Navalny’s poisoning, a billion dollars for Belarus, and the prosecutor’s office versus Morgenstern

[music]

Hello, dear YouTube viewers.

This is the Navalny Live channel.

Today is Thursday, 2020, which means that

we’re live with the program *Russia of the Future* today.

This is the last broadcast of this difficult, ending

year, 2020. I’m Lyubov Sobol, and we

will, as usual, discuss the main

political and social news

from the past week.

A little later, joining me live

via video link will be Alexei Navalny, and with him

we will, of course, discuss the news regarding

his poisoning, his conversation with

Kudryavtsev, the Kremlin’s reaction, and more.

That will be a bit later, but for now I

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who has already made donations since the launch

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I have seen that you are helping very actively

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are sending money, but these are fairly

large penalties and sanctions,

so please keep doing it. Thank you

very much to everyone who supports us. Truly,

we can work only

thanks to you. And of course, the main topic

with which I will begin today’s broadcast is

the main topic—not just of the week,

but probably of the year: Navalny’s poisoning.

And this week, on Monday, there appeared

a new video: Navalny’s phone call to one of the

poisoners, Kudryavtsev, from the FSB’s Criminalistics Institute

During that conversation, Kudryavtsev

said that

he described the details of the poisoning itself—he

did describe them, yes—and he said how he

cleaned Navalny’s underwear, especially the fly area,

where the poisonous substance had been applied, and

in connection with this, many people now may

not yet have seen this investigation.

Be sure to watch this conversation and this

phone call—definitely watch it. It already has

more than 18 million

views.

Keep telling people about what happened—

your friends, your colleagues, those who may

not know, those who may be watching Russian

television and think that this really

was some kind of pancreatitis, diabetes, or

I don’t know, a drop in blood sugar. So

show this video to all your acquaintances and

friends, send it around—I don’t know—on WhatsApp,

so that people know the truth about what is happening.

Because during this phone call, one of the

people who took part in this

special operation to kill Navalny, in this

attempted murder of Navalny, he

really did simply, candidly

confess to everything. And the main thing, of course, from

this video is that Navalny

was, first of all, the target of an attempt to kill him;

this was not intimidation, not surveillance,

it was specifically an attempted murder.

From this video, that becomes

completely clear and understandable, and also that

the killing failed only thanks to

the quick reaction and work of the pilots,

the professionalism of the ambulance doctors, and the quick

reaction of the airplane crew, who

landed the plane in Omsk

when it was flying from Tomsk to Moscow. It

also becomes clear—yes, we had

these assumptions before—but now

it is simply confirmed by one

of the poisoners: they wanted to kill him, and only

because of the ambulance's quick response

and the very rapid emergency landing of the plane, the

murder attempt failed, and

Navalny managed to survive. On Monday

also on Monday, when the video was released on

the YouTube channel, and Navalny immediately had

that conversation with Kudryavtsev, I tried

to get a comment from Kudryavtsev, because

he lives in Moscow, on Suzdalskaya Street

building 38, block 2, entrance 2, apartment 38, on

the fourth floor. It was enough simply

to establish his home address and

I went there and tried, but

literally, as a journalist, to

get a comment. I wanted to ask him

what his motives were for taking part in

the crime of attempting to kill a person, who

gave the direct order, and

other questions as well. Kudryavtsev did not

want to speak with me. I have no doubt whatsoever

that at that moment he was inside

that apartment and was simply trembling with fear,

afraid even to open the door when the doorbell rang.

I could hear how

the people on the other side of the door

carefully crept up to the peephole.

I could see the light being blocked, I could hear rustling, I

was asking questions, trying

to make some kind of contact, but simply no one

answered, they did not even ask who was there,

nothing at all, just silence.

Silence, and someone on the other side of the door,

I assume it was

Kudryavtsev himself, standing there and

just shaking nervously and trembling with

fear because he had been exposed. The whole

country, indeed the whole world, knows that he

took part in the attempted murder of Navalny.

Everyone knows where he lives, everyone can

go there—journalists can come and ask him questions

directly. When I was going there, I thought that people

who committed crimes

naturally assumed that no one would

ever find out that they had participated,

that they were carrying out this unlawful

order to kill a person. I do not think

they expected they would ever be found, and here they were not only

found, but people even came to him

to ask him questions. And I came to him

before the investigation was published, and

when I was trying there to ask him questions,

yes, and afterward I was near the entrance, near

that building. I was sitting in a car because

there was a chance that they were about to

publish the excerpt from that video

of the phone call, and he might simply run out of

the house to flee, yes, because

that was it—everything had been exposed, everything that

possibly could be exposed, all of it had come out, everyone knew

everything he had blurted out, and now the whole world knew it.

And I was waiting in the car nearby, in the courtyard,

simply waiting for Kudryavtsev. I was not committing any

unlawful acts, of course,

I was just sitting in a rented car-sharing vehicle,

in a rented car, and then, after

10 minutes had passed since our video was released,

there really began some kind of

large-scale special operation to protect

Kudryavtsev. A car arrived

with police officers in it. They

immediately came up to my car, then they

went off, and then a second

car arrived, then a third—several cars came altogether.

Some of them were police cars,

some were civilian vehicles; there was a black

Toyota Camry

and inside it there were also officers,

some in uniform, some in plain clothes. Then

literally the entire courtyard was flooded

with police officers—they brought in

all sorts of people. The whole courtyard was effectively cordoned off,

literally. And right away, just 10

minutes after the investigation was released,

when the first police units arrived,

the first thing they did, of course, was go into

the entrance and start clearing out the entire stairwell

of the people who were there—

teenagers, and I do not know, whoever else,

whoever normally happens to be in an apartment entrance—someone

who came to visit someone, standing on

the stair landing talking, someone standing there

smoking in the entrance, or anyone else—they

drove everyone away immediately, simply so that no one

could get near apartment 38 at

38 Suzdalskaya Street, block 2.

And that is probably the best evidence that

this really does involve the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service). Right now

we will talk about it a bit later, because they

say that it is fake,

that it was all made up, that it is a forgery. On Solovyov's

YouTube channel they say that

none of this is real, that it is some kind of fabrication, yes—

that the conversation never really happened at all.

In fact, the best proof that

the conversation was genuine is this very reaction—

this crazy, panicked reaction

from the police after we released our

investigation. They immediately

arrived, that is, and began protecting

the entrance, and flooded the whole area

with police officers.

When they later detained me, I think many people

saw the moment of my detention on

social media. It was absolutely unlawful,

because, as I said,

I had committed no unlawful acts whatsoever.

Later, they detained the people who

were in the same car with me—employees of

our YouTube channel, Navalny LIVE,

Olga Klyuchnikova and Timur Kerimov, who

were also simply sitting in the car at that

moment and likewise were not doing anything,

let alone obstructing police officers.

We were just sitting and waiting, and very much wanted

to speak with Kudryavtsev, to ask him

questions, in the capacity of, so to speak, quasi-

journalists. And then I was taken to

the police station.

And then again, when they tell us

that this is supposedly a fake after all, I mean,

or that this point is all untrue,

that the place in question does not exist at all,

that someone was there by accident, or just

that the chemist was not connected to it, and so on, it is very

important to show what the reaction to all this actually was,

that in reality it was not just some kind of fortress-style lockdown,

they declared some kind of

counterterrorist operation there, as if

a threat was hanging over the Novokosino district police department

they brought in a whole bunch of generals, they brought in

officers from the Moscow criminal investigation unit,

the famous MUR (Moscow Criminal Investigation Department), who

were trying to question me about something there,

they placed some kind of listening device nearby

and set it down there.

There was some kind of commotion going on there,

while I was just sitting in an office, bored,

with police officers who were constantly

being rotated in and out, sitting there to make sure I did not,

God forbid, call anyone, including my

lawyer. At that moment, my lawyer was simply

not allowed even onto the floor, and in the

next room—when I went out to the bathroom—I

saw that nearby there were just sitting

an enormous number of people, along with

those generals and all those stern-faced

officers and others, all frantically

trying to decide what on earth to do,

because how dare she come to

Kudryavtsev.

It was all quite clear, well, on the one hand,

it really was absurdly funny, of course,

because there I was, sitting alone, that is,

with, in my entire arsenal, only

a mobile phone, with which I could

film something or ask a few questions,

yes, and, I do not know, a bag with some

personal belongings, maybe a pen,

a passport, a tissue, something like that,

and around me there was just this

huge crowd of practically every possible

rank of official, and I have no idea

what exactly they were doing at that moment,

apparently trying to decide what to do, what

to do, like, how could this happen, what could they

possibly charge me with.

As for the criminal case, indeed,

that night at the police department, completely unlawfully,

they started questioning me—although

people are not supposed to be questioned at that hour—based on this

complaint that had allegedly been filed against me later,

claiming that I had supposedly entered

an apartment and done something illegal there.

Honestly, I do not know. Right now I will

ask the journalists whether a criminal case has been opened against

me or not, because I

to be honest,

have absolutely no idea, because when I

tried to clarify some things, like who

had filed the complaint against me, they

said that Kudryavtsev had filed a complaint against me, but on

what grounds exactly?

Because specifically, they said it was a

crime report.

But on such basic, specific questions

they told me nothing, and in the end they gave me

only a paper with my interview record to

sign, stating that I had been questioned, and there

the form itself was completely blank—right now

it is on your screen.

You can see that it does not say there

on whose complaint

my nighttime questioning was conducted. That is,

they should first write down for you that

there is a complaint from such-and-such a person regarding

such-and-such circumstances of the case, that

there are some indications of

some kind of offense. None of that

is there. It is simply obvious from the document itself that

it is a mess.

That is why I wrote, first of all,

that, of course, under the Constitution,

I always recommend that if

you somehow—I hope you never do—

encounter, but if you do encounter

law enforcement agencies,

then of course you should never trust them, and when

they try to talk to you and

say, “Just tell us about the weather, what kind of education you have,”

or ask you to explain something without a formal record,

saying, “This is not an interrogation,” and without

any protocol, “we are just having a chat,”

always respond with

the well-known phrase: “I invoke Article 51

of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”

Because all these tricks,

all these manipulations, they will always

use them against you. I have no

doubt about that whatsoever, and you should not

trust anyone there,

none of those police officers.

You simply need to say, “I will exercise

my right under Article 51 of the Constitution

of the Russian Federation. I have that

right, and I am using it.” There is nothing

they could achieve, and by around two in the morning

after keeping me there for a very long time,

for many hours at the police department, they finally let me go.

At the very end, though, when I was already

signing that paper, they invited in

the lawyers who had been there all that time,

waiting in the Interior Ministry building, just downstairs on the first floor,

where they too had been unlawfully denied access.

Illegally, they kept trying

to get me talking, to find out

some details about what else I knew

about Kudryavtsev, whether I knew

or did not know any additional

details, but they of course

did not manage to get anything out of me.

There was simply nothing for them to do but release me.

I had been sitting in the car at the moment of the detention, and

they let me go, but they decided to take revenge and

still bring administrative charges

against my colleagues who

work for the Navalny LIVE channel.

My team is working, including at the campaign headquarters.

headquarters.

After all the commotion, they fined me, and the next

day I was unlawfully convicted and held at the

Interior Ministry police station all night. They would not take into account the fact that

I have a young child, and that I

was supposed to have been released within three hours

from the moment of my detention. Instead, they held me

much longer.

The others were actually kept overnight as well. They were

denied water, not given hot food,

and lawyers were only let in with great difficulty.

This is simply lawlessness from within the system.

We had to demand that our lawyer be allowed in, and

after the hearing, Olga

Klyuchnikova received a fine. Her post on social media is now

on your screens.

She was the head of the campaign headquarters for the

State Duma election.

And my colleague from Navalny LIVE

got seven days of arrest for absolutely nothing,

for no reason at all—just because she was sitting in

a car next to me, that was all.

At the building, in the courtyard of poisoner Kudryavtsev,

and also Akim Kerimov, the cameraman for our

Navalny LIVE team, also received seven

days. They are now serving them in

Special Detention Center No. 2.

If any of you live nearby,

bring a letter, pass along

a postcard or something else,

or a small care package—anyone who wants to can pass something along.

The guys are holding up well.

They called from the detention center and sent everyone

their best regards, thanking everyone for the support, and said that when they

get out, they will work even harder. I,

of course, in no way think that this

illegal detention and administrative

case frightened them.

People, of course, do not like seeing this kind of

outrage happening. That is why, after

the release of that video with Navalny’s call to

Kudryavtsev, people began

coming out for one-person pickets. They went to

Lubyanka, to the FSB building (Russia’s security service headquarters).

Director Vitaly Mansky came out not with

a placard, but literally with blue underwear—

probably one of the

main symbols, unfortunately, of 2020.

These notorious

blue underpants have already inspired a huge number of

viral images, and in general, around

these blue underpants—I saw how underwear stores were already

starting to hold

sales of blue underpants and all sorts of other things.

So Vitaly Mansky decided

to express his protest in this way against

the refusal to open a criminal case over

Navalny.

Apparently, he came out with those blue underpants and, as you know, the FSB

detained him simply because he

was standing near the FSB building

holding that item in his hands.

It was a fairly harmless object, yet he

was detained—again, absolutely unlawfully.

He did not even have a placard in his hands.

Later he was released under an obligation to appear.

Pickets also

took place in Omsk, Yekaterinburg,

Irkutsk, and Kaluga, and now people with underpants in the street

are being detained, as are people who are sitting

in an apartment, near a building, in a car—

in a car and outside the home of poisoner Kudryavtsev—

they are being detained and given arrests of seven

days.

whether one of the perpetrators poisoned him or not. I want

to bring him on now, and we will discuss

this news further, now directly

with Alexei Navalny, who is now

joining us live.

Let’s bring him in after a short

clip from the video of his call to

Kudryavtsev. Once again, I have information that

this was done on August 25.

And the second time—All right, tell me,

please, which item of clothing was

the main focus, which item of clothing was emphasized

as the most, most risky in theory?

Which item of clothing? Underpants.

And on what part of the underpants? The inner

seam, the outer seam? Well, imagine

a pair of underpants.

Yes, and, well, here are the underpants—on which part

is the most vulnerable area of the underpants?

[music]

Konstantin Borisovich,

Everyone is stunned. Hello, Alexei, thank you

very much for joining us—joining my live

broadcast on the Navalny LIVE channel. I wanted

to ask the first question: what is it like,

probably, to call the person you suspect

of poisoning you? Yes, good evening, everyone.

Hello, this is Alexei Navalny—or Maksim

Sergeyevich Ustinov, as the joke now goes,

apparently.

That joke will apparently follow me for a long time. I am very

glad to be on air again, and once again I want

to say that you did an amazing job.

Your, so to speak, heroic struggle with

Apartment No. 38 was, of course,

extremely important at that moment, and

in general, this whole development of events perfectly

confirmed that we are right. Because

it simply does not happen that you just ring

a stranger’s doorbell and then

all the police generals come rushing in, along with

arrests for

seven days, and OMON riot police arrive—and then everyone

understood perfectly well. Because otherwise

the person would simply have come out and said:

‘I am Kudryavtsev, listen

to my voice, and I am absolutely not the person

you think I am,’ and

that would have been it—I would have been left looking ridiculous. But

that did not happen, so everyone understands

that we are right. Everyone kept asking me, and when

I called—not only Kudryavtsev, after all,

but, in fact, others in this group of killers as well.

Kudryavtsev plays that kind of role,

like a cleaner—he comes in to clean things up.

There were two operations; he is undoubtedly one of the killers.

He is undoubtedly a member of that criminal group.

Well, there were these guys who were,

really, truly killers. I called them too, and

so we put together this kind of,

group, and everyone was looking at me with wide

eyes. Some of them I called as myself,

some I called as myself, when I said,

something like, “Hello, this is so-and-so,

Alexei Navalny is calling, I want

to find out why you wanted to kill me,” well, I mean,

obviously, all these conversations

lasted about 15 seconds, and then

people immediately hung up. But everyone

apparently was interested in reading something on my

face, to see whether there were any special emotions there.

But honestly, I wouldn’t say that I

felt any at all. The whole thing—well, somehow I

basically slept through all of it, all that

discussion. For me, those events were

on the plane, and then I blacked out, and then

I only fully came to my senses a month later.

And I can’t really say that all of this

is something I’m deeply reliving, and you know, when I talk to some

Alexandrov or Osipov or

whoever, or Kudryavtsev, I don’t feel

like I’m talking to a killer. Probably if

I were looking at a gun pointed

at my face, then I’d have that feeling. But as it is,

no. Well, maybe it will come

someday, I don’t know. So far it hasn’t.

Kira Yarmysh (Navalny’s spokeswoman), I think, said that

someone even recognized your voice—recognized it, but

I’m not going to say who, and I’m not going to say where.

I’ll say this: last time I was on air, and

by the way,

a technical announcement: Lyuba keeps forgetting

to mention the donation links that

are scrolling along the bottom of the screen. At this rate,

she’s going to bankrupt us, so please,

during the broadcast, use the links below to send donations

that are running across the bottom of the screen. So anyway,

yes, last time I really was on air,

and I was bursting, of course, just

because we were listening to Putin, and I

knew we had recorded Kudryavtsev, because

we recorded him that very same day, and

attentive viewers probably remember

that I was saying to Katya (likely the host) that

all we needed to prove now

was something that would refute Putin’s words

that “if they had wanted to kill him, they would have killed him,” and

even Grozev (likely Christo Grozev, investigative journalist) couldn’t hold back and in one of

his interviews or somewhere said that there was just one

thing left for us to prove, because

even before the first investigation came out, we

already had Kudryavtsev, and when he was telling us all this,

we were sitting there, of course, with

our jaws hanging open, because something like that

no one had dared hope for. And then for the whole week,

basically, we had to keep restraining

ourselves, because of course we wanted

to hit him right away with this—

with Kudryavtsev—but we waited. We waited for

Putin to lie and say something

that would make it convenient to answer him, and that was

just a huge gift for us, because

he went ahead and lied—lied precisely on

that very subject, saying, “Well, if they had wanted

to kill him, they would have killed him.” And we knew—we were only

debating whether to release it right away on Friday

or put it out on Monday—what

Kudryavtsev had told us. I’m not going to

go into details. We called

several people; with some of them

the conversations were short, with others

they were longer. Someone recognized me, but

I won’t give details, because this

story is clearly going to continue, and the Kremlin

has already gotten tangled up in its own lies—we can see that

perfectly well. Yes, they realized they had

trapped themselves in their own lies, because now

notice this—they’ve stopped lying

altogether. They’re not saying anything at all.

Only some minor lapdogs are talking, like

Vladimir Solovyov.

But the big, major liars are

staying away from this topic entirely, because

Channel One is posting recipes

for New Year’s salads.

Well yes, yes, yes, absolutely right, absolutely.

That’s right, all of them—I mean, as I said in the video,

we’ve backed them into a corner.

They don’t understand what else we have, they

don’t understand how to refute it, and

it’s impossible—impossible to refute all of it.

But just in case, for now I’ll

refrain from telling stories like that, including

because, of course, we saw an

interesting thing. I wanted to draw

our YouTube viewers’ attention to this: how

the FSB guys, on the one hand, are this kind of

political police working for

Putin—that’s their purpose, and right now

the whole point of their work is that

they help Putin stay in power—but

at the same time, of course, they set him up in a huge

way. Because we started making the calls

at 7 a.m. Moscow time,

and obviously the first

person who heard me say, “This is Navalny,”

“why did you want to kill me?”—well, he obviously

must have called some superior of his,

and in any case, after that

at seven in the morning,

when they burst into the apartment in Tomsk (the Siberian city where Navalny was poisoned), they

had to understand that something was happening,

something terrible. Then we publish

the video, and obviously, of course, the FSB guys

had listened to all the conversations I

had on that phone, and they knew

exactly

what I had talked about with Kudryavtsev, and they

knew for certain that Kudryavtsev hadn’t spilled everything,

but they didn’t tell Putin that. Why not?

Because they were protecting themselves.

And it’s funny how this works in that sense.

Our security services—I don’t know who exactly misled him,

Bortnikov himself, I think it was Bortnikov,

because they wanted to cover up their failure.

And they’re still trying to hide it, because

they’re spinning fairy tales saying that this is

completely fabricated, that the phone call was fake,

and all that sort of thing, because of course this is

a colossal humiliation for that entire structure,

which is forever puffing itself up,

constantly talking about its supposedly super-

professionalism, about how they catch

terrorists, while at the same time their most

secret unit—well, obviously,

a group of killers operating inside the FSB—and that very

secret

well, in general, supposedly some kind of

super-trained, ultra-mega

professional team—turned out, as I see it,

to be very professional indeed, right? Just think about it:

why did our conversation with Kudryavtsev

work out? Was he really the dumbest of them all?

People often ask on social media:

could they really be so stupid that they

tried to kill a man and didn’t recognize

his voice?

We had actually made a ranking, in our view,

of the dumbest guys, and he

turned out not to be it—the guys we had pegged as the dumbest,

the ones we had classified as extra-

stupid, were not actually all that

stupid. But possibly because of that

dramatic nonsense like, ‘Hello, this is Alexei

Navalny,’

‘what did you want to talk about?’ and so on,

we missed a lot of interesting information,

because I’m

sure that if I hadn’t used that

ridiculous story about Maksim Sergeyevich,

and had called everyone as Patrushev’s assistant,

then not only Kudryavtsev would have spoken

with me—not just Kudryavtsev would have talked to me,

because, first of all, we

really did know this whole thing very well,

I had known for seven months, in fact, in this

investigation we had been working on it, so

I was ready to have a detailed

conversation with them—where they went, what they did, everything.

By the way, Kudryavtsev himself least of all, because his

role was less clear. But probably if I

hadn’t said, ‘This is Alexei Navalny,’

then I would have had much better

results from the calls. Honestly speaking,

of course we didn’t expect such a

crazy thing to happen. We thought that

at most we’d manage to confirm that it was

Kudryavtsev, or at least that he knew

some names—well, at least something,

some minimal indirect

confirmation that on this phone

number there was a person with that

surname. That was the most we were hoping for.

And when we were sitting there,

at the place—actually, from 5 a.m.,

we started calling at 4 a.m.—we

had gathered there, all barely alive,

and I was sitting there in this kind of

improvised штаб (operations room) that we

had set up, saying, ‘Damn, we came here

at 4 in the morning, and it’s already obvious that

in 20 minutes it’ll all be over, because

no one is going to talk to me, CNN won’t

even be able to get into the building entrance, and everywhere

it’ll be a failure, nothing will work anywhere.’

But CNN did get in, first of all, and second,

I start making calls, and bang—Kudryavtsev, and he

at first was like, ‘What? Who is this?’

and then he started talking. And there’s a

very simple explanation for that: they’re

used to total impunity. Just look

at what’s happening now: yes, they

failed spectacularly, they chatted about super-

secret information right over the phone, and

did anything happen? Did the FSB director resign?

No. Were they sent to prison? No.

Absolutely nothing happens, and in

this situation, when they exist

completely outside the law, and any failures

that happen in the service do not lead

to any consequences for them, they

go on like this for years. And of course this leads

to degradation. Young people who

come into the FSB—and I know this from them

themselves—they say, ‘Damn, why should we

work? The bosses steal and provide cover for

someone or other here,

the working conditions are terrible, the pay is low,

everyone is constantly trying to undermine each other,

there are endless mutual inspections, it’s uninteresting,

bad work, and so in reality you can’t

build a normal career there

if you don’t have connections or

aren’t involved in some major

corruption scheme.’ The system, of course,

has degraded very, very badly, and they

are absolutely unpunished. So they traveled

sometimes on their own passports,

sometimes on other people’s passports, and while

carrying out a secret mission, killing people,

they just switch on their phones in order

to check something, to receive

text messages and so on, and that’s why on the phone

they chatter away—because at night,

what’s going to happen to you? Nothing.

So they talk. You mentioned that the FSB

said your conversation was fake.

We can probably show it on screen.

What exactly did the FSB say about your

video of the conversation with Kudryavtsev?

‘The video posted by Navalny on the internet,

the so-called investigation into actions allegedly

taken against him,

appears to be a pre-planned

provocation, and the video clip with the telephone

conversation is a fake.

The use of caller ID spoofing

is a well-known technique of foreign

intelligence services, previously tested many times in’

these Russian stocks—well, Kudryavtsev's

usually, a chemist doesn't cooperate with

Facebook, or whatever they have there, or he does

What do you think of this statement in general? It

is written in such a way that it says there

that it's all untrue, but everything about Berg is there, but

it also doesn't say what exactly they are denying, and

and of course this statement is not for us, it's

a statement for Putin, because experience

Putin

Putin was whipped with those blue underpants

Kudryavtsev whipped Putin with those blue

underpants

the whole phone conversation, because

Putin said at the press conference, well,

something like: if FSB officers (Russia's Federal Security Service) had wanted to

kill him, they would have killed him. And the FSB guys knew for several

days—they had known since Monday morning that

there was such a conversation, and they didn't tell their adored

national leader about it

so you can imagine what

was going on on Monday—there was screaming

all around, people shouting, what the hell is this, or something like that

damn it, you had this phone conversation

and we were right

and you didn't say anything about it, so

they're just saying: it's fake, it's

a fake—well, they came to Putin and said

they used, like, 'Vladimir Vladimirovich, this

wasn't us, we're not these awful, useless

good-for-nothings, it's all the Americans, it's all

fake, it's all nonsense'

Of course, it's not Navalny—it's the CIA behind him

because they simply cannot believe

that they can be deceived

with the help of a device costing $10

or rather, well, they can't even

grasp it—they know it, it's not that they simply don't

want everyone else to understand it

so that's why they go to Putin

and say it's all fake, but they

understand that if the conversation goes further

with follow-up questions

like, what's fake exactly, guys? Is Kudryavtsev not

real? Point us to the real

Kudryavtsev. Or maybe we'll show

you Kudryavtsev ourselves. Is the voice not real? We have

a phonoscopic expert analysis. Why don't you just

simply charge Navalny with

a criminal offense if this is

really a fake thing, slander against the FSB

What's not real here? That the call never happened?

The call exists, it's all real, but they

simply, of course,

their bosses, and that group

that is responsible for all these killings—they

are under enormous pressure, not just

from the Kremlin's political

leadership, but also from all the

other FSB people who

good Lord, there are thousands of people working there, and

not all of them are involved in

killings, and for the overwhelming majority

of employees, the existence of such a group

that kills people is a huge and, again,

quite likely unpleasant revelation, and they

are also saying: what the hell is going on here

in our service at all? And of course it's not just

about covering their own backsides and nothing more

Alexei, what about Peskov's words that

you have a persecution complex, a mania of

being persecuted? It's interesting that I actually

have never had any such mania

of persecution, unlike many people

I've never been particularly obsessed with this topic

like, they're following me, they're following me

someone's tailing me, surveillance is on me—I

could just see it, but I never would have thought in my life

that for four years I was being followed, being followed

by some people. We even made a bet with a friend

that I wouldn't laugh when he walked, when

he walked behind me in those yellow shorts

I laughed, I lost. By the way, at the

very beginning of the broadcast, Lyubov was raising

money to pay Georgy's fine—his

computers and everything else keep getting confiscated

constantly, precisely because of fines for

those protests from last year, so if

you take part in the fundraiser in any way

that would be wonderful. As for

the card number, it will be on the screen

It would be great if you helped make it possible

for Georgy to move around

our country with a computer and a phone

because otherwise they just take everything away

Commenting on Peskov is pointless

Well, he's simply in the

position of a person who cannot

remain completely silent because there are

literally journalists standing next to him, and he

holds briefings, so he has to

answer. But this is the kind of answer he gives

'I haven't seen this thing, but...'

'Navalny's fixation on underpants'

shows this and that—well, of course

he watched it, of course. They feel that once again

Kudryavtsev whipped them with his blue

underpants. Actually, not even Kudryavtsev, but

Bortnikov—this whole killer group

of course, through their stupidity and by

hiding this phone call, they

spectacularly humiliated the Kremlin

and now they're simply trying

to put a brave face on a bad situation

And really, it's astonishing how

they got themselves into this and then

ended up contradicting their own words, because

at Putin's press conference, Peskov

said that Navalny was being watched

and now he's talking about a persecution complex

He's contradicting himself. Let's look

at

for our viewers, a short excerpt from

Peskov's comments to journalists

The patient of the Berlin clinic

is receiving support from the special services while carrying out

in this case—and if, if that is

correct, well then that is interesting

Then, of course, the special services should be keeping an eye on him.

Watching him on the president’s orders—for some reason.

Why keep an eye on him?

Well, both Putin and Peskov were saying that

look into it, and then they say that

Navalny has a persecution complex.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the Kremlin’s

experts of lower rank, and those a bit higher up,

stay silent, while the lower-tier ones start

rushing to justify Putin and his FSB, and I

wanted to show a video on our broadcast of how

Sergei Karnaukhov, an expert on

Solovyov’s channel (host Vladimir Solovyov), God forgive me, said that

all of this was done with a push, not

through development—it’s quite funny to watch him

build this up out of nothing. We’ll show it, of course.

There is a very simple explanation here

that closely correlates with

what happened now with this phone call

to the forensic specialist, the military chemist,

the FSB officer whom we will be

talking about today.

What happened was this: in order to

create a fake, from the standpoint of modern

technology, you absolutely need to have

a basic foundation in the form of facial footage, speech dynamics,

and the acoustic environment—this is

a special term—in the form of

voice samples, and not just samples

of the voice, but also intonation, the dependence

of intonation on specific phrases,

dialogue structures, and so on. In other words,

there are a great many particular features. All of this

is impossible without collecting samples. In

the process of collecting samples,

short interviews are used—that is,

it is enough to call or force your way into

the apartment of some person whom we

want to interview and

record—at least make a high-quality recording of—

at least his refusal to give an interview and

a couple or three phrases. That is

enough to feed all the information obtained

into very powerful

computers that are used only

at professional film studios. They

cost a great deal of money, and there, within the framework of

special technologies—technologies

that use neural networks—

self-learning neural networks,

work is carried out with this

digital material, from which later

one can create any

speech, any dialogue, and build any

verbal constructions. And what is very important is

that any subsequent analysis, if it

is not very in-depth, will not allow one

to distinguish the original from the fake.

So, what do you think, Alexei, very serious stuff,

quite a turn of phrase—very serious

computers, yes, and at film studios too. But

of course, it would be good if

some people of higher rank spoke out, because

Solovyov and Solovyov’s experts are

still, well, in the hierarchy of Kremlin

propagandists, basically gutter-level

vagrants. But note that even

these gutter-level vagrants—and those below them—do not deny

the basic premise itself. They do not deny that

there is an FSB officer, Kudryavtsev, a chemist. I

am not denying that they were following me. This is

actually a great stroke of luck, once again

thanks to the fact that the FSB so badly deceived and

set up Putin.

He blurted out a lot at the press conference, in

particular he slipped up—he confirmed that

FSB officers had been traveling around, keeping watch.

And when he said that, we already had in hand

the conversation with Kudryavtsev. We simply

uploaded it, and all of us here were simply

celebrating, because they had pretty much

buried themselves. It was

a super important moment, and now they have to

within the framework of inventing some kind of

new wounded narrative of lies, they

have to rely on certain things

that Putin has already said, that they supposedly obtained in

the collection: they were following him, watching him.

They can’t just erase Kudryavtsev now.

So that is why they are inventing some kind of

supercomputers and other things, because, well,

Bortnikov’s cowardice in not

admitting it, in not telling Putin about the conversation with

Kudryavtsev, and

Putin’s earlier statements

at the press conference left them very little

room to maneuver in constructing

their lies. But I think it will be

very interesting for us to watch how

they twist and squirm. But for that,

it is of course very important to continue

spreading it. The first video already has

20 million—well, 18 or 20 million already—but we need more, because they

are hoping for one thing:

let’s honestly admit it, we understand

they are waiting for the New Year, because no

news story really carries over through the New Year—

as if once New Year’s passes, everyone will

forget. It is extremely important not to—extremely

important not to forget, to continue

spreading it, to keep telling

friends and acquaintances about it. Everyone who has watched it

should keep discussing it, keep entering into

debate,

arguing the point, and so on. Then we will force

the Kremlin to talk about it. As I understand it,

their strategy right now is to claim

that everything is fake, that Western

intelligence services are behind it, that this is an escalation of

anti-Russian activity, and that of course

the West is to blame for everything. What we are seeing

right now is them constantly being dragged around by the tail,

the correspondence with the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons): they say, yes, but

you didn’t answer us about something, and then you gave us

some kind of conclusion from the OPCW that wasn’t

the right conclusion—give us another one. And

let an OPCW delegation come, and then—well, no, we haven’t

agreed, and under the law they’ll come—but...

Let's add one more thing—here it all is.

Again, some kind of meaningless

long back-and-forth correspondence—just drop all of that.

because at the same time it undermines

trust in what you are saying, and in what

the laboratories are saying, and in the report released by

before your report, I would like to ask you about

the journal *The Lancet* and that article which

has just come out. We have published two posts on our blog

on this topic—that the world's leading

medical journal

is *The Lancet*, and then the article came out in which

doctors from the Charité clinic published

material about your poisoning, and

the article is titled "Poisoning with the nerve

agent Novichok, not an unexplained

metabolic disorder that somehow occurred,"

but specifically poisoning with the nerve agent

Novichok." What

Alexei, in your view, is the most important thing in

this article? The most important thing is that it was published at all,

really, because Putin

constantly

and the Russian Prosecutor's Office constantly

keep saying—not so much this nonsense about how

we supposedly haven't been given documents—that there is no

medical information on Navalny, which

is of course a complete lie. They have my entire

medical history and samples of my

blood from Omsk.

But as you quite rightly said, their

task is simply to throw out a million different versions

and just say out loud all sorts of

nonsense. They keep saying it even

now, even though all the main medical

information has not merely been handed over

in an envelope to the prosecutor's office in black and white—it has

simply been published in the world's leading

scientific journal, and medical journal at that. Well,

there are several important things there.

First, they state directly that the symptoms

of poisoning by these organophosphates

have been described since the 1950s, because

this is essentially poisoning that, across the whole

world, kills many people every year from

them, especially in Asia.

Poisoning by fertilizers is also a kind of

organophosphate poisoning, and therefore

the symptoms are known to absolutely everyone

in the field. So they state quite plainly that the doctors in Omsk could not

have failed to see that this was

poisoning.

Second, they describe everything in detail. And there is one more thing

which, you know, does not really

concern me directly, but it

struck me more than anything else in this article.

And not only me, by the way—I saw that

Russian doctors discussing

the article—and I wrote about it on my blog—

while the general public did not really pay attention to it,

Russian doctors did notice it.

And this is not about me; it is simply about the state of

Russian healthcare. So, when

I was lying in the hospital, around my room there were

some kind of extreme

medical safety measures. They were definitely

constantly changing gowns, and at first I

was not fully aware and could not understand what

was happening. When I started thinking clearly again

and asked, "What's going on?"—I mean,

it was obvious that by then I was no longer

poisonous or radioactive, so why was everyone

keeping away from me? And they told me,

"Because you had on you

from the Omsk hospital—you were simply covered

and teeming with bacteria that were highly resistant to

antibiotics, and here everyone

is terribly afraid that these bacteria

will spread throughout the entire hospital.

And this is a terrible thing, because in fact

a huge number of people can

die from these bacteria during

the course of treatment for their underlying illness.

And there were a lot of jokes there about

these "Siberian bacteria" and all the rest.

And in this article in *The Lancet*

it is also stated that at some stage they

had to fight this imported

flora that was teeming on me no less

than the consequences of Novichok itself.

And I read this and thought—and I read

the doctors' comments too—they were also drawing attention

to this, saying, "Yes, yes, this is

a hugely important problem for us.

This is why life expectancy is what it is here,

this is why people die.

Because they bring you to a Russian hospital,

they hook you up to this

machine, and through the machine you

end up getting these resistant

bacteria that cannot be treated with antibiotics.

These are so-called hospital-acquired bacteria; this is

a fairly

well-known phenomenon from which

tens of thousands of people die every year.

And of course this shows the monstrous,

truly monstrous state of Russian

healthcare, and that is what I wrote about

on my blog today. Sorry to those who have already

read it, but I will repeat it: the chief physician,

Murakhovsky, the chief physician of that emergency

care hospital—under him

the intensive care unit was in such a state that it

was teeming with terrible bacteria from which

patients can die—and now he has been

promoted and made Minister

of Health for the entire region.

Just imagine what he will do to the whole

healthcare system—it is, really,

monstrous. Well, that seemed to me

such an important point, although it does not have

a direct relation to me. But as for

me, the most important thing is that in the medical

discussion, a definitive full stop has been put.

Before, all normal, honest doctors understood everything,

understood it,

but nevertheless there were still these figures,

these people—this Dr. Tyoplykh, for example...

go to his Facebook and read it

he even has the nerve to link to

this journal and say, by the way, look,

you were mentioned there too, and so I’m

rejoicing. Look, *The Lancet* says

that at the Omsk hospital he was properly

treated right away — no big deal.

But that’s not the main issue. The main issue

is that you lied about the diagnosis.

You lied to everyone’s face, looked everyone in the eye and lied back then, and

you were also writing posts and insisting — you

knew you were lying, and you lied brazenly, and

now this journal says that all

those who kept talking about metabolic

disorders, some kind of diabetes, whatever else there was,

pancreatitis and everything else — they’re simply

liars, because any person with

medical training could not have failed to see

the symptoms of poisoning. That’s all. And by the way,

it specifically mentions there that one

of the reasons I survived and was in such good

physical condition — which is also a big

hello to everyone who was saying that I

was somehow, at that moment, damaged by

what happened there, practically dying — that’s the kind of thing

they say about alcoholics and drug addicts.

Yes, and I also wanted to say something about Maxim

Mironov, a very impressive mathematician,

who commented on the publication of this

article in *The Lancet* by saying that you can’t

compare an article in a medical journal

or in scientific journals in general

with a journalist’s article, because a

journalist can publish

some personal opinion there, some kind of

I don’t know, whatever,

whereas in a good scientific journal

the information is checked

literally thirty-three times before

publication.

And colleagues, reviewers, and the scientific

editor — yes, there is a huge

group of specialists in the field who, before

any article comes out, check the information ten times,

fact-check it, and so on. So

this is, of course, as thoroughly

documented as possible, and the story has been

checked from the standpoint of medical

specialists so extensively that it’s probably

impossible to verify it any further. When I was in the hospital, I

asked one of the professors there, I

said, why don’t you publish something,

everyone would be interested to know how, how

someone poisoned with Novichok was treated. He said,

well, probably a large team of us

will write an article. And I was like, okay, but when

will you publish it — in a week, in two? And

he just laughed in my face.

He said, that’s not how it works — these are scientific journals.

It will come out in a few months. Well,

that’s exactly what happened, because 14 people

were writing the article, and that article

really is examined under a

microscope, because it’s a scientific

article and everything is checked, and it

was prepared over several months, so

so in fact, to people who may not be

connected with medicine, it may seem like, well, *The Lancet*,

just some journal. But any

person who understands anything about medicine

of course knows that this is now simply

a huge slap in the face to those liars who

were talking about metabolism and

— and I repeat — throughout this whole discussion.

And if I may, I want to talk with you about

the deputies. Regional deputies

from several regions have demanded

an investigation and a review of

the information about your poisoning. Seven

deputies in the Tomsk City Duma, two deputies from

Yabloko (a Russian liberal political party) in the Pskov Regional Council,

deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly,

St. Petersburg deputy Maxim Reznik again recently

spoke from the podium, raising the issue

of your poisoning and the need

to open a criminal case.

Yabloko deputies in the legislative

assembly of Karelia and 10 deputies of the

Novosibirsk City Council

— and not only the four deputies

from the opposition coalition

in Novosibirsk led by Sergei Boyko, but also

independent deputy Natalia

Pinus, and five members of the Communist Party faction, also

submitted a statement to the Prosecutor General

regarding your poisoning and

the need to conduct an official

investigation there and identify those responsible.

It was also officially sent by the head

of Moscow’s Krasnoselsky municipal district,

Ilya Yashin, and Moscow City Duma deputies

Yevgeny Stupin and Mikhail

Timonov, who were backed by Smart Voting

appealed to the head of the Investigative

Committee and demanded that a criminal case finally

be opened — something the so-called

law enforcement agencies have, since August 20,

still somehow failed to open.

And also a letter

to Bastrykin was written by the Yabloko faction in the

Moscow City Duma.

And yesterday there was a fairly interesting

discussion in the Moscow City Duma

as well: our own Maxim Kruglov introduced

a bill proposing that the Duma should be able

to conduct parliamentary investigations, and

the opposition supported this bill, while

United Russia members, of course, opposed it, essentially

refusing

their own additional

powers, functions, and

capabilities. And then the well-known city

madwoman of Moscow, who also happens to be a

United Russia deputy in the city

duma, Lyudmila Stebenkova,

even said that the group of deputies

who got into the Duma with the help of the

“Berlin patient” was simply out of line.

him, so that he won't be jailed. Let's

watch a short video with Stebenkova.

And after the speech, you asked me:

It became

For now, the one who got into the Duma, I think, with

the support of the Berlin patient (a sarcastic reference to Alexei Navalny) really

wants to conduct an investigation that would not

allow the Berlin patient

to be charged under a criminal article.

Then I will vote against it.

Alexei, why do you think United Russia members

are simply refusing to exercise their powers

to conduct parliamentary investigations, including

in this case?

The wonderful woman Lyudmila Stebenkova

— whom you call very funny —

Stebenkova is simply astonishing,

an astonishing woman. She is one of

the Moscow City Duma's most hellish

United Russia members, who literally

worked for the State Department: in the 1990s she

worked in India on national

projects, almost all of which were funded

by the State Department, and now she is a leading United Russia figure.

But first of all, I want to say: smart voting,

the strategy meant to knock

Stebenkova out of the city duma — we

were just a few votes short. There was

a special operation around that.

Yes, we released a video, and literally

just a tiny bit more — just a little —

and she managed to hold on to her seat.

And why they don't do this is obvious:

because any investigation, any

serious discussion of this topic will lead

to negative consequences for them, because

all right, she said they don't want

an investigation — they want to stage

an investigation to help this

Berlin patient avoid criminal

charges.

Then conduct an investigation that helps

open a criminal case against me — but

set up a commission. Let's have the commission

examine how I supposedly forged Kudryavtsev's voice.

Let's have the commission

look into the claim that I faked the fact that they were following me.

me.

Let's invite Kudryavtsev — Kudryavtsev

will come and tell us that all of this is

fake, that he wasn't at that

house that day, that no one called him by

phone.

Let's invite everyone.

Invite Bogdanov and the FSB forensic experts.

They don't want that, and

well, they simply cannot afford it

at all. That's why they are simply refusing

to use their powers.

And of course it is very, very important that

regional deputies are making these requests.

I am very grateful to all the Yabloko members

— many thanks — and not only Yabloko members:

in Moscow, Communists; A Just Russia members; in

Novosibirsk, it's great that a whole bunch of

Communists signed on. I am very

grateful, and of course I want to say that

this is not a question of personal feelings.

It's not about sympathy or antipathy

toward me. The point is that this situation has revealed

a complete failure of the state.

Again, setting me aside,

we learned that our president

orders murders,

that within the FSB there is a group that

carries out these murders, and then when they

botch them, they can easily

go to any police department and say,

"Give us the physical evidence."

And the police officer says, "All right, here you go."

They take the evidence,

as Kudryavtsev told us, wipe from it

whatever is on it, return it, and then do it a second

time. So the question is: all right, my case is high-profile, but

how many such

murders, and any other

crimes — theft, anything at all,

rape — have been covered up in exactly

this way? That would mean you can simply

bring a certain amount of money to the FSB,

and then they will come

to the police and say, "Please give us

all the evidence. Please give us this

axe." They'll take the axe, wash off the blood traces, and

that's it — that's what happens.

So the entire law enforcement system

doesn't work. The healthcare system doesn't work either.

I mean, there are doctors — you end up there with

I don't know, a hole in your head — and then

someone comes to them and says, "All right, guys, write 'metabolic disorder,'"

and that's what they do: they write it,

and everyone just throws up their hands. What nonsense —

what metabolic disorder? But they write 'metabolic

disorder' and just blink innocently

at all this. So of course I am very

grateful once again to these regional

deputies, and what they are doing is not

about Navalny. It is about the fact that we

must now inform the whole country and

demand an investigation into why

the state turned out to be absolutely

nonfunctional, why the state has turned

simply into an instrument of wrongdoing for

one particular thief. He wants to keep

stealing his billions together with his

friends, and in order for him to feel comfortable

stealing those billions,

so that no one would even criticize him, or even

try to elect to the State Duma those people

who criticize him, he says: well, kill

him. Didn't work? All right then,

go and wash his underpants

so no one can see that, in my view,

there was Novichok on them. I mean,

the whole state belongs to a madman.

A person — if you

stand up against him, your underpants may

end up being dealt with too. That's what these requests are about.

But I didn't want to make some kind of...

surprise for you, but I did end up preparing one for you.

A surprise: I've invited a guest from Novaya Zemlya (an Arctic Russian archipelago) to join us on air.

So that you could...

talk to him after a long absence.

After many months without any contact,

Ruslan Shaveddinov appeared before us again—he literally arrived yesterday.

He flew to Moscow after spending a year

there illegally, essentially in forced isolation.

After he was effectively sent off to Novaya Zemlya,

he has returned to Moscow and is now

here with us in the studio on Navalny Live.

Let's watch a short video

that Alexei and Ruslan filmed themselves

when he was at the court hearing, where Ruslan

talked about the conditions of his military service.

Ruslan, where are you living? — I live now

Please explain. I heard it's some kind of barrel?

In the literal sense.

An actual barrel, physically. There are a couple of

beds in it...

Like Diogenes, only not quite.

So your barrel really is a barrel?

Yes, it's literally a barrel. There's nothing there.

It's an old fuel-oil or kvass tank.

Basically, our barrel used to be a kvass tank.

They just cleaned it out quickly, and then...

put a couple of guys in there.

Around it, around the barrel,

there is absolutely nothing useful.

The sea.

No housing, no real facilities.

Really nothing at all.

Where do you get food from, and where do you get

water? — We get water by walking to a river two

kilometers (about 1.2 miles) away.

Every three days.

We take a large container with us,

go there, fill buckets,

and that's our drinking water.

You mean to say this is a barrel that stands

somewhere on the shore of Novaya Zemlya?

And what are the nearest populated places around it?

They're kilometers away.

And there are polar bears around too.

Quite often all four of us have to

stand together and guard the barrel.

The last 'survivor' challenge there was a bear.

It really started sniffing around.

We had fish there, and the smell of the fish attracted it.

It came for that.

As I understand it, this is a helipad, and

there are seven people there? — No, there are five of us.

Five people living in the barrel, and

a bear nearby, plus a dog named Persik.

She's my best friend, because everyone else...

And where do you get food? Once a month,

they drop supplies to us from above.

They don't land—they just keep up the tradition and

drop canned food, flour, sacks of things.

Explain why this is happening.

Why did they stick you out there?

They stuck me there where there's no connection.

There is no communication there at all, so that I couldn't

talk to anyone, keep in touch with you,

or continue any kind of activity.

In fact, they all understand this there.

All the officers, all the command staff—everyone

understands that this is a kind of forced exile.

They're like, well, we don't know. And I say, of course you do.

But there's no way out—they act on orders.

It's not a legal punishment, but...

They escort me, keep watch over where I am.

I didn't do anything to deserve this.

And these other four people there

in the barrel—they're ordinary conscripts, really.

They were sent there as punishment too.

How did you end up there, while there were 72 people...

There are other facilities there as well.

Those people had training.

They were prepared in advance,

knew where they would be sent, and for several

months they were trained for it, and then they

were sent there.

As for me, they came for me at 12,

told me: pack your things.

They took me to the helipad,

put me on board without saying where I'd be or what

I'd be doing—they just dumped me there.

And for the last four months,

there wasn't a single call, not a single letter from you

to your relatives, to anyone. Why? — But I do write.

I write letters regularly. I don't even know anymore

how many letters I've written there.

A whole stack of pages, if not more.

Whether they actually send them is another question,

because the process works like this:

I write a letter and hand it to the commander.

The commander gives it to the helicopter crew that

flew in; then the helicopter flies out and passes it to a plane.

That plane is supposed to take it onward.

And only after that does it enter the mail system.

But I think either some of the

letters are never sent at all,

or they don't deliver them. For example, many letters were sent to me too,

from different places, from friends and acquaintances,

but they arrived opened up—meaning they

check everything.

How are your relations with your fellow servicemen? How do you feel there?

Hello everyone, this is Ruslan Shaveddinov.

I've burst onto the air on Navalny Live and

I've missed everyone terribly. I'm very glad

to be here in our studio, to appear

on air again.

With all of you,

to say hello and talk—I really

missed it. Alexei, hi, I'm so glad to see you too.

Seeing you after my return for the first time...

I'm incredibly happy. — Hi, Ruslan. Well,

for now it's a kind of surrogate version of a meeting,

but I hope that quite soon

we'll see each other in person. What do they do there in the army?

Everyone coming out of the army looks

kind of alike, and that's why

you can tell right away that someone has just gotten out.

Even just by looking at him,

at his haircut. — No, do you think

you already look like a civilian? No, not yet.

You look like Izar didn't expect that...

It's already looking better, but in any case, soon

it'll all grow back. You look, you look

great, but you still look like

someone who just came back from the army. I wanted to

ask you one thing. Tell me,

please—you were stationed there, on Novaya Zemlya (an Arctic Russian archipelago),

are there any decent

patriotically minded officers there who

might one day, I don't know,

turn the barrels of their tanks toward the Kremlin?

But they have to be normal

guys, right? They understand—it all

happened right in front of me. They all perfectly

understand.

Well, what keeps them there is the very high

pay, because the conditions are harsh.

The high salaries there

are not the only thing holding it together, though.

They all understand. I came back with half my

phone book full of contacts, and all of them

want to talk as soon as their

contracts are over and they can

speak openly. For now, everyone's just

afraid, scared. And they're all from Arkhangelsk

Region, all locals—and those are very poor

areas. So they're all afraid of losing

a decent salary and some kind of meager

pension, so for now they keep quiet. But

overall, everyone understands everything. I was

actually pleasantly surprised that they all

watch the videos—or most of them do,

they watch the videos and are aware, including of

the work of our Anti-Corruption Foundation

and of what's going on in general.

Everyone understands everything, but for now they're a little

too scared to do anything or

to resist in any way. So, in your

opinion, Putin doesn't really have support

in the troops? But there must be some

completely unhinged guys who'll say

they're all in for Putin. Well, of course

there may be some like that, but I didn't

meet any. The people I talked to

said: yes, we understand everything.

They told us, basically, to keep an eye on you

and watch you, so that's what

we're doing. But the country is in complete

chaos—we can see it ourselves, from some, forgive me Lord,

[insert village name here], and in

Arkhangelsk Region people are very poor.

By local standards, 13,000 rubles is nothing, so we're here

to earn money. But as for

some ideological people who are ready

to charge at NATO tomorrow and destroy

our geopolitical enemies—there are no such people.

Simply because everyone, really everyone,

understands that it's one big, big

show. And everyone there, more or less,

everyone who's stationed there, is

eagerly waiting for this damn thing to end.

The people whose contracts still have a little

longer to run are also just sitting it out,

waiting for it all to end so they can

go do something else. So tell me,

they watch videos—was it even possible to watch

videos on Novaya Zemlya? Well, in my barrel, where

I spent practically the whole year, even

if you somehow managed to come to terms with the polar

bears, who weren't exactly sympathetic, and

run internet there, it would have been

problematic. So I personally didn't watch any

videos. Everyone who is, by local standards,

in 'civilization,' where there is

phone service—the internet there isn't

better than 2G either. So loading a video onto

YouTube is a whole feat. That's why everyone

waits for their leave, when they get their extra

vacation time for the harsh conditions, and

when they go on leave, they

download many, many terabytes

of videos from YouTube, and then

throughout the year, sitting in the barrel,

they watch them, for example. I'm very glad. I'm very

sad, of course, about the whole Navalny story, and I

found myself in it too. I'll tell you—right now I'm walking around kind of

a little lost, because everyone laughs

at me, because whatever topic they start

discussing, I look pretty ridiculous

because I immediately go, 'What? That can't be,'

or 'What is that?' But all this is still

new to me—I just need to adapt quickly.

I'll definitely catch up on everything in time.

Yes, yes, yes. I already even managed

to have a little laugh at you—I wrote about it on Twitter,

but I'll tell it here too. When Ruslan had just

flown in,

I called him, and we were with our—well,

I think everyone already knows that I

started the stream with Maxim Sergeyevich,

and Ruslan was like, 'Alexei? What jokes? What is this?

I don't understand what this is.' I

immediately realized: this is a person who has come back

from Novaya Zemlya and understands absolutely nothing

about anything, knows nothing. Then he watched the video, so

now I'm up to speed. It's just

a shock, of course, and I'm amazed by our team and the

investigations department and everyone involved who

helped with these investigations, working day and night.

Once again they showed that the coolest people are

the ones doing anti-corruption work.

Because the way you managed to

show them all, reveal their faces,

their phones, and simply tell the world

the names of all these ghouls—

that's really incredible. I'm still in shock from

what I watched this morning. As they say,

it's terrifying. It really

looks like a movie, and it's hard

to believe. But it's not that we're amazing—they're just

stupid. So the coolest people are

the ones who support the Foundation and do great work.

Our investigations department did a great job there,

our people there, including Pevchikh and Alburov,

who took part in the main part of the

investigation—there really was a lot of

work involved. I was just talking on the phone and

didn't do anything especially remarkable, but

We just happened to have a good chat.

So that's why I told you so much about it.

It's funny—does really nobody know?

I constantly see people saying things like this,

people who don't know what "bullshit" means. Don't you really

know that word?

No, maybe I just don't use it much.

Maybe it's some very outdated term.

Something old-fashioned, maybe slang of some kind.

Cut it off right now.

I've heard the word, but I probably couldn't

clearly explain what exactly

it means. It's familiar, but I'm afraid

to imagine the kind of situation where I'd use it.

It sort of popped up not only in everyday speech.

It became popular, turned into memes, and spread everywhere.

And I'm just incredibly

glad it reached so many people and that everyone is sharing

videos connected to the investigation into the people

who carried out the attack

and the poisoning. That's really great. I saw

the audience numbers there, I saw

everything people are writing online. It's great

that it makes everyone so angry, because it really can't provoke

any other emotion.

They were basically caught red-handed, and

it deserves coverage. Honestly, yes,

when we released it, I

understood there would be a huge reaction, but

something like a million views in an hour—

a million people watching in an hour—

I didn't expect that. And probably

the only explanation is that

people realized just how little of a real state we have,

how many systems

simply don't work at all. I mean,

some guy calls into the most super-mega-

secret FSB units (Russia's Federal Security Service), for God's sake, and they start talking.

And remember, he said that phrase there—

that it always worked; the only question was

how many people they had beaten, overall, and for

what reason. They were trying to kill people—that's pretty straightforward.

When I read the text,

and then looked into it, I realized

that all these years they had been traveling

around the country on regional trips,

and it turns out they were right there with us.

A whole little gang of FSB operatives

were trying to carry out their crimes, and

someone was even apparently going to wash

the fly of the underwear and other things. Alexei, that's

of course—meaning that for several years

they were literally traveling around with us. It was a real shock.

It's incredibly, incredibly infuriating to see what

our taxpayer money is actually being spent on.

A pack of idlers, a gang of killers.

They take our taxes so that

they can commit murders. That, of course,

is unbelievably enraging. All right, I've probably

talked your ears off, so I should probably move on

and let Ruslan tell us about his

adventures before you go. I think

you've really been wanting that.

Since this is our last live broadcast

before New Year, I'd like to поздравить the viewers—

the viewers of the channel—with the New Year. What would you

wish them? Because, after all,

we have a huge audience—more than 2

million subscribers. Reaching 2 million

subscribers was a milestone

that we hit in the difficult year of 2020. We also have

sponsors of the Navalny LIVE channel, and every

person watching the stream can

support our channel

financially. And I would like those people

who watch Alexei Navalny's investigations on

your channel, Alexei Navalny's channel, and who

watch our live broadcasts on Navalny LIVE,

to hear a few warm words from you. Atlas, thank you—

thank you very much. Just for everyone's information:

Lyubov is deliberately

trolling me, because she knows perfectly well that I

love recording all sorts of holiday messages

and things like that. But still,

what I really want to say is this:

everyone keeps endlessly discussing what an

awful year 2020 was, and for me too, this year

—

a number of very eventful things

happened. It will definitely stay with me

for a long time. I think all of us

will remember it. I don't know, of course, what

will happen to us next, but most likely

we will remember 2020 as one

of the most unusual years of our lives,

when we saw a pandemic, when we saw

images of everyone walking around in masks, when we

saw empty city streets—I mean,

some absolutely astonishing things. We

will remember this forever. But I simply want

to wish that we remember all of this

but that nothing so dramatic happens again in our lives,

and I

of course want to wish all of us that in

the coming year we achieve what we set out to do,

that we don't give up, don't get disappointed, and don't

let ourselves be overcome by those thoughts that so often

creep in—like, what's the point of all this?

Nothing can be achieved. A lot of people

asked me: now that you were almost

killed,

you were a hair's breadth from death—surely you

must admit now, Navalny, that

all of this was for nothing, that all of it

is useless, that you won't achieve anything, and so on.

But I—

I came out of intensive care, and on the contrary,

I'm telling everyone that I now have even more

optimism in me.

I am absolutely convinced that we will achieve

our goal. I believed before, I knew and understood

that you and I are fighting for a just cause.

And now there is, quite literally,

ironclad proof of that.

Millions of people have seen

that ironclad proof. So in

the coming year, let's believe in ourselves even more,

even if life squeezes us a little sometimes.

But we will be even stronger, so stay

healthy.

Stand your ground, believe in the rightness of your

ideas, and don’t give up. Thank you very much.

Everyone—looking at your joy and unity makes me happy.

Nice things are happening.

Right before New Year’s.

Many thanks, Alexei, from the viewers.

And from all our supporters as well.

Supporters.

Wishing you health, of course, and see you

in the New Year. Thank you for joining us

on our broadcast. For now—well, let me

just add a little: Alexei said something really great.

He said that even before this they had been trying to sell the idea

that, well, I, as someone who

missed a year, came back and was told

by the guys that there had been a whole lot of

searches connected with your channel, that on your

channel there had been tons of raids, and that really

is actually pretty

impressive and very cool. So everyone

who’s subscribed to my live channel—you’re amazing.

Well done. It’s only thanks to

the subscribers that all of this is going so well for you.

I understand the whole team, in short,

and all the wishes of all the subscribers—everyone

you’re the coolest.

Share the video that comes out here.

There’s endless great

content here. As someone who has only just

now

dived back into all this after a year,

I’m already bookmarking things I really need

to watch over the weekend—a whole bunch

of videos. So everyone,

and now let’s have you talk a little

more about your service in

the army, because it really was some kind of

super-unique experience.

Somewhere in Novaya Zemlya (an Arctic Russian archipelago), and I

remember we put out—I saw—

that video which we’re now

showing to our viewers. And

Milov(?) and the lawyer from the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

who

defended you in court and tried to get you out of there

or at least make sure that you

had contact with the outside world there, because

that is something all servicemen are entitled to.

But in practice, they cut that off for you.

And this was clearly unlawful.

That abduction and your time in the army

also made me note one very important thing for myself,

which I also talked about on air:

it seems to me that, yes, service in

the conditions of the Far North

should, in my view, be done

only by contract soldiers, because as I

understand it, there were also conscripts there with you.

I have no doubt that if they

offered good salaries to contract soldiers,

there would be people willing

to go there and serve there. I mean,

it’s such a straightforward thing—not just the food

and conditions, but also the fact that conscripts were there—

that’s just complete lawlessness.

Why they allow this is the eternal question.

To start with, first of all, the same

thing was happening exactly a year ago.

When everyone asks somehow

about how a year has passed, they all take as the starting point

the moment when I was abducted—that is,

the end of December.

But I want to refresh everyone’s

memory a little: in fact, the whole of 2019

was spent under pressure—not just for me, but for those close to me too.

All our colleagues, all of us, had

searches and interrogations, and personally I

had my accounts frozen and had to

spend a little time locked up in 2019. A whole lot of

things happened that could be called

pressure—all of it because

we launched successful Smart Voting

projects, and I’m glad that this year

despite everything, it all worked out well.

And in some regional

parliaments, a huge

number of independent deputies appeared, or

at least people who are ready

to speak from the podium and express opinions different

from the official line. So the point is,

I want to say from the outset that you shouldn’t think

that all of this happened somehow spontaneously.

Everything had been moving in this direction. I

roughly understand that all year they were trying

somehow to silence you,

me, and everyone else. And with me they decided to do this:

he’s young,

we’ll probably send him there, everyone

will forget about him, and he’ll shut up there himself,

he’ll get scared, and then the others

will get scared too—especially young people.

Exclusively

for the purpose of intimidating everyone else, a lot of

people, because we know that huge numbers of young people

come out to protests,

and they understand that this government is literally

stealing their future. So the fact that

they staged this kind of intimidation campaign

when there was a court hearing in Arkhangelsk

—thank you to everyone who came—news spread

that colleagues had flown in to support me in July,

to the place where I had been taken. Later they told us

many times that they regretted it.

And one of them said, it seems to me,

that you opened Pandora’s box, so let’s

just stop all this and put an end to it.

But it didn’t end there, and now across

the country the abductions of our

colleagues from the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

and our staff continue. In some

regions, because of this whole story, they are already grabbing people

and trying in one way or another to illegally

draft them. So it’s clear that the authorities have chosen

as one of their tools

of punishment and intimidation this

military conscription.

so that a person loses a year and perhaps

rethinks something about their future, and

he is, in effect, given this very direct message:

don't stick your neck out, and you'll have a more or less

decent life, at least while you're free. That's

answering the first part of the question,

a compliant instrument. Before Kazan, I

of course had absolutely no illusions. They

ground the Russian army into the dirt, and

so when TV starts talking

about its power and might, of course I would very much

like us to have a strong army. As

someone with patriotic views, I

of course hope that someday

we will have a strong army, but for now this is an army

that is feared most of all by our own

people of conscription age—that's who fears it.

The only ones who are actually afraid of it, in

reality, because apart from a shovel, they

don't really have any other tools,

or weapons. As for what I said about

that place, conditions there were even worse than in

the regular Russian army, but I had been sure of that

even before, and this year only further

convinced me that Russia needs

a professional army. Of course there should not

be this conscription system that pulls

huge numbers of young people out, and they

simply lose years of their lives, because what do we

gain there? No useful experience is acquired.

What kind of experience did I gain—running so I could

outrun bears, maybe? That's about it.

By the way, greetings to Alexei, and maybe now

we used to run on Saturdays—thank you very much

for that, because at least I learned to run fast

and now I can run away from bears

or, I don't know, from a thousand other things.

I can also cook some kind of porridge from grains,

sure, but there was also

this rather strange activity

of grating

laundry soap on a grater because

there was no washing powder. Why this

was happening—I don't know. Yes, that happened too. But these were just

living conditions, and they were pretty awful, even

though it's awkward to talk about. I

understand that maybe I shouldn't be the one

feeling awkward—really, the people who should feel awkward are

Sergei Shoigu and his subordinates, but if

you asked whether they have any

conscience left at all, the answer would probably be no.

It was all rather bleak, and there was no

washing powder, among other things. Not to mention

there wasn't even water. We melted chunks

of ice and snow so that later we could use that

water to wash, cook, brush

our teeth, and do everything else. And after this experience,

I've already seen propagandists

jump into the discussion and tell stories

about how, well, in the conditions

of war, what did you expect?

There won't be any washing powder—you should

be ready for that. But no, my dear

propagandists, that's not how it works.

If there is a war, we won't manage

If there is a war, these 18-year-old

boys sitting there—in the unit where I was,

there weren't even any weapons at all.

No one had even physically held an assault rifle

in their hands. In the event of war, as a rule,

they would simply be used as cannon fodder.

And there wasn't even a full set of equipment there—

there weren't enough rifles for the entire unit, meaning

how exactly

are they supposed to fight? So this

argument is fairly

empty—it just sounds nice, but in reality

it has nothing behind it. A contract-based

professional army is probably the only way out,

the path

Russia needs to take. There should be

a professional army. There should be

excellent conditions for the people who serve

under contract, there should be decent

pay, because this should be

a profession respected in society. This profession

and the people in it should be trained

to handle modern

military equipment, which, broadly speaking,

is the shield of our country's defense.

But the fact that several hundred

thousand conscripts are sent off every year

and spend their time digging through snow—

this really is sheer stupidity, and it needs

to stop. It's simply a huge loss for the economy.

The other day I read a study—Veronika,

I just got back and

I had a huge number of links saved over the months

in my Telegram channel to read through

everything I had missed over the year, and there was

an article by economists.

A very respected expert laid out that, in

fact,

every year Russia loses more than a trillion

rubles because if there were no

conscription, these people

of prime working age could instead

work and pay taxes to the state, and

it would actually be more beneficial if these people

were not in the army. It affects everything.

If we're talking about the army, my

position is this:

I have only become more convinced that Russia

needs a professional army. We must

move away from conscription, and I am very glad that in

our program—for the Russia of the Future party—

Russia of the Future,

conscription is considered something bad,

and that there is a clear task

to switch to a contract army. And at the same time,

Putin himself has in fact repeatedly

said many times that we need to move

to a contract army.

He was making statements like that as far back as

2002, constantly, over

the course of twenty years, he has always

said that we need a contract

army—a professional army—and yet in the end even now

On Novaya Zemlya, even conscripts serve in such

extremely harsh conditions, and our state

is not prepared to pay or provide for you.

Fully staffed? Where was any of that? It simply wasn’t there.

“Fully equipped”? We saw the photos.

When you’re swimming in a pool, and some

people are also spreading

propaganda, saying things like,

“Look at these excellent service conditions

in our Russian army.” Tell me,

please, what more could they say? But I saw it myself.

I saw the photos, and first of all, I

the minibus with the sign on it looked rather

ridiculous. They weren’t talking about minibuses at all.

They put people somewhere on the seventh... and then in the section with

the pool, I saw what they were publishing.

In fact, on the day when they

brought me there—this first impression, it

was located, was located not in some barrel but

at the military unit—they were constantly filming me

throughout the first months while I was there.

They were afraid of filming openly, but they kept following me.

First a sergeant, then a captain, and some

other service officers were walking around there,

following me and filming my every step. And then at one

point, one day, they told me,

“It’s the middle of the day, come out,” and I leave, and they say,

“You’re going to the sports complex.”

What kind of benefit? Some kind of sports event there.

They said, “According to your daily schedule,”

“you have physical training, we’ll handle it properly.”

They escort me, and it turns out that I’m not going

to any exercise session at all, but

to the canteen area—I got into the pool, and then the captain

who was escorting me there just stood there like this

filming on his phone.

And I asked, “Why are you filming, when I’m just here for myself?”

It was strange, yes, okay. And then somehow

once I got access to a phone, I was able

to make calls, I managed to call here.

And Meduza (independent Russian media outlet) told me that on

the internet there were photos of me in the pool.

At first I didn’t even understand what they were talking about.

That is, it had been done to stir things up,

so that some kind of paid

guys would write online that apparently it was my fault,

that I was some kind of privileged favorite there and had all

these luxury conditions.

That’s what all the talk was about, because, well, there were

a lot of lies. In reality, though,

there was a lot of that. And now I read the news

and understand that no one is definitely swimming

without supervision.

No, this is just an ordinary military unit, and the soldiers

usually bathe surrounded by trash and debris, because

that’s the Russian Arctic.

I may be revealing something to some people here, and it may be

surprising: Novaya Zemlya itself

is basically just one enormous dump.

There is a huge amount of scrap metal there, including radioactive material,

left behind after

the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a huge

number of scientists there conducting various

tests. It seemed to me there was an unbelievable amount of junk.

Later, contract soldiers who sympathized with me told me,

“You know, for about five

years they hauled many, many tons out of here,”

but in recent years that

practice stopped. So in fact, the garbage just

stays there, and we were basically told to deal with trash cleanup

for an hour—but even that barely exists now, because either

they gave up, since there’s so much garbage there that

no one really deals with it. And so I...

Sorry, I just got a little

carried away. I wanted to continue the thought that

as for what happened to me, it wasn’t even really

about conscription as such; it was simply

a demonstrative attempt to intimidate.

But everything that happened afterward with

the guys who went through it—that must not be forgotten.

And I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who wrote to me.

I brought back this gigantic

bag—if anyone saw the footage of me

arriving at the airport, I had this bag with me, and

everyone was surprised: how could someone come back from the army with a bag like that?

It was a bag full of letters—letters

from people who were worried about me there and

kept writing. I’m endlessly grateful, and I have

one huge request: please write

to political prisoners, please write to the guys

who have ended up in unjust situations,

who

have been deprived of their freedom simply because

they want to live with dignity, they want to have

a decent future, to live in a normal country.

It’s very important. It helps.

It helps you not feel alone and somehow, probably,

makes life easier. So I am endlessly

grateful to all of you—many thanks to everyone who

wrote and worried. I wrote replies to everyone. I’m

absolutely convinced of that.

A curious fact: perhaps we should

submit an application to the Guinness World Records, because I

am sure that this year no one in

Russia wrote more by hand than I did.

Given everything I wrote, we might even get in, despite the fact that I

have terrible handwriting. But it seems to me I’ve become like

Ded Moroz (the Slavic/New Year gift-giver, similar to Santa Claus)—who could

possibly compete with Ded Moroz again?

Honestly, it really felt like I was going around visiting people.

I mean, I really wrote hundreds

of letters in reply to those who sent them to me.

The most touching thing was that I received a postcard from our

compatriots in a faraway warm country.

They wrote something like: “We’re sending you

rays of sunshine,” while I’m sitting there in the polar night.

Two bears on the porch instead of bright sun,

a mailbox nearby—and I just tear up with envy.

Thinking of places where it’s warmer. In any case, thank you

so much to everyone who wrote and supported me.

Thanks to you.

Thank you very much as well.

Sorry for interrupting—those who joined the live stream

don’t forget:

there was a lot of support—there was even a Twitter

account, though I don’t know who ran it.

It really does seem like a mystery, and

someone wrote there every day about him.

How many days until he gets out of the army?

People were upset about this lawlessness for a very long time.

They asked questions and wrote letters, asking how...

You mentioned that there are these two colleagues of ours.

One of them is Aisa, a press secretary...

...and the doctors' spokesperson, Ivan Konovalov. We also had...

...someone who was quite literally abducted into the Russian army.

Artyom Ionov is there as well, and...

an employee of the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

He was officially supposed to have...

...a deferment from military service, yes, that is...

...someone who should not have been called up at all. Words matter a lot.

They matter greatly. I mean, when will he be able to...

I simply might not survive this, purely...

...physically, considering the coronavirus and considering...

...that I was already feeling unwell, and...

...she had health issues, and he had already...

...been kept in a hospital. There really is...

...simply a human being.

To shove someone, in the literal sense, into our...

...Russian army—well, that is now...

...being used as one of the instruments...

...of pressure, and it seems to me that this is maximally...

...shameful.

These are actions on the part of the Russian authorities...

...who, instead of making our Russian army...

...instead of trying to make it...

...look better and improve its image, are doing the exact opposite and ruining it.

I absolutely agree, of course we need...

...a strong and real army. But this—this is not it.

The way it is happening now is not normal.

It's shameful. You know, the people there...

...the ones with puffed-up cheeks, with fists, with...

...big stars on their shoulder boards—they, do they...

...understand what they are really doing? They are...

...being used as rather secondary...

...secondary characters. They are being turned into...

...nothing more than errand boys.

For the Presidential Administration, they are told...

...to keep an eye on these undesirable young...

...people, and that's it. Not even any perks—though...

...most likely there are none. It's simply the task they've been given.

I saw that for myself when...

...I was at the police station.

It was literally the middle of the night, on Monday...

I saw how ordinary officers, all the way up to...

...a general, were sitting in a separate room there...

...consulting about something, while rank-and-file officers...

...walked around me, guarding me, watching to make sure...

...I wouldn't use my phone...

...that I couldn't call a lawyer or do anything else.

And they were clearly just...

...you could see it plainly, all of it in their...

...eyes, and by the end they were simply...

...saying things like, "What the hell..."

"...why is she still sitting here?"

"They dragged us here, and our shift ended at 6..."

...o'clock.

"It was like 6 p.m., and now it's already...

...1 a.m." Yes, and they were talking among themselves...

...saying, "Tomorrow we'll do something there, tomorrow..."

...we'll deal with it tomorrow," and I said...

..."Tomorrow has already arrived."

Then they looked at the video recording, checked...

...the clock—in other words, they somehow...

...understand everything perfectly well. They do understand...

...that they are being used in these dirty...

...settlings of scores with people who in fact...

...have done nothing illegal at all.

I have one last question for you.

It's about your plans—not about how you'll spend New...

...Year's, but about what you are going to do in the...

...near future, as a public...

...figure, as someone who made...

...videos and worked at the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

You say they wanted to somehow use the army to...

up

...I don't know, set you on the path of adoring...

...Putin. Has your view changed at all after all this?

Did it somehow pull you in that direction? No.

I certainly did not become a supporter of Putin, but...

...it seems pointless to try to persuade me otherwise.

I understood perfectly well...

...what was happening to me, and it would have been...

...quite wrong on my part...

I myself don't understand how it could sound so...

...as if someone there had convinced me and...

...forced me to change my opinion.

About the Russian authorities. As for...

...my future plans, well, for now...

...I've decided that I will celebrate New Year's...

...with everyone else, and then, of course, if the world...

...doesn't fall apart, I'll get back to work.

The year 2021—I wish for all of you here that...

...it won't be as difficult as the last one.

I understand that right now it sounds like...

...everyone says 2021 will be hard too...

...and no easier, at least for now...

...in the political sphere, because there will be...

...an incredibly important election as well.

On December 31, everyone...

...won't suddenly develop herd immunity just because it's December 31.

Herd immunity will not magically appear for everyone...

...after that, so unfortunately the coronavirus...

...will carry over into the next year as well.

And the authorities will go on talking about events...

...making statements that very soon, in three...

...or six months, we...

...will finally defeat the coronavirus. Putin...

...announced in the summer that victory had already been achieved...

...over the coronavirus—run quickly...

...meaning: run quickly and vote for me...

...in the vote. You'll find out about that...

...a little later when you read the news.

So yes, both the coronavirus and the State...

...Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament), and I think that any...

...people who have their own opinion, different...

...from that of the United Russia party, will continue...

...to matter. I think 2021 will be a very important...

...year both for us and for them, because they...

...believe that this will be an incredibly important election...

...and that they need to preserve the kind of Russia...

...that is important to Vladimir Putin.

Our task is to be as active as possible...

...to come together, resist, and believe...

...in ourselves. Most importantly, of course, without faith...

...in ourselves, nothing will work.

That applies to smart voting as well.

Support everything independent activists and politicians do.

The candidates who will undoubtedly

start appearing already now, at metro stations and in

various places, including Lyubov, who is sitting next to

me—support them in every possible

way, donate rubles, come out in support,

because being an independent candidate in

Russia in 2020

is quite a brave thing to do. To anyone—

to Svyashchenny, to you, to Ivan Zhdanov, and to all

our

friends and acquaintances who are now

planning to run for the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament)—

this will be a very important year, it will

possibly be a bit difficult; they will do things in such a way

that some people may

feel a little scared, but being afraid now

is simply pointless. Everyone understands

how this will all end. Our task

is to make sure that all of this ends as soon as possible

so that you and I can finally

get on with what we all really want to do—

make our country the most wonderful, the very

best. Yes, and we’ll talk more about that

later. Thank you all so much for writing

and supporting me. I’m glad—immensely glad—to be back.

Thank you very much. Support the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

and all independent politicians.

That is very, very

important. Not everyone has access to television,

but YouTube makes it possible to get information across,

so share all

the videos. Huge thanks to everyone.

With the New Year approaching, I want to say this:

Ivan Konovalov and

Artyom Ivanov, my colleagues from FBK,

are now in terrible conditions. If

each of you writes them a New Year’s

card, that would be great. It’s not hard for you,

and for the guys it would mean an incredible amount.

It feels so much better when you receive them. I really

got postcards sometime in March,

with New Year’s greetings from all of you, and I was

possibly the happiest person in the

Arctic, at least after the dog Persik ("Peach").

Because he was being fed tasty food, of course.

So thank you all so much, and basically that’s it.

Everything is only just beginning. Everything will be fine.

Thank you for your optimism.

As for the mailing details for postal

shipments to Artyom Ivanov,

you can easily google them—Navalny

published them on his blog.

Thank you very much, and we’ll probably

continue our stream—we’ve already been on air for an hour and a half,

and we still have some very important topics ahead.

After the break—well, if you assess

the work positively—

why did it fail, and what

needs to be done in the future so that none

of this happens again? Well,

a little longer—Konstantin Borisovich,

if the plane had flown just a little longer,

it was landed after 40 minutes; in principle, that

should have been taken into account when

planning the operation. They calculated

the probability and dosage incorrectly.

Ruslan said something very important on

air:

that there is no need to be afraid, because in

reality, the authorities—these poisoners,

the people involved in poisoning Navalny, Kudryavtsev and the rest—are afraid

far more than you might think.

They are genuinely trembling for their lives,

for the money they

make

illegally. All these United Russia party members,

all these poisoners, and so on—they

should be afraid, and in essence they are afraid.

We are people who live in this country and do not commit

crimes, who live according to the law,

so we have nothing to fear.

You must believe in yourselves and keep acting.

Move forward.

Among those who are very afraid right now,

you can single out the United Russia members, because

it’s obvious they are having something like a panic attack

ahead of the State Duma elections.

Just look at how many

tightening and prohibitive laws they

have already passed, and this week they will

keep passing more. I spoke about these laws

in the previous broadcast, and now I’ll briefly

say this: the “mad printer” (a Russian term for the parliament’s rapid passage of repressive laws)

has gone into overdrive.

And we need to understand why they are doing this:

because they are all very, very afraid

of you—personally afraid of the citizens of our

country. They are afraid of losing their power

and their seats in parliament, all those

I don’t know, those opportunities to avoid

criminal liability in the future

by being a State Duma deputy, and

so on and so forth. And I’ll briefly tell you about the law.

Briefly: the State Duma

—Ruslan, please, if you can hear me, don’t make noise behind the door right now

and let me continue

hosting the broadcast—the State Duma has passed

a law on individuals designated as “foreign agents.” Under this

law, people can be designated as foreign agents

if they are engaged in

political activity in Russia and at the same time

receive funds from foreign

sources—and not only

funds from foreign sources, but also

any financial, material, or

organizational and methodological assistance.

These individuals will have to report

every six months, and the media will have to

label articles and materials about them

with a notice that they are foreign

agents. And when I say that this law is, in essence,

“rubber” (meaning it can be stretched to apply to almost anyone), yes, that is what

specialists are saying—everyone who

has read this

bill says so—because essentially any

person can be declared a foreign

agent under it.

I have nothing abroad, nothing overseas, you know.

As for me, I do live in Russia,

I have spent my whole life here.

I was born and have lived in Russia. I have never had

a bank account abroad,

let alone any real estate overseas,

no residence permit, and certainly no

citizenship like the ones some of our

Russian officials and deputies have,

or propagandists. And yet they can calmly

make sweeping claims that this is

"organizational and methodological"—remember that?

It is an absolutely elastic term,

I mean, who knows—you helped someone get to the station,

cross the street, and told Lisa where

the Okhotny Ryad metro station is located,

or gave someone some kind of hint—

and that can be called "methodological assistance."

That is exactly the point: they deliberately write

these concepts in a way that allows them

to be interpreted as broadly as possible. It is clear

that they will not declare everyone in Russia

to be foreign agents. This law will most likely

be applied very

selectively, against people whom

United Russia fears the most.

So if you see that

someone has been designated a foreign agent,

know that this person is most likely

very seriously feared in the Kremlin, and by United

Russia and the state. At the same time, they

of course want to use this law to make life

more difficult.

Obviously, they will not throw you in prison right away, but

it will force you to file reports,

force you to label your materials with

a "foreign agent" disclaimer, to carry

badges and all the rest, and you will have

to keep saying, "I am a foreign agent." And then they can do

whatever they want. And if you do not

fulfill these obligations, this

bureaucratic reporting and all the rest,

then they can already put you in

prison, because for that they have also passed another

separate law— a law on

criminal liability for foreign

agents for evading compliance with

the foreign agents law. People

will face up to 2 years in prison, and

those who collect data in the area of military

and technical activities of the Russian

Federation—up to 5 years.

This is an amendment to the already existing Article 330

.1 of the Criminal Code, on malicious

evasion of duties established

by the laws on foreign agents.

In other words,

if you failed to file some form,

did not submit some document, that is it—they can

bring criminal charges and send you to prison. They are deliberately trying

to intimidate people. And again, it is very important to understand

that everywhere it says "engaging in

political activity." They

are passing these laws specifically for people—

for political activists. It is obvious that the

people who really work in the interests of the West are

in fact the very people who work in

United Russia, who are members of

United Russia—the people who steal

money from our country, steal from

the budget, and siphon it off for themselves abroad.

And then there are the propagandists—

people like Sergey Brilyov,

who has ties to the United Kingdom, or

Vladimir Solovyov, who has two villas on

Lake Como in Italy. I could

go on listing them for a very long time. But it is

political activists who will actually

be targeted under this law. Moreover,

a separate law on candidate

foreign agents is also being adopted. There are more and more

"foreign agents" in our lives, and now they are

writing up yet another one, specifically for candidates.

And of course I understood that when journalists

started ringing my phone off the hook and asking

me how I would comment on the bill,

it was because everyone understands that first and

foremost, the most prominent, the most

popular candidates for parliament

are the ones the state will try very hard

to target. So under the new law on

candidate foreign agents, and one

of those popular candidates is me.

They do not want to let me into the elections, but at the same time

they are not very eager to openly stick some label on me.

And although the deputies have not yet passed it completely,

the law on candidate

foreign agents has already passed its first reading. I have

no doubt that United Russia

is so afraid of popular

independent candidates who act in

the interests of the people, rather than in the interests of

their own personal wallets,

that they will pass it. And then there is the law on imprisonment

for libel, which could affect

everyone. So I want to talk about that separately.

In 2011, Dmitry Medvedev,

when he was president of our country, submitted

to the State Duma a bill to decriminalize

the article on libel.

It became only an administrative

offense. And in 2012, when he

left office and Putin returned to the presidency,

the libel article was returned to the Criminal Code.

But that article did not include punishment for

libel in the form of imprisonment.

That is, for libel they could only

impose a fine or mandatory

labor. I was asked about this, and when

Medvedev was asked about it, he said

that for libel, you should pay, but you should not

be jailed.

But now the valiant members of United Russia, who

in fact are the party headed by

Medvedev, have decided that ahead of

the 2021 State Duma elections, they need to...

So basically, they need to start jailing people for

defamation, and the new article provides for up to

two years in prison for defamation on the

internet, up to three years for defamation

committed using an official position, up to four years

for defamation alleging that a person has

a disease that poses a danger to

others, and up to five years for defamation

combined with accusing a person of committing

a crime against sexual

integrity and sexual freedom

of the individual, as well as a serious or especially

serious crime. So apparently

the journalists who spoke about

how Slutsky was grabbing people in his

office

could now end up getting

not just some kind of public apology,

or repentance from the deputy from

the State Duma (Russia's lower house of parliament), but up to five years for defamation.

I'd really like to know what

Dmitry Medvedev thinks about this, and I

would like journalists to call him up

and ask him, after all

he heads the United Russia party

because just a few

years ago he was saying that for defamation

people should not be jailed, only fined

financially. And now his own party

is adopting a bill under which

a person could get up to five years in prison

A law tightening the rules

for holding rallies as well. In other words,

it was already hard to hold rallies before

they were banned, and the opposition was even

denied any normal venues locally

applications were sent off practically to a cemetery

just to formally approve them, and really

any rally became unauthorized. Now they

are trying to choke even these formalities around

rallies and make it

even harder to hold them

They are adopting a special law

under which people will have to report

on spending for organizing

a rally, on donations for organizing it

you also won't be allowed to create an organization

that can accept money from foreigners, foreign

organizations, minors, or anonymous

donors. And then this law

was expanded further, including a list

of persons who are not allowed to donate. Everyone

understands perfectly well that

funding is usually raised

through public donation drives, and these

collections, of course, all these accounts are

monitored by our law enforcement officers

as closely as possible, always

under control. Everyone understands that

the money really isn't coming from somewhere

abroad, that it is really citizens of

Russia who are funding, say, a rally so that

they can set up a stage, arrange

decent sound, so that if a rally

is large, with 60,000 people

as happened, for example, in 2019, then everyone

who came could hear

what people were saying from the stage. And now this

will all just create extra work for officials,

because once again this

bureaucracy is being inserted into this

process. And also, very importantly, this

could affect a lot of people, I think

the law on blocking prohibited content

Social networks, by law, will have to prevent

their use

for committing criminally punishable

acts, for disclosing information constituting

legally protected

secrets, and also for the distribution of

materials promoting pornography

the cult of violence and cruelty, as well as

the distribution of materials containing

obscene language

The bit about obscene language is especially great

I just wish good luck to those who will be

tracking swearing from the stage and on social

media and trying to fight it. It will be funny

to watch

In short, they are trying to restrict politics