This is corruption

Hi, this is Alexei Navalny. You should

rename your channel and call it

The Herald of Russia’s Pensioners

and at the end say: don’t subscribe to

our channel, they tell the truth here. Instead,

subscribe to our channel, we know how

to knit wool socks and make jam

for the grandchildren. One and a half spoonfuls go here, so

salt—one. Here’s a two-liter jar

But look for yourself: out of the last ten

videos on your channel, six are devoted

to pensioners and protests against raising

the retirement age.

We’re tired of all this. Give us videos about

corruption. I’ve received a couple dozen letters like this

recently, and I decided

to answer everyone at once. My friends, the most

important videos about corruption are precisely

the videos about raising the

retirement age. Let me explain once again so everyone

understands: the Pension Fund is the country’s main

wallet.

Every working person, every month,

pays 22 percent of their salary into it.

If you take Russia’s GDP, that is, the value

of all goods and services produced, then

the Pension Fund amounts to almost nine

percent of that. If you calculate it in

money,

that’s 8.5 trillion

rubles

this year alone, and it’s important to understand that.

Raising the retirement age is neither

more nor less than a demonstration of the failure

of Vladimir Putin’s economic policy

and of his party, United Russia—a direct

proof that they have stolen

everything. What is Putin’s

pension reform, translated into

plain language? Everyone who goes to

work has been paying taxes toward future

pensions, and now—surprise—it turns out that both the

Pension Fund doesn’t have enough money, and the

budget doesn’t have enough to plug the hole in the

Pension Fund, and now Putin has decided:

let’s just not pay pensioners all

the 8.5 trillion rubles

they are owed. Let’s raise the retirement

age.

Then 40 percent of men and 20 percent

of women will die before retirement; we’ll take their money

for ourselves and use it for all sorts of

other useful things—like, for exa-

we’ll steal some more. The only thing that can save us from an audit

from an audit is this.

That is why this is the main story about

corruption.

Putin and his officials steal everywhere and from

everything: from gas pipelines, from the Olympics,

from medicines, from housing and utilities, from football, from schools,

from kindergartens. But money doesn’t

come out of thin air. If these guys have been

stealing for 18 years, somewhere there had to

be a hole.

And there it is—a hole so big

that it’s impossible not to notice anymore, and

now, in 2018, this hole has had to be

filled with your money, your parents’ money,

your grandparents’ money,

with pension money. And apparently, we

still don’t know enough about the scale

of this hole. Because the day before yesterday—and this is the second

reason why I decided to record this video—

State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin

who, in the official hierarchy,

is effectively the fourth-ranking person in the country, said that

in Russia it is entirely possible to abolish

state pensions altogether. At his meeting with

residents of Saratov, one woman asked:

How can this be? You’re raising the retirement

age, and here none of us will simply live

to reach retirement. To which he replied: that’s still

an open question—whether there will even be state

pensions in Russia or not. And anyway, who wants

to live that long?

Children on the sports ground

[music]

[applause]

We have to think it through

[music]

and

[music]

later

by 100 microns of lime

[music]

not

the world gracefully, we fill the budgets for you

we will have state pensions in our country

This matters because

this is being said by the chairman of the State

Duma and one of the leaders of United Russia,

a man who is, after all, responsible for passing

laws in our country.

Notice that he speaks in the same

terms that I do: there is a hole in the Pension Fund.

A hole.

He’s not even embarrassed. And at this moment,

my dear friends, it should be

absolutely clear to you why protests against

raising the retirement age are

a fight against corruption.

Well, you remember Vyacheslav Volodin’s dacha (country house)

that the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) exposed two years ago.

This man has worked as a government official and

could not have been running any business, yet

his property and his lifestyle clearly

show that he is a billionaire. And his neighbor at the

dacha, United Russia’s secretary general

Sergey Neverov, is also a billionaire.

He, too, got rich in public

service. That’s where the hole in the budget

and the Pension Fund came from: these dachas, these palaces,

these planes, these deposits in Swiss

banks punched that very hole in the

Pension Fund, and now you are supposed

to patch it up—for the sake of fighting

corruption.

I urge you to come out to rallies.

Against raising the retirement age, on September 9

across the country

to say that we do not want to use our own

money

pension funds to pay for palaces

for officials. Come out and explain to this

brazen Vova (diminutive of Vladimir) that he and people like him

are the main problem. If

they tell pensioners that anyone who wants to live

longer should go to the sports ground,

then first of all, as a matter of public interest,

his estate should be turned into a sports ground

instead, and he himself should be sent to places

where there are sports grounds too, but they are located

behind barbed wire

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