Kemerovo. Scapegoats Punished, the Magomedovs Arrested, and the Moscow Mayoral Election

[music]

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

This is Navalny Live, Alexei Navalny speaking.

The so-called blogger, as she called me.

The wonderful Yelena Mizulina, whom we'll

definitely talk about today, because

I've been following her political

biography for a long time, and I really want to discuss it

with you. A wonderful, wonderful

woman. But of course, we'll start with Kemerovo.

I want to once again thank everyone who

made donations during our last broadcast

to help

those affected by the fire in the city of Kemerovo.

We raised 500,000 rubles, as you may remember

— those who watched the previous show know that we raised 400,000

rubles live on air, and then

people apparently kept watching afterward, offline,

and kept sending money. We raised

half a million rubles. You were all amazing.

Well done, everyone who made that happen. Right now we're in

a difficult process, because we need

to decide whom to give it to. There are many different

families, and it's not simple. We can't just

go around randomly

calling everyone and asking who

needs help the most. They all

need help desperately. We'll try,

as delicately as possible,

to identify one family, or two or three families,

who are in the most severe

financial hardship, and we'll give them the money.

I'll publish all the receipts, that is,

it's a delicate process, so I ask

for your understanding that we simply couldn't

do it properly in just a week, because

we didn't want to bother

the relatives with intrusive phone calls

and

and unpleasant questions at such a time. But

we'll get it all done. Once again, you were all amazing,

well done.

Everyone who took part in this—thank you.

Kemerovo still remains the main

issue on the political agenda, and you

remember that when people were discussing, after

the fire, in the immediate following week,

everyone was asking: so how exactly will

punishment and accountability be carried out? What

conclusions will be drawn from this situation? And

many wrote—and it wasn't exactly hard to predict—that

the people punished would be

the scapegoats. And judging by everything, that's

exactly what's happening. A fairly substantial

amount of time has already passed—enough to make

some definite conclusions.

What we're seeing now, unfortunately, is

precisely what you call punishing scapegoats.

Let's just take a look now at

the list of those who are currently

under arrest or detained. There may

well be other people too, probably, but

here's what we see right now—look:

the shopping mall manager, the technical

director, a person from the

company that designed the fire safety

system, a security guard, the general

director—these are all owners or managers there,

from the Kemerovo Confectionery Plant.

The only official—and you can't even call her

a high-ranking official—

is the former head of the inspectorate

of the Kemerovo Region State Construction Supervision agency.

So it's not just that there isn't a single

general or someone with a major

position—there aren't even people in

mid-level positions here. It was rather

interesting to watch how

some media outlets

announced that the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM) in

the Kemerovo Region was being searched. This man

certainly deserves to have his

activities investigated. But here's the thing:

first they reported it and showed [__]

— some photo supposedly showing that

searches were underway at his place, or photos from

his vacation—and then he himself denied it.

The Investigative Committee said nothing.

There was a report from Interfax, and

it ended up being unclear whether

the local top official was actually searched

or not, whether he is being held

accountable or not. But accountability

is, of course, a matter for the investigation,

and not everything necessarily has to

take place in a fully

public, maximally transparent mode. But

I repeat: enough time has already

passed for at least

the basic political conclusions to be drawn.

Obviously, the people I just

showed you who have been arrested may very

well deserve to be

arrested. But still, what interests us most, it seems to me,

is

the punishment of those people who made this

possible in the first place. Because, well,

the word "absurd" always feels

unpleasant in the context of the Kemerovo

tragedy

to use, but nevertheless, the authorities

are saying this was an unauthorized building, meaning

the Winter Cherry shopping mall, which is in

the center of Kemerovo and practically

the city's largest shopping mall, was an illegal construction.

And supposedly we're not to blame—some

woman is to blame, the former head of this

poor State Construction Supervision office.

Tell me, please: the mayor drove past this building

and didn't know it was

an unauthorized building? And Tuleyev, who sat there for 27 years

(Aman Tuleyev, the longtime governor), he didn't know it was unauthorized either?

And he wasn't taking bribes from the developers? And

the deputy governor, and the deputy mayor in charge of construction,

and this woman's superior,

this woman from State Construction Supervision, and the current

director of State Construction Supervision—they all didn't

know? So it all just somehow happened by itself?

you know

a shopping mall that thousands of people go to

every day

the Emergency Situations Ministry, as we know, last year or the year before

held some kind of

even a conference there on fire

safety in a building that is

an illegally built structure. You’ve probably read that book

*Night Watch*

and if you haven’t read the book, then you’ve seen the film

well, in it there was the building of the Night

Watch, and

an ordinary person couldn’t see it; you had to

be an Other to be able to see it

that kind of secret building. But in Kemerovo it was the opposite:

ordinary people somehow

could see that, well, standing in the middle of the city

was a shopping mall, a huge shopping mall

while officials drove past and didn’t notice that there

was an illegal building there—it just didn’t exist for them. They drove by and

saw some kind of empty space, or it seemed to them

that there were still workshops of some

enterprise there, because now everyone is saying with

astonishment, my God, so

this was an enterprise—just imagine, it was still

officially a factory, a confectionery plant or

whatever it was there. So, arrest the director of the confectionery

factory, arrest the director

of the confectionery factory—he converted

it wrongly, improperly, criminally, he

converted

his workshops into a shopping mall. For years they

went to this shopping mall, for years they

drove past it, for years they took bribes from

all of this, because just think about it yourselves

any inspection by the Emergency Situations Ministry, any police inspection

lease agreements, documents confirming the right

of ownership, permits for the right

to trade, whatever, licenses

for the cinema and restaurants surely existed

were being processed, and for an alcohol license they

had to bring in a document and show

that we are located in such-and-such a building

but there is no building—the building is illegal. If the building

is unauthorized, and yet inside it there is

massive commercial activity going on, well

then obviously, excuse me, the regional leadership

and the city leadership knew about it

were taking bribes from everyone, and that’s why everything

stayed as it was

and none of them has been punished. And now there

the main thing is

the political conclusion, of course, is

Aman Tuleyev’s resignation, which was presented

as his voluntary resignation, although

it is perfectly clear that it wasn’t exactly

voluntary. Here’s a man who “voluntarily”

resigned on April 1

saying that with such a burden, with such a burden

in fact, with

this burden, he cannot, he has no moral

right to remain governor. Let’s watch 25

seconds from his address now

today. I want to tell you now: I have submitted

to the President of the Russian Federation

a request to resign. I consider it for myself

the correct, deliberate, the only

right decision, because with such a

terrible burden, to continue working in the post of

governor is impossible

and you know, at the moment when we were watching

all this, I was watching and even thought, well

after all, there is still something

human in this man—sorry for the tautology

he did at least say, “I can’t.” No matter whether Putin

forced him out or something else, he came out and said

I can’t carry on with such a burden. Fair enough. But

then it turned out that with such a burden

he cannot be governor, but

he is keeping the governor’s residence for himself

that state residence—he is keeping it

for himself. He is also keeping the title of

“People’s Governor,” and that title is not

just something printed on a business card; with

that title come money and 3

million rubles a year (about $50,000), despite all

that burden, which he will continue to receive

from the Kuzbass budget

more than that, what happened after this

turned everything into, excuse me, simply

some kind of disgusting farce, because

unable to bear this monstrous burden

Tuleyev said that he was stepping down, and we

assumed that he had left public service, but

it turned out that immediately, within

a single day, he became a deputy, and the whole country

said: how can that even be? Without

an election? And today it became clear that

an absolutely ingenious, in its sheer brazenness

and nastiness, scheme had been

carried out

so, Tuleyev, like all the other crooked

governors, headed the list

of United Russia in the regional assembly; he was

the “locomotive” candidate. Then when they

there, you see, right now you can see the list

so, Tuleyev headed the list

of United Russia candidates, then they get into the assembly

well, in Kuzbass apparently, I don’t know

they got 99 percent or 146. He was supposed to become a

deputy, and he officially comes in

and says, you know, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want

to be a deputy. And with this obvious lie

that everyone expected every year: I’ve changed my mind, I don’t

want to be a deputy, I’d rather remain

governor, and he officially declines

the mandate. Then for several years he

works as governor, and now it turns out

that at some point, when under the

burden of responsibility he decided to submit

something there, he can come back

and say, by the way, I’ve changed my mind

again, please give me back my mandate

and they hand the mandate back to him, and he becomes

a deputy. How is that possible? This is

essentially just mockery of the entire

electoral system, of the whole system

of power—you can do this several times

you can change your mind; at the same time, you can be both

governor and, potentially, well, that is,

first you're a deputy, a governor,

a potential deputy, then an actual deputy

already elected, and at the same time a potential governor

you decline it, become governor, and

but after serving as governor for several years, you

still potentially, at any moment,

can become a deputy again. But that's

absurd, nonsense. But still, I asked

I read it and thought: impossible.

If he gave it up many years ago, how can he

possibly get the mandate back?

I asked our lawyers, and they looked into it

and said there had been a ruling by the

Constitutional Court in a similar

case, which said this was improper,

some kind of abuse

of the electoral system. But overall,

legally, in Russia, this is impossible. Except, sorry,

excuse me, it is possible simply to

just go ahead and get a deputy's mandate. So, well,

fine, he became a deputy. But today came the news

that a group of United Russia members

naturally loyal ones, announced that

they are nominating him for the post of speaker

of the legislative assembly. So he would, in effect,

remain the boss of Kuzbass (a coal-mining region in Siberia),

just having moved over from

the governor's chair

where he could no longer stay because of such a

heavy burden, into the speaker's chair

of the regional legislature, while keeping his dacha

and now receiving a double salary. He would

receive one as speaker of the legislative assembly and also

continue receiving one as the 'people's governor'

keeping everything for himself, and he would

still remain this same

master of Kuzbass, speeding around in his

splendid motorcades, as you may remember.

He didn't even come there on the day of the fire, saying

that his motorcade would interfere with the work

of the rescuers. You can google it on YouTube

and see for yourself: the motorcade really is

impressive. Nothing has changed, not even

the person directly responsible for all this, who

has been sitting in his post for 27 years

— 28, even; we don't even remember anymore.

In any case, it's been well over twenty years.

He of course bears direct responsibility

for the illegal construction

for the collapse in EMERCOM (Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations), for all of it; he bears direct

responsibility. Nevertheless, he remains.

There will be some kind of figurehead under him,

a formal governor — Sergey

Savelyev, the very same one who at the rally

said that the people who came to the rally

had come there for self-promotion. Let's

watch that 15-second clip, but we need to keep

watching those 15 seconds. Let's look again.

Let's watch.

[laughter]

[music]

So what do we have now, after

several weeks? A few

scapegoats; they are quite likely

guilty, they are under arrest, and most

likely will go to prison.

The political leaders, both at the

regional level and at the national level — because, overall,

I repeat, EMERCOM is responsible for all of this —

they all remained in their positions, all of them

stayed right where they were. More than that,

the Kemerovo authorities, after recovering from

that brief shock when the spotlight of the whole country

was turned on them, they

returned to their usual state

of organized lawlessness, and it even seems to me

that they have gone further than they did before.

Because an absolutely fantastic

case — well, yesterday it seemed fantastic,

but today it has turned into a

completely realistic incident — happened at

Kemerovo airport, where Mikhail Svetov, a

fairly well-known

political activist and libertarian, arrived.

He travels around cities and towns giving lectures

on libertarianism, and in particular he

went to Kemerovo simply to deliver a long-

scheduled lecture.

Well, they must have checked the database there and thought, aha,

some guy is flying in from Moscow who has

a lot of followers on Twitter,

so he must be coming here to say something bad about us.

So, at Kemerovo airport,

when he landed, he was surrounded by

a group of plainclothes men who said

they were miners. Behind them stood

some police officers. They beat him,

stuffed him back onto an empty plane and

sent him back to Moscow. Let's listen to 27

seconds from Svetov himself.

So, I have just arrived in

Kemerovo.

About 15 people just forcibly

dragged me into a room and held me there for 40 minutes,

tore my shirt,

and forcibly shoved me onto the next flight back to Moscow.

What is this — Somalia? The Central

African Republic? Afghanistan?

Some tribal zone? How can this happen in

a city — not even in the North Caucasus, but in a

regional capital?

A person arrives — you've been to an airport,

there is security everywhere, police, cameras

hanging all over the place.

And then some people simply walk up to this person,

some thugs — even in the 1990s, something like this

would have been hard to imagine. These thugs

grab him, lock him up, and then drag him

onto a plane and say: that's it, fly back.

How can this be possible? It can only be possible

because, of course, it was organized by the local

police. Of course it was organized by the local

FSB (Russia's security service), because otherwise it

couldn't happen. This is an airport — a high-security

zone, an area with special measures to combat

terrorism and various threats.

It’s impossible to do otherwise—there is a person

there making statements, writing on Twitter

posting videos, causing a scandal—and nothing

happens in response.

You can send it to Moscow: zero attention, zero

people punished. Everything is the same. This

Kuzbass, Kemerovo mafia—gangster

instead of being broken up and

purged after this enormous tragedy,

when dozens of people lost their lives

and the whole country watched in horror

at it—this mafia feels even

better, even safer, because now

they can hide behind all these

stories about how it was supposedly CIA agents

spreading information about the dead, and

so on. They’re simply using this to

protect their own mafia-style

interests even more strongly. I’m speaking about all this

so passionately because

during the election campaign, I

went to Kemerovo twice,

spoke twice in Kemerovo,

and spoke once in Novokuznetsk. It’s a

great region. I’m very grateful to the people

who came to the meetings.

It’s an excellent region, full of

wonderful people. There I

was convinced—I saw that I received

tremendous support, and I’m very

grateful to everyone. So somehow I

want to do something good for these people,

because when I came,

for example, to Novokuznetsk,

there was a rally at the same time—mine and the city mayor’s.

The mayor of Novokuznetsk, who supposedly got 90 percent there—

well, our rally was bigger than the mayor’s.

That’s why I’m fighting for the residents

of Kemerovo Region, as if they were my own. I

was in the city of Kemerovo and saw that it is

one of the most devastated cities

I’ve ever seen. Novokuznetsk is

a little better, but Kemerovo is just

a nightmare—ruined shacks right in the

city center. And of course it’s simply

infuriating that this

mafia has spent 27 years claiming that they

have achieved something, when in fact they’ve simply

destroyed the entire region.

There, 70 percent of sources—from drinking water sources—

are contaminated. The environmental situation there is monstrous,

there is poverty,

there is terrible healthcare.

In the program where I gave the statistics

in detail for Kemerovo Region,

it was among the worst by almost every indicator

in its category—one of the worst in Russia.

The standard of living there is awful, the

life expectancy is awful—everything is bad. And this

mafia, instead of as a result of these

tragic events getting what they deserve,

has only grown stronger. And now they’ll also

steal more money—funds will now be allocated for

fire safety, and all that

money will be stolen together with our

wonderful federal EMERCOM (Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations), where,

I repeat, no one has been punished, not a single

resignation has happened. They haven’t even

acknowledged the obvious: that something in this country

is seriously wrong with fire safety.

Even now it’s practically pouring out of every

crack. After all, we

naturally started paying closer

attention to news about

fires. We saw that in Moscow, at the

shopping center

Persey for Children, you understand, there was a fire and

once again one person died.

A toy store in Tyumen—let’s

watch 20 seconds of it burning.

How can this be in a country where we

spend 160 billion rubles annually on

fire safety? Let’s show the footage from Tyumen.

Let’s take a look at the clip.

[music]

But

of course,

this isn’t just a fire—it’s a massive blaze.

And this is happening all across the country. It

happens more here than almost anywhere else.

Last time I cited the number of people killed in

fires since the catastrophe, the tragedy at

Winter Cherry (the Zimnyaya Vishnya mall in Kemerovo). This time the figures look

absolutely monstrous. If we take

Russia’s annual statistics for deaths in

fires, then simply

extrapolating for the period since

the Winter Cherry fire, in Russia

450 people have died in fires. We simply

don’t notice it. If, God forbid, it

happens in one place, we all see it,

especially if people start writing

text messages saying, “We’re dying, we’re dying,

help us.” But when here one

person dies in Moscow in a shopping-center fire,

there one person dies, and all across the

country people are overcome by smoke, suffocate,

we are worse than Africa—I said this in the

last program,

I’m saying it now, and every time we

discuss the work of EMERCOM, when we discuss

the work of rescue services, we need to say this:

we are worse than Africa,

worse than any European country,

worse than in Ukraine,

worse than everyone else. And these people sit in

their posts and keep skimming enormous,

staggering sums—tens of billions

of rubles every year—puffing themselves up,

covering their chests with medals, and

nothing changes from the standpoint of

fire safety. We see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Go right now, simply

to the official statistics site,

to EMERCOM’s official website, and you

will see that fire-related mortality in

Russia is not decreasing. This has failed, it

has failed, and no one has been punished for it.

I should say: let me answer.

A few tweets about them—I thought, why not.

Will you talk about the fire here in Moscow, and also in

St. Petersburg there were several fires too, writes in

the account Overkill, our regular viewer. Well,

look, it's impossible to talk about every fire.

They happen across the country constantly.

Almost 10,000 fires a year, 30 people

every day—it's just that we wouldn't have paid

attention to another shopping mall fire

in Moscow if it weren't for Zimnyaya Vishnya (the Winter Cherry mall fire in Kemerovo).

But this happens every single blessed day. Show me

a few more tweets—let me do it this way.

Anastasia writes: fire is the topic. Ru...

Tuleyev, cancellation of elections, Excel... I didn't manage

to read it all. In Kazan they want to build

a waste incineration plant. The local population

is against it. How do you make the authorities listen

to us? Listen—protest, hold rallies.

In today's Russia, nothing except

rallies works, and even rallies

barely work—you need to gather a lot of people.

Tuleyev resigned. That was

a pseudo-resignation by Tuleyev, but at least it

happened.

And it happened solely because a rally was held.

If furious residents hadn't come out

with cameras onto the central square, then even

Tuleyev's resignation wouldn't have happened—whatever they say there.

About the working title—I'm being asked: we have

a party congress on May 19, and as you know, our

names keep getting stolen. We had

a party with the name People's

Alliance.

That name was stolen. Their mechanism for theft

is very simple: they take one of their own

Kremlin parties and simply

rename it as our party, stealing

all the symbols and everything else along with it.

Then the same thing happened with our Party of Progress.

We tried several times

to register it, and we were refused.

And then they stole that name too, stole all

the symbols, so we've scheduled the congress for

May 19. Once again, we will

demand registration of our party,

because we know that our party

is the largest mass party in the country. But so that

they don't steal from us before the congress, we literally

wrote down the working title as just that:

we submitted a paper to the Ministry of Justice saying

Party Congress, quotation marks open, Working

Title, quotation marks close. At the actual

congress, at the last moment, we'll come up with some

new name. Honestly, as of

today, there is no name yet, because

well, it no longer matters that much what

the name will be.

That's more of a technicality. The main thing is that

we have a party.

In essence—I'm being asked by Ovan:

why in today's video did you compare

regional ratings with nationwide ones?

A lot of people didn't understand that. I released a video today—

a ratings video today, sorry.

Right now, in the previous program... I'm getting tongue-tied again.

And I wrote—well, a lot of people wrote,

there were lots of comments: Alexei, you're starting

to slur your words. That's absolutely true.

I am slurring my words. I really need a vacation.

I am planning to finally take one when

I can, for about 10 days. In this program,

I'm just trying to speak more slowly

so I trip over my words less.

I really did release a video with a very

simple idea: no one should be frightened by

Putin's huge 76 percent ratings.

It's simply complete nonsense. Take any

governor in Russia and you'll see that

his rating is even higher.

And yes, in that video I compare

Putin's rating with governors' ratings.

Of course, a governor's rating

in the most recent election is within

his own region, but essentially that changes nothing.

If propagandists tell us

that Putin is the top man, the coolest,

then he should have the highest ratings

everywhere. And naturally, take

any governor and ask him who's more

popular—you or Putin?

Of course: Vladimir Vladimirovich is the most

popular.

It is precisely from Vladimir Vladimirovich, our

tsar-emperor, that all power flows, and that is

in fact true. Putin is the foundation of this

corrupt system of power; it is a personalist

regime of Vladimir Putin. I'm simply

comparing him with governors' ratings to

show once again that these governors—you

know yourselves—are most often complete

[__], and nobody even knows

who they are. How many do we have now—two,

I think, governors who are just former

Putin bodyguards—and they all get 80

percent. A person shows up,

runs for governor, and he has never

lived a single day in that region,

and gets 85 percent. That's why I say:

don't pay attention to these

ratings, to these numbers. They mean

nothing. They mean only one thing: that lies,

propaganda, and falsification work very

well. So

that's exactly how I'll treat them. As for what's coming next—

there will be new investigations, but

investigations take time. We

are working on them; it's a fairly

complicated process.

So, I was just talking about

the party, and there are a lot of questions about what

will happen to our future structure—this

structure that we created during

the election campaign. That is our main

achievement: we created it, they created...

created.

Even though I'm speaking slowly, I'm still

getting tongue-tied—creating a real...

a nationwide political network

an active one that can actually do things

various things for you, not just some

names

a regional branch in Kazan—we know

that in Kazan there is a functioning

regional branch that can

carry out an investigation, can

organize a rally, can hold

a party event—that is, it can

engage in political activity

We had offices like that all across the country

—eighty-four of them. Now we

should show you a little graphic: it was

and now it is this: 83 offices—well, 83 after all

including the volunteer-funded ones, we now have

45 offices left. Why? Because

we simply cannot maintain 83. It is

very expensive. During the election period

for that short stretch of a year and a half, we

were doing this, we were gathering, raising a lot of

money. Remember, on every broadcast I

was raising money, we were sending out mailings

about money. We will continue to do

that, but we understand that that much money

to maintain all of them and manage them

as an organization—83, 84—several of those

83 offices, we were funding more than 70 of them, and

several offices were so-called

people’s offices, when people finance

all of it themselves

But now, having realistically assessed

our capabilities, we have gone through a very

painful and, of course, difficult process of

downsizing

Everywhere there are wonderful people, everywhere people

are doing great work. We want to keep everyone

we want to preserve it all. Besides, in some

places—but in general, take Kemerovo Region, for example

(a federal subject of Russia)

we had two offices, in Kemerovo and in

Novokuznetsk, because they are two large cities

one of the regions where there is no clearly defined

capital—Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk are roughly

the same size. But within one

region, we can no longer keep 2

offices, so we kept the one in Kemerovo and closed

the one in Novokuznetsk, even though the Novokuznetsk office worked

wonderfully. And so this is the difficult path

we are taking. But we will preserve most of the structure—45

offices. Among these

offices, several volunteer-funded ones remain—that is, people

said: don’t cut us. If there is no

money, we will raise the money ourselves

we will chip in, but we will keep the office, and

therefore most of our structure

will remain, and we will use it

together with you for political struggle

for work. This is not my structure, not

some personal structure, and not a party structure

—the working title is: it is your structure

your structure, and we

we will all coordinate together and

try

to learn how to work with it, because until

now, unfortunately, in Russia there has not been

a single example of a political

party or movement being able to create

and maintain a real regional

political structure. More often than not, it is

a regional branch that does nothing

and merely exists on paper

That is not interesting to us, and it is not interesting to you

either. You are not going to give money for that

We want this structure

to work effectively

to report back to you, and for you to continue

supporting it. This is all something that

from scratch

all of us will have to invent, and then

make happen. And we will figure it out, and then

we will do it—I have no doubt about that

Kasper 985: will the trips

around the country continue? Yes, trips around

the country will continue, though not as often, of course, as they did

before. But this is one of the most

wonderful and amazing things

I have done, and I will continue. Besides, this is

part of a politician’s job. If a

politician claims that he is

a federal-level politician, if he claims

that he influences the situation in the country, wants

to influence the situation in the country, understands what

is happening in the country, then he must travel—and I

will, of course, continue doing that. Now, about

the Magomedov brothers

a great many questions have come in about why they were

arrested. People read the press, and the press

is writing some astonishing nonsense—that this is

an attack on Dvorkovich, that this is a weakening of

Medvedev’s group, that this means some

people have defeated others, and I have received

quite a lot of questions, because those

who follow our work closely

know that we have been paying close attention to the

Magomedov brothers. We did

an investigation into Dmitry Peskov, and in

that investigation the

Magomedov brothers

showed up in a big way, so

we have been watching them closely, and of course I

have been following very carefully what

is happening to them now

They ended up in a SIZO (pre-trial detention center), and there were some interesting

media reports saying that they

got there and were surprised—how could it be

that there is no hot water here? There was this article

in *Moskovsky Komsomolets* (a Russian newspaper), where

a correspondent spoke with Magomedov, and

they said: how can this be, there is no hot water

and showers only once a week, and there is also no

gym. Well, I am not saying this

out of gloating—I am not going

to gloat over people who

have ended up in the inhuman conditions of our prisons

but one simply wants to say this

to the Magomedov brothers: and when

other people were being thrown in jail, everyone stayed silent

that was normal, and in that sense I have

this universal Ildar

Dadin formula. When I once wrote a post on

this topic,

when Ildar Dadin, arrested for

holding one-person pickets, was tortured

in a prison in Karelia, everyone

kept silent. And so now, to people like the

Magomedov brothers, who kept silent when

Dadin was being tortured, we should give exactly

as much sympathy as they

once gave him. Well, that’s a kind of

Old Testament principle of revenge. Several

smart people wrote to me saying you can’t

say that, it’s wrong, but nevertheless

—

I still stick to this

concept. I feel sorry for the Magomedov brothers

exactly as much as I felt sorry

for the absolutely innocent Ildar Dadin.

That is, for example, zero percent. So,

anyway, you remember we released a series of

investigations about the remarkable liar

Dmitry Peskov, and one of those episodes

was devoted to his wonderful trip

on the yacht *Maltese Falcon*

— renting that yacht, the largest

sailing yacht in the world, cost 26

million rubles a week at the time when he

used it.

And we said then, and continue

to say now, that it was precisely the

Magomedov brothers who chartered this yacht for

Peskov. In this way, they were paying him

a bribe. When we released the investigation

about Peskov’s son, a British citizen,

who had been living in the UK and, after coming

here, turned into a member of Russia’s

golden youth, there too

the same Magomedov brothers appeared in our findings.

The Magomedovs. Let’s watch 30 — actually,

37 — seconds from that investigation of ours,

so you remember what I’m talking

about. Already on Facebook we can see that Choles

calls himself the creative director at

the company Fight Nights. They organize

fights, various shows, and competitions. This

doesn’t surprise us at all. He

really can work there as

creative director, lord

of fights, ruler of the ring — whatever he wants.

After all, this whole spectacle is sponsored by

Peskov’s friend, businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov,

the very same Magomedov who, as we

claimed two years ago, paid for

Peskov and Navka’s honeymoon on the

largest and most luxurious sailing yacht in the world,

*Maltese Falcon*.

In other words, the crooks, the Magomedov brothers,

were bribers, paying off everyone in sight —

Peskov in particular.

They provided favors, gave bribes, delivered cash,

and hoped that things would go very

well for them. So the question is:

what suddenly happened to them

that was so important that even these bribes

to Peskov didn’t work? I can tell you — I

think I understand what happened to them.

I can tell you my version, and

I’m sure it’s quite close to the truth and

to what really happened. In fact, this

has nothing to do with Medvedev or

Dvorkovich.

The thread is connected to the Novorossiysk

Commercial Sea Port. If you go now

to this company’s website, you

will see a very recently

published company report.

There is an interesting line in it:

on April 5 there was an attempt to hold

a shareholders’ meeting, and it was disrupted,

and it was disrupted precisely by

shareholders connected to Magomedov. Let me

show you one slide from that report. You

can see it here —

there’s a lot of stuff and it’s not clear

what it all means, but in this

little rectangle at the top, the shareholder

structure, it says NMTP — that is

Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port.

And if you look at the little boxes

on the right, you will see

a box labeled LLC PTP. And that is

essentially the whole problem for the

Magomedov brothers.

And to explain it, as much as possible,

without any complicated

legal explanations, let me explain

it all with duckies. There are two

little ducks. Look: what are the

Magomedov brothers known for, what did they make their money on?

In the town of Primorsk — God knows where that is,

it’s nowhere near Novorossiysk, it’s on

the shore of the Gulf of Finland — they bought

a useless piece of land that was worth nothing.

Then they contributed this piece of land

to the share capital of that very

— and what was written there as PTP is

Primorsk Trading

Port. Let this duck be

the Primorsk Trading Port. They contributed

this land, which was worth nothing, and

received 50 percent. Everything else

was provided by Transneft, and Transneft

also gave the Magomedovs the contract for

the construction of this

trading port. Even then they stole

a huge amount of money from the construction and got

50 percent of a very valuable and impressive

enterprise for nothing. This was still under the

previous head of Transneft,

the one — those of you who have followed

my work for a long time probably remember him.

I had that big, loud

investigation into Transneft called

“Theft in Transneft” (a play on words in Russian).

It was devoted precisely to this

scheme, and this was one of the frauds.

One major fraudulent scheme was precisely this:

the theft of a huge amount of money from Transneft, together with

Magomed, involving the Primorsk commercial port.

Then Novorossiysk

Commercial Sea Port appears.

The main troubled enterprise, at

some point, came in and bought

the Primorsk port for 2.5

billion rubles, which they borrowed from

Sberbank. The money that the

shareholders of this scheme received, they then paid back here,

and it turned out that they essentially got it for nothing,

because it came to them for free. They

continue to own it because

subsidiaries of Novorossiysk

port received a significant stake in this.

That.

But in the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea

Port, that is, they invested zero, but as a result

of purely legal manipulations, they ended up owning

enormous, enormous assets

worth many billions of rubles.

If we bring back that slide now and

look at it again, we can see that

it even lists the dividends by year

that were paid out by the enterprise

Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port.

You can see they were paying out billions of rubles

to shareholders.

And among those shareholders were

the Magomedov brothers, who received a lot

of money from it. In other words, they got

this enterprise for nothing and were drawing

large amounts of money from it, and all of this was also

financed through Sberbank loans.

And as I understand it, right now

events developed in such a way that

they said to Transneft: Transneft, you should

buy our stake here, in this

port, and accordingly, at this

point, for some huge,

gigantic, colossal amount of money. Transneft

said, well, we don't want to. Then they

simply went ahead and disrupted

the shareholders' meeting of Novorossiysk

Commercial Sea Port, after which

Tokarev ran to Putin and said, well,

those people of yours there,

your people, because of course all these

machinations around buying the stake, all of that

happened under Putin, and it could not have

happened without Putin's knowledge.

His FSB (Federal Security Service) people there, all sorts of overseers,

former colleagues, and everyone else, of course

knew everything. They were getting some

share of it. But then Tokarev came and said,

sure, the Magomedovs are paying your

press secretary, and paying someone else too,

but right now they're getting too bold and trying

to rip something away from us by sheer lawlessness.

After that, Putin said, all right, I

authorize you to devour the Magomedov brothers.

There was a meeting with Tokarev, and

Tokarev, the head of Transneft,

met him in the morning or afternoon, and by evening they had already all been

arrested. So what we are observing

is simply one group of corrupt officials and crooks

devouring another group of corrupt officials and crooks.

This has no

grand political consequences.

It just means Peskov will have to find someone else

next time to pay for

his Maltese Falcon yacht, or buy something, or

place his son in some other

company.

A certain number of officials have lost

this cow that was giving them

wonderful sweet milk, but overall

this has no grand, highly

significant political consequences.

The material base is shrinking, there is less money

in the country, and so they are

devouring one another.

Overall, though, it is still one big

process of robbing you and me. In the

end, if Sberbank financed

all these deals, and Sberbank is a

state bank, then who ultimately paid

for all of this? We did. If money was stolen

from the state and from Transneft for these

schemes, then who paid for it all? We did.

You and I, the viewers of this channel, teachers,

doctors, everyone — we paid for all of it.

That means we paid for Peskov's

yacht, we paid the salary of Peskov's

son through these Magomedovs. As I understand it,

now they will be forced to hand over this

Novorossiysk port. They may

be released, or they may not be released,

but that is not important. In any case, their

families, this whole mafia, will still keep

many, many millions of dollars. Those

millions of dollars will be

redistributed a little internally, but you and I

still won't get anything. We won't see

the money, we won't see hospitals, we won't see

roads, we won't see anything good. And this

is happening in part because the people

do not participate in governing the state,

and last week we

once again saw

a truly striking example of this,

because in Yekaterinburg

one of the country's largest cities,

despite a very impressive

demonstration organized by the city's mayor,

Yevgeny Roizman — good for him

for doing that — our штаб (campaign headquarters) was involved there too.

Thousands of people took part, many thousands

came out to this rally. In this regard,

I of course saw comments, the usual kind,

the traditional Kremlin-style ones: oh come on,

Yekaterinburg has a population of 1.5 million,

and only a few thousand came out — that's

nonsense. No, it isn't nonsense, because you have to

compare it with other rallies, and this one

was definitely one of the largest in

recent years, and we know perfectly well

It’s clear that even according to polls

by sociological services close to the Kremlin

or oriented toward the Kremlin

people—we can see this. This issue, it seems to me,

is simply, in general—though it isn’t written here

—65 percent of people

in a nationwide poll said that

city mayors should be elected through direct

elections. We constantly conduct such

surveys.

Government sociological services

conduct such polls, everyone conducts them, and

they consistently show one thing:

the country’s residents, the people of the Russian Federation,

demand direct mayoral elections, and that is not

happening. In that sense, we see—well,

yes, communists usually use this kind of

language, but there’s no other way to put it—the most

blatantly anti-people policy of Vladimir

Putin and the United Russia party, because

they are acting directly against the will of the people. In

Kazan, this has happened many, many times,

and that is exactly how it happens.

What’s interesting is that in today’s, in

the modern political system, when

everything is completely squeezed shut and nothing can

be done,

the struggle for direct mayoral elections,

for direct elections of mayors, is turning into

one of the main political slogans and

political demands. We saw in

Yekaterinburg one of the largest

rallies take place, and despite that

rally, the very next day

United Russia voted to abolish

mayoral elections. Interestingly, for example, in

Magadan, what is happening there now—

the movement for elections for the mayor of Magadan—has become

the opposition’s main issue.

It’s striking how ferociously,

how brutally they are trying to crush

this movement there.

A completely

fantastic situation occurred, even by

Russian standards. If you

google these reports, you’ll see

what happened there in more detail.

It’s written about there. One peculiarity of Magadan is that we

looked into this a bit because

we wanted to take part in the elections to the Magadan

regional legislative assembly; Georgy Alburov even went

there. The internet there was very slow until

recently, and it still remains

an isolated region. There are very

popular internal chat groups there. There are

regions like that—for example, Yakutia (Sakha Republic)—where

people sit in WhatsApp and take any

information and simply forward it to one

another from phone to phone. And in Magadan

it’s exactly the same: large

group chats are very popular, with hundreds of

people in them. And in one of these chats, someone

insulted the mayor of Magadan. Unfortunately, I can’t

find exactly how

the insult was worded, because

I would very gladly repeat it to that

person before a much

larger audience, that insult, because

—

do you know what they did over it?

Over that insult, they opened a criminal case.

So, someone in a chat wrote that the mayor

of Magadan was an idiot—used a different word, but

they have that right. If you’re a politician, then please,

go look at my comments—they call me

all sorts of names. If you’re a politician, then you

automatically give people the right to write

various things about you—that you’re an idiot,

a fool, whatever. If someone spreads some

actual slander about you, that’s a different matter, but

just insulting you? That’s normal. People

insult politicians; that’s part of the rules of the game.

But the mayor of Magadan apparently can’t just let it go,

so they opened a case.

And they started confiscating phones from people

who were in that chat—actual,

real searches began to be carried out at

people’s homes. They came and said: we’ve opened

a criminal case; the mayor of Magadan was called

an idiot, so we’re conducting a search of your home

and taking your phone. Naturally, people

were in shock. This is an unprecedented situation.

And in fact, that’s exactly what happened, and the coordinator

of our штаб (campaign office/headquarters) in Magadan, Yablokova Arina,

said that over several days, from several people

they took phones. This really is some kind of

horrific investigation, a sensational

investigation of the century—and this is in Magadan, with

all its problems, with its level of

crime. And they are seriously

investigating who exactly insulted the mayor there

in that chat, and who exactly there is demanding

the return of direct mayoral elections. This is a

sign of the times: even when people

are demanding something absolutely basic, something

that the overwhelming majority of people clearly support,

these bastards

run after them, trying to take away

their phones, trying to suppress them, trying

to crush them, trying to eliminate even

these poor little chats where someone

is simply discussing how it would be good, in general,

to hold a rally for the return of direct

elections for the mayor of Magadan. So, my friends,

across our entire huge

beautiful Russia—not the Russia of the future,

but the Russia of today—

direct mayoral elections are still in place, actually,

how many regional capitals do you think still have them?

In 7.

Though we also added Moscow and

St. Petersburg—but Moscow and

St. Petersburg are separate; they are

separate federal subjects, but in essence

that leaves only Abakan, Anadyr,

Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, and Khabarovsk,

and Yakutsk.

These are the cities where direct elections still exist.

the mayor—that is, it's impossible, we don't elect anyone.

In our country, gubernatorial

elections can't really be called elections. There is

a municipal filter, and that way

it is simply controlled one hundred percent who

will be allowed to participate.

At least mayoral elections offered some

opportunity to engage in politics there.

United Russia is getting rid of that. Why? Because

they lost mayoral elections one after another.

In Yekaterinburg, where they elected

Roizman; in the Novosibirsk mayoral election, where

the Communist Lokot was elected; in the mayoral election

of Petrozavodsk—they would have

lost the Moscow mayoral election

if it had not been rigged. They

manufactured a first-round victory for Sobyanin

and, seeing that, they got scared and

decided simply to deprive all of us of elections.

This is critically important, because without

municipal self-government, without this

main level of government, where people actually live,

where most problems are discussed and resolved,

of course nothing good can happen in the country.

The system is fundamentally

broken. If you don't have normal city mayors,

then Moscow runs everything.

And everything is run by one specific person—Putin.

Even snow removal on the streets of your city

is controlled by Putin, because he

also appoints the mayor through his United

Russia party, and as you can easily see,

he does it very, very badly. And this

topic, I can see, is quite relevant right now.

I just saw a tweet about the mayoral

election in Moscow. This whole, whole

system

of squeezing out mayoral elections across the country

naturally brings us to the most important topic,

the most important discussion taking place right now.

It is a discussion about what exactly

will happen with the Moscow mayoral election.

It is supposed to take place in September of this

year, so that's already quite soon. We

won't even have time to look around before it is

announced, something happens, someone

gets elected. Naturally, Sobyanin will

try to be re-elected. Moscow is a big,

huge city—the largest in Europe—with

an enormous population that

they still haven't managed to brainwash. People

use the internet, they get

news from independent sources, and for us—

for all of us, no matter where you live—

it is very important that in Moscow

this system gets a real, strong fight.

Right now I see a lot of

stupid messages in Telegram

channels about how, supposedly, there is some kind of

Navalny position: Navalny wants this,

Navalny wants that. My favorite, Alexei

Venediktov, the king of intrigue,

especially the king of Moscow intrigue,

wrote something and amused me with his

message. Many journalists

quoted it, saying the scheme would be

as follows: United Russia nominates Benin,

Yabloko nominates Mitrokhin, Sobchak

nominates Gudkov,

and Navalny nominates Yashin—and that is where

the intrigue lies, and we will watch how this

intrigue develops. Now I want to tell you all

very clearly:

I have two interests in the Moscow mayoral election.

Interest number one: that the candidate

who runs gives Sobyanin a real fight and says

plainly everything he thinks about

Sobyanin, everything he thinks about Putin,

everything he thinks about this failed

system of governance, everything he thinks about

corruption in Moscow; that he calls things

by their real names and gives the real numbers,

and turns this election into a war

of decent people against crooks and thieves.

And second, my interest is that we

choose a candidate together,

someone who will wage that fight—that we choose

together the person who

will run and represent our interests.

I cannot run. I would not be able

to run now for the post of Moscow mayor,

but I also simply can't, because, well, you all

understand perfectly well that they will once again not

allow me onto the ballot. But I need

a candidate who represents me. I

see only one way to choose the best

candidate: to hold primaries for such a

candidate. And

this is a very interesting discussion that

is now taking place around the primaries. Some

people are judging it incorrectly, as if

the opposition is quarreling among itself or

there is some kind of intrigue. No, no, in fact

it is not like that at all. It is much bigger.

It is a discussion about how to choose a candidate for the

post of Moscow mayor; it is a discussion about what

the opposition should look like and on what

principles it should be built. Therefore I urge everyone

to follow it very carefully,

to speak out on the matter,

and to take part in this discussion, because

in reality it is not about the candidates. It is

a discussion about us—about how much we will be able to

influence the situation. Well, say I am simply

a resident of Moscow, Alexei Navalny,

and I want somehow, somewhere,

to speak out, do something, put

some kind of check mark, and influence whether

it will be Ivanov or Petrov.

So let's take a look at who has already

announced that they

are running for the post of Moscow mayor, which candidates.

We should have a slide about that.

Look, Sergei Mitrokhin has stated

and has already spoken at length about the fact that he is running for

mayor, that he will run for Moscow mayor.

My opponent last time was Dmitry

Gudkov.

about a year ago, he said that he

would run for mayor of Moscow.

Yelena Rusakova wants to as well; she heads

the municipal council of the Gagarinsky District.

By the way, she’s an excellent deputy. I’ve

known her for a long time — one of those deputies who

actually said that when I

was collecting these signatures from municipal

deputies, it was no problem at all — we could organize that right away.

Ilya Yashin is on

this slide, but so far he still hasn’t said

that he will take part in the mayoral

election. I think that, in this

list, these are my personal preferences — they’re

probably obvious from the standpoint of my

number one priority, from the standpoint of

organizing a fight against Sobyanin.

Well, of course, out of all of them I would prefer

Yashin, because right now I myself

am engaged in this fight with Sobyanin, and with all

my respect for the other candidates, I don’t

see them actively, proactively, with real

energy, organizing people and

taking on this mayor’s office, doing things that actually

make it uncomfortable. Yashin, for example,

did an interesting little thing — some kind of

“municipal inspector.” Let me

show you 51 seconds

of what he does. At the very least,

it’s interesting. Let’s take a look here for

a second. You know, municipal

deputies don’t actually have very many powers,

but there is one important area

of responsibility: we oversee

repair work that takes place in residential

buildings — major renovations, facade repairs,

entrance hall repairs, and so on. So

today I want to show you how we

actually do this work, to show

this area of our activity.

[inaudible]

[inaudible]

[inaudible]

[inaudible]

[music]

[inaudible]

[inaudible]

Thank you, bye.

I want all candidates to be doing this kind of thing.

As a voter, as a Muscovite (resident of Moscow), I want

and demand that all candidates be engaged in

something similar. They don’t necessarily have to run around

apartment entrances — conduct investigations,

do something. Conduct investigations into

snow removal, conduct investigations into housing and utilities services,

conduct investigations into construction,

speak out, expose and tear into

this disgusting, thieving Moscow

government on any issue. Fight them, and

I, as a voter and as a politician,

can say once again, very clearly, on air,

that yes, this is my demand

of the candidates. But I will support whoever

wins the primary, whoever wins

the primary.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Yashin, Rusakova, Gudkov,

Mitrokhin, Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov (a comic fictional character from the Soviet film *The Diamond Arm*), maybe

even some politician there whom I

don’t like at all because of what he does —

I commit myself absolutely to supporting

whoever wins these primaries,

provided that a lot of people come out and

vote in them. Why do I consider this

so important? Because you cannot

run for the post of mayor of Moscow if you’re

afraid of a primary.

If you want to become mayor of the largest

city in Europe,

then, excuse me, you should at any

moment be confident that you’ll show up and

win that primary. I ran

for president, and well,

there simply were no primaries, but I have no

doubt that I would have won them.

Maybe easily, maybe not

so easily — I would have relied on you, I would have persuaded

you, and I would have won those primaries.

That’s why I’m always happy to support

such procedures. I organized elections to the

Opposition Coordination Council (a Russian opposition body),

because for me this is a clear way for

a politician to address you, convince you,

gain your support, and win or

lose. If I lose, I try again

to win. It’s clear how

it works, and it seems to me that for you and me this is

also

also beneficial, because then the candidates

— and now I’m speaking not only of myself

as a politician, but as a Muscovite —

then the candidates are accountable to us. They

then, I don’t know, record video addresses,

say, “Guys, vote for us,” and

I feel that no one is saying, “Alexei,

will you vote for me because I’m

such a great guy?” I want that. I

want the opposition to answer to me, and

right now a very interesting discussion is underway

about what exactly these primaries should look like. And

two points of view have clashed, each of which

generally has some, well, some

grounds and some support. This discussion

was started by Dmitry Gudkov,

who published a fairly long

post on Facebook — you can see it now — and

he criticizes the system of these broad, general

primaries, especially online ones, and says that

there should be primaries

among municipal deputies — that is,

municipal deputies should

vote, because behind every

municipal deputy there are people as well.

That would be a more proper approach. Dmitry

Gudkov is opposed by Ilya Yashin, who still

isn’t officially running for anything, apparently,

hasn’t announced anything, and it’s actually unclear

whether he will or not. But he says that

this is not the right system, because we

We should give every Muscovite (Moscow resident) the opportunity

to take part in such a selection process, but I

certainly

hold the second point of view, because

well, excuse me, when primaries

are organized among municipal

deputies

what is that called? It is called

the municipal filter. That is what Putin

and United Russia came up with. They said:

no, you should not choose the governor by direct

vote; we will choose the candidates for you

and let them pass through the municipal filter. So

and here we are being offered the same thing: let us

put the opposition primaries through

a municipal filter. I do not really

like that, and it seems to me—in fact, I am convinced

that most people do not like it either. At

least, most of the questions

I have seen—there was just a poll

[music]

by Alexander Plushev, a correspondent for Echo

of Moscow (the Russian radio station Echo of Moscow), on his Telegram. If we look

at the voting results, 93 percent are in favor of

direct primaries and against the municipal

filter. I also ran a poll on my Telegram

and there too

more than 90 percent—92 percent of my

Telegram channel audience—

people support having direct

elections. Interestingly, municipal

deputies themselves—many of them, at

least—have also written rather

quite

passionate posts saying that direct

primaries are needed. I noticed that the head

of the Yakimanka municipal district

Andrei Morev also wrote a post—you can

go and read it. He proposes a kind of

mediation between Gudkov and Yashin, but

he states directly that there should

be

there should be direct primaries, not

a municipal filter, because when

tens of thousands of people—or at least a thousand

people—come and vote, then those

people will later be interested in

working as volunteers and donating money

to the candidate. That strengthens

the candidate. I repeat: what we all need is

a candidate who is not afraid to come forward and

win in these primaries. Only

such a person will be able to give Sobyanin a real fight

I will repeat once again, because there is a lot of

misinterpretation: I am saying, I am making

a public promise that I will support any

politician, whether I like them or not,

whoever wins the primaries

Volokolamsk—let me say a few words. Goodness, I

am running over time again, I apologize

but I cannot help saying a couple of words about Volokolamsk

because arrests have taken place there

but entirely the wrong people were arrested

were arrested. We more or less know the whole

mafia that created the problem in

Volokolamsk

That is, essentially, Governor

Vorobyov, Mayor Sobyanin, Chaika’s children (the family of former Prosecutor General Yury Chaika),

and various other officials who

are part of this vile mafia. You

can see this chart from the investigations

that we carried out several

years ago. They organized this

filthy mafia network that

makes money simply by taking garbage

away and dumping it somewhere in the Moscow

region

They make money from it, while people

are suffocating. And how do the Moscow authorities respond?

They arrest—

they arrest whom? The organizers of the rallies

and in Volokolamsk right now under

administrative arrest are Artyom

Lyubimov and

Andrei Zhdanov

They are fairly active members of the initiative

group. One was given 15 days

of arrest, the other 14. Lyubimov has announced

a hunger strike, so I simply wanted

to call on all of you to support these

people, to support the movement in

Volokolamsk, and in Kolomna, and in Klin, because

this is a movement of ordinary people

against the mafia. The fact that they are now

putting such pressure on members of these initiative

groups—besides the fact that they have

arrested them, they have started checking someone's

business, going after clients—well,

that is, they are taking revenge for these rallies—not on

the mafiosi, but on the organizers

of the rallies, and that is disgusting

We all must, of course, support

such people right now. One last topic

Sorry, I have gone past the time limit again

of our program. Elena Mizulina—the very same one

who called me a so-called

blogger. As it turned out on the previous program,

I inflicted a cruel insult on her

and Mizulina appealed to the prosecutor’s office

because I showed a video clip here and

supposedly misinterpreted her

words and created some kind of

impression for you that she did not mean

what she said she meant. Well, if the video we showed

somehow offended Elena Mizulina

so deeply, then

it is probably absolutely necessary

to watch it once again. I would like

to express words of sympathy and support

to our leader

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. I have never anywhere

publicly declared that I am a member of his

team. I did not shout it in the squares

but today I want to say it: I am a member

of his team, the team of the Russian people

who are with him, because for him

this video is a stab in the back, and

it distorted the senator’s opinion specifically on

the opinion of Elena Mizulina, which

which, strictly speaking, is exactly this

senator—that's an important detail, by the way

I started thinking, because Elena Mizulina

she's not just some girl, some young woman—she

was very active; in 2013 there was even

a criminal case opened against

people who had somehow, in some way

insulted her in a similar way and said online

or on television something against her

something inappropriate. I started wondering: how can the opinion

of a senator—what exactly does it consist of? I don't

I went on YouTube and

found an old opinion of Senator Mizulina

that differs from what she

is saying now. Let's watch these 50

seconds: "I believe that Yavlinsky

is, really, Russia's destiny. It's just, well,

that's how it happened, that's how it turned out, Russia was lucky

to have such a man as Grigory

Alexeyevich among the candidates

that thanks to his participation

he sets a very high bar of expectations

for a candidate, that he creates the possibility

for comparison. And of course, if the choice fell on

him—and I would very much like to

hope for that—then I think Russia

would leap forward, with the election of just

one person to the presidency,

would leap ahead by several

decades."

Interesting how that works. So where is that very

opinion of the senator that, apparently, we all

don't understand, distort, and are supposed to interpret correctly?

Right—now she's on Putin's team, and he is

her national leader, whom she adores, and

at the same time

Grigory Yavlinsky is Russia's

destiny,

the only person with whom the country

can leap forward, and so on. How does that

fit together in her head?

And what you get is 50 seconds from which

it's impossible to understand anything at all. Let's

listen: "I would like to express words of

condolence and support to our leader...

"Yavlinsky is, really, Russia's destiny. I

have never publicly stated that I am a member of his

team. It's simply

that that's how it happened, that's how it turned out, Russia was lucky

that what he is doing for Russia today

is incredible.

"Defending Russia on the international stage, and at home

carrying out reforms of incredible force.

"This man truly is open; he

throughout all his years in politics

has proven that everything he proposes, he

proposes openly. He doesn't just propose things

in words—he sets them out in the form of

fairly well-founded, carefully thought-out

programs, as it should be. I am a member of his

team—the team of the Russian people

who are with him."

If Elena Mizulina is outraged that I am

distorting her words here, it seems to me

that nothing is more distorted than

Elena Mizulina's own position. This is

the height of perversity, the absolute height of perversity.

Because before 1995, as I saw in her biography, she

was a member of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

Then she was a member of the party

together with me—I was a member of the party

Yabloko, and Elena Mizulina was there with me. I

remember her perfectly well.

She was a member of the Yabloko party. I

have talked about all these things before.

Grigory Alexeyevich

was the best man in the world. After that, in 2001,

she left Yabloko and said that

it was shameful to be in Yabloko—even though just a moment before

she had been saying that Yavlinsky

was the only one. Then suddenly she was ashamed of Yabloko.

From Yabloko she moved to SPS (Union of Right Forces).

She was in SPS until 2003.

After some time she left SPS.

Things started going badly for her there too.

She lost her seat in the State Duma, and immediately

things got bad, so she joined A Just Russia.

She spent some amount of time in

A Just Russia, after which she

left A Just Russia as well, and now

she has joined Putin's team

and sings him astonishingly flattering

praises. Dear Elena Mizulina, your

political position cannot be

distorted, because your political

position can be described in only

two words:

political prostitution. You may

be upset, you may complain about me

to the prosecutor's office, but Elena Mizulina is not

a senator, not a servant of the people, but a political

[__] who is sitting on our necks

taking our money, running from party to

party, praising and fawning over the leader of whatever

party she happens to be in at the moment

for one reason only: in order to

stay in her chair, in order to

receive—effectively steal—money

from taxpayers, in order to have

her official car, in order to

lecture us on how to live. This is political

prostitution, dear Elena Mizulina.

File a hundred thousand

million complaints against me—for each one I

will repeat exactly the same thing. Thank you all very much.

See you next Thursday.

[music]