A cattle truck for evacuation, influencers for the president, Putin did it 15 times

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow,

which means that live on air is

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

Alexei Navalny, or,

as I was called this week, a host on the Karusel TV channel

— not by Kremlin

propagandists, but by a rather funny

Twitter account.

ИА Panorama is a kind of amusing

pseudo-media outlet that publishes

fake news.

This week they wrote that I

would be hosting on the Karusel channel, where I would

tell children how to survive in a country

of police lawlessness. Panorama

regularly publishes this kind of

news, and it is very funny to see that every

time, some state

propagandists fall for these stories and

at first very eagerly

spread them around, saying something ridiculous,

claiming, “There you go, the liberals are at it again,” and

“spreading fake news.” In my previous

programs, I spoke a lot about

all these constitutional amendments and so on.

We discussed how no one

understands what to do with this, and no one

really understands what it is, and it is very important for me

to know your opinion. This week we

sent out a fairly large mailing to our lists

to find out what you think about

this topic, whether you understand at all what is

going on there. Personally, I honestly

do not really understand it myself, to be honest.

There is a link in the description of this video. If

you follow it, there will be no spam or anything like that,

and if you simply confirm your email

so there is no spam,

there will be a survey there that will take

two minutes, because I want to better

understand what the audience of this

program thinks about what is happening, about the process, and about various

personal matters, including your attitudes

toward certain politicians. So I would be

grateful if, after this—or while you are watching

the program, or even while listening—you

could fill out this

survey. Let me remind you that our

donation system still seems to be working, so

there is also a link there

if you would like to support us, please follow

that link. You can send me questions

on Twitter with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, and I

will try to answer them as

usual.

I’ll start with this: I just remembered

how Panorama wrote that I

would tell children how to survive amid this

police lawlessness. I’ll begin simply with one

story—not even specifically about police

lawlessness, but in general about a kind of

lawlessness overall, another spit in the

face, something I do not even know how to describe.

You have probably heard about the tragedy that

occurred during the demolition of the Sports and

Concert Complex in St. Petersburg.

In St. Petersburg there is a huge

sports and concert complex,

a city landmark. It was built

for the 1980 Olympics, and it was even

considered for recognition as a historical monument

because of its unique beams or structural elements.

It is known throughout the city and across the country,

a major sports venue.

It is very large, and now they are demolishing it so that

Timchenko can build something there again.

Timchenko is Putin’s friend—everyone knows that, and everyone understands

that

Timchenko, a crook who has been friends with Putin

since the 1980s, and who

for a long time was the main seller of

Russian oil abroad—in other words,

one of Putin’s money men—first

made money together with Putin from oil and

essentially stole money, because from

every barrel of our oil

he profited, and now he is being handed

enormous construction contracts. He

has nothing to do with construction, but

nevertheless he gets these

contracts so that he and Putin can

once again make money off them. And while they were dismantling all this,

a tragedy occurred: a worker was working without

safety gear. Well, of course, people

want to maximize their profit, and to

maximize profit, they need to

cut costs, including spending

on safety, and

a worker fell and died. It was even

captured on video by

the photographer Serebryakov, who is quite well known, by the way.

He has photographed me several times,

actually. Let’s watch it—31

seconds.

Well, as you can see, all of this is of course

monstrous from the standpoint of tragedy: a person died.

And it is even more monstrous from the standpoint

that no

obvious safety measures

were taken. Moreover, the people who were

cutting that beam and sitting there

did not have the slightest idea how

this demolition was supposed to be carried out, because

clearly all of this happened

not according to plan.

And yes, one could say that during demolition

rules were broken, that such things happen. But I decided to talk about it tonight

because

the reaction—more precisely, the reaction of the St. Petersburg

authorities—was simply absolutely

fantastic. When everyone was outraged

and began saying, “What on earth are you

doing there? What kind of madness is this? A person has died,”

the authorities of St. Petersburg—the governor

of St. Petersburg and Smolny (the city administration)—said

that, you know, they were not aware at all who

was doing it; they do not know who was carrying out the demolition.

The Petersburg Sports and Concert Complex (SKK) and this isn't exactly straightforward.

They said

it and didn't even laugh, and they expect us to

believe it. But almost no one will believe it.

But they really, in all seriousness, think

that this is an explanation, because it's obvious

that in a normal situation they should

say: yes, this was done by a structure connected

to Mr. Timchenko.

Therefore, an investigation will now be carried out.

A criminal case will obviously be opened.

There was obviously a violation of safety regulations, and

the company should have its license revoked; possibly

the contractor needs to be replaced. In any case,

work needs to stop for a while, and

this contractor will obviously incur some

losses, because everything has to be done

properly. But this is Timchenko, so of course they can't

say: you know, yes, something terrible

happened there, and the license needs to be

revoked. These are incompetent people,

idiot engineers. But since it's a friend of

Putin's, we'll just look into all of this.

They can't say that, so they

thought about it and then said: actually, we don't

know who's doing it. But what is it, really? It's just

only the largest sports

venue with 25,000 seats in the second-largest

city in Russia,

a federal city. Someone is demolishing it,

who the hell knows. Something like

someone was digging there—I don't know who's demolishing it.

And that's simply how everything happens

in Russia in 2020. You can simply

judge the sheer degree of contempt

for public opinion, and the degree

of willingness not even just to tell some

ordinary lie—the daily lies of our authorities are

just background noise by now—but this kind of lie is really

completely absurd. How can they not

know who is demolishing this massive facility,

the largest sports venue in the entire

country? They said: we don't know, that's it, moving on.

Nothing more to comment on.

And yes, apparently anything

can burn down,

collapse, and so on. If something

burned down somewhere and it belonged to some

businessman, they'd crush him—I don't know,

ruin him, jail him. But if it's Timchenko,

then suddenly we have no idea what happened, everything is

just wonderful, and

of course this once again confirms that we were

right when we were going after that fugitive,

that disgusting crook who became

governor of St. Petersburg. Before his

election, we urged people to vote against

him. And once again I want to draw the attention

not only of St. Petersburg residents but of the whole country

to the fact that he must be fought—he is a real

enemy.

A scoundrel, a liar, a man who simply

mocks all of us, mocks

common sense. If you have any

questions, send them to me with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture.

I'll answer them. But we started

talking about St. Petersburg, and there,

along with this outrageous story,

another piece of news came out,

extraordinary, simply remarkable.

There are all kinds of news—good and bad—but in

St. Petersburg, something happened

that seems completely out of another world,

the kind of news that simply cannot

happen in Russia, and especially cannot

happen in St. Petersburg.

Because in St. Petersburg, suddenly,

a court, right there in an official ruling,

said that, you know, in the Chyornaya Rechka district

there had been massive

election fraud—fraud in favor of

United Russia—and the entire election

campaign was doing it for United Russia. And

when I first saw this court

ruling, I thought: this must be some new fake news.

It couldn't be real. But the ruling is absolutely fair.

You remember how the elections were conducted there

in St. Petersburg—the municipal campaign.

Not a single candidate was allowed in; it was

complete lawlessness. People were beaten,

literally physically assaulted by random thugs,

commission offices were packed so that not

a single decent candidate could submit

their documents. In other words, everything was done

so that the only candidates would be

from United Russia, and only United

Russia would win. And then some kind of—I don't know—

eclipse, magnetic waves or something—hit the court,

and somehow a judge, completely unexpectedly, the court

took these documents and said it like it is.

He said: you know, it says right there

in the ruling that the only

registered candidates were

the only registered candidates were

twenty candidates nominated

by the political party United Russia.

And this election commission—look below—

committed unlawful actions,

made unlawful decisions aimed

at securing the election of a specific group

of deputies. In other words, the whole country has been doing this

for 20 years. The entire Putin system has rested on

exactly this for 20 years:

unlawful actions so that there would be

an election result they wanted.

Unlawful actions aimed

at electing a specific group of deputies.

And wow, that's written прямо there in a court ruling.

That's really something. I mean, I don't know,

maybe there will be an appeal and all that,

it's an extraordinary ruling, but I certainly

applaud this brave and honest

judge—the only one of his kind in the whole country—

who wrote

things as they are and truly ruled according to the law.

We'll see what happens next, but

generally speaking, this ruling should lead to

some kind of consequences.

long-term consequences, because, well,

in practice, this should mean that

the next step should be the opening of

a criminal case against a group of people who

were part of an organized criminal group

that carried out these illegal actions

of course, all these people should be put in prison

not just fined, because they did not merely

violate election law

they are outright thugs and criminals from

a legal standpoint, we know that

they are thugs and criminals, but now there is

a court ruling that directly

shows that they all need to be jailed

the next thing I wanted to discuss, you

will be surprised, I wanted to discuss news about

Ukraine, because today I saw

a fight between Ukrainian lawmakers. You know that

I try to talk as little as possible about

Ukraine, because absolutely every

TV channel covers it, but this news really

surprised me. Today I watched a fight

in the Ukrainian parliament. In principle, this is

not good when there is a fight in parliament

but I do not see anything especially extraordinary

in it. I do not think that a fight in parliament

shows, let's say,

the underdevelopment of democratic institutions

after all, even in advanced democratic

countries, fights certainly happen, but

it is simply about what the fight there was over

the pro-Russian deputies were fighting with

everyone else because

the pro-Russian, pro-Putin, effectively

lawmakers, who are funded, let's

be honest, through Russia, through

Putin, were fighting with other lawmakers

because of their opposition to the land law

let's watch a few seconds of the fight

in the Ukrainian parliament

[music]

[music]

2

and this video is being actively shown on various

channels. Have no doubt that it will be

shown on all sorts of propaganda

programs with a tone of, there you go, look,

first of all, look at how

things there are really, frankly speaking, not

very presentable, and second, that these are

pro-Russian deputies opposing

the predatory land law. This whole

mess is happening because of the law on

land, and so the majority in the Rada (Ukraine's parliament)

is voting for this law, it

supports it, while the pro-Putin deputies

oppose it and say that

they are doing it to protect the people

well, I decided to depart from my rule

of saying nothing about Ukraine on my

program, because the degree of

dishonesty of these people is astonishing. In

Russia, there is such a law, and the pro-Putin

deputies in the Ukrainian Rada are fighting and

shouting themselves hoarse against a law that exists in

Russia and was signed by Vladimir

Putin. The laws differ somewhat there, yes,

but in essence, they adopted it here, Putin

adopted it in Russia, such a law is needed in

that sense. In that sense, this is not some kind of

crime. One can talk about

certain procedural specifics, or

one can talk about how the level of

corruption in Ukraine is such that this

law will be implemented in such a way that

everything will be stolen. But in Ukraine, as in Russia,

in Ukraine in fact to an even greater

extent, they still pocket everything. In that

sense, it is an extremely corrupt country

more corrupt than Russia

but really, this is Putinist

propaganda

it simultaneously says what a

wonderful law Putin adopted, and says

that

what wonderful pro-Putin deputies

there are in Ukraine, who are not allowing through

the predatory land law. It is just, I mean,

there are people

you know the expression "to change shoes in midair"

they are practically changing clothes in midair; their

trajectory of movement is not always

even clear, you cannot even tell what shoes they had on

to begin with, because this whole

procedure is just an endless

changing of shoes in midair, and in that sense

it is simply amazing, this close coordination between our

propagandists and the pro-Putin deputies in

Ukraine, who on any issue simply

give completely opposite

answers, and this joint effort

is simply astonishing, just

astonishing. You watch it and cannot

look away. 30,000 people are watching us

live. Let's also talk about

propagandists, because the thing that

drove me into a kind of mini

hysteria, I watched this video and

laughed my head off

very, very loudly, because you remember

that in the previous program I told you

about the strike that was organized

by the Doctors' Alliance trade union in

Sverdlovsk Region, and there is an absolutely

monstrous situation there. Under the previous video

I saw that one of the most liked

of your comments was that

"I watched this video from a hospital and

cried." It really is hard

to watch these

women earning 11,000 rubles (about 120 USD)

working in a hospital, and they are crying, they have

a hospital that is simply falling apart

they work in the laundry, and they have to do everything

in cold water. It is all monstrous

and all of it is horribly sad

here you can see these sheets that

I showed you: they wrap a corpse in them, and then

...is simply handed over to sick people.

This was Yekaterinburg propaganda's response to it.

This was their response to everything. Let me show you.

A video that was shown on the main

regional TV channel in

the Sverdlovsk Region, in Yekaterinburg. There is

a chief

propagandist there named Sheremet, and just imagine—

Sheremet is basically a local, local

Vladimir Solovyov (a prominent pro-Kremlin TV host), only even dumber and

more brazen than Vladimir Solovyov. Let's

look at what they said in response

to the strike by people who live in

the same region as them. They showed people there

who don't want to work for 11,000 rubles a month

(about $120 / €110), crying and saying, 'Fix our hospital.'

And this is how the regional propaganda responded:

In a town beginning with 'Bogu'—that is, in

Bogdanovich—into the local central

district hospital,

a gang of provocateurs brazenly burst in broad daylight,

a group of provocateurs directed by

Navalny's associates, led by the head

of the Doctors' Alliance trade union, the aggressive

blonde Anastasia Vasilyeva.

First of all, they barged into the office

of the chief doctor and rudely began

insisting that, it turns out, the hospital

was already in the middle of a full-blown doctors' strike.

They behave very arrogantly,

raise their voices in an overbearing way, and think

they own the place. Therefore this is

a very dangerous organization that

practically undermines the reputation of our

institution.

But as we've said before, and will say again: even in

the well-fed breeding ground of the USA, the standard of living

of ordinary people has not risen since the 1950s, while in

Russia, people have never lived so well-fed

as they do under Putin and United Russia. Anyone who wants

to argue, write in or call us.

It's easier to destroy than to build. Hey, provocateur, what have you

gone and wrecked before running off to Canada? We in Russia

still have to live here. They're saying this to the very same people

who are right there, somewhere just

I don't know, a few

kilometers away, earning 11,000 rubles ($120 / €110), and telling them: 'But in

America, the standard of living hasn't risen since

the 1950s.' It's an attitude as if these

people had crawled out of a cave or something. Any

nurse in the Sverdlovsk Region knows

that her colleague in America earns, when converted

into Russian money, no less than

200,000 rubles a month

(about $2,200 / €2,000). That would be the very lowest-paid nurse; more likely

it's much more. And it's just like in

my Soviet childhood, when from

the television they would say: 'Boy, Alexei,

be glad you were born to work in

the Soviet country, because in America

you'd be working in some mine,

some uranium mine or something like that.'

That whole line about the so-called rotting

capitalism, where people are dying of hunger, while in

our Soviet country

everything is wonderful, despite the fact that you're standing in

line for milk for 40 minutes.

But now it's 2020, and there's

the internet, and still these scoundrels are

telling us point-blank that in the USA,

of course, the standard of living has been stuck in the 1950s,

while in Russia people have never lived

more prosperously than under Putin. Want

to argue? As they say, get in touch with

us. Seriously—you earn 11,000 rubles a month. Want

to argue that you've never lived so

well-fed? And separately, what's astonishing is this:

I looked at the St. Petersburg штаб (headquarters/office),

and naturally they were outraged too. And, well, the

local journalists were outraged—in fact,

the whole local community was, because everyone

understands perfectly well that this crook,

Sheremet, and this whole regional television outfit,

is such a deeply loss-making operation. In

2018 it posted a net

loss of 14 million rubles (about $150,000 / €140,000). It

is financed with regional budget money, which

means money is taken from this woman earning 11,000 rubles

to pay these

people—if you can even call them that—

who tell her that never before

has she lived so richly. What's more, until

recently this was simply such a

really—well, a perfect example—until

recently this television channel

was owned

jointly by the regional government and

an offshore company from the British Virgin

Islands. I mean, and then the share of those

offshore companies was transferred to

an oligarch,

to a firm belonging to the structures of the oligarch

Vekselberg. It's all mixed together—everything.

Regional money, which has effectively been

stolen from unfortunate people; offshore companies;

some kind of oligarchic, oligarchic

firm—so the whole mafia of bloodsuckers,

starting with these journalists and ending with

Vekselberg, the oligarchs, and regional

officials, are parasitizing on this

television channel and talking about

the 'aggressive blonde,'

Navalny's provocateurs who dare

to demand some additional

pay. It's just absolutely

fantastic. I

would of course like for people in

Yekaterinburg—they all know this situation there—

we just wanted to draw attention to it once

again, and say a few choice words

to those people who, in such an brazen

way,

mock and humiliate others. It's just that when we

watch this, it looks—I would even say—

I laughed when I saw it—like a kind of

completely parodic report. But

it's not even a parody report—this is actually

real, and that's genuinely how they interpret things.

the truth for our money to all of us, everyone who

wants a pay raise should be fired, and

aggressive blondes

we have never lived so richly, but that

is exactly the reason why we are all living

poorer and poorer, why we are in

poverty, and why people are earning 11

thousand rubles because we agree to listen to

these lies

in a normal situation, people would now be out on the streets of

Yekaterinburg and

would say: we demand the dismissal of

all those scoundrels who

dared to say such things. We

demand they be thrown out to hell

more or less. We demand higher

wages, the governor’s dismissal. As long as we tolerate

this, this is what happens. So let’s

look at the questions. 34,000 people are

watching live. Let me remind you that on

Twitter, with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, you can

ask questions. Grigory asks:

Grigory Rakov: tell us about the problems with

uranium mining in Kurgan Region

the head of the Kurgan штаб (regional political office) spoke about it

the head of the Doctors’ Alliance. Well, you can go

I won’t go into detail or get sidetracked

simply because right now I don’t know

the material well enough to

talk about it, but you can go to

the website of our штаб (regional office) in Kurgan

it really is a major problem there

Kurgan Region is one of the poorest

regions and one of the most troubled

environmentally, and not only

there really, this affects

people are being poisoned, and this is a very serious

problem

Fyodor Hill Fischer asks me

tell us what you think about the evacuation of our

fellow citizens from Wuhan to the city of Tyumen, and

in Tyumen we have many people who are for it

and even more who are against it. Thank you, I

will definitely talk about it. I have

it in the plan, I’ll talk about it a bit later

it made a big

impression on me. By the way,

thanks for writing, I didn’t know that

there are apparently some people in Tyumen

who are against this, and those who are in favor, and

the ones most opposed are those unfortunate

people who were brought to Tyumen. With all

due respect to Tyumen, those same people

had been promised they would be taken to the Moscow

Region, and instead they were dropped somewhere in Tyumen

we’ll definitely talk about it. Channel One

is blaring that the U.S. is infecting China with

the coronavirus. My coworkers

and pensioners believe it. I just can’t—I

wanted to show you this video, but Channel One

will get us banned. In fact,

there is now basically an entire section in

Channel One’s news that

is called “Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories.” Well,

they use that phrase, “conspiracy theories,”

and then go on to spout complete nonsense

I mean, it’s just lies about how

the U.S. invented the coronavirus, that inside the corona-

virus there is the AIDS virus, I mean

they tell the most outrageous

tall tales, again invented under

the slogan, under the label of “conspiracy theories,” as if

they aren’t real—but they are presented as real news

they look like real news, with

a real news anchor, and this is happening

on actual news broadcasts. And all of this is done

so that pensioners will believe it and

discuss endless nonsense instead of

discussing, in particular,

the state of Russian healthcare

let me talk a little about

write your questions, I’ll answer them, and

in the meantime I’ll tell you about the “years torn out”

that Vladimir Solovyov is promising

to arrange for our lawyer, Aleksandr

Golovach. And in general, they’ve got this whole

funny little confrontation going on between

Golovach and him on Twitter, I mean

between Golovach and Solovyov, which

however is now developing the way

any confrontation between any

person and Vladimir Solovyov develops

it consists of Solovyov

simply banning Golovach. The thing is

that, as you know—I talked about this—

some time ago Solovyov

made a film in which he simply glorifies

Benito Mussolini, and

he writes various texts where he basically says

what a wonderful man

Mussolini was, and in this

activity of glorifying Mussolini

he is actively supported by our mighty channel

Russia Today, by Margarita Simonyan, and

strictly speaking, what RT

does there with state money

receiving 22 billion rubles in subsidies annually

looks strange. But okay, if Vladimir

Solovyov likes Mussolini, that’s fine

you can tell in general by his whole

clothes, by his whole look, those

collars and all that, that he clearly

likes that sort of thing. But basically

he works as a Russian analogue of Goebbels

though Goebbels was at least some kind of

high-ranking figure; Solovyov works

as the Russian analogue of the people who

served under Goebbels and spread that deadly

Russian propaganda. In other words, he lies all

the time, so in principle it’s clear why

Solovyov

has a soft spot for fascists, and all these people

who lie endlessly. So he believes in it and

keeps pouring it on. In the end

it’s his personal opinion: Solovyov likes

fascists and fascist propaganda. But

at the same time, as you know, in Russia we have

an entire ongoing story about how

a huge one about what it means

that everyone who disagrees with some official

interpretation

in the official wording, basically what

these propagandists say, people like

Solovyov on Russian TV channels, is what

gets written in textbooks, and all sorts of people like that

all these people need to be jailed

a special criminal statute was invented here, as

you may remember, there was this episode

with the coordinator of our

our headquarters in Volgograd, they opened

a criminal case

because they made a photomontage of the famous

The Motherland Calls statue, with its face smeared

green, because in Volgograd I was attacked

with brilliant green antiseptic, and they opened a criminal

case for desecrating the statue, even though it was

just an image, and across the country they are opening

criminal cases against people who

said something the wrong way or thought the wrong

thing

about the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet term for the Eastern Front of World War II), and

our lawyer, Alexandra Golovach, and, well,

basically decided to do a mirror-image

version of it: if you, the Kremlin,

have made up all this nonsense

and at the same time your propagandist

is praising Mussolini, then let’s

use your

official idiotic criminal statute and

charge Solovyov and Simonyan with

rehabilitating Nazism. Let’s watch 40 seconds

of Golovach’s video and see who

Benito Mussolini was

A coward? No,

a very brave man, an athlete, a murderer,

an antisemite, a brute. Here it’s no longer about what

is written about him showing that he supposedly

treated women very respectfully, but

perhaps among such clearly pronounced

shortcomings, that would be the last one he had

On January 7 of this year, Solovyov

retweeted on his Telegram channel a very

frank post by a Russia Today columnist

Igor Molotov: “Vladimir Solovyov made

a very necessary film, necessary above all

because here the Duce is considered a maniac and

people do not understand that fascism and bastardized

Nazism

are different things. Mussolini was a brilliant

man who gave the world a third path, along which

Russia is partly traveling today

Mussolini was a brilliant man

who set in motion the path that

Russia is following at the beginning

And then they say: who was Mussolini?

An antisemite, a fascist, a Nazi thug? Of course not

Just replace Mussolini with

someone else — Bandera, for example

whom Solovyov talks about endlessly

or anyone else, Hitler. Who was Hitler?

A fascist [__] and a Nazi, but then

he built roads and started a brilliant

path. Who was Bandera? An antisemite

who organized pogroms? No, of course not

of course, he was brilliant, blah blah blah blah

blah — substitute any word with any

other surname. Solovyov’s film

is simply a justification of fascism

that is guaranteed to fall under a criminal statute, and in

that sense Golovach was absolutely right

to say: if you invented this statute

then go ahead and jail your own mouthpiece under it

under that statute

And Solovyov, of course, absolutely lost it

and immediately banned Golovach

and now on his program — why did I decide

to show this? What struck me was the very

expression: “we’ll give him torn-out

years”

Yes, that’s great — apparently it’ll be a new

meme, “to give someone torn-out years.” Let’s

watch how, on his morning show,

Solovyov gets outraged by what

was written by a person who understands nothing

about history and nothing about jurisprudence

and the point is that what he wrote contains an element

of false denunciation and slander, so

we’ll see, maybe we really will give him some torn-out

years. But the funny part is something else: he suddenly discovered

a film from 2013 — so he’s also

slow, too.

You see, in 2013 it was possible to justify

Nazism, but now, of course, with the

anniversary

75th anniversary of Victory, you can’t do that anymore

anymore. And so Vladimir Solovyov

interestingly enough, is trying to thread the needle

saying: now I’m different. Interesting

By the way, take a look at the investigation

on our own channel, Navalny Live

Golovach’s investigation — there’s a substantial

really great section there, apparently the one

that Solovyov is most outraged by

but which he keeps quiet about

it’s about Solovyov’s family and Sberbank

It turned out there that Solovyov’s wife

works at Sberbank, Solovyov’s son shoots

ads for Sberbank — so basically

the entire Solovyov family is feeding off

a state-owned bank, apparently in

exchange for some kind of PR

services, or I don’t know what exactly he does for them

That raises a big

question

for German Gref: why is he feeding this

whole gang? And I think we, and Golovach himself,

will keep working on this further

If you work at Sberbank and know something

about this family, write to us at

Black Box — google “Black Box” and you’ll find it right away

because it seems to me that it’s important

to talk about how this

man with a residence permit in Italy

and houses in Italy

who shouted that he would send his son

to Syria

But he didn't send him to Syria.

He sent him to Sberbank to make money at

the state-owned bank, a lot, a lot, a lot of

money. It's quite a curious story.

You have to admit, 40,000 people are watching us

live. Timofey Platonov asks:

"Alexei, what's going on with Ruslan? What

news is there about Ruslan?" The news is rather

interesting. Ruslan and our lawyers—

we have filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Defense

because, quite obviously,

Ruslan, an employee of BK, was apparently

abducted and taken to Novaya Zemlya (a remote Russian Arctic archipelago). There, they are not

respecting his basic rights; they are not allowing him

even to send letters or receive letters.

They won't allow parcels either. And to make matters worse,

he was taken from home, and his family can't

even send him warm clothes or any kind of

supplies. Of course he has some army-issued things, but

still, somehow they need to send the guy

wool socks. But they can't do that

because no

correspondence reaches him. And the court ruled that

the detainee should be brought to

Arkhangelsk, where today's

court hearing took place. Our lawyer went there today,

and press secretary Kira Yarmysh went as well.

But the detainee was not brought to

the hearing from Novaya Zemlya.

So, as before, there is still

no contact with them. We are trying to achieve that, and

again, if you happen to be on Novaya Zemlya

and something like this has happened to you, and you're watching

this program, get in touch with us somehow

and tell us

what is happening. Nikolai Bayev asks

me: "Alexei, who do you think gave up

the creators of the Telegram channel *Cello Case*?"

There is such a channel, *Cello Case*.

A very funny channel—well, I mean, they kind of

they write, of course, not always very funnily,

but they insult all officials.

I mean, if they write something about

Peskov, for example, the intro will be something unusual like:

"serial pedophile, pervert"—

"Peskov did this and that," and all of it

is supplied with various hyperlinks. And this

channel undoubtedly irritated

our authorities very strongly, and I can absolutely believe

the story that they wrote something about

Mishustin, and

Mishustin begged the FSB. We know that they

are very sensitive about

truthful information about themselves. He begged the FSB

to do something about this channel.

Some people have been detained, and it is still not very

clear whether these people really ran

the *Cello Case* channel.

As I understand it, the Telegram channel is still

there now, and all the posts are still in it. You

can go there, but it is not being updated

because, whoever these people were, their

SIM cards were taken away, or they were simply intimidated and

told, "We know who you are,

so if you write anything else,

we'll kill you." In short, something happened to them,

but for now it is unclear who these people are.

Of course, I do not always agree with

the editorial policy of *Cello Case*.

It seems to me they were involved in

some kind of commercial activity around it. Well,

for example, they went after

Kostin very aggressively and wrote about Kostin and Asker-zadeh

a long time ago, but then at some

point, when Asker-zadeh began buying up

blocks in all the media, *Cello Case*

for some reason stopped writing—specifically, about our

investigations.

They did not write a single word, and that

really seemed like some kind of sign that

either they had been intimidated or they had been paid.

I don't know, and I won't make false accusations, but

overall the channel was good. I want to send

them my regards, express my support, and hope

that they won't be swallowed up, that they won't be turned into

yet another Potupchik-style channel

that spreads lies like that.

Dmitry Kharitonov asks me:

"Alexei, have you seen that interview with Alena

Vodonaeva? What do you think?"

I have read a lot about this interview.

About how Alena Vodonaeva was telling

the blunt truth. I will definitely watch it; for now

I haven't yet. She certainly criticizes our authorities

quite fiercely.

And, very importantly, she is not afraid. As for

all sorts of Instagram divas and the like,

we'll talk about them at the end of our program.

But Vodonaeva is great, at least

because she is not afraid to express her

opinion, whatever it may be, and is not afraid

to criticize our supreme

commander-in-chief, who this

week, well, just

—I had been waiting for this, waiting, though honestly

I did not really expect it to happen for the 15th

time, because everyone has already laughed at the phrase

"there's no time to waste."

Everyone, absolutely everyone, has laughed at it already.

He has said it publicly at least

on television—not just that we must get down

to work and that there is no time

to waste—at least 14 times. Let's

first take a look

at a roundup of how Putin talks about there being no time

to waste throughout his

presidency, many, many times. Without

wasting time, I would like

the deputies, including those elected

for the first time, to get to work as quickly as possible, without delay.

I very much count on

everyone understanding that this

initial stage is over and, without

any further delay, getting down to

joint work. You know this well,

so I very much ask you, without delay, not to

drag your feet and to get to work.

There is a great deal of work to be done in this area.

In any case, we need to act without

any delay, as quickly as possible, the speaker says,

without any so-called "warming up." We still have

a lot of hard work ahead of us.

There is no time for warming up, we have no

time for warming up, as I already said.

A lot of time for warming up will not

be needed; there is simply no reserve of time for warming up

for any further dithering and coordination.

There isn't any. This has long since turned into a meme—a meme

about how they don't do a damn thing, they only

say one thing after another, and behind the words

"there's no time for warming up," nothing

happens. In other words, the words are spoken, and then

nothing happens, and a year later there's a new

meeting, and the person speaking says nothing was done:

"Guys, we need to get moving, there's no time for

warming up, no time for warming up." The ministers nod,

after which they disperse again and

go back to their own business—building

their dachas (country houses). And then there's a new government, and everything

starts over again: no time for warming up.

Putin comes out and repeats his own

now truly legendary phrase: "Therefore, I believe

that the current lineup has absolutely no

not even one minute to warm up—simply

no right to do so." That's exactly what I mean.

The best part is that at that moment

the camera shows Siluanov

—you know, Siluanov, who has been sitting in this

government for years, and by now he has

heard this "warming up" line 14 times, and still he

hasn't done a damn thing. And in general, all of this—

they're trying to build a new

legend for us: that government failed,

sure, the old government failed,

but now new people have come in.

Mishustin has arrived, and now, you could say, they can once again

claim there's no time for warming up.

And supposedly they'll finally start working. But that's

nonsense: it's the same people sitting there. Out of

the 22 members of the government, 12

key figures remained. In other words, it's all the same

people under Mishustin's leadership,

and he too has been in this government

and in public service for 22 years already.

And now these same old

pointless idlers, who are

pointless idlers not because

I'm calling them that on my program,

but because we have 20 years of experience

watching them. You know, if you spend 20 years

observing monkeys in a zoo, and

you see that the monkeys lie around lazily, eating

bananas, and one of them periodically says

something like, "There's no time for warming up," or

whatever it is she's saying there in

monkey language, while all the others just

kind of nod their heads and keep

lying there—if after 20 years we've figured that out,

I mean, if we know enough about the monkeys

to write a book about

them—then when one of the monkeys

says something resembling words about

warming up, the other monkeys do nothing.

And here it's exactly the same.

It was just so funny to watch

Siluanov and all the others when

they hear, "There's no time for warming up, guys,"

and think, sure, we've heard this for the 15th time, and

nothing will happen except this

—nothing except

nothing at all beyond that.

What's funny is that Putin keeps saying it.

I mean, maybe you could imagine

that he doesn't know about

the existence of this meme.

As is well known, Putin doesn't use

the internet, and the internet is brought to him

printed out—maybe, I don't know. Maybe

Peskov (Putin's press secretary) is setting him up in a funny way, and they themselves

are waiting for this phrase. Medvedev used to have

this thing where he would fall asleep everywhere, and

everyone would always wait for him to close

his eyes so they could take a screenshot and write,

"Ha ha, Medvedev fell asleep again, fell asleep at

the meeting." So with Putin, the government members themselves

are basically playing bingo and saying,

"What are the odds the old man says something today about

warming up? Ha ha, let's see." That's about the 15th time.

He's said it.

But overall, all of this is of course really

sad, because

it illustrates that in reality, apart from

empty talk and ritual repetition of the same

thing over and over, there is simply nothing else.

Nothing is happening, and nothing will happen

except

for mutual encouragement, like, "Come on, guys,

let's go, there's no time for warming up,

no time for warming up." Apart from that,

there is absolute emptiness: no ideas,

no plans, no road maps. Or rather,

all of that did exist—it was there, it was

approved in 2008, 2009, 2010.

It was called Program 2020, and it completely

failed. And now the same people, slightly

reshuffled, are sitting there telling each other

that they don't have

any time for warming up.

And this kind of absurdity,

this absurd discussion, the absurdity of the context and everything around it,

of course reached one of its peaks this very week.

It somehow showed one of

its high points, its culmination.

It was Putin's meeting with people in

Cherepovets, and it looked quite something.

Obviously, the president—the president of Russia—

of a country at war, needs security measures.

In that sense, I'm fine with it.

When, you know, at the start of

some summit, he goes to the bathroom and

six bodyguards go with him—well, he isn't supposed

to wander around alone somewhere; he's

the president.

When Trump goes to the bathroom, or Obama did, with

26 security guards around him—basically,

he is the president of a huge country at war.

countries, and there are many people in the world who

want to kill him, or do something to him,

so he has to be protected. Well, if you have to be

protected, and it is very important for you to hold this

meeting with people, then bring them through

some checkpoint somewhere, and don’t pretend that you

just happened to run into people. But again,

they bring Putin the internet in printed form,

so they still live in

a reality where they think, let’s stage

some kind of choreographed meeting and say that

Putin just happened, purely by chance, to stop the car

he was just driving by, saw that people were standing there, some men

and told the driver, all right, driver,

please stop the car, I’m going to

get out now and talk to the people. They stop

the car, and then he goes and talks to the people.

Let’s see how all this was shown

on television.

[applause]

[music]

Just random people outside a Dixy grocery store (a Russian discount supermarket chain).

Well, it’s kind of strange that they’re

standing behind that little barrier,

waiting for you. But then, when we saw video from

another angle, it became clear that this

“chance encounter” had been prepared for a very long time.

Let’s watch 37 seconds of what this video

actually looked like.

Putin’s “chance encounter” with the people was

basically a military operation: a cordon,

FSO barriers, checkpoints, a sniper sitting on the roof

in advance, watching how Putin would

meet with the people. Why the hell—this is

the question for Putin—why is this necessary, and whom are they

trying to fool this way?

That’s first of all. Second, it really

shows the full extent of the alienation. People often

have to say that people supposedly love

to say this sort of thing: that Putin, of course,

is supposedly out of touch with ordinary people, but this

really shows just how out of touch he is

with the people. It’s a well-known thing that any

big boss interacts with whom? “I

know how ordinary people live—I talk to my driver,”

he says. He talks to his driver, his secretary,

someone else around him; sometimes he

meets a cleaner in the hallway.

He says, “So, Galina, how are things

going?” “Fine, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin’s first name and patronymic, a formal Russian mode of address),

everything’s fine. They raised my pension recently,”

“there was an indexation.” And that is what his

experience of communicating with people is made up of. If for 20 years

all the “people” you see are

specially prepared grandmothers, every

other one carefully vetted,

behind a fence, under watch, under the sights

of a sniper, waiting for several hours

for you to stop and supposedly

talk to them by chance—yet he himself can see it all.

Surely Putin notices the sniper too,

notices the people, notices all of this,

that everything is cordoned off, and he understands that he is taking part in

this whole farce. And yet,

this farce is being fed to us on the one hand,

but I am absolutely sure that he

functions within it himself, so they really

are completely cut off from the people. And all these

reports—I opened my program with

a TASS report,

and a report from Yekaterinburg television, saying that

since the 1950s everything in America has been going downhill,

the people are getting poorer, while under Putin

people live well. He really, over these

20 years, has come to believe that everyone lives well

only because of him, while the whole world is collapsing

around him. In the end, if day after day you see only

people who

are happy and cheerful and

everything is wonderful for them, and they wish you

success, then of course you start to think that’s really how it is.

These are serious people, after all.

You met them on the street. Sure, in blogs

some people grumble, and some

journalist occasionally says something, but most likely

the Americans paid them all, of course.

“When you meet people on the street—I talked

to the people,” Putin tells

his ministers, before saying

the phrase “there’s no time to waste”; “I was

talking to people, and they explained to me

that pensions are fine,”

“now we need to adopt in the Constitution

a decision about some kind of

indexation, but everything is fine. I’ve

seen the people, I know. And those who are unhappy are

unhappy for some particular reason.”

And that reason, of course, must be connected to the fact that

someone paid them or bribed them.

So please instruct the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service)

to check how things really are arranged,

because, well, it can’t possibly be

that everyone is perfectly happy and only some

small group is dissatisfied—they must be dissatisfied

for some reason. This is really deeply rooted

in his mind, including because of such

staged meetings. And I often talk about how

some things like this,

symbolic and ritualized as they may be,

lead to a kind of extreme degradation

of the state. Just imagine: the entire machine

of lies is already functioning in a way that is

almost like North Korea.

They rounded up people, positioned snipers,

set up the television crews, and these camera operators

are standing in the cold, shifting from one foot to the other,

because in a moment there will be a false

report about how Putin met with

the people. They know it, he knows it, the people

standing there know it and understand that they are going to

pretend to be random passersby. It is simply

this enormous whole structure

of lies, which of course distorts everything.

And after that, these people working in

television will of course lie about anything

at all, because, well, because they have already

taken part in something completely

absurd—a staged lie, almost comedic in nature.

Of course, all these "artists" are employees

of the special services. What honest service can we

expect from them if they take part in such a

grand, mega-scale lie?

Every, every, every day, and without

a written order. But in principle, it would have been possible,

probably no one would have killed Putin. But if

he had simply, by chance, suddenly, without

preparation—terrorists, after all, do not know that

he will get out of the car, walk into a Dixy (a Russian discount grocery chain), and go

chat with ordinary people.

He will never, ever do that, because

in reality, people there would not

rush at him with their fists—they would say something like,

"Our salaries are 11,000 rubles a month (about $120)," and that is exactly what he

does not want to hear. And so

he pretends as if no one is

telling him that, and as if no one ever will. And in that

there is, of course, a grand metaphysical

problem of constant deterioration—

a samsara-like worsening, the deterioration of the situation in Russia is

connected with this as well. No,

someone asks me whether, in response to

lawsuits for insult, one can file suits for

defamation. You can, but they can only be considered

in theory—no one will actually do it, because lawsuits

for insult against you will be filed

by officials, while defamation suits will be filed

by you against officials,

and you will definitely lose them—unless

there happens to be a judge like the one in

St. Petersburg, who issued the ruling I

mentioned at the beginning of the program. Andrei

asks me: the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank

are preparing a law, by analogy, on pensions—13

percent. What do you think about that?

I do not know anything about it.

Perhaps Vladimir Milov spoke about it on his program,

but I would have difficulty right now

saying anything that I am one hundred

percent sure of. Someone asked me about the evacuation,

and if we can bring that person's question up again later,

the listener from Tyumen asked me visually—

asked me what I think about the evacuation

that took place. It really

was discussed, and it does deserve

discussion, because it was, of course,

also something like

a bizarre act of state propaganda

that turned into a fact of collective

humiliation for our country. Here, Fyodor...

Alexei, I will repeat the question once again:

tell us what you think about the evacuation

of our fellow citizens from Wuhan to the city of Tyumen.

I am from Tyumen myself. There are many of us here who support it,

and even more who are against it. Thank you. I

think it was a real disgrace and

humiliation. What happened was this: there are citizens

of Russia in China, specifically in Wuhan,

and some of them voluntarily said,

"Evacuate us." They said they wanted to be taken out

to Tyumen and to the Moscow region.

Many countries were evacuating people from

China—that is normal. And so our

fellow citizens saw that, for example,

the Americans were taking people out of China, and it

looked a certain way.

There are many different photos

showing how evacuations happen.

Take the Germans, for example—let us look.

Show us what the evacuation

of the Germans looked like. Well, the Germans—usually

they sent regular passenger planes, after all.

It is important to understand: they were not evacuating

sick people. They were not necessarily sick.

These were simply people

who were in an area where they could

become infected, and they were sent on ordinary

planes. These people were transported under the supervision

of medical staff. They were treated like

human beings, not like people who, you know, had just

been bitten by a zombie and therefore

would, in about 5 to 7 minutes,

turn into a zombie and had to be restrained

in advance, while the person could still say,

"Sorry, Petya or John, you understand

what is about to happen to you, so now I am going to

tie you to the seat so that when this

happens and you start screaming, saying a stake has been

driven through your heart..." And John, in tears,

says, "Yes, kill me, brother, because

in an hour I will become a zombie." There was nothing like that. They were

just people. They were not sick, and most

of them were not sick. That is how the Germans were transported.

That is how the French were transported. Show us

how the French were taken out—the French were transported like this too.

The same thing. You see? Doctors, an ordinary

passenger plane. The Turks were transported the same way.

Show us the people from

Turkey. And citizens of Kazakhstan were taken out like this too.

They were evacuated in much the same way,

again on a regular passenger plane. But

they sat wearing masks. These were normal,

ordinary people. They would be brought in, checked, and if

necessary, maybe placed in quarantine. Well,

they were treated like human beings, and that

is logical. So what the hell happened in Russia?

First of all, some kind of

completely vile PR stunt was staged. It was announced:

"We are evacuating everyone. This is very important." And

suddenly, to bring them back, we send not just

a plane—it was not even that many people.

You just needed to send a plane.

There are plenty of planes in the country, [__], judging by the fact

that all sorts of people fly around on them—

askers, Svetlanas, Medvedevs—every minister,

officially, if we look at state procurement records,

takes a plane for any little thing, just

to fly from city to city. So there was no

problem chartering one and sending it, as

all the other countries did—

an ordinary plane to bring these people back.

It is quite a long flight. They are flying, they

need to be fed, they want to go to

the bathroom.

They want to sit in a seat and look out

the window, like people do on airplanes. But no, damn it,

we sent a military transport aircraft for them.

an Aerospace Forces plane, and over all of this

Shoigu (Russia’s defense minister) will be shamelessly promoting himself

some other people, and they were flying, but

seriously, what was this—even Kotovsk, this base

some kind of flying spectacle was staged, show

how our people were flown—it’s no wonder that

one of the most popular comparisons

for this flight was with the way

dogs are transported

Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov—we did

an investigation into this too, yes, he transports dogs to

shows on a private jet

that costs several million

dollars, while here, again, these are people

just ordinary people, basically

most likely not sick, but still, just look

at the photos: they were transported on a

cargo plane, and they waited

and later said in interviews that there was no

toilet there; instead, on the plane they had set up

tents, and inside the tents there were buckets

tell me, please—even Onishchenko (Russia’s former chief sanitary official), of all people,

as fanatical as he is, said that from the

sanitary point of view, this was

monstrous. So, 50 people are flying, and possibly

one of them is sick, but the task, presumably,

should logically be to make sure they don’t

infect one another. But if instead of

a normal toilet we set up a tent, and in the

tent we put a bucket, and for several

hours of flight they have to use that bucket in the

tent, then that is probably, quite literally,

creating the conditions

where, if one person is sick, they will

infect everyone else there. What

happens next? They are told, “We are taking you

to Moscow, to the Moscow region,”

and then suddenly—well, because they’re, you know,

basically zombies—if you warn them in advance, they’ll

start tearing their clothes off and

smashing the windows—so they are taken

to the Tyumen region. So there was no money for

a proper plane, but there was money to

put them in a boarding house

and, within a day, equip that boarding house

with a bunch of surveillance cameras and set up a double

cordon of Rosgvardiya (Russia’s National Guard), and then proudly announce

it: “You know, we put up a double

barrier—no zombie will fly out or run away.”

You were asking me who is for it and who is

against it. Viewer from Tyumen, don’t worry,

dear viewer from Tyumen: not one of these

supposed terrifying mutants

they brought in will smash a window or

make it to you and bite you, because on the

way, either the first Rosgvardiya cordon

or the second fearsome Rosgvardiya cordon

will shoot them. Honestly, what kind of

idiocy is this? These are ordinary

people, yes, they need to be placed in quarantine

People get sick with coronavirus and

recover; the death rate is relatively high

relatively high for this

disease, but it’s not something like one hundred

percent, or 90, or even 10 percent

of the people who get sick dying. These are

ordinary people, and they deserve normal

humane treatment. What kind of

absurdity is this?

Well, it’s like they chose Tyumen in case

they break out and start biting people, and

the residents of Tyumen and their whole families get infected,

then we’ll basically be able, without major

losses, to drop a damn atomic

bomb there and burn them all, like they show in movies

—there are vast, snow-covered

open spaces there, which will prevent

any surviving zombies and the virus floating through

the air from reaching any densely

populated areas. Seriously,

at the same time, there are things that make this situation

—two things happening that make

the situation completely hellishly comical

and idiotic. You know that at the same time as

the double Rosgvardiya perimeter, with

surveillance cameras and so on, they are still

selling stays there. How is that possible—someone

I mean, they placed these people in a

guarded sanatorium, right? But there

they didn’t take up all the rooms, and the sanatorium

is operating as usual. Journalists from

Open Media simply called and

asked whether this was the same sanatorium

and whether you could come there just by buying

a stay for 1,500 rubles (about $16)

Let’s listen. “Hello, could you

please tell me, is your weekend offer

valid? I’d like to book a room.”

“Yes, you can book a stay. Which one would you like?”

“A regular one or a treatment package?”

“A single room. There’ll be just one person—well, me.”

“I’ll be alone. Is it possible for this weekend?”

“Just one question: I heard that at the

sanatorium in Tyumen they brought in

people evacuated from China. Isn’t that the place

where the people from China were taken?”

“I’d like to be sure it’s safe.”

“The patients are in another building.”

“I was already planning to come.” “You’re not just…”

They simply didn’t want to answer the question. “Booked, thank you.”

I mean, it’s just absolutely astonishing

—they stage this nationwide clown show:

military plane, Tyumen, double security cordon,

surveillance cameras, not a single zombie will get through, not a single one will

jump out—but if you want to come there

for 1,500 rubles (about $16),

a single room at the Atlantik Hotel or at the

sanatorium

Gradostroitel will be booked for you. We are a

rehabilitation center—come on over.”

That is all of Russia, and the entire Putin-era

system of governance, right there in this

fully expressed: super-mega

idiocy costing enormous amounts of money

security, of course, made up of idle National Guard

troops—please, come to our

sanatorium, and then go back home

—come with your children to our sanatorium.

you'll have a wonderful rest at our rehabilitation center

center together with these—he said two things before that

which simply makes the situation and

dietary—you will be able to without any problem

talk to our people who

were evacuated, and Russia remains one of

the few countries, and in my opinion almost

the only country in Europe in which

that continues, without any real problems,

air traffic with China. It is, sort of,

restricted—some flights have been canceled there, but

there are still nearly 10 flights a day

British Airways is arriving

and then on the second day they stopped flights

Lufthansa stopped flights

Air France stopped flying, and only

Russia's Aeroflot keeps banging out flights from

China. But then those who

fly here are not even taken

first to Tyumen, to a sanatorium, and kept

there for three weeks, and only then sent on

Right now, the easiest way for a Chinese traveler

to get to Europe is through Moscow, and they

are all flying through Moscow, and the probability

and—there's nothing terrible about it, no need to

burn these Chinese people with a flamethrower as soon as

they come down the stairs from the plane, but the probability

that, of course, some sick people

infected with coronavirus have flown in

are flying in, or are right now wandering somewhere

through the halls of Sheremetyevo Airport, is of course

an order of magnitude higher than the probability that

someone among these

private individuals in that sanatorium box

at Gradostroitel near Tyumen is sick. I mean,

it's just—well, first of all, security theater

as is well known, this kind of thing

is something the Russian authorities are very close to

when there are lots of measures

for security and they make absolutely no

sense—this is a typical example of

security theater, but also the embodiment of extreme

idiocy. Flights continue, while to the boarding house

Gradostroitel we put a lot of

our citizens—140 people

we will, deliberately and ritualistically,

treat them like cattle: first

we haul them in a cattle truck, then

lock them up somewhere, then announce that we are

guarding them because they are zombies, and

supposedly—well, Chinese people, Chinese people are flying

they keep flying, and of course we are not going to

treat them that way because they

pay money. So of course, for what is happening,

for this, for what is going on, for this

idiocy

half of all those people should be fired

those people—the person who

came up with this whole PR campaign simply

really ought to be jailed. But they are feeding

people this stuff. There was a question right at the beginning

of the program about why Channel One (Russia's main state TV channel)

is telling stories that Americans

invented the coronavirus and that inside it there is

AIDS, and so on. Well, because

they don't want people discussing these real

things, so that they don't discuss—do you know what I

saw? Something absolutely incredible. They found

in what region was it—Zabaykalsky Krai (a region in eastern Russia)

they have a health minister there

named Valery Kozhevnikov. That is,

the health minister of a region that

is in the east, and where, accordingly, we

believe there is an elevated

elevated probability that Chinese people

who are sick came to Baikal and are traveling, and every

time they are turned into zombies. One would assume that

the health minister would have at least

in his hospitals at minimum

the latest equipment, at least for

the minister. And then we watch the video

give us the photo—no, we even have video of it

34 seconds

the guy literally came to visit—on board there

were people sick with coronavirus, and he

was wearing ski goggles. Literally, the guy—the minister

of health—there was nothing there, well

nothing more appropriate, more

medical, so he just put on

ski goggles. Let's watch

a few seconds

[music]

everything is fine at work, no issues, stay calm

stay composed

passage

[music]

Are you laughing? And they really showed this

on television in order to calm

the public, like, everything is under control. And

the public sees that he is wearing

some kind of cutting-edge medical

equipment, maybe some kind of device

that scans a person

some sort of X-ray—no, it's a ski

goggle that the minister put on because

in all of Zabaykalsky Krai there is no more

appropriate medical equipment

but in order to keep the public from

freaking out at the very idea that in

an entire federal subject (region), the minister, in order

to stage some kind of

pathetic, incomprehensible PR stunt, while our

population cannot find something

resembling what a doctor ought to wear, and

instead he wears ski goggles—well, that is exactly

why they invent all sorts of nonsense on

Channel One. Of course it's much better

to speculate whether or not the Americans

invented this coronavirus than to think

about where all the money is that

over all these years was invested in

Russian healthcare. I mean

all of this really is, of course,

quite something. And in Tatarstan, by the way,

they've already arranged it with me—there was

a very, very funny story there, and

its development

happened literally right before

On our program, our штаб (Navalny campaign office) reported

that today it released an investigation into this

brazen woman who works as

the Minister of Culture

of Tatarstan (a republic within Russia) — this lady, the culture minister.

So naturally, she treats

cultural sites as if they were her own property.

There is, in Kazan,

a contemporary art gallery that

is state-owned, a government-run

gallery. People called there

and asked whether it could be rented out

for private events, and no — it cannot be rented

for private purposes.

It is a state gallery.

But then suddenly it was closed

for one year — sorry, for one day — and

there was a notice saying it would be

closed to visitors for technical

reasons. It turned out that what was happening there was

of course, the wedding of the minister’s daughter.

The culture minister’s daughter — well, it has to be something more stylish than

a restaurant, right? You have to impress the guests.

So no problem — just go ahead and

say, “Come on, it’s just a museum.”

“Please close it for one day, we’ll hold

the wedding there.” Let’s watch 16 seconds of what

this wonderful wedding looked like.

[music]

[applause]

Well, it is cool, isn’t it? Really

beautiful — a wedding people will remember.

Let other ordinary people

do theirs at the registry office (ZAGS, the state civil registry office) or in a restaurant somewhere,

or rent some banquet hall, but we

will do it right in the gallery, with paintings hanging there — really

everything looks great, and she walks in and it all

looks so lovely, and the minister stands there beaming.

And outside there is a sign: closed for

technical reasons. Want to rent

this hall? No chance for you. Let’s hear a call with

the question of whether other people — you or

me — can celebrate, hold a wedding, celebrate

a wedding anniversary. Let’s listen.

Hello, I

would like to ask whether your museum

offers any kind of rental

of the gallery for an event.

Unfortunately, no, it does not, you understand.

Unfortunately, no. But that makes sense — this is

a state-owned gallery; how could it

be rented out for weddings or for

something else? You know, someone toasting the newlyweds

and splashing red wine onto

a painting — whether it is worth a lot or a little,

it does not matter. It is a state

gallery. Obviously there are certain

restrictions. But what is funny is how events developed

and the crafty behavior of Tatarstan’s officials,

who are, well, very

particular kinds of crooks, who think that

if they twist things cleverly enough,

they can get away with it. And now Irada Ayupova

is at the center of a huge scandal.

She is now looking for some way

to make everyone leave her alone, specifically to make

our штаб (Navalny campaign office) back off, because they think like this:

the Navalny штаб (campaign office)

is blowing up the scandal. They, of course, in

Tatarstan control absolutely all

media, and they need our штаб (campaign office) to stop

writing about it. So when we once again

called them, they said in complete seriousness:

“Do you know that, like, the minister

and Navalny have already settled everything just fine?”

Let’s listen to the audio from the reception office.

Good afternoon, this is the website of the штаб (campaign office)

calling — I spoke with you

some time ago.

Yes, regarding Irada Ayupova.

From the reception office: “And the Navalny штаб (campaign office)

didn’t tell you, Vladislav, that the minister has already

spoken directly herself?” “Directly with whom?”

“With him.” “With whom — with Navalny?”

“So the minister personally spoke with

Alexei himself?” “All right, so she did.”

Thank you very much. Goodbye.”

Our colleague was genuinely taken aback. I mean, they

apparently think this kind of obvious

scam will work — they are simply trying

to say: the bosses have already

talked among themselves and sorted everything out, so

you can stop sending out

press releases. Your Navalny has already said

it is all fine, like maybe I too can have some kind of

silver or golden wedding anniversary in the contemporary art gallery,

and they will let me in there.

So, to clear everything up, I

officially state that I have not spoken with

Irada Ayupova, and I believe that

she should of course be removed from office

for her rudeness, for her lies, and for

abusing her official position.

I mean, really — you are a minister. What, there was no

way to rent some banquet

hall or restaurant for your daughter? The money — any

minister in Tatarstan has plenty of it, I am sure.

There is so much money there,

an ocean of money, and against the backdrop of

all that, to go even further and simply

close a gallery for your daughter’s wedding —

of course an official cannot

do that. In principle, for something

similar, they recently removed

and forced the governor of Chuvashia (a republic within Russia) to resign.

But here, of course, the people are much more

resourceful — in Tatarstan, the

mafia-like system is so entrenched that even a minister

will not be given up so easily. It will be very

interesting to see whether

United Russia (the ruling political party) will be just as outraged, and whether

everyone else will be outraged too. I

simply urge all residents of Tatarstan

to pay attention to this and simply

tell their friends, neighbors,

and acquaintances about how their

minister behaves. Forty-seven thousand people are watching us

live right now. I remind you that on our

There’s a little link to a survey in the description, and I’d really

like to know your view, your

attitude, your opinion about

the political process that is currently

going on—this whole constitution, these amendments.

Do you understand what’s happening, what it is?

Or do you not understand it? Because in order

to work out

some kind of strategy for action and call on you

to do something more specific, I

would like to better understand what you

think about it. So please go there—there’s

no catch, you don’t have to pay for anything,

you just need to confirm your email so that it

isn’t spam, click the link, and it will take two minutes

to complete the survey. Wrapping up the topic,

I’ll finish the program with this whole

story about the constitution. Last time I said in

my previous program

that soon we would see funny things—we

would see Instagram influencers and

all sorts of very ridiculous people

who are generally far removed from politics

start promoting Putin’s

constitutional amendments, because ads had been published everywhere

saying that

PR people were simply offering money

to tell people something about

the constitution, about how important these amendments are.

And, well, I’m fine with Instagram

influencers, but I just expected—I didn’t

expect something quite this absurd. I

thought there would be some—they were sending this offer to

people like, say,

Wylsacom (a popular Russian tech blogger), tech bloggers in general,

reviewers of various gadgets—well, that is,

to some seemingly normal guys

who could also say something about politics

if they sold out for money. Wylsacom, in particular,

didn’t sell out—he’s

a normal, smart person.

I thought there would be people like that—not stupid,

but willing to sell out—and they would agree to

say something. I had prepared myself, and prepared

you as well, that we would expose people like that

and humiliate them. But there’s no need even to humiliate

anyone, because what is happening in

practice is such a ridiculously hellish

show factory. Apparently they don’t have enough

people who are more or less

popular and can string two

words together, so they’ve already moved on to this kind of

Instagram blogger. And we have nothing against them either—these

you know,

very similar girls. They have

the same little noses and sharp cheekbones, they have

the same plump lips after

cosmetic procedures, these kinds of cheekbones,

all the same—they all look very, very similar.

They all have around two million

Instagram followers, mostly

bought, but somehow I thought it would

be absolutely hilarious if they

started buying them. But I figured they probably wouldn’t

buy them, because, well, they wouldn’t

give us that much pleasure.

But they really did bring in these

young women. I have nothing against their little noses

and those inflated lips—it’s all

fine. Every person has the right

to do whatever they want with their appearance. But

when they’re not just taking money

to advertise manicures, when they

start advertising Putin, it’s simply

hilarious. I’ll tell you this girl’s name now.

I just—I saw it, excuse me please—

it’s Liza Shatilova.

And I clicked through—well, she’s a completely

typical Instagram influencer, and her

announcement about how she was going to make a video

about how wonderful Putin is, asking the people something—

he’s just marvelous. Let’s

take a look: “Tomorrow I’ll be filming a new

blog where one of the topics will be the laws

of the Russian Federation—yes, it would be nice to know them better.

I think many of you understand what I mean.

By the way, I recently discussed it with my dad—he’s

into politics and understands all of this.

Right now a very important issue is the amendments

to the Constitution proposed by the president. He wants to make

it more people-oriented, so that people more often

take part in deciding many issues—healthcare,

education, and so on. But that does not mean

that the president will be elected again

for another term—that will be decided separately. Do you

think people should participate in such

issues, or should everything still

be decided at the state level, or

should we be making decisions? Well, isn’t that

just delightful? People should decide whether they can

participate in such issues, or whether everything

should be decided at the state

level.”

Magnificent. I urged—and I urge—you

all simply to record these, save them,

collect videos like this, send

them to me, show them to everyone, because

this is magnificent.

It is the best possible advertisement for just how

unconstitutional, stupid, and corruptly

our authorities act—you simply couldn’t invent

anything better. They are literally pulling money out of

the budget to pay people like this,

these wonderful, marvelous Liza Shatilovas,

so that they can spread this cute little nonsense

about how, come on, let’s decide these

little issues in a state-approved way. These are

Putin’s best friends.

Putin and his constitutional amendments

will be lobbied through precisely by people like

Liza Shatilova, and someday, in

a few years, you know—there was the

Brezhnev Constitution (the Soviet constitution associated with Leonid Brezhnev); this will be the blogger

constitution. What Putin adopts will

not be the Putin Constitution, but

the Constitution of Liza Shatilova and her

Instagram influencer friends. Thank you very much

to everyone who watched our program.

Please be sure to complete the survey below.

We’ll see you at the link next

Thursday. Bye.

[music]