for no reason.

But so that this wouldn’t turn into

a full-blown case, the police officially stated

that the cameras weren’t working that day, because

the people who were beaten said, “Well then, let’s

get the camera footage and some…”

dashcams

how, when, when it happens, how it happens

a political rally, and then the very next

day, every

police officer has gigabytes of video, and yet

look at how Volkov was jailed

for scratching a Toyota

Camry with a plastic bag — you can see it here at the 27-second mark, and

look, there they pushed a police officer

and inflicted this, and this as well

the wording — this is not a joke — was: a bruise to the dorsal

nail plate of the little finger. This was actually

written in the police report under which you

jailed Volkov, and before that jailed me

for 30 days, and they have evidence everywhere

everything is on camera here. So stop making things up (literally, "take your finger out of your mouth")

you know, of course we beat people up here

pretty much everyone, but all that footage on the internet

that was filmed and posted — we can't exactly

officially add those files to the case, and our

official recordings, well, on that day

we didn't make any. Can you imagine? What a

disgrace. It's genuinely an insult

to people. And, by the way, I was especially

upset by something else — I mean, there were

ten or eleven people who dared

to come forward at first and complain about all this

about everything, but not one of them later

filed a criminal complaint in order

to try to hold these

police officers accountable. It's pretty sad

guys, why are you such cowards? You were beaten, and

afterward you're still afraid. I understand all

your reasoning on this subject

but if you stay silent, then today

they beat you, tomorrow they'll beat others

the day after tomorrow, you again, and

the day after that, you again. The more

you act like cowards, the more you'll

get hit over the head with a baton. In short,

it's a simple thing. But Moscow's

police — what are the Moscow police and

the Moscow mayor's office, which simply, looking

everyone in the face — the beaten people, their

parents, all of us — say: there was no

filming that day. They're criminals

they committed an abuse-of-office crime, and

of course all of them should be — I don't know — not

just reprimanded, they simply need to be put

in prison, all of them. Speaking of registration,

let's talk about the big picture directly

I'm under some kind of pressure here

people are genuinely angrily writing in

the comments under almost every post, saying

Navalny, stop dodging

and tell us your position on

Zelensky. What is that supposed to mean? What

is my position on Zelensky? Actually,

something very interesting is happening in

Russia right now, where there are these

sort of pro-Putin people, and they are somehow

wary of Zelensky and don't

know what to say about him, because

apparently they can't praise him, despite the fact

that he's in favor of the Russian language and all

that sort of thing — because you can't praise the Ukrainian

president — and so they just

call him a clown, but really they're waiting

to see what kind of instructions

or talking points memo will come down

As for the anti-Putin crowd, they mostly

hate this Zelensky outright

and demand that everyone else hate

Zelensky along with them. So if you

don't condemn him strongly enough,

then there's something wrong with you, you're bad, and

maybe that means you're somehow with Putin

It's very curious how this works in

citizens

And it happens because, basically,

it's believed that Zelensky

isn't aggressive enough toward

the Russian authorities, which means he's somehow

pro-Kremlin. Besides that,

of course they bring up the usual list of things

— Kolomoisky, oligarchs, and so on. I'm not

so well versed in Ukrainian

politics that I can speak about it in detail

but in general it's clear: the idea is that he's some kind of

supposed puppet

with oligarchs standing behind him, and those oligarchs are some kind of

pro-Russian crooks, and this

Zelensky supposedly doesn't respect Maidan (the 2013–2014 Ukrainian protest movement) now

he appointed someone there, a person who

was in Yanukovych's administration, and under lustration (post-regime vetting laws)

was supposed to be barred from office — in short,

this is being called Russia's revenge in Ukraine, and

everyone tells me: so, Alexei, you need

to choose, with us or with them — say what

you think about Zelensky. So, I

have said what I think about Zelensky

Whose interests do I represent? I represent

the interests of Russian citizens. I have a very good

attitude toward Ukrainians; I have relatives

in Ukraine, but I represent the interests

of Russian citizens. It is in the interests of Russian

citizens

for Ukraine to be a rich, prosperous

state. That's it. As for what Zelensky does,

I suggest something simple:

judge him by his actions. Let's — well,

I look at him as a kind of abstract

Zelensky in a vacuum. If we set aside

all the background he had there

— Kolomoisky, all that stuff, the people around him —

and yes, I know that's not really how politicians

should be judged, no, you can't

consider them in a vacuum, but since I

don't know the situation very well, for now I'll

consider Zelensky in a vacuum

Well, his inauguration — his inaugural

speech, excuse me, was quite appealing

Let's listen to about 45 seconds of it

because you were not elected to come here, people

who will serve the people. I very much want

that in your offices

Nebula, my image is shown

Nebula

Meanness—who are they, according to the Word rating?

The president on an icon.

Not a tool, and not the president’s portrait either.

[applause]

to hang photos of their children there and

in front of every extra one

January 9—it was a great speech, excellently

written, of course. Zelensky’s opponents

say, well, they could have written anything for him,

they’ve got scripts from *Servant of the People* there

lying around in piles—just take one from there and everything will

sound nice. In practice, though, it’s not like that.

But it sounded good; it was a cool

piece of trolling of the Russian authorities, by the way.

There were lots of jokes and memes about

this whole idea—like, what kind of

photos, whose children?

What would our officials hang there, at the very

most famous picture—the one with Chaika (Yury Chaika, former Russian prosecutor general)?

Yeah, what would it look like if in Russia

officials started following the advice of

Zelensky? But I suggest, once again,

let’s judge him by

his actions. So far, it seems to me, there haven’t been any yet,

but we’ll see fairly soon. He’s in a

difficult situation, because one of his

main promises, one of the main ideas on which

he won, was the fight against

corruption.

Fighting corruption can’t simply be

abstract—I’m saying this as someone who

understands the issue. Fighting corruption

is always a fight against specific

corrupt individuals.

Will President Zelensky unleash that process?

That will mean

some real action on his part. Will he

actually continue these

lustration procedures? Will he continue

the process of cleansing

the de-oligarchization of the Ukrainian government and of

the Ukrainian elite?

This is very important, because Ukraine

is a wonderful country, but, I repeat,

it is more corrupt than Russia, despite

the staggering corruption here.

Oligarchs control most of

the economy there; there are some simply vile

clans. The entire Ukrainian elite

is just—not all of it, of course, but 95

percent of it—

a gathering of such corrupt scoundrels

that any Russian corrupt scoundrels

would just stand quietly off to the side smoking. Here, at least,

there are still at least some people who

somehow

can communicate and push back on

that level, and Putin, so to speak, and we

don’t even see them, and I don’t

interact or speak with them. But in

Ukraine, everything is even more intertwined.

Everyone is making some new

alliances every day, having completely cast aside any principles.

Politically, it’s very hard to deal with.

And on top of that, Ukraine has come

a long way, and impressively so, in terms of

democracy and changing power through elections, yes. But in

terms of economic growth, it is

worse than all the others—worse than any of the former Soviet republics.

I showed you those

charts. So now Zelensky has appeared.

He’s a libertarian—very interesting. Well,

we’ll see: if he carries out reforms, great.

If he doesn’t, that’s bad. But right now,

there’s no point jumping on him. I don’t have

a bad attitude toward him. I’m watching to see what

he does, and it would be really great

if he helps Ukraine.

Because strategically, in the interests of my

voters,

it is important that Ukraine become more prosperous.

By the way, there’s another post-Soviet

president

whom, for example, I follow much

more closely,

and I really like what he is doing.

That’s the president of Armenia—well, actually,

Nikol Pashinyan made a really great statement.

He announced that there is now a second stage of the Armenian

revolution. He blocked the courts and called on

people to block the courts. Why? Because

they are not letting him fight corruption.

Many people think that this is dangerous,

because, well, today you block the courts,

tomorrow you block something else,

and the day after tomorrow you turn into

a usurper of power. But still, he

said he would fight

corruption, and he is moving in that direction.

For example, he announced that he would remove from

office all judges

whose rulings have been overturned by

the European Court of Human Rights. I

can only applaud Pashinyan—he’s right, he

did the right thing, good for him. In Russia, we

will do the same thing, and more than that, we

will jail all the judges who handed down

those rulings that were found by the European Court

to violate the norms of justice. That’s how it should

be done. And in that sense, what is happening

in Armenia gives great hope.

What is happening in Ukraine is also great,

well, again, speaking just personally, yes.

I don’t know all the fine details, but it’s

just a kind of suspended situation that

could move in a very good direction. I

really hope that’s where it goes. But it may

also go nowhere, and then it will be the same as

what Ukraine has had for the past twenty years.

It will stay that way. I hope things turn out well.

We had our fun talking about that; now let’s

talk about Russians, because Russians do not

surrender, as Maria Butina told us,

recording her video address from an

American prison. Let’s immediately

watch it—five seconds, and I’ll remind you

All right, yes, yes, yes—let’s show the video. Let me remind you

that Maria Butina was arrested.

by Americans who changed

She wasn’t charged with espionage at all; rather, they accused her of the fact that

she had engaged, without the proper notifications,

as a foreign citizen, in carrying out

various kinds of political activity, and therefore

she violated a whole series of laws there.

A lot of correspondence came to light there,

quite, quite sad, actually.

It turned out that even in her email there

it was published that in fact she

was interconnected with Russian

officials, with that former senator Torshin

who oversaw Butina.

She was this kind of gun enthusiast, and

so when she was ingratiating herself into the circles

of Republicans who are also obsessed with

guns—by the way, in that respect I

was quite genuinely a member of that

right-to-bear-arms community, which she

headed. I also, as you know,

support making it easier in Russia to own

civilian short-barreled firearms

but what she was doing looked

sad. In her letters, sadly,

she wrote that she was being made to sleep with

some old Republicans in order

to pry some kind of

information out of them. All of this came out, and she was jailed.

And then she made this kind of video

address from an American prison, something like:

“It feels as though I’ve returned again and ended up

in the present day; now we have the internet,

and I can record a video message.

First of all, with words of gratitude

to everyone who has supported me over

these long 10 months and followed my

situation. I would also like to appeal to

you for support, and for financial

support.

And as you know, my lawyers have filed

an appeal, and we intend to fight against

the injustice that is happening to

me now, and to all Russian

citizens, because I see this more and more as

a reflection of today’s reality.

So if you have the opportunity

to donate any amount of money, any

sum

plays a big role, so please

follow the link to my website and

donate whatever you can. Thank you,

guys, stay strong. Russians don’t—

Stay strong, Russians never surrender.” And she should have added

here, something like, “Russians don’t abandon their own,”

because, well, what is happening

to her is one

She is, after all, a Russian citizen.

She was involved in some strange things,

things that turned out sadly for her there.

She was engaged in—

I don’t think she was some kind of cloud-seeding specialist over

Moscow; yes, maybe an intelligence operative, but she worked with some

people, and now naturally the task

of the state is to bring her home. But she is on

the internet asking for money. Go

right now, for example, to Twitter and

type in—find the account of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian

Federation, and you’ll see her

photo as the profile picture. Zakharova and all the others

keep endlessly shouting, “Butina, Butina, freedom

for Butina,” so then give her a lawyer.

Why should she have to beg for money online?

You’ve got a whole bunch of

freeloaders sitting around at the embassy, and you’ve put her in some

very strange situation. So she

says she is short either 30 or 40

million rubles (roughly $330,000–$440,000) supposedly,

that some lawyers suddenly provided services

worth $600,000. There are no such

lawyers—there simply are no lawyers who

in America, on credit,

could, for a Russian citizen,

rack up $600,000 in services, and she

ends up owing 40 million rubles, and online

they’re collecting it kopeck by kopeck, while the authorities say

let’s help Maria Butina. If

Maria Butina was, for the sake of some

state interests or something like that,

or gathering information, involved in the fact that you had her

sleep with some

elderly Republicans, then give her

lawyers. Otherwise you are disgracing her and the whole

country, and in general this is really

a super humiliating situation. That senator,

Torshin, was running around hugging

and kissing people—well, if he’s a senator, then yes, give her the money.

Don’t mess around with nonsense, really.

Why is it that a person whom

the American state is prosecuting and

accusing of having worked for the

Russian state

—we can sort out later whether what she did was right

or wrong.

Any intelligence operatives can make

mistakes; anything could have

happened there. But somehow it seems to me this is already

a matter of the fact that she should not be sitting in

an American prison,

appealing to the Russian people and asking

them for money at a time when

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has her

photo on its Twitter profile picture.

Take Medinsky’s (former Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky) apartment away

and pay for Butina, and then

cover the legal expenses. Then spend less,

allocate less, steal less

on cloud dispersal over Moscow (a costly weather-control practice used before public events),

cut it by ten percent

and pay for Butina’s lawyers. But she—

her fate has turned out difficult, that’s how it is.

Let’s get her out, if you’re really declaring all this so loudly,

then get her out.

Honestly, this whole situation just

infuriated me. And all of it is wrapped up in these slogans like

“Russians never surrender,” “Russians don’t abandon their own,”

and meanwhile she’s saying she has no way

to pay for a lawyer. Seriously.

It would be an absolute disgrace for the country.

And if you’re not defending her, then just say so—we don’t know.

We know some woman named Busina, and we’re not going to put up any avatars for her.

We’re not going to hang anything up there—she got herself into this.

She got herself into this situation, so let her deal with the consequences.

If the state itself is connected to them, then...

help them.

Let the lawyers who work for the Russian

embassy go and represent her for free.

I think that would be

quite logical. The funniest story

that emerged literally today

I want to tell you about at the very, very

end of the program.

It has to do with Ilya Yashin, who is running for

the Moscow City Duma. He heads

the municipal council in the Krasnoselsky District,

in his own neighborhood.

He’s running in the election, and since he has managed

his municipality quite successfully

—well, despite United Russia having the majority there—

the respected opposition, so to speak, isn’t treated like

just some opposition figure: he fights corruption,

gave up the official car,

set up social assistance measures,

controls procurement, and so on.

In other words, he showed the most terrible thing

the authorities fear most of all: he showed

that when the opposition comes to power,

everything actually gets better.

Things really did improve; the municipality started working properly.

Things in the Krasnoselsky District are much better

than they were under Luzhkov (former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov),

under Sobyanin, under Putin—under all the rest of them.

That’s why they got scared.

So they put up against him this kind of

vice-rector from the Higher School of Economics,

because this is the city center, and they need

someone whom it wouldn’t be too convenient

to call a crook and a thief.

So they put forward this lady, but apparently the lady wasn’t

doing very well against Yashin, and now

it seems they’re actively conducting

opinion polls there,

asking people who they like more:

Yashin or Vladimir Mashkov. In fact,

Moscow City Hall got so

terrified that it has now wheeled out

Vladimir Mashkov, the famous actor,

a famous, talented, wonderful

actor—and unfortunately an even more

talented bootlicker.

Mashkov has played many good roles, but his

most striking performances, of course, are these videos where he appears

with eyes literally welling up with tears,

begging everyone to support United Russia.

The way he pleads there—come on,

let’s watch it and enjoy it once again. I adore

these videos. They have lots of views on YouTube,

and half of those views

are probably mine, because I just watched

them and laughed and cried and thought

at the same time: how low do you have to sink,

how much do you have to humiliate yourself to perform like

Mashkov does? And if this happens, then of course

it will effectively become a federal campaign.

The whole country will be watching how they dragged out

one of the most famous people in the country

just so Yashin, the head of

the Krasnoselsky District, could be taken down there.

So let’s take a look at Mashkov

as of 2011: “Russia has given me everything.

I owe my country, and I came here

to repay that debt. We have, we have

a great history and a great culture, and we

have a leader. Our goal is a great United

Russia—forward!”

The guy was living mostly in Miami at the time.

I don’t know how he lives now; I don’t really

follow him. He flew in from Miami so that

he could say, “We have a great goal, Mr. President—

forward!” They say that after that video,

when everyone laughed at him

and said what they thought, he spent a long time

agonizing over it. But he got over it and

came back.

And he came back to play his finest role: the super-

mega-bootlicker. Let’s look at Mashkov

as of

2018: “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich,

we, your trusted representatives, and I first of all

on behalf of our culture and arts group,

want to congratulate everyone on the start of

our joint work and wish you,

Vladimirovich, and all of us—well then,

upward movement toward victory.” He’s practically

pressed himself to the boot—stuck to it so hard

you’d have to peel him off afterward.

It’s simply absolutely astonishing.

But take note: he really is

probably, out of that whole group of sycophants,

the most famous guy—a famous

actor, a good actor. It’s good that he’s

a good actor; it’s bad that he’s such

a bad person. By the way, he’s done this before.

He’s engaged in this kind of

service work for the authorities. In

2011, I don’t know how much

they paid him, or whether he did it

simply out of a love of bootlicking, but he

headed the United Russia list for the Kemerovo regional legislature

(in Kemerovo, a region in Siberia). Naturally,

he got elected, but of course he didn’t actually become a deputy.

He stepped aside

so that some other crook

could take his seat.

So that’s what they bring him in for—this kind of

service to the authorities in places where they

have a problem. But he really is one of

the most famous, and United Russia has pulled out

its most valuable asset against Yashin, and

it will be

hilarious. Because the third—and really the funniest—

video about Mashkov, which

it seems to me, judging by everything

that’s been happening to him, shows that he’s genuinely losing it,

is this third one: a clip from an interview

he gave not long ago, when he was asked...

made

the artistic director of the theater and Oleg

Tabakov's studio theater. He gave an interview. They added

very funny and dramatic

this dramatic kind of music

as the soundtrack. Let's watch. I just

look at it and think, this is so cool,

really cool. The debates between

Yashin and Mashkov will look great. So, NLP and

psychotechniques from Vladimir Mashkov.

He'll have to become a fair father figure

which, well, hardly

of course.

It's not simple, and here we need to change

change what exactly? Tolerance is

a great quality, but is tolerance the main thing

for theater? No, probably not, no.

An actor is obliged to be successful. It's an

amazing profession that obliges

you to move toward success with the audience. They

have to love you. Teaching, Volodya,

deliberately, with the palm—psycho

techniques, NLP—they should know how

to stop bleeding in a person. They should

know about rituals,

with Surkov. They should know military

rituals. They don't know what a circle is

if you haven't

not come face to face

with an unwillingness to confront yourself and look at yourself

.

Why should I be looking at you?

Absolutely against it.

Just imagine it—your jaw will drop.

Psychotechniques, NLP—they should know

military rituals

at night. Vladimir Mashkov, who will definitely

watch this broadcast: you don't need to go

to any election. So please

understand that in the movies you're so brave,

such a cool guy in a burning airplane,

saving someone, or some brigade commander,

or a tough battalion commander (a reference to the Russian phrase/title "Batya, Kombat"),

or a superhero. You yourself know

that in real life things are a little

different with you, and that you're all somehow closer to

the boss's boot. Don't—just don't go

to the election. Nothing good will come

of it for you. I strongly doubt that

you or your bosses will manage

to deceive the residents of Moscow, to muddle

their heads so much that they will vote for

United Russia in your person.

Thank you very much to everyone who watched my

broadcast. See you next Thursday.

Bye.

[music]