Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #001, 20.04

Hello, good evening, you’re on the air with

the YouTube channel Navalny Live. Alexei

Navalny, in a shirt and tie, almost like a

real TV host. That means I’m finally

making good on a promise I made a long time ago

and from now on I’ll be hosting a weekly YouTube

show, completely live. Soon

we’ll finish setting things up — we’ll have calls here, we’ll

have Skype here too, but in any case

I’ll be answering your questions. This

program exists so that you and I can

talk and discuss the latest news over the course

of an hour. I won’t be able to escape your

tough questions. You can

really pin me down with them right here —

the trickiest ones, the most interesting ones. I’ll

have to answer them, because this is

live, and that’s basically

the whole point. Please don’t judge

me too harshly. This is my first

experience hosting a program. Who knows what

might fall apart here — the sound might cut out or something

like that. I’ll say right away, actually:

Insight is a pretty stressful thing. Sobol,

who hosts on the channel every morning,

is always complaining that she gets very tired,

and we laugh at her. But now I can see

that my heart is pounding and, overall,

it’s a little scary — but I hope it all works out.

Hi. I actually wanted to start by

introducing our channel, Navalny Live,

because it’s already working quite actively.

Our broadcast from the rallies on the 26th

was watched by 4 million people. That can absolutely

compete with big, real

television. But still, we launched it

in a kind of guerrilla way, and we also have

morning shows that are also watched by

an average of 150,000–170,000 people, and we’re very

pleased. Thank you to all our viewers. But still,

no one has really explained yet

exactly why we launched the Navalny

Live channel, and I’d like to briefly say now

that, first of all,

the main reason is that we have something to say. We

believe we represent a

significant part of society. We know that

on the other side of the screen there is already a huge

part of society that wants to talk

about the topics we want

to talk about. Yes, there are people who are

interested in fighting corruption. There are people

who are

interested in what is actually happening at the rallies.

There are people who are

critical of the government — and in fact

they are the majority in Russia — and they

have no television of their own, neither regional nor

federal. There are, of course,

the excellent Echo of Moscow and the TV Rain channel,

but overall, there is no real television

for these people, and we are trying to create —

to add to those few uncensored

islands of informational freedom

our channel as well. We know that people

want this. Second,

what is on television now is

not really Russia’s television — it is

television for some occupied

country, or, I don’t know, for some foreign

place abroad. You press the button,

turn on Channel One, Channel Two, Channel Three, Channel Four,

or even any regional channel,

and they’ll tell you about Ukraine — that’ll be

the first three news items — then about Syria, about

Palmyra, about Aleppo, what happened there at the

United Nations, how

terrible Europe is decaying, how they have

Islamization there, or some attacks,

or gays taking over entire countries. But where is

Russia in all this? Where are the news stories about Russia,

about what is happening here in our

country? Well, excuse me, but I see — I find online —

and I see thousands of

truck drivers in Dagestan, very much within

Russia,

literally fighting with OMON riot police.

I see a huge number of news stories about

our country. There is so much I want to know about

our country. But where can I watch that? So

I am completely dissatisfied with

the occupation-style television that exists in the

idiot box. And third,

we basically despise everything

that is happening now on official

television. It is television

made by thieves and crooks.

And we want to do our part. I’m not

afraid to use such a lofty phrase as

the destruction of this television. I understand perfectly well

— I’m not a naive person — yes, here I am

sitting here in a room at a white table, with

one camera filming me. This is not exactly

a direct challenge to central television and

the major broadcast channels, but still, we

want to do our part. We also want

to support and encourage many people

who are wondering whether they should start

YouTube channels, who are thinking about whether

they can organize

some kind of small-scale broadcasting in their own region. And we want

to show that yes, you can. It’s not that expensive,

it’s not that scary. And probably the symbol

of all this is the wonderful wall

behind me. Well, you know how it is:

usually when a TV host has

an evening show, behind them there’s this

cool, expensive backdrop, like a nighttime cityscape,

with lights twinkling everywhere, and everything

looks great and super polished. We don’t have

the ability to make a nighttime cityscape,

especially after, in particular, the police

quite recently cleared out this very room

and took absolutely everything that was

in it. But that’s all right — we drew

a city. It’s a perfectly decent city. There are probably

even some five-story apartment blocks here that will

to take down, and which we’ll also discuss later today

And, uh,

And in the background, there’s a stylish chalk drawing

I can certainly say a few words, actually, and

probably a lot of people will want to hear them

that’s what we’re doing all this for, so

Please subscribe to the channel

Navalny Live — we’re going to fill it

with news, and we’ll also be making

regional mini-channels like these, first and foremost

in cities with populations over one million

we’ll launch them, and we’ll be filling the broadcast

schedule — right now we already have regular

weekday morning broadcasts with Sobol

Sobol’s show, rather — and we also regularly

feature lawyers with their own

legal show, offering basic legal explainers

Leonid Volkov talks about what’s happening at headquarters, and I

will talk about anything that interests you

and we’ll keep building out this schedule — please write to us

and tell us who you’d like to see here

who we should invite, and what other

programs we can make for you. We’ll definitely

make them for you. Although, of course, in

general, this isn’t exactly what we do

professionally, but we’ll give it a try together

this is the kind of television we’re going to

build together with all of you. And Alexei

asks me — Denis Antonov asks — why are you

doing this on Navalny Live instead of on

the main channel? The audience there is much larger,

right?

Dear Denis, we have 125,000

subscribers here; on the main channel, around

850,000. But the formats are completely different here

it’s live broadcasts, nothing but live broadcasts

these are long videos, and we do a lot of broadcasting

so we want, ideally, to do this kind of broadcasting

24 hours a day. But on the main channel

we make short films — five

or at most ten minutes long — that’s the longest

they get. So they’re just completely different

formats. Besides, we want to grow

the audience — some people are interested in produced videos,

some people are interested in a talking head,

as they call it, right

A few

things I wanted to discuss — I just

looked at where I got the most questions

and of course the biggest number were about

Medvedev in the State Duma and yesterday’s speech

You know that Medvedev, as the head

of the executive branch, came yesterday to the Duma

for Government Hour, and

the idea was that the deputies would

really grill him there, ask him tough questions

possibly ask about our investigation

and you probably know that

they did sort of ask, but

only in passing, and Medvedev said he was not

going to comment on the investigation

or on the materials of some swindler. But actually, I

wanted to talk about something else. You know what really

struck me?

These deputies —

450 people, half of them elected in

single-member districts — which means they need

to travel back to their regions, meet with people

and many of them do meet with them. They

are involved in politics, at least in some way, they

want to make a name for themselves too, and all these

deputies basically fall into three categories

first, those who meet with

voters, with people, and say:

the government is very bad, but Putin

is good. The second group says:

the government is very bad, and about Putin

they stay silent. And the third say:

the government is bad, and Putin isn’t very

good either — the Communists, A Just Russia (a Russian political party), a little bit

at least. And then you get this one moment a year when

the Prime Minister comes to you, and

there he is, standing there, small and

defenseless at the podium — well, ask him

a question. Stand up, go out there, say something. But

the Communists, throughout the year, every — well, not

every day, but regularly — declare that

they demand the government’s resignation

they have no confidence in the government, and

so say it

Medvedev, resign, we do not

trust you. On any subject at all, just stand up and

speak to him on behalf of those millions of people who

earn salaries of 15,000 rubles a month (about $250 at the time)

get yourself noticed

for once, right? Do something

so that people notice you — and nothing. Absolutely

nothing. They were forbidden to ask sharp

questions, and they don’t ask them. That’s apparently how it was planned

and just think — people are surprised why

no one goes to elections. Why is that?

Why has institutional politics stopped

being interesting to anyone? Yes, that’s exactly why

it stopped being interesting — because you have

one day a year when you can

do what a deputy is supposed to do

convey what people think. If you are

an opposition party, then you should

voice an opposition view — and you

stay silent. It’s simply not interesting. What do

they feel — these healthy grown men?

Many of them bought their seats. They absolutely love

being in the spotlight; for that they submit

all kinds of bills so that the press writes about them

and they want, they really want

to jump in with some question, but they can’t

so they sit there, heads bowed

staring at the desk. It’s very sad

very sad, very depressing that

billions are spent on this Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), that we

pay each of these deputies

a salary of 450,000 rubles a month (about $7,500 at the time) for

simply staying silent when

the head of government comes before him

As they say in cases like this, one

leader of a certain country once said sadly,

Hitler — let’s talk about Hitler

when the TV Rain channel (an independent Russian broadcaster) released the news

What this means is that the Presidential Administration

has created entire groups of some kind,

units whose job is to go after me,

to, as they put it, keep attacking me.

"Attack me like Hitler"—but everyone thought I meant

it as some kind of metaphor.

Like, they were just going to hit me really hard,

as if I were some huge villain. But

in fact,

a video came out yesterday. I watched it just now

before going on air, and it already had 1.6 million

views. A lot of money has clearly been poured

into promoting it—it’s being pushed through paid

sites. And in it, I literally am

Hitler.

And a lot of people ask me: how is that possible?

Why? What is this? Is it even legal?

There was supposed to be a picture appearing here next to me,

a still from

that film, and we were even wondering whether it was legal

to show such an image, because United Russia

has passed a special law banning

the display of Nazi

symbols, and they shut down websites and open cases against people

for posting

archival photographs

from the war years that contain swastikas. And here, meanwhile,

the Kremlin is putting out entire videos like this.

You know, this is not surprising to me at all.

First of all, they already did all this in 2011

and 2012, very actively. You’ve probably just

forgotten. When I launched the campaign

"United Russia is the party of crooks and thieves," they

responded to me like this. For example, they

said, "Well, you’re Hitler. You’re a fascist," and

they made these videos,

gave various interviews on the subject

quite often. I understand why they

do it.

Just think about the Presidential Administration.

Just picture the situation in your head:

who are these people, really?

The Presidential Administration

is made up of people whose actual direct

duties are to lie and steal. They

are responsible for making sure the press lies. They

send out talking points,

they make sure censorship is enforced.

They

appoint governors. If some

decent person appears, they make sure

that that decent person does not become

governor, and that instead the governor is

an indecent person, and so on and so

forth. In other words, this is a structure that

basically exists to lie and

create the conditions for corruption. So

they hold a meeting,

and there I am, Kiriyenko, sitting there saying something like,

"Come on, guys, we have to act

proactively. Look, Navalny

—we thought we had squeezed him out of the

information space, but no.

He can write some blog posts, sure, fool around on

Twitter, but then he releases

these films, and those films are watched by 20

million people. He tanked the approval rating of

our United Russia party leader,

Medvedev. Let’s do something."

And what can they do? They can only

throw someone in jail, or they can

use their lying media

to smear people. That’s what this fake is.

They said, "All right, he’s active on YouTube now,

so let’s allocate a lot of money,

make a video saying that he is

Hitler—can you imagine, Hitler—and pay

to promote it, and everyone will see that he’s Hitler, and everyone

will stop believing Navalny, won’t go to the

June 12 rally, and will stop watching his

investigations." It sounds ridiculous,

Shuvalov says. Yes, but in reality

I think that’s more or less exactly how it happens. And

most importantly, I don’t see how it could happen

any other way. They simply cannot argue with me

on the substance. No one can come out

and say, "Well, you

released an investigation. Now we’re going to

go through your investigation point by point

and debunk it, tear it apart, destroy it,

wipe the floor with you." No. What we saw from

—from Shuvalov, sorry, from Usmanov,

from Eliseev, from the people named in our

investigation—was just ridiculous. And

today Burov released a video where he

basically wipes the floor with Eliseev.

They have nothing substantive to say, not about

a single point of our program. So they

will of course make videos saying that

I’m Hitler, that I’m a foreign agent,

that my income comes from shady sources,

what else—that I’m some kind of

dubious figure. They’ve been doing all this

since 2007, even earlier. There’s

nothing else they can do. On the other end of

their toolkit, there’s also

jail. That’s something they can do too.

That’s all. And we’ll see it: the closer we get to

the elections, the more people watch these

videos, the more they will

spread their lies, and the more

budget money they will "spend," because

this also involves huge sums of money that, of course,

this whole crowd from the Presidential Administration,

together with contractors and

others, will happily carve up among themselves. So, I’m being

asked—I saw here:

"Reanimator 4: Why didn’t Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media regulator) block

the video with Navalny-as-Hitler

for the swastika?" Well,

because it was put out by the Kremlin, and Roskomnadzor

is, among other things, helping it stay up.

YouTube is not going to block anything.

YouTube blocks content when there is a violation

of the law.

So there would have to be some complaints. But

who is going to complain—me? I’m not going to

file complaints about this video. I’m for freedom.

Those words are certainly unpleasant to me, very much so.

There are lots of little jokes about Hitler, ha-ha, very funny, but I get no

pleasure from that topic whatsoever,

I truly don't. But I'm not going to complain about the video,

so YouTube doesn't care

if there are no complainants.

All right, the second question is from Ekaterina Shcherbatova.

What if we ask subscribers

to complain to YouTube

about the video in which I'm compared to Hitler?

But why? Honestly, tell me,

what for? That video, once again, at first

glance is funny; on second

glance it's rather unpleasant.

Would I like to be compared with

someone else? Of course.

Do you think it hurt me more, or

did it actually help me by showing what kind of

crooks, scoundrels, idlers, and louts

are sitting in the presidential administration? Well, I

am sure it's the latter. Look, by the way,

they disabled the comments. Did you see

that they turned off comments under that

video? Well, because people were writing everything

they thought. But there is also the number,

the ratio of likes to dislikes — dislikes are

10 times higher. That basically never happens,

normally. So they simply showed, uh,

once again, that they can't do anything. After all,

they're putting this on YouTube, not on Channel One

(Russia's main state TV channel).

On YouTube, there are people who more or less

understand what's what.

A short, small topic — a lot of people asked about this.

Today there was news that

schools are introducing special tests, well,

something like the Unified State Exam (Russia's standardized school-leaving exam) about the presidential elections, and that

just floored me this morning. When

I was arrested on the 26th,

I was sitting there, and for a week they brought me newspapers. I

read newspapers, including some pro-Kremlin ones,

and on every page there was an article

about how

Navalny uses children, Navalny

brings politics into schools, Navalny

politicizes our poor little children and

teaches them something bad. And these people,

the very people who accuse me of

politicizing young people, are now officially

and administratively introducing

tests about the presidential election in schools.

I won't even start talking about the fact that

our schoolchildren, it seems to me, are already

dying from the sheer number of tests as it is.

Just imagine: an 11th-grader

apparently has absolutely nothing else to do.

He doesn't need to prepare for the Unified State Exam

or the GIA (Russia's state school exams) or any other exams.

No, apparently he also needs to prepare for a test

about the presidential election and answer

questions like: what would be better for Russia —

to elect Putin president, or what?

Or to have a Maidan (reference to the Ukrainian protest movement) here and

buildings burning? That's apparently the kind of test

they're going to make. But honestly, this

outrages me terribly, of course. But I am sure of

one thing: all of this will infuriate

both the students themselves and their parents so much. Here's

yet another new test, maybe some textbook,

some new teaching guide or whatever, that they'll give me

even more votes.

Uh,

the next thing I wanted to discuss with you

is the five-story apartment blocks.

The five-story apartment blocks.

A huge number of questions are coming in

about the five-story buildings; people ask me about this

especially often because, as you know, I

headed an organization called the Committee

for the Protection of Muscovites and for several years was quite actively involved

in Moscow with issues of

development and development-related conflicts, even back in

the Luzhkov era (under former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov) of demolishing five-story buildings.

So, generally speaking, uh, I know what I'm talking about here,

I would say. And my attitude toward what

Sobyanin is proposing, toward what was

passed today in the first reading, is for now definitely

negative. Let me explain: what is being proposed

now is essentially not even a program

for demolishing five-story buildings. It's a cunning little

Sobyanin-Khusnullin combination

to abolish construction standards in the city

of Moscow altogether. They simply want to make life easier for all

developers, and so far not that many people have

paid attention to this. I even wrote down

some notes here.

There are several points there.

In renovation zones, they declare a renovation zone

to be basically anything — both where the

five-story buildings themselves are, and the districts where

new housing is being built. There, they can deviate from

construction standards and sanitary standards —

epidemiological standards, and so on,

sunlight exposure requirements, everything else. This is explicitly

written into the bill that

was passed today, and all they need to approve are some

special technical conditions. And you

know, under the law this demolition

does not regulate only five-story buildings, and

certainly not only the so-called

first series of industrially built housing —

the very worst five-story blocks.

In fact, under this law, in a simplified procedure they can demolish

other

residential buildings too, buildings of any height, any

structures at all, in principle, that are located in

a renovation zone. They are making life easier for themselves.

They are loosening the technical requirements for themselves, and

we will see, I am sure, that all

this talk about demolishing

five-story buildings will in fact turn into

them choosing those nice,

juicy pieces of Moscow where they can

carry out profitable commercial development

and simply take advantage of the fact that there it's easier,

there will be a simplified legal regime, and

they will demolish everything there. They will

force property owners to sell cheaply.

to sell or give up their premises

they will deviate from the rules and will

make a huge, huge amount of money, and

one thing that shows me that

something is very suspicious about this

five-story apartment block program, because

there is supposed to be a vote, and they say

that, well, if people vote against it, then

that means we won’t demolish them. But the voting

will take place through the so-called system

*Active Citizen*—and I can state responsibly

that this simply means that all

these votes will be rigged

we conducted an investigation into

*Active Citizen*; FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) and Volkov looked into it and carried out

investigations into *Active Citizen*

Plushev from Echo of Moscow wrote a good post today

on this topic. So, *Active Citizen*

is a system for falsifying

public opinion. It was created by Sobyanin. As I

understand it, Rakova oversaw all of this

it’s simply a fake; it’s a tool

for saying that Muscovites support

this, and then doing any kind of nonsense and

claiming that Muscovites support it. And the fact

that all voting will take place

through *Active Citizen* really

bothers me. Today it was announced that in the

Khamovniki district—for those not from Moscow, that’s an upscale

district of Moscow—there will be no demolition of five-story buildings

there. If that’s true, then good for the residents

of Khamovniki—they defended their homes. Well, there

are a lot of high-ranking officials living in Khamovniki

so that’s probably part of it. Plus, there

are old five-story buildings there that are actually quite good

with high ceilings; nobody wants to

demolish them

But here’s what it comes down to

in Khamovniki, then

the Moscow city government said, well, fine, we won’t

demolish them—damn it, we’ll leave yours alone

but we’ll demolish them everywhere else. Then that

means there is something bad about what they’re demolishing, and

they clearly mean something bad. And

when I see that this law, again,

talks about relocation, I understand

what that bad thing is. They say, uh, you’ll

be given another apartment on a square-meter-for-square-meter basis

and if it’s in the Central Administrative District, then within

the boundaries of that administrative district. But

look at a map of the administrative

district: someone may have lived in Zamoskvorechye—there are

five-story buildings on Runovsky Lane, near the

Novokuznetskaya metro station

but within the same district, for example,

you could be relocated to Taganka, near

the Third Ring Road, or moved to remote

parts of Presnya, or relocated to distant

areas of the Basmanny district. Housing prices

can differ by a factor of three. So your

five-story apartment in the center could be three times

more expensive than the new housing they give you

and under the new law, you don’t even have the right to challenge that

in court. Under the new law, this is a gigantic

and enormous scam. The next important thing is this:

why many people wanted

to take part in Luzhkov’s program for five-story buildings

because, among other things,

communal apartments were being resettled. Because when

eight people were registered in a one-room apartment

they were supposed to be given

several apartments; people living in communal apartments were supposed

to receive separate apartments. Now

that’s not written there, it’s not included. If you had

a 40 sq. m apartment, they’re supposed to give you 40 sq. m

if you had a room in a communal apartment, they’re supposed

to give you the same amount of space. You don’t even

have a guarantee that you’ll receive

a separate apartment, so

I don’t understand how Sobyanin today

said he needs to be given an initial, I think,

93 billion rubles from the budget for

implementing the program, when it has only passed

its first reading. How are you going to do all this

if the law hasn’t even been properly spelled out?

At every public hearing I see

people completely up in arms

nothing is clear, and they’re already spending money on something

but for now, all I can see is that this is

one huge financial scam

and a swindle by Moscow’s construction complex

of Moscow

And here Pavel Frolov writes: I live in Solntsevo

they’re renovating the entrances of a four-story building

before demolishing it

Typical. Excellent, thank you very much

Pavel, for this example—it’s a typical situation

the construction complex needs money. It wants it, it

sees Moscow’s budget—2 trillion rubles

an enormous, colossal amount of money in Moscow

and of course that money has to be stuffed

into people’s pockets. So they take any building

and start renovating it without paying attention

to the fact that in six months it is supposed to be

demolished. Well, that’s such a typical

absolutely typical

position of the current Moscow city government

Is it planned that—White Lindon

asks me—is it planned that we

will work on the five-story building issue at FBK

in some organized way? Well, it is planned. For now

we haven’t started doing anything yet; the law has

only passed its first reading so far, yes

nothing concrete has happened yet, but

as it is currently being proposed, this is

a gigantic corruption issue

without a doubt, the Anti-Corruption Foundation

will be dealing with all of this

Now, regarding those detained at the rallies on the 26th—I’ve been

asked about this a lot

whether I stand by my promise

to file an application with the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) for each person—yes

I confirm it. Of course we will file one for everyone, and

we are doing a great deal of work on this with our lawyers

I don’t have the exact figures here, but through our hotline alone

the one we organized here at FBK

there have been

674 people detained at the rallies on the 26th who contacted us

Across the country, we prepared for the events on the 26th.

We prepared and sent 321 appeals.

These people will go through the appeals process,

and after that we will be able to file

a complaint with the European Court. I confirm

that for every one of them, I and my colleagues there—my

partner Konstantin Terekhov on the ECHR project

—will prepare such complaints, and I

honestly have no doubt about the success

of all this. Not because I’m some kind of

super-mega lawyer. Well, I am a good lawyer,

a very good lawyer—sorry for the self-promotion

regarding the ECHR. It’s just that the ECHR’s practice is such that

for those utterly shameless

illegal detentions—yes, all of them—

there will, of course, be a ruling in our

favor.

There are indeed still many court hearings going on.

Yesterday I was a witness at

the Tverskoy District Court in the case of the RBC journalist

Sokolov and Kolegov, who have already spent two

years in prison for organizing

a referendum, and in the neighboring courtrooms

cases were being heard concerning detentions on the 26th.

For the most part, they’re just handing out fines to everyone,

left and right.

There really are criminal cases, and I

understand that at least four people

are currently behind bars. And I saw a very

good question here:

Why are so few people discussing the fact that there are people

who are being held under criminal arrest?

It’s an unpleasant thing, and there is

a specific explanation for it: because this

has stopped being news in Russia.

The illegal detention and illegal arrest

of a person,

the fabrication of a criminal case, has ceased

to be, unfortunately, in Russia

significant news. Every single

day we have news that someone has been jailed—

bloggers jailed for a like, someone jailed for

some Pokémon,

members of a religious group jailed—

absurd stories. They’ve already basically

become screenshots about how someone was brought to

criminal liability—a guitarist,

for example, who was playing guitar at home for himself.

That already gets filed under humor, however

monstrous that may sound. So, simply put,

political repression, criminal

repression—there has become so much

of it that, unfortunately, it stops being

important news. And that is precisely why

the main mechanism of struggle

for the release of political prisoners,

the mechanism for making sure there are no

political prisoners, for making sure people are not jailed

left and right, is to go out to

new mass demonstrations. That is, we need

simply to unite and still

go out, still keep going. Because they

cannot jail everyone, and the example of

the rallies on the 26th proved that once again. Yes,

terrible things happened—they jailed, what, 4

people, 5, maybe 10—but

there was all that talk: we, the tough guys,

from the Kremlin, will shut everything down in all

cities, disperse all rallies. But rallies took place in 84 cities.

They happened.

In a significant number of those cities,

in a significant number of those cities, the rallies

were what the authorities called

“unauthorized,” but in practice, at least according to what

we see, 674

people contacted us out of tens of thousands.

The truth is that they

really do carry out

targeted repression—they jail people—but

when it comes to large groups of people, they

can’t do anything. So when

all of us go out to a rally, we make the situation

safer for ourselves, and in fact

we are effectively fighting for those who have been arrested

as well. By the way,

the host on our channel, the co-host

of the program with Sobol, Nikolai Lyaskin,

has been released. He got 25 days of administrative arrest. Somehow

I walked into the cafeteria in that detention center

and saw some very, very sad

person standing there on the first day, in the morning, after my

first night. I look—it’s Kolya.

He says sadly, “I got

25 days.”

And that was the longest arrest term there. And

that, by the way, is also a demonstration

of the absurdity of it. You can drive drunk,

you can fail to pay fines, you

can do all sorts of things, and

the maximum arrest term for you will be

15 days. But if you go to a rally—

my God, that’s the most terrible crime

in modern Russia—then suddenly it’s 25

days, 30 days, maybe almost

up to 60. So Kolya Lyaskin got 25.

He is being released today, and I

congratulate him on that. Tomorrow he’ll be back on air. And

my partner on the ECHR project, Konstantin

Terekhov, was at the detention center today and

met with Maltsev. He asked me to

send his regards to all of you. And by the way, we

are also preparing an ECHR complaint for him. He’s holding up

well,

and he’s doing great.

Questions.

If you become president, will you do live broadcasts?

Live broadcasts?

As for me, the current format of Putin’s live call-in shows

where he talks for four hours

and

answers prepared questions—yes,

it has become clear that many of those

prepared questions are not at all

to my liking. I believe the president should not

be doing that. There should simply be

a free press, in principle.

The president should be accessible to

the press at press conferences, when he

when he goes somewhere, he should answer

questions. His press secretary is obliged

to answer questions substantively, not

like Peskov, our, uh, mustachioed corrupt official,

who says, "I'm not aware," or "I won't"

answer, the Kremlin isn't interested." They

are obliged to respond in substance. If

the press should, of course, chase after them, and if I

become president, I will be the kind of president

whom

the press will chase, and who will be forced to answer

the press's questions even without any live

broadcasts. But overall, I think some

such, uh, well, not four-hour-long

large-format Q&A sessions are

absolutely right. The main thing is that

the questions should not be prepared in advance.

And

"Greetings from the flour-covered headquarters in Krasnodar,

Cornelius writes to me. How can relations

between society and the Cossacks be improved?

As I understand it, the question is connected to the fact that

today our headquarters in Krasnodar was

raided by some kind of mob

of so-called Tatar-Mongols

who for some reason claimed they were Cossacks.

They ran in and started throwing flour at everyone.

I honestly don't understand what that was. What

symbolism is supposed to be behind covering people in flour?

They trashed the headquarters and ran off. I don't

know whether these people can be called

Cossacks. In my view, they are more like

hooligans, and there is no need to establish any dialogue

with those who carry out these raids,

because they get 500 rubles

from the administration of Krasnodar Krai

As for the Cossacks, we have a normal dialogue

already established. What are Cossacks? Cossacks are

ordinary people, ordinary residents

of Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai,

and Rostov Oblast—they suffer from exactly

the same things. Are they against

the minimum wage of 25,000 rubles that

I am proposing? Are they against the fight against

corruption? Well, no, of course not, of course

not. They are ordinary people; they simply

signed up in this register, they like

observing the tradition—great, uh,

we don't need any additional dialogue

because they all support us anyway.

They can never—well, at least

not openly—support us, those

people who depend on the administration,

who receive money. If there are

Cossack organizations—well, they were given premises,

the administration gave them money, the administration pays them,

and very often they have some kind of

uniformed security contract awarded

by the administration. The administration tells them:

we'll take all your money away if

you run to Navalny's headquarters and dump

flour on it. And they run and do it. What kind of

dialogue can there be with them?

They cover people in flour, and then somewhere

later, when you're standing on the porch smoking, they'll

say, "Guys, you have to understand, it's not that we're

like this—life is like this, nothing personal at all,

we support you." That's how it always is

in reality. So dialogue with them

is already established; people just need

to be less afraid of this government, less

cowardly. And for that, we need to carry out

campaigning, simply talk to everyone.

Next, what I wanted to discuss with you: there are many

questions about Zenit Arena. So, about Zenit Arena—

today I published on the blog that we

managed to secure

the opening

of an antitrust case over one

type of work for which an additional

billion rubles was allocated to Zenit Arena.

And now a case has been opened based on our complaint,

and in theory some officials should even be

disqualified—that is, they will be banned,

for example, from serving as officials for

some period of time. And there was an interesting question,

I don't remember from whom, I won't find it now, so

many questions are coming in, uh. Well, some people

say you're putting spokes in Zenit Arena's wheels.

Is that good or bad? What if something

falls through? Well, guys,

Zenit Arena—let's call things by their

proper names—is simply a bottomless pit. It is

a huge round mechanism in the city of

St. Petersburg showing how people steal

billions. I can't even remember now

how much it costs; it is definitely the

most expensive stadium in the world by now. And you all

recently read interviews from

representatives, including from Zenit, and they

say that you can't train there,

you can't play there, the grass is already bad, the roof

doesn't retract,

for heaven's sake, they've already spent more than 30,

I think, billion rubles on Zenit Arena, and

nothing there works.

The question is not whether to put spokes in

the wheels; the question is that we must

somehow—someone must—bring

these officials, at least formally, to

account, or at least, as we do,

file complaints. We've filed many.

They reject them unlawfully. We've recorded everyone,

and at least we know whom we will need

to bring to criminal

responsibility in the beautiful Russia

of the future for the fact that, right before the eyes

of the whole country, not just the city of

St. Petersburg, they steal and steal and steal, and

keep stealing at this Zenit Arena.

There are no media outlets left—not even the pro-Putin ones—

that write about it without saying, well, somehow

Zenit Arena is costing us a bit too much, but

still, new contracts, new

contracts. This contract was awarded under

the emergency procedures, you understand.

A billion rubles is allocated to Zenit without

any tender because the contractor

for Zenit Arena because it's an emergency

situation. What kind of emergency is it? Did a meteorite fly by there?

A fire? Ambulances? Everyone got sick? No.

They just need to hand it over, without any tender, without

any competition, to some guys, a billion rubles

so that out of that billion they can kick back to you

some 400 million rubles in return. That's all.

That's the whole Zenit Arena story. Of course, people should

complain, but wow.

Please comment on the words

of Zhirinovsky about the need to abolish

the requirement for officials to declare

their income. But they dream about this, and

Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky in particular

simply dreams of it. Why? Well, because

you probably remember our

investigation into how we found that his son

— supposedly also State Duma deputy Lebedev —

had an apartment

I don't even remember, was it 7 rooms or 12

rooms, in Dubai, and the official extract showed

that it belonged to Lebedev, and none of it

was declared. And obviously, to

maintain that apartment, you need

to have a foreign bank account to pay for

utilities, and there was nothing in the

declaration. And nothing happened to him for it.

It was all quietly buried. They dream of

a situation where there is no

oversight at all, so that you — and we specifically — cannot

even stick our noses into their affairs and

find out anything about their

property. Here's a perfect example of

just how much, in fact,

the Russian asset declaration system

doesn't work at all, absolutely does not

work. Why do they want to get rid of it? There is

this politician — formerly a deputy, now

senator Babakov — we've written about him many times

before.

Because there was this interesting thing

about him: on the one hand, he was literally

the poorest deputy. We called him

our Cinderella — like Cinderella, he had nothing

at all. He had the lowest income, he

showed no property whatsoever — truly

an orphan; you read his declaration and feel like

crying. But we found his apartment in

Paris, found his foreign real estate.

Everyone knows that he has

huge energy assets in

Ukraine, among other places. He simply did not

declare any of it, and for years we filed complaints

about him. For years we were told, well, your

complaints do not correspond to reality.

And then he moves to the Federation Council website, and in

his new declaration statement

he reports 312 million rubles

How can that be? If a person in

public service shows that he has nothing

at point A, then at point B he cannot suddenly

have 312 million rubles appear. By the way,

on this subject I've already come up with something:

we're going to conduct

a test for Natalya Poklonskaya. She

heads the ethics commission and, among other things,

the body that checks the declarations of State Duma

deputies. Babakov is no longer a

State Duma deputy,

but he did file declarations

with the State Duma, and now he has a new declaration in

which there are 312 million rubles. Poklonskaya

has repeatedly said that she is this kind of

tough prosecutor who won't let anyone off the hook,

very honest, and

that the image of Nicholas II (the last Russian tsar) will not let her

fudge anything in her decisions. So

we will ask her officially: Dear

Natalya Poklonskaya, I think she will watch

this video. Please find out: if

Babakov was lying all this time in his

declaration — and he obviously was lying, because

he didn't just find 312 million rubles lying in the street — then

that means he must either be held

accountable or at least

the State Duma must officially

— the committee headed by Poklonskaya —

must officially say: Guys, this

deputy lied, deceived people, and violated

the declaration procedure. We are very

much waiting for this. We will write an official appeal, and when

the State Duma reviews all this and explains

to us how exactly 312

million rubles can come out of zero. Therefore,

returning to the broader issue, the declaration procedure

unfortunately does not work, because

there are no enforcement mechanisms, no punishment. We

expose these deputies, but no one

punishes them, and nothing is done to them.

There are no pressure mechanisms, like the press and

everything else. But if we even abolish

what little exists now,

I don't know what they'll do then. They

are all just extremely rich people.

The country is getting poorer. For four years in a row,

what are called real

disposable incomes of the population

have been declining, and only by looking at the declarations

of deputies do we see that for them

things are getting better, deputies are becoming

richer officially, ministers and members

of the government are officially becoming

richer.

Members of the Federation Council have simply

gotten much richer over the past year. These

people have all the money; they belong to

that very 1 percent, half a percent,

that controls 84 percent

of the national wealth. If we

abolish declarations, then there will be

just

total chaos.

Erundistika asks me:

Alexei, if you become president,

how are you going to fight

the spread of pseudoscience in Russia?

I will fight the spread

of pseudoscience in Russia by funding

Supporting proper science is not the task

of the state to fight the spread

of pseudoscience. That is the task of the scientific community.

The scientific community in Russia now has one

problem: it has no money. If we

look at how much money Russia allocates

as a percentage of its GDP and compare that with

normal developed countries where there is

at least some real science, then we will see that

it is catastrophically insufficient. It

is not enough for any science at all. It is no coincidence that last

year, I think, Iran overtook

Russia in the number of papers published in

international scientific journals. Well,

that is simply a disgrace and a shame. Therefore,

Russian science needs money, first

and foremost, and also a normal

proper reform. But without money

nothing can be done, and the scientific

community, uh, should be the one fighting pseudo-

science. That is not the task

of the state authorities. Air just asked me:

if you became president,

what would happen to the law on insulting the feelings

of believers? I believe it is impossible

to insult the feelings of a believer. If you

believe, then how can you be insulted? That

existing law is simply

a repressive mechanism. Randomly

chosen people are thrown in jail because

they can.

Because in general, the policy now is:

let's put people in prison so that

everyone around is afraid. No law on

protecting believers' feelings is needed.

We need to stop being hypocritical, we need

to stop making it so that members of the CPSU

from, say, 1976 are standing in churches, being

broadcast to the whole country, and there they are

bowing to the ground, because for genuine

believers it is both ridiculous and embarrassing

to watch.

This law is unnecessary, just as Article 282 in

general is unnecessary.

There are a great many questions about the June 12 rallies.

My answer about the June 12 rallies: people need to

come out. Right now, if memory serves,

we already have around

60 groups on VKontakte (a Russian social network).

Last time, the March 26 rally involved

84 cities. This time, let's

make it more than 100 cities, and

let even more people come. So

there is no need to ask. If in your city there is already

an initiative group, then look in

the list published under each video,

join it, spread

the information, gather people for the June 12

rally. If there is no such group, create one.

Send it to us, and we will promote it.

Gather people. It is Russia Day,

an official public holiday, officially a day off.

And all we want to do is, under

Russian flags,

with some fine slogans

in support of Russia, go out into the streets very

peacefully and demand,

among other things, a fight against corruption,

to demand Russia's development, because

Russia cannot develop; corruption has

strangled it. And I think that, first of all, it

will not always be easy for the authorities to refuse us

permission to hold such events. But if we

are refused permission to hold them, then

just as on March 26, uh, in

accordance with the Constitution, well, we will still come out.

All right then, let them try to stop

us from coming out. Let them tell us, you know,

citizens of Russia, we do not allow you

to come out on Russia Day with Russian

flags. Let them say it—but we will still

come out.

There is no need to overthink this, and no need to ask

anything there. I will explain it many more times,

and apparently we will release [more information]. The main thing is:

come out, organize groups,

plan your participation, and attract

more and more people. There are similar

questions: will they be approved? Is it necessary

to get rallies approved? It is still

a bit too early, because the earliest an application

can be submitted is 15 days in advance.

Of course, you and I are law-abiding

people, law-abiding people, which means the entire

procedure will be followed: we will submit

an official application and say: give us

such-and-such a square; these are our

authorized representatives. We will send everyone the form of these applications

and explain everything.

And then the point is that this is

a notification procedure under the Constitution.

It does not require any approval. They

are supposed to tell us: yes, all right, folks,

go ahead and hold it; we will send police to you so

they can help you. We will send

an ambulance so that if someone there

has heart trouble or someone

steps on someone else's foot, that foot can quickly be

bandaged. That is the point of notification:

so that the authorities help those wishing

to rally. We will submit these notifications.

If they refuse us in an absolutely unlawful

way, we will act

within the law. If people in the city administration

make an illegal decision, well,

what, are we supposed to stay silent? No, we will come out

as is our right, very peacefully, and very...

And in fact, on March 26 we proved

that these are absolutely peaceful demonstrations,

that they pose no threat to anyone, and

that they only inspire and cheer people up.

And can the ROI platform be used

to hold Medvedev accountable?

Megafon asks me. Megafon, unfortunately,

it cannot, because the ROI mechanism

does not work. You know that I, and in general

our organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

collected more signatures for this than anyone else.

Right, we collected signatures for a bill on illicit

enrichment, against illicit enrichment.

And for my bill banning officials from

buying expensive cars, and against

the Yarovaya law (a package of repressive anti-terror laws in Russia), people helped collect signatures.

That doesn't work in Russia now. Despite

Putin's promise: collect 100,000

people and

verify them, and the State Duma will consider it — not

once has anything even made it to the State Duma yet. Not

once has it been put to a vote. So

once again, they lied; once again, they deceived us.

So I think that now, here in

2017, it's not worth doing this anymore; we need

to bring all these people out into the streets. That's

what they're afraid of. Signatures on

the internet don't make any impression on them.

[music]

Nikita Misyukov asks:

he asks me a tricky question.

Alexei, you say that detentions

have stopped being news. Doesn't it seem

to you that by moving the next protest to

June 12, you're damping down the protest yourself?

You have to prepare. Yes, you can — you see, if there were

the will for it. I'm in favor of any rallies. If

someone wants to go out, they can do an opposition walk;

they do them every Sunday.

Good for them. I fully

support all of that. If there's a group of

people ready, once a week, to

organize rallies, once a week

to come out with their peaceful demands,

they don't bother anyone; they play

an entirely positive role. I

fully support that. But as for

our action — well, of course I think

we need to prepare well. We need, together with

you, more cities. Yes. We need more

people. Yes. We need to prepare better.

Yes. We need to broadcast not only from here,

but maybe from every region as well. Yes.

We need to make sure that in any

city, even a large one like Novosibirsk,

not 30% of people know that a rally

is going to happen, but 85%. That takes a lot of work.

So we're not postponing the protest; we're

simply planning certain actions

and carrying them out. That's very important.

Anton Lukin asks me, Alexei,

have you heard about the cancellation of the 15%

tariff increase in Novosibirsk?

Anton Lukin, I wrote a post about it. If

you're from Novosibirsk, I congratulate you, and

I congratulate everyone. And I want to say once again

that in Novosibirsk there really was

a cancellation of

an outrageous, unprecedented decision to

raise tariffs by 15%. And for

cold water, by 20%. Because

people came out to a rally. The point is that

you have to go out — this government isn't impressed by

anything else.

Signatures, I don't know, even videos or

whatever else — of course they read all that,

they discuss it among themselves. Many of them

are unhappy about being exposed. But what really

frightens and unsettles them, the one thing they always

react to, is people coming out into

the streets. In Novosibirsk, people came out

several times, and I know perfectly well that by

the fourth or fifth time, the talk had already started:

"Come on, how many times can they

keep coming out? They came out once — it didn't work.

They came out twice — it didn't work. Maybe we should

give up." That's the most harmful kind of talk.

That's exactly what leads to failure. When

the authorities hear that kind of talk, or

start it themselves, they're immediately delighted,

because they do respond to rallies.

You just need to keep going more persistently and bring

more people together. In Novosibirsk, despite

the fact that what was at stake there was, I think,

2.5 billion rubles (about US$43 million at the time),

that's how much they were supposed to squeeze out of the city. Out of those

two-and-a-half planned billion

rubles, several officials had already

prepared briefcases and suitcases for themselves,

into which they were supposed to load hundreds

of millions for pushing this

decision through. But no — they curbed their appetites,

and raised the tariff not by 15

percent, but by 4%, within

the rate of inflation, because people took to the streets.

Because everyone saw: wow,

these people — so tomorrow they'll gather, and then

when it gets warm — if they gathered in 30-degree-below-zero weather

(-30°C / -22°F), if there at -2°C

they gathered 4,000 people at the rally I attended,

then when it gets warm they'll

gather 40,000 people. Then they'll

start

becoming politicized. They'll demand

the governor's resignation, they'll march,

they'll go after United Russia — why would we want

that? Let's put a stop to it. That's how

the authorities operate. That's exactly why you need

to come out.

To rallies.

v3r GL, like in Star Wars, that

robot was called — I showed my grandmother, who watches

Kiselyov (a prominent pro-Kremlin TV host), the film about Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev). After

watching it, she said she would vote for

Navalny. I don't think that's impossible.

Exactly. Because it works. People are constantly

saying it's impossible to win over

your grandmother or grandfather or

your mom or dad, because they're so

stubborn, they watch Kiselyov. Well, you

should try. Try it. In fact, it's fairly easy

to persuade a person.

People are generally rational; they can tell

black from white. They go outside and

see those broken roads. When you

explain everything to them and show them, they may

even keep grumbling and

saying, "No, I'm still for

Putin," but you'll still plant a big seed of doubt in them.

into the soul, and most likely into theirs as well

persuaded them—the power of persuasion

for a convinced person, it is enormous

and it should be used

You ask me whether I intend to

Daniil, yes, it absolutely must be abolished

residential registration

in Moscow

It is customary for politicians, when asked this question,

to say that no, registration should not

be abolished, because it is believed that

Muscovites are the only people in the country

who support registration. But nevertheless,

despite the fact that I am a Muscovite

and ran for office in Moscow, even then during

the election I said—and I want to say now—that

of course registration should be abolished. It is

an atavism, it is

a meaningless thing. It does not

work at all. I mean, what is this—there is registration in Moscow,

there is registration, and so what? There are several

million people here who are not registered

here

Several million people from other

countries, who came from the republics of Central

Asia, simply bought tickets and did not

need anything, and are not registered here—they simply

work. Registration is now a method

of extorting money; this method is a method

of creating headaches. You have to

run around somewhere to register—this is

a way of diverting police resources

and migration services to all sorts of

meaningless nonsense, and it is a method of extor

ting money. Near any metro station

what do you see? You see

some poor person there, either

someone who came from another region, or

someone from Central Asia, and there are two

policemen standing by him. And so he looks miserable,

understanding that they are rummaging through his documents and

that he will apparently be down 500 rubles

in the next few minutes

That is what registration really is

It has no other meaning, and

it is simply unnecessary

The questions are flying in at tremendous speed, so

it is honestly hard even to read them; we need

to come up with some other, probably

mechanism

Azaza Ahaha asks me, Alexei, what

should be done with a structure like

Roskomnadzor (Russia’s federal media and internet regulator) when you come to power?

Will it be reformed?

I want to say it is more likely to be

shot, but I will not say that, because

this is, after all, not an extremist

program

They are not needed at all; in principle they are not

needed. It is a harmful agency that

does what exactly? Some kind of videos on

the internet, and generally engages in who knows what

A bunch of idlers who are breaking

our internet, harming our internet

and, by the way, causing economic damage

to the country’s economy by meddling in

the internet—that is the essence of it

The internet is the only sector

that was created from scratch after

the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was

nothing at all, and then the Russian

internet was created by providers, by people who

worked actively and, by the way, did a fairly

good job. The internet speed in

Russia is high; in very few European

countries, or in the United States, can you buy

fast internet so cheaply. It developed well,

we have many great websites, we have

many programmers—this all works

and then in recent years, excuse me,

some Roskomnadzor came barging in

some idiots started messing with things

They are not needed. We will certainly fire them, and

those among them who were involved in

blocking websites—we will also jail them

because they made illegal

decisions; they engaged in censorship. If

there is child pornography or

there are, uh, things for which

criminal liability should apply,

then the police should deal with that

The police deal with that, and

the FSB (Federal Security Service) deals with that. These are fairly rare things

Well, if someone is selling drugs on

the internet, they need to be caught, they need to be

caught, obviously. And who should catch them?

Roskomnadzor? What, it is supposed to block

some websites and issue something? No. That is

what the police do, what the courts do

and Roskomnadzor, of course, should be

disbanded, eliminated

Alexei, when you become president, according to

what model will you carry out lustration?

Probably at 21:16 I should not have read such a

big question, because it takes a long time

to answer. I will probably only have time

to say that the question of lustration is

of course a question of national consensus

The newly elected Duma (Russian parliament) must make

a decision on whether lustration is needed or

not needed. My vote is certainly in favor of

lustration. I believe that without lustration

we will achieve nothing, just as nothing really

worked out for Russia in

the 1990s, when the very same

party officials simply repainted themselves as democrats

then they repainted themselves as something else, and

so they moved from one party to another

At first they were in the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), then they

ran to Gaidar, then they ran to

Chernomyrdin, and then they ran to

Luzhkov, then they ran to Putin, and

they will run to God knows who else, because

they are simply sellouts who want only one thing:

power. And those people who sat there,

who were involved in corruption,

who made bad decisions and

harmed Russia’s development—many of them need to

some of them really do need to be subjected to it

lustration. But this is a major, collective decision

the president cannot carry out lustration

Navalny or anyone else, because

then we will get

the opinion of just one political force. There must

be both the left and the right, nationalists—whoever

it may be—a consolidated decision

on lustration. It seems to me that now

Russia in 2017 has matured to the point where

all real political forces

would support lustration

It’s 21:18 on our clock. Thank you very much for

being with us. I really hope that all this

time there was sound, and that I wasn’t just, well, talking

like a fish in an aquarium, and that nothing

crashed on us and everything worked out. Many

thanks for watching. Every Thursday

in 2018, tune in. Subscribe to our

channel. On that channel they tell the truth. And

here they tell the truth too. Thank you

[music]