Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #003, 04.05

[music]

It’s 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, which means we’re live on the channel

Navalny Live with the program *Pirates*

of the Caribbean, and here in the studio with you is me,

Captain Jack Sparrow. I can just

imagine you laughing right now, looking

at me. In exactly the same way, everyone sitting in

this studio right now is laughing at me. But

actually, there was no other way

because I have severe

light sensitivity—my eye can’t tolerate light,

and there are studio lights here that are harmful to me.

There was another option: for me to sit in front of you

wearing dark glasses like these. We thought that

would look even more ridiculous, so we spent a long time looking for

and eventually bought this eye patch.

We just googled “people with eye patches”

and saw lots of different, uh, stylish

wonderful people who wear these

patches. I thought maybe it might even

be kind of cool to join them, to join

this wonderful cohort, uh.

And I just feel that, naturally,

the most popular question or request in

our broadcast will be: “Come on, lift the patch

and show us what happened to your eye.” And

since we’re not exactly real

television, we can actually show it,

even what the eye looks like today. We won’t

keep it on screen for long because there may be

underage children watching with us.

My doctor very kindly took a photo

and showed it to me on the phone.

I want to start by saying a big

thank you to everyone who wrote me all kinds of

words of support, offered help,

recommended various doctors, and, uh,

special thanks, by the way,

to all the one-eyed people. It turns out there are quite

a lot of people I know who live perfectly

wonderful lives with one eye,

and you can’t even tell. From them

I also got a bunch of encouraging messages

like, “Dude, here’s our one-eye community,”

“happy to welcome you,” and that there’s

nothing so terrible about it. Still, I

really hope that now, especially

since I’ve been issued a foreign passport,

I’ll be able to travel abroad, and I still hope that

my eyesight will recover. But even without

leaving, I have very

excellent doctors treating me here, and

well, there is hope that my vision

will recover. Right now, in my right

eye, I have 15% vision left, but

nevertheless, we’re treating it very, very intensively.

To wrap up the medical part, uh,

just a funny little fact about

the treatment: I never imagined, you know,

what they do—they take blood from a vein,

dilute it with some medicine, and then

that blood from the vein

is injected into the eye with syringes. It’s very

intense—I nearly died of horror when

they told me they were going to do

something like that. But the doctors are absolutely

wonderful, very

kind and excellent. They perform this procedure

for me almost painlessly. And

in general, everyone is very good. Many

thanks to everyone who is treating me and

encouraging me in every way. There are a lot of questions about the investigation,

and I had planned to start the broadcast by

denouncing the police,

the Investigative Committee (Russia’s main federal investigative body), and everyone else

because they weren’t conducting any

investigation at all.

But literally just before we went on air,

news came out that a criminal case

had been opened over the attack. True,

it was opened under the article for battery, which is a very

minor charge. Of course, that doesn’t satisfy us.

A criminal case has been opened, but here

this was clearly hooliganism, a much more

serious charge, with prior conspiracy,

a political motive, a group of perpetrators, and all

the other qualifying elements are

present here.

We hope that

the charge will be reclassified as a more

serious one after we submit

various additional medical documents.

I have a huge number of them.

But what was announced today, the fact that

a criminal case had been opened and all sorts of

news stories started coming out, looks a little

strange, especially in the context of the fact that

it was stated that the case had actually been opened back on April 29.

We know for certain that as recently as

yesterday the case was still sitting with the local police officer

and that officer wasn’t doing anything. You almost

certainly know that

all the participants in the attack have been identified; everything about

them is well known, right down to their addresses.

But absolutely nothing is happening: no one is

arresting them, there are no searches,

no detentions, and of course this can

only be interpreted as meaning that

they’re helping them avoid responsibility.

Because, obviously, uh, they can

do what’s called destroy the traces

of the crime—correspondence,

phones, and everything else. All these things

are important for the investigation, important for

proving conspiracy and intent.

From my point of view, the investigators are simply

helping them. But overall, I want to

tell you that I’m most

pessimistic about this

investigation simply based on

previous experience. You remember that exactly

a year ago there was an attack on the Anti-Corruption Foundation

in Anapa, at the airport in the city of

Anapa. Almost the entire foundation had gone

on a hiking trip. It was an entirely non-political

event; many people went with their children and

wives, and right there at the airport a group of

forty people attacked us. All of this

It was all filmed on camera and posted online there.

Several people suffered serious

beatings, and a year has already passed. I was

even told a criminal case had been opened. Although here

this is clearly group hooliganism

— a serious socially dangerous act — it is

plain as day, but, uh, nothing happened.

So I have serious doubts that

this will end in nothing as well.

For one simple reason. We understand that

this is not the work of some

lone individuals, or simply the actions of

a bunch of local crazies. Local crazies cannot

know which

trains I’m arriving on, right down to the compartment

and carriage. They cannot know the details of my

air travel, where I’m

departing from and arriving at, uh,

and all the other information they always have

in any city. That information, of course, can only

be supplied by the special services.

So to conduct a proper

investigation would mean that someone from

this group would, naturally, say that

we knew everything because some

Sergei

Petrovich comes to us — he’s our handler from the FSB (Russia’s security service) — and he gives

us a piece of paper and says something like,

“Guys, uh, we’ve decided to help your cause a little.”

And then someone would also say, yes,

we went to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), and you

can see there are lots of

photos of the attackers hanging out

in the State Duma with

high-ranking United Russia officials, and

it would come out, and they would tell investigators,

well, we go to the State Duma, and

some vice speaker from

United Russia, Pyotr Tolstoy, tells us, “Well done,”

guys, and United Russia really appreciates your

passionate contribution to

the way you fight the ‘fifth column.’

That’s how all this is done. First of all, these people are

supplied with оперативная information

second, they are given, uh, political

support; and third, they are guaranteed

immunity from criminal

prosecution. And so far, in every case — every

case there has been, from highly

political ones like ours to less

political ones involving Varlamov — what just

happened with the attack on him in

Stavropol — there has been no criminal

prosecution. Take that same

Varlamov.

He was doused with brilliant green antiseptic dye twice,

his equipment was smashed, and he was knocked down too.

This happened at the airport. So what?

A fine of 500 rubles (about $8 at the time). So a person goes out to a

rally with a little sign, stands there, and gets

fined 10,000 rubles (about $170), while here

there is an obvious hooligan attack

and the fine is 500 rubles. So of course this

guarantee of safety, this guarantee of

immunity from criminal prosecution, is

the main thing with which the Kremlin, in effect,

pays off all these lowlifes.

And honestly, I don’t believe — though I’d be glad

to be wrong — that there will be any

investigation here.

So, I’m being told that we’re taking

tweets. If you want to write something

so that it appears on the screen, please write

with the hashtag #Navalny2018

and it will appear on the screen.

I’m also being very sternly reminded — they’re looking at me

very strictly and telling me that I absolutely

must keep saying: subscribe

to our channel, hit like.

Subscribe to our channel. By the way,

this is outrageous: right now we have

216,000 subscribers. That’s a lot — thank you

very much to everyone who subscribed. But the previous

broadcast,

which was, of course,

made livelier

by the amusing color of my face, was watched by

almost one and a half million people. If you guys had all

clicked the

subscribe button, we’d already have 1.5

million subscribers by now, and we’d be very

happy. So please,

subscribe to our channel.

Naturally, the topic I received

the most questions about was access

to the election. So, a hearing was held

in the appellate court in the Kirovles case

and the Kirovles verdict has entered into

legal force. Because of this, all

the media wrote: well, now politician

Navalny has no right to take part in

the election. But my friends, honestly,

I’m even surprised that so many people

are asking me about this, because how is this

any different from my situation at the moment

I announced that I would take part in

the election? In no way. At that time there was also

a verdict that had entered into legal force.

That verdict was overturned by the European

Court, and this verdict will also be overturned

by the European Court. The case is fabricated — that

is all obvious. There’s no need to pay attention

to all this legal nonsense. So here’s

some — I even wrote it down — some

guy from the CEC (Central Election Commission) named Bulaev also gave

a comment saying that, well, Navalny is now

now barred, barred

from taking part in the election, and everyone keeps

repeating it: “My God, what do we do now?

What’s the strategy now? Alexei, you can’t

take part in the election.”

Who is this Bulaev, and who is the CEC, guys?

Don’t look at the paperwork; look at the substance.

So, we have one document

that matters, one document we pay attention to.

It is called the Constitution of the Russian

Federation. It has now appeared on the screen,

an excerpt from the relevant article, and there

absolutely clearly

it is stated unambiguously that it is prohibited

to participate only for those who are in

places of detention, while those who

are live on the TV channel

the YouTube channel Navalny Live

are allowed to take part in elections. This is

the main legal point that concerns us

everything else concerns us

purely politically. We are asking ourselves

the question: do all those people have the right

who want a fight against corruption in

Russia to obtain their own political

representation? Do they have the right

to run, to nominate their own candidate for

elections? Of course they do. I claim to be

such a candidate. Do all

those citizens of Russia who want change

have the right to nominate their own candidate? They probably do

have that right, and they will not

give up that right. If there are people in Russia who

do not agree that 85 percent

of the national wealth belongs

to less than 1 percent of the population—such

people are the majority. They want their own

candidate. I want to be that candidate. I

will be that candidate. Therefore I have

the right to take part in elections. All of us

together have the right to take part in elections

and we will take part in them. And there is no need

to look at all this legal

pettifogging. If we complied with

all those idiotic laws that United Russia

has passed, you and I would not have been able

to do anything at all. What rallies?

It would be impossible to breathe. Uh, there are many of us

of us—quite possibly a majority. You and I

in any case are far more numerous than

the real political activist base that

United Russia has, for example

Take note: in the description of this video

there is a link to the VKontakte (Russian social network) group

for our anti-corruption rally on June 12

right now

141 cities have said they will

organize such rallies. Let

United Russia show us the same

Let any other political force

show us real, actual people

who in 141 cities of the Russian

Federation said that they would go

on June 12 or on any other day to

anti-corruption rallies, even if they

try to ban them illegally. But we exist

and there are far more of us than all of them, yes

Of course, there is a large mass

of people who just go along by inertia, who

watch television and believe

what it tells them. But change is made by

politically active people, and there are, among us

you and me, far more politically active people

than United Russia or any other

For them, any rally is simply an effort to

round up state employees. Just look at what

disgusting things are happening now—they are even

at

the Immortal Regiment (a commemorative march honoring relatives who fought in World War II), herding people there, herding

students. It's simply a disgrace

a monstrous disgrace. This wonderful

magnificent event, which was created by

Tomsk television channel TV2—they, well,

stole it from them, vulgarized it, turned it

into an administrative resource. They are forcing

students now to go there compulsorily

and walk around with placards. Although

there is not the slightest need for that—hundreds of thousands

of people in Russia gladly take part

in the Immortal Regiment, but still they

can only, through their administrative

resources, achieve whatever

target figures they have. But we do not

need that. We exist, we are real, truly

real people who care about real

issues, including questions about

corruption, questions of poverty, questions of

why in Russia in 2017, thirty

percent of people—well, 25 percent of people—do not have

hot water at home; it is simply

absent. And 19 percent of people in Russia

do not have sewage systems at home, do you understand? Even though we are

the world's leading sellers of oil and gas

and

[music]

by raising these issues, we will receive

the support of the majority in these elections, and

we will definitely take part in them, and we will

definitely win them. So, to conclude

the topic of nomination, no one can

forbid us anything. If there is something we do not

take part in, it will only be because

we ourselves think, well, how can we

go, when some guy in

United Russia introduced some 27th amendment, and apparently

that amendment is interpreted in such a way that

we are not allowed to run? If we ourselves

convince ourselves of such nonsense, then

of course they can stop us. But if we remember

our basic rights, then we will take part in

everything. And one important thing on

this subject, the last thing I wanted to say

If we agree to this, they will never

allow any candidate onto the ballot

It's not about me; it's about any candidate

Any candidate could appear tomorrow, and not just

for president—someone for the State Duma

a decent deputy could win in a

single-member district, someone could

properly create a party—but by exactly

this same scheme they will deprive him of his electoral

rights, and by this very scheme they will simply

remove absolutely anyone from political competition

if we agree to it, then

you and I will never obtain political

representation. So, my screen just

went dark—sorry, I am now going to

type here while keeping one eye on this

all right, I'm looking at the question

the local police officer came to me and said that

If you go to the rally on the 12th, you’ll get 15 days.

15 days, no questions asked — that’s what they’re writing, apparently.

So Ivan just comes to me and says,

the local police officer — just tell him clearly that

“Officer, if you come to me one more time,”

“pulling this kind of nonsense, you’ll be kicked out of the police, not me.”

“I may get 15 days, but you’ll be thrown out of”

“the police, because you have no right”

“to say things like that.” And file a complaint boldly.

As soon as you tell him, “Man, I’m going to”

“record you,” or even without

a recorder, “I’ll just call 02 (the Russian police emergency number) and report”

“that you’re, uh, trying to”

“intimidate me here” — the local officer will turn pale

and run off. Don’t let yourself be intimidated, especially

by such ridiculous methods as these

that they, uh,

use. Ekaterina Gromova writes: “We should”

“go out on June 12 wearing the same bandages.” Well, I

don’t think so. It would probably be funny, but we

already have a lot — too many memes. I mean,

we’ve already had ducks, green-painted faces, and

I don’t know, Dimon’s sneakers (a reference to Dmitry Medvedev), and then also

some kind of one-eyed people — come on, this is

some kind of surrealism. I think

it may not be such a good idea.

Actually, that bandage may

look kind of cool, but it’s fairly

uncomfortable. And of course, I mean, I don’t

walk around the street wearing a bandage like that, I can

tell you that for sure — I just wear sunglasses.

You know, very often when you’re somewhere

inside a building, yes, there’s always

some guy walking around in sunglasses

inside the building, even if it’s dim,

and you think, “What the hell is this guy doing”

“in sunglasses?” Right now I’m basically playing the role

of exactly that kind of person who walks around

in those glasses, and I keep thinking I was wrong

to silently mock people like that before.

Maybe they also just had

eye problems. Alexei, could you comment on

what’s going on at Singer, why everyone’s in an uproar, why they’re shouting

“we won’t let him out,” writes Tsaryov from the Interior Ministry. Well,

something strange really did happen.

They gave me my international passport

this morning.

Then later in the day,

the head of my criminal-executive

inspection office called — that’s the agency

where I go twice a month to check in,

which is supposed to monitor me, even though I didn’t commit a crime,

and they lecture me about how I

am supposed to, well, get on

the path of reform. She called him

and said that Navalny shouldn’t even

think about going abroad — “we won’t let him out.” I

think this is just

some kind of low-level incident, and I

don’t owe anything to any inspection office. There is

no ban on my leaving the country, and

if I have a passport, I’m sure

they’ll let me out. Well, at least they’ll definitely let me go

to the hospital.

Alexei, are you going to celebrate

1 million subscribers in some way?

We’ll hit 1 million subscribers on

our other channel, the main channel, I

hope, pretty soon — if you go there

right now and subscribe. But I’m sure

we’ll reach a million. Right now we’ve got

a big team here, we’ve worked hard,

and we really do want to celebrate.

We will celebrate, but I think — well, I’ll

be celebrating the way I spend most of my

days right now: sitting in a dark

room and staring at the wall with one eye,

and sometimes at the computer,

though rarely, because often I’m not allowed to. But

of course we’ll celebrate — it’s a big

deal. I want to say once again that we, uh,

really strongly

support all YouTube channels. We

like running these YouTube channels, and

this one, the live broadcasts, our main

channel — and we strongly urge everyone

to develop these channels. This is a real

breach we can punch through in

television.

Another topic I wanted to discuss

is something that, frankly, really infuriated me.

Even despite all these

medical issues of mine — yes, I now spend most

of the day either sitting in a dark room or

going to doctors — it’s this tax on the self-employed.

A member of the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament), and not just

an ordinary member of the Federation Council, but

the chair of the committee on social

policy, proposed banning foreign travel for

the self-employed. Who are the self-employed? They are

about

20 million people who, well, aren’t officially

registered but do work somewhere. These are

tutors, taxi drivers, teachers,

again, tutors — doctors

who see patients privately, builders,

huge numbers of freelancers — well, 20 million

people. I see someone raising

their hand. By the way, the person who just raised

their hand, uh, said that you’re evading

tax payments. I won’t say your

last name live on air, but the point is

that there are 20 million people like that. If there were

100,000, 200,000, or a million of them,

then the state could probably

make claims against them and say, “Guys,

you’re not paying taxes.” But if there are 20 million

of them, and we have an officially employed population of

roughly a comparable size, then

sorry, your state is broken. This

isn’t a problem with the self-employed; it’s a problem

with the state’s tax system. It’s

a problem with the economy as a whole. If 20

million people in our country work as

self-employed and can’t get officially registered, that means

they can’t find normal jobs, or

they can’t find jobs where they would be

officially employed and have taxes paid for them, because

that payroll taxes here are insane, and

of course this tax—no, not a tax, this

complaint against the self-employed sounds

disgusting. It seems they already walked it back

and are now saying they were misunderstood,

but even so, from the Finance Ministry and

from other officials, we keep seeing

this same theme over and over: let’s somehow

tax the self-employed, or do something

to them. Well, sure, it would be nice

if they paid some taxes,

but right now, you understand, it just looks

absurd. It looks as if our

state, our officials, are frantically

trying to find some kind of

working people—first they grabbed truck drivers

and started squeezing them, and now these

poor self-employed people—uh, freelancers,

tutors, and doctors in private

practice—and are trying to squeeze

some money out of them somehow, to crack down on them. These

people are trying—they’re just surviving.

In reality, they earn next to nothing.

I mean, how much does a teacher earn

who tutors on the side—a typical

self-employed person? He’s lucky if he

manages to make another 15,000 rubles a

month (about $160). Are we really supposed to chase after this

teacher? Are we supposed to make sure

that after saving up for a year for a trip to

Turkey, we won’t let him go to Turkey

because he’s such a terrible villain? Against

that same backdrop,

Gazprom and Rosneft aren’t paying dividends,

for example. Just the other day it was

announced again that Gazprom once more would not pay

dividends, and nobody touches it. But sure,

let’s go after these taxi drivers,

these teachers, and these freelancers.

It’s just disgusting stupidity. In our

platform, by the way, on this issue there is

what I believe is a very sound

solution: they should be exempted

from taxes altogether. Right now we need to officially

recognize that this is, in fact, small

business. This is what small business looks like in Russia:

a person has no money and nowhere

to earn any, so he gets in his car and starts driving for fares—he’s

a small businessman. Same with a tutor—

that’s small business. They should be

exempt from taxes altogether because they

can’t really pay anything. The actual revenue

from them is tiny, minuscule,

while the administrative costs of these taxes are enormous

and complicated. So they need to be left

alone. Tell them: guys, if you want, some

minimal amount, some kind of license fee, you can

pay—something absolutely tiny. But otherwise,

we love you and would practically kiss you

just because you work, because you at least

earn something for yourselves and your families.

They need to be left alone, and we need to stop meddling with

the self-employed. Everything should be done

to bring them out of the shadows, to remove these

huge payroll taxes, and not try

to squeeze anything out of them. It’s impossible, but

we certainly can make poor people even poorer.

What we do not have is any way to collect much from them.

And against this whole backdrop,

it was announced that we forgave Kyrgyzstan’s debt

of several hundred million dollars.

Wonderful—so we feel sorry for Kyrgyz people.

Fine, let’s feel sorry for Kyrgyzstan and say:

all right, it’s hard for you to pay your external

debt, so let’s forgive these millions.

But for our own ordinary people, those same

self-employed people who are buried

in loans—someone bought himself

a washing machine on credit and can’t

pay for it, so he takes a fourth

job, becomes self-employed, and nobody

forgives that loan for him, nobody

feels sorry for him, nobody cares about him. If he

were to go to the bank and say, guys,

please forgive part of my loan,

they’d just slam the door on him and call

a bailiff to start taking

things out of his home. That’s how it turns out

we treat our own citizens, while for someone

else we forgive everything. This is absolutely

unacceptable. My clear position is that

we need to stop endlessly

forgiving these debts if we cannot

forgive anything to our own

citizens.

Now, you’ve probably heard that at

Peresvet Bank, 5 billion rubles disappeared

(about $53 million), and nobody says much—well, it disappeared, and again nobody

really understands what happened there.

5 billion rubles vanished, but nevertheless

the Central Bank—the blindfold is finally

coming off today—

nevertheless, the Bank of Russia is carrying out the rescue

of Peresvet Bank and allocated 100

billion rubles for it. Great. So basically,

there was a hole there,

someone looted it, and with state

money all of this is being covered up in order

to effectively pay off somebody’s debts. But

again, just go outside,

walk up to every second person on the street,

ask him: man, do you

have any debts? He’ll say: yes, yes,

of course I do. Yesterday I took out another

loan to pay off the previous one. Shall we

forgive his too? Nobody does that.

So why should we be forgiving all of this

to Peresvet Bank or to some

Kyrgyz government?

So, to sum up—since I’ve gone on so long about

these self-employed people—they need to be left

alone. Number one, they need to be given

the opportunity to work legally, and so that

they either pay no taxes or pay

minimal taxes. We need to stop

looking for money for the state in this

sphere, from these unfortunate people. The money

our state can get from

from Rosneft and Gazprom, from more proper

management of the nation’s wealth

resources, raw materials, metals — that’s where

a lot of money can be saved on government procurement

— trillions are being stolen there, while

the self-employed are being squeezed out as if we can’t do anything else

Albert Serabyan: Alexei, don’t worry

about your eye — I’ve been living with one eye for

19 years now. And now you and I are alike not

only in our political views, well

that sounds nice, very encouraging. I still

hope that somehow my eye will recover, but

in any case, thank you very much. No, well,

what will be, will be. No one’s to blame, not to blame. I, I

can see a little. That is, with this eye I can see

some silhouettes of people, someone walking around

— there’s still some kind of life there, but I

am still keeping a positive attitude

The doctors tell me that it’s important to maintain

a positive attitude. I think that somehow we’ll

try

to get all this under control

Valery Popov rightly writes: 20

million self-employed people, and 70 percent

of officially employed workers receive part of their pay off the books

salary. That’s absolutely right. There are 45 million

officially employed people, and indeed, of

them, probably 70 percent — well, maybe

a little less — also receive off-the-books

pay. So you can’t say

to citizens, you can’t say to businesses,

“Guys, you’re doing something wrong,”

because it’s the state that has

organized things incorrectly. If millions,

tens of millions of people, and practically

all business in the country operates in the shadows,

that means you created a system in which they

can only operate off the books

And Vera Maksimova: Alexei, I’m a teacher

and I have to work as a tutor on the side

because it’s impossible to live on this pittance

I’m curious how they’re going to

track people’s income. And why

do you think they want to introduce this tax? Vera, well,

right now they don’t want to track

income — they just want to stop

you from going abroad, in order to make

your life harder, so that you think more

about

registering as an individual

entrepreneur. But at the same time

the Finance Ministry really is talking about

how they can calculate this and somehow

tax these people

Why? Why do you think they want to introduce

a tax? Well, they — as I already said —

are frantically running around trying to figure out where

they can get more money. It never occurs to them

that maybe they could get much

more money if they looked at

Sobyanin’s corrupt program

for rehousing people from dilapidated housing, worth 2

trillion rubles (about $32 billion at historical exchange rates) — we’ll talk about that more. They

they think it’s much easier to squeeze money out of you, Vera,

because, well, you’re

a defenseless person, right? But Sobyanin and

some of his corrupt developers

know how to pass money along somewhere, into

the presidential administration, and it will

protect them. So of course they just

want to take everything they can from ordinary people. This

absolutely cannot be tolerated

So, what kind of eye patches do they sell, or do you have to

make one yourself? Alexei, is yours store-bought

or homemade? Funny story

Oksana Baulina, the producer of our channel,

she’s sitting here laughing. So I said,

“Well, buy me an eye patch.” But patches like that

are only sold in prop stores

— the kind where kids buy pirate costumes and things like that

After a while she writes to me,

“So, I found you a leather eye patch.” I

said, “I’m not putting on an eye patch from a sex shop,”

but it turned out it wasn’t from a sex shop

— it was actually a piece of theatrical prop gear

right, from some kind of

specialized store

So, yes. But as I understand it, abroad

this is common practice

There are lots of online stores where you can find

perfectly normal ones like this, black

or any other color, medical eye patches

that are pretty easy to order. You just

need to spend a little time, um, a bit of time

looking. Back to the self-employed

Vladislav Kuznetsov writes: One physics lesson

in physics, 45 minutes — 1,500 rubles (about $25 at historical exchange rates)

You see? And now let’s go chasing after

Vladislav Kuznetsov to take away

his 1,500 rubles, or take 250 out of those 1,500

and leave Igor

Ivanovich Sechin alone, with his yacht and salary of

3 million rubles a day (about $50,000 at historical exchange rates). Of course, what you’re writing is right

all of you. This is just

truly outrageous. This whole

issue of the self-employed just — honestly —

makes me furious. Because

we investigate

corruption, and I see how

trillions disappear through government procurement

Trillions. But look there — it’s fairly

easy — not completely easy, of course, but it is

possible to save that money, to direct that

money into the budget. No, nobody wants

to deal with that at all. But instead

they need to chase after a teacher who, for

1,500 rubles, is tutoring some students

The five-story apartment blocks — we talked a lot about

those little five-story buildings last time, and this time I’ll

say it again because the issue is extremely important

and it cannot be dropped. I’ll say it again: 2

trillion rubles over several years

— colossal money that will be paid not

only by Moscow, but by all the rest of Russia

All the rest of Russia, which still cannot

rehouse people from barracks (substandard housing), will be

financing this program in Moscow

and we can see that this program is built

right now, so basically not even

Muscovites will be deceived. I just now

wanted to talk about the next two things

the next few things that

that are already basically established

as fact, and that are clearly

alarming. First,

the Moscow mayor's office has launched a major

PR campaign. You can see that online

they have created groups supporting the demolition of five-story apartment blocks

— “Muscovites in Support of Sobyanin” — and there is

an excellent investigation by Alexei

Kovalev. You can find it. He simply

shows there that all these groups

are fake. So everything we are being shown as some kind of

real grassroots initiative that they are trying

to present to us as support for these

measures — all of it, at least for now,

is fake, which basically tells us

something very important: there is no real

mass support for the program that

Sobyanin is proposing. At the same time, the problem is

that there are a great many five-story buildings

that absolutely do need to be demolished; people want

to be rehoused, to move out, but it is being organized

in such a way that nothing is still clear. Well,

look, an order has already been signed

allocating 96 billion rubles, and from May 15 they

are starting to organize some kind of

votes on whether to demolish our building or not

demolish our building — but the law has not been passed

even in its second reading. This is a federal

law, and under this federal law

decisions on rehousing can be made

This federal law regulates all

issues of apartment size, money, and everything

else. The law does not exist yet, but from the 15th they are already

starting the voting, and in this

vote there is one particularly nasty trick

that

that the Moscow mayor's office plans to use.

If we look at how decisions are made there,

there is an extremely

important clause. You should put it on

the screen now — uh, please take a look

and read it. The thing is that those who do not

vote have their votes counted as if

they want to participate in the rehousing program.

It is precisely through this

that the mayor's office is planning to fool everyone. Well,

anyone who has ever tried to hold

meetings in their own building knows perfectly well

how this works.

People are away, people are on business trips,

people have rented out their apartments and no longer

live there, and so on and so forth. A quorum

for a building meeting, legally and genuinely,

so that there is truly a majority of the building's residents,

is practically impossible to achieve

almost ever. That is exactly what they will

try to exploit. They will simply count all

those silent non-voters as supporting

demolition, and then, hiding behind that, they will

push through whatever shady business they want.

This is very alarming. This is

absolutely illegal. This is

something that shows

that fraud is being planned. Besides that,

the Active Citizen system itself

has repeatedly

been caught out as being

simply a fraud. It is completely

unverifiable, uncontrolled

voting, and the result of this

voting — well, it is just

entered into a computer by some person, and

out comes 90 percent, 80 percent,

or however many percent. Once again,

right now, live on air, we once again to the Moscow mayor's office

— we have already proposed this before —

I propose, my friends:

dear Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin,

let the Anti-Corruption Foundation become

an independent organization that

will audit how people actually

vote in the Active Citizen

system. And not just us — fine, we are

an opposition organization — let us

add some other organization as well.

Bring in independent observers,

some election-monitoring group, or those who

do this during elections. Just let them

into your system so they can go

inside and see how the

voting is conducted.

We have proposed this several times regarding

various previous decisions that

were made through the Active Citizen system.

Each time we were refused, and told that

some auditors would conduct an audit, but that is

all a sham, all a lie. So if you

want your

vote on these buildings this time

to be believed by anyone, then we are ready

to look at how your system is set up, and ready

to tell people whether this is in fact

an honest vote or whether this vote

is dishonest. One more important point

connected with the five-story buildings is

that

if you look at the list of these buildings, there are

many buildings there that are not even

five-story blocks at all — many buildings from the early

19th century, many buildings with custom

layouts — and all of them have been included there

because these are obviously promising

sites for development. Investors simply want

to get hold of these plots of land, because

you take some two-story building,

demolish it — there are few people there — and then throw up

a 19-story tower and make a lot of

money. At the same time, we have many

documented cases where people spent years

fighting to get their five-story blocks demolished. Well, for example,

I saw

in one of the districts — I think Konstantinkovskaya — they have

an entire movement there, several buildings, some kind of

horrific dilapidated dormitories that

They have been demanding resettlement for years. Back in

2013, when I was running in

Morskoy, I met with them. They hold mass

rallies, saying: recognize our buildings

as unsafe—they are unsafe—and resettle

us. They were not included in the program.

That is, they include some perfectly

decent buildings that should not be demolished, these so-

called Stalin-era apartment buildings

—these brick buildings with high ceilings and

so on and so forth—where people do not

want to move out, while they do not include the

buildings that

do want resettlement. I might not

speak so confidently about this if

it were not for a personal example: my wife's grandmother

lives in Preobrazhenka, in a building

that is a dreadful five-story block. Many years

ago, I also spoke about it on air here,

and I even wrote letters to Luzhkov (former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov) asking:

when are you going to resettle

this five-story building? For example, it and the

one next door were not included in the demolition program.

Why—not clear. And it still remains

unexplained. Yet resettling each building

costs millions of dollars, millions

of dollars, and affects hundreds of people. So I do not

understand why Moscow City Hall cannot

give us, for each building, a clear, detailed,

well-reasoned answer: folks, we are demolishing yours

even though you have a Stalin-era

building here, for these reasons; and you, folks, we are

not demolishing, even though yours is an unsafe building, for

these reasons.

If they want to spend 2 trillion

rubles, then surely they can spend

a few million rubles

to prepare a detailed assessment for each

building and explain it specifically to the people

living there. That is not happening. And once again,

this is the main sign that there will be

grand-scale fraud going on.

I will repeat what I said last time:

judging by the way this is happening now,

the main idea of this entire

renovation program is simply

to pump a great deal of money into Moscow's

construction business. And in that construction

business, the Moscow city government itself

is involved; it is building millions

of square meters. Those millions

of square meters are not being bought, and in order

to buy them from themselves, they want

simply to pour money into it and support

prices—and maybe raise real estate prices

a little—and save their own

dubious development projects

from bankruptcy. They inflated a bubble,

and now they are afraid it will

simply burst and bury them too.

Alexei, will you change the Constitution? I

wanted to ask: Nemtsov (Boris Nemtsov, opposition politician) wanted to limit the

presidential term, asks Netolst.

Well, of course, yes. Without question, this is one of the most important

things that must be changed.

The presidential term should be only four years—

four years, plus another four years if you are

re-elected. None of this business about consecutive or non-consecutive

terms. It should be

written clearly and unambiguously: no one may serve

as President of the

Russian Federation for more than eight years. They simply cannot, because

when a person stays in office for more than eight years,

they really do start to lose their mind.

That is something Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin himself once said, when he had been in office

for his seventh year as president. And this is

an essential thing that, of course, I would immediately

change.

[music]

Dekoz asks: Alexei, do you know

that your campaign office in Vladimir is being evicted? Will there

be any comment? There is also suspicion

that this is Governor Orlova's doing. We

regularly run into various

difficulties with our regional offices, especially

since we have already opened quite a lot of them—about 28

or so. Sometimes these are just technical issues;

sometimes we ourselves want to move out because

the premises are inconvenient; sometimes there really

is administrative pressure. As I

understand it, in Vladimir Region—well, there

the governor is really behaving outrageously, I would say.

From Vladimir Region we are constantly

getting news like this, saying that

students are being lectured about how

they are organizers of a Maidan (a reference to the Ukrainian protest movement), and from

Vladimir Region there came this insane

report that some teacher

told parents they would be stripped of

their parental rights, uh, because their children took part in

rallies. Just an idiot. I hope that teacher

will be fired from the school. As I understand it,

the Ministry of

Education is already looking into it. I think

this is of course connected with the fact that

the governor is a bit unhinged.

In Vladimir Region, anyway, all these

problems will be solved. We will find new

premises. There is nothing especially

serious here.

Breaking: the Moscow City Court reported the absence

of any ban in Navalny's sentence on leaving

the country. But that is not breaking news at all; I already said

there are no formal

restrictions on me. And I hope that

I will be able to travel where I need to, but at

the same time, let me repeat once again: here, in general,

I am being treated by very good doctors,

excellent doctors, and I am very

satisfied with them both as physicians and as people.

They treat me wonderfully. But nevertheless,

of course I would like to go to a

specialized clinic, especially if

I end up needing a corneal transplant there.

But again, I hope that it

will not come to that.

Mitya Aleshkovsky, who, as I understand it,

I was recently on the air with

Lyaskin on the program *Cactus Writes*.

The same thing is being proposed in the law on the self-employed by the same

— Senator Ryazansky is proposing exactly the same thing,

the one who has been pushing for years a law on

volunteers. So yes, this is a senator who

specializes in awful

bills. In general, there are quite a lot of people like that

in the State Duma and elsewhere. But

they keep shoving through their idiotic

and completely unnecessary bills in order to

get a public reaction, so that

people write about them, so that they

get talked about, and to please the authorities by

harming certain people — these

self-employed tutors, drivers,

builders, or volunteers again. What

is a law on volunteers even needed for?

A law on volunteers should read like this:

first, we leave volunteers alone; and

second, the state allocates some

money for

compensating their expenses in the course of their work.

Not salaries, not anything else.

And it encourages the volunteer

movement. Nothing else needs

to be regulated in the volunteer movement. It

arose on its own, thank God,

and it is developing far better than any

state institution. Not a single government body

in our country, uh, compared

with the 1990s, has

gotten better, but the volunteer movement has

improved enormously. So it needs to be left

alone.

And

right now more than 55,000 people are watching us.

That’s excellent. Sokolovsky,

what will you do with the law on offending the feelings

of believers when you become president? I

will repeal that law. It is harmful. It is

unnecessary, and it is impossible to

criminalize offending a believer’s feelings. The current Criminal

Code is full of articles that

can perfectly well be applied. But if

someone really is behaving like a hooligan in a church,

say, got drunk, started a fight with someone there,

or stole some religious objects,

overturned something, really did something

offensive, desecrated

something, hurt many people, and committed

an act for which you should be

punished — there are articles on hooliganism and

many other provisions that can

be used. What is happening with

the law on protecting believers’ feelings has

simply led to utter absurdity.

Show that cartoon clip,

can we put it on screen now?

Right now on your screens you can see

a few seconds

from *The Simpsons*, where Homer from the cartoon

*The Simpsons* is catching Pokémon in a

Protestant church, and honestly I was

shocked when I found out that the TV channel

2x2 said it would not

broadcast this episode of *The Simpsons* because

some believers claimed that it

offended them.

How can Orthodox Christians in Russia be

offended by a cartoon showing

the American Homer Simpson in

his Protestant church

catching nonexistent

Pokémon on his phone? I don’t know — maybe they weren’t

watching the cartoon very carefully,

because what don’t they do in that church?

They’ve slept in it, and there have been

gates to Hell opening there, and

in general, *The Simpsons* is

known for making fun of

religiosity — not religion itself, but specifically

religiosity. This happens

constantly. That kind of irony is

wonderful, and many people

appreciate it. And suddenly it offended someone in

Russia. Fine, whatever, if some [__]

felt offended by it, but

the 2x2 channel, which broadcasts these cartoons,

did this voluntarily.

I really hope — I truly

really hope — that they simply decided

to attract attention like this, to boost

the ratings for this episode, and that after a while they’ll

say: we’ve decided after all to show this

scandalous episode, watch it. Because

if people

do this voluntarily — no one forced them,

the prosecutor’s office did not require them to do it —

then self-censorship has reached such idiocy

that tomorrow, guys, you won’t be able to show any cartoons

at all, because

*Futurama* makes fun of religiosity, in

*The Simpsons* too, and in most, uh, generally

modern cultural

works there is one degree or another

of irony about religion.

Because without some kind of ironic

distance from all this, it is impossible even

to make sense of it. Right now on your

screens — can we put it up again?

Well, as a continuation of this idiocy, in

Kaluga there was this acrobatic

performance — children jumping around in a church,

and now the prosecutor’s office and the Investigative

Committee are conducting an inquiry because

what is happening on screen here

offended someone, and that supposedly merits

the opening of a criminal case. In

connection with this, I want to say one thing:

you know, all these people who carry out

such inquiries or declare that they are

deeply offended by this — they

are pagans, or maybe some kind of

Satanists. They do not understand at all what

Christianity is. They do not understand what

a church is for. They relate to these

material things as some kind of

They deify it as a sacred object.

Some specific objects — that is

paganism. When you believe that inside a

church you must not laugh, must not sing, must not

recite a poem — that is paganism. You

think that some thing hanging there, or

some golden object standing there,

is endowed

with a special divine essence, and that

there is something living inside it, or that

some spirit or god lives there. But

that is paganism: there stands an idol,

an idol, and we think that this idol

needs to have its lips smeared with blood so that

it will accept your sacrifice — that, uh, is what it is.

These reincarnated communists from Soviet

times became Christians, declared that

they were Christians, but in essence, of course, they

are pagans. Here there can be only one

approach.

There is a congregation, there is a priest in the church, and it is

their decision what may be done in the church.

Whether children may jump around there or not,

but there are some stricter congregations.

Presumably, they would not want

to have acrobatic

performances. There are perfectly normal congregations

in large cities, and generally speaking

there is no problem at all with children’s

holiday performances, songs, dances, or

anything else, because it is done for the congregation.

Specific people come to the church; these

acrobatic girls were brought by their parents,

who are parishioners. If they want there to be something in the church,

and the priest is not against it,

and the children put on a performance, then leave

them alone. It is their church, their parish,

their priest, and there is no need to interfere with them, and

the prosecutor’s office should not be telling them what they

may do and what they may not do.

What color someone’s... well, that is easily

not your business. Therefore, what

is happening now is this strange

thing, when our police,

the Investigative Committee, and the prosecutor’s office

start acting holier than the Pope,

monitor blogs, watching to make sure no one

has offended something or someone there, offended

something — but in essence, you cannot offend anyone there.

You must not sin in a church; you must not engage

in sinful acts in a church — and not only in

a church. But rejoicing in life, singing, dancing

is entirely possible if the congregation’s rules

allow it. So of course I would

repeal all these harmful, foolish laws on

protecting the rights of believers, which cause

serious damage, including to the development

of Christianity in the country. You know, I opened

— well, we opened, the campaign opened, 28 headquarters

and I have not been to all of them for various reasons, but in

most of them — 25 — I have been, and at every

meeting I was asked about

this. That is, the questions vary everywhere,

but the question of obscurantism

and these idiotic laws, under which

our police are now engaged in

checking whether you believe in

God properly or improperly, whether you believe in God or not,

whether you are insulting God — that question

comes up in every city. That shows

that people are fed up with all this, and it shows

that this will have colossal and

negative consequences, including for

the Russian Orthodox Church.

I do not want those consequences, so I believe that

we need to remove from the relationship

between society and religion, between people and religion, the unnecessary

link in the form of this police-state meddling,

these investigative committees and

prosecutors’ offices.

Vera Aaronova asks me: “Alexei, don’t

you think that Platon and the renovation program

were invented so that in December Putin

could cancel these measures and then run in the

election?”

Vera, I most definitely do not think so. Both Platon

and the renovation program were invented in order

to steal many, many billions of rubles,

and they will do it. They also want something else — they want

to run as well — but they want to steal

many, many billions of rubles, because

that is the purpose of their being in power: those very

billions of rubles. Without that, everything for

them loses its meaning. Why do any of this at all

if you cannot enrich yourself

without restraint?

So I think that, unquestionably, as the

election approaches, Putin will propose a number of

very populist initiatives on which

he will try to score political points, as has already

been announced. In other words, they will try to turn the election

into a referendum for everything good

and against everything bad. But

the stupidest and most harmful law will not be repealed

if people close to Putin are making money from it,

and on

Platon and on the renovation program, people close to

Putin will make — are making —

tens of billions of rubles. Therefore these laws

will not be repealed, and they will continue to

impose them, because that is their money,

their palaces, their Swiss bank accounts,

their Maldives offshore accounts.

And Mikro asks me: “Navalny, what do you

think about the sale of Lake Baikal to the Chinese?”

Well, first of all, there is some

exaggeration here. I think what is meant is

that Lake Baikal has not, after all, literally been sold to the Chinese. But

what we do see

is a clear kind of hidden expansion, and we

see that the Russian authorities are favorably disposed both to

Chinese business and to Chinese expansion

and are turning a blind eye to many violations

of the law, uh, allocating forest quotas. The fact that

the Russian authorities constantly declare

that they will not give up a single inch of land

to anyone — and yet all our

territorial agreements

There were territorial disputes with China for some time,

and they were recently settled by Putin,

in China's favor. That is an established fact, and in

that sense, Russia finds itself in a

rather difficult situation in which

it is trying to be friends with

China so that, together with

China, it can oppose the United States and Europe. But that

is never really going to work.

Look at the volume of trade between

China and the United States. So we are surrendering our

interests in the Russian Far East in favor of

China, hoping that China will help us

resolve some kind of European

or American issues, which is not

happening. That is absolutely a fact.

Sofya Petrunkina asks me, Alexei,

What do you think? Will there be a tax on

"social parasitism" in Russia?

I don't think so.

Or rather, they may try to do it.

As they are trying to do now,

in Belarus, and there have been similar attempts in

Russia. But as I already said, we have 20

million self-employed people.

Formally, they are "parasites." If tomorrow

they try to force these 20 million people

in a harsh, direct way to pay

a tax, I think there will simply be

an uprising. Because these self-employed people are

people who work extremely hard, at

two or three jobs, and most often earn

much less than everyone else. And if

you come to them now and start hitting them over the head

with this tax, I think there will be

something very bad.

So, what else do I watch?

Alexei Seredinka asks: does Navalny watch

*The Simpsons*? Absolutely. I will campaign for

it without hesitation. I'm a fan of *The Simpsons*. I'm probably the kind of person who

doesn't watch the latest episodes as closely, but

the first many seasons, I

have watched many times over. I remember all the dialogue

by heart. *The Simpsons* is, in my view,

one of the greatest

works of world culture,

of modern culture. It's just incredible. Everyone should

watch *The Simpsons* and *Futurama*

and *Terminator 2*.

In Samara, in 2018, they want to

cover all the old unsafe houses and barracks from view

with a steel fence so that

foreigners will think everything is fine there,

instead of eliminating the problem. Because

that only makes it worse. But how are you going to fix it in

Samara? There is no money. In Samara there is no

money even to relocate people from

unsafe housing. Nowhere. In my previous

program I talked about this: the worst

unsafe building in Moscow is in

far better condition than

the average building slated for resettlement in

any region, even in the nearby

Moscow region. What is happening in the regions

with the housing stock, with barracks, with

two-story houses, with five-story apartment blocks, is

monstrous. But nothing can be resettled

because Moscow has sucked up all the money.

That is how the budget system is structured: all

the money flows only to Moscow so that

in Moscow it can not merely

be stolen in larger chunks, and

so yes, nothing remains except to

hide it behind a steel fence. But this is

basically how the authorities are structured now:

they do nothing in essence.

They put up a facade in front so that foreigners

will think everything is fine—steel fences, and

sometimes they even decorate them with St. George ribbons (a Russian military remembrance symbol),

too.

Beslan Ashinov: Hello. As a doctor, it is important for me

to know whether you consider it corruption

if a patient, after treatment, voluntarily

thanks the doctor.

What is corruption? Corruption is

the use of one's official

position for personal gain. Therefore, from the point

of view of formal law, this is

undoubtedly corruption. From the point of view

of our everyday life, though, it is simply part of our

reality. Yes, of course, I view negatively

the fact that in our country patients

are forced to thank doctors in every possible way

with chocolates, bottles, and money, and I

view it negatively because

our doctors are paid around 15,000 rubles (about a few hundred U.S. dollars) per month

and simply cannot survive without these

offerings. But this shows that

the system is broken. If all doctors are drawn into these corrupt

relationships across

Russia—and that is effectively what is happening—

then it is hard for us to accuse all doctors in

Russia of corruption. It shows that

the system is wrong. It should not

work this way. In Russia, there is still

enough money in the budget

to pay doctors decent salaries

and to properly fund

healthcare so that these

idiotic offerings would not exist. Especially since, in

essence, nobody wants this anymore. It's the eternal scene

where everyone feels awkward: someone takes it out, the doctor

is told, "Please take it," and the doctor says, "Oh no, no need,"

and then takes it. Everyone suffers from

this. Nobody wants it. And if we

properly fund Russian healthcare

up to the standards that exist in

different countries, we will eradicate this. It

is not needed by anyone; it should not exist. But

to launch some kind of campaign against

doctors—"Right, let's start jailing

doctors tomorrow because they accept boxes of chocolates"—

that is, of course, foolish, because

we could jail all the doctors and still we would not solve

a single problem. And when I heard

these statistics on corruption

crimes that we are so often told about by

the Supreme Court or the prosecutor's office...

There, corruption cases involve 20,000 people.

200,000 people, and the corruption is mainly in

the fields of education and healthcare. Well, that's

ridiculous. Why don't you go look in the Kremlin (the Russian seat of power)

for those who take tens of billions, and only then

someday will it be possible

to go after those who take bribes by the boxful

of chocolates.

And Alexei, will we have time to stock up on your

merch for the rally on Russia Day?

Excellent question. Merch means various

items with our symbols on them. Last time, on

our previous broadcast, sitting here in the corner was

Leonid Volkov, and he promised that in

mid-May—am I saying that right?

in mid-May our store will go live

with merch. So I think

that—well, I hope—we'll launch the store.

Kirill Naskin asks me: Alexei,

if you're under eighteen, can you go to

a rally? Kirill, you're not eighteen yet, but you're

a person—well, of course you're a person—and you have

your own views and ideas. Of course

you can go to a rally. But if you're under 18,

first of all, you need to be very

careful and attentive; secondly,

you should probably still let

your parents know. But overall,

just behave yourself; don't go where you

shouldn't. Don't behave in some

improper way. Overall, rallies, as we know,

are much safer events

than riding in a car, and the likelihood

of getting into trouble is much lower. I'm being given

this kind of hand signal here. That means

we have to wrap up. Thank you very much

for being with us for this rather

strange second broadcast; the first one was

green and pirated. Don't forget

to subscribe to our channel. They tell

the truth here, and they will keep telling the truth. At the

end of May, we'll launch several more

programs on Navalny Live, and I hope

we'll be able both to entertain you and

to tell you something interesting, and

to keep punching a hole in this

system of censorship. Thank you very much. Until

next Thursday at 20:18.

[music]