Mr. & Mrs. Bottom made a movie, the prosecutor general bought a crab for a murderer, and idiot deputies

[music]

Good evening. It’s 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, and that

means we’re live on the channel

Navalny Live with the program *Russia*

of the Future. And I’m Alexei Navalny, who

last time complained to you that, well, they haven’t

been coming up with funny nicknames for me lately.

But this week, there was a breakthrough.

I can’t choose. I’ve got three names

I could sign off with. First,

“the embodiment of the devil.” Sorry, that’s

from deputy Vitaly Milonov. He also called me

a “charismatic pastor.” And, uh, the third name,

which the newspaper splashed across a full page about me,

was in *Moskovsky Komsomolets*,

which, by the way, has a large circulation:

“opposition

monarch.” So, well, those are the

powerful names I got this week.

I mean, “the embodiment

of the devil.” “Opposition monarch.” Respect,

respect. I’m a big deal. I should do this

and show that I’m pleased. I’ll start by

briefly plugging once again

a really cool thing we’ve

launched. It’s a social media

aggregator. We basically made it for

ourselves, so we could better understand

the picture of the day: *Trending Today*. There’ll be a link in the description.

Click it, use it.

It really will help you. Because

you, ordinary people, what do you do

during the day? Well, you work a little,

spend a little time with your kids or

your parents, do a few

useful things. But mostly, of course,

you sit on your phone and open

Twitter, Instagram, or somewhere else

68 times a day, or 268 times a day,

to check whether there’s anything

interesting there. Now you don’t need

to do that. All 268 times a day, you can

go to our aggregator and see what

interesting things have come out. Really,

it’s genuinely a good resource.

Check it out, use it. And now I’ll move straight, straight

to the Culture News section, which I usually don’t even have

in this program.

And, uh, if it does

appear, it’s usually at the end. But

culture news belongs on the last page, after all.

But here I want to start with culture

news, because I feel bad about 80 kopecks.

Actually,

I paid it, just like you did, just like the people in this

studio, just like my wife, my children, and

every citizen of the Russian Federation did.

We all helped fund a wonderful

couple whom I call Mr. and

Mrs. Bottom. They are absolutely

disgusting people: Margarita Simonyan and

her husband Tigran Keosayan. These people

received 100 million rubles (about $1.5 million) for their film,

which is called *The Crimean Bridge*.

*Made with Love*.

And it’s such a great story,

because

the money was allocated without any competition. Well, we

understand that the Cinema Fund, basically,

has only nominal competitions. The money

goes to whoever is, uh, liked by our

culture minister, Mr. Medinsky,

and whoever is, well, sufficiently, sufficiently

busy licking the authorities’ boots. But still,

there is some formal procedure there,

some kind of competition, some kind of

applications,

some pitching and selection procedures. I don’t

know what a pitching procedure is,

forgive me, please. But some kind of

procedure exists. And this film, *The Crimean

Bridge*, which flopped—I admit that

I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to watch it,

but basically I know enough from, uh,

the fact that its ratings on

a ten-point scale on

all the film-rating websites,

KinoPoisk and so on, are from 2-point-something to 3-point-something

out of 10—so, a complete

box-office failure. But even so, you and

I paid 100 million rubles for it. And those 100 million

rubles were given out on the basis of some

letter, as the BBC told us.

That is, a letter came to the Cinema Fund

saying Tigran Keosayan, the film’s director, had such an important project,

and Margarita

Simonyan, the film’s screenwriter, was involved too.

Such important, brilliant people, that

they needed to be given 100 million rubles immediately

without any procedures at all, and they would make their

great masterpiece. I can’t show you

a clip from *The Crimean Bridge*, but

that would probably be some kind of copyright

violation. I’m waiting—I’ll probably watch it when

BadComedian (a popular Russian YouTube film reviewer) does some kind of

review of it. But, uh, actually,

the genius of Tigran Keosayan

I can demonstrate it to you,

and show why, in fact, I call them both

Mr. and Mrs. Bottom. Uh, but

Margarita Simonyan is a person who,

at a minimum, besides the 80 kopecks she

just stole from us for this pathetic

film of hers, also takes from each of us

128 rubles a year, because for her channel

Russia Today, the Russian Federation

allocates 18—almost 19—billion rubles a year. And

we absolutely do not want to allocate that

money. It’s miserable television

that almost nobody watches. And,

well, it is an absolutely disgusting,

low-grade propaganda channel. And yet,

18 billion rubles—we took that out of

our own pockets and set it aside. Fine then,

let the hospitals wait. Children, don’t run

over here, children, and don’t ask for your

free children’s medicine. We need

to fund Margarita Simonyan, uh,

and

her

ideas about what

information policy should be. And,

Tigran Keosayan, her husband, hosts

an absolutely astonishing

show on the NTV channel. It's called

— I don't have it written down here. Well,

some kind of show, anyway, on the subject of

geopolitics. It's a kind of comedic

political show. You know, they're very

popular, for example, in the United

States of America. They really are

quite funny. They're, uh, very, very

popular. And they have a very strong

influence on politics. I mean, there are

always some shows that are more left-wing,

more right-wing; there's competition between

these shows. It's a very popular format —

making jokes about politics. And so in

Russia, this same Tigran Keosayan,

who recently got 80 kopecks from you

to make his masterpiece, which flopped at the

box office, makes this kind of show on

NTV. The NTV channel

will ban us if I just play this. But I

want to show you 1 minute and 12 seconds

of this show, just so you understand

what a wonderful, brilliant person,

Mr. Bottom, is, and why you should give him 100

million rubles (about $1.1 million) without a tender. So now I'm going to

play 1 minute and 12 seconds for you, and I'll

sit in the corner, because under

YouTube's rules, if I'm sitting in the corner like

this, the NTV people won't be able to block

this broadcast. But please, be

careful. If you have a saucer or something

nearby, because your eyes are going to

bleed — please hold it right

here. And in general, please move

the faint-hearted away from the screen, because

the genius director is about to make jokes. 1

minute and 12 seconds. Of Great Keosayan.

I don't know about other irresponsible

journalists, but we personally have never joked

about Macron. We have always spoken

only the truth.

Back in school, he realized that being a married

gay gerontophile was somehow more elegant than

just being an ordinary gay man.

Oh, don't shove that furry thing in my

face. I'm getting excited. Our people are filming. And that makes me

even more excited.

Emmanuel Macron.

wants Putin to respect him.

Well, what advice can you give here?

Change your name.

Persistent rumors say that Macron is gay.

Of course not. They're not rumors. If I were

Emmanuel Macron, my first

visit would be to Emomali Rahmon.

Just because the names sound alike.

Cute Emmanuel, as befits

a flighty Frenchwoman, was late with another

cute guy in glasses; they were

counting the cute ones in the crowd.

Just yesterday, the surname Macron sounded like

a brand of macaroni, and the first name hinted at

the bedroom. What can you expect from

Emmanuel?

Macron,

macaroni — don't shove that furry thing

in my face. That was aired on a federal

TV channel. That costs a lot of money. As you

know, all these federal channels, including NTV,

are, one way or another, still

funded from the budget, from

state-owned companies. But most

importantly, you were able to appreciate the tremendous,

creative, comedic

talent of this man, who has now made

his amazing romantic

comedy. Well, uh,

it's not even that I'm afraid of giving it

extra — uh, additional

publicity; please, I am giving it

additional publicity. Go see it — after all, you

already spent your 80 kopecks on it, so, well, spend

another 300 rubles (about $3–4). Go to the cinema

just so you can walk out and

understand that all these people need to be driven

the hell out, because, well,

they've landed on their feet. In any

normal country, these people would simply

be where they belong,

Mr. and Mrs. Bottom. They are

absolutely talentless, absolutely

worthless people whom nobody

needs. All of their talent consists of

being lackeys. And they are lackeys of this

regime. And in Russia they are simply swimming

in money. They get everything without

waiting in line; money is handed to them. Well, look,

what a family operation this is. Money

to be a director, fine. The wife

is the screenwriter; I don't know, there was probably someone else

too — likely the whole extended family

was involved. And all their whims are paid for with our

money. And if you're unhappy about something,

you'll hear from them: "Well,

guys, you have to sit quietly, because

we are the authority here." As Margarita

Simonyan once so memorably said,

that if Russia

ever has democracy and we

let people do what they want,

they'll take us and hang us from the lamp posts.

Well, after things like these,

these so-called comedy shows, or stories

about how 100

million rubles (about $1.1 million) get allocated without a tender to some film by your

family, then yes, Margarita, you

are probably right. The risks of such a scenario

really do increase.

And, uh, it seems to me that if we've already started

talking about, uh, these

wonderful people who, uh, well,

are absolutely useless and repulsive

idlers and crooks bathing in our

money—then of course this is a good segue

to the woman who,

of course, delivered last week's biggest hit.

This has been discussed from every angle. I

was wondering whether we should talk about it at all or

not, whether we should mention it or not. Well, because

it seems like everyone has already chewed this topic over. Do I have

anything to add to it? But I still want

to say my piece. This is Olga

Glotskikh, director of the Department

of Youth Policy, who first

gathered various people in her office who

work on issues related to childhood,

motherhood, and then delivered to them, like

a boss sitting at the head of the table, uh, this kind of

sermon about how the state

owes you nothing, and in general the state did not

ask you—did not ask you—to have children.

You've probably seen it. Still, let's

watch those 22 seconds again. Olga

Glotskikh, a member of United Russia (the ruling political party),

a high-ranking regional

official, explains to us how

life works.

As of today, it has somehow turned out that

among young people, in the rising generation,

for some reason there is this understanding

that the state owes us everything.

No, the state, in principle, owes you

absolutely nothing; the ones who owe you are your

parents. Well, because they gave birth to you.

The state did not ask them to have you.

This is actually very important, because

it is very candid and very much

the way things are actually arranged in their

heads. In other words, it was this very

Olga Glodtskikh speaking, because what

was in her head is exactly what she

blurted out. But in fact, you should understand that

speaking to you through her were

Margarita Simonyan and Tigran Keosayan,

Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev—they

were all speaking, because this is the

most important article of faith for them: that

the state owes you nothing. We never

asked you for anything, and in general the state

and society are not some kind of dialogue

or debate. You have no right to outvote us

or demand anything. Rather,

it is a relationship between a boss and

a subordinate. That is, well, you come to us,

you ask us for something, and we will

look at you and say, and think to ourselves,

what fools, here they are again

asking us, begging. Well, if they are

sufficiently, uh, willing to bend before

us, then maybe we won't

give them something. If they get cocky, we'll put them in the

corner or throw them right out the

door. But overall, in general, we are your

superiors. And this is an extremely important

thing that actually sits in the

heads of almost all officials. Unfortunately,

it also sits in the heads of many

of our fellow citizens, who also

think this way. Well, uh, you can't. People there

get scared that I criticize

officials on this program, people

get scared that I expose

officials and call them all sorts of names.

They say: "How can that be? Good

grief, he's the prime minister—how can you

have the right to criticize him?" Because

even people who are not

officials still carry this thought:

"Well, he's above you,

he's my superior; if he sits in

that office, then he's not just the head of some

youth policy department that, well,

that is basically just seven

people sitting in three more offices and

doing nothing." He's the boss

in general. In principle, in any

situation—whether you meet him at the theater, or

in a café, or in a bar, or on the street, or

standing with him in line at the post office—he is still

the boss in any situation. He is

always, by definition, above you. And this is a very

important thing that we must

talk about. It is a very important thing that

we must overcome within ourselves. And,

of course, it is a very important thing for which

we must go after people—those

who, uh, say this, say it

out loud, as this utterly brazen

Olga Gladkikh did. I even saw several

comments saying that, well, everyone has really gone after

her, steamrolled her. And

some silly girl just said a bunch of foolish things.

She was expelled from United Russia today,

they came to their senses, yes, and apparently she also

left the country, and so, well, how could it be that

she suddenly became the one to take the hit. She took

the hit quite rightly, unfortunately

though,

to a much lesser extent, the one who took the hit was

her immediate superior,

Governor Kuivashev. Kuivashev, uh,

the governor of Sverdlovsk Region. In any

case, those who follow my

work know that I have not the slightest

sympathy for him. He became

governor solely because

he kept Yevgeny Roizman off the ballot. That

is, this is a man who effectively

stole the governor's seat. And he

appointed her—he knew she was stupid, he knew

absolutely everything about her. What's more, after

this whole

huge scandal happened, uh, there surfaced

audio recordings and video recordings where, basically,

she explains

how she became an official. And this is what

you are about to hear now—I'll play you

44 seconds. Olga Glotskikh explains

how she got this position. Don't

think of her, of this Olga Glotskikh,

Like, what an idiot she is, or whatever else,

right? You think about what this

Kuivashev is like, you think about what

Medvedev is like, what Putin is like. That these

people get appointed to positions, these

people will retire early, these

people use official cars, these

people get enormous salaries. Forty-four

seconds of, uh,

remarkable

candor from a female official about how she

became an official, and how, in fact,

power in Russia is actually structured. Forty-four

seconds.

So there I am, sitting with the governor. After

a week-long binge, I had lost the election. I

was drinking at home, not going anywhere. Then

the governor's office calls me and says:

"The governor is expecting you in two hours, can you

come?" Olga Vyacheslavna, are you ready

to take charge? I agreed to the whole thing.

I don't have a team. I've been living in this

region for two months. I don't know anyone here

at all. And, well, I had no other

choice but to agree.

On September 24, I come out, and there are two

cars waiting for me by the residence, one belongs to a brother

of some friend there, and everyone there is

congratulating me.

But what are they congratulating me for? I don't know what

to do. They handed me the executive branch

authorities, and I don't know what to do with it. I

don't understand anything at all. It was funny.

It sounds like a joke. There I am, sitting at home, drunk

at home. I'm on a week-long binge, and then

the governor calls me and says, "Well, come on over,

we're going to appoint you right now." So I went to him,

and he really did appoint me. And then I

come out, and everyone's there to greet me, giving me flowers.

And I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. And

just like that I became the head of an

executive government body. I don't know what

to do. Well, I'll do something. And those

idiots running around there,

all those people there, all those

nobodies, those slaves—well, they'll put up with it. Since

they appointed me and put me in this office,

I can do pretty much

whatever I want in it—or do nothing at all. And

that would have been fine if someone—apparently

some enemies of this Golodskikh woman,

hadn't posted this little fragment

of video where, in her naivete,

she just openly says: "Well,

the state didn't ask you to give birth, so why

are you pushing in? We don't owe you anything."

She would still be sitting in office to this day and

would be very much loved. And Governor Kuivashev

would be telling everyone what a great,

competent employee she is. United Russia

would love this person and say:

"Did you know that our Department

of Youth Policy is headed by some

champion athlete, a very, very

good person, selected through a competitive

commission, who entered

the civil service. She has seven grades

of education."

That's another astonishing story.

Everyone started digging through her biography. We

looked too and found her 2015 interview.

Now, in some of her recent

interviews, she has somehow already

acquired an education from somewhere—Moscow State University,

she graduated from the Financial Academy,

apparently. But in that 2015 interview

she's asked: "What about your

career? You were involved in your

rhythmic gymnastics, you went to school,"

and she says that from the seventh

grade on, I didn't go anywhere anymore."

That's it, all my education ended

in the seventh grade. What was the point? Everything

was honest. I mean, basically, I really was

an athlete.

I trained in rhythmic gymnastics.

They put a ball in your hands, they put a ribbon

in your hand. I jumped over the ball, jumped

over the ribbon. That's what my parents decided.

That's an athlete's fate. Well, seven grades

of education. What are you appointing her to?

Why are you appointing her? I mean, she

can't even string two words together. And, well,

probably, in part, that's some kind of

thing you can hardly blame her for.

Her parents decided everything for her. They said:

"Our dear girl, you've, well,

learned that two plus two makes four,

that's enough. We've decided to make you into a

brilliant athlete." And they set about doing it.

So she's an athlete, and beyond that she

never studied anywhere else. And she

won some medals. And while she was an

athlete, no one had any

complaints about her. She competed for our country.

We all supported her there,

applauded, shouted, "Come on, come on,

go!" And if she said some

stupid things—fine, let her say

stupid things, no problem. Anyone

can say stupid things, but

why does this government absolutely have to take

someone with seven grades of education and

put her in charge of us?

And besides, it's also one of those cases where

seven grades of education

don't prevent her from having certain other

remarkable talents, which, apparently,

is how she got into the United Russia party

and landed this position, because

now some astonishing things are already coming to light:

that

first, she has left the country, according to

local media reports, because the local

Investigative Committee (Russia's main federal investigative authority) launched an inquiry

into her over the fact that she

funded

some youth projects and housed people in

local hotels

gifted children, spent 131 million rubles on it

million rubles. Local deputies calculated that

this was based on 84,000 rubles

per child. They were supposedly running

children's camps at 80,000 to 84,000 rubles per

person in Yekaterinburg. Well,

you can imagine, it's such an obvious

scam. I wonder, can you verify

that?

On the Investigative Committee's website

a news item appeared saying that an inquiry was underway in

connection with the fact that this 131 million rubles

had been siphoned off by her and, accordingly,

the owner of this hotel, who apparently

has now left the country together with her

abroad. And then that news item disappeared.

Why did that news item disappear? Who

so powerful could have been involved in

this? Ah, it turned out that all of this

was being done for that very center for

gifted children, Sirius. Remember

Roldugin, Putin's wallet (a slang term for someone who holds assets for him),

the cellist,

into whose accounts billions of

dollars were flowing, and we all understood perfectly well that

this was simply Putin's money, stolen

from state-owned companies. When all this came to light,

Putin said that he was involved there with

creative children, gifted children.

That Roldugin. And in Sochi, a

huge amount of various property was transferred. And

there really are talented children,

there are very good teachers at this

center, but around it there is, well, Roldugin,

the cellist, and money, and some strange

things. And in particular, it seems that

some kind of scheme has come to light involving outright

theft of money from summer camps. But

since this is connected to Sirius, to

a Putin project, to Roldugin,

the Investigative Committee first shouted

that they were conducting an inquiry, and then, uh,

removed that press release. I'm very

interested to see how this situation

will develop. On the one hand,

United Russia (the ruling political party), trying to get ahead of the story,

understanding the public outrage over this

woman, expelled her from

the party itself. On the other hand, well, we

understand that she was appointed by the governor, and

apparently she was skimming money together with some

of these Putin-connected people. I mean,

the sums aren't such that, of course, Putin himself

or Roldugin himself would have been

personally interested in it, or the director of this

Sirius center. But around it there were

some very interesting things happening involving

tens of millions of rubles. Well, we'll see

how all this develops. Now, and

I also

wanted to say one more thing, and it seems to me

it's time to start talking about it,

because it's, you know, a bit

taboo all the same, because, well,

it's awkward to talk about.

I mean, it feels like you're offending athletes,

but they're good people, and they're not

to blame for anything, and somehow people don't talk about it that often.

But I'll say it, and I want us

to start acting accordingly.

So, we need to

speak openly about this

trash and hell that Putin creates with his

personnel policy, when it drags all these

athletes

into the State Duma, into the executive

branch. Everywhere you look, there is already

either an actor, or an athlete, or someone

of the same sort. And why? Well,

let's say it honestly. I'm not going to

say the phrase, you know, something like: "All

athletes are stupid." Of course that's not true,

but, unquestionably, people who are

professional athletes, like

this Glodskikh, who only studied through the seventh

grade, simply cannot be there

even if they are wonderful

champions. Again, they devoted their

lives to winning medals. We love them for that.

We do. We respect them, we do. We watch with pride

their profiles when they

climb onto the podium, with their

medals and all the rest. Great. We

support them, we root for them, we cry at the

sound of the anthem. But then we're told:

"Uh-huh, she finished seven grades."

Look, she achieved everything. She

won two medals for Russia. Great,

we're ecstatic, we're happy. And now she

is going to be your boss."

Why? She has seven grades of schooling. She can't

put two words together. And most of them, again, though people differ,

to be fair. To

be a good official,

a good politician, you don't necessarily

have to read 140 million

books and have 12 university degrees. You

basically need to be a normal

person. You need to have life

experience. Many athletes have it, many

do not. It's the same as with other

people. But we have to say honestly that

most professional athletes

simply because of the circumstances of their lives

did not have the opportunity to get a proper

education even at school. And when they are brought to us

all into the Duma and we're told: "Well, he

was the best at jumping around with a ball, so

let him write your laws now." But

that's insane. And I decided to say this

actually, in this rather, uh, well,

perhaps unpopular way after

reading a quote. By the

way, before the speech by this

lady from Sverdlovsk Region, there was

Tikhonov, our well-known

four-time Olympic champion

Alexander Tikhonov, the biathlon guy, yes, him.

There’s an interesting quote on his website, where he

writes about athletes in government.

Stick to what you know.

Have you ever taken part in passing any decent law

at all? Have you, well,

I mean, you can see that quote now.

The point of it is basically: guys, you don’t understand a damn thing,

and all your voting does

is produce yet another

pension reform. And the man is right,

he knows what he’s talking about. He deals with these

athletes all the time.

So let athletes focus on

sports, let them become coaches,

let them be whoever they want

to be. But in general, this personnel policy where

someone wins a medal at the Olympics

and that automatically means we’ll definitely shove them into the

State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). Then they’ll be sitting at

some round tables. Then

now they’ll be expressing their opinion

on all sorts of issues of life

and the state and politics. And we’re supposed to

just nod along. And we can’t

say, “He’s an idiot.” Because, well, how

can you say that to him? He’s an Olympic

champion. He gave everything, he sacrificed his health

to win that

medal. Let’s just be honest

and say it plainly: well done, you won an Olympic

medal, but you’re an idiot. You can’t sit

in the Duma, you have no education,

nothing. And all these Putin-era athletes,

this is deliberate. Not just athletes either, there are

plenty of actors too, lots of people like that — it’s

a deliberate policy, because they’re

dragging stupid people into power because

they’re easy to manipulate. We’ll appoint

some female athlete as chair of some

committee, and she’ll do everything we

tell her, because she has no idea

what’s going on. Which,

as a matter of fact, was perfectly

illustrated by Ms.

Glodskikh herself: “I sit at home, drink, understand nothing.”

“Then they call me up, appoint me

to something. Fine, I agree.” That’s how

she works. We have several people like that in the Duma.

We have several like that in other

executive bodies too. Look,

in every regional

government — Putin set the fashion, and

the governors follow

the same path — they too go and

take some local athlete

and appoint them to something. And that

athlete isn’t just serving as a

figurehead, you know —

they sit there, collect a state salary, appoint

other people, and maybe

80% of the time they’re just sitting around,

but 20% of the time they do stupid, foolish

things because they don’t understand, because

they’re not capable of doing this kind of work.

So, my friends, I think

the time has come when we really need to

lift the taboo on this subject. And

when we see that in elections they’re once again

pushing athletes, singers, or some other, well,

people whose achievements may

indeed be impressive, whose accomplishments

consist of the fact that, well,

they sang and danced or played ball,

we shouldn’t be shy about telling these people

that we are not prepared to forgive

your, I don’t know, inability to speak clearly or

your stupid ideas or simply

your inability to string two words together

just because you’re athletes. We do not need you

in government in that capacity.

Please, go do some

other wonderful things. As for the issue of

stupid people in power, unfortunately

it’s not just athletes — there are a great many of them in

all sorts of other varieties as well.

And quite astonishingly, we’ve now got

an idiot deputy popping up — from Bulgaria,

residents of Saint Petersburg. I’m talking

about your deputy, cultural capital. You

elected a guy named Sergei

Vostretsov, who this week

said that, uh, people should be stripped of

their parental rights if their children

have gone more than twice to

unauthorized rallies. You just want to say to him,

“Are you an idiot or what? Where did you

even come from?” When I heard that, I thought, “My God,

where did they find such a stupid deputy?”

Maybe he was somehow co-opted, or I don’t

know, maybe it was some tiny district

or something. Maybe he got in by some shady

means. But then it turned out that he was

elected from Saint Petersburg’s 213th district.

Shame on you, shame on you, residents of the 213th district, for

electing this blockhead as your deputy.

Please, let’s make sure this

never happens again. And he’s not an athlete, by the way,

right? In fact, quite the opposite.

He comes from trade union work, that is,

the kind of person who is supposed to

stand up for ordinary people, the kind of person who

heads the independent trade union

Sotsprof, which in theory should spend all day

being involved in things like

rallies, pickets, petitions, protest

actions, and strikes.

And first of all, he’s a member of United Russia,

and he comes out and says, “Well then, let’s strip

parental rights from people whose children

go to rallies.” Great idea. But, well,

whenever I hear some

new statement from some idiot deputy — and this one is clearly

very much one of those, well,

a textbook idiot deputy — I

immediately go look up his asset declaration on the website.

5 million rubles (about tens of thousands of U.S. dollars) and apartments in Bulgaria, for God’s sake,

you understand — a trade union activist.

a union activist, a defender of the working

class, uh, with an apartment in Bulgaria. Well,

no, no, there’s nothing, well, I mean there’s nothing

terrible in itself about having an

apartment in Bulgaria, right. Uh, it’s not

the most expensive real estate, but it

really shows the style of these people.

You’re posing as—well, I looked at his biography—

a union leader.

I wondered what he used to be, what kind of representative,

I mean, what industry he came from in order

to become a union leader. Where do you

think he came from? A former militiaman (police officer in Russia before the 2011 reform).

A former militiaman (police officer in Russia before the 2011 reform).

And then somehow he wormed his way into this

trade union movement. And now, apparently, he

goes around saying that he represents

the interests of the working class. Uh, he bought

an apartment in Bulgaria and talks about

how, uh, you should be stripped of

your parental rights if your children went

to a rally. Great deputy, just an

amazing deputy. I’m talking about this for so long

because I’d really like

for you never to elect him again, and when he

runs in the next election, I

will specifically be in St. Petersburg, uh, I don’t know,

well, to put up against him, probably,

some, naturally, pretty feeble

candidates who can’t even beat someone

this dim-witted. Well, even so,

we’ll see what feeble

candidates there are. Even among those feeble

candidates, we’ll find someone

to unite around and

vote against that very

Stretsov. So, Sasha writes to me: "Please once again

show your support and urge Khakassia to come out

to vote." Once again, I urge you, once again I

express my support. In Khakassia, the situation is that

the authorities want to steal victory from the Communist

candidate, and there is only one

person left in the election. This is a

unique situation. And that’s why right now

you simply need to come out and vote for

him. He will become governor

if he simply gets a majority of votes

in favor. The authorities are now trying to make sure

that everyone comes out and votes against him.

So in Khakassia, go to the polls and

vote for this sole

candidate. There is some good news. On our

program, good news comes up rather rarely,

but I’ve just told you about a terrible

union leader. The good news

is that, thank God, right

now tears of emotion and happiness are about

to start streaming from my eyes, because, well, I

follow the trade union movement

quite closely. I think it’s a

major problem in Russia that there is no

genuinely independent trade union movement

here, and nothing normal will ever exist

in this country until

well, interests are balanced. Here

there are entrepreneurs, there are big

businesses, there is the state, and there

must also be trade unions that

defend the interests of ordinary workers. We have

miserable wages in this country, in part

because there are no unions and no one is

putting forward the most fundamental, the most basic

political demand: we

want wages to rise. Well,

look at who in this country is demanding that.

No one. Well, in the presidential election I

called for the minimum wage

to be 25,000 rubles (about 25,000 RUB). But no one is doing

any systematic work on this. No one is engaged in

protecting people. And finally, there has appeared

a medical trade union, which

interestingly enough, uh, is doing this

work. A rather curious thing

happened with it. You know that

right now, well, the logo of this

trade union has appeared; it’s called the Doctors’ Alliance.

Right now, healthcare is undergoing the so-called

"optimization." What is optimization?

in healthcare? Well, if you’ve been to your local

district hospital, especially if you don’t live in

Moscow—though even if you do live in Moscow—

you’ve seen roughly what

optimization means: staff are cut,

wages are effectively reduced,

using all sorts of manipulations, like

moving doctors to half-time positions, uh, turning

orderlies into cleaners—well, in other words,

they fiddle the numbers so they can formally

say that a doctor’s salary rate is some

large amount, while in practice

they only pay half-time wages. And doctors still

end up receiving, even in large

cities, around 40,000 rubles, even though in theory

they should be getting 80,000 to 90,000 rubles.

So this optimization is underway. And in

the Moscow suburbs, in the Moscow suburbs, in

the Moscow region, in the near Moscow suburbs,

the town of Vidnoye, by the way—

the fiefdom of our famous "people’s candidate,"

from the people,

Grudinin. I mean, this is the closest and

very wealthy part of the Moscow region. You drive

your car along the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road) and see

all these fancy shopping centers

standing there. All of that is located in this

part of Moscow Oblast. In other words, there’s

plenty of money there. The Moscow region as a whole

allocates 176 billion rubles to healthcare

a year. And the governor

is saying that the budget is growing by 45%. And yet

optimization is still going on. Hospitals are

simply being shut down. And, uh, in this

hospital in Vidnoye, the infectious diseases

department was cut, and residents were told to

travel from the town of Vidnoye to the town of

Domodedovo. Now, for those who aren’t from

the Moscow region or don’t really

have a clear picture of it, yes, I specifically took a segment

I asked them to show it on a map. It’s 20 km (about 12 miles). So

when you tell someone, "You

know, in our town we’ve got

optimization to make things better, but

optimization is supposedly about improving things."

You know, residents of the town of Vidnoye, in your

best interests we carried out this optimization,

so now you’ll be taking your

child to the infectious diseases ward 20

km (about 12 miles) away."

20 km. The year is 2018. Densely populated

Moscow Oblast (the region around Moscow). This isn’t Chukotka (a remote far-northeastern region of Russia),

you know, where basically the distance

between populated places is never

less than 400 km (about 250 miles). Right, this isn’t the Urals, this isn’t

Siberia, this is the most densely populated part

of the country. Well, apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg. And

they shut down a hospital and say, "Well, you

can drive 20 km to another one." Well,

naturally, everyone there rebelled.

The doctors rebelled, the local

residents rebelled, they’ve been holding constant

protests there. And, well, the chief doctor

said, "Well, as usual, you know,

like that Glatskikh woman, right?" He said, "No one

promised you anything here. And anyway, anyone who

starts showing off—I’ll fire all of you

and twist you into a ram’s horn." And

that was, well, a pretty realistic threat,

because what is a chief doctor

at a hospital in

some small town? Well, he’s basically

a member of the local mafia. There’s the head of the town,

the top police officer,

some other senior official in charge of

something or other, the main oligarch, the owner of

the biggest enterprise, and the chief

doctor of the main hospital. That’s the local elite.

They all sit together in the banya (Russian bathhouse) and hang out.

So he said, "Right now I’ll have

the police called on you." And then the doctors

turned to the union.

Usually, turning to a union

means you run into

someone like Sergei Vostretsov, whom

I was just telling you about,

a member of United Russia, who says:

"Everything is great, we support

Governor Vorobyov, we support

the mayor of the city, and you’re the idiots." But

this union actually went there

in person. And there was an absolutely amazing

exchange. We posted the video, but I’ll

still show you a few seconds

from it now. Just so that

you can understand what kind of

conversation was taking place there. Here’s

what happened when the medical union

came to the hospital.

Please understand: right now materials will be sent to the

FSB (Russia’s security service) about destabilization

in society. So, I am a representative

...it’s being linked to terrorism.

[music]

We had to take the child to Domodedovo.

Domodedovo? Is that far from here?

Well, quite far, because before, if

we could get there in 5 minutes,

there used to be a pediatric infectious diseases ward

here, right?

So you see, at first everything followed the

standard script. What does an official do?

Whether it’s that Glatskikh woman or this

doctor here—what was his name again, good

Lord? Bobrov, was it? Ah, I think

Bobrov—sorry, it slipped my

mind

for a second. Barsuk. Barsuk. Exactly,

Doctor Barsuk. Well, he acted in the standard way.

Olga Glatskikh says, "The state

doesn’t owe you anything." And this one

says: "What, paid medicine?

You want paid medicine and for me not to

fire you? I’ll call the FSB right now. I’ll

crush all of you. Right now

the police chief will come here, the one whom

I treated last week for

a venereal disease—secretly, of course." And

he’s obviously an old friend of mine. He’ll

just steamroll all of you into the asphalt.

A standard conversation. And the official, basically—

well, official, chief doctor, same thing—

he assumes, it’s just hardwired into him,

deep in his subconscious, that

he switches this on and everyone

gets scared, everyone says, "Oh, Chief Doctor

Barsuk, forgive us, we’re so afraid of your

FSB,

we’re so afraid of your police and your

police chief whom you supposedly

treated for something. Please forgive us,

we’ll buy the supposedly free medicines,

we’ll put up with our wages being cut

and so on." But then, finally, thank God,

a union appeared

that said, "We’re not afraid at all

and we’re not leaving your meeting."

You want the police to

throw us out? Fine, call the police." So he

called the police. And in fact, yes,

the police came. What else could they do? But

the union chairman had come, and he has the

right to go to those workplaces

where his union has a local branch. And, well,

it actually worked. And today I was very

glad to read that, at least

temporarily, this very Barsuk has been suspended

from his post. And the Moscow Region Ministry

of Health also deserves some credit for

being crafty. They

also decided to get ahead of things. They

have already announced that they allocated 105 million

rubles (about US$1.7 million at the time) so that these

necessary free medicines could be purchased. That

means people will no longer have to buy them

with their own money; the budget will cover it after all. There

was some kind of rally there today,

which Grudinin also came to, naturally,

those same corrupt trade unions showed up,

the ones that had done nothing before. But

the fact remains: when we see

that there is real trade-union

activity, uh,

things can start to change. I find it quite

interesting exactly how,

well, this doctors' union is acting in this way

because doctors, after all, in

the overwhelming majority of cases,

work for the state. They are very

dependent on the state. And, well,

it was assumed that they were in such a

subordinate position that these thugs

would always be able to intimidate them. But even so,

it works. You know, I connect this with

the recent wave of activity, including

from the Investigative Committee (Russia's main federal investigative body), which started

jailing doctors for medical errors.

By the way, this is a real problem. Doctors

do make medical mistakes. Doctors

perform operations while drunk. They make a lot of

different mistakes, and if they commit

a crime, they should be jailed. But there

were some cases where, well,

the Investigative Committee, obviously

without understanding at all what it was doing, tried

to bring criminal charges against Dr. Misyurina

It was a high-profile case. I

saw it in my Facebook feed: all the doctors

were writing about it. So we saw

this kind of coming together, in that sense, uh, well,

a kind of faction, I guess, I don't know,

a guild of doctors. It was quite

interesting. And probably, maybe,

these processes pushed things toward

the emergence of a real trade-union

movement. That's very encouraging. Now let me

answer some questions before we

move on to discuss

the most interesting part: Prikhodko, Rybka,

and everyone else. So, "Oxygen

Guy" asks me:

"What will the consequences be after the introduction of

new U.S. sanctions?" Well, there won't be any

special consequences. The main consequences

that we will feel are

simply lower wages, or

the absence of wage growth. Which is to say,

it's the same thing. Your salary will

stay at the same level. But inflation

will be 4% on paper, but in reality

12%. That means that every year you

will be 12% poorer. This will be connected

to the economic policy of the Russian government

and Russian President Putin, and to a

much lesser extent to American

sanctions. And because of the sanctions, well,

business simply won't develop, yes,

and there won't be any jobs. And people

who, in a normal situation, well,

how does it usually work? There's some

person or bank that has

money, or maybe no money but a desire

to start a business. He starts

doing business. He hires you,

he hires her, her, her,

produces something, pays taxes.

That's how economic growth

happens. In Russia's situation, if you

have money, you will never in your life

invest it. Now, especially when

there are sanctions, Putin has clearly gone off the rails, and the whole

country is being run by god-knows-who, and 100 million

rubles gets handed to, damn it, Margarita Simonyan and

Tigran Keosayan for their films. Of course,

you would never invest your money; you'd

stash it away in your Swiss bank

or put it into a Cypriot company. If you

don't have money but are thinking of starting

a business, you won't do it; instead

you'll seriously be thinking about

emigration. So tens of thousands of people,

enterprising people who, in a

normal situation, would start

businesses, pay taxes, and

thereby make all of us richer, are

getting out of the country and somewhere in America

starting to do it there. So there, that is,

that's where economic growth is happening, in

Western Europe or the United States, while here

nothing happens. A gradual

decline, and unfortunately it will

definitely continue as long as Putin

sits in the Kremlin. And American sanctions

against that backdrop are just some minor

nuisance. Another big question: What should we

expect in 2019? Well, in

2019, as far as the authorities and

everything else are concerned, we should expect

more of the same decline. There will be elections in

2019. Uh,

well, what do I expect in 2019? I

expect that in 2019 I will

work better, and I will persuade you

through this program even more effectively. And we

will be able to put pressure on this government, on

the authorities, more effectively than we have

all these years, in order to force

them to change something. The government,

for its part, will

push back against us and will try to

crush us, intimidate us, and push us aside.

That's specifically what we should expect in

2019. All right, Drogot 64.

Is there any progress with registering

the party? Is there any way around

the bureaucratic obstacles? Unfortunately, no,

there is no such possibility. Registering a party is

a process in which we fill out

many, many, many, many pieces of paperwork. And

then some person there, the minister of, uh,

justice, goes to Putin and says: "So,

Navalny is trying to register a party again

What do we do?" Putin

tells him: "No Navalny party,

goodbye. We already have excellent parties,

there are the Communists, there's Yabloko (a Russian liberal party). There is

Ksenia Sobchak’s Party of Change. Let

all Navalny supporters choose what

they prefer: to go with Zhirinovsky

or with Ksenia Sobchak. Let them choose and then

go to the elections. That is enough.

So, unfortunately, there is no clever

legal maneuver here

that exists. I also see questions here about the party.

Questions about the party.

Is your strategy still

to keep making videos, or is it something

else? What is it? Dmitry asks me.

Dmitry, my strategy is

to do a variety of things.

Making videos. There is a kind of

little jab in that question. Like, here you are,

you consider yourself a politician, and yet

you make some little videos and write

some funny things on

your mug. And that is not real

activity.

We choose the kinds of activity

that at a given moment seem

more effective to us. Maybe we are

mistaken, maybe I am mistaken. I

believe that right now establishing and

building up information flows

is the most important political

activity. Besides that, we

have taken part in elections and will

take part in elections; for example, on

the next September there will again be a single voting day

(Russia’s nationwide election day). At minimum, Moscow and

St. Petersburg, the regions that interest us.

We will take part in the elections; we are already

recruiting candidates and working on all

of that. We will hold rallies, organize rallies,

and make videos—absolutely we will keep making

videos, because if I do not

make videos, then no one at all will

be able to find out what is happening in the

country. No one will ever learn that

the family of the deputy

head of the Russian government staff

Prikhodko

owns a chalet in France. And that is important

information; it is not society gossip,

you understand, it is not, well, not something

abstract. It is a completely concrete

fact that you and I, Dmitry,

must tell people, must tell

Grandma Zinaida Petrovna, Grandma

Valentina Alexandrovna, and everyone

else, so that these grandmothers

do not support Putin, do not vote for

them, and vote against United Russia.

As we can see, that is exactly what is happening now in

many regions of the country. Four—in

four regions, United Russia lost

the elections. Why? Well, partly because of

the videos, partly because we

made videos and promoted them specifically in

those regions about the increase in the retirement

age. Videos matter, and we will keep

making them. So, Prikhodko, whom we

talked about—let me remind you

with 58 seconds about the house of this wonderful

Prikhodko, and then we will talk about him. 58

seconds: a chalet in France. This is how it goes in

our country. You start building

a hyper-mega supersonic super-missile,

and what you end up with is a chalet in the French Alps.

That is the scheme. Two Putin-era

officials run a secret military

corporation, while their daughters and sons-in-law

make money by

latching onto that corporation’s money and

carrying out various projects at its expense. We are

above the French ski resort of

Megève, right near the borders with Switzerland

and Italy. One of the most prestigious

ski resorts in the world. And now

let us fly a little closer. Right in front of us is that

very chalet. The house has an area of 170 m², and beneath

it are 11 sotkas of precious French

land (about 0.11 hectares). We believe that the

Prikhodko family acquired this house in 2014

through a chain of other companies. And this

little house costs €2,100,000

.

28,000 people are watching us live

right now. We are discussing Prikhodko, his dacha (country house), and

the chalet. And as for this video,

quite a lot of people have watched it already—1.7

million, I think. And yet I received

a huge number of, well, rather

disappointed comments.

Do you know why? Because mostly

people wrote, mm, that it was kind of a small

house.

Usually, you show something and say:

"Oh, the officials stole and stole,

and then at the end—bam—you fly over and there stands

a palace." But here you fly and fly, and

there is a house in France, a chalet, well, kind of

small. It is funny, actually,

that we have already, well, sort of lowered

our threshold of sensitivity. That means I can

surprise you only with something like

some hundred-story palace,

with golden lions standing around, while naked girls

toss burning torches into the air and dwarfs run around nearby.

And the chief official, Prikhodko,

must be sitting in a chair upholstered in

leopard skin, smoking a cigar. That is what it takes. In other words,

they are so brazen, they steal so

much, that when I simply show

a chalet worth €2,100,000—yes, $2.5 million—

people say: "Well, his house is kind of

small." But in fact,

yes, why is this little video important? Because

the typical person you argue with

about politics will обязательно tell you

something about the defense industry, about

the military-industrial complex, and will definitely tell you that,

well, Putin may do some things wrong.

Of course, he should not have raised the retirement age,

but the Americans, you see, want to

to seize Siberia. Just look,

Western Europe has set its sights directly

on Yakutia and wants to come into Yakutia and

steal the diamonds. And for that, we must

build missiles,

to protect Yakutia’s diamonds from

some person in Germany, and in Japan, and

in Australia or the United States, who, of course,

dreams of nothing else. He dreams of it constantly,

you understand? He already has a salary there of

an average of $5,000 a month. So,

of course he dreams of stealing our Yakut

diamond, and Putin is protecting it. And this video

is not even so much about what kind of chalet

Prikhodko has in France, but about the fact that

the notorious nuclear shield has turned

simply, uh, into a cash cow

for corrupt officials. And apparently, to an

even greater extent than any

civilian projects. We talk a lot there

about money being siphoned off there,

kickbacks, procurement schemes, but here

everything is mostly classified.

If we have a top-secret

enterprise whose managers,

this wasn’t in the video, but if you read

the main investigation by Novaya Gazeta (independent Russian newspaper),

they set up Cypriot companies, well, in general,

at every such enterprise, the Tactical

Missile Armament Corporation is involved. Yes, there

are more FSB officers working there than ordinary

workers who actually make the missiles. And can

you imagine that the corporation’s

executives set up Cypriot offshore companies and

channel military money through those offshore accounts?

That the daughter of the head, the general

director Obnosov, and the son-in-law of the former

chairman of the board, uh,

Prikhodko, are running some kind of schemes involving

the procurement of grain elevators. For this,

companies are set up, and they appear there under their own

last names. In other words, the schemes are

so primitive, so blatant. I mean,

just imagine how many even

more sophisticated schemes there must be. Can you imagine

the kind of corruption going on there under the label

of secrecy? Can you imagine? And how much is

hidden there, if with that money, well, take

Prikhodko, for example, a man to whom

Medvedev publicly says on television:

“Prikhodko.”

“Western countries are once again plotting against us,

they want to impose sanctions. Work out

the issue of sanctions against the West.”

Prikhodko says, “All right, I

will look into that.” After that,

he gets on a private jet and flies to

his family chalet in France. We found

it, after all. It’s in open registries under

the names of his daughter and his son-in-law. And,

well, somehow nothing happens. And

Novaya Gazeta wrote: “We published it.” And

really, at the Tactical

Missile Armament Corporation there should already

be searches underway. The FSB should be in an uproar. How

can this be? A breach of secrecy. Uh, and

Cypriot companies, chalets, foreigners, and

some kids, some

23-year-old girls, hairdressers,

setting up companies and getting into these completely

classified funds and completely secret

construction projects. And nothing happens. That

speaks to the scale of the theft. And this is what

we need to talk about with those who are

convinced. There are quite a lot of such people. They

sincerely believe that we must build

missiles in order to protect Yakut

diamonds from the people of Germany. So you

should discuss missiles and Yakut diamonds with them,

talk about how we allocate money,

how your pension is smaller, how you

have fewer medicines, and how your hospital

is being closed and you’re being forced to

travel somewhere else, because the money is going to

the sacred defense sector, and in that sacred

defense sector it turns into chalets. This

is very important. We need to talk about it. And

that’s why I’m simply urging everyone

to use this, uh, video in arguments with

that kind of people, of whom there are quite

a lot. And Peskov, by the way, was

asked, well, what do you think about

the corporation? And he said: “I

doubt its credibility.”

But what is there to doubt? There are the companies,

there is the Russian state property registry, here are all these

Russian databases, these people with specific

last names are in the databases of the Russian

state. So as a matter of legal fact,

everything that Novaya Gazeta described and

that we talked about does exist. But they

say, “Well, we doubt that this is,

well, of course, something white has been placed right in front of them,

and they say, “Well,

we doubt that it’s white.”

Prove it to us.”

We need to conduct an independent

examination to determine whether it is

white. Maybe it isn’t white

at all—maybe it’s black.”

Oligarchs.

Interestingly, oligarchs have become a little

less loved. That can’t help but be pleasing. You

know that I don’t like oligarchs, I don’t

feel sorry for oligarchs, and I don’t consider them

real businessmen. And I welcome the fact

that they are, uh, being jailed abroad. They

are not my fellow citizens in any sense,

they are not Russian people to me, and in fact

not people at all. Uh, to me they are

enemies. Especially resource oligarchs, especially

people like Dmitry Rybolovlev,

who was recently detained in

Monaco. What is

Dmitry Rybolovlev? When we show

a photograph of Dmitry Rybolovlev, well,

usually he looks like a rather, uh, pleasant,

youthful-looking man, like he does here now

appeared in the photo. In fact,

the photo of Dmitry Rybolovlev is actually

a photo of a giant sinkhole in the city of

Berezniki. A place famous for its giant sinkhole.

That is, it is a collapse in the ground that

was caused by the operations of the company

Uralkali. Because this very

Rybolovlev, sometime back in the 1990s,

as a result of some shady

schemes and manipulations—he had never actually been involved in this business

at all. Just some random person

cheated several other random people

and ended up with a huge Soviet-era

enterprise that earns

billions from exporting fertilizer abroad.

No achievements, no

business acumen, nothing of the sort was there.

It was just a matter of the dice being thrown, and the chips

falling in such a way that it ended up

in Rybolovlev's hands—he was simply, at that moment,

the luckier crook. He invested

all of it abroad, and left behind here

a huge hole. And now in Monaco

whether they jail him there or not, I

don't think they actually will; more likely

he'll somehow be released on bail, uh—

or put under some form of travel restriction, some

version of that. But the fact that there is an investigation underway against him

at last is very

good, because before this the man had simply

bought up all of Monaco, including the police,

and corrupted absolutely all

the officials. And this is a very positive

process, what is happening now, as they finally begin

to investigate their activities.

I very much hope that in the course of investigating

these activities, some portion of the money

that was ours will be returned, because, well, that same

Rybolovlev, yes, he, in

particular, is known for the fact that he

owns AS Monaco football club, and he

funded it, but beyond

that financing, he also illegally put

additional money into it. Well,

because there are certain limits there and

there are

requirements for a transparent structure of

football club financing. And he

put into AS Monaco, in

violation of the rules, €140 million. How

wonderful that must sound to the people who live

on the edge of that enormous sinkhole in Berezniki?

How wonderful that must sound to everyone else

in Perm Krai (a region in Russia), where this money is actually being extracted from?

Those very funds, in fact. How

nice that is for us to hear. And how nice it must be

for the residents of Vidnoye, who

now have their hospital closed, and have to

travel all the way to Domodedovo, damn it, with a

sick child. He put €140 million into

AS Monaco football club. Great,

just great. We should all be thrilled.

So the fact that they are being arrested, hounded, and

there was news that in Davos they are not

letting in Kostin and some of our other

oligarchic state crooks—I

welcome these decisions. They, uh, all these

people are not our fellow citizens at all. They are all our

enemies. Let them all be thrown in jail, for all I care,

before we throw them in jail ourselves in the

beautiful Russia of the future. The only very

important thing is that at least some of this

money be returned to the Russian

budget. Uh, and I will finish with an optimistic

photo of a man eating

shashlik (grilled meat skewers).

A great deal was written about this over the

past week, because

Tsepovyaz,

Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz,

was a name that made headlines several years ago,

when this monstrous

crime in the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Kushchyovskaya

in Krasnodar Krai, where

several people, including several children, were murdered. Well,

to be precise, they had been killing people; there was

the so-called Tsapok gang. They were all

members of United Russia, by the way. The local authorities,

members of United Russia, friends of the governor,

friends of all the security services. They held

power there; they literally

raped everyone. The things described are simply

monstrous. Like driving up to a school

and picking out older schoolgirls, taking them away. And

no one in that district, in that stanitsa,

could say a word to them, because they were

the authorities. They simply, well,

went too far. If they had not killed

so many people at once and had not

killed so many

children at the same time, it probably would have

been swept under the rug for them, just like everything else had been

before. Criminal cases against them were, uh, being closed

even when they were occasionally opened.

But in the end they were imprisoned. That

Tsapok, as I understand it, was simply killed in his

cell because he started giving

testimony against local prosecutors. And

Tsepovyaz was ultimately sentenced to 20 years, and

his

photos caused a huge stir. He is serving time somewhere far away—he was sent off to

Amur Oblast—and there he is,

grilling shashlik, eating some kind of crab, and all the rest.

And now everyone is outraged. And

what is interesting is that even on television

they showed it on federal channels, and

various state propagandists like Vladimir

Solovyov are outraged and say, "Oh,

my God, Tsepovyaz, how can he be there eating

little kebabs." But I would like none of

us to forget that this Tsepovyaz

is, well, the best friend of Vladimir

Solovyov.

He himself is a member of United Russia. His brother was

a United Russia deputy. And by the way,

his brother knew about this murder. He was

charged with concealing a

crime. And guess what terrible

The one who was actually punished was, uh, this very man,

Tsepovyaz.

for covering up a murder there—a mass

murder of people. A 150,000-ruble fine,

because he is a United Russia party member,

because he is a deputy from United Russia. And in that way,

he effectively just escaped

punishment. I wrote a post about this back in 2012.

Well, they showed all of it. And

the reaction was astonishing. They showed all those

crabs. An astonishing reaction. So,

Tsepovyaz was thrown into solitary confinement.

The question is: for the fact that Tsepovyaz was eating

barbecue,

should Tsepovyaz have been put in solitary,

or should it have been the person who let the barbecue into

the penal colony? Our federal

penitentiary system

is completely corrupt. For

money, anyone there—even Chikatilo (a notorious Soviet serial killer)—could

be eating barbecue and crab. Let me plug a book by

my brother Oleg, called

"Three and a Half with British Respect, Brotherly

Warmth." Buy it and read it. He

describes all of this brilliantly. How

corrupt this whole system is. It doesn’t matter

if you’re some mass murderer. If, on the other hand, you’re

a political prisoner—that’s what he writes about—then

everything will be strictly by the book for you, you won’t

get anything, and you’ll be sitting in solitary

constantly. My brother was put in solitary 15 times,

or maybe 20 times—some huge number.

But Tsepovyaz was put in solitary only

because he got caught in

photos with those kebabs. And

why wasn’t the colony warden removed? And

why wasn’t the entire leadership of the penitentiary service in

Amur Region jailed? Why, in that sense,

did nothing happen? Sure, they said he was eating

barbecue and put him in solitary. But who

brought the crab? Who brought all of it in?

Why are they silent about that?

They’re silent because, in reality, Tsepovyaz is

still ideologically close to them. And you may

remember that we—and I personally—

most often mentioned the Tsapok gang and

Tsepovyaz because they were

business partners of the current

Prosecutor General of Russia. They did business with his

family. Let me show you

43 seconds from our film about

the Prosecutor General, to remind you

that these were not just some random gangsters,

they were gangsters who

committed crimes and did business together with

the families of the leaders of the Russian

Prosecutor General’s Office. Forty-three seconds.

The most interesting question, of course,

remains this: where did the wife of the deputy

prosecutor general get millions of euros to buy

a hotel in Greece? Olga Lopatina did not

state in her declaration that she was involved in

the sugar trade. She is

a founder of two companies

specializing in sugar in Moscow and

Krasnodar Krai. In fact,

Olga Lopatina, the wife of the deputy prosecutor general,

has very strong reasons to hide this

business. Her partners,

the co-founders of the sugar

enterprise, are Angela-Maria Tsapok

and Natalya Tsepovyaz. They are the wives of

the leader of the Kushchyovskaya organized crime group, Sergey Tsapok,

and his right-hand man, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz.

Well, you saw it: there are the surnames of the children of the

Prosecutor General. And alongside them are

Tsapok and Tsepovyaz. That’s why he gets to eat

crab. He is a business partner of the

Prosecutor General. Sure, yes, there was some

small, God knows, little stain in his biography—

something like 20 people were murdered,

children were burned alive. But he’s one of ours,

we made money with him,

so let him eat crab—

that’s what the Prosecutor General thinks. There are people

to stand up for this man.

So I don’t know what exactly is happening with Tsepovyaz.

He was put in solitary. But what we should demand is not

just that Tsepovyaz serve his

20 years. What I don’t understand is why, together with

him, there are not also sitting in prison

Yury Chaika, Artyom Chaika, and all the other

Chaikas, the Lopatins, all the other

prosecutor’s office officials who

took part in all of this. And now they

are still involved in everything. And they are eating the same

kebabs and crabs, only now they’re doing it

out in the open. And to their buddy and accomplice

Tsepovyaz, they’re probably now

speaking through some mobile phone and saying,

"Just wait, brother, for now

you’ll do a little fifteen days in solitary, and

then you’ll come out and everything will be fine for you.

The boys in blue uniforms with gold

stars will send you a little gift—we’ll send you, I don’t

know, crab, or maybe oysters."

We’ll fly oysters into Amur Region by plane.

In the beautiful Russia of the future,

we will move all these people from the witness stand

to the defendants’ dock, and they will eat only

what they are supposed to eat in a

maximum-security penal colony. Next week

there will be no episode of my show, because I

will be at the Strasbourg court. In Strasbourg,

at the European Court, where the decision will be announced

in one of my cases, in which I am

seeking recognition that there was political

persecution against me. It is important for me

to go there. So, unfortunately,

I’ll have to miss the next program, but the Thursday after

that we’ll meet again. Bye.