Putin Did Worse Than Expected, the Journalists’ Strike, and the Battle for Volokolamsk

[music]

Hello everyone. It's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, and in the studio—

Alexei Navalny, or, as they called me today, an opposition

politician, as they called me at today's

meeting of the Central Election

Commission. Sorry, but this

week we didn't come up with a funnier

title, so we'll have to

make do with what we've got. It's good that

they're over, though honestly, it had gotten tiring.

We did like this strike

—it was real political struggle—

but at some point we were really waiting for it all

to end. And it did end, and today I'm

basically here with a session, a session

of joy, a psychotherapy session, because

actually it's even a little

strange to watch how much

this thing has a magical effect on people—

that number they showed on

TV, they showed it,

and everyone got upset. Everywhere I look,

people are terribly upset and worried. And

in my last broadcast I said that

you would feel this on March 19

because the Kremlin wants you

to feel it. They designed the election that way,

specifically so that on March 19 you

would all read that what was needed was

immediate emigration, and oh my God, nothing

worked out. And they did it. And in my

previous video—and you'll see now, and over the

next month I'll keep doing these

sessions—not psychotherapy, but explanations

of whatever is needed. Because, guys, overall

everything went according to a normal scenario, and

our strike was quite successful.

Because let's reconstruct the whole

chain of events. Look:

a year and a half ago, we said—we said

to this government: despite Crimea,

despite all your wars, despite

all your talk about how tough and formidable you are,

we will challenge you in this

election, because you can't do

anything, because you cannot govern

the country, because the population has been getting poorer

for five years in a row, and we intend to beat you.

I entered the race with those words and

ran an honest campaign. In response,

from the very first months of my

campaign, the Kremlin said: we won't register you,

we won't let you in, that's it. And from the very beginning

we said—this was completely our

open position—that if you don't let us in, well,

then you won't get what you

want, because we will

boycott, and we will force you either

to show a very low result,

worse than in the 2012 election,

that is, we will show that since 2012

Putin has lost support and now enjoys a lower

level of support—which is simply

the truth—or we will force you

to falsify the results. That was very important. It was

a very important approach, because since

the street protests of

2012, the Kremlin

has built much of its domestic policy

around the idea that it can win without

any obvious falsification, because

falsification is what stirs people up. And that's why

they put their own Ella Pamfilova in place (head of Russia's Central Election Commission).

They kept saying over and over that

they were working on the system's legitimacy,

they kept saying, why would we need

falsification? We can easily, without

falsification, win everything, and everything will

be just fine. And on that they

spent colossal effort, and they needed

to achieve a very clear result. Namely:

in 2012, turnout was 65

percent, and Putin then received

63—63 percent

of the vote.

They wanted better. Where do you think

this came from? It has been described many times in

the newspapers: the goal was 70 percent turnout and 70

percent for Putin. It's very clear where

that came from: it came from the result of

Dmitry Medvedev, because Dmitry

Medvedev in the 2008 election got

70 percent, and turnout there was

also 70 percent. And of course it was important for Putin

to show that he was stronger than Medvedev,

because if you're supposedly so

incredibly tough and you talk about

some fiery missiles in your state-of-the-nation addresses, and

you supposedly run the whole world and got Trump elected,

then at home in your own country you

at least ought to be stronger than

Medvedev, right? And so the goal was 70 and

70 percent. So what did they get in the end?

Formally, they achieved it, but to do so

they had to resort to colossal

falsification, colossal deception. And in

that sense, the strike worked, and they were unable

simply to take, by sheer force

of persuasion on television, by the force

of Putin's power alone, simply with bare

Putin and propaganda, with some kind of

imaginary successes or real successes,

to show that he enjoys such

support, that he has such a level of

legitimacy, that he could achieve the

results Medvedev achieved in

2008. In this election, Putin got

lower turnout than Medvedev, and lower than he himself got

in 2012. In this election, fewer people voted

for Putin than in

2012, and fewer people than voted for

Medvedev. And it's very simple. Once again,

don't let yourselves be hypnotized by these

numbers now shown in the box here,

right here next to me.

Let me once again go over several of the most

important things, and please

bring them up in your discussions and arguments.

And the most important thing is to understand this yourselves and

stop worrying about it.

So what was the basis for carrying out this

massive fraud? Because ten

million votes, at a minimum, we believe

that from ten to twelve million were simply

stuffed in, and there is a huge

amount of mathematical

evidence for this. Of course, you saw those

endless videos of ballot stuffing, but the

three main things they did not do were these.

First, the number of voters.

You see, the number of voters—before

the election, literally a week beforehand, no one

knew what that number was.

The CEC (Central Election Commission) had not published those figures. Five days before, on

the air on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station),

Ella Pamfilova was asked directly, when they

asked, “How many voters are there in Russia?”

Alexei Venediktov asked, and she said,

“Well, I don’t know exactly, something around 107

million. Let’s watch—37 seconds.”

Literally, Ella Pamfilova on Echo of Moscow:

“Altogether, taking into account—we’ll include...

duplicates, duplicate records, ‘dead souls’ (fake or deceased voters kept on the rolls),

people who are beyond the line, those who

are registered in different places, those who haven’t even

including under various other parameters, yes,”

“I won’t list them all now, but already more than two

million.”

“Add to that up to one and a half million voters

in Crimea,”

“compared with all the previous presidential elections—I’m just drawing

attention to this. So we remain at 100 million, where—”

“No, no, now, I think, now, now...”

“Moreover, we have now cross-checked all

the data, for example with the tax service,”

“but I won’t go into the whole methodology; it’s just that

by voting day we may still change significantly

one way or another.”

“The total database is 109... 108... I think we can

say it without decimals.”

So there you have it: four days before

the day of voting, the head of the

Central Election Commission

says, “Well, we have such

secret technologies; we don’t know exactly.”

“It’s plus or minus a million; we’ll still clean it up.”

“Possibly 107.” In the end, the number

of voters was 109 million.

And that raises the question, because

in 2012 there were 110 million, plus

Crimea was added, plus migrants were added,

plus there was natural population growth.

I saw that

the Kremlin talking points were spinning it

like this: well, the Kremlin’s—or Putin’s—

population growth he talked about

couldn’t be added here because those

people

had not yet reached voting age.

But Putin’s demographic “successes” are not

just about an increase in newborns; they are also about

longer life expectancy and lower mortality.

So there should be a larger number of adults.

There should be. But fine, let’s even forget

about that. Let’s just forget it: there were 110 million,

then Crimea was added,

and immigrants.

That makes 112 million. So how did it end up

being 109 million voters?

How? Fine, let’s forget that too.

Let’s just forget the 2012 figure. In 2016,

at the last State Duma election, there were 110

million voters, and now there are

109 again. Where did that million

people go? Where is it? And this is actually

an absolutely crucial number, and I

urge everyone—I urge journalists

to press Pamfilova and the Central

Election Commission on this, because all

the rest—even these astonishing

videos of stacks of ballots being stuffed in—are already

small things compared with the fact that they have

three million voters floating back and forth. Three million

voters—you cut the list there, and

your turnout immediately rose by 3

percent. Quite a trick they pulled.

If in 2012 it was 65, and now

it is 69, then that is roughly what happened.

Despite the fact that they were herding people in, despite

the fact that public-sector employees were being pressured,

nothing actually increased; only because of these

manipulations did they raise turnout. That

means the boycott worked, and this

is visible not only at the federal

level.

Let’s take the city of St. Petersburg.

It is the third-largest federal subject of the Russian

Federation.

Let’s look at the number of voters.

In St. Petersburg, at the election that year—

the gubernatorial election in 2014—

there were 3.7 million people; in 2016,

for the State Duma election, 3.8 million

people; and now 3.62 million people. For

St. Petersburg, that is, excuse me, five

percent of voters.

Where did they go? And in this election—well,

if you are in St. Petersburg and you are watching this

program, I

am sure you know examples of how people

came to polling stations and were not found

on the voter lists.

Because they were shrinking the database so that

turnout would appear higher. Two to five

percent of voters were simply thrown off

the list. That is method number one by which they

engaged in truly massive fraud, and the whole country

saw it. You just need to understand this very

clearly. Method number two is those very

famous 6 million absentee certificates,

which this time

was called voting at one’s current

location. Six million people—is that a lot

or a little? Let’s compare it with what happened

in previous elections.

There is always some number of people

who does not live where they are officially registered

and sometimes they want to vote, and

normally they come and vote regularly

around absentee certificates

there were some issues there, but let’s

look at how many there were in the elections in

2016. That was a federal election in

the country as a whole

809,000 people — seven and a half times

fewer, seven and a half times fewer. All right, suppose there had been

this time, taking into account

the administrative pressure, let it have been

twice as many, three times as many as in

the State Duma elections. But when it is seven and a half times

more, we understand perfectly well that out of

those six million people

a significant number were simply

completely fake, or it was outright ballot-stuffing, so

that explanation does not work. And the third big figure

you need to understand is voting

outside polling stations

you know, with those portable ballot boxes, and

people go around with portable ballot boxes, bring them

and

and then all of that is counted separately

for example, portable ballot boxes were the main

method of falsification in the elections

in Moscow — in the Moscow mayoral election

thanks to which Sobyanin managed to

falsify his victory in

the first round. If there had not been

out-of-station voting

he would not have been able to steal 2 percent of the vote from us

and that was enough for his so-called

victory — 51 percent. Let’s also

look at the 2012 presidential

election: outside polling stations

3.4 million people voted, while in

2018 it was already 5.9 million — that is, 1.7

times more, nearly twice as many, counting people who

suddenly, all at once, supposedly became too ill to

file an application and vote outside

polling stations. That too is an extra

1.5 million people — that’s all. So

that is how, little by little, you get 10

million votes

that were thrown in — or rather, not even thrown in

not physically stuffed, technically speaking, but somehow

again, those middle-aged women, schoolteachers at

the polling stations, were not stuffing everything into the voting machine

or into the ballot box — no. But simply

at the level of the numbers, all of it was

fabricated, falsified. And when now

Pamfilova tells us, well no, this

is not how it was — you know, guys, back then we had

a bad voter database, and now

a new life has begun and the database has been cleaned up

and everything has become much better — well then

excuse me, how were we voting with a bad database

in 2016, in 2012? That means all those

elections were falsified. After all, you

calculated Putin’s victory in 2012

based on some specific number of

voters. Now you are saying it was

a bad database and several million

people were not listed twice, which means

then our 2012 president was absolutely illegitimate

therefore, guys, this is why I

urge you to understand very clearly that

the boycott worked. We reduced the number

of people willing to go to polling stations

so dramatically

that even despite the colossal

administrative pressure, they had to resort to

these methods, producing millions of votes

millions added in — again, not

physically stuffing ballots, but simply drawing them in on paper. This

is very important, and it needs to be understood that

as for actual ballot-stuffing

and falsified additions, again I will not show you a large

number of videos; let me

show you two absolutely astonishing

protocols from Kemerovo Region, my

favorite. Please look at the protocol

that the observer at the polling station received

look at it — well, it is plainly

a protocol, it looks like an ordinary, normal

protocol. There are votes here for Grudinin

and for Zhirinovsky, for Yavlinsky

for Suraykin, yes, Putin has the most, but

this is the protocol that our observer received, signed

and certified. Now we go into

the GAS Vybory system (the Russian state election database) and see what

the GAS Vybory system shows for that same

protocol. Something is wrong here, it somehow does not

look like what was written in the

protocol that was given to the observer

let me — I specifically prepared for you a

simple comparison; the next image

shows what the difference is. You

see, on the left is simply a table with the

real protocol, and on the right is a table with what

was in the GAS Vybory system, that is

you can see they simply took votes away from

everyone and reassigned them to Putin. And the funniest

part is the one vote left for Baburin — that is really

some kind of joke

or irony. In other words, people simply

bluntly took the protocols and rewrote all

the votes for Putin, and thanks to the North

Caucasus, Kemerovo Region

and Krasnodar Krai

(a region in southern Russia)

there, one of our coordinators who

was involved in election monitoring held a

press conference about the violations. David

Conquer went out into the street and was detained

and jailed for five days

for the second time that month, just so you

understand the scale and nature of the violations. And in that

sense, in at least these three regions

Kemerovo Region

the North Caucasus as a region, and

Krasnodar Krai — that was already the

cherry on top

an additional

million or a couple of million votes — not

hundreds of thousands of votes — for him to

It was really just a matter of polishing it off, but these

basic things

ballot stuffing, basically, manipulation of the voter rolls

that alone was enough

to make all of this happen, and you know

that we had, of course, a completely

astonishing story with the North Caucasus. We

sent observers there; we created what we

called the “Wild Division” — that was our

internal name for it. We sent

observers to the North Caucasus, we

sent observers to Mordovia

and called it the “Wild Division.” To some

other problematic regions we sent people from

other regions — to Tambov, to the same

Kuzbass — but the main, the primary

problem for us was specifically Mordovia

and the North Caucasus.

We sent observers there, and thanks

to everyone who, during the previous similar livestream,

helped fund the whole trip. And

some absolutely astonishing things

came to light, to put it plainly.

The voter strike won in the

North Caucasus.

Let’s just look at the picture.

The difference between places where there was an observer

— on our polling stations, this is Chechnya —

and places without an observer: we can see

that it was 55 percent, and at some polling stations, well,

there’s quite a lot about this online,

and we’ll be talking a lot more about it,

you’ll see that 30 percent

of the vote was recorded at some polling stations,

40 percent of the vote — meaning people simply

did not go to the polls. It was only through methods of

massive falsification that this was

made to happen. I’ve already met with

observers who came back from there;

they told us a whole lot of completely

absurd stories. We’ll try

to turn several of them into video clips

and even target them specifically

at the Caucasian republics, because we are

really very grateful to the local

residents — they helped our observers, and

the stories sound something like this: people would simply

come up to our people and say,

‘Listen, you’re standing here observing,

this is some kind of hell. For Grudinin, we need

to add 500 votes — that’s what the bosses told us.

‘Come on, so you won’t feel bad,

we’ll throw another hundred to Grudinin too,

on top of that — just don’t

make a fuss that we’re about to assign

500 extra votes to Putin.’ And this was everywhere,

literally everywhere. Wherever there was

an observer, the level of

voting for Putin was much lower,

turnout was much lower — there was no triumphant

victory at all. We made one mistake,

a serious mistake: we concentrated

so heavily on Chechnya. That was understandable,

we did it because we were so concerned

about the safety of our

observers — we sent two people

to each polling station.

We specifically coordinated with the Central Election Commission,

and in that sense we somewhat overlooked

the other republics, which seemed less problematic.

The North Caucasus republics that turned out to be the most

problematic were actually

North Ossetia — they simply threw everyone out

of the polling stations, detained them, took them to the police,

the Investigative Committee threatened them with criminal

cases. Karachay-Cherkessia also turned out to be

quite problematic. And we had an absolutely

amazing observer,

Ekaterina, who went to a polling station for the first time.

And now, I think we have three

minutes of video — two videos altogether,

about three minutes total. I think it’s worth watching

to see this kind of evolution in an observer.

First, a minute and forty seconds of what

Ekaterina said immediately after returning from her

trip. Let’s watch. ‘Hi everyone,

I need to tell you, while everything is still fresh in my mind,

about how today’s election went in the city of

Cherkessk. I went there as an observer for

candidate Grudinin. Please excuse

my appearance, and the fact that I’ve been crying

out of sheer hopelessness.’ Then there was another

part: ‘All right, then they literally

just started — they simply took all

these ballots that had been laid out, and they

all started handling them together. First of all, I have

all of this recorded on video. And they simply

started putting them into bags. I asked,

why are you doing this when I still don’t

know the turnout? You haven’t announced anything.’ They

said nothing. They didn’t say how many

votes they had counted, they didn’t say how many

votes had been cast for this or that

candidate.

‘I went to the chair of the election commission

to demand a copy of the official protocol. She

said she would give me a copy only, well,

after we went to city hall. That’s

also illegal, because I’m supposed

to be given it right there, after everything is counted, at the

polling station itself. Miss,

please give me a copy

of the election protocol. Where are you taking

the ballots? Why did you put them in the car

when I still haven’t received a copy? Please give me

a copy of the election

protocol. I must receive a copy

before you leave. I must

receive a copy before you go to

city hall.’

‘Svetlana, then I’m going with you. I need

a copy of the protocol.

I need a copy of the protocol. Krupskaya Street,

84.

‘That’s it — I’ve decided to leave Russia

because this is total lawlessness, and

well, you can imagine it, right? You can see the despair

of a person: she came to the polling station, and she

He understands that the strike worked.

He came to monitor turnout, and he sees that

there is no 90 percent or 70 percent turnout at all,

none of that. Instead, right there on a tray,

ballots are simply dumped out and stuffed into

bags and taken away somewhere, while the shouting and

everything else are completely ignored — thugs,

real thugs. Katya then said, quite dramatically,

at the end that

she was leaving the country, that it was pointless

to keep fighting. But then you saw another of her

videos, and we literally have just one minute here.

Let's watch: a person pulled herself together and

decided to do the right thing. And what is interesting

is the evolution of this observer, and also the answer

the crooks gave her when they themselves decided to

fight back. One minute, two seconds.

Ekaterina: Hi everyone, guys. And people

shouldn't cry, because on the contrary, I'm in a

fighting mood, ready to battle all

the injustices that have come my way

during this trip.

Basically, I wanted to talk about

a few things I didn't mention in

the previous video. I went there from Navalny's team

— I traveled to the city of Cherkessk, although I'm from

Moscow. I specifically went to a labor-intensive

region, because Moscow is boring in that sense; in the

regions, observers are really needed there.

People are needed there, so I decided to go. In three

days I managed to get in touch with lawyers and file

a complaint with the prosecutor's office, a complaint with the Central Election Commission,

submit a complaint to the violations map, and file

a complaint with the election commission of the city of

Cherkessk. So far, only the latter has replied to me.

And do you know what they told me? I

wanted to make some kind of interesting

video with a catchy headline, but actually

there's no need to invent anything, because

they've opened an investigation against me. I believe

that if everything there was honest, then if I

was there unlawfully, then probably

the commission acted unlawfully too

by not telling me about it.

There are now three possible ways this could develop:

either I emigrate and seek political

asylum,

or I go to prison, or I win.

That last option is the one I like best, even if it's unlikely,

and of course that's the option we like best too.

Of course, we understand what this

system is. But here is a person who saw it all with her own

eyes, felt all of it firsthand,

and decided to keep fighting. The system

responds by saying:

we're going to open a criminal case against you personally.

A criminal case. But do you understand —

just understand what this all means. Reuters journalists

also ran an experiment of sorts,

a rather interesting one. They took under their

control 12 polling stations, and at those

12 polling stations they sat down and

carefully counted the entire voter turnout.

Let's look at

the table they compiled based on

all of that. Well, the table isn't here —

they're saying there's no table, we forgot to show it to you.

But in any case, it simply shows

that at some polling stations,

for example in Simferopol, 60

percent of the votes were stuffed in — in other words, the ballot stuffing there

was enormous. In all the regions they observed,

in Crimea, in the North

Caucasus, in the Urals, in various places,

the result of those observations was the same:

colossal, massive ballot stuffing

measured in the tens of percentage points. So

I ask you once again: stop looking at

these election commission numbers and believing them.

Why did you suddenly decide to worry about

something that is a complete fake? In fact, it

only shows how successfully we

acted, because without fraud

they simply could not have pulled this off.

And we will continue exposing them, and that is very

important. Right now, our

headquarters in Novokuznetsk, in this most

troubled region, has asked me to state clearly that

we are officially appealing to the candidates,

to all presidential candidates

except Putin, who is not interested in this,

especially to those presidential candidates

who from time to time seem to say something

about election fraud — Grudinin, and also

Yavlinsky and Sobchak — asking them to

officially demand access to

video recordings from all polling stations

located in southern Kuzbass

and in the Kemerovo region in general. We will

documentarily prove it. Why am I forced

to appeal to them? Because we have no rights at all, and

people very often ask: will you go to court?

How can I go to court? I'm not a candidate.

Right now, the system is set up so that

Yavlinsky has to go to court, Sobchak

has to go to court, Grudinin has to

go to court. Even though we

deployed more observers than anyone else

and in fact may even have been

the only ones really doing this,

we, as the observer organization, have no rights at all.

We can't even obtain the video recordings. So I

hope the candidates will help make that happen.

Once again, using those video recordings we will prove

— our lawyer is even promising to shave off his beard

— presumably he will be more

careful with his promises than

Grudinin — if he cannot, if he cannot

document what kind of

colossal ballot stuffing took place in

the Kemerovo region. Why do I talk about it so

often? Because those are exactly the

votes that made all this happen, and

we have achieved the point where now half the country,

including people who do not use the internet,

knows that everyone was being coerced at those polling stations

to go and vote, because they are exactly the same

people who were pressured — they are the very ones.

State employees who were forced to show up at 9 a.m.

and vote for someone, while half the

country—those who use

the internet—saw all these

falsifications. Everyone knows perfectly well that there is no

colossal support there for

Putin, at least not on the scale

or in the proportions they claim.

And all over the world, these elections

have simply turned into something that, by the way,

is no longer even amusing—it's unpleasant—when

people discuss it all and mock it. But

in the end, they are mocking our country.

Let's watch 40 seconds from the show of

Trevor Noah, one of the most famous and

humorous shows in America. Here's how

they discuss what happened in

Russia. Forty seconds.

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

[Unclear/transcribed speech]

It's funny, you have to admit, funny. Yes, but

it's also somehow wrong—wrong to

watch this. But we have to understand that

this bad, unpleasant feeling—this is

ultimately Putin. It is Putin's fault. And

the whole world and the whole country saw once again that

just as in 2011, as always, everything

rests on falsification, everything rests

on fraud.

This is a direct consequence of our strike.

We carried out our threat, and we forced

them to falsify. For now, we cannot

make them give up

falsification; we are not yet in a position

to force them not to falsify. But at

least we dragged all of this

out into the open. And Ella Pamfilova and Putin and

all the others—well, they will say

that the elections were

fair, but even their own supporters

will be smirking. So let me

answer some

Twitter questions—someone is writing to me here.

Upgrade asks: Navalny, the elections are over—

what comes next? Will there be rallies

and other actions? So is the fight for the

presidency over? We'd like more

information about your plans for the future

... I don't know what "bull" means, and

the ellipsis suggests—I don't know how

that word fits into this context.

Look, our plans: we have come out of this

entire campaign—a very exhausting 15-

month

long, difficult, and expensive

ordeal, with arrests, searches, and so on.

We are much stronger now, in fact much

stronger. What our

structure is now—our structure, your structure—

is like night and day compared with what

it was 15 months ago: a huge, real

political network. And our task now,

our plan for the future, as we continue

our struggle, is that this

regional network will create

politics. It will engage in

political struggle. Of course I understand

that maybe this sounds somehow

grandiose, or not very clear, but

in fact, someone wrote somewhere—I think I

saw it on Facebook—a very smart

thing was written: a politician is someone

who creates politics around himself,

and a political party, even if it is

not officially registered, is the party

that creates politics around itself.

And unfortunately, all attempts over the past

many, many years by all parties, both systemic

and non-systemic, to create a regional network

that creates politics around itself—they

have failed. Any political party is

basically some nomenklatura (Soviet-style bureaucratic elite) in Moscow

and people in the regions who, by and large, do not

really understand what to do and simply

wait until once every four years

budget money falls into their lap, and they

divide it up and spend it—more often than not,

they pocket it. But mostly they do nothing,

and no one understands why they exist.

Now, together with you, we are going to invent

we are going to create new methods

of political struggle, new methods

of political pressure in order to

fight, including through elections. Will we

take part in regional elections? Yes, we

will take part in regional elections.

Will we organize

protests, including nationwide protest

actions? We will, and we can. Fifteen

months ago, people said to me, "Alexei,

what about organizing a

nationwide protest action?" I said, well,

of course we can probably do it, but

it wasn't clear how. Now we understand how

to do it. We have a genuinely alive,

powerful network: 700,000 supporters, 200,000

volunteers, observers

brought in

30,000 to 35,000 people, 84 campaign offices still

exist there to this day. We can do all sorts of

things. We will create information

channels, regional YouTube channels—everything

will have to be invented anew, and we will have to learn

how to do it, because no one in

Russia has ever done this before, and there has never been

an independent political organization

that, while under constant pressure,

still exists and is capable of doing this. But we

will do it. We will fight with all our

strength, and we know for certain that there is

support. But when people from Chechnya

come—observers say that to us...

There, people would come up to us—Chechens included—and say,

"Good for you, coming here like this,

to somehow argue with our authorities." In

Dagestan, it was exactly the same everywhere—absolutely

people want some kind of struggle. It’s just that

when they don’t see anything, when nothing

is happening, when there’s no opposition and no politics,

of course they just shrug and vote for

Putin. It’s natural to vote for whoever

you’re told to vote for, and if someone doesn’t vote

for Putin—well, that’s exactly why we’re going to use

this system. Naturally, right now we’re thinking

about how to scale it down properly. We

can’t maintain all 84 regional

branches, and in this huge, expanded

format we simply don’t have

the money to keep all of this together. We can’t

go on living all the time in this kind of

hysterical fundraising mode—it’s

simply impossible. But right now we’re thinking

about how to do it properly, competently, intelligently—

how to reduce all this without falling out

with anyone, and to part ways with people

on good terms, while continuing our

political cooperation. After all, people

didn’t come for money, not

to sit in an office, but in order

to fight for their country. And so now we’re

again, we’re working it out—but if

someone asks, "Do you know how to do this?"

my answer is: I understand in general how

to do it, but exactly how we organize it—

that’s what we’re now

going to figure out. We’ll sit down, think it through, and decide. Right now we

together with our regional

branches and coordinators are sitting down and

thinking about how to wind this structure down so

that it becomes a bit cheaper

to maintain. I see, yes, that

people are still sending in "Good will prevail."

Sergei writes—although it seems we’re not supposed to

be doing that on this broadcast—

we’re not collecting data. Good, you’re catching on.

So we’ll do everything—protest actions,

we’ll organize them directly based on the

election results. But to organize a protest action purely from the

voting results is impossible, well,

because, well, nobody is interested in that

alone. I predicted these voting results to you

on this broadcast a million times, and

they don’t bring anyone out into the streets. We’re not

going to hold, you know, a rally just for the sake of

having a rally. But unquestionably,

two political Russias have taken shape.

One is the idea in the West—there are people like that—

stubborn people who believe that

we must give up everything, we must

give up development, and simply

support this kind of colossus on

feet of clay—Putin—who supposedly

threatens the whole world with who-knows-what. And then there are

millions of normal people who

for the first time

—and perhaps this was the main thing about this

strike—millions of people for the first time

took collective political

action, a united action. And these people—35

million people—did not take part in the

election. We can’t—but I can’t say

that all 35 million

took part in the strike, but obviously

many, many millions did participate

in the strike consciously, and relying on these

people, we will fight against Putin’s

Russia. We will fight for people, for

influence—organizationally, politically,

informationally, however necessary—we will

do it, and that is our plan.

So my appeal to you is: don’t go

anywhere.

Stay with us. We’re not some new Titanic

heading for disaster—we have only one side to be on. Like Katya,

whom I just showed: she decided that

I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not going anywhere either.

You’ll stay here, and the only question is

whether we are ready to let these people

devour us, or whether we

will fight for our own interests.

Let me take a couple more questions.

What are you asking me? Okay, I see someone from

Kolomna saying they want to turn it into a second Volokolamsk.

"We started protesting earlier—say something

about it on air." I’ll be talking about

Volokolamsk a little later. What should be done about

Slutsky? Well then, listen, let’s

really say that right now there are two main

topics, the two main political topics in

Russia, and as it seems to me—though

I may be wrong—they will have

long-term political consequences.

They are Volokolamsk

and Slutsky. What happened in Volokolamsk, in

fact, wasn’t even only in

Volokolamsk, but in the Moscow Region as

a whole: the so-called garbage crisis.

This is when the Moscow regional authorities, together

with the Moscow city authorities, together with

their associates, effectively created a kind of

mafia group there—you’ve got Prosecutor General

Chaika, the whole Moscow Region mafia

connected to Shoigu,

and they make absolutely colossal

amounts of money from landfills, and they make it

in a fairly barbaric way, because

they simply create gigantic dump sites,

just open-air ones, and all this garbage

is dumped there just to sit there.

People are writing: "Do an investigation into the garbage

landfills, please look into it."

There was already an investigation on this back in

2015—an investigation into who

is making billions from landfills. It described

exactly all these people, all

Putin’s friends, the friends of the Prosecutor General’s Office,

this suburban mafia—they make billions

from it. But all these profits

have run up against a limit,

because the ultimate finite resource is simply plots of land.

located near populated areas and

sooner or later, the people living in

the towns of Klin and Volokolamsk

and Kolomna

they understood it, but more than that, they felt it, they

could smell that they were simply being

poisoned. You have to understand that

Moscow Oblast is the second most populous

federal subject of the Russian Federation

that is an enormous number of people

naturally, they are in a state of justified

absolute fury

when people, when people simply can no longer

breathe

they begin to see everything in a completely different

way. In Volokolamsk

it erupted fastest of all. They held

huge rallies, and at those rallies

as you can see in the pictures, they came

wearing gas masks, and basically even

people who sympathized with them would say, well,

this is all more of a metaphor, the gas mask

is a metaphor, because it can’t really be

that bad. They just don’t like the fact that

there’s a landfill there. Of course

no one would like that, but a bad smell

when the wind occasionally blows from there, a bad

smell—that was what they tried to convince everyone of

that this was exactly the situation. They even said that

the organizers of the Volokolamsk rallies

many of them I know—well, some of them I’ve

known quite well for many years—were

some kind of State Department agents. TV host Karaulov went there

specifically—Karaulov (a Russian TV presenter)

a well-known crook, and showed some

photos of me with the organizers of these

rallies, saying: look, look,

with Navalny, the well-known extremist. Then

it turned out, just a couple of days ago,

we all learned, we learned that the residents of

Volokolamsk were not exaggerating when

they walked around in their

gas masks. One hundred children were affected there, 60

were hospitalized because of a release of this

so-called landfill gas

you can google it, look it up on

Wikipedia—it really is a toxic

gas, and if children there were fainting and

feeling dizzy and nauseous, then you can

judge the scale of the problem. How can anyone live

like that?

How can people live in conditions where such

things are happening? And here, of course, we need

to draw a simple parallel here

many say that Volokolamsk is just

some minor episode, some nonsense

a small town outside Moscow, and in the whole

Volokolamsk district

there are 50,000 people, and in the town itself

Volokolamsk has 20,000 residents. And not long ago there was

an American city called

Flint, where the water was contaminated with lead

and that small city, that small city

became the center of American politics

during the election, by the way, and it became

a dedicated topic in the debates between

Clinton and Sanders, back when it was still

the primaries. In other words, it was a huge

a huge political event. So

Volokolamsk too

as well as, by the way, Kolomna and Klin

should likewise be at the center

of a nationwide debate, because this is

not just about Klin and Volokolamsk and all

the rest of it—it is about everything, it is about

Chelyabinsk, it is about Krasnoyarsk—the situation

is even worse there, by the way. In Krasnoyarsk

there is that infamous cloud that covers the city

in Chelyabinsk the environmental situation is monstrous

there are horrific rates of cancer

and respiratory illnesses

look at what is happening in Norilsk

we have a huge number of cities where people are simply being poisoned

but in Volokolamsk, because of the children, this

all exploded, and what is very interesting is that

Volokolamsk

approached this politically. Volokolamsk

really took part in a voters’ strike

there, and it had one of the lowest

turnout rates in the country: in the district it was

only 44 percent. At the rallies

that took place before the election, those rallies

voiced quite clearly, well, outright

opposition slogans. Let’s watch 36 seconds

of a pre-election rally in

Volokolamsk

[music]

[music]

so, as you can tell from the rhetoric, this is

very much an opposition rally, because

those who have attended rallies about development

or environmental issues know that very often

there is this line: we are outside politics, we

just want clean water here

to speak, but we will not allow

politicians to speak, and we will

avoid topics that criticize the authorities. But in

Volokolamsk, everything is completely different. These are

quite brave people, and all of them

speak bluntly, telling the plain truth; they directly

connect all of this with politics, and that is

absolutely right. Incidentally, this

shows that when a protest takes on

a political form, it looks completely

different and works much more effectively. But

probably it could not have happened

any other way, because when it comes to

children’s health, you want to say to the head of the district

everything directly and plainly. I think

you have already seen this footage, but it seems to me

that it is so instructive that

it is worth watching again. This is a meeting

lasting up to one minute and 30 seconds

between the head of the Volokolamsk district and residents

who, until very recently, were his

constituents. He is a member of United Russia (the ruling party), and

our authorities and

and on television they tell us how this

The party strongly supports these chapters.

One minute during the segment—one more question again.

Why did you come here? Answer for yourself, right here.

I’m standing here calmly, alone.

So, what did you find here with us?

[applause]

[applause]

[music]

So you can see only this little bit, not more.

It was just short of a lynch mob.

And this is in supposedly stable times, in a time of—

of everything else, and overall you can

understand these people, because the problem had been there

for years, for years, and in recent months these same

rallies had been going on for a long time—they went, they spoke, but

you can’t live like this. But there’s money in this too,

money all the same—Vorobyov is making money off this,

the whole Vorobyov mafia in the Moscow

region—they’re making money off it.

A completely real sum—billions of rubles.

Billions of rubles. And in that sense, when there arrived

Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow

Region, very firmly entrenched,

a governor, a powerful man, and it would

seem that when he got there, he should have

encountered the classic situation where

the governor comes to a protest rally,

people listen to him, nod along, he says,

“We’ll sort it out,” and they tell him, “All right,”

“we’ll wait.”

They tell him, “Fine, we’ll wait.” And for 31

seconds, this is how Governor Vorobyov felt

at that rally. Let’s

take a look. He got 88 percent in

the last election—that is, supposedly universally

beloved, more than Putin, by the way.

[applause]

I

With all their percentages, with all their Ros

gvardiya (Russia’s National Guard), with television, with armored vehicles

that they buy, with all

the billions they’ve spent on PR

and keep spending on federal television,

some little guy runs off in disgrace, hanging his head.

Just like when I used to go to some

regions and people there would throw eggs,

people like the ones they hired,

governors like Vorobyov. Only here

no one was hired.

They were really just throwing things at him on their own.

Because in an instant, from being this

huge inflated toad,

you turn into a small, pathetic

man—a crook and a thief—whom

the people living on your own

territory drive away in disgrace. It’s very important what will

happen next in Volokolamsk and in all

the other

other regions. Of course, they will

lie and drive wedges between people,

because that is their main

tactic. The authorities will now say, well,

if we close the landfill in Volokolamsk,

we’ll have to take the garbage to Kolomna, and the residents

of Kolomna will say, “No, let it stay in Volokolamsk.”

They’ll tell the residents of Klin that we’re

probably going to bring it to Klin, to your

landfill. I’ve already seen similar things online,

read comments like that. Right now they’ll

simply try to exploit

these contradictions and prove to us that, well,

guys, nothing can be done. But yes, it can.

Everything can be done. Why the hell is the Moscow

Region larger than Belgium in area,

and yet somehow the issue of

waste processing gets solved in European countries,

while only in Russia do we have these gigantic

garbage dumps, and in Volokolamsk there are

literally piles taller than nine-story

apartment buildings—mountains of trash. There’s nothing like that anywhere else.

This is the 21st century. Waste processing is

a major problem, an extremely serious problem

for humanity, but for children to be poisoned

by an open dump—

that doesn’t happen anywhere in the world, and it shouldn’t

be happening in Russia either. And there is enough money for this,

so of course they will

lie, they will say that nothing

can be done, they will try to

discredit people, they will

try somehow, gradually, to

split the initiative groups and

try to bring someone to

account, to intimidate them. This is a completely

standard tactic. But I simply urge

the residents of all the towns around Moscow

who are concerned about this issue—and it concerns me too,

because I myself am a former

resident of the Moscow Region, and my parents

live in the Moscow Region—

not to give in to this. We need

to show solidarity and not give them

a moment’s rest, to keep all this going. As I understand it,

in Volokolamsk this weekend

there are officially approved rallies,

about the landfill and the administration, so

people need to keep taking part in this,

because they will take away the water, they will take away the air.

What happens around this

confrontation, where on one side are

the interests of the residents, and on the other side

colossal sums of money—will the residents be able

to force these people

to give up even some of their money in order

to reduce the social

tension? That is an extremely important and extremely

interesting question. Danil Logachev

asks me what time the

Instagram livestream is. Right, in 2017 I

really do hold such livestreams on

Instagram, live on Wednesdays, and I bring

people on—Instagram gives you the option

to simply connect some random

person and chat with them. But I don’t

do it at any specific time; it’s

more of an entertainment

thing. I try to do it all on Wednesdays.

If there are any other questions, then...

On Twitter, I’ll answer them—show them to me.

People are asking why pro-Putin

journalists staged this kind of boycott.

of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament)—I mean, really.

We’ve come to Slutsky. Slutsky—and what

happened with Slutsky—is the second story,

a very important political story

that will have major consequences

depending on how it

develops. You know this whole story:

Deputy Slutsky is not just any deputy, not

an ordinary MP—he heads the committee

on international affairs. In that sense, he is

a highly trusted person for this

system, an important person for this system,

because he is one of those who has

connections with all sorts of parliamentary committees on

international affairs; he travels around to various

places there and

officially speaks on behalf of the state,

pulls tricks on behalf of the state, and he is

an important deputy, so the system will not

give him up. As it has now turned out, he

sexually harassed female journalists,

quite openly, quite aggressively.

Several journalists accused him

of sexual harassment, but by now

the story has become much bigger than that.

Because the question was exactly why

even such pro-Putin media outlets declared

a boycott of the Duma. This is already a situation in which

the discussion was handled in a certain way.

The journalists did everything by the book; they took the legal

route.

When they said publicly that there had been

harassment, they were told in response

by the Duma leadership: well, write

a letter, and we’ll review it all. So they wrote

the letter. And, generally speaking, you have to understand that for

them this was also a rather

humiliating situation. One of the

journalists,

BBC journalist Farida Rustamova,

even recorded clear evidence

of this harassment on a voice recorder and

submitted the recording. Which, let’s be honest,

is not exactly the most

comfortable situation for a person. Nevertheless, they

did it. And what did they basically

run into when they got there? Let’s

just watch 21 seconds of how

this meeting went, when seated there were

State Duma deputies on one side—people

working on our money, receiving

their salaries from us, who are supposed to protect

these very journalists, who are supposed to be

an example of morality. I mean, it is generally believed that

the best citizens sit in the Duma, right? So how

did all this happen? Twenty-one seconds, I said.

That this kind of

documents, audio recordings,

which were made secretly—

you journalists know that when you

come in to conduct an interview, you ask

for permission: may we record you or

not? But is it okay to grab someone’s pubic area? I’m not aware.

You understand, there he is sitting in front of you,

this man this wide,

whose salary you pay, and you

bring him an audio recording where

a State Duma deputy is harassing a

journalist.

Well, that is obvious—at the very least, a violation

of ethics. And probably we understand that this is one

big mafia-like system; they’re not going to shoot him there, but

still, they could at least have used some

vague wording so that we

would understand they were not going to cover for their

own man. But looking everyone straight in the eye, they said—

when asked, here is the audio recording, he is

harassing her—they said: the recording

is illegal, an illegal recording. What are you doing? You recorded him

without permission, a deputy, on an

audio device.

What outrageous conduct, dear journalist

Farida Rustamova. We are not interested in what

was done to you there—you turned on a recorder and

recorded a public official

while being a journalist. Outrageous. And when

they are asked: so recording is not allowed, but is it allowed

to grope and grab? Well, I don’t know. This is

simply—if there were a Wikipedia article

for “boorish depravity,” this would be the illustration.

That is why even pro-Putin journalists

declared a boycott, and they did the right thing.

And this is a very important story, because

as you can see now, information has appeared about

which

media outlets have already

joined this boycott. Some

are boycotting the Duma as a whole, some

are boycotting only the committee on

international affairs and Slutsky himself.

But this is an extremely important thing that in

Russia simply does not happen—does not happen at all

these past years. We have simply

a classic situation here,

a classic situation of the side of good and

the side of evil. More than that, it is unfolding according to

all the canons of a trade-union

struggle—revolutionary, perhaps,

with all the features of that kind of labor fight.

Here is a professional community; it has been insulted,

and they want to get their way—they have

every right to do so. They declared

a boycott. There will also be strikebreakers, and

for example, deputy and

editor-in-chief of the newspaper *Moskovsky Komsomolets*

has already said that he

will send even more journalists

to the State Duma,

and in general, as the head of the Union

of Journalists, he is making some

absolutely—I don’t even know—

utterly vile statements to the effect that

the female journalists themselves, if all this happened, are

to blame for everything. In other words, he is a

genuine strikebreaker in these circumstances.

Strikes by people who work for such a

unjust employer, a lockout, and

these emerged as part of labor-union struggle, you know.

People showed up and declared a strike.

The employer said: if you won’t work, you’re all fired. And

here Volodin said that everyone who will

boycott—we will strip everyone of

their accreditation, and we will see a rather

dramatic story. I don’t know, personally,

how it will unfold there, but it seems to me

it will be very interesting to watch who

among those who declared a boycott will also become

a strikebreaker and betray their own, who

else will join, and how these

wonderful people will continue their work,

the ones who are standing in pickets outside the State

Duma—how others react to them.

How do the other journalists watching them

respond—with support, more likely, or with a kind of “haha,”

“Look at those idiots standing there with their

pathetic, miserable one-person pickets.”

As the saying goes, you can’t break a whip with a butt-end (i.e., you can’t fight overwhelming force);

you can’t do anything, it’s all impossible. This is

really a very interesting case.

The journalistic community, which, as you

know, is very deeply concerned with itself,

quite understandably—in any country, the media work like this.

They pursue their own interests, and they have

the right to do so. They feel personally offended there,

they are offended by things of the sort where

they are, so to speak, expected to take offense, and

they are filled with a sense of righteousness.

They are full of anger at Popova, in a situation when they

should be filled with righteous anger, and

what is happening is very important. And of course

I absolutely wanted to support all these

journalists. You probably saw

our blackout on March 8 that we put out

as a sign, a sign of solidarity with these, with these

people. We have already conducted our investigation,

a package dealing with

Slutsky’s property, and we found information

that is enough to, well,

as it says here, drive Slutsky out of

the State Duma without any

harassment allegations at all—although first and foremost

he should be removed over the harassment allegations.

Let’s watch a few seconds from

our investigation—about a minute and 30 seconds—

about who Deputy Slutsky is and why

he has no place in the State Duma. Another

one of Slutsky’s cars:

a Mercedes S-Class. And here it’s not even

about the price—although of course it is also very

expensive—but about the fact that we managed to find

a specific Mercedes belonging to the specific Slutsky

and thereby crack open a portal into the life

of the people’s elected representative. This car—

there can be no doubt about it, since there is a photograph

showing Slutsky personally getting out of it. And

now watch this trick: to cheerful

music, you can flip through the list of fines issued

for the deputy’s car just since June

2017—just a little more than half a year—59

pages.

Fifty-nine pages of fines. The total number

of violations—

drumroll—825. And now we move

to Rublyovka (an elite suburban area outside Moscow). Let’s

take a look at the deputy’s 800-square-meter house.

He has owned it since 1999, so I’m not even

going to raise the question of where the money came from; prices

were different back then,

so let’s assume he had

the money. But the issue here is not the price, it’s

the size of the plot. Slutsky declares

a 1,200-square-meter plot, but if

we carefully examine the boundaries of the actual

plot, we will see that they differ greatly

from what is on paper, which

suggests the thought: did he seize

some extra land for himself illegally? But no—

Slutsky did not seize extra land illegally.

In 2008, he leased

a neighboring forest plot with an area of 1

hectare, and he never declared it. I’ve

run a little over time already; there are

32,000 people watching, so for another

five minutes, with your permission, I’ll keep talking—just

to finish with Slutsky.

This is a very important situation; it seems to me

it is very important to support those media outlets

that declared a boycott of the Duma. There are media outlets there—

it’s simply disgusting—Lenta.ru in

its current state,

it’s just completely awful overall,

but the fact that they joined in is

an excellent move; good for them. I know

some people criticize them and say, “Well, why

did you only start playing at boycott now, while

before you didn’t declare this boycott in

these terms?” There is certainly

some truth to that, but all the same, it is necessary

to support them, because this is plainly

a righteous cause. There will be deceit in it,

there will be cowardice in it, there will be courage in it, and

of course one must support the side of good.

By the way, they say this story is already beginning

to spread, although that is very unexpected.

For example, today one of the

journalists accused Vladimir

Zhirinovsky

of nothing less than sexual

harassment. But already in the realm of

sexual harassment, I can’t

read

this whole text aloud—it would be rather awkward

to read some of these things out. But nevertheless,

here it is.

The journalist writes that Zhirinovsky

in his company—and while I’m speaking now,

you can manage to read it all from the screen.

It says he was dragged to a sauna, grabbed,

groped—this is really

important testimony, especially in terms

of the fact that these people—you read this

text and understand that it is written about

a person who is sick, about…

rather,

those sitting in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) and

present themselves as models of morality and

virtue, and teach us how to live.

They tell us what is good and what is bad, what

we are allowed to watch on the internet and what

we are not. First they pass laws about

banned websites, and then they grab some

male journalist and drag him off to a bathhouse with them.

They try to take him away by force. This is

this is what is happening right now

with journalists in the Slutsky case (a scandal involving Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky), and already

in this growing story, this is a story of

normal people against thieves,

debauchees, crooks, and perverts

who are trying to teach us how to live.

So this is a very big story. Two

very short things, since I’m being

asked. Sergey Kalinov asks: tell us

the story about saying goodbye to Ilya Yashin’s grandmother.

LifeNews have hit a new low, truly.

It’s a disgusting story. I mean, we’ve seen

all kinds of filth, but Yashin has an

elderly grandmother, and she fell ill.

She has dementia, and it’s quite difficult

in an apartment setting, when everyone works,

to provide proper care for her, and so on.

So she was placed in a special home where people care

for her, a special residential care facility.

And of course they decided to turn this into

a big story right away, claiming that Yashin

dumped his grandmother in a nursing home while he himself

took her apartment. That’s the kind of

usual stuff—but this really, really made an

impression. They

from LifeNews were pounding on Yashin’s apartment door,

filming his parents there. Then they tried to force their way

into the care home where his

grandmother is staying. Naturally, they were not let in.

Then a local police officer went in there—basically, he’s a

cop.

He secretly filmed this grandmother on his phone and

took the recording out and handed it over to LifeNews.

What is going on, damn it? I mean,

they really have hit rock bottom, you understand? Some kind of

tenfold, triple, absolute swinishness.

I’ve said the word “swinishness”

a million times during this broadcast, but what else is there to call it?

A police officer goes and secretly films someone’s grandmother—

not just Yashin’s grandmother, but someone’s grandmother with dementia—

you understand?—while she is saying something,

records it on his phone in order to give it to these

disgusting people at LifeNews so they can

put out their piece.

And look—when Putin, when

someone asks him something about his personal

life, he practically shudders.

They have completely sealed off all of their own private lives.

Completely. But engaging in this kind of

filth—they can do that. It’s just awful.

Best wishes and support to Ilya Yashin and all of his

family. The last thing I want

to say—because you remember, I began

by saying that this is a program about joy, a program

about what is good, and I talk about that

through what is bad. Very bad is the fact

that in the last major city in Russia

where this still existed—Yekaterinburg—they have abolished the

mayoral election, and

it will no longer be possible to elect Yevgeny

Roizman, because there are no more elections.

But what is good is that once again we see: they can do nothing.

Nothing. Again they tell us

that they have everything: they have television, they have

swagger, the Sarmat missile, and some kind of

huge approval ratings,

and so on. And there sits Roizman—what does he have?

He has that red T-shirt, his famous

Museum of Nevyansk Icons, and a video blog

that he records.

And they can do nothing to Roizman.

This is simply a man in a red

T-shirt—here in the photo it looks blue, but

it’s actually red, that famous one—and he drives all of

United Russia (the ruling political party) around Yekaterinburg with kicks,

and they can do nothing

to him, in one of Russia’s largest cities.

That is the most significant

political fact of what is happening:

they rigged these elections because

they could not cope with the resistance

that was being coordinated, damn it, from this

broadcast where there is nothing except a camera,

a white table, and a red cup with the

words on it saying that in Yekaterinburg they

had to cancel the mayoral election because

they simply can do nothing against one

private individual

who relies on other honest

people. Therefore, honest people will always

win.

Thank you very much to everyone who watched.

See you next Thursday.

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