What’s going on with the Venezuelans? Who ate the school breakfasts? They’re going to make hoofs for Putin out of tanks.
Text version
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[music]
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Hello everyone. It’s 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, which means
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that we’re live from the Navalny Live studio. I’m Alexei
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Navalny, and this is my program, *Russia*
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*of the Future*.
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This week, Alexei Navalny is the man
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who supposedly woke up ISIS — but that’s not all.
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Besides that, this week I’m also the person
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who, according to
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my favorite TV channel’s version of events,
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Tsargrad, ought to be dealt with by psychiatrists. Well, actually, yes — psychiatrists, according to
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Tsargrad’s view of life, should probably deal with all of us,
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not just me. Please send your
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questions with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, and if
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they show up on Twitter, send them to us — we’ll
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put them on the screen, and I’ll try
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to answer them. So, what do you want to discuss first?
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Venezuela, because the phrase
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“So, how are the Venezuelans doing?” is obviously
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going to replace, for quite a while, the phrase
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“What about the Ukrainians?” or “Think about your own 7,500 rubles
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(about $115 at the time) instead.”
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Actually, haha, that was a joke, because
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the question “How are the Venezuelans doing?” and the question
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of your own personal 7,500 rubles
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are one and the same question, because
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congratulations, dear citizen
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of the Russian Federation: regardless of
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your age, social status,
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salary, and so on, you have invested in
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the wonderful Venezuela of the present — or rather, in
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the terrible Venezuela of the past — 7,500
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rubles each, because here in power we have
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these mighty
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geopolitical masterminds. They outplayed everyone. Putin
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outplayed everyone, and on top of that he also has
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this guy Sechin (Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft),
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so even if Putin somehow hadn’t outplayed everyone,
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Sechin would have rushed in and outplayed them too. Over the past few years, they
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have invested in
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Venezuela
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$17 billion — that’s about 7,500
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rubles for every
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citizen of the Russian Federation.
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Now, for those who are thinking: is that a lot
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or a little? Who the hell knows,
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on Russia’s scale maybe
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it doesn’t seem like much, maybe we somehow had
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an extra $17 billion lying around. But those 17
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billion — I made a video about it
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and said back then, when there was another round
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of investments, that this money would never come back.
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It was an idiotic decision to invest
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in Venezuela. The money would never return. In the
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comments there were tons of people writing,
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“Come on, Alexei, don’t meddle in geopolitics. These are
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important matters. We have to support this.”
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“We’re investing now, and later it’ll come back to us
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many times over — whether in bananas or
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oil.” Well, let’s take a look. And today on Facebook I
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saw a chart and, let’s be honest, stole it
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from a political analyst — by the way,
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a pro-Kremlin one — Mikhail
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Vinogradov. Nina, keep
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this image on screen a bit longer so we can all
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enjoy it. You can see the bars here — these are
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this year’s federal budget expenditures.
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And here — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven — we see not
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a bar but this big fat marker: that’s the debt
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of Venezuela. You see, proportionally speaking,
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in terms of our country’s actual life, it’s bigger
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than education. It’s bigger than interbudgetary transfers
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between budgets — interbudgetary transfers
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are what the federal center allocates
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to the regions, to all the regions of enormous
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Russia, so that they don’t go completely bankrupt
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and end up destitute. It’s bigger than
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healthcare, never mind environmental
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protection, housing and utilities, and so on. In other words,
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these are unimaginable,
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enormous sums of money that, for some reason,
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we poured into Venezuela. And with that money we
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could have built a great many things here in
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Russia. Not that we could have rebuilt absolutely everything,
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but an enormous number of
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infrastructure projects could have been completed.
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A huge number of people could simply
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have received higher salaries. And as for
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that famous issue of treatment for sick
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children, for which everyone is always fundraising
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— we could have
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guaranteed, for the next 20 years,
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to any parents whose children, God forbid,
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fell seriously ill, we could have guaranteed
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that all of it would be
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paid for from public funds. But that money,
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for some reason, Putin, Sechin, and the rest
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of that whole gang invested in Venezuela.
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So what are we going to get now, and what exactly
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is happening in Venezuela? I see, just like you do,
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just the picture: a huge
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number of people in the streets of Caracas,
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a huge number of people in the streets
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of other cities. Well, you can see this kind of
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footage.
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According to the “Moscow city authorities” style of reporting, almost no one
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showed up to this rally again.
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An enormous number of people. And interestingly enough,
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all sorts of our
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Kremlin crooks and propagandists are lying about it. But it’s not
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just them — not only are they lying, but
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many perfectly normal people
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have also been misled, because many people
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seem to think that all this means
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something like: people came out into the streets and chose
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some random guy, some obscure
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guy named Juan Guaidó — we need
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to remember that name; obviously we’ll be hearing it often — and then
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basically
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those who love revolutions are saying,
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“Great, people came out into the streets,”},{
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“picked a leader for themselves,”},{
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“and made him president.” And all sorts of
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crooks are saying, “What about legitimate authority?”
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“Did they all just get together and this mob of nobodies,”
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“appoint some upstart?” Medvedev (Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and prime minister)
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posted a whole series of tweets today: how could this be,
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this interference in the affairs of who-even-knows-whom?
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they appointed him, the people who rose up, so this is
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an absolutely incorrect understanding of the situation
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a misunderstanding of what is happening
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in Venezuela, because there
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this is a completely legitimate process
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a legitimate process is accompanied by
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demonstrations, of course, but the person
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who declared himself president, he
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did not do it simply by a show of hands at
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a rally — “Oh, Juan, come on, we like you,”
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“you’re a cool guy, let’s choose you,” and
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make him president. He is the speaker of parliament, he is
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the chair of the National Assembly, well
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that is, it is an elected body. He not only
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was elected there as an opposition figure, despite the fact that
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despite all that
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Maduro controls the courts and controls
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the mass media and a great
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many other things, this man
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was elected to parliament and won a majority
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in parliament, well, reached some agreements, and he
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was elected speaker of parliament
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the parliament, the National Assembly, by the way
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has been at war with Maduro for two years already
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who, in fact, illegally usurped
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power
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is reducing parliament’s powers and simply
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by controlling the country’s Supreme Court
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is trying to dissolve this
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parliament altogether, and convened some kind of constituent
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assembly made up of some obscure
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random guys — so in that sense
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Venezuela’s parliament is a much
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more legitimate authority than Maduro
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who, as a result of obvious
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falsifications, came to power and
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is holding onto that power, usurping power
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and when I see a statement by the speaker
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of the Russian parliament, Volodin, saying that
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well, some nobody-knows-who
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was brought in there, basically just some man off the street, well
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Volodin should really keep quiet on that subject
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let’s take a look and remember those
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wonderful charts showing how Volodin was elected in
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the Saratov region — remember
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those famous sixty-two point two
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percent? The elections, supposedly, were honest
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in the Saratov region. Amazingly
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at every polling station, one after another, everywhere
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United Russia’s result was 62.2, 62.2, 62.2
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that was Volodin’s district. Thanks to that
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vote for United Russia — obviously
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a falsified vote in his favor — there
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it was just such a
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mathematicians calculated that not even a
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one-in-a-trillion chance existed that at
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several polling stations, straight across the board
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the result would be 62.2
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Volodin is a man off the street who, having stolen
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the election, wormed his way into parliament and sits there, and
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as we know, secured for his mother a
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500-square-meter apartment — now that is a real nobody-knows-who
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that man off the street. But Juan Guaidó
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is the speaker of parliament, and in that sense
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right now
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in Venezuela there is an undeniable conflict between two
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branches of power: the less legitimate
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presidential one and the more legitimate
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parliamentary one, and from the standpoint of simple
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common sense
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of course one wants
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the parliamentary branch to win, simply because
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the presidential власти — Chávez and Maduro — they
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have driven the country into catastrophe. One should not
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forget that Venezuela, in terms of
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oil
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is the richest country in the world, richer than
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Russia, richer than Saudi Arabia in terms of
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oil reserves — that is, it could simply have
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become the wealthiest state on earth
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but these two clowns, Chávez and now Maduro
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they — let’s show a graphic from Meduza (an independent Russian media outlet) — but
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here is what these wonderful people have done, you
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see
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inflation during the Maduro years — I can’t even
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be bothered to count the number of digits — it is
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two billion percent inflation. GDP
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fell by 45 percent. Three
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million people fled the country — that is, 10 percent
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of the country’s population simply fled
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Venezuela. What is happening there now, and what
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has been happening over the past years, is an
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economic crisis far worse than
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what existed in the Soviet Union before its collapse
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far worse than the Great Depression
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during the time of
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the Great Depression in the United States: enormous
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lines for basic food products
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riots, constant looting of stores
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all of this is what Maduro has done — he simply
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turned a wealthy oil state into an
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officially ultra-poor state, well
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just imagine: if three million people
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simply fled across the border, there were even
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cordons set up by neighboring
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states on the border with Venezuela
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afterward because people were just pushing through
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just running away. You also have to understand that
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in the USSR there was a crisis, shortages, and huge
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lines for soap, but that was in 1982
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whereas there, in 2018, in 2017, people had nothing
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to eat. And one of the — it is actually hard
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even to imagine this, but
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one infuriating factor for Venezuelans
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was that since food
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was genuinely scarce and everyone was losing weight, they
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looked at government officials on
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television
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just Maduro’s people, and saw that they were
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just getting fatter and fatter and fatter, like in
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those meme pictures
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about Prosecutor General Chaika (former Russian prosecutor general) — it would be
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a challenge: these ten-year
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little cheeks versus those massive cheeks. And in fact
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that really enraged people because
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they were literally losing weight, they
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literally did not have enough food, they
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were going hungry, while Maduro had plenty of everything
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It's a good thing that, apparently, more and more...
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...most countries hate him more and more, and...
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...his victory in the most recent election was...
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...completely rigged. By the way, that...
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...once again shows us what all these figures are worth.
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I mean, come on, the guy supposedly...
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...won a month ago, won with...
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...something like 65 percent, if I remember right—and so what?
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Hundreds of thousands took to the streets. You can't...
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...say Maduro has no support at all.
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He still controls the army.
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The army is supposedly staying neutral, but...
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...the military leadership has declared its support for...
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...Maduro, and he still controls...
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...the courts. But it seems to me—let's hope...
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...his days are numbered.
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And, sadly, so are the days of our hope that...
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...these $17 billion...
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...or about 7,500 rubles per person...
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...for each of us, will ever come back. Well, I...
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...think the new government is unlikely to just...
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...cross it all out entirely, but there will be some kind of...
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...restructuring stretched out over 130,000 years or something...
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...like all those African debts and other...
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...Latin American debts to the Soviet...
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...Union. Sooner or later, they will still...
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...have to be forgiven. And here we see in the picture...
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...two great geopolitical masterminds, and we...
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...have to ask ourselves a question: well, there they are...
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...shaking each other's little hands, and those...
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...handshakes cost us, as we saw in the...
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...image, simply unimaginable sums of money...
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...many times greater than annual spending...
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...on education and healthcare. What did we get...
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...out of it? Why was there...
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...this whole absurd...
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...idealistic spectacle staged around it? Do you remember the...
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...Tu-160 bombers that flew...
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...there and all that? What for, exactly? I mean, in...
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...Putin's head there is some strange picture...
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...that for the sake of Maduro—and before him...
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...Chávez—who kept coming to Russia constantly...
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...I mean, they came here just an endless...
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...number of times. More often than them, only...
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...leaders of foreign...
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...states from the former...
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...Soviet Union visited Russia, and right after them...
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...came these Venezuelans...
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...who came here as if it were their day job.
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Every time, they were loaded up with suitcases of money.
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Why? Because they said, "Putin is...
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...wonderful," and they also recognized...
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...the independence of South Ossetia. Great. Was all that...
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...really worth paying them $17...
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...billion? No. But getting back to it...
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...I just want to show you these...
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...hellish videos about how...
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...the bombers flew there, how...
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...they were received. Let's watch 47 seconds...
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...of meaningless, idiotic hype.
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A few more seconds, and in the cloudless sky...
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...the silhouette becomes clearly visible...
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...of a Tu-160 strategic missile-carrying bomber.
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First to touch down is Vasily...
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...Reshetnikov, followed by an honorary escort of...
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...Venezuelan fighter jets. Nikolai...
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...Kuznetsov.
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Each "White Swan" (nickname for the Tu-160) has its own name. From the Barents...
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...Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the Caribbean Sea...
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...across the Atlantic Ocean: 13 hours and 10,000...
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...kilometers (about 6,200 miles).
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The welcome was not just warm, but hot in...
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...the literal sense: outside, the temperature was over 30°C (86°F).
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The flight, the pilots admit, was not an easy one...
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...and not only because of its duration. For almost...
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...the entire route, the Tu-160s were escorted...
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...by aircraft from NATO countries. This is not just...
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...cooperation—this is friendship based on...
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...respect. Such warm relations...
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...in the military-technical sphere began in...
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...the time of Hugo Chávez...
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...and continue under President Nicolás...
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...Maduro.
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And this, excuse my language, crap cost us...
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...$17 billion. A few more seconds, and...
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...in just a few more seconds, the missile-carrying bombers...
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...touch the runway.
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Thirty degrees, a sea of joy—what even...
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...was this stupidity? And what was it...
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...supposed to be—intimidating the U.S.? They couldn't care less.
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Support for the people of Venezuela? They...
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...couldn't care less. At that very moment, people were standing in line for soap.
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Did this help them in any way? Well...
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...they burned a huge amount of aviation fuel...
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...kerosene, flew in—fine, okay...
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...they flew in. We demonstrated that our...
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...bombers can fly. In other words...
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...they did what, generally speaking, we...
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...built them for and maintain an army for. So it's...
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...pure showmanship.
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This is some kind of strange bravado...
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...a stupid foreign-policy...
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...game again. Fine, if you're supporting...
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...an authoritarian but somehow...
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...strong regime that is developing the country...
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...that's one thing. But here you're shoveling money...
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...into suitcases for people...
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...who created 2 billion percent...
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...inflation, under whom GDP fell by half...
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...and you're giving them money. And all...
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...you get in return are these videos...
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...clearly aimed at the dumbest part...
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...of the population, which enjoys this while sitting...
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...there broke.
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But they enjoy the idea that our...
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...look, our bombers made it all the way to Venezuela, and...
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...there they are greeted by people like this, all...
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...covered in stars. Well, we have people with...
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...gold stars too. You could put one...
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...somewhere in Kubinka (a town near Moscow known for military airfields), and he would walk...
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...around some aircraft, and the picture would look...
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...very similar.
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To sum up, people ask me...
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...what new levy the government will come up with...
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...to make up for Venezuela's debt...
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...to Russia. A tax on air?
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Utility bills for garbage removal at 544 rubles?
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No, they won't invent a new tax.
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you paid for it
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with your own hard-earned money, for all these
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the infamous retail tricks like prices ending in 9,
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all these so-called one-liter
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milk cartons that actually contain 900 grams,
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of milk
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low wages—but that’s exactly what this is:
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money. It’s already gone. That tax, your
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labor, our crushing poverty—we have all
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become
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$17 billion poorer.
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We didn’t get several new
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bridges. We didn’t get several
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new high-quality roads. We didn’t get
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any additional demand in the economy.
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Once again, we have to send more
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text messages to raise money to get someone treated,
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and some people we won’t be able to treat—children,
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horrible as it is to say, children and adults,
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anyone at all,
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will die because they don’t have medicine,
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because we couldn’t get it for them,
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couldn’t treat them, while we’ll be lying on planks in
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hospitals—like in that infamous case of
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two stools and two boards in some
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hospital,
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used to create extra beds. That is the
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tax we have already paid. So
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I think—I am convinced—that this money
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is lost to us, because of the way the
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Russian government behaves, when it
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declares: we support
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the one and only legitimate Maduro.
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Most likely, soon enough he’ll be spending his days
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somewhere in Rostov or on Rublyovka (an elite suburb of Moscow).
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It’s obvious that the new government of
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Venezuela will hardly be eager
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to return this money to us. And of course,
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even for purely political reasons, Putin
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can’t just switch sides now and start
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supporting the new authorities. But to push
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harder than anyone else and support
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Maduro more than anyone else—that makes no sense
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from any rational point of view. Fine,
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even if
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it turned out Sechin was an idiot—we already knew he was
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an idiot, and now it’s confirmed: Sechin is an idiot,
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and he persuaded everyone to invest money in
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Venezuela, he poured Rosneft’s money into it.
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What should be done?
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If we’re being rational, first of all he should be kicked out
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to hell. Second, they should start
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some kind of back-channel negotiations,
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say: guys, we’re taking
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a flexible position here; for us this is a substantial
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sum—$17 billion—so let’s somehow
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quietly establish informal contacts, let’s
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not put all our eggs in one basket.
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That would be a very cynical position regarding Maduro,
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and I do not support it. But even if
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you’re being completely cynical—maybe Maduro will hold on,
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and we’ll make a deal with him; if these others
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win, then we’ll make a deal with them—we’ll
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be a bit more cunning. But no—they boldly, without
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a second thought,
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sacrifice our money. Old man Putin
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Continuing on the subject of money,
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to paraphrase Yuri Dud (a well-known Russian interviewer), who
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asks everyone: if you found yourself standing before
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Putin, what would you say to him? If you found yourself
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standing before your salary,
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what would you say? Most residents of
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Russia, unfortunately, would probably say:
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“My salary is so tiny.” I’m joking,
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of course, but really it’s not funny at all: we have 22
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million people living below the poverty line, and today we
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launched a major project,
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possibly the biggest one we’ve ever
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launched, and
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I’ve already written about it, but it is also a kind of
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personal political manifesto for me,
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because I believe that what we
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have now begun to do—without abandoning
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anything else we’re doing—is exactly what
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Navalny’s team has started; the video is out, you
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can watch it. This is what the
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opposition should be doing. I’ve been thinking about
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this for quite a long time. Those who have seen my
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speeches when I traveled to
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the regions know very well that I always
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began by asking what people’s salaries were
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and comparing them with the official figures. It was
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a very funny part of my
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speech, because people would simply
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laugh when I cited the official
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Rosstat figures for salaries in their
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regions.
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It all finally came together in my head
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while I was under arrest in a special detention center. The best
22:32
ideas come when you’re under arrest. I
22:36
deliberately
22:37
signed up to see the paramedic there.
22:41
There are detainees there, and there are
22:43
paramedics. Detainees are, well, a rather
22:45
specific contingent:
22:47
some have delirium tremens, some are drug addicts,
22:50
some are simply sick people, with pain,
22:52
blood pressure issues, all sorts of things. And there is a paramedic
22:56
there all the time, around the clock, though on
22:58
weekdays in particular, they actually
23:00
have quite a lot of work to do,
23:01
because, well, someone is always
23:03
having some kind of episode. So I deliberately
23:07
knocked on the door and said: I need to see a doctor.
23:10
I needed to test a hypothesis
23:13
about the paramedic’s salary. I was sitting there
23:15
with those papers—the so-called May decrees
23:17
issued by Putin, in which he
23:21
guaranteed a certain level of wages,
23:24
tying them to the average salary—and I saw
23:26
figures there, something like this:
23:28
the average salary in Moscow was, say,
23:31
80,000 rubles. So I think: here sits either a
23:34
nurse, meaning mid-level medical staff,
23:35
or a paramedic, meaning junior medical
23:37
staff, so this person’s salary
23:40
should be somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 rubles.
23:42
Let me ask her now.
23:44
I knock on the door and say, "Come on, you see..."
23:47
To see the doctor. After a while, the escort guard
23:49
takes me up to him, and I go in.
23:50
"Hello, hello, could you take my blood pressure?"
23:53
And meanwhile, I sort of spread out
23:55
a piece of paper and say, "Listen, may I just
23:57
ask you something, please? It's not
23:58
a very comfortable question, but what is
24:02
your salary? Because I want to compare it
24:04
with the official figures, which say that your
24:07
salary...
24:07
And there it says from 60,000 to 80,000 rubles (about $650–$870), and the woman
24:11
very pleasantly says to me, "Well...
24:13
I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but my salary is
24:15
27... well, 25, actually."
24:17
I say, "Wait, 27? 25? In Moscow, to live on
24:20
that while working here? Your average salary
24:23
should be something like 60,000, no
24:25
less." And then she says a phrase
24:27
after which I understood everything: "Alexei, come on,
24:31
who would ever allow us to be paid that kind of
24:35
money?" And I thought, damn, wow—so this is it.
24:41
A person works in medicine, and her job
24:46
is, first of all, considered
24:48
something that should come with special pay,
24:50
because you're working with
24:52
prisoners, a special contingent,
24:55
you're definitely working with people who are
24:57
constantly dealing with all kinds of problems, you see.
24:58
You have to treat people with delirium tremens (severe alcohol withdrawal), too.
25:02
And she says, completely seriously, "Well, who
25:05
is going to pay that kind of money?" She herself
25:07
doesn't even really believe, in principle, that
25:10
a situation is possible in which they would
25:13
pay 60,000 rubles (about $650). That's not some incredible amount of money,
25:16
you'll agree—especially not an incredible amount
25:19
for living in Moscow. That's when I
25:21
realized: damn, there are all kinds of
25:25
politicians, all kinds of parties, there are
25:28
theoretically trade unions in Russia, but
25:31
there is no political force at all that
25:33
represents the interests of this woman and
25:36
will finally come out and say: if
25:40
Putin guaranteed and promised the May decrees (a set of presidential social spending orders issued in May 2012),
25:44
and claims that he has
25:47
fulfilled them, then pay up—pay exactly
25:50
what you promised. Let's take a look, by the way.
25:52
There's a short video where Putin
25:54
tells us that everything is fine, everything is
25:56
great with the May decrees. For a whole range of
25:58
categories of public-sector workers,
26:01
wages in state-funded institutions have long
26:04
not been raised for several
26:06
years. In this connection, I propose carrying out
26:08
indexation of wages precisely for
26:12
these categories of public-sector
26:15
employees.
26:17
Back in 2016, they reported that indexation had been done,
26:21
that everything had been raised and indexed,
26:24
but they still don't pay. There are various
26:27
ways around it—they move people onto some
26:29
quarter-time position, a fraction of a full-time post, and so on.
26:32
But they don't pay. And I thought that this
26:36
is exactly what needs to be dealt with.
26:39
So if you're a politician, and if in the country there are
26:42
millions of people who are being underpaid—because here
26:45
pretty much everyone is underpaid—then if you're going to create
26:48
trade unions, then of course trade unions need to be created.
26:50
Remember, I discussed this in detail here,
26:52
before.
26:53
How in Berezniki, at that collapsed
26:56
Uralkali mine, people died—that's how
27:01
trade unions should act.
27:02
There should be active trade unions at all factories.
27:04
That is, people should
27:05
fight for normal wages.
27:08
But these public-sector workers—there are some 6 million of them,
27:10
or 5 to 8 million—they have it
27:13
guaranteed on paper, written down,
27:17
and at all these meetings the ministers sit there
27:20
nodding their heads, saying, "Yes, we pay them all."
27:23
That is, for this woman I spoke
27:25
to, someone went there and reported back,
27:27
saying, "Yes, we paid
27:29
60,000 rubles (about $650)." But many are not being paid that, which means
27:33
someone has to defend her.
27:35
Someone has to talk about this, after all,
27:37
because there will be no
27:39
economic growth
27:40
if there are no wages and the population is impoverished.
27:43
Nothing can be done that way. It really is
27:45
just as I said in the video—our fight against
27:47
corruption from below.
27:48
We all need to unite and finally
27:51
say: enough, this has gone too far.
27:54
We don't need to be spending money on Venezuela
27:56
—there won't be money for that damn Venezuela
27:59
if they start paying normal wages
28:02
to people. Not gigantic wages—just normal ones. Very often
28:04
you hear this nonsense:
28:06
"Oh, but then hyperinflation will start." Why would
28:09
hyperinflation start?
28:11
Because a paramedic in Moscow would
28:13
earn 60,000 rubles (about $650), as they should? Or
28:17
because in the Novosibirsk region
28:19
a kindergarten teacher would earn 32,000 rubles (about $350)? Is that where
28:22
hyperinflation would begin? Hyperinflation
28:23
would begin because billions are spent on all sorts of
28:27
nonsense—billions here, billions there.
28:29
Just look at how much is spent on
28:31
Margarita Simonyan, how much is spent on
28:33
state television, just on
28:35
endless Venezuela, Venezuela. Okay, money has been
28:37
spent there, but even inside the country
28:40
far more is spent on all kinds of absurdities, and
28:43
therefore, of course, we need to defend those people
28:46
who
28:47
are simply being underpaid.
28:50
I'm getting a lot of questions right now
28:52
about why we
28:54
started with public-sector workers, and what about miners,
28:56
and what about everyone else? Well, this is the first step,
29:00
because these people have guaranteed entitlements, and here we
29:03
can make a clear demand
29:05
to governors and mayors, to Putin and everyone
29:08
else: you promised, so pay. We can
29:11
bring in trade unions that will
29:14
work on this. Let me just show you the website...
29:17
I’d only just started working on this, and I printed out
29:20
a few pages for myself of what
29:25
people are writing, just to reassure myself once again
29:27
how necessary this project is. It says here:
29:32
Moscow: junior nurse, monthly salary
29:37
14,300 rubles in Moscow; 14,300 rubles in Ryazan Region
29:43
daycare worker: 11,907. How are people supposed to live on
29:49
11,907? And how shameless it is to say that this
29:52
person in Ryazan is supposedly earning
29:55
according to the statistics somewhere around
29:56
28,000 or 30,000
29:59
when you’re paying them 11,900. Cultural institution
30:02
employee.
30:04
Oryol: 15,454 rubles. That’s an adult
30:10
person earning 15,000. How is he supposed to send his
30:14
children to school? So it’s no wonder
30:16
that not everyone can make ends meet.
30:18
People survive off what they can grow themselves, planting potatoes
30:22
just to stay alive. Tomsk Region:
30:23
I’m looking again: orderly, 15,000 rubles.
30:28
Do these people need protection? Of course
30:31
they do. And it’s strange, really, that only now
30:33
we’ve finally started talking about this,
30:36
actually setting side by side
30:37
an orderly in Tomsk and
30:40
the 17 billion dollars Putin
30:42
is giving to Venezuela. He’ll stop giving it
30:44
when all these orderlies finally rise up.
30:47
We understand perfectly well that many
30:49
public-sector workers are simply afraid. And again, I
30:51
look here and see that people most often want
30:54
to complain, but they write anonymously, a little
30:56
hesitantly—someone writes,
30:57
"I’m ready to let you use my..."
30:59
I understand that they’re afraid, but unless we
31:03
push all this forward, nothing will come of it.
31:06
Either the authorities will feel
31:09
pressure from below—pressure from millions of people
31:12
pressure from below over their own
31:15
incomes—or they’ll just keep on
31:18
sending billions here and there.
31:20
Of course, he seems to think that this is
31:22
his personal money, because nobody is demanding anything from him,
31:24
and Putin thinks he
31:26
can hand it all out, while the orderly
31:28
just stays silent.
31:29
Well, our project exists so that people
31:32
won’t stay silent. We have people who
31:35
are ready to fight for all this right now.
31:38
There’s a union we’re working with on this.
31:40
And while we’re on the subject,
31:43
let me show you
31:46
a short video clip—1 minute 20 seconds.
31:49
It’s the medical union we’re working with.
31:51
They’re real fighters, and I was especially
31:54
pleased when they
31:56
brought us this video and said, maybe
31:58
you could post it on your channel, because more
31:59
people will see it. And I said, of course I can,
32:02
because that’s exactly what we collect donations for.
32:04
This whole studio exists
32:05
so that any independent
32:07
trade union can come here, and we’ll help any of them if they’re
32:11
truly fighting for a just cause. So, they
32:13
came and showed that they’re fighting not only for the rights
32:15
of doctors, but for patients’ rights as well.
32:18
A normal, humane trade union. 1
32:21
minute 20 seconds.
32:22
Hello, I’m Anastasia Vasilyeva,
32:24
chair of the medical workers’ union
32:26
Doctors’ Alliance. After our last
32:28
video, we started receiving emails
32:30
from staff and patients of Clinic No. 218.
32:33
Among those who wrote to us was
32:35
Valentina Nikiforova, who suffers from diabetes
32:38
and for a long time had been unable
32:40
to get them to provide her with
32:42
the subsidized medications she was entitled to.
32:43
She had an appointment scheduled with the chief
32:45
doctor and invited us to go with
32:47
her.
32:47
Of course, we agreed to support her
32:50
and went there together with Valentina Alexeyevna.
32:52
As expected, the chief doctor,
32:55
Olga Kolesnikova,
32:56
got flustered and immediately promised
32:58
to resolve Valentina’s problems.
33:05
The system works, everything works
33:08
perfectly. You’re lying... You claimed that
33:12
you had seen the original.
33:14
For six months they ignored her, but as soon as
33:16
she loudly stated her demands, they
33:18
were fulfilled immediately. Within 20 minutes,
33:21
Valentina received the medications
33:23
she was legally entitled to, and a month’s supply costs
33:26
almost 5,000 rubles.
33:29
Well, that’s money I won’t have to spend from my
33:31
pension, which of course makes me very happy.
33:35
So that’s the story. Thank you very much.
33:38
I’m very grateful. I don’t know—tell everyone that
33:42
they should contact Nastya, and she’ll go with them.
33:46
And there must be
33:48
tens of thousands of people like me, probably.
33:52
It’s a slightly funny video in terms of
33:54
how it’s presented—these union representatives,
33:56
the way she explains it sounds almost like a schoolteacher,
33:58
but in essence, you have to admit, if there
34:00
were 100 unions like this, if there were
34:04
one in each of Russia’s 80-plus federal subjects (regions),
34:06
and they were out there running around
34:08
dealing with these issues, from salaries to
34:11
free medicines, life would be
34:13
much better, right? Because the authorities
34:15
will act, will do something in
34:17
our interests, only when there is pressure.
34:20
In a normal system, there should be pressure
34:22
from trade unions, from a federation
34:25
of independent unions. As it stands now,
34:27
there is no pressure at all—these are just people
34:29
who fawn over the authorities. So,
34:33
let me show you a slide. It lists
34:34
the categories of people
34:37
who can take part in our project
34:39
right now. You can see: doctors and
34:41
nurses,
34:42
teachers, lecturers, and so on. If
34:45
you’re watching, get involved. If you have
34:48
friends or acquaintances like this, send them this link.
34:50
This is a major project that we will be
34:53
working on, and it is only possible with
34:55
your help. I am absolutely convinced that this is
35:00
the future of the opposition. We are not stopping
35:04
anything else we do: we will fight
35:05
corruption, we will work on
35:07
human rights issues,
35:09
we will do everything that decent, honest people
35:13
are supposed to do. But we will also
35:16
devote a lot of attention to this too—maybe
35:19
more attention than anything else, because
35:21
this
35:22
about millions of people being robbed. Today it is
35:25
public-sector workers; tomorrow it will be someone else, and we will
35:27
work on that too. So if you are, if you are
35:29
the leader of a local trade union and want to work with us,
35:32
go to the website and write to us as well.
35:34
Our entire infrastructure is quite extensive;
35:37
it is there for you, and we will be able to organize
35:41
political pressure on your local
35:44
bosses, and
35:46
well, maybe they will
35:47
refuse to pay wages right away,
35:49
but at the very least we will not let them
35:51
have the chance to lie that they have paid everyone
35:55
everything and that everyone
35:58
is doing fine. Clark Petrov writes:
36:01
What about the salaries of EMERCOM employees (Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations)? We just
36:03
have no strength left anymore. By the way,
36:05
an amazing thing: after
36:09
we launched this project, I actually saw
36:10
several letters from firefighters, from EMERCOM
36:12
employees—what is going on there? They are simply not
36:14
being paid. But we will keep adding, we
36:17
will keep adding new and new categories.
36:19
You cannot embrace the infinite, but we are
36:21
a nonprofit organization.
36:22
Form a trade union—you in EMERCOM, form a trade union.
36:25
We will help you, and together we will
36:28
work on your wage issue. So,
36:32
Sasha Peppa asks, in connection with
36:35
your latest video about trade unions:
36:37
I work as a barista. How can I support
36:38
the campaign, given that I do not know anyone in these
36:41
fields? Sasha, you are already supporting it.
36:44
It may seem to you that you do not know anyone,
36:46
but post something about it somewhere on your social
36:49
media.
36:49
Among the people you know, there are people whose
36:53
parents work in the public sector.
36:55
The state in Russia controls virtually
36:57
80 percent of the economy,
37:00
so certainly among your acquaintances, your
37:02
friends, relatives, and parents, there are those
37:07
who are public-sector workers. But besides that, you should
37:10
simply talk about it, just
37:11
discuss these things. Just do not stay silent—
37:13
say it.
37:14
Tell an acquaintance that in Tomsk Oblast
37:17
nurses earn 15,000 rubles, and I, a barista from
37:21
Moscow, am not exactly happy about that either,
37:24
or pleased with it. Sasha, I cannot tell whether you are a young
37:26
man or a young woman—just talk about
37:30
it. Say that there is such a project. Sooner
37:32
or later the information will spread; sooner
37:34
or later each of these 6 million people
37:37
will come to our website and compare their
37:39
salary with what they are supposed to be receiving.
37:41
So support us by continuing.
37:46
On the issue of poverty: yes, Kemerovo Oblast
37:51
of course stood out, stood out this
37:55
week probably among all the regions of Russia.
37:58
And I talked about Kemerovo Oblast more
38:01
than anything else in this program because there
38:04
the political order is worse than in
38:06
Chechnya even now, while at the same time it is a rich
38:10
region, an industrial region, and yet a
38:12
poor one. And this week the children’s rights ombudsman made a major
38:17
statement, telling us that in
38:19
Kemerovo Oblast—excuse me—
38:21
children are fainting from hunger because
38:26
their parents are so poor
38:28
that they cannot give them 50 rubles for
38:33
a school breakfast. And I know who ate
38:38
the school breakfasts in Kemerovo Oblast.
38:41
I can show you a photograph of this
38:44
man, because when I read this
38:49
news, I thought: these are just some
38:54
absolutely shameless people.
38:56
The children’s rights ombudsman told
38:59
this
38:59
the deputies of the regional assembly—the very same
39:04
regional assembly deputies. He was telling us,
39:06
saying: guys, in our
39:08
region,
39:10
children are fainting from hunger; their
39:12
parents do not have 50 rubles to buy breakfast,
39:15
and
39:16
the deputies just sat there and said: we do not know how
39:18
to solve this issue. But the ones who should solve it are
39:21
them—these United Russia deputies. Meanwhile, for this
39:24
guy,
39:24
this guy with the big broad face,
39:27
they are still paying for the upkeep of that
39:31
very dacha (country house) that I showed you. There are
39:33
1 million square meters of forest alone,
39:37
gas, electricity, its own road, several houses—
39:40
and he is no longer governor, but for some reason he is still there.
39:43
For some reason.
39:44
The upkeep of this dacha, frankly speaking,
39:48
more than covers everything needed
39:52
to give children from low-income families
39:54
50 rubles each so they would not collapse from
39:56
hunger. I will tell you even more: if we
40:01
look at the sources of income for
40:06
that very man himself,
40:07
Aman Tuleyev—why did I say that he
40:09
ate those breakfasts?
40:11
But that is not even a figure of speech. He filed
40:13
a complaint against me with the Investigative Committee
40:17
and even had an investigator from
40:19
Kemerovo come to see me at the special detention center
40:21
when I was under arrest, and interrogate
40:23
me because I had allegedly slandered Aman
40:26
Tuleyev. So I will mention again
40:29
that Aman Tuleyev invented for himself
40:31
a special piece of nonsense
40:34
called the title of “people’s governor,” and
40:37
the title of honorary citizen
40:39
of various districts, cities, and villages
40:42
in Kemerovo Region, he is an honorary
40:44
citizen of 11 cities and 7 districts, and for
40:48
that he gets paid, and these
40:51
shameless United Russia deputies
40:54
passed this law under which Tuleyev
40:57
receives money because he is an honorary
41:01
citizen of some village in the middle of nowhere
41:05
they simply pay him for it, and for that he
41:08
gets 3 million rubles a year in total
41:11
altogether, and that is, excuse me, 6
41:16
ten thousand of those very school
41:18
breakfasts. So stop paying him, that
41:22
smug face who sat there for many
41:25
years and ruined Kuzbass (the Kemerovo coal-mining region), don’t pay
41:27
him, and you will solve the problem of poor
41:31
schoolchildren, poor parents, poor
41:33
schoolchildren. Don’t sit there, dear United Russia members,
41:37
at the Kemerovo regional assembly, and don’t pretend
41:39
to us that you don’t know the budgets are
41:42
tight, that somehow you can’t
41:44
solve this problem. You can solve
41:46
this problem simply by stopping the enforcement of
41:49
this illegal, this unlawful decision under
41:52
which you are paying who-knows-whom,
41:53
a former governor, from the
41:56
budget for a huge, colossal dacha and
41:59
also paying him for the title of honorary
42:03
citizen of some backwater village. It’s all
42:05
very simple, very simple. They
42:08
have to do this, and for them to
42:10
do it, we must not stay silent. In
42:13
Kemerovo Region, please, somehow
42:15
talk about this. If you see your
42:18
local deputy, talk to them. And
42:20
as for schoolchildren fainting from hunger, well,
42:23
I think, of course, that perhaps this
42:25
ombudsman exaggerated things; probably there
42:28
isn’t literally a mass situation where
42:31
bang, children stand up in front of the teacher
42:34
and all collapse from hunger, well
42:37
that’s a stupid joke too, but nevertheless
42:39
I think it’s unlikely that this is truly
42:42
massive, but Rostovtseva said that
42:45
such cases did happen. And if such
42:47
cases exist, then take it away from Tuleyev and give it to these
42:50
children, and everything will be fine. Now let’s
42:52
talk about that guy who has never
42:56
fainted from hunger—quite the opposite,
42:59
he fainted from happiness
43:02
and self-satisfaction because he has lots of
43:05
money. He’d open his
43:09
mobile phone and get a message about
43:11
what else had come in from the
43:13
state-funded institution
43:16
TV channel
43:18
Rossiya 24, or whatever it’s called
43:22
the Rossiya TV channel: another
43:25
1 million rubles or 5 million rubles has been credited to you
43:27
and he’d nearly faint with happiness. This is
43:30
Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov
43:32
our wonderful man, and this
43:34
week I released an investigation into his
43:38
second villa on Lake Como, and this is of course
43:42
simply marvelous because
43:45
it shows us just how much all these
43:48
people do not believe for a second in
43:51
Russia’s prospects. Because, come on,
43:56
he has two villas. What does that say? Either
43:59
he’s buying a house for his mother or
44:02
for some relatives in Italy, if we assume
44:04
he’s buying them, then the whole family
44:06
has decided to move there, or he is simply
44:09
taking all the money we pay him and
44:11
investing it in real estate on Lake Como
44:14
So he sat here in Russia thinking,
44:15
where should I invest my money
44:17
received from a federal budget-funded
44:21
institution? Maybe in Venezuela?
44:23
No, probably not. Maybe
44:25
buy some stocks in Russia? No,
44:27
certainly not, because I understand that with
44:30
these
44:30
Putin and Medvedev there will be
44:33
no prospects at all. So I’d better take
44:36
this money in my beak over to Italy
44:39
and buy in a great place where there are none of
44:43
those people I praise on television—they
44:47
aren’t there, all those disgusting mugs
44:49
that I drag onto my show
44:51
aren’t there, which means it’s some kind of
44:54
great place to
44:55
invest money. And so he bought another
44:57
villa. Let me show you
44:59
exclusive, previously unseen
45:02
video, recently filmed, of the same place, and
45:05
while I’m at it, I’ll correct my mistake
45:09
let’s take one minute for the old flyover
45:12
or rather the new flyover. You can already see
45:15
it’s not as green because this was filmed recently
45:17
and I said that he was building a
45:20
pool. I was mistaken: he is building another house
45:24
you can see they’ve already started putting up the walls there
45:27
apparently it’s a house there, and next to it
45:29
a pool. So our Vladimir Rudolfovich
45:32
on his large plot of land—about 0.39 hectares (roughly 0.96 acres)
45:36
37 sotkas—and with two houses already, he is building yet
45:39
another house and a pool. He’s set himself up nicely,
45:44
Vladimir Rudolfovich
45:45
everything is very, very good for him. He does not
45:51
believe in Russia for a second; he
45:53
puts his money into Lake Como
45:55
and here, meanwhile, just to
45:57
brighten up his daily life a bit, he drives a
46:01
Maybach worth 15 million rubles
46:03
A curious situation: this post
46:06
was up for just under a year, about how
46:09
Solovyov bought a Maybach. There were
46:12
quite a few comments there, and all
46:13
the comments were along the lines of
46:15
‘Cringe, ugh, Mercedes, shame—I’m switching from
46:18
Mercedes to BMW. Why did you put this freak
46:20
in the post?’ After we
46:23
told everyone about this situation, they closed
46:26
comments under that post altogether
46:29
on Instagram, because everyone came and
46:31
told the blunt truth there, everything they
46:35
think about this
46:37
this utterly disgusting fellow who
46:41
buys himself a Mercedes
46:42
One of the notable topics this week—not
46:48
not because it was interesting, but because it’s interesting how
46:50
it was being pushed—there was a dispute involving that same
46:53
Solovyov (Vladimir Solovyov, Russian TV host and propagandist) on one side and Maria
46:56
Zakharova (Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman)—good Lord—and Anatoly Chubais on the other
46:59
and we saw quite clearly how the state
47:02
media were openly pushing it, with news alerts coming out like
47:05
“Maria Zakharova
47:07
mocked Anatoly Chubais; Vladimir
47:11
Solovyov backed Maria Zakharova,”
47:15
who mocked Anatoly Chubais.”
47:18
Anatoly Chubais, in turn, responded to them, and
47:20
then they all started trading insults, and so one part
47:23
of this disgusting rabble was bickering with
47:27
another part of the same disgusting rabble.
47:29
Chubais this, Solovyov that—and Vladimir Solovyov
47:32
was really going hard in his program
47:34
throwing a few insults at Chubais. Let’s
47:36
listen to 31 seconds of Vladimir
47:38
Solovyov raging about the vile liberal
47:42
Chubais: “He should be jailed, absolutely.”
47:46
What other options are there? And convenient as it may be, but
47:52
this is Chubais, after all.
47:53
He simply can’t help lying. We’ll be waiting to see you again
47:56
in the arena—sorry, strike that—on the screen
47:58
of our blue TV sets.
48:00
But listen, if even your
48:02
TV is blue, that shows just how
48:04
alive—sorry—those popular associations still are;
48:07
people don’t call you that for nothing, given who you really are
48:09
and in the bad sense of the word at that.
48:11
If even your TV is blue, then
48:14
glory be to the screen...
48:17
Chubais says Solovyov is a fool,
48:19
Solovyov says in response that Chubais
48:21
should be jailed, that you should be locked up,
48:23
that all of you should be jailed. So this
48:27
this segment of mine is called: “When Sweethearts Quarrel”
48:30
“When sweethearts quarrel, they only amuse themselves”—it’s one and the same
48:34
organism.
48:36
Chubais and Solovyov grow on the same
48:39
body. When Solovyov says Chubais
48:41
should be jailed,
48:42
just remember, please: who was it that appointed Chubais?
48:44
If he’s so terrible,
48:48
if the public dislikes him so much, if he’s
48:51
such a nightmare, and if even
48:54
Maria Zakharova, who crawled out of
48:57
who-knows-where, can’t stand him,
48:58
then why on earth does Putin not just keep him around
49:01
—not only that, he gives him the same kind of
49:04
fancy Mercedes cars with flashing lights
49:07
and, on top of that, reaches into our pockets
49:09
pulls out money and gives it to Chubais for this?
49:12
For Rosnano (the Russian state nanotechnology company). And Rosnano fails year
49:16
after year; everyone laughs at Rosnano, and
49:19
we have none of those flexible tablets or whatever,
49:22
none of those wonderful LED
49:25
light bulbs, no lithium batteries—nothing at all.
49:28
Chubais, together with his entire
49:31
team, basically stole everything, and whatever
49:33
they couldn’t steal, they simply
49:36
blew on all sorts of nonsense.
49:38
So why does Putin keep him? Because
49:41
it was Chubais who taught Putin how to steal. They
49:46
started out together in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office
49:48
when they were still young men. They
49:53
took envelopes together from some
49:57
St. Petersburg businessmen and so on.
50:00
And while Chubais was skimming off the electricity sector,
50:05
Putin was skimming off the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, and then
50:08
in 1996 Putin moved
50:11
to the Presidential Administration. There they were.
50:13
You keep cursing the damned ’90s, but since 1996 your
50:17
Putin has been sitting in Yeltsin’s Presidential Administration
50:21
and Chubais was among those who brought him there.
50:23
And all his life Chubais has protected your
50:27
Putin. Chubais and Putin kiss each other,
50:30
hug each other, and say, “Remember, Vova (diminutive of Vladimir), how back in
50:33
St. Petersburg we conned that one sucker out of five
50:36
thousand dollars?” And the other replies,
50:38
“Of course I remember—weren’t we great
50:41
guys even back then? But now, of course,
50:43
now we squeeze people for billions, not
50:45
for five thousand dollars.”
50:47
They pat each other on the shoulder, pat each other on
50:50
the back, laugh at Vladimir
50:53
Solovyov, laugh at Maria Zakharova,
50:56
and what’s more, standing there will also be
50:58
Solovyov and Zakharova, all of them together
50:59
sort of laughing at us because of how brilliantly
51:02
we staged it all.
51:03
This supposed conflict—Chubais, Putin, Solovyov, and
51:08
Zakharova—is all the same thing. It’s a gathering
51:11
of disgusting, degenerate, talentless
51:15
crooks sitting on our necks with their legs dangling
51:18
and making you want, somehow, to finally
51:21
at long last
51:23
drive them out. Since we’ve started talking about the city of
51:26
St. Petersburg, where these
51:29
wonderful
51:30
twin brothers, Putin and Chubais, came from, we need
51:33
to talk about the future governor
51:36
of St. Petersburg, whose last name is
51:38
Beglov. You may think he’s Beglov, but
51:42
yesterday he turned into Belyov.
51:44
This is actually a very interesting
51:45
story, and in general what is now
51:48
happening in St. Petersburg
51:49
is going to be one of the most gripping and
51:53
interesting political stories—follow it closely.
51:55
It doesn’t matter what region you’re from,
51:57
because in St. Petersburg there will be, at the same time,
52:00
elections for local deputies and the
52:02
gubernatorial election, in which this very
52:04
same
52:06
Beglov is running—a bureaucrat nobody knows,
52:10
who very much wants to be governor
52:12
of St. Petersburg, though it’s completely unclear why,
52:14
since he has not the slightest grounds for it,
52:16
not the slightest talent, and not the slightest
52:20
support. And right now he’s running a very funny
52:22
campaign, and in some ways it’s
52:24
copied from Sobyanin’s (Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin) campaign,
52:27
this campaign is built on such lies and on a narrative
52:30
So, that means he does too.
52:32
a strong, competent manager
52:33
and just look at how it has been transformed,
52:36
and at the same time, look at how
52:38
Moscow was transformed under Sergey Semyonovich (Sergey Sobyanin).
52:41
And here, look, Beglov came in and
52:43
started transforming the city of St. Petersburg.
52:45
They came up with this meme, “Beglov’s shovel,” and
52:49
started promoting it on social media, and Beglov
52:51
is photographed with a shovel, and this
52:54
shovel is supposed to symbolize that they need
52:58
to clean all this up, and they’re pushing all of it, and
53:01
promoting it, of course, across
53:03
social media, and Fontanka, a St. Petersburg media outlet,
53:05
published an amusing investigation
53:09
showing that a few months earlier
53:12
this group of bots had been working for Kozhemyako,
53:15
the man who became governor
53:17
of Primorye as a result of rigged
53:19
elections, and for a couple of months they wrote
53:22
about what a strong, competent manager Kozhemyako was, how
53:24
great he was at cleaning things up, how well he
53:26
had gotten everything in order.
53:27
And now, all these people have apparently
53:31
suddenly moved from Vladivostok to the city of
53:34
St. Petersburg, and now they’re telling everyone there
53:36
how great Beglov is. So why
53:38
did Beglov get up and leave? Because, well,
53:41
aside from the fact that he’s some kind of unclear,
53:46
hard-to-understand figure who suddenly decided
53:50
he wanted to lead the country’s second-largest city,
53:52
he also turned out to be a fantastically
53:53
cowardly and worthless politician. He came to the
53:56
St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, where
53:58
various candidates were being discussed, and then
54:00
deputy Maxim Reznik took the podium
54:02
and said some very simple words.
54:07
He wasn’t shouting at Beglov there,
54:10
he wasn’t insulting him; he said, “You are not
54:12
suited to our city, you are saying
54:14
some kind of nonsense.” Reznik actually put it
54:17
much more politely. But this “cultural capital” (a common nickname for St. Petersburg),
54:20
Beglov jumped up and ran out of
54:24
the hall.
54:24
At that moment, Beglov fled, basically.
54:27
Just imagine: a man wants to become
54:28
governor, but he is incapable of listening to
54:32
even the most basic criticism from his own
54:34
St. Petersburg deputies in the legislative assembly,
54:37
the very people he is supposed to work with. Let’s
54:39
watch 51 seconds of the speech and
54:43
Beglov’s escape in the middle of it.
54:45
Maxim Reznik: “And in that sense, I will not
54:48
support any of the
54:49
candidates presented here, simply because,
54:51
with all due respect, Alexander Dmitrievich, I do not
54:53
support your candidacy for the post of
54:54
governor, and I believe that you are not
54:55
suited to our city.”
54:56
“That is exactly what I would like
54:58
to speak about today, because I consider it important. I
55:01
will try to be as brief as possible, but
55:03
I’m not sure I can fit it all into one speech,
55:05
into just three minutes, because this is a matter
55:07
of principle.”
55:09
“You and I have spoken only
55:11
once, at a government meeting
55:13
at the end of last year, and it seemed to me
55:18
that was enough. But now you don’t even
55:21
want to listen. That’s very unfortunate, but
55:24
nevertheless I will speak, because
55:25
I am addressing the voters. In his programmatic
55:30
statement, Alexander Dmitrievich said that
55:31
he considers the main task to be protecting the minds
55:33
of the population from Western influence. I believe that
55:36
everything about that phrase is unsuited to St. Petersburg.”
55:39
Do you get it? People say, well, there he is,
55:42
he came, he took his seat of honor, he
55:44
listens to the deputies, and then finally
55:45
a deputy comes out who isn’t flattering Beglov
55:48
and says, “Well, I believe you are not suited
55:51
to our city,” and then he
55:53
jumps up from his seat and leaves the hall. He
55:56
doesn’t want to listen to these terrible “insults.”
55:59
So, Beglov is an absolute
56:02
political [__].
56:04
He isn’t even capable of listening to
56:07
an opposition deputy who is speaking quite
56:09
politely. And it will be very interesting
56:12
to watch how Putin is going to get this
56:16
shovels,
56:17
elected, what they will try to do to
56:20
the people of St. Petersburg in order to make them
56:22
vote. I have only one
56:24
hypothesis: they must, I don’t know, find some kind of
56:27
absolute hellish freak
56:29
just for contrast,
56:32
so that everyone says, “My God, well, okay, I don’t know,”
56:34
maybe actor Panin, or Dzhigurda, or
56:38
Sobchak — who would they have to put up so that
56:41
people would say, “Anyone but that one — we’ll vote
56:43
for Beglov.”
56:44
It will be very interesting to watch this
56:46
campaign, how they are going to promote all these
56:49
shovels of theirs, how they are going to fight with our
56:53
headquarters, which is now working very
56:55
actively. And in response to these Beglov
56:57
shovels,
56:58
it launched the “Into Beglov’s snowdrift” flash mob, where
57:01
people simply paint “Beglov’s snowdrift” on snowbanks.
57:04
And interestingly, there was a similar
57:07
flash mob last winter in Moscow, when
57:10
some witty people wrote on huge
57:13
snowbanks in Moscow in red paint
57:16
“Navalny,” after which
57:18
Moscow municipal equipment would immediately arrive and
57:21
clear away that snowbank. There were many such examples.
57:23
It was very funny. But in St. Petersburg it’s even
57:26
funnier, because Beglov is not
57:28
capable of removing a snowbank that has
57:31
“Beglov’s snowdrift” written on it. Utility workers arrive,
57:33
and they come fairly
57:35
quickly — the police or someone else informs them —
57:37
they take shovels and mix the snow and the
57:41
paint together so that the writing disappears from the snowbank.
57:44
The snowbank itself remains, and after that they
57:46
get back in the vehicle and leave.
57:49
It will be very funny to watch how they handle it.
57:53
they'll be choosing how to break the whole
57:56
city of St. Petersburg over their knee. I
57:58
hope the city doesn't break, but I don't
58:01
see the gubernatorial election as anything
58:03
but predetermined, because they control who
58:06
gets in and who doesn't. So I very much
58:08
hope that people in St. Petersburg, at least,
58:13
will hit back at this trash through
58:16
the municipal elections and won't elect a single
58:19
United Russia member. And I really
58:22
hope that our штаб (campaign office) will also
58:25
play some significant role in that.
58:28
Let me answer some questions. Maria
58:30
Drevo writes: "I'm from St. Petersburg. Where did they even find
58:32
Beglov? Who even is he? I'm not going to
58:33
vote for him." Everyone keeps asking who he is.
58:35
Well, he was the presidential envoy in the Northern
58:38
Northwestern Federal District, a close friend
58:40
of Putin, again from those old days in
58:44
that old, old
58:46
St. Petersburg. He, Chubais, Putin — the whole
58:50
same gang. They're all old friends.
58:53
They're all trusted insiders because back
58:55
in the 1990s they were all making money together in
59:00
the St. Petersburg mayor's office and in all that
59:03
St. Petersburg business. So for you he's not
59:04
some random nobody — for Putin he's always been
59:06
a trusted person. And now they're going to
59:09
push this trusted
59:11
man
59:12
so that you, Maria, will vote for him. Alexei asks:
59:14
"Saulsky, your view on the law against
59:16
insulting the authorities — how strong is your
59:18
outrage?" It's always at the maximum. I
59:20
always have consistency in life:
59:23
my level of outrage is always pretty high. But
59:25
as for the law on insulting the authorities, I
59:28
discussed it in quite a bit of detail. I released a video about it.
59:30
They've already passed it in
59:33
the first reading.
59:35
A lot of political analysts were saying
59:36
they wouldn't pass it — but they did pass this law.
59:38
They'll be issuing fines under it. The fine for
59:40
individuals for fake news is 5,000 rubles
59:44
(about $50 / €45). Just watch: of course all that
59:48
endless lying from Solovyov, Maria
59:50
Zakharova, Russia Today — that will all be fine,
59:53
but they'll fine me for some nonsense.
59:56
That infuriates me, of course, but I think
59:58
that in this situation it will hit them
1:00:02
harder, because do you know who
1:00:07
will be the first to file a complaint over
1:00:10
fake news? Me. Because when they
1:00:12
say things like what's written here — when they
1:00:15
tell me that in Tomsk
1:00:17
a nurse earns 30,000 rubles
1:00:19
(about $300 / €270), I'll bring them a letter I received from
1:00:23
that nurse in Tomsk, who won't be afraid
1:00:25
to sign it herself, and I'll say: here she is, she earns
1:00:27
15,000 rubles (about $150 / €135). You're fake news — fine them
1:00:29
5,000 rubles," I'll shout. And they'll
1:00:32
awkwardly try to laugh it off. Unicorn Geralt,
1:00:35
a regular listener and commenter,
1:00:39
asks: "Why does Saratov pay for gas,
1:00:41
but Chechnya doesn't? Are we a federal
1:00:43
state or not?" Vladimir Milov had a broadcast today
1:00:45
where he went into the Chechnya situation in quite a bit of detail.
1:00:48
It's not all so straightforward there. First of all,
1:00:49
of course everyone should pay for gas — both Chechnya
1:00:52
and Saratov — because that's just
1:00:53
not even up for discussion. The situation is absurd.
1:00:56
But apparently in Chechnya
1:00:58
the issue was that the regional network had
1:01:00
charged people for non-existent gas debts.
1:01:02
That's what the head of Dagestan's
1:01:04
Mezhregiongaz was recently jailed for.
1:01:08
He used gas for commercial purposes,
1:01:11
and then shifted those debts
1:01:14
onto the population through various
1:01:17
non-existent properties.
1:01:19
Supposedly, non-existent people
1:01:20
had consumed this gas, and in order to collect
1:01:22
that money, they billed real people.
1:01:25
That's why they say they're afraid of public
1:01:28
outrage — and they should be afraid of public outrage,
1:01:30
because when a person already doesn't
1:01:33
want to pay for gas, and then they also
1:01:35
get a bill for gas they never consumed,
1:01:39
they really could start a revolt,
1:01:41
especially in Chechnya.
1:01:43
So it's a complex issue there.
1:01:45
On the one hand, Kadyrov certainly
1:01:48
wants to create special preferential
1:01:50
conditions; on the other hand, there's horrific
1:01:51
corruption, where these debts are simply
1:01:53
dumped on the population. We'll sort it out
1:01:56
and see how the appeal court ruling goes.
1:01:59
Golova Chik Arte asks:
1:02:01
"My mom works as an accountant.
1:02:03
Her salary is 15,000 rubles
1:02:05
(about $150 / €135). She works from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
1:02:10
It's unfair to have such a salary.
1:02:15
I don't know what to do. She comes home already
1:02:16
exhausted. Can you help? Dear Arte,
1:02:19
only we can help each other. But
1:02:21
it would be dishonest of me to tell you,
1:02:24
"Write to me and I'll help," if she works in
1:02:25
the public sector — healthcare,
1:02:28
culture, or education.
1:02:32
If she is a public-sector employee, write to us, and we
1:02:35
know what to do in a situation like your
1:02:38
mother's. But in general, of course,
1:02:40
this is the same answer I always give, and it
1:02:42
may not satisfy everyone: we need to fight
1:02:45
this government, because low wages
1:02:48
are a direct consequence of the fact that Putin
1:02:51
has been in power for 20 years, and the country's economy
1:02:55
isn't growing, people's incomes have been falling
1:02:57
for the fifth year in a row, and Putin can only
1:03:00
respond to our outrage, yours and mine, with
1:03:00
repression. And this week we saw
1:03:03
some new level of cynicism and monstrosity — when they started
1:03:06
...
1:03:28
right now
1:03:30
to pressure and persecute the Open Russia organization
1:03:33
Open Russia, which is Mikhail
1:03:34
Khodorkovsky's organization—they declared it,
1:03:36
an undesirable organization, and moreover
1:03:38
only a foreign organization can be declared undesirable
1:03:39
and this one is
1:03:42
Russian. Well yes, this organization
1:03:44
belongs to Khodorkovsky, and of course they
1:03:46
don't like it, but they lied by saying that
1:03:48
this organization had been declared undesirable abroad
1:03:50
and they really started jailing people
1:03:52
in total lawlessness, complete arbitrariness
1:03:56
people who worked for Open Russia
1:03:58
Now you'll see a photo with me
1:04:00
standing with two volunteers from the election
1:04:03
campaign. These two people have now been
1:04:05
locked up.
1:04:06
The young woman was placed under house arrest, and the young
1:04:09
man, Artyom Milushkin, was sent to jail.
1:04:11
He was put in pretrial detention (SIZO), and his wife, Liyа Milushkina,
1:04:14
was placed under house arrest.
1:04:17
Allegedly, they were buying drugs, and this is,
1:04:21
well, a story that is genuinely infuriating.
1:04:24
This Milushkin
1:04:26
had previously been detained for organizing [missing text]
1:04:29
Let's watch 37 seconds from
1:04:31
his detention in Pskov. He was detained there; he is
1:04:33
an opposition activist.
1:04:53
"You're taking him away—explain to me, explain, I am
1:04:59
his wife. Explain what you're doing."
1:05:07
Well done, heroes. If only you worked this hard
1:05:13
This man had filed the notice for a small rally,
1:05:16
and these bastards
1:05:19
grabbed him on the street and detained him as if
1:05:21
he were some kind of terrorist who had hijacked a plane.
1:05:24
After that detention, they told him that
1:05:26
next time we'd find drugs on you, and
1:05:28
now they've jailed him on the accusation that
1:05:31
drugs were found on him, even though
1:05:34
no drugs were actually found on him, and this
1:05:38
charge is based on the testimony
1:05:40
of a witness who in some documents
1:05:42
is listed as Viktor, and in other documents
1:05:45
is listed as
1:05:46
Olga, who allegedly bought drugs from him.
1:05:50
Just think about it: literally anyone
1:05:53
can be jailed tomorrow if some
1:05:55
anonymous secret witness says that he
1:05:58
"Well, I bought from him there..."
1:06:01
"300 grams of marijuana or heroin," and then you're jailed
1:06:05
for drug possession because
1:06:08
some witness testified that
1:06:10
he bought those drugs from you.
1:06:12
You're hearing this now and saying, "No way, that can't
1:06:14
possibly happen." But it can, and it is happening.
1:06:16
In Pskov,
1:06:17
a man is sitting in pretrial detention (SIZO) on exactly this
1:06:21
absurd charge—that someone said
1:06:23
they bought drugs from him. And of course
1:06:26
he's a political activist who
1:06:29
is constantly being detained, searched, and surveilled,
1:06:31
so naturally he just loves selling drugs
1:06:33
to some random shady guys. And his wife
1:06:36
also apparently loves selling drugs. They
1:06:39
have to be jailed—it's total lawlessness. And
1:06:41
an even more monstrous situation may be
1:06:44
unfolding right now in Rostov, where
1:06:46
Anastasia Shevchenko
1:06:51
has been arrested.
1:06:53
She is an activist, the coordinator of Open Russia
1:06:55
in Rostov, and she also worked there
1:06:58
including as a volunteer for our [campaign/project]. She is
1:07:00
a mother of three children, and they arrest her
1:07:04
because, can you imagine,
1:07:07
she committed such a terrible crime:
1:07:10
she is a member of an organization. That is
1:07:13
the accusation. They aren't even accusing her of
1:07:15
making Molotov cocktails or
1:07:19
anything like that. The point is: she is a member of an organization
1:07:21
that is banned, and on that basis
1:07:24
a mother of three can simply be locked up.
1:07:29
This is just genuinely monstrous
1:07:32
swine-like behavior, and of course this is being done personally by
1:07:36
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
1:07:38
With the backing of all these people
1:07:41
from Solovyov and Zakharova to Chubais, they
1:07:45
want precisely to preserve their
1:07:47
status quo, under which everything is fine for them
1:07:48
and
1:07:50
they have a villa on Lake Como. So this
1:07:52
Anastasia Shevchenko
1:07:54
must be jailed, and to hell with her children
1:07:57
and whatever is happening to them, whatever is going on in that
1:07:59
family right now—can you imagine? But that's their attitude:
1:08:00
like, "The mother was jailed." I'll wrap up today's program
1:08:07
today
1:08:10
by discussing the main act
1:08:13
of idiocy, the prolonged
1:08:16
ongoing idiocy that has been taking place in
1:08:20
our country over the course of, well, several
1:08:23
weeks. It was just a
1:08:27
dance with tambourines, an act of state paganism.
1:08:31
I looked at it and thought, good grief,
1:08:33
it feels like we are some kind of country
1:08:35
of Papuans; it feels like
1:08:38
we've ended up in the year 805, or I don't know,
1:08:43
302—back when
1:08:46
across the territory of our country there ran
1:08:48
Vyatichi and Krivichi (early East Slavic tribes) worshipping a bear. But
1:08:51
now we're not worshipping a bear,
1:08:54
we're worshipping a piece of metal that we hauled in from Laos.
1:08:58
The whole damn country stood out in the freezing cold
1:09:03
welcoming tanks produced after
1:09:08
the war in Czechoslovakia. But to us they were
1:09:11
presented as sacred T-34 military tanks.
1:09:16
And it turns out that now we're supposed not only to
1:09:20
pray to the St. George ribbon (a Russian military symbol), we also have to
1:09:23
pray to this hunk of metal
1:09:25
that was produced in Czechoslovakia
1:09:28
in 1953—or 1952, 1948, 1950,
1:09:34
in any case, it was made in Czechoslovakia.
1:09:36
Those tanks were sold to Laos,
1:09:40
and now we're bringing those tanks back from there.
1:09:44
They spent an enormous amount of money
1:09:46
to transport them—just think, where is Laos and where is Moscow?
1:09:50
to the Moscow region, where the Kantemirovskaya division is based,
1:09:52
all the way across practically the entire globe.
1:09:55
Why the hell did we drag in these damn Czechoslovak
1:10:00
pieces of metal so they could be brought onto the territory
1:10:04
of our country, and here they could drive out soldiers,
1:10:07
schoolchildren, and some generals, so that they
1:10:09
would bow down
1:10:10
to these chunks of metal as if, as if they were actually
1:10:13
some kind of holy artifact, as if
1:10:16
they really were. Yes, there was a war, and a lot of
1:10:18
people died. There was a tank in that war that
1:10:22
proved itself, sure; there was the PPSh submachine gun,
1:10:24
the PPSh, the Katyusha rocket launcher—so now are we supposed
1:10:27
to bow to some multiple rocket launcher
1:10:31
systems? Let's watch the video: the governor
1:10:35
is standing there—and this is the governor in Chita, on the day
1:10:38
when it was around minus 30 degrees Celsius, and there are
1:10:41
some people standing there, bowing and
1:10:44
delivering these pompous, insane speeches,
1:10:47
a full 21 seconds of madness.
1:10:53
Russian daily... and to fall asleep...
1:10:58
doomed... like the ancient bogatyrs (medieval epic warriors),
1:11:02
our partnership, our troubles...
1:11:06
have provided the process within it...
1:11:11
tens of thousands of our ancestors... you cannot forge...
1:11:17
The heavy tanks are coming from Laos and have already
1:11:24
been to Vladivostok. The equipment
1:11:26
has covered more than four and a half
1:11:27
thousand kilometers by sea. The tanks are coming
1:11:32
from Laos and have already been to Vladivostok.
1:11:36
Thank you, sacred tanks...
1:11:39
The governor is standing there—good Lord, he's a governor, and in his
1:11:42
region, in Chita Region (now part of Zabaykalsky Krai), a huge share of the population lives
1:11:46
below the poverty line—almost 25
1:11:48
percent of the population. One of the poorest
1:11:50
regions, absolutely destitute.
1:11:54
And the governor stands there babbling something about bogatyrs (medieval epic warriors) in
1:11:57
this armor, like the ancients... You want
1:11:59
to say to him: not everything you're saying
1:12:03
even makes sense. Listen to yourself. This has absolutely nothing
1:12:06
to do with anything. It's just
1:12:09
old Czechoslovak scrap metal. But here,
1:12:13
you see, our deputy defense minister
1:12:15
declares: successfully completed
1:12:19
the most important state task of
1:12:23
Sergei Shoigu's initiative; as a result of
1:12:26
military-technical cooperation, some number of
1:12:31
T-34 tanks... But these tanks' homeland is
1:12:36
Czechoslovakia and Laos—they have nothing
1:12:40
to do with any of this. And again,
1:12:42
I apologize for constantly using
1:12:44
the example of the neighbor's kids, but how many
1:12:47
could have been
1:12:48
operations carried out if we weren't doing this
1:12:51
nonsense—hauling these metal chunks around,
1:12:53
by sea, by rail. They must have bought these tanks,
1:12:56
presumably, or rented them, or something. Now they're
1:12:58
going to bring them to
1:13:02
the Kantemirovskaya Division. I lived for many years—most of my life,
1:13:05
I spent there,
1:13:07
near the Taman Division.
1:13:10
There is plenty of this kind of stuff there—tanks standing on
1:13:13
pedestals, as many as you like. These
1:13:16
tanks, this metal—there's a sea of it. Why bring in more?
1:13:19
And now, surely, one of them
1:13:21
will be put on a pedestal,
1:13:23
and the others will be melted down into little crosses that
1:13:26
the Patriarch will consecrate,
1:13:29
or maybe they'll make some other sacred horseshoes
1:13:32
to shoe something with, I don't know,
1:13:36
not sacred experience—sacred horseshoeing.
1:13:39
They'll put them on Putin's little shoes so that when he
1:13:43
walks somewhere in America,
1:13:46
as he walks, he'll be clacking along
1:13:48
with these horseshoes, and that way
1:13:51
the T-34 tanks will make it to Washington too, onto the
1:13:56
territory of the probable enemy. You'll see,
1:13:58
that's exactly how it will be. This is
1:14:00
state paganism already; it's right here,
1:14:03
and it's already simply unbearable. Our
1:14:06
state has simply turned into
1:14:08
a state of some kind of wild,
1:14:10
absurd shamans. In the Beautiful Russia of the Future
1:14:12
(a slogan meaning a hoped-for democratic future for Russia), we will of course deal with this
1:14:15
strictly: no shamanism whatsoever, except
1:14:18
in the territories of the Far North, where
1:14:20
it is a traditional religion.
1:14:22
Until the next program. Goodbye.
1:14:42
[music]