Putin Didn’t Answer—He Lied. A Circus: Animals and Clowns. The New Ukrainian Church

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Hello everyone. It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, and you're watching live

the program *Russia of the Future*.

Its host is Alexei Navalny, or, as one

of the Kremlin's propaganda outlets once called me, a man

who will stop at nothing.

In a way, that was probably

partly true today, because

today I really did something

I'm a little embarrassed

to admit on air:

I watched all three and a half hours

of Putin's press conference. We were streaming it,

and I knew you'd be asking me

about it.

By the way, send in your questions with the hashtag

hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter, and I'll

try to answer them. So yes,

I watched all three and a half hours, honestly,

from beginning to end, and it really was

quite a spectacle, of course.

First of all, what was striking wasn't even

just the usual spectacle of

bootlickers from all over the country gathering together,

but a battle of bootlickers. You had the usual

federal-level bootlickers who flatter

Putin 24/7

going head-to-head with regional bootlickers

who had come specially

from Vladivostok, Yaroslavl, from all over

the country. They come there in order to

say something like,

basically, to compete over who loves

Vladimir Vladimirovich more. Let's watch a few

seconds of a typical question—19 seconds

from Putin's press conference.

In one of your appearances at

a previous press conference, you said

something interesting: that you are

a collector, and that you collect emotions,

and that this is your wealth as the leader

of the country. So in that

emotional sense, what kind of year was this?

What do you consider the main event

of the year?

Vladimir Vladimirovich, collecting emotions...

Well then, tell us: emotionally, for you...

And separately, I just want to note this

guy, Kondratyev, the correspondent—I've been seeing him

since school.

Literally since school. I was a schoolboy, and he

was hosting some program there—Channel One, big news, whatever it was called then.

Back then there wasn't much else besides

the big news broadcasts. He was a correspondent in

Germany, then he was...

Then I became a student, then I got

married, had children, and now I host this

program—and once again I see this guy

standing there, gazing up ingratiatingly,

asking some little question like that,

so that Putin can say, yes,

emotionally this year was

difficult, but still very joyful, we...

Something like that. So what was notable about this

conference? Probably, first of all,

the fact that it wasn't notable

at all. He convened it in order

to answer questions—but he didn't answer any.

I even wrote on my cup: 'Did not answer.'

Because usually after

a press conference—and during it too—

Twitter periodically explodes,

people start posting, then

articles come out and everyone discusses it. That's because

Putin stages these events

in order to throw out some

interesting tidbit—maybe

announce a foreign policy initiative,

name some new enemy, or tell

some especially juicy joke about

a grandmother, a pillow, or a mother-in-law,

so that some of our fellow citizens will still think,

'Wow, what a man of the people.' Or

very often, someone supposedly asks him a tough

question—some specially selected

female journalist asks ten difficult questions in a row,

sharp questions on painful, pressing topics,

and then he picks one of them,

answers it, and that's that—as if the issue

has been addressed, like, well, Putin was asked about it.

This time there was none of that at all.

I mean, there was the traditional

flood of lies, the same things repeated

over and over that he's said many times before, and there was

nothing even to latch onto—no

funny trash, no

new insults, no new gimmicks, no memes,

nothing at all. I don't know—when a man has been

in power for twenty years, he can no longer produce

any improvement—neither improvement

in people's lives nor in the quality of the country itself.

But he used to at least produce

some side effect of interest; now even that is gone.

Just emptiness—an absolutely empty

press conference. And I don't think that's

just my opinion. From what I saw,

journalists discussing it also found nothing

particularly interesting. Traditionally,

the same Ukrainian journalist

asked a sharp question about Ukraine, and Putin

basically told him, 'You're all idiots.'

There was a question about Lev Ponomaryov (a Russian human rights activist),

and he said, 'Serves him right, he's in jail because he called

for rallies.' But even that lacked any real

harshness.

There was nothing like, 'Saakashvili is running around the streets'

or anything of that sort.

In that sense, he wasn't even trying to act tough,

or play the hard man.

Of course, that was connected to the fact that

there really weren't any proper questions.

We tried to ask one,

and our wonderful Dmitry Nizovtsev

got accredited, and the equally wonderful

camera crew went there too. Let's

watch a few seconds of Dima

arriving there with questions and a placard.

about the gold in Vo...

Well, nothing worked out. One more thing:

they approved our poster, and then they came up to us

they approached us and said, "Unfold it, show us your

poster." They looked at it closely, and the person wasn't

even looking at our second poster.

And then they went off to clarify something about us.

This man here—

Do you want to take the poster? Why are you

taking it away without giving any explanation?

There are plenty of posters here, and you're

taking mine specifically.

You know perfectly well that these posters

are a genre of their own. You have to

write something eye-catching to attract

attention, so Putin looks over and maybe suddenly

gives you a chance to ask a question.

The funniest poster this time

had a half-naked Putin on it

from that famous photo shoot in Khakassia (a Russian republic in Siberia), and it

said: "Putin, what a pike—just my type,"

I think. A journalist from Khakassia, apparently,

was holding that poster, but she wasn't given the chance

to ask a question.

As for Nizovtsev, he had planned

to ask about the gold in Vo... Well, we don't really...

It's not that we thought we had somehow fooled anyone high up;

we knew perfectly well that Nizovtsev hadn't fooled the system.

He had been arrested live on air

and jailed before, so of course we

knew he was on all the relevant lists,

which is exactly why they let him in.

But very pointedly, they confiscated posters only from him—

the only person at the entire

press conference.

They took his posters, and then of course they didn't

give him a chance to ask a question. And by the way,

I should note that Roman

Dobrokhotov, a journalist from *The Insider*,

wasn't allowed in at all to the

press conference.

So Roma ended up being treated like a journalistic outcast.

There were several moments in this

press conference that, well,

personally for me,

stirred up some emotions.

So I just want

to share with you, I guess, my

feelings—my outrage, first and foremost.

First of all, it's the question about

the bridge over the Lena River. Even if it

seems like some minor issue to you,

it's actually very important. Let's

take a look—here's a brief background.

To explain the situation: the city of

Yakutsk

is the largest city in Russia

—a major city with a population of 311,000—

that is not connected

by rail. In fact, you can't get there

by regular rail or road transport at all,

and during the period when

the river is freezing or thawing,

you can't get there at all.

There are hovercraft and

various boats, but in any case it's a major

problem.

A longstanding problem. And then a journalist from

Yakutia asks Putin: "Could a bridge across

the Lena River become a symbol of developing

the Asian part of the territory of the Russian

Federation?

I'd like to ask: should we expect this bridge,

and if so, when? Because

we really need it. Thank you."

"A symbol is always good. It's always

some kind of completed stage

of work and an opportunity for further

movement forward. In that sense, the Crimean

Bridge is both. I agree with you: it is both

a symbol of Crimea's reunification with Russia

and an opportunity for the development of

the peninsula.

"Precisely the opportunities for development—those are

very important. But the same applies

to the bridge over the Lena River. You said it

should be tied to development—well, that

needs to be calculated precisely."

The man has been in power for almost 20 years, and he's asked

a question about a bridge over the Lena, and he goes on at length

about Crimea and then says, "We need to

calculate it." Dude, then calculate it!

You've been sitting in power for 20 years and

you're acting like, "Well yes, we need to run the numbers."

Let's look at what Putin was saying

two years earlier with the governor and

—clip, 24 seconds.

Yegor Borisov met in Moscow with

Vladimir Putin. The head of the republic and

the country's president discussed the construction

of a bridge over the Lena. Borisov noted

the need to include funding

for the bridge crossing project in the draft

federal targeted program for the development

of Russia's transport system. The head of Yakutia

explained that the bridge was among the key

priority projects. It was a long report, and at the end of it

—a long report—and at the end of it

Putin says, "Well, in general, I

support the construction of a bridge across

the Lena River." Well, obviously—he had to

support it. That's 300,000 people, about 30%

of Yakutia's residents, and they are completely

cut off. He supported it two years ago, and

now, two years later, he says, yes,

it needs to be calculated. And the point is that here we

see from this example that Putin simply

says things, but in the bigger picture

he couldn't care less. Governors come to him

and say, "Vladimir

Vladimirovich, do you know how people over there

have to get around? Let's take a look—here are

35 seconds from 2014. A striking video of how

our fellow citizens, in the 21st century,

make their way to the city of Yakutsk, a major

city, the capital of a federal subject (region).

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books

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It’s freezing, there’s a huge crowd, and hovercraft are arriving

to carry people across. A ticket costs 1,000

rubles (about US$10–15), and people are storming these hovercraft. But that

was several years ago, and before the program I just

went and googled

what the latest achievement was in the area of

crossing the Lena River, and I found

a report from November of this year. You can

check it later—it’s still up on the

official

official Rossiya 24 channel. Let’s watch

35 seconds of how wonderfully

the crossing over the Lena is organized now.

Just look at this.

This is the latest video on the

official channel of Russian

state television. By the way, it’s called “A New Ice Crossing Has Been Established,”

“A New Ice Crossing Has Been Established.”

It’s not called “Total Trash, Horror, and

Nightmare in Yakutia.” It’s called “A New

Crossing Has Been Established.” So, the point is,

everyone clearly knows about this problem.

It’s Yakutia’s main problem. This

bridge has been discussed an endless number of

times, and the governor comes to him and

says, “Come on, let’s finally build the bridge.

After all, we have diamonds and gold here,

we seem to contribute something—maybe we could

get a bridge built somehow?”

So that in winter we don’t have to

cross through water and all that.” And it’s always, “Yes, yes, yes,

I support it,” and then it just vanishes

from his mind, as if

nothing happened. And then two years later

they ask him again about the bridge to Yakutsk,

and he says, “Well, we probably need to calculate it.”

You’ve got the Construction Ministry, headed by Mutko,

you’ve got a bunch of officials,

builders—you hand out a hundred medals a month

to some “honored builder” or other.

You’ve got design institutes, you’ve got the Rotenbergs (powerful Russian businessmen close to the Kremlin),

who love building bridges. Do the math. No—

well, because, basically, because they just

don’t want to. Because: to hell with you.

That’s why. That’s Vladimir Putin’s answer.

And this whole situation with the bridge over the Lena

really perfectly shows

that they proceed from the assumption that,

basically, the general public couldn’t care

less. They don’t know anything, and only

some especially curious people will go online

and look up what the problem is with

this bridge and with Yakutia. And to hell with them.

In two years everyone’s forgotten, so we’ll just

say some things during the live

call-in show, at this press conference, on the live line—

but it doesn’t mean anything. It

costs nothing. It has absolutely no

significance whatsoever, because it has nothing

to do with real life. And that’s it—his whole

answer is just

endless bullshit.

He had this phrase there,

“positive trends everywhere.”

Positive trends? He’s been sitting there for 20 years and hasn’t

done a damn thing. He lost all the oil money

and says we have positive

trends. There was also this great

line: “Well, we had an economic

crisis, and we were forced to spend our

oil money to support the population.”

Forced to—as if some unfortunate thing happened,

some unpleasant accident. There was oil money,

and of course they would’ve liked to keep it for themselves, but

instead they were forced to spend it on

supporting the population.

I also really liked the moment about

Brilev. I was wondering whether they’d let Brilev in

to this press conference, because after all

we proved that he’s a British citizen,

a British subject, and he confirmed it all, so

it seemed a bit strange.

And they endlessly milk patriotism,

endlessly going on again about how

Britain is the enemy. Putin clearly

said that the Skripal case

is being used by Britain to attack Russia—that is,

Britain is carrying out an attack on Russia. And so,

who gets to question Putin? A British citizen,

Brilev, at this press conference. 39

seconds.

And in this connection, I can’t help but pass on

my heartfelt thanks for being allowed to ask, and in this

connection I can’t help asking you about

the current state of affairs in

Russian-British relations.

Let’s start boldly, as it were. After

the G20 summit, Theresa May said she didn’t know

whether she had met with you or not, but you

did meet with her after all. How do you

assess these relations? And another

interesting question: do you see how

Brexit might affect Russia? Will it

affect it? Thank you.

As for meetings—at events like

the G20, there are very

many meetings; you can’t even list them all.

That’s just how it is.

So it’s this kind of schizophrenia: up stands a

British journalist

representing Russian television and asks

this kind of question—like, who exactly are you

talking to? A British journalist

is asking a question about Britain. But the best part

didn’t even happen at the

press conference. The best part

happened on Twitter. Anyone who isn’t following it

should, because they’re basically

trolling us with this Brilev thing.

And it became clear that they invited him

and decided to have a laugh at all of us, because

what you’re seeing right now, here

in this photo, is the official

Twitter account of the President of Russia, which immediately

after Brilev’s question—well, everyone there started...

Naturally, they laugh — ha-ha, Brilev.

He asks about Britain — ha-ha-ha, right?

It’s just that the president of Russia

puts up a photo of Brilev, like,

and as if to say, “So what? You decided again — why don’t you go to hell,”

to hell. That’s why the response from these

wonderful people was to laugh at us.

But considering Peskov, all the children

are foreign citizens; Putin’s children are there too,

his daughter lives — or used to live — there, lives in

the Netherlands; it’s generally unclear what’s going on with

them. They all have these strange

citizenships.

So that’s how they sneer at us.

They show Brilev, and they must have discussed it among

themselves, like, “Let’s make a little joke — they’ll

all go crazy over there.”

They came up with it: “We’ll give him the floor, and he’ll

ask a question about Britain, and then we’ll also

slam it onto Twitter afterward.” I mean,

it’s a kind of trolling art. Another important

point, and no jokes now, is the

statistics that were announced in

support of the claim that life in Russia

is very good, and that every year life gets

better. If it seems to you that you go

to the store and your salary is enough for fewer and

fewer products,

well, then something must be wrong with you. But in

reality, everything is very good. Putin usually

dumps a huge amount of statistics on

this subject. Let’s show you this strange heap of

all of it now — all of this,

numbers, numbers, numbers, for ten this, several that.

Then for the first time...

17 percent, the forecast for global development

for 2018.

Industrial production grew at a more

rapid pace.

Compared with last year, when it was 2.1

percent, for January through October of the current year, yes.

Let’s say 2.9 by the end of the year, while these

percentages in manufacturing industries

are growing even faster — by 3.2 percent.

For... well, never mind.

Investment in fixed capital amounted to 4

point-something percent, and retail turnover

and market trade volume were up 2.6

percent. I can’t make my way through this anymore.

This demand is, of course, noticeable; it is

a positive factor. After a long

break, a slight

but still positive trend has been recorded.

In real terms, Russians’...

According to the latest data, the population’s

will amount to... You see, the guy has

a special sheet of paper on which it says

there is proof that we have started living

better, and he just reads out these numbers,

talks and talks and talks, while everyone sits there and

understands that these numbers mean

nothing. Well, because — not only that —

Vladimir Milov spoke about this in great detail.

Vladimir Milov, who commented on this

press conference, seemed to me to have

commented on it very well in his program.

He talked about it there. The thing is that

Putin’s numbers are official lies. This

isn’t our assumption that he’s just

making it all up — it is officially

a lie. In particular, even Russian

statistical agencies, which of course

fudge the numbers, were recently forced to admit

that, for example, in agriculture they

had said that growth in agriculture

was 30 percent, and then

it turned out that all of it was simply

a statistical error, and the figures were reduced

severalfold. In other words, they simply

crossed out, literally,

tens of millions of tons of agricultural products

that had been added on paper, and all these indicators

had to be revised. The same

situation applies to industrial production.

He talks about GDP growth, industrial

production.

And the Gaidar Institute, which works for

the government and is actually a fairly loyal

establishment organization,

also officially says that all of this

is manipulation of statistics. They take

the official figures, and even with those

there is cheating. You can verify them — it’s all

lies. And in the end Putin really

said the main thing: after a long

break, real

disposable incomes of the population

have increased. Translated into plain language, that means

that your salary really has gone up —

not just nominally, but so that, taking

inflation into account, you can buy more things

than before. And at that moment,

naturally, the whole country says, “What?”

“Come on now, uh-huh, enough with the

fairy tales.” And they really are fairy tales, because

he said they had grown a little,

but even

official statistics already refute that and

say that real disposable incomes

actually decreased by 0

point one — one tenth

of a percent. So even officially

we have been getting poorer for the fifth year in a row. Our wages,

our ability to buy things,

is declining when inflation is taken into account, and that inflation

is nowhere near

the official 4 percent. Everyone has been getting poorer

quite significantly. And there sits a man

telling and telling and telling

all these endless lies about

statistics. The last thing that seemed really

important to me — and I’ll end on

this point about Putin’s press conference —

was a journalist from Primorye (Russia’s Far East region).

He really put on a master class there

in regional bootlicking. Basically, he

sort of presented Putin with a complaint

about the pension reform, in a long, long, long-winded way.

Putin was speaking, but at the end of each...

he offered New Year greetings and said...

perhaps as the key point, so to speak, in

this press conference. Let's take 39 seconds.

A journalist from Primorye (Russia's Pacific coastal region) congratulated

him on the New Year after all and wished him

strength, creative success, and all the rest, and

finally, the very last thing I want

to say. Guys, here Mr. Pin...

you see, said that thousands

come in there, but only

this information came through. Guys, I want to

I really want, bypassing all my own

requests that journalists want to

snatch.

I want to voice the most important

question: Vladimir Vladimirovich, please help.

There is

Vladislav Shestakov, three years old, he is ill.

From the Irkutsk region, from Cheremkhovo.

He simply needs to be transferred to Moscow

People have raised the money.

Please help with that.

And I have a question for this journalist from Primorye

and to all the other

journalists, and really to everyone:

good Lord, do you really not have enough sense

to understand the elementary connection between

the fact that he has been sitting there for 20 years, and you still

fawn over him: 'Happy New Year, I wish you'

health, happiness, and another 30 years

in power.' And by the way, here, before

the whole country at this press conference,

the only possible way to help

Vladislav Shestakov from Irkutsk

is to ask you, the president of the country,

to bring him to Moscow. There is no other

way. And Vlad Shestakov—I don't know,

if things get worse for him there or if something

bad happens to him while we, in this

manual mode, before the eyes of the whole country, are

already collecting money for him—then we will have to admit that

free healthcare simply does not work.

If in the Irkutsk region

money was raised for Vladislav Shestakov, but

it still wasn't enough, you see, even for a ticket—he needs

to be transferred to Moscow to undergo

surgery—well, please understand

this simple connection, for heaven's sake:

Vladislav Shestakov cannot receive

treatment in the Irkutsk region,

which is, after all, an industrially developed and wealthy

region, because Putin is in power,

because he destroyed

healthcare, because together with

his friends and relatives he stole

the money with which Vladislav Shestakov

at three years old should officially

and free of charge be treated first in the Irkutsk

region, and then, if that was not possible,

he should have been transferred

to Moscow at the expense of the insurance system,

from public budgets, because his mom and

dad

Vladislav Shestakov's parents work and pay

taxes, and in any case they are entitled to

some share of the oil pumped out of

the ground; they are entitled to some share

of the hydropower—that is, those very

Siberian rivers that in the Irkutsk

region

generate enormous amounts of

electricity—they belong, among others, to

Vladislav Shestakov's mother and father too, but

for some reason they get nothing, while everything

goes to our collective wonderful

Timchenkos and Rotenbergs. And well, did you see

Putin's face when he was asked that question?

Of course he did not like that whole

topic; obviously he did not like it. But

that is in fact the quintessence

of this entire system. And that gives me a nice

good

bridge to our next topic: the main thing

that happened this week was precisely in

Primorye, where that journalist came from, though

who

who was probably driven by

some noble idea that

this three-year-old Shestakov needed help.

He came from Primorye, and in Primorye

there occurred

remarkable things that explain, among

other things, why there was no money in

Primorye. In fact, many people

are disappointed and write to me: in your last

program you urged everyone to

vote against Kozhemyako, but he won in the first

round. But no—in Primorye everything

turned out great, because on the one

hand, this acting

governor Oleg Kozhemyako

did win in the first round, but we already have

a huge amount of evidence now,

including mathematical proof, that in fact he

lost the first round. So this cannot

be called a victory, because although

he became governor, nevertheless we

saw that Putin and Kozhemyako

and United Russia suffered a defeat in Primorye,

because they had built

a setup in which they removed all

the candidates, and Oleg Kozhemyako ran

an 'opposition' campaign; absolutely all the media

were pushing for him. I saw ads—

Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network) was running his ads, those very

same Odnoklassniki that, for example, always tells us

'political advertising? No,'

'no, it's prohibited on our platform.'

And yet there they were flooding it with

ads for Kozhemyako. Nevertheless,

people in Primorye came to the polls

and despite the fact that all the other

candidates were basically spoilers imposed from above, and

the LDPR candidate who came second had, in the previous

recent election, supported

the United Russia candidate, the people of Primorye came and said: no,

this Kozhemyako will not win in the first round.

and most of them voted

against him, and Putin had to rig the count

and in Primorye (a region in Russia’s Far East), you can clearly see that ballot stuffing took place

and in Gorny, you can already clearly see where

they stuffed ballots, how they did it, and at which

polling stations. Just look at this table

you can see it plainly: they were evening out

the percentages for different candidates, not just

for Kozhemyako

the probability that our

result would randomly come out with figures like that

is something like one in a trillion

quite a lot has already been written on this subject

there is not the slightest doubt, so once again I’m returning

to the topic I already raised

about our Smart Voting, and I’m going to

talk about it a lot, a lot. This is another example

of why it works, and an explanation of why

they blocked our Smart Voting

they blocked it, blocked it because by now

United Russia candidates can no longer win

well, here they did, yes, of course

falsify the results. He got 46, and they

stuffed roughly 170,000 votes in there

to boost his total, but even so

this still has to be done manually, and it is extremely

difficult to do for all districts, for all

elections. In Moscow, there will be elections to the

Moscow City Duma, and there will be 45 single-member

districts. In fact, that’s not very many

people needed

if we all simultaneously and in a coordinated way

vote, if we agree on whom

to vote for in order to defeat United Russia candidates

we will deprive them of their majority, and in other

cities and regions where elections are held, we

can deprive them of their majority. That’s why they

got so scared. So, friends,

be sure to take part in Smart

Voting — register

If it is blocked, we will find a technical

solution, but for now use a VPN

register, because they are already

look, they have several

factors on their side: Putin’s support

guarantees victory for them

administrative resources, lots of advertising, and so on

and so on, all of it. And none of these factors

will work — only through falsification

only through falsification can they

win. So the situation is really

shaking the authorities, and that is very

important. Well then, since I’ve already started talking

about this

I’ll say a few words about how

they blocked it, because this concerns not only

us, but everyone

with websites on the internet, because we saw

that the state has declared a major war

on the internet. It consists in the fact that they

really are going to block everything

completely arbitrarily. They told us

that we had personal data on

the website, and we simply took that personal

data and removed it all. When we went to court, in

court Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and internet regulator) said, you know,

they have Google Analytics trackers on their websites

and Yandex.Metrica, and that too

is the collection of personal data, and all of it is stored on

servers in California, therefore

it should be blocked — and it was blocked

but the thing is that afterward several

people — there’s this wonderful guy

Alexander Litrifonov — it hadn’t even occurred to me

I wrote a post: guys, the same thing is also

on all their websites. How can they

block ours? He simply went onto the website

of United Russia, and there were the same trackers there

then onto Roskomnadzor’s own website

and there were the same trackers there too

he had already filed several complaints: come on then

now block them too, if Navalny’s

was blocked on these same grounds. But

today Putin, at a press conference,

also spoke about this, and he was

asked whether it was really necessary to

punish people so harshly for posts and so

on. He answered differently than before

because previously he would answer along the lines of

well yes, these are excesses by local officials

probably, freedom of opinion is necessary, it should exist

but this time he said

roughly the following, more or less quoting accurately

if the law is being broken, it is the same everywhere

what difference does it make where they

break the law — on the street or on the internet

it’s the same thing. To tweet, or out on the street

someone stabbed someone with a knife

or on the internet someone clicked like or made a post

wrote something bad about, say, the authorities

saying they are bad — that too is a criminal act

so even from this change in rhetoric

we can see that

there is going to be a major offensive, and we will

certainly survive it. And one of the reasons why it is necessary

to take part in voting is that if they are

attacking the internet, then the internet should

also

strike back. We’ll talk more about the internet today

but for now let’s talk about

clones; before we get to the clowns and the circus

let me answer a few questions

so, Andrei is asking me precisely about

this. The elections in Primorye clearly

showed that this government will not hand over even a piece

of power honestly, especially since for them all of this

is a matter of survival. Without a fight, no, they will not

give it up. Well of course, yes, Andrei, they will not

give it up without a fight, but it would be naive

to assume that these people would give up

not only power, but also the

hundreds of billions of rubles attached to it — tens of

billions of dollars. But there will be a fight, and

we need to give them that fight. It consists of

a multifront offensive. I’m not

saying that only participation

in elections and Smart Voting alone will bring them down

no, it has to be a combination of different things

One element is fighting them at

the elections through Smart Voting.

Because no other form of participation in

elections works anymore—rallies,

spreading information—well, in other words,

these are complex things, and this is a fight

that we will put up,

and a fight that they will sooner or later

lose. From that press conference, it was

clear that, well, they have nothing left to say.

They will lose, and all you need to do is

get involved. People very often tell me,

“Why are you pushing voting on us? Let’s

do something else.” But honestly,

guys, taking part in Smart

Voting takes one day a year—you’re not

exactly overworking yourselves.

If, on top of that, in addition

to some other action, you also

take part in Smart Voting, then

please do participate. Vladimir

asks what will happen if Russia

abandons the dollar. That will not happen.

No one is going to abandon the dollar, even

in Soviet times dollars circulated here

in limited quantities, and

even if he said so today, it is simply

impossible. Russia is now so tightly connected to

the international system that it is impossible

to abandon the dollar, and it will not

be abandoned—first and foremost, Russia’s Finance Ministry

and the state banks will not abandon it. In fact,

Putin himself and his friends do not keep anything in rubles.

Do you think their money is held in rubles? Well,

of course not. They will not abandon the dollar; that is not

going to happen. Next.

Adalin asks me: greetings.

Do you condemn participation in the HRC

—meaning the Human Rights Council?

Obviously, the discussion is about whether some people

joined Putin’s Human Rights Council

and whether we should shame and attack them.

No, we should neither shame nor attack them. It’s not

that I condemn it—well, except for the truly disgusting

crooks who are there. Yes, I condemn them, but

I condemned them before this too. That is, I

condemn them because they are disgusting crooks.

Some people, like Ekaterina Shulman,

decent people, joined it, and I do not condemn that.

It is probably useless, and joining

will of course change nothing there; they

will help no one, everyone will feel awkward, they

will talk about small deeds—well, okay.

They will not do any particular harm either—well, one could

say the harm is that it legitimizes the

system.

But really, on the whole, nothing especially

terrible will happen. They joined the council—so what?

Pavel Chikov, I think, is still

there. He’s a great guy; he

really does a lot of legal work

together with his wonderful

organization Agora. He’s at least doing something.

Is there any benefit from it?

Zero. Well, he does it, and he does it—fine.

We just should not spend too much time

on this. That is, there is no need

to single them out for criticism,

but there is also absolutely no reason

to praise them for these

appointments. So, Unicorn Geralt—well,

of course, when we have a question

from someone with the nickname

Unicorn Geralt, we should soon make

a unicorn the logo of our program.

Geralt, it is entirely logical to assume that

the authorities will try as much as possible

to restrict freedom of speech on the internet, and

what will we do then? Unicorn—well,

come on, of course the authorities will try

to restrict freedom of speech on the internet. Haven’t I

been telling you this for the tenth

program in a row about blocked

websites? They will keep restricting it all. What will we

do? Well, we will keep working. We

will use VPNs, we will install things, we

will use other

methods. Where did this program come from?

This program

came from the fact that they block websites on

the internet, and we decided simply to make

a program like this on YouTube because

for now YouTube is hard to block.

They can block all of YouTube,

but my channel specifically

they cannot block yet. So that is what

we will do, dear Unicorn—we will

keep inventing

different things. We will send each other

videos and notes in messengers.

Still, about the circus and the clowns—that

was a very important topic last

week.

Putin has not only a Human Rights Council,

which we discussed today, but also some kind of

council—I do not even know how to describe it—of

theater figures, artists, and other

rather pointless people

whose main activity is that once a year

they gather and, again, fawn over Putin,

bow to him obsequiously, and

beg for money for their theater or

for themselves personally—well, for their organization.

They will, of course, steal most of that money,

and no one will do anything about it

because they go there begging

and flattering Putin and all that. And it was

important—the key moment there was the move

made by the famous—I do not even

know how to put it correctly—

our famous director Edgard Zapashny (a well-known Russian circus performer and animal trainer),

who

told Putin—and Putin even agreed—that

we should basically start clearing out

foreign circuses so that our

plain old Russian circus can develop. This

matters because it concerns not only the circus.

Let’s watch a few seconds of it.

It takes 1 minute and 4 seconds.

Forgive me for criticizing my

Canadian colleagues—someone might see in this

a fight for market share, or sense

that. Absolutely not. Mr. Gutseriev

announced that in 2019, Skolkovo (a Moscow innovation hub)

would open a permanent venue

for a Canadian circus.

I believe this is unacceptable. I believe

it is wrong. No one is stopping them

from coming here on temporary tours.

They have already been coming here for more than ten years,

coming here regularly.

But this will definitely have a negative impact, and not

only on the Russian circus industry, but on

Russian sports as well. And here we are,

at a time when Canada is very actively

imposing sanctions against us, and

suddenly, for some reason, we become

welcoming to Cirque du Soleil from that country

on a permanent basis. Which is exactly what

Andrei Sergeich was talking about: this is, in essence,

a fight for the market. That is true, and

to throw the gates wide open like that—well,

I don't know. Of course, the audience wants

to see it, but I am most likely on your

side.

You know, it gives the impression that everything in

Russia exists for Eduard Zapashny

and to fill his circus with spectators.

Because, I don't know, apparently people are not going

to his circus if he is so afraid of

competition. As you know, I am a rather

simple-minded person, so I immediately

go and look at the declaration, yes, and there, respected sir,

sure, he may train his

tigers brilliantly, do whatever he does with them, and risk

having them bite his leg off, and tell them,

"And the tigers sat at my feet and looked into my eyes,"

and all that—but I look it up and

see that Eduard Zapashny receives from

the state budget, as a director, 10 million rubles

a year. Well, perhaps someone

that famous should perhaps be paid even more,

but still, man, that's 10

million rubles a year (about 100,000 USD). We're already

paying you, you already have a circus—leave us

alone. Let that Canadian

circus come, or a Chinese circus, or whatever circus

wants to come and build a venue. And can I

then choose for myself whether to go to Zapashny's

circus

or Cirque du Soleil? I went once in my life

to

[music]

a Cirque du Soleil performance, and it really

was impressive. Probably one of the

reasons I brought it up is because

it stuck with me—I had been to Cirque

du Soleil, and it was really something, really very cool.

Again, I am not trying to say that

our circus performers are somehow bad or don't do anything,

but we are in favor of competition, after all.

We are for the visitors, for these

children—let them choose. If they like

going to the circus, they can first go to Cirque

du Soleil,

and then go to Zapashny's, or

vice versa. But here there is simply an

element

not of competition, as they discuss with Putin,

but rather an element of some kind of

cult of personality: yes, we are supposed to gear the whole country

toward making sure Zapashny does his dangerous

thing with tigers—not even mentioning

that there is a separate question of whether we even need

circuses with animals at all.

There are many videos on YouTube on this

topic, and they are all quite unpleasant. I am not

going to show them to you—you already

know how animals are trained, what kind of

cages they live in, and what happens to them

in the circus. It is, well, a whole series

of horrific torture and sadism to which

these unfortunate animals are subjected

so that they will jump somewhere in the proper

way,

or give a paw, or juggle

something, or so that a bear rides a bicycle.

If you do not beat that bear

in the kidneys with an iron rod, it will not

ride a bicycle. And the thing is that

children's joy

is built precisely in this way:

the animals are terrorized, they ride

bicycles, someone applauds, Eduard Zapashny

gets 10 million rubles. I am not sure

that this is the right state of affairs in

Russia right now. Finally, I congratulate you all:

after 10 years of lengthy discussions, we

have passed—thank God—a law

on cruelty to animals.

It is called the law on responsible treatment of

animals. Well, they did ban petting

zoos, but by and large

ordinary zoos should also, of course, be

banned. Well, I mean—not zoos,

but these circuses, at least.

I assume that Mr. Zapashny

will watch my program and, in an angry

fit, write me a response

on Instagram or wherever, and say, "We do not

torment our tigers, we feed them

a portion of meat,"

Then install webcams there so that everyone

who wants to can see, or so that animal rights activists

can have unrestricted access at

any moment to the places where the

animals are kept, and at the times when these

training sessions

or drills or whatever take place, because

everything we have seen, including footage

from hidden cameras of animal training in

the circus, is a monstrous spectacle that,

once a person has seen it, they will never again

take joy in any circus with

animals. Therefore, before

Mr. Zapashny starts showing off like that,

So the idea is: let's just ban everything.

Let him first answer these important

questions—not only from animal rights activists, but also from

any normal person: are you training

your tigers, or are you torturing them? And

by the way, from there he goes on to

launch into a real flight of fancy.

And on this same subject he says,

"Why don't we open a branch of the Louvre, a branch of

La Scala here in Russia?" As if

that would be bad, and that it would destroy

the Hermitage. That it would reduce the number of people

who go to our theaters and our museums.

And then, quoting that logic: "Let's

slowly destroy everything that is ours

—everything Russian."

So he equated his tiger circus

and made it essentially identical,

forgive me, to everything Russian. As if everything Russian for us is

Eduard Zapashny, his tiger,

his 10 million rubles, and Vladimir Putin

who agrees with him. What the hell?

If in Moscow or St. Petersburg

a branch of the Louvre, La Scala, and

so on were to open, everyone would be happy—first and foremost,

I assure you, the visitors of

the Mariinsky or the Hermitage, and everyone else,

any cultured person. That would be

great if it opened. All, all

circus lovers would be delighted if

both the Zapashnys and Cirque

du Soleil and everyone else could coexist. But what we see is

that this mindset will always dominate.

Now there are certain people who have simply latched onto

the state budget—people like Nikita

Mikhalkov (the Russian filmmaker).

For them, the sign that you're a patriot and somehow

have special rights is that budget money

starts flowing to you. And immediately you

puff yourself up and say, "I am everything

Russian—don't you dare destroy me.

Support me." And this will keep going

further and further—you'll see, it will just

keep developing, developing, and developing.

I've received a lot of questions about

paid parking. It's such a

toxic topic: opponents of paid

parking all come running in and start arguing, and here

there really is something to discuss, because I believe

that by now we can already see

the final fiasco and failure of the entire

strategy of Moscow City Hall. All that nonsense about

how this is a modern city, and about paid

parking—

that it would somehow save something or

help with anything—because essentially

all of the Moscow government's measures to fight

traffic jams boiled down to paid parking.

We were told: look, people park

like idiots. That's true—people do park

everywhere, including on sidewalks.

That's true. They're idiots, they block parking and

park on sidewalks. Now we'll really hit

them in the wallet, and the situation will improve. But

they hit them—and then hit them again on top of that.

And they did it in such a way that, frankly, we ought

to hit back at them, excuse me. Even

if you're a supporter of paid

parking—I support paid parking

in general. In any normal

city in the world, downtown has paid

parking; you can't avoid restricting

cars in the center, and paid

parking should be used there. But if, before an election—you are

politicians, after all, officials—you declare

—look, on December 26 of last year,

Maxim Liksutov, our old favorite, about whom

we have done many

reports and investigations, and it has been shown

that he is a monstrous corrupt official, one of the

biggest corrupt figures

in the country—said that paid parking in 2018

would not become more expensive.

On August 1 of this year, he repeated

it, looking all of us in the eye before the

Moscow mayoral election. Everyone

was asking, because Sobyanin was running

his campaign, and he said:

"No tariff increase is planned in 2018.

Paid parking will not get more expensive." And then—bang—

it went up to 380 rubles.

Let's compare 380 rubles with other

cities.

And here we see the chart, and we see

that yes, London is even more expensive—but this is

when converted

into a single currency, into euros. In

London it's five and a half; Moscow is at

the level of Amsterdam, and more expensive than Paris,

more expensive than all the other European

cities, including expensive ones like

Luxembourg.

Well, okay.

Still, that number can't just

come out of nowhere. You can't just say,

"Let's make it a hundred thousand million billion."

Why not, then? There had to be some kind of

justification, assuming they didn't just pull

the number out of thin air. If what you really need is

to make sure cars simply don't

come there, then just ban parking

in those places—Neglinnaya Street, for example.

Ban parking there. But you won't do that,

because the Central Bank's cars are parked there,

the Prosecutor General's Office cars are parked there. They

don't care about any of that. Instead, on these small

sections where ordinary people can park,

they slap on 380 rubles—that's more expensive than anywhere else. Well,

come on, guys, you have to admit it's reasonable

to compare that with average salaries.

If the average salary in London is 340,000

rubles, and the average salary in

Amsterdam, where parking costs about the same as

in Moscow, is 280,000 rubles, while in

Moscow the average salary is 82,000 rubles

—and that's obviously a lie, too, because

the real average salary in Moscow is of course

lower. There has to be some kind of

Any sense of proportion at all—where are you even getting this from?

Who are these numbers even for, then?

There is such a city as Moscow—you just can't ignore it.

With these parking prices, what exactly were you trying to achieve?

To make it so that people would come there

only for a short time, or take the metro instead?

But instead, you're just setting a completely insane

price that basically no one can afford,

that no one can afford at all, and

most importantly, these measures haven't led to anything

at all.

We're looking at the latest international

study, which shows how much time

residents of each major city

spend in traffic jams, and we saw that

Moscow

is in first place by a fairly wide

margin. So it hasn't led to anything.

Your paid parking system—you can say all you want

that without paid parking

things would be worse, and maybe they would be worse, but

paid parking is just one element, one of

many things, and not the most important one when it comes to

fighting traffic. I'll give you a simple example

and just tell you what I think about it.

Here's another example I see all the time from

my window. I work at our Anti-Corruption Foundation

near Avtozavodskaya metro station.

We're based in an office center, and my window

in that office center looks directly out

onto a huge building under construction—some kind of

16-story building, pretty ugly,

a black rectangular block

that the hell knows why they built here—who even needs it

here? But I wasn't too lazy, so

because look—here you've got

the business center where we are, a shopping center,

residential buildings—everything here is packed with cars,

there's paid parking, there are already traffic jams,

and now they want this too. Avtozavodskaya isn't even the city center, and yet

they've started this. I go to the website of this

complex—it's a luxury development, and there

each apartment costs 160 million rubles (about US$1.7 million),

there are 232 apartments in total, and parking spaces

for only 80 cars. Come on, we're

reasonable people—we understand that in

a luxury building where each apartment costs

60 million rubles (about US$650,000), it's impossible not to realize

who is buying these apartments. In every

apartment there will be two cars, and more likely

three cars—and they're building only 80

parking spaces. They are simply

guaranteeing that around

this building there will be another 500 cars.

And then add the drivers, the deliveries,

the movers, all of that.

You can make parking there

700 rubles an hour, 800 rubles an hour

—whatever you want—it won't solve any

problem, because the real problem is

that the Moscow city government, Sobyanin (Moscow's mayor), and

his officials are still approving, for bribes,

the construction of gigantic

developments that attract traffic.

But you don't have to build a six-story building there—

build a four-story one, build five-story ones.

Instead, they keep putting up

shopping centers of unimaginable size,

office centers of unimaginable size,

and these buildings too—and there's another trick to it.

I go to the website, and they're selling

apartments—well, 'apartments'—then you open

the documentation and see that it's not actually a residential building.

I mean, it's an obvious scam.

You see, they just call it not an

apartment but 'apartments' because

they couldn't get it approved under the technical

requirements. So in essence, what we're seeing is a huge

illegal construction project where they're throwing up

their damn flats.

They call all of it 'apartments'; they just

carried suitcases of money to various

people and are condemning this little area around

Avtozavodskaya metro station

to decades of sharply worsening

traffic conditions. This

is happening everywhere. It happens

constantly. So as long as

the Moscow city government is filled with

bribe-takers, as long as crooks remain there who

approve the construction of these huge, unnecessary,

high-rise, ugly developments,

until that changes, there will be no

real, effective fight against

traffic jams. You can hire McKinsey,

someone from Amsterdam, I don't know, or any

other foreign consultants you like.

You can run whatever

super PR campaigns you want, telling everyone how

everything here

is great and fixed—it won't help as long as

the people sitting there keep taking bribes.

So once again: there will be elections in

September for the Moscow City Duma—let's make sure

United Russia loses, including over this

parking nonsense. Let's register

and vote out every single one of these

bastards who feed us lies

about fighting traffic jams while continuing

to build more buildings. Well, obviously

they're building a 16-story building because

you can make 20 million on it,

whereas on a four-story one you can make 2

million. So why make 2 million

if you can make 23 million,

take some of it to Sobyanin (Moscow's mayor) or

to some of his

people, and everything will work out for you.

And if there are traffic jams there—

who cares.

We all live abroad anyway, basically.

All neighbors of Sergey Brilyov (a Russian TV presenter) are in London.

That's it. That's how the system works. So

for all these things,

they need to be crushed. Let's talk—there isn't much

time left—about me, me...

the Russian-Ukrainian scandal, Katsyv and I

accidentally started it with one tweet, one...

I was just swarmed there by a huge wave of outrage,

by a huge number of Ukrainians, because

I wrote a tweet—well, I’ll show you what the tweet said.

It said: on Saturday, this happened—

today an event of historic

magnitude will take place: the council in Kyiv will complete the schism

and the creation of a national church in Ukraine; the Russian Orthodox Church

will lose up to half of its active parishes. Everything

that had been built over centuries was destroyed

by Putin and his idiots in four years.

Putin is an enemy of the Russian world (the idea of a shared Russian cultural sphere). That’s what it means.

Well, since I apparently didn’t explain it clearly enough,

to all the Ukrainians—

there were some, like we have here, [ __ ] there

and even more of them [ __ ], and they were

basically all going crazy,

saying, “What is this supposed to mean? They won’t let us

create our own church?” Of course,

it’s my fault—if nobody understood my tweet,

or rather, if everyone understood it that way, then I

must have phrased it badly. I’ll try

to develop my point, because in fact

this is important from the standpoint of Russian and

Ukrainian relations, and Russia’s

relations with other

countries in general. I absolutely believe that every

country has every right to create

whatever church it wants. It’s actually

ridiculous to think that Moscow could somehow

forbid Ukraine, or, I don’t know, Armenia

or Georgia,

from creating their own churches. That

is just as absurd as, basically, this

degenerate discussion on Russian

TV channels about whether Ukrainians even exist.

If there is such a thing as

a Ukrainian nation—open Russia’s census.

We have several thousand

elves and some number of dwarves listed there.

Nationality is self-identification.

If you want to be an elf, you’re an elf. If you want to be

a dwarf, you’re a dwarf. If you want to be Russian—what

exactly “Russian” means isn’t all that clear either.

In the 18th century, vast territories were

populated by Mordvins, Chud peoples, and so on,

and now everyone there is Russian.

Well, that’s how a nation works: it simply absorbs

people, and now that is called “Russian.” So

likewise now,

there is a huge territory where

tens of millions of people live, and they are Ukrainians.

They want a Ukrainian church—then let them have

their own Ukrainian church.

Register it however you want—it’s your

absolute right. What I was talking about was something else:

Putin keeps running around with this “Russian

world” idea.

He wanted the Russian Orthodox Church, among other things,

to serve as an instrument of influence,

a form of soft power. And generally speaking,

there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Obviously, language,

cultural ties, including religious

ties, are a very powerful instrument of influence—

influence not in a negative sense, but

in a positive one as well.

It means we can be on the same wavelength with large groups of other

people, think similarly,

and reach agreements about things.

That helps.

And Putin is an enemy of the Russian world because he

destroyed all of that with his stupidity,

with his idiocy, with his war. All that

we got as a result of Putin’s

so-called brilliant geopolitics is a very

large, aggressive state that is negatively disposed toward us—

Ukraine, a huge country,

a huge state with a huge population,

which will now always vote

against us, will always get worked up,

go crazy, and jump on any tweet, and which

now, simply on principle, will

defend its own church and its own religion

in opposition to us. But

none of this belonged to Putin. This was

something people built

over hundreds of years. People paid with their lives; there were

major wars, there were—well, there was

suffering and torment, a whole history spanning

centuries, a history hundreds of years long,

all leading to the fact that, well,

within the Orthodox churches, we had

the largest Orthodox Church of all.

And now it’s gone. And now, because of Putin,

that blockhead, it’s over—this glorious

centuries-long history has ended. Because

the truth is that it

in Ukraine,

a larger share of the population lives in

rural areas, and accordingly there is a higher

level of everyday religiosity

among the population—people simply go to

church more often. That’s why I wrote that these

are “live” parishes. In Russia there are plenty of formal

parishes where nobody goes, where there are no parishioners,

but in Ukraine, in that sense,

the situation is different. And all of this is gone, all of this

we have lost. And it’s fairly hard for me to

blame

the Ukrainians, because for an Orthodox

person—I know many criticize me

for this, because they think it’s normal and that

a democratic politician should

necessarily be an atheist. I used to be

an atheist.

Now I am Orthodox, and I have

some kind of personal, including new,

religious, so to speak, crisis of some kind.

Because I don’t really believe—honestly,

I’ll tell you frankly—I don’t believe that the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church

believe in God, judging by what they do.

I just can’t believe it. I see a board meeting of the

Ministry of Defense, and there sits Patriarch

Kirill—what are you doing there? There are so many

problems in the country. There’s that boy—what’s his name—

Vladislav Shestakov from Irkutsk,

who can’t get from Irkutsk to Moscow for

treatment. Please, deal with that

boy. No—instead, you have to sit at a ministry board meeting.

the Ministry of Defense, because here you’ve really got

some kind of shoulder boards under your cassock.

This is probably the first time I’ve spoken this harshly

about

the Russian Orthodox Church, but honestly there’s no other way. I talk

to many people there who

kind of correct me, someone like me,

a superficial Soviet-style Orthodox believer.

These are genuinely devout, church-going people, and they also

feel a great deal of irritation. But all

these stories about the watch—remember

that famous photograph, where right here on

the wrist there’s a watch,

or rather, the watch appeared in the reflection, even though it wasn’t actually there—

and then all this stuff with the Ministry of Defense,

this kind of super-aggressive

rhetoric, these statements—

well, this sort of super-... The Russian Orthodox Church has always

been tied to the state, of course, it has always

been connected to the state, it is

basically, well, effectively a ministry.

But damn it, there has to be some limit, because

then why the hell is the president of the country,

the president of a secular state,

—let’s watch 50 seconds of how he

so passionately answered a question about

this: the Ukrainian church was formed,

and the Ukrainian church is supposedly

a branch of Istanbul. Let’s

watch. Orthodoxy—what

is happening in Orthodoxy right now is

simply—

it’s beyond comprehension. It is direct interference

by the state in church and religious

life. Nothing like this has happened since

the days of the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, in Ukraine right now

what’s happening is that they created this united

schismatic church of the Istanbul

parish. I like that—if there’s a Moscow parish,

then apparently there’ll be an Istanbul parish. I think

this was all planned out, and besides

that, of course, there were prompts from Washington.

So the Secretary called about this

issue in Kyiv and discussed the topic. But this

is absolutely outrageous.

An Istanbul parish, a prompt from

Washington—and already someone in the audience

is applauding: yes, yes, yes, well done, thank you. I’ve

said this many times, many times, and

I’ll repeat it, because it really drives

me up the wall as an Orthodox believer:

a KGB man

and Communist Party member has become our chief

Orthodox Christian and is now going to

teach all of us. He studied scientific atheism,

they went off together on student construction brigades (Soviet work camps),

and lived in a warehouse built from the remains of

blown-up churches, and told everyone

that religion was the opium of the people.

Listen, I myself, in the school library,

used to get little anti-religious booklets.

I would go to Ukraine, by the way, to visit my

grandmother, who was very religious, and I’d tell her

things like, “Look, Grandma, the Turin

Shroud—scientists have proved that it’s

a fake.”

And my grandmother would say... I used to pester her

with stories about how God doesn’t exist.

But it’s simply disgusting and revolting to me

that our leading Orthodox voices have become

these party functionaries, all these CPSU members,

the very people who blew up churches,

who destroyed priests,

who squeezed Orthodoxy out of public life—and now they

are going to teach us how to love our homeland

and how to believe in God. The last

topic I want to touch on concerns all of us,

and me in particular, because

this is also one of those bills

that obviously arose under the influence of

our activities—our rallies,

the investigations we publish.

This brings us back to the internet in Russia.

They are introducing deep packet

inspection of internet traffic, which will allow them

to analyze traffic and, in general,

block everything completely.

And they want to spend 20 billion rubles on this

—that is, for those

who don’t want to get into all the

deep technical details,

the idea is very simple. Right now, if they need

to block my blog, they write to the providers:

“Block navalny

dot com.”

But when they buy this equipment for 20

billion—naturally, they’ll steal 11 billion of it;

that’s one of the main purposes of

this whole thing—they’ll do it

differently. When you try to go to

navalny.com, that site sends you

a specific kind of traffic, like a fingerprint.

They’ll be able to analyze

the traffic and see: oh, this guy went to

navalny.com, even if you can’t see it directly.

They’ll dig deep into your traffic,

figure out that you went somewhere you weren’t supposed to,

and they’ll block all of it. And 20

billion, guys, 20 billion—

one moment they’re telling Putin

“Let’s get the boy treated,” and

“let’s transport him to Moscow,” and the next

moment it’s 20 billion. 20 billion is

five annual budgets of the city of Pskov. Have you been to

Pskov?

It needs

—like all other Russian cities, with the exception

of Moscow. Our country is

falling apart. That bridge over the Lena River

the mayor talked about—for 20 billion rubles

you probably can’t build the whole bridge,

but still, surely you could at least

provide some subsidies for those

little ferries so people wouldn’t have to pay

thousands of rubles, and so on and so forth.

We have plenty of places where money could be invested, in that

sense. Well, take the recent case...

Valentina Matviyenko's exchange at the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia's parliament)

She was discussing how, you know, we have

a huge number of schools where the toilets

are outside, and there isn't enough money. Let's

try to deal with it by 2020. Putin—

38 seconds from Valentina Matviyenko: We have

only three regions where this problem

has not yet been resolved. One region is the Republic of

Buryatia, and they promised that by the new

school year they will have no schools with

cold toilets. But two regions, unfortunately,

are still not managing to address

the situation, and by the end of the year they will not have

solved this problem. And of course, one school

differs from another, and the cost of insulating

a school toilet varies. But even so,

this is not like building a spaceport.

That's right, it's not a spaceport construction project.

Buryatia was mentioned here.

It's cold in Buryatia in winter. I can just

imagine my own children, including a schoolchild,

wanting to go to the toilet.

He has to go outside in -25°C (-13°F) and walk to

an outdoor toilet, which is obviously

cold. Let's not even discuss what it

looks like inside. And yet you spend 20

billion rubles just to

block my website and block

videos and block various other

information resources where Putin is criticized.

That is exactly what's happening. All school toilets

in Russia could be made

heated, and toilets in all hospitals could be fixed.

There would be no outdoor toilets in hospitals or in other

institutions if we spent on this

20 billion rubles. The same United Russia (the ruling political party),

when discussing an increase in child benefits,

tells us there is no money.

Let's hear Tamara Pletnyova for 46 seconds.

She explains that it would be nice, of course, but we do not have

money for children in Russia. This bill

is very complicated, although at first glance

it seems simple: let's just raise

the payment.

up to the age of three, and that's it. But when we looked at

how much money this would require—two hundred

thirty-six point eight

billion rubles would be needed for all of this.

And these are regional payments, at that.

The idea is simply wonderful. I voted for it,

you understand that.

But the main issue is still

the funds. That's why, as of today, they are not available,

and

the committee decided to reject this

bill.

You see, the idea is wonderful, but

there's no money. Fine, say 200 billion is needed,

but 10 percent of that amount—20

billion—we are spending on something completely unclear,

for what exactly. There are already blocks in place, Roskomnadzor (Russia's media and internet regulator)

is already doing it, but apparently that's not enough.

Let's spend another 20 billion. Just waste it

on nothing. And in the Beautiful Russia of the Future

all the people who voted for this and

supported it, and who in one way or another will

help allocate

20 billion for internet blocking, we will

send them out into the street, give them hammers and

nails, and they will

be insulating school toilets all across

the country. Thank you very much for

watching. See you in a week.

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