A major broadcast on Belarus. Tikhanovskaya. Strikes. Special forces officers.

Good evening, everyone. In Moscow, it is exactly

20:00, 8 p.m., which

means the program is live on air,

*Russia of the Future*, and I’m your host, Alexei

Navalny — or, this week, the man who, as

the Belarusian border guards, as it were, left in a puddle

— that’s what the Tsargrad TV channel called me,

Tsargrad, which, like many other

official media outlets, was very pleased

that I spoke, commented, and wrote a lot

about the Belarus agenda — and I will continue to do so.

For the third week in a row, my mug

is dedicated to Belarus, and it can’t really be

dedicated to anything else, because

the events are truly astonishing —

fantastic, historic, regardless

of the outcome — and they are happening

right now. I’m very glad that some of you are watching

my program now, when of course everyone

wants to watch streams from Minsk

and get the latest news from Minsk and

other cities about what is happening there.

I want that too.

But, by the way, our guys from the

studio will keep me updated, and if something

happens, they’ll feed it in,

and I’ll tell you about the very latest

events taking place in that

country. Without a doubt, that is the main topic

of our program today, of course:

Belarus. So much has happened,

but we’ll try to sort it out, more or less,

and remember — it’s important to remember — certain

things, at least the sequence

of what happened, because this, well,

directly concerns us. It is very

instructive. The questions I’m seeing — your

questions — are all about this:

how will this affect Russia? Can it happen

in Russia? What would happen in that case in

Russia? All of this is very close to us, and we will

discuss all of it.

Let me remind you that you can

become sponsors of our channel, and

we have a link below, and through that

link today you can send not only little ducks

but also little KamAZ trucks that

we drew especially for those who

want to send them. And half of all

donations that you send today by

buying something with Belarus-themed

designs, we will of course send to our

brothers and sisters in Belarus, to those — well, to those

fundraisers where they are collecting money for

supporting political prisoners, supporting

the injured, supporting families, and the new

initiative to support striking workers — to them

we will send half of all the money. So

go ahead, click that link,

send little ducks, little BelAZ trucks,

small flags, and so on. Belarus

is, of course, dominating the information

space. However, I saw a very

accurate, very instructive, and

in some sense unpleasant meme for any

Russian politician, and certainly for

the Russian media. Please show that meme.

Do you have it there? Yes, there it is.

You see, it’s that famous kind of thing, like:

“Opposition figure…” and then, just a moment ago,

some other opposition figure… any Russian opposition politician,

just recently was saying:

“Khabarovsk, Khabarovsk, Khabarovsk…”

that Khabarovsk is the center

of the world, the most important political event

in Russia — which is still true, by the way — but

everyone has already forgotten it; everyone is discussing

nothing but Belarus, and that

really does seem wrong. I

will try

to correct this mistake that everyone is making.

Well, strictly speaking, we are not — we do not

ever get distracted from our Russian

agenda. I just want to remind you once again:

yes, we should all follow

everything that is happening there, but also remember

that events in our own country must not

go unnoticed, and some

very important events, like what is

happening around Khabarovsk and around

KushTau, desperately need our

attention and informational support. If

we do not pay attention, that will not be

very good. But I decided to begin, nevertheless,

with the miracle vaccine, because into

this entire dense news agenda,

with Khabarovsk, Belarus, and various

global events, protests in America,

different people are trying to wedge themselves in, including

Vladimir Putin. And he, desperately

seeing these information clouds, seems to have thought:

I’ll break into them, and for that

he came up with a mega-hit. He said that Russia

had invented a vaccine. More than that, this vaccine

had supposedly been tested on one of Putin’s daughters. The daughter

was not shown. As we remember, he usually

refers to his daughters as

“that woman doctor” and “the other woman,” and

basically no one understands who exactly

they are. We all know where they work,

we’ve seen their photographs, but Putin

still does not want to be specific. Nevertheless,

he apparently thinks it is perfectly

normal to lie himself, obviously, that

this vaccine was tested on one of his daughters,

and in general to lie about

the vaccine. And let me brag a little:

remember, I already

— this was when I was still recording from home,

it was during the active phase

of self-isolation — I said that this complete

failure in the fight against the coronavirus

— and it was unquestionably a complete failure —

of the Russian state and Russian

medicine, they would try to compensate for it

with falsified statistics, but everyone still

saw that it was a failure. They will try

and then smooth it over with statements saying that

it was Russia that defeated the coronavirus and

that Russia invented the cure — that is exactly what

happened, in fact. It really wasn’t hard

to predict. We know that Putin

lies constantly, that he lies outrageously,

and of course he loves to declare

that he has supposedly outpaced everyone, every country in the world.

And that’s exactly what happened: two seconds later, Putin

announces the invention of a

miracle vaccine. As far as I know,

this morning, for the first time in

the world, a vaccine against

the new coronavirus infection was registered. I know

that this vaccine, as you said, was

made on the basis of 1S

viral vectors, but in my view the advantage

is that it is based on

a human adenoviral vector, and I

received it myself.

And it works — it more precisely forms

stable

antibody and cellular immunity. That is

also something I know very well, since one of

my daughters got this vaccination.

I think that in this sense she often took part in

the experiment. The main thing, of course, is that in

the future we can ensure the unconditional

safety of using this vaccine and

its effectiveness.

I hope that won’t be the case. The idea was very

simple: that everyone would rejoice and cry out, “My God,”

“a triumph of Russian science,” and on top of that

Putin’s daughter, risking herself — just imagine —

testing it on herself, sacrificing herself, and

there she is, almost at death’s door, but

still, it was Russian scientists who

invented the vaccine, the disease is retreating,

doctors are applauding and hugging each other,

Russia, and Vladimir

Putin’s family personally, have saved humanity.” The idea that

was in the heads of the Kremlin PR people

who came up with this whole thing was, of course,

exactly that.

We simply ran into and overlooked one

simple thing: the fact is that tens of

millions of people who, since April

— or even earlier, for some since April,

in fact since the beginning of the year — have simply

been endlessly reading articles about

the coronavirus, so all of us here have

more or less become expert epidemiologists.

And we all know perfectly well that vaccines against

the coronavirus are being developed in dozens of

countries, that there are, say, 36 laboratories

working on them, and besides that we

also understand very well by now the stages by which these

vaccines

are made and developed — this is something

that has been discussed endlessly. And so this

Putin-style lie that Russian

scientists invented, registered,

tested, and are already ready to use

the vaccine on a mass scale — it was so obviously

false that it provoked nothing but ridicule.

And even the World

Health Organization, which is very, very

loyal to Russia, said

something like, “What are you talking about? What vaccine? What

exactly have you invented there?” because there cannot yet be

the so-called third stage — that is,

the stage with mass testing,

the third phase, in which

large groups of people are involved. In other words,

vaccines are the kind of thing that

humanity makes all the time, and there is

a very clear protocol for how to make vaccines.

And we have been taught by bitter experience that when

certain drugs

are made outside this clear protocol,

they cause a great deal of harm. Therefore, in

principle,

there are plenty of laboratories that can say, “Oh, we

have developed a vaccine” — there are tons of them. But laboratories

that have gone through all testing stages and

published all their reports in respectable

proper journals — there are also many of those, but

far fewer. In Russia, none of this

is happening. The Doctors’ Alliance released a long video

about this. It is important, actually,

to understand this, because, well,

several times I was written to by representatives

of various state-funded organizations who

said, basically, “We’ve been told that

everyone will be mass-vaccinated with this

new vaccine. What should we do — get vaccinated

or not?” On the one hand, you don’t

want to become anti-vaxxers and

join that sect which

claims that vaccines are harmful. On the other hand,

is it necessary to do this?

The answer is, of course: absolutely not, you must not

get vaccinated. You should do it when the vaccine is properly

ready. At 29 seconds, the Doctors’ Alliance

explains that no one does it this way. It is

necessary to conduct three phases of clinical

trials on volunteers.

On the official website of the World

Health Organization, only six

companies out of 26 are currently conducting the third

phase. Let’s find our Gamaleya Institute here.

Look — it is stuck at only the first

phase of clinical trials. Carrying out

mass vaccination with an insufficiently studied

vaccine is the same as

conducting experiments on people who

do not even realize what they have

signed up for.

Again, 4,000 people are watching us live.

For those who have just

joined and are indignant, asking why I’m

not saying anything about Minsk or about

Belarus — I will talk about it.

That is the main topic, but we also have Russian

news

that we also need to discuss. And so,

the final, let’s say, blow that already

destroyed it

All of this is Putin's lie about some miraculous wonder.

Of course, the vaccine was indeed developed.

The newspaper *Fontanka* got hold of

the report by those very doctors who

— the doctors and scientists who actually created it,

who, in fact, invented this vaccine — and

in their report, as they are supposed to,

they clearly and dryly describe what exactly

they came up with, what they did, and

what research they conducted on the matter.

It says there directly:

there is the term “titer,” which will be used now.

Used.

Putin also used it in his speech.

A protective titer is, essentially,

the strength of the vaccine's protection. In the official

report it says that the protective titer

for this miracle remedy Putin talks about

is currently unknown.

The duration of protection is unknown.

Clinical trials to study and assess

its practical effectiveness have not

been conducted — that is what the people who

invented this vaccine honestly write.

But Vladimir Putin couldn't care less.

What matters to him is saying: we were the first to invent it, we

will start vaccinating, and we

will save humanity from the coronavirus.

Moreover, speaking of

vaccination, if you are being offered

the chance to get vaccinated, you should look at

another page of this report, which

has been published. There, the people who

developed the vaccine honestly write — the specialists

acknowledge that adverse

events, in terms of how often they occur,

can be classified as occurring

frequently and very frequently. In other words, they

honestly write that there are a great many

side effects.

They may occur constantly, but

everyone keeps quiet about it and speaks only in

some kind of triumphalist tone.

There is no doubt that Russian

scientists will undoubtedly make a major contribution to

the fight against the coronavirus, and our vaccines

will be remembered as one of the inventions of the year.

The names of the people who fought

the coronavirus will be written into the golden records,

and there will be many people there

from different countries — and ours will be among them.

But there is no need, at the cost of

the health of our fellow citizens, who are now

being injected with a vaccine whose

adverse effects occur frequently

and very frequently, to try to help Vladimir

Putin solve his image problems.

The claim that we were the first to invent it,

the first to roll it out,

and that we already have everything ready — that is complete

nonsense, of course. It is important to understand that. 54

thousand people are watching us, and I have

several questions about a rather strange word

— Kushtau — which many of you

may not have heard of, and that is a mistake, because what

is happening in Bashkortostan (a republic within Russia) right now is

potentially a protest on a scale

possibly even bigger than... well, or at

the very least, even now...

Few people know about it because

first Khabarovsk (referring to the mass protests there) consumed the entire news agenda,

and now, naturally, Belarus

has taken over the information agenda.

But meanwhile, over there,

major events are taking place.

Banzai3476, please comment

on the situation in Bashkortostan around Mount Kushtau and

please tell us more about it.

About the man appointed by Putin — Khabirov.

Radiy Khabirov is the kind of

corrupt official who was once

driven out of Bashkortostan, then taken in

and embraced by the Kremlin.

Later, the Kremlin appointed him mayor

of one of the small towns outside Moscow.

He was kept there as a kind of temporary placement,

and then, once the way was cleared, he was sent back to

Bashkortostan. A monstrously deceitful, monstrous

and corrupt

person, absolutely incapable

of organizing normal work.

That is precisely why Bashkortostan had one of the

biggest failures, by the way, in the fight

against the coronavirus. You remember those

horrific hospitals that turned into

hotspots for the spread of the coronavirus?

That was Bashkortostan.

The central...

It was the central, I think,

the Republican Hospital in Ufa, and so

on and so forth. I have spoken about this a lot here.

So, in Bashkortostan right now

the following is happening: there is

something there called the Shikhans.

These are real standalone mountains — there are four of them.

These mountains are remnants — and here the important thing is

not to get it wrong, so that later people who know

the subject do not laugh at me,

people who really understand geology.

It is a reef from an ancient sea, formed

millions of years ago, when on

the territory where Bashkortostan is now

an ancient sea once splashed, and

some marvelous ichthyosaurs swam there.

That is how these reefs were formed. Now they are solitary mountains.

And Mount Kushtau

has, naturally, like all such mountains,

become something people lived beside and saw as a strange

standalone real mountain inside which

there are remains of that ancient

flora and fauna of those times. Naturally,

all such mountains acquired for local

residents a certain sacred

significance, which is why many people call it

a sacred mountain.

But they are made of a kind of limestone from which

soda ash can be extracted.

Soda ash can be extracted in many places, but here it is simply easier.

all of this by simply tearing apart these

very mountains, and one of the four such mountains

has already been leveled, and now they want to level the hill that

So what happens in practice is this:

there are these oligarch guys who want

money, and these oligarch guys

come from the Ministry of Natural Resources

and the leadership of Bashkiria (Bashkortostan, a republic in Russia) says there

while some Bashkirs (the indigenous Turkic people of Bashkortostan) are running around it

shouting, “Don’t touch our mountain,” but basically

the mountain is money, so let’s just

dig it up and turn all of it into soda ash

sell the soda ash, make a ton of cash

— why do we need this mountain anyway?

And somehow it turned out that in this story

the local residents do not agree with framing the issue this way

and for several months now

there has been a fairly active standoff going on

involving security forces

and, naturally, some “athletes” (a common euphemism in Russia for hired muscle)

who are brought in and start fights with those

people who are protecting this mountain

But what is actually happening there is a mass

protest movement, with fairly large demonstrations. Let’s

watch 36 seconds of what

the latest rally in defense of Mount Kushtau looked like

[applause]

We are paratroopers.

We call on everyone to defend

our homeland, defend our environment, and

defend this natural monument.

This is a really big deal, I mean

it’s a major confrontation in a republic with

a large population, and again, it

echoes Belarus — Bashkiria (Bashkortostan) in terms of its

political landscape is much the same:

completely cleared out politically, and the territory is always

subject to totally rigged elections

no one is ever allowed into these elections

it’s total lawlessness on the part of the authorities, with a super-

rich, brazen elite that

claims it cares about

the interests of the people, while in reality

it is making

huge amounts of money for certain local oligarchs, and

right now there is a genuinely major protest underway there

effectively on an all-Russian scale

So first of all, people need to keep watching it

and second, it needs support. This is

very, very important, and even despite

the fact that various remarkable

events are happening in other parts

of the country, and in Belarus in particular, I’m

being told, people are writing that there are

mass protests going on there, but nothing especially

out of the ordinary is happening there yet, so

66,000 people, stay with me

and don’t switch over to the live feed

directly from Minsk

I almost forgot — a user with the nickname More

is worried and asks what happened to your background

Alexei, that’s the main question today

Indeed, we updated our background. It is

still made up of homes — the cities where

you, my dear viewers, live — but we

made it more three-dimensional. Great, well

let’s put it this way: it so happened that we

today, let’s dedicate the change of our

background to the amazing, astonishing

events we have seen, the events

of the past several weeks, which

for those watching, have practically just

flowed one into another from the perspective of Russia

First, Khabarovsk was astonishing, and then

even more astonishing was what

has been happening in Belarus. It’s incredible.

I understand that it may seem a little

funny that I’m dedicating the change of our

background specifically to these events, but

let me dedicate it to all those brave people who

went out into the streets of cities to

the east of us and to the west of us, and

who powerfully surprised everyone — Khabarovsk

has been protesting for 34 days now

in a row

Protest is the kind of thing that stays alive

when people pay attention to it

when people protest

they walk the streets, they show both

themselves and others by their actions, so they are not just

expressing that protest — they are also

desperately, desperately in need of

informational support, especially when

it is not in Russia’s spotlight, especially now

when, well, I don’t even know — independent media

independent politicians, opposition

politicians have stopped paying attention

because something more

interesting has come up, fully in line with the

meme I used to open the broadcast

Khabarovsk has been marching for 34 days in a row — that is

magnificent. They came out on Saturday, and they

are still continuing to come out every

day, although right now we are seeing

the implementation of what was

a fairly obvious forecast I

talked about: they would wait until

little by little

public attention weakened, and as soon as

it did weaken, several

people were arrested and jailed for 15

days. That’s exactly what is happening, so

it is extremely important to keep following all of this

Well, and in fact, what

is happening internally is, of course, still

fueling the protest, and

perhaps the Kremlin’s hopes, or the hopes

of those who would like the protests in Khabarovsk

to stop, these protest actions

that Governor Degtyaryov would somehow prove himself

in some way

make a few foolish

moves, then make a few sensible ones and

somehow compensate for it, have absolutely not

come true

In fact, Governor Furgal

who was arrested — when he came in, he made

two very popular decisions that

You brought him down right away.

to the very peak of people's affection, people's love, and...

and everyone said, what a great guy, well, these were such

obvious things, but you did them, so what a

good job. First of all, he banned officials from

flying business class, and that really

had been irritating everyone, because Khabarovsk is far away

tickets are expensive, and people are forced to rely heavily

on air travel

because otherwise you can't get anywhere.

People really suffer from the fact that

tickets are expensive, and then officials say,

you know, we're also going to fly business class to

Khabarovsk. That infuriated everyone, and Furgal

canceled it and was supported for it.

And the next thing—they had this

local issue, a very strange one. Once,

the previous administration bought a yacht. I mean,

you'll see, because, well,

there's no sea nearby, apparently, but they

bought a genuinely huge personal

yacht for an enormous amount of money, and that too

naturally drove local residents

absolutely up the wall—they were

very unhappy. Furgal said, basically, I

don't understand why the administration needs

a yacht. I'll sell this yacht, and he put

it up for auction. People liked that too.

What does Degtyaryov do? He reverses

both decisions. First, he brings back

the possibility of this project to me

show me—show me first the part about

[music]

business class.

At first, fine, he cancels this

ban on using business class, and this

was explained by—I saw funny,

really funny comments from various officials

who said Degtyaryov did this because

you know, it's the only

opportunity for officials to get some sleep, well,

they work so much, they're such

hard workers, they have sleepless nights, they're out there

walking around Khabarovsk, fixing things, solving

people's problems, and then with such red

and inflamed eyes they end up on the

plane.

They get business class, a big reclining

seat, they're poured champagne, they drink it,

and then that's the only, the only

chance for them to get some sleep. So there you go—

Degtyaryov brought back their chance to sleep, which

made people in Khabarovsk very angry, and

he withdrew this yacht from auction. It had been listed,

really—well, a yacht in

Khabarovsk.

In the Russian Far East, it was a strange

exotic thing. Sure, you can

sail on the Amur River, of course, but still

it's still a rather strange, exotic

thing, so, well...

It's not as if there were huge numbers of people wanting to buy it.

You can't say there were. It could have been

moved elsewhere and resold; in that case they would have

sold it, but the officials didn't want to

sell it.

And now Degtyaryov has decided to keep it in

regional ownership, but effectively at the

disposal of himself.

Using the favorite trick of Khabarovsk

officials—and federal officials in general,

but Khabarovsk ones especially—you'll

see why in a second—they brought out children, and the children

you see, some kind of children's school there

declared that, dear

Uncle Misha, we ask that this yacht be

given to us, the kids, and we, the kids, will

sail on it along the Amur River. Oh, let's

watch this video.

Mikhail Vladimirovich, we are addressing you

with a very unusual request. So, who are we?

I am the director of the regional education center, I am

a student and an activist in the Russian Schoolchildren's Movement,

I am Viktor Liman, a 6th-grade

student.

I am the chair of the parents' committee.

Katseva, Pavel Krupkin. As of today,

we know that the fate of a very

interesting asset is being decided: the boat *Victoria*, and

we would very much like it not to go

to officials and not to leave Khabarovsk Krai (region)

but to go to our children. The regional education center

includes IT-Cube and Quantorium (children's technology education programs)

it is a center for gifted children from all across

Khabarovsk Krai, and it would be very

interesting for us, in our Quantorium,

and in other projects, to have such an

extraordinary, amazing vessel.

Right—a vessel, a huge luxury yacht.

Its upkeep costs 1 million

rubles (about US$11,000) .

And now it's supposedly being given to us for this

some kind of Quantorium thing, so the kids can

ride around on it. I mean, this is absolutely

fake, of course, and for every resident of Khabarovsk

it's one hundred percent obvious that this is fake

because before this they

had another scandal of a different kind where, in the end,

kids were involved too. There was a

bathhouse.

An elite bathhouse that was attached to a

sports center, and all the officials used to go there.

Mikhail Degtyaryov was saying, why do we even need

a bathhouse at all? And at some point this center

together with the bathhouse was put up for sale because

basically it's not the state's job

to maintain various centers and bathhouses. I mean,

it's rather strange that this is being kept

on the state balance sheet, so they decided

to sell it. And for that too they brought out

special children who said

along with coaches who came out and said

let's keep this facility because we,

the athletes and the athletes' children, need

to steam our bones too so that

we can score goals and hit pucks better there. Let's

watch—just a second—about sports, boxing...

I want to give a small example about

For 10 days in the city of Khabarovsk

the junior team held a training camp

of the Russian national boxing team

or rather, three members of the Russian national team,

that is, the elite of junior boxing, and for

the 10 days of this training camp in the city of

Khabarovsk, they had, as I see it, four

recovery activities, that is,

a banya (Russian steam bath), a little massage, a bit of

speed work. So why am I saying this?

Because our sports infrastructure in Khabarovsk

has gained the opportunity

to go outdoors and carry out

recovery activities at this

facility. It is simply absolutely

wonderful, and I think sport would

keep developing further and further in this direction.

"Recovery activities" sounds freaking

amazing. "Recovery activities"—I wonder what that

actually means. Well, obviously the officials there

asked

an actual athlete: "Come here, say something

so they’ll keep it in public ownership." And he

said it, and the bathhouse was kept in public ownership. It

still belongs to city hall, and in it, still,

officials keep steaming away. And here too

Degtyaryov pulled out some children who

said, "Please keep this in

public ownership, this amazing vessel," that is,

a huge yacht, and they will keep it in

public ownership because Degtyaryov already

liked the idea from the children not to sell the yacht,

and they will keep it, and people will continue

riding on it. I’ll interrupt my

story about what is happening in Khabarovsk

because we need to turn to Belarus

and to Orenburg, because it is precisely in

Orenburg—show us the photo—there

right now, unexpectedly, people came out and formed

a huge human chain in solidarity with

Belarus, with Minsk, and that is very cool.

It’s great that this is happening, and we hope

that it will happen in other

Russian cities as well. And because of that,

I’ll talk about it in more detail, of course, in the

later part of the program where I’ll be

talking about Belarus. But you can really

feel inside Russia a general

desire to help Belarusians,

that kind of desire. I mean, there was

something similar during the events in Ukraine and so on,

but there was still at least some split in

Russian

society. Now, it seems to me, there is definitely

this kind of consolidation: everyone really wants

and wishes Belarusians well, and that goodwill is

connected precisely with the movement that is now

taking place, and that is why it is so encouraging.

By the way, about Orenburg, I was asked

a question—I see it here too—whether there will ever be

Smart Voting in Orenburg. I’m not ready

to say off the top of my head right now; we have

Timofey Platonov asking there

whether there will ever be Smart Voting in

the Orenburg region.

If there are elections to the regional legislative assembly or to the

city council,

I don’t remember offhand, and I won’t lie, but of course there will be.

Of course, in all major cities

there will be Smart Voting candidates.

Register. But the main thing we see

is that in Orenburg there are definitely people who

absolutely need Smart Voting.

If they are even supporting Belarus,

then they certainly will not

oppose the liberation of Orenburg from

the United Russia occupiers, so

that’s really great—well done.

I’ll go back now, jump back,

fly across the whole country, jump

from west to east.

Khabarovsk—there, in conditions where

the media spotlights stopped being directed

at this city, as I already said, this is a kind of

slow, creeping counterrevolution: people began

to be detained, arrested, and once again

they are pushing the theme that outsiders,

some kind of sinister international forces,

are involved. And again, there is this peculiar new

thing with children: here, our grandpas got the yacht back,

the grandpas didn’t want

the state-owned bathhouse to be sold, and then there

arrived some astonishing

in Khabarovsk

female defender, absolutely wild,

quite clearly someone who was actively

shown and quoted on

the federal TV channels.

They even cobbled together a whole segment around her, and

she was saying that these are international

forces, that children are being used by sinister

protest organizers. Let’s take a look.

It’s a minute and a half, but it’s exactly the kind of

important nonsense that nevertheless

shows the Kremlin’s general idea of how

Khabarovsk is supposed to be covered.

I have a lot of questions here. Why has Putin

been silent about the situation in Khabarovsk for

a month already? Rambler users are asking.

He is not commenting at all. What can he say—that people

have risen up against me? First they kind of

send out these kinds of

auntie-type women in order to deceive

everyone at first, and only later will Putin speak.

A wild woman: in the heat and in pouring rain, in

the crowd on the streets of Khabarovsk, adults walk

together with their children, both teenagers

and little kids, in the rain.

There was such heat—how could we

know whether the child would not

need rescuing or would not be exposed

to heatstroke?

There is another threat to life and health.

According to this public figure, the danger is that in

a crowd, small children may simply not be

noticed, whether by pedestrians or

drivers. In order to keep the protest heated up, in order to attract

attention to the protest,

universal attention not only at the

Russian level, but also internationally

of course, it is possible that someone will need

victims, and those victims, first and foremost,

could be children

therefore, I would like to call on all

parents to act prudently

members of the public, clergy,

healthcare representatives, and ombudsmen are already saying

that parents themselves have seen the other

side of such mass events: children

are being used for propaganda by the organizers

of the rally. A parent

materials were used about the black-clad people when

children were simply crossing the street while a

procession was passing by; these moments were captured

and as of today, the only way to protect

their own interests and the interests of their children is through

a court ruling

those, however, who voluntarily bring children with them

according to human rights advocates, not only

violate the principles of the Convention on the Rights

of the Child, but may also face criminal

liability

because of the risk to which a minor is exposed

the most astonishing thing is that

this gathering of nomenklatura-style

crooks, this bureaucratic clique, sits there and

they call themselves not

human rights defenders, while little

pedestrians may go unnoticed

by vehicles or by protesters, I mean

it is simply disgustingly hypocritical nonsense, but

it is being said because something has to be

said, and

they need to talk about international forces

because the slogans being heard now

in Khabarovsk after thirty-four, thirty-five

thirty-four days are really

an absolutely unprecedented thing for

Russia; in fact, even by global

standards, this is quite a rare thing,

for it to go on for a whole month, and even to bring in

in a single city, literally one separate city

such momentum — that practically never happens, and

the slogans sound very radical there

and, by the way, one slogan was directly

borrowed from Belarus: 10 seconds

that was chanted at the latest rally

[music]

Putin, 2 percent — the same direct copy

lifted from “three-percent Lukashenko,” and in general

it has been very interesting to watch this

how Belarusian flags are appearing in Khabarovsk

while in Belarus, at the

protests there, Khabarovsk has been noticed many times

and the flags are this kind of, well,

really, in both places the situation at some

point looked hopeless, but in

Khabarovsk it now looks very

difficult, while three days ago, on Sunday, in

Minsk it all looked as though

there was no hope at all, not even close, and now

people are reminding each other of Nevsky

Khabarovsk — they have become sister cities there

brother cities, and another slogan that

is now the most popular

slogan at the Khabarovsk protests

and it is precisely because of it that Putin does not want

to say anything — he does not know what to say and does not even

understand from which angle to look at it

uh

[applause]

what can you even say here — how do you want

Putin to comment on this, when

there have, by the way, always been in Khabarovsk

relatively large

protest actions; when we held the first

“He Is Not Dimon to You” rally, a large march came out in Khabarovsk

there was a large column there that personally

surprised me, but here you cannot say that this is

youths or schoolchildren, because

the scale is too large, and any

person can see that these are simply the most

ordinary people, most often middle-aged

or older than middle-aged; they come out

and chant, “Putin has nothing to say in response,” and

he does not want to discuss it at all, so

he is waiting for it to die out on its own; apparently they are not

sitting in the Kremlin discussing it — “they cannot

go on forever, can they? They cannot keep

marching forever; it will become very

cold there very soon,” so they are waiting until we

stop paying attention, until in

Khabarovsk people stop marching, in order

to smother everything there. Khabarovsk,

stay strong, we are with you. Strike action — now I

am moving on to discuss Minsk, and the key thing

happening there right now is

of course the strike movement. I

have been saying for several weeks in a row that

Khabarovsk, pay attention: a strike

may seem difficult, but it really

is not a simple mechanism, but first of all

it is fairly safe for

participants, and if you set it in motion and

start doing it, then you simply grab the authorities

by the throat immediately — that is very important, and

well, at the very least this issue needs to be

studied. So, Khabarovsk, stay strong. 81

thousand people are watching us live

I

am moving on to discuss our brotherly

republic, thanks to these absolutely

truly amazing people. They will be written about

in textbooks. This is not some kind of

completely astonishing shift that

appeared out of nowhere — not even close

no, it did not appear out of nowhere

because throughout all these events there was

the largest Telegram channel in Belarus

one of the largest media outlets, one of those

openly opposition ones, but what

is happening with them now, how they have become

the de facto organizers of all this, is

absolutely astonishing. So

thanks to them, we are now in huge numbers

watching various videos from

In Belarus, just before

the program, a short little

video appeared from the town of Smorgon

that someone posted on Instagram. I want

to begin my story at the end, with this

video. I want to show it because

it answers many, many questions

— questions like whether the army will

open fire, whether victory is possible,

whether there is light at the end of the tunnel, and so on.

This video shows what it all looks like

in the small town of Smorgon, where

troops were brought in,

what the military does. Here are the troops, and here are

the protesters, and what happens when

the military meets these protesters.

Smorgon, Belarus

This is something extraordinary, really.

It is truly the best kind of thing,

the kind that brings you to tears, because it shows that

not everyone in uniform is the kind of hellish fascist

we have been watching in shock over

the past week. We did not expect to see

anything good come out of these clashes.

What happened was beyond the pale.

And this morning we saw that people in uniform

can be completely different. They say outright:

we swore an oath to this people. At last,

that phrase was spoken: we swore allegiance

not to that mustached man,

not to his evidently deranged interior minister,

not to some generals,

not to anyone else — we swore an oath to the people.

And this is obvious. They are saying in Zhodino

— where, in fact, I am simply going

to share my thoughts about what

is happening, go over the chronology, and

give you the latest news about what

is happening in Belarus, so that those

who do not watch all the streams I do

can still follow along — and in

Zhodino, which is now a very

important city,

a strike is taking place there.

BelAZ began striking there, and earlier today

the beginning of this protest was shown. Then

the Belarusian state media said:

oh, everyone has returned to work.

Why did they return? Because the mayor

of the city promised that at eight o’clock

in the evening he would come to the strikers and meet

with them in a large gathering. We were just discussing

that I would start the program at 8 p.m. and

that there probably would be no meeting.

My guess was that he would deceive them and not come.

But he came. And let us see what

the people are chanting at the most

famous enterprise in Belarus, which, by the way,

is one of the genuinely profitable

enterprises that supplies

equipment to the West as well. In other words, this is

not some failing enterprise — this is a place where workers

earn decent money and it brings profit

to its shareholders. Zhodino.

And

sky

this is

[applause]

Riot police

out of the city, and let them out — that is what the people are chanting,

the people working at BelAZ are chanting.

This is the very heart, the core of Lukashenko’s entire regime.

I will show more videos,

including some amazing ones from today

featuring labor collectives, and this is

of course a real game changer. Pasha Bulakhov

asks whether Lukashenko might hold on.

We hope not.

And today’s videos specifically from the factories

of course give the greatest

hope for that, because previously it was believed

by everyone — and above all by

Lukashenko himself, and by Russian

commentators, and the Russian authorities,

and all the others — that

I have many questions here.

About the position of the Communists — Ilya Baronov asks:

what

Alexei, how do you feel about

the fact that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation supports

Lukashenko? The CPRF issued a statement

saying that working people are for Lukashenko,

because, well, blah blah blah, the workers

and all that. Though not all Communists, by the way.

Rashkin, for example, released

an excellent statement today saying, you know, I am on

the side of the people.

If the police are beating the people, then I understand

that something is going wrong. But overall,

the CPRF is generally for Alexander Grigoryevich (Alexander Lukashenko),

because, supposedly, the working man loves him. And

why do I call this a game changer?

Because the working man is now in the city of

Zhodino

standing in the square and chanting. A real

working man — literally,

a man who was standing there at the conveyor belt,

wiped his hands,

with some oily rag, and said:

come on, guys. He walked out, and he is not chanting

‘Lukashenko’ or anything like that,

not saying ‘let’s go beat up the hipsters,’ not repeating

that nonsense which, excuse me, was once

sold to us as the truth: that workers

from Uralvagonzavod (a major Russian tank and railcar manufacturer) would come to Moscow and

clear everyone out. No — they come out and say: riot police,

out of the city, because enough of

detaining us. And let them out — that is,

release all those people who were

arrested. And earlier today, according to official Belarusian statements,

6,700 people

had been arrested and detained in Belarus. That is

a great many people, and

after all, this is a country with a population

of under 10 million. All of

Belarus is smaller than Moscow. It is as if in

Russia, imagine if they arrested

300,000 people — three hundred thousand people — in

On the scale of Russia, Belarus has just been given that.

These are arrests on such a massive scale, I mean, everyone

knows someone who has an acquaintance

or a relative who has been arrested, and that alone

of course, is very important. Alexei,

please comment on the statement

by the popular Belarusian singer Max

Korzh.

What do you think he meant, and how

do you feel about the fact that he pushed your

comment down? It seems to me he didn’t delete my

comment — it just moved

down.

And, by the way, I don’t think everyone should

pile onto Max Korzh and somehow

drag him through the mud. He just may have

phrased his thought not very successfully,

and he did call for peaceful

protests.

And that was the right thing to do. He also refers to

and talks a lot about the Armenian experience, but

the thing is,

sometimes an unfortunate choice of words in a situation

when everyone is completely on edge, furious, and everyone

is speaking from one side or another

— and that’s understandable, you have to take a side: are you for

these people or those? It seems to me that given the fact

that Korzh, right before

the election, released a song that, well,

spoke rather indirectly — and by the way, people don’t write how to stress Korzh’s name,

Max Korzh — sorry,

please.

Right before the election, he

released a song that can certainly

be interpreted as, well, a kind of support for

Tikhanovskaya and for people in general, and as fairly

anti-Lukashenko, and so I

I think that in my comment

I wrote exactly that: it was poorly

worded, that’s all. And he really

did phrase it badly. But it seems to me —

I don’t know him personally — that he’s a good

person, and most likely he is on the side of the people. I

have no doubt that his position will somehow

become completely clear. Here’s a strange

question, but still — all right, look,

Platonov asks Alexei: what do you think about

Dud’s post? And should he

go to the scene and cover

the protests? The post is excellent. Dud addressed

riot police officers, police officers,

but why should he go there and

cover the protests? That too is a rather

strange idea. He is a Russian citizen;

he can speak out. I’m also a citizen of

Russia — should I be there? I say quite

openly and without hesitation whom I

support. I transferred money and publicly

wrote about it —

for the treatment of the injured, for all these things, and

if they start raising money to support

the strikers, I will definitely send them

my own.

Those would be, in fact, Russian rubles, and

Lukashenko could say, “See, that’s where

the foreign money is.” But what is there

to do there?

Should people — or should I — go cover a rally? No,

a person should be doing

their own work, and in that sense these

seem to me like rather strange complaints. Well,

let’s go back, rewind — it feels like

it was really a very long time ago, a week

ago, I ended the program on a kind of

sad and solemn note, saying that

Belarusians, hang in there, things are going to be

very hard, because it was clear

to everyone that they were not, of course, going to vote

for Tikhanovskaya in the official count, mostly, and we

didn’t really expect there to be such a

level of voting for her, but we understood

that Lukashenko definitely did not get anything even close

to 80 percent, after which he would

rig the election, people would take to the streets, they

had said so, and basically everyone on

Tikhanovsky’s side — Tikhanovsky himself, sitting in prison —

his whole concept was that

the election should be boycotted because

everyone was sure they would not

register anyone, and Lukashenko

tried to fool everyone and

registered Tikhanovskaya, his wife. But he

said that regardless — that is,

even if no one is asking us to — we will boycott

this election, but we will go out into the streets and we will

not recognize it. Therefore,

whether participation or boycott, in any case

the Belarusian opposition said that on the

night after the vote people would come out, and we all

understood that they would be beaten. That was, basically,

a fairly simple, banal, and

obvious forecast: people would go out, unhappy, and they would

simply be beaten on Lukashenko’s orders, and

in fact this had been made clear in advance —

the sides had effectively spelled it out. Lukashenko

said it, his interior minister

said it, I showed you the address

— the protesters said they would go out, and

knowing how militarized the Belarusian side is,

we understood that nothing good would come

of it. And in fact that is exactly

what happened. And moreover, already on

election day, around midday, across the republic

they shut down the internet so that

everything would be clear to everyone: Lukashenko’s real percentage

was so low

that he wanted no communication whatsoever

between people. He did not want these

protocols, these tally sheets, and people saw that at several

polling stations there had in fact been no

falsification. He did not want there to be

any communication at all. And for Lukashenko, as

was rightly said by

Nilov on the program, what mattered to him was

a blitzkrieg — that is, it was necessary to

act fast. They were standing ready,

at eight in the evening; from nine people would start coming out,

we’ll crush them, we’ll beat them, we’ll...

We are intimidating people; we are ready for this, Lukashenko said.

Dmitry Navosha, quite rightly, was preparing for this.

One of the best of them, the editor-in-chief

of Sports.ru, himself Belarusian, understands very well

what is going on there, and one of the best commentators

on what is happening there.

He wrote, absolutely correctly, that Lukashenko

was not preparing for an election; he was preparing for

war. He was ready to have everyone beaten

on the day after the election, to intimidate them, and

essentially that was the point. But look at the tone

he used.

He spoke at the press conference, well,

once everything had already become clear, when it was already

after the internet had been shut down.

He gave a press conference. The only

decent journalist there was from Deutsche Welle,

and he asked him the right question:

look at how brazenly Lukashenko answered then.

Why, as the sitting head

of state, do you allow such

unprecedented pressure on your

main opponent right now, Svetlana

Tikhanovskaya? “I have four main

opponents.”

“I do not consider this person my main

competitor. It was you who made her

that poor woman into the main competitor, and she

sincerely admits herself that she

does not understand where she has ended up, why she

got there, or what to do at all. So there is no need

to inflame the situation here. And you too,

Deutsche Welle,”

“No one has carried out any repressions in violation

of the law, and no one will.

Obey the law, follow

the law, and all this talk about

repression or anything else will disappear. The law, and

nothing but the law. If you break it,

we will respond. And so far we have responded mildly,”

“mildly. And honestly, I have always

held back the law enforcement agencies. There was no need

for them to go further. I told my people: they are not worth

taking any

repressive measures against. Sorry for letting you in on

that secret.”

“They are worth nothing politically.”

That is already there: we will shut off the internet,

like, the police want

to beat them, but I will tell them to beat them only a little,”

and the vilest thing in this speech

is that Lukashenko and Putin always literally

repeat this line: just

obey the law. That is, they invented

completely repressive laws, they took away

all rights, but it is still something written

on a piece of paper. They say: we wrote it

down on paper.

Obey the law, and if you do not want to,

we will crush you. And so the lesson here

for everyone, the important thing, is to stop

repeating this filth ourselves and stop listening to it. And when

others say again, “obey the law,” the answer

to that is: go to hell with

your laws. I say this as a lawyer,

you understand, because these are not laws,

they are complete filth.

The fact that they came up with them through

an illegitimate Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament)

or, in Belarus, through

an illegitimate Supreme Council,

does not change the fact that these absolutely repressive laws take away

rights, and then they tell us: obey the laws.

We must not obey them. If a law says

that you do not have the right

to go out into the street, then that law

simply contradicts our basic

inalienable rights. If a law

contradicts the fact that we are human beings with rights,

then it is no law at all. An unjust

law must not be obeyed. Obeying an

unjust law is precisely the most

real, genuine crime.

So, they shut down the internet, and then

a star emerged, of course — these wonderful

people. As I said at the beginning, this program is about

them; textbooks will be written about them. Three

young men — as I understand it, based in Poland —

they have a Telegram channel. It

was already large then, already one of

the biggest media outlets in Belarus, and at that time it had

400,000 subscribers. Now, I think,

it is already around 2 million. The last time I

looked, it was 1.7 million. So

it has been growing at simply colossal,

colossal speed. And in a situation

where truly everything there had been

completely wiped out — I mean, literally everything there

had been destroyed, everyone jailed, and it was unclear what

could be done — this Telegram channel, in many ways,

well, as it looked from Moscow, at least,

probably,

people who are in Minsk

may correct me or say that

events unfolded a little differently,

but unquestionably one of the organizing

roles

belonged, of course, to this Telegram channel

and this team.

They, first of all, especially starting on

Tuesday, began clearly broadcasting the message:

we go out, we declare a strike. And already

from election day itself, they

very clearly and explicitly pushed the idea:

we go out. Also because

the few official leaders

who remained

could not say this out loud.

Tikhanovskaya could not come out and say,

“Guys,”

“let’s go out into the streets,” because the very next

second her head would have been smashed

with a baton, and she herself would have been sitting in a cell

together with all the members of her campaign staff.

So she could not say it. It was

the Telegram channel that said it, and everyone

understood that, so they went out.

That, of course, was absolutely crucial.

The thing is this:

well, which happened in part

thanks to this Telegram channel,

people understood what the result there had been.

What is distinctive about Belarus, and about

this situation in particular, is that nobody knows

what the real election result actually was.

There is not a single person there—not

the Belarusian KGB, not Lukashenko,

not the observers, not those women

teachers on the election commissions—nobody

knows the election results. Nobody.

Because the polling organizations

have been destroyed, and exit polls are banned.

The elections are falsified in such a way

that there is no—as I have explained many times

about our elections—guys, you are mistaken

if you think that Putin has

something like a white folder

and a black folder, and in the white folder—or

maybe in the black one—is the fabricated

result, while in the white folder there is

the real result, and he opens it. That is not

how it works. What happens is, these teachers stuff ballots

and write down

"we have 90 percent," whatever it was supposed to be

in practice.

Nobody knows, especially in Belarus, because there

they simply rewrite these protocols, simply

rewrite them, but

therefore all our ideas about what

the real election result actually was

are based on two things. First:

the general feeling among Belarusian citizens,

who were simply asking one another

who they voted for, and all

social groups, already on the day

of voting, were telling each other they voted for

Tikhanovskaya. Well, nobody was really voting for

Lukashenko, or for that

some random girl, whatever her name was,

some local puppet candidate—nobody was going to vote for them either. And second:

nobody would have voted for them. And second:

several commissions there—literally about 80 in

the whole country—but located in completely

different places, in cities, in villages, and so

on—reported honest results.

They counted honestly, found the courage—it is genuinely

dangerous there—but they found the strength

to go outside and read out

the honest result. Let's look at one

of those commissions where, well, this really was

an honest distribution of votes:

Anna Kanopatskaya — 20 votes. Andrei Dmitriev —

24 votes.

Alexander Lukashenko — 277. 1,203...

[applause]

And the analysis of all these protocols—

again, this is not like, you know,

if in our case you just take protocols from

some district like Khamovniki (a central district of Moscow), where everywhere

there will obviously be a high level of voting for

the opposition, if we are talking about the Moscow mayoral election,

and then immediately take protocols from

Gagarinsky District—I won everywhere there—but

there were also some completely different districts

where it was not me who won, but Sobyanin.

That is how it is structured, and so, well,

it is clear that in the more modern parts of Minsk

the voting is one way, while in the villages

the voting is different. But here these

protocols are spread out, and they include

ones from villages too, and even in the villages the rough

picture is that Tikhanovskaya clearly

won in the first round, and everyone more or less

knew that Lukashenko was unpopular, but

his exact level of support was unknown. And this, of course,

this realization, this sudden revelation,

confirmed on paper, that

it turned out that in reality nobody

had actually voted for him—this was, of course,

absolutely crucial. But then, already later,

of course, the next day there came

simply documentary proof of how

the falsifications had been organized.

It is a two-minute clip, a full two minutes, but it is important

to listen to it. Vitebsk.

So, members of a commission are sitting there,

the kind that had wanted

to count honestly and go out to the people, because

Tikhanovskaya had called on people in the evening to go to

the commissions and simply keep watch,

put pressure on the commissions so that

they would count honestly. And so they

did count honestly, and then the district head came to them,

and someone recorded him, and here is

the kind of conversation he had with them. Let's

listen for two minutes.

How did you manage that? Well done, everyone still

counted everything.

And according to you, 5...? That means add some more.

Let's put it this way.

But let me say that your colleagues

counted things a little differently more often.

... honestly, I

went through every single

page of theirs, checking whether the count was correct.

Three days earlier, it was somewhere around seventy-five

percent for... whereas here you have a very

large gap, around 15.

This basically disrupts the overall picture

that had been taking shape.

Therefore I do not want

you to be the only ones who, for some

reason,

guided by who knows what—common

sense, a sense of pride,

responsibility, and so on—have broken away from

the general line. On that subject, I have for you

a very firm proposal: change

the protocol and radically change the numbers.

...

So, I am prepared to agree that for

Tikhanovskaya

a sufficient number of people in the neighborhood voted.

I will not even explain the reasons to you,

or speculate: some followed their hearts,

because, well...

Someone else was the main wallet behind all this.

The problem is, we have other tasks and

other problems that are fundamental.

...the population, when it comes to our

future, you want it to be at least

an interesting vision, yes, he has

a bright future. Did you notice? He

says that things need to be changed radically.

the votes between the third and fourth

candidate, and he agrees, fine, so be it.

He is ready to accept that Tikhanovskaya

will get at least something, yes, and

and this very word, "radically"—well now,

that really opens your eyes, because

as I already said on the program, for this

it is a very important part of the narrative.

Putin and Lukashenko, unlike everyone else, they

say, well yes, there were elections, but their

supporters, the authorities, say, well, yes,

there was a choice, and of course they may falsify it,

but you understand that he still got

the majority.

Well, sort of, probably yes—and that was what everything

rested on. Everyone knew that for 20 years there

Lukashenko would rig the election, but, like, still

he still got the majority anyway, right?

But here, no—here it is radically not the case, and in that

sense, of course, people took to the streets, and that

was it—no one drove everyone out, and all

the others too. That is, the main heroes, of course,

are those heroes, those people who came out

into the streets and called on everyone else to join them. That is

the key thing.

An election is great, but elections without

a call to go out into the streets—and Tikhanovsky

sitting in prison was even calling

for a boycott, not for people to go out into the streets—

that is the key point: when, in response to

obvious injustice, you go out

to defend your rights. And that is the key

lesson of Belarus. So right now, on

Instagram, the number one tennis player of the Republic of

Belarus in tennis,

Aryna Sabalenka, a 22-year-old woman, simply

a genuinely honest and brave person, wrote a post

on Instagram: "I can't believe that all of

this is happening in my native, peaceful

Belarus... revolution..."

...same idea, synonymous.

"I haven't been able to sleep for the fourth night already. I can't

watch the cruelty toward

people. Why? Please stop the

violence. Take care of yourselves and of my

loved ones, my dear Belarusians." Well, there you go.

A normal person, obviously. Of course, she

absolutely is—but she is an athlete in an

authoritarian state.

She depends on Lukashenko for everything, she

depends on this regime for everything, but she still wrote it,

she still said it—good for her.

Fine, maybe it was awkward, maybe her coach fell

to her knees and said, "Aryna, don't write this, because

if the revolution doesn't win, they'll

destroy you there, and you won't be

any kind of athlete anymore." But at least she

didn't write, "Come on, let's rip off Lukashenko's mustache,"

she simply wrote about the violence.

Anyone can write something like that, and those

people who started writing

a few days ago and are writing now—they

are, of course, the real heroes.

There is a video not from a city, but from the settlement

Druzhny. You really need to pay attention to it:

the population is 9,000 people, and about 1,000 came out into the streets.

This once again shows us

the proportion—just as he said. And this

crooked district head said the numbers had to be

changed radically. How radically?

Now Tikhanovskaya's—and in general

the broader Tikhanovskaya position—is hitting

Lukashenko hard. Let's watch.

[music]

[applause]

The population of this place is 9,000 people.

Of this town—but of course it

is called a town, with all due respect to

it, but really it's an urban-type settlement

—basically just a large village.

The OMON riot police are leaving the town, and this is exactly what—

as Kremlin political analysts love to say—

to put it mockingly,

the "deep people"—those very people, the base

that Lukashenko could count on.

But that's it now, it's all gone. You no longer have any

"deep people" behind you, there is

no base at all. So, returning

back to what was happening then, on

voting day last Sunday:

Lukashenko speaks, and people understand that

all of this is a complete lie, all propaganda.

They simply start preparing everyone en masse,

because first, all of you will be beaten, and

second, there is already this talk that foreigners

used some kind of technology—and there was this absolutely hellish

30-second video about it. I won't even

repeat it; I'll just summarize briefly.

A "biohacking system"—that's how it was described,

though in completely different terms. It's just a level of sheer madness

on state television:

they show one idiot

spouting his lying nonsense, and

a bunch of other idiots sit there watching,

nodding their heads. And just imagine

the Belarusians in the streets: the president said

you'll be smashed, arrested, out there in the streets,

there's already some kind of militarized setup,

the internet has been cut off, and on television

they are showing "biohacking." How must

those people have felt? "For 30 seconds, biohacking

was tested during the Belarusian elections.

It was a new, dirty but

high-tech

system involving psychographic

social hacking, a kind of hack on

the emotional level of mass consciousness

of people.

The puppet masters are now using this technology on

strong, stable Belarus..."

without any real grounds for carrying out

a revolution

to test it out, perhaps in order to

later sell this technology to

some other states, where similar

methods would be used

to try it out from—well, to what extent

this is really—well, it's nonsense to us, it's

funny, we laugh, ha-ha, because here in

Russia, I mean, we also have nonsense on

television, but this was still just too

much

But there, people were actually living in it, and so they

sat at home and understood that now

they had to go out into the streets despite all of

that. As I promised, the news that is just

coming in, I’ll be giving to you during the

broadcast. A video has just appeared showing how

the Gefest manufacturing plant in Brest has also

joined the strike. And those

people who went out into the streets that night, on that

crucial night, made it possible for

others to join them afterward

Brest, Gefest

strike in the workshop

[applause]

[applause]

ah

ah

[applause]

[music]

[applause]

workers are walking through the shop floor and chanting

political slogans, and you just want

to say: so, what do you think of that, Alexander

Grigoryevich Lukashenko?

Where are your 80 percent? They made it up. I

was arguing with our guys, and I said that

they’d give Tikhanovskaya 15, and there were different

bets, including one bet that they’d give her 6

percent, or maybe 7 percent

I mean, I roughly

estimated it, and thought he’d award himself

a very high number, but surely he’d have enough conscience

to at least show that she had

substantial support. No, there’s no conscience

there at all, and that’s why Tikhanovskaya was

given such a tiny number, and that’s why people were so

outraged. But then, further and further across

Belarus, people began coming out into the streets

just as, broadly speaking, we all understood would happen, just as

had been stated. Let’s say the main news

was that there was very high activity in

small towns, and in some

ways it was even easier to protest there, because

by that time, absolutely all

the riot police forces and everything else had been

pulled into Minsk. In small towns,

in relatively modest-sized cities—not

the very biggest ones—if we’re talking about

the march in Brest, 10 seconds of which took place

on the night after the election

Well, the city of Brest—you all know it, it’s a large

city. But here’s video from the city of Molodechno

which, to be honest, I don’t know much about as a city

Molodechno

but judging by the fact that I don’t know it,

it’s a small town. Nevertheless, there too, people

came out into the streets at night

[music]

So, without any doubt, already

immediately after the election, on the night after the election,

a mass movement began. Again, I won’t

tire of repeating: this was under conditions of real

fear. Here, before every

rally, we hear the same thing, right?

We announce a rally, and then somewhere

they arrest me the day before, or while I’m on my way out,

and before that the police start saying:

the police will use all measures against those unlawfully

assembled; the police will harshly

suppress violations

But even so, they say there will be beatings there

in Belarus—and it was stated quite directly

at the presidential level

that they would simply crush you there, beat you all senseless

And what’s more, in Belarus

it is known that people were killed there

that opposition figures disappeared there, and

later Lukashenko’s henchmen, when they

left and emigrated to Germany, gave

interviews and described in great detail

how they had taken part in the murders of political

opponents. So there, it is a major thing

to go out to a demonstration in the city of Pinsk

Here are 15 seconds of that nighttime footage from Pinsk

after the election

[applause]

And now Locker Men writes to me: show

the footage from Belarus—obviously, show

the footage of the savage beatings of people by riot police, and in

Belarus they’ve already seen it, while you perhaps

haven’t. I think many people here have seen it too

many

But then this is exactly what began, meaning

the situation was clear: people said they would go

into the streets, and Lukashenko and his whole gang

said, all right then, you came out—well, we’re surprised,

of course, that people came out in small towns; we’re

surprised that so many came out in Minsk, but

no problem—our rubber batons

won’t wear out anytime soon, and our

rubber bullets—we are ready to use them

immediately. That too was a kind of

revelation, you know. After all, firing

rubber bullets is

a serious matter; it rarely happens in

Moscow—over all this time, maybe only an isolated

case of using such

weapons. But even where they are used often,

it is still considered an emergency measure. In

Belarus, they simply

started right away with exactly this kind of

mass beatings and the use of rubber

bullets—50 seconds

of what was happening immediately after the election

[music]

[music]

Ah.

we get around it.

These were completely performative,

punitive actions. I wrote about this for you,

but on this subject, in a long post on

Instagram. But I'll repeat: these are important

points. People very often asked, well,

like, why did Lukashenko do this?

This madness wouldn't appeal to anyone, when

they ran into a café there and started

rushing in, dragging people out—it was obvious

that there was a camera in the café, or someone

was standing there with a phone. All of this would be filmed and

uploaded to the internet. But thanks to brave

people there, it would leak out somewhere anyway.

No one would like this. 37 seconds.

Let's watch the footage from the café.

him, along with his equipment, just to take him away.

Not yet, not at all.

They were dragging people out from everywhere, from shopping malls,

there was a person—you saw it there somehow.

Well, first of all, they pulled him out of the café and simply

led him away. But then, when they ended up

in these detention centers—in Belarus, the system

of law enforcement is set up so that, unlike here,

as usual, the authorities took them to the police station; at the

station you spent the night, then they took you to court,

and from court to a special detention facility—they have these

centers.

Well, like holding cells and various temporary

detention centers before trial.

The most notorious of them is, well,

Okrestina, which became infamous this time

because people living in neighboring buildings,

people who happened to be nearby,

could simply hear the screams from the beatings—that is,

people were being beaten and tortured. And they weren't even

forced to keep quiet about it, like, 'don't talk about this.'

No—they were doing it almost with pleasure,

showing it off and doing it demonstratively. Here, at the

police station—let's take a look. People are being taken to the

station, how they beat them and drive them out into the street, and

the OMON riot police beat them, line them up against the wall in the street, and

they kill them there—they really kill them.

And all of this was filmed. And actually,

with Lukashenko—coming back to the question we're discussing—

100,000 people watched this live.

We're discussing the question of why, why he

would do this—because it was truly bestial

cruelty, and no one would like it. I mean,

even if you're pro-Lukashenko,

all that 'Batka' (Daddy, a nickname for Lukashenko) stuff and so on—yeah, like, you

still just see people being beaten,

clubbed with batons, beaten to death, shot,

for no clear reason. No one would like that.

Simply for humanitarian reasons.

But Lukashenko did it. It was

a matter of principle, and next to the word

'blitzkrieg,' the key point was that it was important for him

to crush it on the very first night,

so that there would simply be nothing left. And in this

there was an absolutely rational

calculation: Belarus has a lot of OMON riot police, there are

internal troops, the army, and so on. But still,

how many people can you actually detain?

They simply understood that if

80 percent voted for Tikhanovskaya,

or 60 percent—whatever her real margin of victory was in

the first round—if there was a real mass

movement,

you couldn't disperse all of them. This OMON force,

plus the internal troops—maybe around 20

thousand people, twenty thousand people.

If they're working around the clock, divide that by

three shifts.

So that they could at least get some rest

every other day, that means across all cities—and

in small towns, too, where 10,000

people came out—how are you going to disperse everyone? Well, they

can't all work at once; they get tired, and

they understood very well that, first of all,

after 3–4 days, all these OMON officers, no matter how

brutalized they might be, would have no

strength left. I don't believe they were somehow

turned into beasts by being given

lots of pills, because that's nonsense,

and the claim that they were supposedly given methamphetamine

is also a complete lie.

I mean, in any case, regardless

of the degree of their brutality, after

three days they wouldn't have the strength to keep

running around.

Besides, as I've said many times about

Russian protests: yes, they detain

us, but don't be too afraid of these detentions. Because

once they've detained people—how many can they

detain? A thousand? After that they

start releasing everyone in Moscow. Once it's more than

a thousand people, they stop detaining anyone—not

because they feel sorry for people, but because there's nowhere

left to put them.

Because every police station is already full of people

sitting there, because there are so many detainees,

and so many relatives of theirs,

that it becomes impossible to deal with all of it.

In Belarus, they were cramming

30 people into a cell meant for eight, but

even so, there's still a limit to how many you can

stuff in. That's exactly why the day before yesterday and

yesterday they already stopped detaining people and dragging them

off anywhere.

And they understood that either we

terrorize

people with horror so they don't come out—that

works. You allow videos like this to be released,

videos of someone being beaten, and so

a person who's getting ready to go into the city

thinks, 'Maybe I'll go protest'—and in front of him, here

here, a mother falls to her knees, and here

here, a wife falls to her knees, and there

the children are crying, 'Don't go, they'll kill you.'

Well, you can see these videos—go online

and watch them. Look—they beat people there,

smash cars, and don't drive anywhere, absolutely don't,

and you say, 'I'll just go

stand in the courtyard,' and then they show videos

of how these

degenerates, like Uruk-hai, in helmets come into the courtyard.

they force one person to his knees, and then

one of them runs up and, well, you saw it on

I’m not going to show you that video

I don’t want a hundred thousand people

to watch it. Believe me, that video exists

if you haven’t seen it yourselves: he runs up and hits

him in the back. He’s just kneeling there, and

then they hit him in the head, he falls, and they keep beating him

with batons in courtyards — that’s what was happening

and people come out, shouting something from

their balconies, and they fire at them

through the windows with their, their rubber

bullets, and

it was an absolutely performative thing, it

was done so that on the first day

everyone would be terrified, to create that kind of horror

so that, basically, no one else would

come out, because they understood that for four or five

days of protests across all the cities, they wouldn’t

hold out, and there was nothing they could

do about it, because any authoritarian

regime — whether Putin’s or Lukashenko’s — any of them is

like a bloated toad

a power structure sustained solely by

everyone thinking the toad is very formidable

There’s that great poem about the cockroach

remember how the cockroach frightened all the animals

and then a sparrow flew in and

ate the cockroach, because that’s exactly how it works

it’s set up. We just sit there thinking

what can we possibly do against Putin, I mean

what can anyone do against him — and it was the same there

for 26 years Belarusians were told: where do you think you’re going against

Lukashenko?

He’s popular, they kept saying, but where

can you go against Lukashenko? He’s popular and

he won’t joke around with you. And then they said

well, basically, they’ll crush you, like all those

Russian propagandists saying they’d stuff you in a barrel and

this is no joke, it’s not like

liberal Moscow, where OMON (Russian riot police) only

hits you in the face with a baton once

there, like, three people will beat you in the

face with batons for many, many minutes in a row

and then they’ll take you to a detention center

or to a holding facility, and without any concern for

the cameras, they’ll keep pounding you. And so they

used all of this to intimidate people, just terrorized

them, because, you see, in reality

they can’t keep doing it for long, but

of course it looked

truly shocking — 31 seconds of how, right there

on the streets, they demonstratively knock people

down

Mom

Yes, but this is still that same video

where a man forces him onto

his knees and then beats him — there, you can see it

there, that’s a mother there, and a child

is saying something to her, and of course that child

I mean, people really were just

afraid to leave their apartments, and the people

who did go out at night, and then

especially on the key, decisive night

which, of course, was the night from Monday to

Tuesday

when it was no longer just frightening, but

it was already clear what kind of nightmare it would be when you

went out, and you understood that you’d come back

covered in bruises, with holes from those rubber

bullets, understanding that it would be just

some kind of horror. You’ve already seen two videos

that were also circulating fairly widely

showing how

soldiers were also demonstratively being issued

live ammunition. Why? So that on

the first night they beat you,

and on the second night they’ll simply

shoot you — that was exactly the message

Let’s show this video about live

ammunition. There’s a lot of swearing in it, so there will be

a lot of blanked-out bits — we’ve

bleeped it out

They’re being issued live ammunition, damn it, and

the guys are ready

[music]

g

the boys here are loaded up

and by evening

too

[music]

This is a good psychological exercise

for everyone who is now giving advice

to Belarusians or speculating about things — just

put yourselves in the place of people

who saw all that brutal beating

of those people

and then saw videos of how

soldiers were being handed live ammunition

and still went out into the streets — and of course that

was an absolutely extraordinary display of heroism

real, genuine heroism, that they

did that. Separately, there was this whole

kind of Lukashenko-era nightmare,

this monstrous idea that they needed to beat

drivers, or just, like, attack

passing cars, and it seems to me that this

was also done, unquestionably, by design as

an intimidation tactic. Everyone understood that this

would be filmed, and the message there was precisely

that we are so completely

out of control here that we’ll just

drag people out of their cars

smash up and wreck the car. If you’re not

afraid of ending up with a bruise or a hole

from a rubber bullet, then we’ll just

trash your car. Arresting people

and attacking motorists — that

became something of a trademark of the Lukash

enko regime

So now let’s watch

a minute and a half of them smashing cars

[applause]

[music]

The thugs had full run of the place, and they act like

someone got into the car, yes, to hide — I

understand how they ‘solve the issue,’ in the end, I know

damn you all — when they beat you, I guarantee it

That speaks for them — you beat them several times.

Often it's just a mess in the head, yeah, aimed at some old man.

the old man in the cap

even though you're a smart girl

That's clear.

This is how people are provoking our...

The old man with the arrows went home — I would...

the police are in pursuit

There are bandits here — go wash up, you pair of viruses.

[music]

[applause]

[music]

They lick.

[music]

Well, I mean, it's all about being demonstrative.

An old man is riding along in a cap and shorts, and then he gets hit.

They smashed his mirror, the bastards — I mean, somewhere...

So, his own little darling, his car, and there they...

they're polishing off your broken mirror — a big deal.

For him, it's an absolutely serious matter...

Not to mention that it's sheer madness.

A police officer confronting someone like that...

A typical gopnik (street thug) — even a gopnik would never do that.

Two hooligans might do something like that, and...

it was just openly, demonstratively done.

They smashed the mirror first, and then beat him up badly too.

And right in front of everyone, they led him away somewhere.

Just right there, in front of everyone — it's absolutely...

monstrous. Right now on Pushkinskaya Street in Minsk,

103,000 people are able to...

watching us live. I won't... I will show you...

I will show you everything that's happening — the most

interesting thing is the enormous number of people, and

you see, now you can already compare then and

now.

First of all, there are no longer enough police forces.

Second, of course, this is already

a turning point. And if a day and a half ago, at

night — especially on the night from Monday

to Tuesday —

OMON riot police were firing these rubber

bullets simply at apartments, at windows

from which people were shouting at them, now already

people

are hanging out — give me 6 seconds, let's look.

Flags — these sort of semi-banned

flags are being hung from balconies and windows.

[applause]

So this is what's happening in Minsk

right now. I want to show you

a short video clip where a girl from

Minsk describes it very accurately. I

thought exactly the same thing: Lukashenko, he

yes, he wasn't dispersing a rally, he wasn't dispersing

a demonstration — he was simply, literally

beating people demonstratively. That was the whole point.

The point was precisely just to beat them, and the

order was this: no need to come in

and push them back, and force them out, and

block them — just go and beat

all those, all those who don't like my

regime. Let's listen to this girl in

Minsk: they dragged a man out of his car because

he had simply honked at them, and they beat him.

Or simply a car, as if it were the most terrible of...

A woman was covering the man. This does not look like

the dispersal of a protest — this is genocide against peaceful

citizens.

My friends are being held there simply because

they were walking down the street, not bothering anyone.

This must not happen. We can make this

a peaceful process now.

Indeed, very often we simply see

such absurd acts of intimidation

and terror. Here's the video I wanted

to show: there, a Yandex Taxi car somehow

didn't please them, and they just

like a real group of Uruk-hai (orc warriors from *The Lord of the Rings*), to the horror of everyone

riding past in a minibus, attack

the Yandex Taxi. Let's watch — 43

seconds.

[music]

[music]

[music]

The level of... this is...

my connection.

This hadn't happened here before.

We're alive and well.

You see, even aesthetically, this is...

it's made to look like some kind of shooting gallery — like death squads.

No identifying insignia, no faces visible.

No — I mean, just look at what they're doing, even visually.

When you show a person this

image, it would never occur to anyone

that these are police officers. Of course, these are

just some kind of guys, you know,

and on camera it looks like some kind of movie —

bandits, movie villains.

But this is what was happening on a mass scale in

the streets of Belarus. There were cases where

situations when

police officers lowered their shields, especially in

smaller towns, thereby showing

that they were, well, with the people, and

at that moment they received very strong

support from the people, great visible

relief from people who could see that they had

finally lowered their shields. One moment — 22

seconds, let's watch.

[applause]

[music]

[applause]

103,000 people are watching live

the latest news about what is

happening in Belarus. Zhodino

is a very important city — BelAZ, the giant dump truck manufacturer, is located there.

And there's a strike there, at this absolutely symbolic

enterprise for the republic. I already

showed you a video of how the mayor of the city of

Zhodino

did, to be fair, keep his promise and came

to meet people, and was met with chants of

"OMON, go away" and "Release the people."

The mayor fled. And now, a little over an hour later, the information is this:

the mayor ran away, but the people

stayed. Let's see what it looks like

now. You'll recognize the slogan, yes: one for

all and all for one — and it shows how, well...

How closely related Russia under

the leadership of such a villain and

Belarus under the leadership of a villain

It’s just that in Belarus, the villain is of course also

well, very, very insane in that sense.

Belarus seemed like the more hopeless

state in terms of a real struggle

by the people for freedom, but that really is true, that’s

yes, let’s say it as it is: all of us

understood it, we just didn’t say those words

beforehand.

Because you can’t say things like that

to those who are going to take to the streets anyway.

The idea was basically: if you

go out, they’ll go out, and all of them there

will be beaten, battered, and nothing will change,

because this man is simply ready

to devour the whole country and everyone in it, but

he won’t give up what’s his. We won’t

say too much too early, but still,

a lot of things are similar, things are changing, and

to wrap up this little overview: on the first day,

everyone was beaten, and on that first day there began

the preparations for the beatings on day two. That was

the key day, from Monday into Tuesday.

Lukashenko spoke, and he

very clearly started saying that, well,

it was all about the unemployed,

everyone who has no job, and therefore everyone who

walks the streets: go get to work.

Get off the streets, and no fake

employment certificates—we’ll track every one of you down. And, well,

still demonstrating that same

beast-like determination that everyone will suffer

who simply walks the streets.

3 minutes, 3 seconds.

that he’ll make life miserable for all of you, all those who

want to work, who strive to work,

must have jobs and, accordingly,

wages.

Everyone who is not working today must be

looked into; they must be offered work.

The core of all these so-called

protesters are people with criminal records

and the unemployed today. They have no jobs and

are wandering the streets and avenues.

So I am asking nicely and warning

everyone who doesn’t have a job to get one,

and I want to warn some of our

our

so-called, to put it mildly, bourgeois citizens

God forbid anyone should issue

fake employment certificates to anyone. Everything

must be honest and proper. That was

that was Monday. Today is Thursday. 104

thousand people are watching live, and

now this news has come in that

really shows perfectly that you

bastards puffed yourselves up and said you would crush

everyone.

But you failed to crush them, and now

everyone who spread information, who

went out into the streets, achieved this

news. So far there isn’t much video yet,

just the text: Belarus’s interior minister

Yury Karayev, a truly deranged

guy—I showed him to you on the previous

program—who, with that smug face of his,

said: we will carry out any task, it may be hard for us

physically, but we’ll crush them all.

I’m quoting him.

I take responsibility and apologize for

the injuries to random people at the protests

who got caught up in it. So, well,

of course, he cannot admit there that

this is simply a gang of thugs

and that he, like a thug, was directing other

thugs, but still

the fact that they’re now talking about injuries

means the authorities understood

that a few more videos like these, with these

beatings, this torment, these

tortures,

and people would really start hanging them, you know.

It’s a partisan land, after all. I mean, it simply

changed everyone’s attitude, yes.

No one wants this anymore. After all, it had all been sold

under the banner of “stability”: we’re for Lukashenko

because of stability. But when your

stability, you know, exists amid

the screams of detained people, whose cries

can be heard in the neighboring building next to the police

station, that is no stability at all.

No one wants that kind of stability, and

that’s why, of course, this

Belarusian minister is already there

apologizing. Why? Because in

some place called Serebryanka, a name

you’ve probably never heard before, this many

people are standing by the roadside right

now. Let’s watch video from Serebryanka.

[music]

[applause]

This is already happening on a mass scale, in every

city, in every populated place

across Belarus. Today I also saw—someone

sent it to me in the last hour before the broadcast—

someone cheerfully posted a photo:

a village—I won’t lie, I don’t remember the

name—89 residents, and something like 20

people came out onto the road like this,

waving flowers, holding up flags, and

passing cars are honking at them. This is

a truly mass movement.

There are a lot of questions and criticism about Tikhanovskaya,

and this absolutely needs to be discussed

because precisely on the question of

Tikhanovskaya, from what I’ve seen, opinions

among Belarusians and Russians—well, Russian citizens—

have shifted

and split. And it seems to me that the comments

that are being voiced so much in Russia

are absolutely unfair and

wrong, often downright stupid, and I want

to say this because it concerns the fact that

Tikhanovskaya is now in

Lithuania, and many are saying: she fled—how could that be?

She abandoned her people and ran away.

And that’s why, to my surprise,

it’s being commented on this way. I also wanted to speak on

this matter. First, let me start with

the way events unfolded. Lukashenko understands

that they are going to lose. People are being beaten, and he says

that they will continue beating Tsikhanouskaya

and everyone else. He says this at a time when

she had not yet disappeared at the Central Election Commission, and he calls

them “little sheep.” Twenty seconds later, we hear about puppet masters.

One of the lines of attack is that these puppet masters are in the Czech Republic.

Today, supposedly, the Czech Republic is already running our

joint campaign headquarters, where, excuse me,

these “little sheep” are sitting, understanding nothing about

what is wanted from them.

I ordered this information to be released to the media

so that you could see

what they want.

That’s the picture.

Andrei Fadin asks me why

opposition leader Tsikhanouskaya left

Belarus and did not stay with the people until

the end. Pasha Malakhov asks: Alexei, how do you

comment briefly on the interrogations and the sudden

disappearance of Tsikhanouskaya? On Tuesday, Tsikhanouskaya

went to the Central Election Commission and went inside,

then disappeared for several hours. No one could

find her. Later, it was apparently reported that

she had in fact left the building, and the next

morning it emerged that she was in Lithuania.

And naturally, the Russian media in particular

started savoring the story: she ran away. And all this

—at the beginning I mentioned this absurd thing—

this very week they were calling me

“Alexei Navalny, who was put in a puddle” by the

Belarusian border guards, because

I had supported Tsikhanouskaya.

Naturally, the border guards were spreading

videos supposedly showing that she had fled.

Everyone was relishing it. To my surprise, as I

already said, many otherwise reasonable people in

Russia also started saying: ah, she ran away

and abandoned her people. But Tsikhanouskaya

has shown herself to be one of the heroes of this whole story.

Not only her—all the women, to a great extent.

In fact, it’s an astonishing thing.

As for the events in Belarus, we do not know how

they will end, but they are already

historic, and today in particular is a new,

obvious turning point.

A great day in the history of Belarus, and

the defining feature of this day and of all these

extraordinary events was, of course, the role

of women—the enormous role women played

in this entire story.

Specifically, those three women, and specifically

Tsikhanouskaya personally, as well as those who

came out yesterday and today to these

peaceful rallies—the women who were there

rising up,

forming chains like that, protecting everyone

else and speaking out against violence.

I wrote about this on Twitter today:

perhaps this was a revolution

that will one day be called

the revolution made by women.

There was an interesting exchange: people write,

basically, “What about the men? The men are the ones being beaten

and jailed.” That is absolutely true, that is exactly

how it is. In fact, the price has been paid

and is still being paid by people

whose ribs are being broken, who are sitting in

these detention centers,

in cells meant for six people but holding 30

people, who are being beaten; there are dead

and maimed people there, unquestionably. But the

distinctive feature of what happened is that

women, precisely as women—not just

as part of the crowd like everyone else—

Yes, people make revolutions; if one happens,

it is made by people—both

men and women—but here women as

women played a truly

important role, demonstrating: you may

jail all our husbands—and they did jail them,

they are still in jail, and we do not understand

what has happened to them—but they did this.

And Tsikhanouskaya is an accidental person in politics,

a teacher, a housewife. You cannot

imagine it. Guys, I have held many

meetings with voters and large rallies

and all that, and

believe me, it is a very great

stress, even for someone who wants

to do it and knows how to do it. It is hard.

On all those trips, she was holding three

rallies a day. I have done that too.

When I was in Moscow, I held 35 rallies

a day across the regions, covering several

cities.

It is the kind of work after which you simply

want to lie low quietly for a week

so that no one bothers you. But I

am still a politician, and I want to do it, and

this is my profession. I had a team that

helped me, a large structure. Tsikhanouskaya and

all the others found themselves

thrown into all of this without money, without

a proper team, just a large number of volunteers.

She did not know what to say, she did not

understand things fully, she was terribly afraid that something

would happen—that she might say something wrong, blurt something out, and then

it would all be quoted against her.

Endless provocations, pressure, the police—

you understand that your result

will never be announced as the true

result. You understand that your husband,

who is sitting in prison and whose situation is unclear,

has already called everyone into the streets.

They will come out, they will be beaten, and most

likely you will be jailed for it. In Belarus,

there were also threats being spread, like

“we’ll take away”

“the children.” They do that. She is a woman who, like

everyone else, fulfilled her role as a symbol,

as a unifying figure,

by 146 percent.

Then the following happened to her, and

she was taken into the Central Election Commission—well, I saw that too.

Comments: why on earth did she go to the Central Election Commission?

Why did she go to the Central Election Commission at all?

But just imagine how this works.

If I were going somewhere like that, you know, I’d go with lawyers,

or with a support group, and then suddenly—bang—

I find myself alone. I also went into

Russia’s election commission offices to submit documents, but when you

arrive and hand them over, once you’ve crossed that threshold, you’re

not allowed any further—and then, suddenly,

the door shuts, the guards close it, and that’s it.

You’re alone, and they won’t even let your lawyer in.

As for the fact that she went in and then, after some time,

came out, ended up in Lithuania,

and released the following video address,

which, for some reason, deeply

outraged many people. Let’s watch it—37

seconds. “Dear citizens of the Republic of

Belarus,

I, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, thank you for

taking part in the election of the head of state.

The people of Belarus have made their choice.

With gratitude and warmth, I appeal

to all the citizens who supported

me all this time.

People of Belarus, I call on you to show prudence and

respect for the law. I do not want bloodshed or

violence.

I ask you not to confront the police,

not to go out into the squares, so as not to put

your lives in danger. Take care of yourselves and

your loved ones.”

And this video started being circulated by various

pro-government Belarusian channels,

and it spread everywhere. And notably,

in Belarus, nobody particularly condemned it.

Well, who would? Everyone there understands perfectly well

how the country works. But over here,

that night it started:

“What she did was wrong, she left…” But then

it became clear fairly quickly that, obviously,

this video was not recorded in Lithuania, in safety;

it was recorded in

the Central Election Commission,

more precisely, in the office of the chief official there.

That video was made there—

it’s obvious she was reading from a piece of paper.

I mean, there

they matched up the sofa and

the blinds on the windows—it was clear.

So, guys, just imagine

a person—a woman—who never

wanted to be involved in politics, but did

all of this anyway: she traveled to rallies, she

spoke publicly, she gave interviews.

Come on—try giving even one interview yourself,

with tricky questions being thrown at you.

She went through all of that, and then she found herself alone.

Imagine it: she walks in, and there are

all these ghouls and Uruk-hai (orc-like villains from *The Lord of the Rings*),

these witches from the election commission; her husband is in

prison. What did they do to her there, that she ended up

reading from a sheet of paper like that? Do you have even

the slightest doubt that they could, for example,

have shown her a video of her husband being beaten, or a video

of her husband with, say,

a gun held to his temple,

or something like that? Do you really doubt

that they were capable of doing that?

These people—Lukashenko and his Interior Ministry—were beating

people in plain sight, on the streets of Minsk.

In detention centers and special holding facilities,

they force people into stress positions, simply beat them and

torture them. Do you have the slightest doubt

that they could, for example, have beaten

Tikhanovsky nearly to death, or

tortured him? I hope that didn’t happen, but

they could have forced him to record a video message to

his wife, saying, basically, “Read whatever they want.”

Do you have any doubt that they

told her: “You will read this, and after that

you get out of here to Lithuania and keep quiet. And if

you say even one word, your husband is

finished.” I have no doubt that’s exactly what happened, judging

by the fact that she is clearly in a state of

shock right now and staying silent. I do not doubt for

a single second that this is what happened, because

listen—if they were simply

actually

beating people, with several dead, as I

already said earlier—Belarus has long

been known for the fact that

several political

opponents disappeared, and there are already public

statements and interviews saying they were killed.

There are people who said they

took part in those killings

on Lukashenko’s orders.

Do you think they would stop short of

having the news come out the next day, on

Tuesday, saying, you know,

“Tikhanovsky died of a heart attack”

or “hanged himself, having realized the terrible things

he had done against the Belarusian people, and

took his own life”?

Do you have any doubt? I’m not even talking yet

about the fact that she went in alone, and they could have told her:

“Right now we’ll deal with you here ourselves—

nobody will know. Either you go to Lithuania now,

or you go to a cell right now, where we’ll do

terrible things to you, and we’ll take your children away.”

Besides, all the staffers

from her campaign headquarters were effectively being held hostage there,

along with close associates.

You’re standing there with no real alternative in front of you:

you know, either you read from the paper and then

get out to Lithuania and keep quiet, or

you sit in prison right now. We won’t even touch you,

but you’ll simply hear, from behind the

wall, your campaign staff screaming

as we shock them with electricity and tell them

we’re doing it because you,

Tikhanovskaya, refused to record

just one little statement. Of course she recorded it.

She was dealing with monstrous fascists,

the vilest, most deceitful people on earth.

Of course she recorded that address and

she left. But she is, as it were, finished—

and he remains the sitting president.

the elected president of the Republic of Belarus

second, she is a symbol of resistance

as a symbol, all of this works perfectly well from

Lithuania, and there is nothing for her to do in Belarus right now, and

and her physical presence there would make

her husband's situation, I believe, even more dangerous

so let's leave aside these beautiful

phrases about why she isn't there with her people

yes, she is with her people, she is with her

people, it's just that circumstances and life

can be different, can be difficult, and in

some situations it is absolutely right

to record an address like that; she played her

role brilliantly. Those who saw that

address simply went out into the streets even

more, because it was obvious what had been done to

her, because it was clear, so to speak,

what kind of authorities you are dealing with, and

that was very important, and simply, on

her face, everything was written there, and, by the

way, the current behavior

also confirms it perfectly. Belarusians

know how their authorities are structured, and they all

understood it absolutely correctly. Let's

understand it too and not make demands of people

or reproach them for something unnecessary

she is absolutely a hero, and all the women—I do not

insist on this despite the fact

that I see such indignation from some

part of the men over something or other there

you know, like, calling people feminists

whether you switch on feminism or not, but

the outstanding political role of women

in Belarus in this revolution is obvious

and unquestionably heroic, just like that of the whole people

of course, everyone did this, but women

did it in such a way that they broke the spine

of this—well, that means we have

video from, from, from the settlement—show me

once again, I couldn't at first

pronounce it correctly—yes, Machulishchi, I

hope I'm saying it correctly, population 8,000

people. The latest news from Belarus

the adventures of a special forces officer in the settlement of

Machulishchi, population 8,000

[applause]

[music]

[applause]

[music]

[applause]

[music]

[applause]

uh

[applause]

uh

[applause]

107,000 people are watching us live

on air. That was the settlement of Machulishchi, 8,000

people, and essentially what happened was

this kind of symbolic action

which is now very popular in the

republic, and in fact it is very important

everyone talks about, well, a split among the elites, a split among the elites

and that is exactly how a split among the elites happens: when

there is a demonstrative, even if on a

small scale, at the grassroots level, shift

of loyalty in the right direction, that is,

these people, these special forces officers, were showing that we

serve the people, and if our uniform has become

a symbol of fighting against the people, then it is better

to throw this uniform away. This is very important, and

it is happening in the streets right now

Russia's reaction is very interesting

after all, it is not only us

107,000 people, and then however many more

watching with bated breath and wondering what

exactly is happening there

the Kremlin is watching too, obviously talking to

Lukashenko and not understanding what to do. There are also

a great many questions about whether

Artem... Alexei...

our authorities will start cracking down even harder

after watching the protests in

Belarus

I mean, whether they will receive more powers

whether they will expand the National Guard (Rosgvardiya). It is clear that

for Putin, one of the main conclusions will be

that under no circumstances should you allow

candidates into elections. I have often

talked about Tikhanovskaya, and precisely on the question of

elections or no elections, boycott

or no boycott, before registration

Tikhanovskaya's position, and Tikhanovsky's

position, and that of the absolute majority of other people,

was that we would not go to these elections, we

would not participate in them, despite the fact

that there were three formal candidates

Tikhanovskaya appeared there, and she

turned the elections into actual elections, and she

turned all of this into a campaign, but

remove from this great structure

her and Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya, and everything else

falls apart, and no one already

knows whether everything that happened later

would have happened if people had come out as

the finale of a boycott campaign, as had originally

been planned—no one now

knows. But we

have seen very clearly here that a candidate,

a real honest candidate, makes

a campaign nationwide and political

rather than just some kind of... if it had been some nobody there

then people would not have

come out, and no one would have emotionally

reacted to all of this at all. There was

a candidate, and that is exactly why all this happened

therefore the main thing Putin wrote in his

little notebook as point number one, and circled in bold, was

no candidates at all. Allowing candidates

is the main instrument, and here I will

allow myself to say a phrase that I have

been saying for the last two years, even longer

I said that, guys, our main

political demand should be

the admission of all candidates to elections, because

that is the main working instrument. There, in

her notes, it says: under no circumstances let anyone

in. In ours, it should be written:

to demand the registration of candidates in

the elections, because as long as

we are willing to accept, in elections, a candidate like

Sobchak or someone else, well,

nothing works out, because people are taking to the streets

not for Tikhanovskaya at the ballot box,

or in the streets, but for everything—for that broader, generalized

collective cause. Even if they bring in the wonderful

Grigory Yavlinsky, whom I

have a good opinion of, still

those kinds of candidates are not enough.

That is a very, very important point, and

so now, of course, Russia—both the people and

the authorities—is watching all this very closely,

and it is very interesting that the Kremlin

clearly

doesn’t really understand which

strategy to choose.

At first they thought, as these types often do,

that people there might make a bit of noise, but basically

he wouldn’t mess around, he would simply

crush everyone, wipe them out, and so,

everything would stay as it is. But still,

since he seemed to show some hostility,

we’ll treat this cautiously.

And there is even, in fact, a kind of

split among the propagandists.

On some federal TV channels,

they praise Lukashenko and talk about what a

great, smart idea it is. We do not, of course, condone

police violence,

but it certainly works, so

Alexander Grigoryevich did well to disperse

that whole gang. That’s one

part of the propagandists, led by

Skabeyeva. Twenty seconds—let’s take another look

at how, when Belarusian OMON (riot police) are criticized for

their brutality, they also say:

“Take note: in Kyiv they failed to disperse

the crowd, and the Maidan (the 2013–2014 protest movement in Ukraine) began—began and has not

ended for six years running, whereas

here they cut it off in practically three days. We

naturally do not support police

lawlessness, but it is clear that this tactic, this scheme,

works. It is, of course, very important

not to allow a Maidan—another Maidan in

Minsk.” That is the main refrain in everything

they say. And then there is the truly deranged stuff,

starting with Skabeyeva and ending with

people who are completely off the rails, but also in United

Russia—a very ridiculous deputy, Fyodorov, from

the movement—well, a United Russia deputy, Fyodorov—

who says that everything

happening in Belarus is, of course,

staged, and there is no blood there at all.

Where you think you see blood,

look closely—there is not a single dead person, and all

those who were supposedly injured—there were even

some shots of them smearing something on themselves

in an alley and then running out. In other words, it is

all fake, all a performance. Everything

they show us on television, including from

Belarus, is just a show, simply

a show.”

“A movie—with fake blood, costumes, all that. Sharon Stone

likes acting in films like that. There are movies like that,

but the reality there is completely

different, and we simply do not know the real situation

there, deep down, and we do not see it because

the information space is not ours. And anyway, once again,

there are no options with Belarus:

either it is a fatherland within

the framework of a Union State with Russia,

or it is the liquidation of the Belarusian people

for the purpose of cleansing this territory of

undesirable elements after

its annexation by foreign occupiers.”

That is already entering a hot phase.

So, especially for that lunatic from United

Russia, let’s show what is happening right now

in the settlement of Ivenets. This is a

settlement with a population of 4,000—in other words,

literally a large village.

If Deputy Fyodorov and his colleagues from

United Russia think that all this is

staged, then, you know, that would require a pretty large

film crew to organize

these mass scenes in absolutely every