Putin flew to Mars, how officials killed a girl, “The Country That Has Most Thoroughly Humiliated Itself”

[music]

Good evening, everyone. In Moscow, it is exactly

eight o’clock in the evening, which means that

the program *Russia of the Future* is live on air, and

I’m your host, Alexei Navalny, or

the man who intimidates Moscow

judges, as the Kremlin-controlled

media called me this week. Please write to me

on Twitter with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture

with your questions, wishes, complaints, reproaches,

and praise. I’ll put them on the screen and

comment on them and answer your questions.

I want to begin with one piece of news—actually, two

stories that came out right before

the program. First,

there was a statement from Roscosmos (Russia’s state space corporation). They have

some ridiculous little guy there

who is in charge of internal audit.

As for Roscosmos, that answers the question of why

absolutely everything has been stolen there. This

little guy—this is the little guy you’re seeing

on screen now. Not Rogozin—the little guy. He

spoke earlier—put Rogozin back on the right

screen. He was speaking on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio

.

And on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio, apparently

he was asked: why is Rogozin’s

salary so high—much higher

than the head of NASA’s? And that figure came from

our investigation, which came out

last week and has already been watched by nearly 2

million people. To that, this gentleman

gave a truly astonishing answer: you see,

it’s all about military and missile-related

work.

He said salaries at NASA are much lower because

NASA only deals with civilian matters, whereas at

Roscosmos, you see, there’s the robot Fyodor

and Rogozin in camouflage uniform.

He appears like that so often precisely because he has

military

missile-related responsibilities, and supposedly people like that in

America earn ten times more.

Which is, of course, an obvious lie. Rogozin’s salary,

let me remind you, is almost 30 million

rubles a year—about $330,000 USD. It is impossible to find a single

public official, not only in

the United States but in any country, whose

salary would be

30—actually, not 30, but 300

million rubles. So, I wanted

to say—even to say that some [__]

from Roscosmos is lying to us. In fact,

this gentleman from Roscosmos is a former—I

looked it up out of curiosity, I checked

his biography—and naturally he comes from

the Prosecutor General’s Office. Where else could he be from?

Such a liar, and he apparently takes everyone else for

idiots, including, apparently, the listeners of

Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.

He considers them complete

fools, because these people come out

and just blatantly lie—absolutely shamelessly,

without even worrying that tomorrow they’ll simply be

caught and exposed. When you say, you know,

the salary is higher because we have military

missile-related work and launch vehicles

and secrecy,

and all sorts of classified things—so yes, of course,

a $500,000 salary is perfectly normal.

And in America they earn ten times more.

Brazen little liars.

But we’ll expose them in more detail—we’ll dig into

this topic and find out, especially for

the gentleman from Roscosmos, who exactly in America

and what salaries are paid in America to those

people who deal with military missile-related

work—missile work, whatever you want to call it.

They’ll dress anything up as some kind of

mystery, with portentous

words about secrecy

and national defense. But the truth

is that none of that exists.

There’s absolutely nothing there at Roscosmos.

There’s nothing anywhere—just some remnants

of the Soviet military, total collapse, and

theft. But they create a lot of smoke and mirrors.

A lot.

Now, the second piece of news literally

came up 30 seconds before we went on air. I hope

we managed to prepare the video. Actually,

I was going to invite you to a roundtable

that will take place tomorrow at the

Moscow City Duma. I was planning to go there, along with

Plakhina, Volkov, Sobol, Burov, and Zhdanov.

Volkov, our director, was also supposed to attend.

The reason is this roundtable, which

was organized in the very building of the

Moscow City Duma.

It was organized by deputy Elena Shuvalova from the

Communist Party—well done, thank you very much.

An excellent deputy. The topic is specifically

the political repression of the opposition. She

even recorded a short video address.

Let’s watch it. If it’s ready, please show

us Shuvalova’s appeal, in which she

calls on everyone to come to the roundtable.

Dear Muscovites, I am a deputy of the Moscow

City Duma, Elena

Anatolyevna Shuvalova.

I would like to inform you that on November 29 at ten

o’clock in the morning, on my initiative, the Moscow

City Duma will host a roundtable.

We,

representatives of the opposition, those people who

were subjected to detention and repression,

invite representatives of the authorities,

representatives of law enforcement

agencies, to enter into dialogue with society,

to enter into dialogue with Muscovites,

to enter into dialogue with those who hold a different

position from the one currently being pursued

by the Moscow government. And we ask you

to respond to this invitation and come to

this roundtable.

And I am very concerned about the situation

of misunderstanding that is taking shape on the

part of those in power in relation to

to Muscovites unhappy with what is happening, and

so I would like them to respond

to our invitation and take part in

the roundtable. Right now, dialogue between

the authorities and the opposition is absolutely necessary.

What a nice, polite appeal.

A dialogue between the authorities and the opposition — please come.

Were representatives of the authorities really supposed to be there?

It was announced that the following were supposed to come there:

representatives of the Moscow City Duma,

representatives of this department

of regional security, where, as it happens,

sit the very same crooks and thieves who

in Moscow are supposedly responsible for

fighting corruption, while at the same time they

are themselves among the biggest

corrupt officials — including the notorious Gorbенко — and

they are also the ones who issue permits for rallies

or ban rallies. So we

were all planning to come, and it had all been

agreed several weeks in advance because

there was some large ceremonial

hall there that they do not just hand out lightly. So,

apparently, after — I do not know

what happened — literally 30 seconds before

the start of this program, look:

this note appeared on the Moscow City Duma website.

A little document — here it is.

The head of the Communist Party faction (KPRF)

withdrew the application to hold the roundtable

that had been planned. So

now we are going to find out what

happened there, but

it seems fairly obvious to me that

the leadership of the Moscow City Duma and Moscow City Hall

probably — especially Alexei

Shaposhnikov

— the one we investigated — they

simply got scared that we would come there.

As we know, not long ago they even

put our people on a blacklist

— including Lyubov Sobol — and here, apparently,

things became truly frightening for Alexei

Shaposhnikov, as if we were somehow going to

storm the place or something, I do not know. We would go there and

say some special words. Yes, we

would of course come and say those

special words, but it is just funny how

cowardly all these United Russia people are. I

do not know what they did to the Communists,

who are also involved now, but at least

the faction leader — we will see what he

says, yes — but at least in this

situation he does not look very good either.

It is clear that he was, by the way, under some kind of

apparently extraordinary pressure, but still,

backing out does not look good. On the other

hand, it is also great, you know — we will still say

everything we wanted to say, one way

or another.

It is just amazing that United Russia is so

cowardly. It is disgusting that they are even

afraid of such a basically harmless

event as a roundtable. They could have just come

to this roundtable and said everything

they keep repeating. Sobyanin today again

spouted some nonsense about how

you should look at what is happening in Hong Kong,

in Barcelona — do you really want that

here? Constantly: Hong Kong, Barcelona, Paris,

I think Paris too — do you really want Moscow

to be like Paris or Barcelona? No,

we do not. We want something more like Moscow.

That is exactly the point: unlike in Barcelona, they

have nothing they can

come and say to people

who will answer them directly. The whole mode in

which they are prepared to operate

is limited to putting out

statements that no one can

respond to, because, well, because it is

a one-way communication, like what I have

with you right now — though, by the way, I am reading

your questions.

We will see how the situation develops.

We will sort everything out now. For the moment, apparently, I

need to apologize to the people

who have already signed up for this roundtable

tomorrow,

because, well, most likely you

will come, and you — and we — simply will not

be let in, because they will say it has all been canceled.

It is a great pity. The thing with which

I wanted to begin the main part of this

program is very sad. And with 20

thousand people watching us live right now, to all

20,000 of you, and everyone who will watch

later, I want to say that the saddest

thing announced this week,

really showing the scale of the catastrophe,

was a sociological survey by the Levada Center (an independent Russian polling organization)

that asked young people

about

how ready they are, in general, how much

they want to move abroad. In Russia, unfortunately, such figures have always

been

fairly high, because people do not

feel they have prospects. But this time everyone

saw a record number: it turned out that

53 percent of young people aged 18 to 24

are seriously thinking about moving

abroad permanently.

They would like to emigrate. Of course,

not all of them will actually do it, but

53 percent is the highest figure in

recent years. There was also a high figure

in 2011, as you can see, apparently against the backdrop of

the protests and Putin’s return, but

now it has simply risen very

sharply. This is genuinely a majority,

a large share of the young people you

see on the street — or that you yourselves

are part of — want to leave the country.

This is not just a catastrophe — it is, of course,

a catastrophe. In Russia, a generation is growing up

of people to whom the country seems like an unpleasant

place, a burdensome

and uncomfortable place to live.

It's awful, monstrous—of course, many of them will leave.

A much smaller number of people have

most simply have no opportunity

to go anywhere—you understand, even there

10 percent, and even 5 percent

leaving would be a catastrophe from every angle.

A colossal loss of money,

a colossal loss of future births, or rather

future citizens, because they left at

18, and then had their children somewhere

abroad already. And as the government tells us,

"But don't

worry, it's being offset

by migration." Well, of course, if your point of view is

that for now we should just count heads

whether they're people, sheep, or whoever—but

then yes, of course, you can say it's all replaced by

immigration, or that we can simply bring people in from

Africa, and then on paper

it will look the same: there were 100 people, and there are still

100 people. But still,

we want our country to develop in a more

natural way, so to speak.

We do have some

inflow of migrants, an immigration inflow,

but that does not, at the very least, not

compensate for the fact that people are leaving here.

People are fleeing from—if things keep going

the way they are going now, to the point that

the children of these migrants who are born here,

we can already see, also fall into this

18-to-24-year-old youth category

who also want to leave. That is, of course,

just an absolutely monstrous figure, and

it's no surprise that the Kremlin immediately

reacted—Putin immediately declared

that the outflow of young people must be fought.

Well, because people are basically saying, "Dude, you run

the country in such a way that most

young people just want to leave."

Of course, they'll definitely now—I have no doubt—

adopt yet another

federal targeted program for

retaining young people. But it's obvious why

people are leaving: people do not want to be in some kind of

Putinist squads; people do not want

to live in a state that resembles

a barracks.

And everything Putin does really is this kind of

thing straight out of army jokes:

pointless, senseless,

sometimes very funny, but more often

an irritating, stupid barracks. Just look—

when I was preparing for the program,

I thought I'd talk about this and then

see what Putin and all the others

are offering this young generation—what solutions

could they possibly have? It's always

some kind of squads: Yunarmiya (the pro-Kremlin youth military movement), squads, we

are creating—Ros... Roscosmos, sorry,

Rostec

are financing some kind of

squads all over the country.

Even in the famous

Let me show this clip again,

from Putin's famous speech where, on the subject of

problems in healthcare, he proposes

solving healthcare problems through squads

of young people, student squads. It's 17 seconds—

let me remind you of this famous, legendary

remark. The idea was:

medical students could organize

something like student clinical

brigades—there are construction brigades,

there are specialized brigades, so it would be possible

for them too to travel around the country and provide help

to people, and support them at the level

that, of course, they are capable of doing.

Kostin.

While you were watching Putin, things here have been developing in a rather

dramatic way, because

Ruslan Shaveddinov, who is apparently

persona non grata at the Moscow City

Duma, got in touch with Lyubov Shuvalova, who

said, "I don't know anything at all. I

submitted the application, and tomorrow I will be holding

this event at the Moscow City

Duma. We don't know what they're doing there—there is absolutely

no need to cancel anything.

Everyone, come to the round table—it is

official." In short, I think that maybe

by the end of the program something will become clearer,

but in any case, all of this is very

exciting. So anyway, these guys—

their mindset is wired this way, Nikita:

squads, squads, squads, squads—and they

really think that young people,

that the youth, damn it, dream of ending up in

squads. And any people, including

young people who would like to study,

who would like to study at

university, to do science—Shoigu, remember, proposed the famous

"scientific companies" too,

which are also the quintessence of idiocy.

To say: let's draft everyone into the army,

but fine, if you're one of those

smart-ass types, showing off, and you don't want

to march in formation there or you don't want to get

punched in the face at night in the barracks, we'll make for

you, dude,

a scientific company, and then at night you'll be beaten up

not by just some guy

who came from a collective farm in

Tambov Region, but by the same kind of nerd

with an education who will be

smashing your face in. At 27 seconds—27 seconds in—Shoigu

talks about scientific companies: "We could

think and reflect together with you on

creating scientific... and so on. We could

take talented young people, without removing them from these

walls—from, so to speak, our sphere—

the Ministry of Defense

quite calmly

bring them up to this level. They could

continue carrying out, together with

their instructors, of course, those assignments

and that work which is needed today.

You see? That's the mindset, guys.

We need to think about creating scientific units.

Companies.

Think about abolishing conscription, damn it, when you have

people fleeing the country, including 18-year-olds,

because they want to go somewhere

to escape and wait it out somewhere until they turn 27

because they don’t want to spend a year or

a year and a half serving in an army that seems to them

completely pointless. So either

make military service meaningful,

so that no one has to build a summer house

for some general or get punched in the face for no reason,

just because some

old-timer who came from, I don’t know,

Dagestan or wherever suddenly decided

to lie on a bed and have you rock it

as if you were imitating a commuter train

taking him home, or something like that.

Let them deal with that, but they don’t want to do it.

They want scientific units,

medical units, construction brigades, and

all the other stupid garbage that

they keep forcing on them—and then everyone acts surprised: how is it that

young people are so bad?

“It’s the smartphones.” I think now a bunch of people say

smartphones and video games have corrupted everyone, and

that in their own youth they were, of course, completely different.

Of course they would have gladly joined the Young Pioneers

and the Komsomol (Soviet youth organizations), and gone into the army—unlike these idiots,

who don’t want anything. People really do think like that.

But this is no longer just

that, you know, old-man grumbling.

That kind of old-man grumbling exists everywhere, in

every country. But here these are people vested with

state authority, and they think this way,

and they herd everyone, they try to

force everyone into their own meaningless,

stupid barracks—and people want to run away.

They avoid it, and this is a path to national

catastrophe. We have examples of countries on

planet Earth, like Ireland, from which

a great many people emigrated. And yes,

the country still exists

and exists quite well, like that same

Ireland—but they ended up

permanently and historically simply

undermined.

Their strength—their intellectual strength,

whatever kind of strength you like—simply the number of people in

those countries, because an enormous

number of people just got up and left.

Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving Russia.

Just take each year: according to various

sources, anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 people

leave. Just take their salaries

and multiply them, and think about the fact that this

money—they will spend it,

earn it and spend it abroad, that’s all.

So what kind of economic growth can there

possibly be here? And when a young

person thinks about the country’s prospects,

for them now, as I said on the

previous program, it’s actually very easy

just to go online and understand whether

there is any real future behind these promises or

not.

Will you be able to live in some great,

truly developed country, or not?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question already

exists now, because, you know,

for example, in 2019, literally in the

next month, apparently, we were supposed to fly to

Mars and make some amazing

space discoveries, because that’s what

we were very recently promised by

Vladimir Putin. It’s just that, as usual, they

make promises and lie, but they probably don’t think very well about the fact that

people are watching this

and they understand that not a damn thing—

if this didn’t work out for you, yet

you so actively promise and lie, then all

your other promises will be the same kind of

lies as Putin’s statements that

in 2019 we would get a Mars

and lunar program. Let’s watch one

minute: “The youth of our great country

have always stood out for having

global dreams,”

like conquering space, and

“we will bring that back and multiply it,” promises

Vladimir. “We will now be

carrying out unmanned and then

manned launches for the exploration of

deep space, and a lunar program,

then the exploration of Mars. The first one,

very soon, in 2019, we are planning

to launch toward Mars in a new mission.

“The continuation of lunar exploration—not like

the Soviet Union—our specialists

will try to make landings at the poles

because there is reason to believe

that there may be water there. So there is plenty

to work on. From there, perhaps, research into

other planets in deep

space can begin. A new conquest of space should

become part of a major technological

revolution—and with it, new types of energy,”

“smart homes and cities,”

“support for talent and a new economy,” and

“we need to move quickly.”

How funny and at the same time sad

it is to look at all this: new energy,

new homes, yet another economic

and scientific-technological revolution. At the beginning

he says youth has always aspired to

space, and now Vladimir Putin promises

a new breakthrough. Rogozin’s salary is

the only breakthrough that has happened in

the field of space.

There’s not a damn thing there. Everything Putin said—

Mars, the Moon’s poles—zero, nothing.

Absolutely nothing. They haven’t even finished the spaceport,

and they won’t finish anything else either.

So yes, people are fleeing—and that’s exactly why they’re fleeing:

because there is absolutely no

trust in this government, not even the slightest. This is no longer

even just a question of trust,

but of empirical experience. Because if they

Every time there’s a rally, and every time nothing comes of it.

They couldn’t do anything.

The answer to the question of whether they’ll be able to do anything in the

future is, frankly, of course not.

It has been proven that in the future they will be able to do

nothing, which is why people all across the country sit there

and think, damn it, to hell with it,

it would be better to somehow, by some clever means,

try to get out to Barcelona,

Hong Kong, or Paris, which they keep trying so hard to

scare us with.

Sergei Sobyanin (Mayor of Moscow), so why ask me?

Daniil Burov writes: hold a roundtable

online, in a Skype conference format.

Well, listen, an online roundtable

using this channel is something we can

do. But Chastov has come in again while we were

watching—great—Marsianin, and

Ruslan Shiredinov said that

Declan Shuvalov is confirming that the roundtable will take place.

I don’t know, I mean,

he’s confirming it, and if he’s confirming it, that means

there will be a roundtable in the Moscow City Duma on the topic of

the persecution of the opposition, so apparently

it will indeed take place tomorrow. Let them—some deputy there

did book the hall after all. We’ll see what comes

of all this. So, ask United Russia (the ruling political party),

I’ll definitely say something about

the sanctions. I definitely will. Alexei,

what are the plans for 2021? Isn’t it time to start

getting ready? We’re all waiting. We are preparing for

the fact that in 2021 we have

elections to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament).

Well of course we’re preparing right now.

How many people are watching us—27,000 people live.

That is the preparation.

We’re discussing with you the fact that this

government is useless and senseless, and that we

must fight it, and specifically in

2021 our tactical

task—we’ll be doing a lot of things—

our tactical task, to put it in the right, censored

wording, is to hit

United Russia much harder than what

happened in the elections to the Moscow

City Duma—they’re just lying there squealing.

They opened it, changed it—the roundtable

should be held

all across the country. So: he fired some shots, apologized,

this is really becoming some kind of

astonishing practice in Russia, and we all

watch in amazement as, at the same time,

they open yet another—fabricate yet another—

criminal case as part of this

so-called Moscow Case (a series of criminal prosecutions after Moscow protests); today they even

arrested two or three more people. For what?

For nothing—for allegedly using some kind of violence

against the National Guard, while at the same time in

St. Petersburg

we see an astonishing story about which

the following was posted on Instagram

as a Story, and everyone is simply

admiring what kind of legality

and law and order are on display in the city on

the Neva (St. Petersburg).

Where, let me remind you, they did not authorize a single

rally, and repeatedly arrested our

coordinators.

They were fined there hundreds of thousands—up to

a million rubles.

Our coordinator was fined, but this thing

that is happening

in St. Petersburg apparently does not, does not, does not

look like any kind of problem for the local or

federal police.

So, a car is driving along, with “Nokhchi” written on it

and “Borz”—something like “Chechen wolves,” all that stuff.

A guy leans out the window and just

starts firing an automatic weapon—an automatic weapon.

Firing an automatic weapon—automatic weapons are prohibited.

Shooting in the city is prohibited, I mean,

thankfully he wasn’t, of course, shooting

at people, but still, there are just some

guys blasting away with an automatic weapon out the window. What

does the St. Petersburg police do? Well,

they posted it on Instagram as a Story.

They sit there thinking whether to like that Story

or not like it, and only after

a scandal naturally erupted on the internet

—a real scandal—

because people found it pretty unpleasant to watch.

What happened? The person apologized, but

apparently some representatives of Kadyrov (head of Chechnya)

found this 21-year-old young

man named Mansur Khasiev,

and he apologized on camera for 19 seconds:

“I, Mansur Musaevich, born in ’98,

apologize to those persons

whom I disturbed,”

“to whom I caused some kind of psychological harm.”

Well, sure, apologize to

those to whom you caused psychological trauma, but I mean,

it’s not as if all of us weren’t given

psychological trauma by someone firing into the air from an

—not from a military enlistment office, sorry—from an

automatic weapon.

I too would like them to apologize

to me. No need to apologize to me

personally—rather, the police

or rather all these people who are responsible

for public order and for combating

extremism—let them offer us

some kind of apology, or at least let us

hear some kind of reaction to

what is happening. I mean, okay, it’s clear:

Kadyrov saw the reaction on Instagram—he apparently

sits on Instagram all day—

he saw that people were discussing it.

They found this guy, apparently roughed him up a bit,

forced him to apologize, and in that Chechen-style

way, they handled it according to their own rules.

Fine—but this is still happening in

St. Petersburg, not in Chechnya, and we

proceed from the assumption that there is police there,

there are rules there, there is a Criminal Code,

there is

an Administrative Code, and the Administrative

Code prohibits shooting in the city even

if you have a permit for an assault rifle,

but this young man clearly cannot

have such a permit for an assault rifle, so

what the hell is going on?

why is it that people want at least

some sense that they are living in

a country where there is at least some

basic rule of law, and that law says

that if guys are firing an assault rifle in

the city of St. Petersburg,

then surely, at the very least, they will be found and have it taken away

from them, or at least it will be выяснится, well

but in fact, nothing happened—zero reaction whatsoever to

what is going on.

Thirty thousand people are watching us

live, and I have just been told again that

this roundtable at the Moscow City Duma (Moscow’s city parliament), which

is rapidly turning into

some kind of huge scandal in the Moscow City Duma,

is still going to take place. Who killed

Nastya Orlova? This is the saddest,

most distressing topic of today’s

broadcast.

It concerns a child who really did die,

named Nastya Orlova.

I consider Nastya Orlova to be a murdered child,

and this whole situation also

shows why people are leaving. By the way, let’s

look at the slide: when 53

percent of young people

say that they would like to leave

the country, and the number one reason

is the desire to provide their children

with a decent future abroad—

and let me remind you, these are young people aged

18 to 24.

Most of them do not even have children yet,

in most cases.

But if they do, those children are very young, and

they are already worried now, and

they have every reason to be worried

looking at what happened right in Moscow,

in Moscow.

In Moscow there is a transplant surgeon, Mikhail Kabak.

Kabak—that is his somewhat unusual

surname. He is a transplant surgeon; he performs

transplants for small children, including

children

under one year old. He got into some kind of conflict with

the Ministry of Health, and they simply fired him, and

everyone shouted, everyone was outraged, everyone

spoke out, because he performs these

operations, and children were already scheduled

for surgery with him. Naturally, the parents

started making a scandal out of it, because

when he was fired, all the children

who had been on his waiting list for

operations were discharged, and a scandal broke out. At first, everyone

was discussing it, but the Ministry of Health said no,

well, he was fired because—well, because

we are right. And not long ago, in this same

institution, by the way, they fired

an entire group of oncologists, but they were acting like

tough guys, like, we

will not give in to anyone. They fired him, but a week later

this very same Nastya Orlova,

the little girl who had been scheduled

with him and whom he was supposed to perform

a transplant on,

died because she was discharged, well,

they just washed their hands of it and told the parents to take

your child and figure out what

to do with her, where to go, what to do at night with her.

Parents cannot perform a transplant.

The person who could do it was fired; he may

want to do it, but he is not going to perform

a transplant in his own apartment. The girl

died, and these hypocritical bastards from

the Ministry of Health, after that, now

Skvortsova said that they were immediately

reinstating him. Then they

said that they were immediately

reinstating him and even promoting him

to a higher position. Just recently, damn it, a week ago,

they were saying he was, basically, the worst person on

earth, they were throwing him out, they were absolutely

right about everything. Then a child died, they got scared,

and started reinstating him. But that is not all.

We are helping the Doctors’ Alliance, and

the Doctors’ Alliance tells me that they

say the level of brazenness and hypocrisy of these

people is unbelievable: on television and everywhere else they say

that they have reinstated this man.

They can see the public outcry—for example,

my Instagram is simply flooded with

messages from

all kinds of mothers writing,

"Alexei, cover this situation," because

parents feel this very acutely. Any

person who has a small child

more or less goes out of their mind looking at

this situation. They tracked it and found that

hundreds of thousands of young mothers—and not only

young mothers—are outraged. They

reinstated him, but at the same time they

actually reinstated him at only 0.25 of a full-time position

and gave him this whole list

of documents that he is supposed

to fill out and submit in order to be

taken back into the very same job from which

he was just fired. So de facto they are

reinstating him in this tricky

way so as not to really reinstate him. For this

to happen—not even for justice to be done, but simply

for the guy to be allowed to keep his job—

for the guy to stay employed,

a transplant surgeon had to lose a

little patient, and now I am interested in

who is going to bear responsibility

for this death. Because this is effectively

murder. Or, well, let us

not call it murder—let us call it

abandonment in danger; there is such an

article in the Criminal Code. She

was on the waiting list for a transplant, she

was discharged home, and she died. They had no right

to do that. She died because of the fault

of specific Ministry of Health officials, and these

Health Ministry officials should not just

reinstate the doctor — they should

be removed from their posts; there should

be a criminal case opened. There must be

some consequences for this.

But no — they think, well, basically, let’s

just wait it out as usual, people will make noise

on the internet and then forget. We must not

forget this.

And that is exactly why our country

has no prospects right now under this regime.

No prospects at all. That is exactly why people

are fleeing. Because everyone sits there and

thinks: can we even have a child if

God forbid they get sick and we bring them

in for treatment — and then you’re standing there in this

line.

You have to travel to Moscow specially,

because you need Moscow — nowhere in the regions can this kind of

operation be done. You come to Moscow,

you send the child there, and you yourself somehow

have to rent an apartment, apparently, because you can’t even

just leave a seven-month-old

baby there and keep watch. And then

they simply discharge them, hand the child back to you,

and the child dies in your arms. Who

dreams of living in a country like that?

In a country like that, unfortunately, in our country right now

no one dreams of living anymore. More than half

want to leave for exactly this reason.

And these doctors now — by the way, from

this institute — are already holding a nationwide action on the 30th.

A nationwide protest. Let’s take a look.

Do you remember I showed you the first

video from these medical workers, these oncologists, who

who, by the way, were also involved in

pediatric organ transplants there? They

were fired, and we all thought that a

huge scandal was building, that this

would have some kind of happy ending, that they would be reinstated.

No such luck — not a single one was reinstated, and

now they are recording another appeal.

Let’s watch 45 seconds of it. But

right now we are once again forced to turn to

you for help. We are not giving up, and we understand

that our unique institution must

be revived and must continue its

work. Therefore, we call on everyone

to support us, and we are organizing a

sanctioned mass protest. We

are counting very much on your support.

After all, cancer is an extremely serious disease

that can affect anyone, and the fact that even

the most basic demands for fair

pay for medical workers were not met

shows that

the leadership does not value children’s health

or preserving this unique team as much as

it values its own ambitions and some

goals that are unclear to us. We call on everyone —

medical workers and patients,

all people who care — to unite. We

protest against the devaluation of

unique doctors and the ignoring of their

demands, the demands of parents, medical workers,

and all citizens of our country. You can

go to the Doctors’ Alliance website and to the Doctors’ Alliance YouTube

channel and look there for

the exact

information. Different doctors there have simply

started doing all this — oncologists,

and now others have joined them,

including transplant specialists and various

patients who are not receiving medication in

Perm, for example. This is not an isolated case.

There are oncologists in Sochi, palliative

care workers — they are doing this across the whole country. But I

just want to say that you really should

think about what is happening in the country. Guys,

people are recording videos on YouTube saying,

“We have no one else to turn to. We are once again

asking you for help.” They are making YouTube

videos simply so they can say to some

people on the internet: “Guys,

help us, doctors.” If doctors of this kind

need help, then what, in general,

is happening? Who in this country

has any protection at all, any protection whatsoever?

The only ones with protection are these strange people with

assault rifles who shoot from windows.

So if you are a doctor or a medical worker at all,

or a nurse, support the Doctors’ Alliance.

I think this is an absolutely right action. That is,

until doctors start

taking to the streets and

defending their rights there, including by

some of the most

aggressive methods, I would even say — but

what other methods can there be when

these children are dying?

What else is there left to do? Blocking a road already

doesn’t even look like an aggressive method against the

background of firing a doctor while their

patients are dying. So, for our part,

just as we have supported the Doctors’ Alliance,

we will continue to support it in any way we can —

with legal assistance,

support,

media support, and so on. Viktor Medved

asks: “Alexei, what’s happening with the lawsuits

against us?” In a remarkable way,

everyone is winning everything against us, so we

apparently owe just many, many

millions to everyone in the world.

Probably quite soon all of this will move

to the stage where

bailiffs will be running around endlessly, demanding

from us, essentially,

the money we are supposed to pay

to the police,

Mosgortrans (Moscow public transport), the Armenia restaurant,

Putin, Prigozhin, and everyone else. So

Konstantin writes to me that he is a former

law enforcement officer and asks whether

I have heard about the tragedy of the young woman

investigator in Sochi.

And he writes that he knows that people

their lives, if I’m not mistaken, there, I think...

There really was a situation where

some young woman, a police officer,

was raped by her colleagues, and she took her own life

by suicide, but

I think I've read about four such stories in the media, and unfortunately

this is just another example

— another tragic example of how in

Russia, on the one hand, the police have become

an absolutely useless institution that

helps no one, and on the other hand, within it

the police officers themselves are just as much

victims of this idiotic system. They

work extremely hard, but do a great deal of

meaningless work endlessly

— pointless paperwork nobody needs.

The atmosphere in these workplaces is such that, well,

when truly serious

crimes happen there — say, they rape a colleague

at the police department —

then what can you expect from Sochi

or Krasnodar? I keep talking about this all the time; no

other region comes up as often in my

program — except maybe Ryashchaya (unclear proper name) even more often.

Krasnodar Krai is a zone of banditry.

Everything that happens in Kuban (a region in southern Russia) is just

lawlessness. There is absolutely no rule of law there at all.

Now let's talk about

the lucky ones. It seems like

the main theme we've landed on is that people

want to leave the country. But even

the marvelous, amazing lucky ones,

the beneficiaries of all the pain caused by what is happening

in our country, also want to leave — or at least

they get very anxious

when someone hints that soon they

may no longer be able to escape from this wonderful,

beautiful Russia, where they so enthusiastically

support

Vladimir Putin. One example is the oligarch

Deripaska — Oleg Deripaska, the well-known

billionaire. He

made his money by pulling aluminum out of

Russian soil and selling it

abroad, and that is how he became

a billionaire. In effect, he

profits from the fact that electricity in Russia is very

cheap, and because in

the cost structure of aluminum, electricity

is the biggest component. So, well, that's just how it happened:

electricity in Siberia is cheap,

and it would seem that this ought to make

all of us a little richer, but

the one who mainly gets richer from it is

Oleg Deripaska.

And despite the fact that he is an official

billionaire — what does a guy like that do?

A man who adores Vladimir Putin and has given

a billion interviews

about what a wonderful president Vladimir

Putin is — of course he immediately runs off

to get a passport from another country. In

particular, Deripaska — both he and his family —

received Cypriot passports. There is

a so-called golden passport procedure there:

you invest money in the Cypriot economy,

and of course you're not stupid, you're not going to

invest it in Irkutsk or

Krasnoyarsk — you invest it in Cyprus,

and you get those passports. And in Cyprus

there are also political forces

that are not very happy with this situation.

They say: why the hell are we giving our Cypriot

passports to Russian crooks and gangsters?

Maybe we should stop

doing that. And a process began under which

some people had

their investment-based citizenship revoked. And then

a report appeared saying that 26

people, including Deripaska and his family,

had their Cypriot citizenship taken away. So it would seem

— or rather, you would think — that a guy who

so demonstratively adores and flatters Putin

over and over again, endlessly,

what should he say when a

report appears in the Cypriot press saying that

this happened? He ought to say: well, to hell with

them, to hell with their

damn Cypriot citizenship,

everything is great here in Russia, I love

Russia so much I can hardly stand it, everything is wonderful. But no — they

put out a press release saying that none of this

is true,

that Oleg Deripaska remains

a citizen of Cyprus, and of course all of this is

the doing of the United States.

And to commit such an utterly unthinkable

outrage against Oleg Deripaska — to deprive

him of his Cypriot civil rights,

his citizenship —

could only be done by those

sadists, those Gestapo types from the U.S. State Department, because

really, just admit it,

what an unimaginable crime: depriving an oligarch's entire family

of the ability to travel to

the European Union visa-free, and in general

to move around the world and enjoy their

billions. That really is, well,

a crime against humanity. So of course

of course

Deripaska says: oh no, nothing

of the sort is happening. But I just want

to remind you, my friends, who is it that endlessly

keeps saving Deripaska — us, or Cyprus,

or the United States? Because there he is,

wanting to be a citizen there, wanting to go there, and he

worries about what the State Department said or

what Cyprus told him. But in 2008, it was

Vnesheconombank (a Russian state development bank) that rescued him and gave him

crisis assistance in the form of a loan for four

and a half billion dollars. That was at the very

height of the 2008 crisis, remember?

All across the country, people with foreign-currency

mortgages were running around crying, "My God, we can't

pay for our apartments now." Back then

people were literally dropping to their knees and crying — they had simply

bought apartments,

then the dollar exchange rate changed, and nobody

helped them then. But Oleg Deripaska — we did.

We shelled out money in 2011—$1.5 billion.

Billion dollars. And Harry—

we financed him.

Try going out and buying a washing machine on credit,

and then asking to refinance it.

You won’t get anything. But Oleg

Deripaska—we financed him, and then

we financed this whole

huge loan for him—$9.5

billion.

Then in 2014 he took out loans from

Sberbank and rolled them over; at the beginning of this

year he again simply asked for help from

the state.

30 billion rubles (about $470 million), and he’ll get it—and I have no

doubt about that. So, essentially, Deripaska’s

business model is that he

is constantly getting some kind of

state support,

runs his business extremely inefficiently, and

does so because he knows that sooner or later

the state will throw money at him and give him cheap

loans—or just outright non-repayable money

that can be endlessly finan—

endlessly refinanced, and we keep swallowing it. And he’s so eager to get to Cyprus, and

he’s obsessed with it, and he’s so desperate to get to Cyprus, and

it all looks, well, just

strange. But once again it underlines that even

those people who, damn it, have

everything they have handed to them—everything he has was given to him by

Putin and the Putin regime; United Russia (the ruling political party)

made Deripaska rich, and even he

is desperately, with all his might,

trying to flee our country. That gives you something to

think about.

Let’s take a look at what questions

have come in. There are 33,000 people

watching live. I can see people asking

mostly about this roundtable

at the Moscow City Duma. Guys, I really don’t know

what’s going on. I really don’t. I know

that there’s a request from a deputy who wants

to hold a roundtable on parole issues—

and positions on them. We were invited there,

and apparently passes were arranged for all of us,

but the faction leader

refused to use that hall. So what exactly

is happening there? Some very funny things,

I think Sobyanin (Moscow’s mayor) is calling everyone

and squeaking in a thin voice: ‘Cancel it!

Ban it! Don’t let anyone in!’ Well, we’ll see.

There were also a lot of questions about all this and about

this latest

doping scandal, and it really is

very important because, as was rightly

written, on the one hand there’s a huge article

about it on Sports.ru—go

read it.

It’s important for everyone to know and understand this because

in the long term it will have a major impact on

Russian sport and on Russia’s image. It will

be discussed endlessly, and the gist

of the article is that Russia once again tried to

deceive everyone, Russia was caught again, and we

were disgraced, and for that we got, well,

basically everything is written there correctly.

I just want to say—well, why ‘we’?

I’m part of Russia, and you are part

of Russia too—33,000 people are watching live,

and I think not one of those 33,000

people watching this live has ever mixed anything into a sample

or cheated in any way. So this is not

‘Russia was caught’—it’s Putin who once again

tried to cheat and rig the system, and

once again he was caught and had his face rubbed in it.

But unfortunately, the ones who will pay for

it are us and Russian athletes.

So what happened? Let’s take a look.

First, Mutko says that

the doping problem

is really a problem for the whole world, not

just a problem of the Russian

state. In fact, in that very

statement, in that hypocrisy of his, lies

a large part of our problem. Mutko says

that this is not only Russia’s problem;

doping is a problem for all of world

sport. It’s not just a problem in track and

field; it’s a problem in other sports too.

These are problems that already

concern everyone. It’s not a tragedy for us

if we’re not allowed in; for the country, well, if

some number of us don’t go, then so be it.

We’ve long since stopped

politicizing Olympic results here.

For us there are now other

tasks and values. But the question is different:

what will this give world athletics?

That’s their main narrative; they always

say this to everyone, and of course they’re

repeating it now too: everyone uses doping,

everyone does. ‘Just look—what about

the Norwegians? They’re all asthmatics,’

they like to point fingers: these people

use it, those people use it—so why

are only we punished?’ The only difference

is that over there, some specific

athlete—I don’t know,

Johansson or Smith or someone else—he

may use it or may not.

If he does use it, he gets

caught and disqualified. That’s his problem

and his coach’s problem. Here, all of this was carried out at

the state level. Russia is being punished

not because our athletes use

doping—that would have been the athletes’ problem.

They’d be disqualified, and that would be that. But we

are all being punished collectively and

thrown out of top-level sport because

it was state policy.

Let me remind you of the chronology of events before

the Sochi Olympics.

All those miserable hacks, together with Mutko,

got together and did the math, and saw that

despite the fact that they had poured in

an enormous amount of money—and stolen a lot of it—

we still weren’t going to win many medals, and we

would end up, I don’t know, in 4th, 5th, 6th, or 8th place.

overall in the Olympic medal standings and

well, basically, that’s just not cool in

the Olympics, after sinking at least $50 billion into it

dollars at a minimum, absolutely

fantastically valuable to him. So he said, I

want first place. And all these

people around him nodded and said, well, we know

a way to do that, you know, just, well,

probably with pharmacology for everyone

to make it work. Let’s just be better than

everyone else.

And we’ll simply move it to the state

level, after which the Federal Security Service

and the state as a whole

were engaged in cheating with doping

at the Sochi Olympics. This was not done by

the athletes—that’s the issue. It was done by

the state. Putin did it. It was done by

Mutko.

It was specifically carried out by FSB operatives, as we

now know from all these materials.

They were working in the actual

doping laboratory, drilling a hole in

the wall.

They passed urine sample tubes through it; a special

FSB officer handled all of that. In other words,

it was a total disgrace, and we were punished for it.

And then they said, well, that is to say,

why is all of this still

continuing now? They said there had to be

an investigation: give us all the

materials.

Give us all the documents because we

don’t trust this, this your

RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency there

that is supposedly monitoring those athletes. We’ll

check all of this ourselves. To which our people

said, sure, yes, we’ve started an investigation

too. But then, what lawlessness—all the materials

were taken by the Investigative Committee

and at the Investigative Committee everything disappeared.

Some files vanished, these ones were erased, and

here the sample tubes and everything, everything somehow

disappeared, and now nothing can be checked anymore.

And Putin sits there all cheerful and

happy and says, you know, it just

turned out that everything disappeared, and he smiles and

thinks that’s it, and the Europeans too

will shrug and say, oh well, to hell with it,

it’s gone, but we understand—sit down, let’s

pat each other on the back, because you all do this too,

but as I said in one of

my programs years ago, I cited a country

as an example—Albania—and that’s not how it

works, because there too there are

athletes who also dream of

medals, and in countries all over the world

there are also just guys

who, well, basically don’t agree with that. They

have the same kind of political

pressure inside their own countries. They also

spend money on sports. They also have

a huge number of difficulties and problems

with doping.

But somehow they catch their own athletes and

disqualify them and throw them out. But, basically,

they fight for medals—that’s a big

and complicated process—and then they see that

Putin is like, overnight, just telling everyone there,

like, now we’ll all juice up, toss out the samples,

deceive all of you, and take

the gold medals. Ha-ha, great, guys,

do you like that scheme? No, we don’t

like that scheme. And now, for the

second time, they’re cheating again, now with

the involvement of the Investigative Committee, and

again laughing in everyone’s face and saying, basically,

you do understand that I outplayed all of you, right?

That kind of crap

doesn’t appeal to anyone. What is happening with

doping in Russia appeals to no one anywhere in

the world, because these are not isolated excesses;

this is state policy. No one will accept

a system in which, well, maybe something

might be happening under the table, when

the president is organizing falsification and

mass doping at

the Olympics. That’s something beyond the pale.

Let’s recall, we had

just such a situation that

perfectly illustrates

the country’s doping problem. In Irkutsk

there was a competition, and there

doping officers unexpectedly arrived. No one

knew they were coming there. Right there

at the track-and-field

competition

36 people withdrew from the competition. That is,

they found out doping control had arrived and said,

I think I’d rather not take part in

the competition and submit to doping control.

And I won’t, I won’t, no one will, and

36 people withdrew. This is state

policy. And if we hope—well, Putin hopes

that he can keep, like,

outplaying everyone like this and everyone will

stay silent—that’s not going to happen. We really will be

thrown out of all this sport.

And Mutko says, well, okay,

they kicked us out, fine, we’ll just be without a couple of

medals. It’s not that—we’ll simply be without a couple of

medals.

There are many, many people who have spent their whole lives

on running or

jumping, wrecked their health over it. They won’t

just fail to get those medals—they

won’t even have a chance to compete

for those medals. And by that point everyone

in charge no longer cares about any of it, again and again.

That is exactly why people leave, because

people do not want to live in this

endless grab-and-steal system (a reference to Putin’s phrase 'tsap-tsarap,' meaning to snatch things).

Putin, quite astonishingly, recently

said that this is basically their whole politics:

you know, we just snatch things here and there, and with

doping too—stole here, cheated there,

fudged things here, rigged the elections

there. It’s all incredibly blatant, but we

So, like, we'll look over everyone and

with such a charming smile

smile for 17 seconds about this "grab-and-snatch" thing so as

to remind you what it looks like, well,

let's wait until the Americans

spend money on new technologies for

extracting shale oil, and then from them

and drones too—we'll see whether we

are even interested in that today or not

So, either

we'll just go in and buy it—well, we'll see.

Invent it here, steal it there—the audience

laughs—but it's exactly the same thing

with this doping scandal. Right, like, what, we were somehow

helping everyone, and we just, we just

brought the FSB (Russia's security service) into it, and got everyone involved

and then the Investigative Committee (Russia's main federal investigative body) accidentally

destroyed all the evidence—grab-and-snatch—and

and now even Fetisov—you know, I have

not the slightest sympathy

for the former famous Russian and

Soviet hockey player Fetisov,

but even he says about this situation

literally—being a United Russia party member and

quite a character besides—he says that we are

the most

disgraced country in the history of world

sport. Even our hockey players—well, because

they're athletes, they understand

that this is beyond any, well,

beyond the usual situations where, well, someone might

look away or fail to notice, but

when the state deliberately

falsifies things for years, and then, trying

to cover it all up, falsifies everything again—well,

we really are the most disgraced country, but

I just want to say once again

that it isn't we who disgraced ourselves, but Putin

who disgraced himself, and United Russia, within which

this Fetisov sits—they are the ones who brought shame on themselves

the fraudsters, and we want nothing

to do with it, and really, quite simply,

again, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future

someone will have to deal with all the filth

that Putin, Mutko, and all the other

crooks have done, but we'll have to deal with it.

Good evening. 24 asks:

"Alexei, are questions for the

live broadcast censored or not?" Good evening, my dear, no,

they are not censored, and in particular your sharp

and shocking question about censorship—I have just

answered it. Andrei Kalach asks: if

Irina Rodnina is a U.S. citizen,

did she really have the right to become, and then serve as, a

State Duma deputy? She did not, as I understand it. As for

Irina Rodnina, her daughter has

U.S. citizenship; maybe Rodnina herself does too,

I don't know. But listen, if we take

our high-ranking United Russia officials, their

relatives, members of the State Duma,

members of the Federation Council,

there will be about 30 percent of people with foreign

citizenship, because first and foremost they all

being wealthy people, rush first

to get themselves a foreign passport, and

then they run

back and pass laws under which we

are foreign agents. And this week we

simply had

an absolutely spectacular

reply—well, not even a reply, you could say,

we received an absolutely spectacular

document. You know that the Anti-Corruption

Foundation was declared a foreign agent,

and this whole operation of declaring

people foreign agents—well, it's simply

a fraudulent scheme. United Russia itself,

Putin, his special services, I don't know who else there,

the same FSB types who were swapping

samples in the doping case,

they funneled some amount of

money to us through some Spanish acquaintances of theirs,

and all of it looks so

ridiculous that we will, of course, immediately

expose all of it. And we were declared

a foreign agent. We wrote—we first

filed suit; in court the Justice Ministry came and brought

some document, didn't show it to us, and

said, "Here, look, Your Honor, here,

it was on the basis of this that we declared them

a foreign agent, but we won't let them

copy it or even look at it."

The court upheld it, so they won against us.

But after that we wrote a letter and signed

a request: "Guys, you declared us

a foreign agent, so please give us

the grounds on which you declared us

a foreign agent, with specific

points—like a menu. We want to

correct them. If you think that we

received foreign money, we'll return it.

Just show us what amounts and where you

found them." And we received—attention please—

an absolutely delightful reply

which says that this document was provided to the Ministry

by certain state

authorities, and it doesn't even

say who. And then at the bottom we see that this

document is marked "For Official Use Only,"

and therefore we cannot give it to you.

So, we declare you

foreign agents, but the grounds on

which we declared you

foreign agents are secret, so we won't

give them to you, which means you won't be able to

appeal it.

And that means you become forever

foreign agents—we have declared you so

already,

but you don't even understand why and do not

have the right to know, because it's secret.

What happened? Another grab-and-snatch, just

another petty fraud by these

Putin people, these United Russia types, all the rest. As

I often say on the program,

I still expected at least some

greater elegance from them. But these guys are just

so utterly crude.

and when they’re backed into a corner

they say, well, you falsified everything,

No, no—there’s a document about you, but it

is classified, we won’t give it to you.

So with these people, we, just as before,

having already been labeled a “foreign agent,”

will simply fight even more actively against

this United Russia and this Putin regime,

because they really are utterly vile,

shameless people who are not embarrassed for a second,

people who have simply sunk to

the very lowest level—they still

cannot give us the document on the basis of which we were

declared a “foreign agent,” and

at the same time, meanwhile,

the United Russia congress was, of course, the most

important political event,

that happened this week—very

important, in fact, because it shows

what they are going to do and what

we need to do in preparation for 2021.

There were many, many different rumors about

how Putin would now drag his party of

power into the 2021 elections.

They need to win again and control

the State Duma. How do you do that when

everyone hates United Russia?

It loses in Moscow; it suffered

a significant defeat there, even considering

that they did not allow a single

independent candidate onto the ballot, falsified the election,

and still a whole bunch of independent

deputies got into the Moscow City Duma. And, well, different people

proposed different solutions, up to and including

dissolving United Russia altogether,

rebranding it, and so on. Then the United Russia congress took place,

and it became clear from it that

nothing will change. They decided, exactly

as in 2011,

and then in 2016, to simply steamroll us

with that same United Russia

once again. And now they have announced again

—you know, like in zombie movies,

when they say, “It’s alive!”

It’s the same thing here: they gathered on

stage and said, nothing of the sort,

our United Russia is the greatest, we

are going with it again, and Putin

—let’s take a quick look at the way

he said that in 2020, during his

presidency: you know, guys, we need to

earn people’s trust. You are the ruling

party. For 20 years we have needed to win

people’s trust. We cannot ignore

their problems. Just think about it for

a second: according to Putin, United Russia is the largest

and leading political party in the country, and

it earned that status because

it always put the protection of

citizens’ interests first. The main thing in the work of a

party is to be with the people, to know in detail

people’s demands, their needs and problems, and

to respond to them so that people

feel positive changes in their

lives.

To help, to explain, to protect. I repeat:

the main benchmark for the party’s work

is people’s opinion about the current

situation, about the pace of positive

changes in all spheres that determine

a person’s quality of life.

The status of the ruling party, the party of power,

does not consist in celebrating, but in

serving—

serving the people of Russia, not in

showing off, but in serving. And then

all these thick-faced people with stolen

mandates sitting in the hall start applauding wildly,

because, at the same time,

you understand, they really are in a

kind of hopeless situation. So let’s just

imagine:

what is Putin supposed to do—merge

United Russia with his All-Russia People’s Front?

You could imagine that, but it would add nothing. Create

another party? It would be even worse. They

have no good moves at all, and that is why

now, in 2020, they have gone back

to their same old routine

about “people’s trust,” and now

you’ll see: over the next two years we

will see a constant attempt to artificially boost

United Russia’s ratings. They will

show up,

they will help some old woman get running water,

they will help some old man carry buckets

to his house, they will travel to

remote villages and give a little girl

a kitten, even though what she really needs is a school bus

to take her to school. But they will solve no

substantive problems at all.

In fact,

what I want to say is that the attempt

to revive United Russia is excellent

news for us, because, as Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin quite correctly said,

the national leader of the Russian Federation,

the main measure is people’s trust

and people’s opinion. And people’s opinion

of United Russia right now is basically:

to hell with United Russia. And we

will very actively

support people in that opinion, including

through Smart Voting,

through everything we can do

on YouTube and so on. I very much hope that

you will take part in these campaigns,

because 10 years ago they could repair

some old woman’s water pump and say,

“Grandma, we’ll build you a road,

bring you fiber-optic internet, and build for

you not just some new

gas heater, but even a base on Mars.” But

now they can’t even lie that brazenly

anymore.

Because that old woman will remember that

they already promised all this 10 years ago,

and they sat down, thought it over, and decided that was it.

So yes, they really should run with United Russia (the ruling Russian political party) — that's possible.

We say: excellent, come on over here, and we will...

...we will simply tear your United Russia apart, and...

It was very amusing to listen to

Medvedev's speech at this, at this

United Russia congress, where he says that

I think no one should be ashamed of our

party at all. Let's take a look at what

Medvedev is proposing — not to be ashamed. Those

who are ashamed can leave. In twenty-

one, we will face elections to the

State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament).

Our goal

as before is to win honestly, confidently,

and decisively. We continue to care for

those who need special attention

from the state: pensioners, people with disabilities.

I believe that United Russia candidates

should be proud of their party

affiliation.

And if someone is ashamed to be in our

ranks, it's better to leave the party and free up

space for those who believe in the party's future. This is

just absurd, and they applaud.

Not one of these people — the governors

sitting there in the front rows — not a single one

of them ran as a United Russia candidate, right?

Right now, in the key regions, here

just now — let's look at Sobyanin,

who explains why he is not running from

United Russia: I will be nominated by the party

of Muscovites, by collecting signatures.

I believe this is right, because

the office of mayor is to a greater extent

administrative rather than political, and it should

take into account the mood, opinions,

proposals,

of Muscovites of all political views, and

of course

collecting tens of thousands of signatures

is a good opportunity to hear

the wishes and

instructions of Muscovites. Well, let's not leave out

Sobyanin either — with his United Russia, he clearly

showed here that he is not just not ashamed — he does not

want it, and does not believe in the future of your

wonderful party. A moment ago there was Beglov,

one of the founders of United Russia,

who also speaks and says

exactly the same thing: what United Russia?

Guys, no, there is no United Russia, no way.

There is no United Russia here — I am running on behalf of the people of St. Petersburg, Beglov says.

One must rise above political ambitions, therefore

I decided to run not from any party, but

simply as an independent candidate, in order to be

independent of one set of views or another.

But I am ready for cooperation, and I very much

ask political parties, city residents, and

public organizations to provide their

proposals,

because right now my team and I

are beginning to formulate our program of

action for the coming years, and it is very

important and interesting for us to take all opinions into account. There you go,

just now they were not running from United Russia.

They recoil from it, and they will keep

avoiding it in the future too. But at the same time the hall

applauds: yes, yes, of course, we need to

run only from United Russia — wonderful.

Please, do run from United Russia. It will be

much easier for us to destroy all of you

and trample you precisely in exactly that

way. That is how these

disgusting

worst people should be dealt with. This whole

United Russia congress is truly the worst

kind of people — simply revolting. Every other one is

a crook, a thief, or simply a traitor, a

scoundrel.

By the way, the percentage there of

foreign passports — foreign, I mean,

foreign citizenships — would simply be

off the charts. Every other person there is

a foreign citizen, and at the same time all of them

talk about what great patriots they are. And

the only reason to be in United Russia is

one thing: because if you have

— if you're running, no, not because of United Russia —

but if you do have a party

membership card, then first of all you can steal

as much

as you want, and secondly you will receive

all kinds of state perks

that, for example, others with the same

status — people just like you, say,

deputies of the State Duma or the Moscow City Duma — would not get.

But you will, because you are a United Russia member.

A really excellent investigation has come out

from our Moscow team, which I will

show you — 1 minute 18 seconds. It turned out that

there is, apparently, a secret settlement

where special elite

cottages have been set aside, where all

expenses are paid — communism built for the chosen ones.

At the Moscow City Duma, only those from United

Russia get this, while people from other factions

don't even — well, let's watch a clip.

Here, cars are driving out of the gates of the Moscow City Duma.

These are the cars of United Russia members Kostya Belkovy and

Guseva, and other deputies' Audis.

Many of them are heading toward

Odintsovo, to a luxurious cottage community.

But they do not drive into it; instead, they go onto

the adjacent territory behind a tall

fence. Before us is Paulus Lake. Here

that very Nazi

general was held prisoner.

And also, farther on, there was a dacha of the head of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police),

Genrikh Yagoda. It is a historic place and

a beautiful view, but that is not what interests us — rather,

those rows of townhouses. This is the territory

of the former lakeside retreat. A few

of the houses stand right on the shore, while

the rest are a little farther from the water, among

the trees: brown roofs,

asphalt paths between tall

trees, a serene view, and a huge fence

all around. From below, everything looks pretty good too.

Here is one of the most brazen members of United Russia (the Kremlin-backed ruling party).

Semennikov is skateboarding here.

And what have you heard about official housing for

deputies? I know for a fact that he

hands out these dachas (country houses).

I know Anastasia Vladimirovna Rabkova,

and I know that in order to get one,

you have to go to her. I was, so to speak,

advised: why don't you go and see Rabkova,

talk to her, and then perhaps she will make

such a decision about granting it. 38,000

people are watching us live.

Go to the Moscow штаб (campaign headquarters) website

and watch this investigation in full there.

It's genuinely great. I mean, they

— I'll say it again — have built communism for themselves there.

They even pay for dry cleaning for all these people.

It's all paid through state procurement at the expense of

the Moscow budget. They were given cottages, and

they guard their little

happiness.

This little United Russia pocket of happiness is

really remarkable. We will use all these materials

in order to

destroy their disgusting party. But

to wrap up my program, I want to say

that in some sense they are striking

back. We are constantly making

flyover videos, showing the luxurious lives of all sorts of

these United Russia people. They really don't

like it, and they want to do the same too. Well,

it's rather pointless to fly over

my apartment in Maryino (a Moscow district), or

my parents' dacha, because if

you see that flyover, you'll vote for me

even more enthusiastically.

But United Russia has found itself new servants.

And this week, really, how can we

on the internet outdo United Russia? So United

Russia, using all of state

television and propaganda,

went after its two main enemies:

Sofia Rotaru and Natalya Vetlitskaya.

We saw them absolutely raging,

shouting,

wailing and lamenting, and they even hired their

journalists to fly over

Natalya Vetlitskaya's house outside Moscow.

Let's watch this shocking

report. You can go and see it yourselves.

Look, this is a singer who moved to

Spain and was slinging mud at Russia

from Spain, and now she's come back and started

doing a concert tour across Russia. And

if she's doing a concert tour across

Russia,

then she should be praising our authorities. She

should love Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin. She should be right here together with

everyone else. Look — Valeriya, who else is there,

Prigozhin, Gazmanov — they're all standing there

fawning over us. So why isn't Vetlitskaya

kissing up too? But let's not argue about that now.

Let's simply admire this wonderful

article they published: "Natasha

Vetlitskaya returns to Russia with a new

program, with which she will go on

tour. For 10 years she wrote from Spain

vile things about Russia and its people,

but now she's toned it down a little and

will now shamelessly take

money from those she smeared with mud."

As for Natalya Vetlitskaya — the cameraman's enemy,

there is just... And by the way, I would also

note: not only did they show

her dacha, but the Rossiya 24 TV channel also did

a shocking investigation claiming that

singer Vetlitskaya lives near Patriarch's Ponds

and has country real estate worth

1 billion rubles (about US$11 million). This is what is commonly

called a dacha. They found that Natalya Vetlitskaya has

an apartment closer to the center, at Patriarch's Ponds.

At Patriarch's Ponds...

The value of the home is estimated at 500

million rubles (about US$5.5 million).

Perhaps the rumors that the singer has been broke since the 1990s

are greatly exaggerated.

But isn't it wonderful? They too

sat there agonizing: my God, who should we film,

whose house should we fly over,

whose palace should we shove in people's faces?

And they found one:

Natalya Vetlitskaya. It's absolutely

delightful. Let it stay that way.

Let the people of our country see that

the enemy of the authorities is Natalya Vetlitskaya,

who has never really been — I mean, I wouldn't exactly

call myself a great defender of Natalya

Vetlitskaya, and she probably has no need of my

legal services — but good Lord, they've found

someone to pick on. She has never been

an official, she was nobody in government, and she still isn't

someone who receives money from us. She

just had some kind of eventful personal life.

There were probably some people who

helped her buy all these

lovely mansions

or wherever she lives. But in any case,

it doesn't really seem connected to the idea that

Natalya Vetlitskaya somehow stole from you,

or from me, or from anyone else. She simply

sings her songs and writes things

on social media. And yet United Russia

came down on her. Wonderful. Well then,

let it be that way.

And there was a question here at the very beginning:

are we preparing — are we preparing for 2021?

Yes, we are. We are building a system

under which, on completely clear

grounds and with evidence, we will

target this party and specific individuals

and destroy them morally, plain and simple,

morally and in PR terms.

But in response, they have nothing on us,

so they'll go running after Natalya Vetlitskaya.

All I can do is sympathize with her, and with Sofia

Rotaru, who will apparently have to endure

quite a few unpleasant moments.

So this will be their small contribution to

the fight against the disgusting

United Russia party. Thank you very much

to everyone who watched our program. Tomorrow

there will be some kind of unclear, strange thing

again. Now, I see questions about a roundtable

at the Moscow City Duma (Moscow city parliament)

I don’t know what will happen; the application has been submitted

the deputy who is organizing this roundtable

is confirming that it will take place

Ilya Yashin, Sobol, Burov

Zhdanov, and others. A representative, Vladimir

Milov, as well as representatives of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

will be there. Well, we’ll go to the Moscow City Duma

and try to take part in this

roundtable. After all, under the law

we, as citizens of Russia, absolutely have

the right to sit down with opposition deputies

and discuss something. I hope

while I have the chance, I’d like to invite Alexei

Shaposhnikov, the chairman of the Moscow

City Duma, to come as well and speak

there on behalf of United Russia. Let him

speak there and tell us why this

party, as Medvedev said, will

keep winning

because it is used to winning. It will be very

interesting. Thank you very much

see you on Thursday

[music]