Putin vs. the epidemic. Sellout artists back the amendments. Navka pays a bribe.

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow.

That means the program *Russia of the Future* is live on air,

and I am its permanent host,

Alexei Navalny—or,

as the Tsargrad TV channel called me this week,

“the man who rudely insulted Vladimir Putin.”

I hope all of you are alive and well,

that you are observing the self-isolation regime,

staying at home and not going anywhere

unless absolutely necessary, and doing

everything you can so that your relatives,

especially those who belong to the older generation,

have the chance to truly

self-isolate properly. You

help them by following precautions,

buying groceries for them, and

in general, preferably not doing anything

that would require them to leave the house. Please send

your questions on Twitter with the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture. I will answer them.

I can already see a very funny

question from Yuri Lopukhov: Do you

think that in the middle of the epidemic the authorities

might try to get rid of

opposition figures and blame it all on the virus?

Well, you mean, they’ll start finding

opposition activists with smashed-in heads

and say the virus is mowing people down—no one is sitting there,

just the virus. In reality, our authorities—

as we can see, and we’ll talk about this

in some detail today—

during a crisis, of course, always

act very strangely, nervously, and

in a confused way. They always try to present themselves

as these tough guys,

but now a real major

crisis has happened, and they do not know what to do. But

without a doubt, they will try in some way

to resort to various

petty and illegal tricks in order

to somehow

—you can’t even call this muddy water—

to extract some benefit

from this horrible environment where

these viruses are floating around. For example, I have no

doubt that they will try,

even when, I hope, this virus is over,

to keep banning any

mass events for as long as possible.

We will almost certainly see mandatory

quarantines where people are locked up, and then try

figuring out whether they actually have coronavirus

or not—but they will be placed under

quarantine, effectively under house arrest.

That cannot be ruled out either. So, well,

our authorities lie, steal, and

cheat, so something like that could

very well happen. And since I’ve started answering

questions, let me grab one more right away.

Sakhare asks me: “Alexei, why do you think

troops are being moved into

Moscow?” There are already videos of this all over the internet.

I’ve seen videos on Twitter too,

on Facebook—some military convoys,

but honestly, for now it seems to me

that this is either made up, or

just some routine troop movement

being presented as troops being massed

in Moscow. It is hard for me to

imagine a situation arising

where Moscow would need to be blocked off

by troops. That would already be some kind of

zombie apocalypse—people running around and being

shot from armored personnel carriers. Unlikely. I

don’t think so. But

I do know for sure that the police

have been put on heightened alert.

Stricter quarantine measures

may be introduced, and police officers may,

as in Italy now, walk the streets and tell everyone,

“Go back inside.” That could

happen. But actually massing troops would be

pretty stupid. Not to mention that

bringing troops together somewhere means

all those troops will infect one another.

Of course, the troops are mostly made up

of young people, but they also have

commanders and other people who are

older. I think they understand too

what that could lead to. And this whole

coronavirus situation

has completely pushed aside the entire news agenda.

You can see it: no one is discussing

anything else anymore. Any other news

is completely relegated to the margins.

And that is obvious, because our

entire way of life has changed completely.

It may change even more. This is

a kind of enormous experiment on

humanity, unfolding in many

different areas. For example,

take the sphere of

distance education,

where this is truly a massive experiment:

students who used to study in person

are now all studying remotely. And

that includes university students, schoolchildren, poor performers,

solid students, and top students alike. And after

some time, we will have a huge

amount of data that will let us

finally understand whether

distance learning is actually effective

or not. That is one small point. Of course, there is

far, far more that is negative. I

simply want to urge that

when we discuss coronavirus, we

should still pay attention and keep track—we must not

forget about other

news and events that are

happening and have happened. And it seemed right to me

to begin today’s program

by recalling that two

years ago, a terrible, horrifying

tragedy occurred that shook and

united the entire country. It is hard for me

to remember another event that

also, well,

Obviously, coronavirus is a much bigger issue,

but nevertheless this was the main topic

of discussion for several days.

The whole country was genuinely horrified, grieving

and crying. This was the infamous fire at Winter

Cherry (the Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping mall in Kemerovo), when 60 people died, of whom

37 were children. Let’s watch this

29-second video of what it looked like.

Remember, at the time we watched all of this

in real horror. These live images were simply

online just

unbearable to watch.

[music]

rescuers. If it is possible to use them

during emergency

rescue operations.

[music]

You can see—you just saw this

Winter Cherry shopping mall after

the active phase of the fire had

been extinguished; it was still smoldering

for several more days. And two years have passed, yet

the investigation is still ongoing there. And unfortunately, very few people

are following that investigation,

and very few people understand at all what is

happening there. And the worst thing is that, basically,

you can’t say that any

lessons were learned, and you can’t say that

those responsible were punished. There were also

repeated rallies, and in

Kemerovo there were huge protests, uh, back

then. But what is happening now?

The investigation is already in its final stage. And

the most senior person who has been charged

is the head of the local EMERCOM (Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations). That’s it. And we have not

seen any systemic, truly

major systemic changes

not the kind where they say, let’s

send inspectors around to check all

the shopping malls. No, we have not seen

any systemic changes in this

very permit-and-approval system, where for

money you can always get any

authorization you want. It worked that way before,

and it still works that way. Yesterday I was

on air on Echo of Moscow with Yegor Zhukov, and he

asked me this question: “Alexei, you

are aiming for leadership, so

why do you keep focusing on

such a small and narrow issue as

corruption?” And at the time, well, I

said that I simply believe that

corruption is one of the key

problems. And the political regime is built

on corruption. But unfortunately I did not think of

this example. And the day before yesterday, I think, Poland

extradited

the co-owner of Winter Cherry, finally, to

Russia. And he is accused of

paying a bribe to the local fire safety

inspectorate—7 million rubles (about $90,000 at the time)—so that

his property would not be inspected. And accordingly,

it was not inspected for five years,

after which all this happened.

And the thing is that, as we can see, well,

in this specific

case corruption became the cause of people’s deaths.

And more broadly,

it is the cause of the system’s overall rot, because

everything is arranged exactly this way. It’s just that

here, tragically and horrifically, 60

people burned to death. And in all the other places, well,

fortunately, no tragic situations

have occurred, so exactly the same thing

continues to happen. We saw no

resignations, no punishments,

no reckoning at the highest levels of EMERCOM, where

absolutely everything is rotten, everything has decayed,

especially in this area of fire

protection, and in the sphere of obtaining any

permits, sanitary [ __ ] permits. Everything

is done for money, absolutely everything. And here

we simply have one specific case

where once again we saw a 7 million ruble bribe.

No inspections, and complete—uh—they give you

all the paperwork in full, after which

people die. The outlet Baza released a full

documentary about this. I’ll show 30 seconds of it.

It’s simply a demonstration of just how

fundamentally wrong everything there

was done.

Investigators from the Investigative Committee were documenting everything

that might point to the cause of the fire or

to ways it could have been prevented. Here,

for example, on the fourth floor they

noticed two cabinets with fire hose valves.

And look at this photo. Here is the valve with

the handwheel for turning on the water. The fire hose

is supposed to connect here. See,

the thread is male. And here is another photo—this is

the hose itself. And as you can see, its thread

is also male. So what does that mean?

It means that physically it was impossible

to connect them. And it was like this in every fire

cabinet. The hoses were just placed there

for show.

Great that the Investigative Committee officers are now

walking through the ashes, photographing these

hoses, and seeing that the threads are the wrong

type. But we understand very well

—someone from “Chel Democracy” is asking me:

“Alexei, who do you think is to blame for

this Winter Cherry tragedy?” Every

tragedy has specific people responsible. There,

part of the blame lies directly with

the firefighters, who acted improperly

during that situation.

Of course, and, properly speaking, the

people who took bribes first and foremost,

the people who paid bribes, and in general

the entire permit-and-approval system of Russia and

of Kemerovo Region—the governor, Tuleyev,

effectively created within Russia

a small mafia-style gangster

state. And in Kemerovo Region everything

was decided, and still is decided, exactly this way. For

money. Well, in reality the police there are

quite simply real bandits.

are simply no different from

bandits. And all the authorities in Kemerovo

Region are just outright

bandits. They do everything in exactly this

way. Fine then. They found a local

EMERCOM official (Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations), uh, and jailed him. But Tuleyev,

and all the others? We understand that

major facilities like a large

shopping mall in the city center

paid everyone off. And the owner of that shopping

mall paid officials, he paid

sanitary inspectors, he simply paid

the local administration. Bribes were delivered to

everyone, and everyone took part in it. But more broadly,

the whole country is structured in exactly

the same way. And, uh, everyone kind of

hoped that after this terrible

tragedy there would at least be some kind of, uh,

discussion about how, even if, obviously, on the whole

Putin's system is corrupt,

still, at least within this corrupt

system, we might create some kind of

segment of the permitting

documentation where, well, corruption

can't be eradicated, but it wouldn't be

on such a scale that it could lead

to tragedies. Absolutely none of that

happened. They just, like, forgot about it, and that was that.

They found scapegoats and jailed

the scapegoats. Some families are still

crying. Every year they light candles,

with photos of the children who died. And the state

has moved on and no longer looks back. And

the new fire safety chief gets

a new 7 million rubles from the new mall director

(about $75,000). Because those are the rules,

and they tell each other: "It's not that we're

like this, it's life that's like this." Because

that really is how everything is set up, and

life should not be arranged this way. 40,000

people are watching us live.

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And

coronavirus

won't let me move on—no, let's put it this way,

coronavirus won't let Tatyana Navka get away

without my mentioning her on my

broadcast, because nobody is noticing this.

It's terribly frustrating. Terribly

frustrating that, as I already said,

coronavirus has swallowed up absolutely the entire

news agenda, while right now

there is an absolutely astonishing,

wild corruption scandal unfolding, involving

the

wife of the press secretary—uh,

the press secretary to the President of Russia,

Dmitry Peskov. They are quite a

corrupt couple. We'll talk about Peskov

more later. This week he angered the whole country

by saying that it was a very good idea

to tax bank deposits of, uh,

one million rubles (about $10,700). We'll talk about

that. But right now we're talking about Tatyana

Navka, and a very interesting thing is happening with her.

She has an ice

show. Obviously, she's a woman with resources. Well,

besides that, she really is a genuine,

the real deal—not just a figure skater, but a

talented athlete. I mean,

she's a corrupt and hypocritical woman,

but nevertheless she's a talented

athlete and skates in her ice show.

She put on a show, and among others

it features the famous young figure skater

Alina Zagitova. But since these are

crooks, they can't do things any other way. And what do

crooks do? Well, there's this man,

the vice president of the Moscow Figure Skating

Federation and deputy head of the Khrustalny Ice

Palace. His name is Eduard

Aksyonov. And this Eduard Aksyonov is playing

the role of his life. I'll still be

talking about the investigation into

these parasites. Many of you probably saw

how Margarita Simonyan got 9 million rubles (about $96,000)

for a screenplay. But this guy did something even

more outrageous. So, there's an ice show. And, uh,

this ice show takes in money from

ticket sales and pays fees. So there,

Zagitova gets some fee,

Navka probably gets some kind of

fee—she gets

6.5 million rubles (about $69,000) for taking part in this show. Pyotr

Chernyshev, I don't know, probably some

well-known figure skater, also gets 3 million

rubles (about $32,000). And this Aksyonov

supposedly performs some role there and gets

8 million rubles (about $85,000) for it. While formally

speaking a government official, he is with the

Moscow Figure Skating Federation, meaning he

effectively works for the Moscow sports authorities,

yet he gets 8 million rubles. The thing is,

he doesn't skate there. There is no such

role. They literally invented a

fictional role in this show so that

this official could receive 8 million rubles.

So Navka is effectively

handing over

a bribe, simply legalizing it through

a fake contract for, uh, the provision of

some kind of acting services by this very

Eduard Aksyonov, and in this way she is simply handing over

a bribe to the deputy head

of the ice palace. And now, of course,

a scandal has erupted, though not as big as

one might have hoped, because once again

coronavirus. And, uh, well, they were basically backed

all up against the wall and told: "Well, 8 million rubles

(about 80,000-90,000 USD) are there. Please, just look at the man,

he doesn’t dance on the ice. No double

toe loops, no triple toe loops, no

toe loops at all. He just sits there in his

office room, collecting 8 million

rubles. And Navka gave an absolutely astonishing

comment. She said:

"Indeed, the question arose as to why

Eduard Aksyonov received money but did not

skate in the show. He really did not

skate; he is not a figure skater at all." So

they drew up a contract for him, damn it, for

participation in an ice show, but he isn’t even

a figure skater. And she goes on to explain:

"The thing is that Alina Zagitova

is a minor, and under

Russian law she cannot have

her own sole proprietorship." Therefore Eduard Aksyonov

with the agreement of Alina’s parents

represented, and continues to represent,

the figure skater’s interests. Everything is in strict

compliance with the law.

My God, what brazen people they are, and what

idiots they really take us for.

So, Zagitova can take part in

all championships, she can receive

fees, she can enter into

advertising contracts. I mean,

it doesn’t matter that she is a minor and

cannot register a sole proprietorship. Why would she

need one at all?

A person who is one day old

can still be arranged to receive

money; you can sign a contract with their

parents. No problem. You can pay money

to a person of any age. So, I mean,

they are just blatantly lying. And I’m very

interested to see how they are going to wriggle out of

this situation. Because

this is simply a fake contract, an obvious

forgery. An official, and moreover the

deputy head of this palace, receives 8

million rubles under a fake contract.

The explanation is a complete lie. In other words,

Peskov’s wife has been caught in her

corruption scheme. I’m very

interested to see what happens next, and I urge all of you

to keep an eye on this, because

well, they’ll hush it up, using the epidemic as a

distraction. A quick shuffle here and there,

people will basically stop discussing all this,

and Navka will go back to her usual

business, buying another watch for 37 million

rubles (about 370,000-400,000 USD), or however much those

watches they give each other cost. It’s very important

to keep this issue alive. So just

follow what is happening, and I will also

keep watching and report on it here.

And we must not leave this whole disgusting corrupt

family alone

for a single second. 48,000 people are watching us

live. That’s really cool, actually.

Well, actually 50,000 people are watching

live. I’m already being corrected here.

You’re all sitting at home in quarantine, you’re

all bored, so you’re all watching

the program. I’m very glad. They say that

YouTube is now going to reduce streaming speeds.

So far that hasn’t happened, but

I hope it won’t, and that

we won’t end up in a situation where

we’re all locked at home and our only

friend is the internet. And then, bang,

the internet slows down and we can’t

watch anything. And Anna Vaska, Anna

Vaska One says: "Alexei, please tell

my husband

to disinfect his hands. He’ll definitely

believe you. Dear husband, I’m honestly

surprised that anyone needs to tell you such an

elementary thing. There are actually

a lot of people now who call

themselves COVID dissidents, and they

say that all of this is really

not that important, that the death rate

is indeed low, 1 or 3 percent, nobody

really knows. But in any case, you often

hear this line of thinking: "Well, where are these

mountains of corpses? Please show us." So,

there’s quarantine, so much talk, but where are the

people dying in the streets? And there are no people

dying in the streets. I hope we

never, ever see that. But if everything

goes wrong, then there will be many

people dying in hospitals. Those people, uh,

will most often, unfortunately, be elderly

people. Though young people, as we know,

are dying now too. People are getting sick. Lev

Leshchenko (a famous Russian singer) is currently in serious condition

in the hospital. Boris Akunin (a well-known Russian writer) wrote today on

Facebook that he also has

coronavirus. So, dear husband,

do it, if not for yourself—if you are

a COVID dissident—then for the rest of

your family. You grab onto something somewhere in the metro

and bring this virus home,

infecting everyone there. And maybe

you’ll get off lightly and just

spend a day in bed. Maybe you’ll carry it

without symptoms and not even notice, or maybe not.

Are you really prepared to expose your own family even to

a one-percent

chance of death? Probably

not. So please wash

your hands constantly, and put

these little bottles everywhere, if you can still

buy them, filled with disinfectant.

That is the simplest thing we

can do, and we must do it.

Uh, General Shoigu,

uh, dragged our Ruslan Shaveddinov off to

Novaya Zemlya (a remote Russian Arctic archipelago), and also somehow

showed off in a completely hellish way in this

last week, and he was speaking in the Federation

Council. And of course, he was talking about

how, uh, around Russia

hordes of terrible pro-Western

liberals are gathering. And all Western countries,

of course, are sharpening their daggers and weaving

their intrigues against Mother Russia. And so he

was speaking in this Federation Council, and well, I mean

obviously, he was talking nonsense. Shoigu

is talking nonsense. In general, basically, these days

any official is always talking nonsense,

because whenever they are asked about pretty much

anything, they start talking

about the terrible West. About absolutely anything.

But what is monstrous is that the entire

Federation Council is sitting there, applauding him or

nodding along. Here is a man saying:

"Nonsense!" And there sits a whole gang

of idlers, each of whom earns

half a million rubles a month (about several thousand U.S. dollars). And they nod,

saying, "Well done, Sergei Kuzhugetovich,

let's hear him out." Western countries

regularly accuse Russia of involvement

in high-profile incidents such as

interference in U.S. elections,

various hacking attacks, concealment of

combat losses, and so on. In our

country, these claims are picked up by the

pro-Western opposition division,

regularly trained abroad.

Sheltering behind media laws,

its activists try

to infiltrate military facilities, hunt

for relatives and witnesses,

push their way into hospitals where our

wounded and sick are being treated, into cemeteries and to

memorial gatherings

and into the families of our fallen boys,

film the entrances and exits of our restricted

facilities and post them online. One can

imagine what kind of liability they would face

in Western countries. This area

requires further legislative

regulation.

About the pro-Western opposition division. And,

of course, this area requires

legislative regulation. In other words,

ban something again. How about you

just stop lying. Here he is

contradicting himself. He says: "They

accuse us of covering up

combat losses." Well, you are covering them up.

You really are hiding them. And no one would

be running around cemeteries filming

random graves if you would just stop

hiding it, for heaven's sake. But this is simply

disrespectful toward our own

soldiers. If you send them somewhere

to Syria, in whatever capacity, as

contract soldiers, regular servicemen, or

members of Wagner PMC (a Russian private military company), whatever you call it, they are

still Russian citizens. We do not

really understand what they are fighting for there in

Syria, but if they die, why are you

hiding all of this? Why do you keep

lying endlessly? And with Shevedin, what

is happening is still completely

unclear — no one knows where the person is.

The Ministry of Defense comes out and

says: "He has contacted his relatives. He has

such-and-such status, he is in such-and-such

unit." But he does not call. And he is supposed to have

a phone. He is supposed to make a call at least once a week.

We do not know where

he was taken. They literally kidnapped

the man, took him to Novaya Zemlya (a remote Russian Arctic archipelago), and are holding him

in a status somewhere between a prisoner and a

hostage.

And on top of that, they blame the pro-Western

opposition division. They do not like it

that we are poking around and trying to

find things out. Well, of course we are trying

to find out why you kidnapped a person. And,

not to mention that, well, good grief,

look,

I have already said that EMERCOM (Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations) is one of the

most corrupt agencies. This whole, uh,

halo that has been created

around Shoigu, as if he created

some kind of super-efficient rescue

ministry — he created no such thing. It is

an absolutely hyper-corrupt,

inefficient system in which people now

are paid next to nothing. These

EMERCOM rescue workers write to us at

FBK (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) all the time, saying, guys,

pay attention to us. They raise salaries for these people,

and for those people, but for us

they pay practically nothing. There are these

cushy, lucrative positions. Those are exactly

the ones where

all sorts of fire-safety approvals get signed off. And

everything else is just poverty,

destitution, and collapse — there is nothing. And meanwhile

there are just super-rich people: Shoigu,

whose house we showed a few years

ago, and all his deputies — they are all

millionaires and multimillionaires,

you understand? Yet they pin medals all over themselves,

climb onto the stage, and lecture us about the

pro-Western opposition division. Every one of

them has an account in the West. Every

single one. Maybe not in Switzerland, but

somewhere, I do not know, in the Middle East, in the

broader foreign "West." All of them

keep money abroad. All of them live

in direct luxury. All of them are

multimillionaires, but damn it, they lecture us and

demand measures of legislative

regulation. It is simply outrageous.

Dig, dig, dig and find. Apparently,

that is the username. Fourteen planes flew to Italy.

There are no masks in our pharmacies, and they are going to take 13%

from bank deposits. We will talk about

that. Ah, just before the program

I saw an excellent tweet by Vladimir

Varfolomeyev, head of the news service at

Echo of Moscow, who, uh, was complaining

about Minister Manturov, who two weeks

ago said, "Guys, don't buy

any antiseptics, don't buy

any disinfectants, because

you're rushing out in a panic and clearing everything off the shelves."

In a week, everything will be supplied, everything

will be in abundance. Our government will produce everything,

our industry

is capable. There's nothing.

Go to a pharmacy and try to buy this

little bottle of disinfecting

liquid. You won't be able to

do it. There are no masks, no—there's nothing. Well,

we'll talk more about this now, but it's just

all terrible that they can't even manage

the most basic things

at all.

And

yesterday, on that very broadcast on Echo

of Moscow (a Russian radio station), where I was with Yegor Zhukov, he

—look, on the Echo of Moscow website there's

a transcript posted, there's both a transcript and

video. And, well, he was, uh, grilling

me. It was very interesting. I really

liked the broadcast. And I liked Zhukov too.

I hadn't met him before. And he,

well, asked me: "So, you

held this rally and achieved nothing."

You organized such a rally and achieved

nothing. You said a lot of things,

but you accomplished nothing. What

did you achieve? Now I can say. I

achieved this. The FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) achieved this:

Margarita Simonyan has been silent for four days

in a row. She's an absolutely relentless person,

someone who is practically bursting

from the inside if she's not sitting on Twitter

or on her Telegram channel praising her

boss. For four days she's kept her mouth shut

or, I don't know, stuffed her mouth with some kind of,

I don't know, beaver meat or something

like that—and stayed silent.

And that is, of course, thanks to the second part

of our investigation, *Parasites*, which

we released on Tuesday. I think that,

of course, this is quite a painful blow

for these family parasites, because

in fact, this film *The Crimean Bridge*

was made as a gift for Putin. They

kept saying it was being made as

a gift for Putin and were feeding everyone

a line. They really love talking about

what philanthropists they are, what good

people. And I have no doubt that they

went around all their superiors and told them how

wonderfully they made this film, what a great one it was,

using Film Fund money, and that they didn't take a kopeck

for themselves. And we simply came along and

explained that they took for themselves approximately

everything—they just stole it all. And now even by

their own internal-understanding system,

why is Simonyan sitting quietly there and saying

nothing? Because even by the standards

of these crooks, on this film

they obviously had no right to steal

that much, and now they are in a very

difficult situation. Well, the film is up on

the main channel. Let me remind you—1

minute 16 seconds—what it's about.

So, there are 100 million rubles (about 100 million RUB), and filming can begin.

But before that, they need to assemble

the film crew.

Kiosayan: David Kiosayan, Tigran's daughter

Laura Kiosayan, the wife of Tigran Kiosayan's brother's son,

Yunona Glotova. Alexander

Kiosayan—Tigran's daughter, second director.

Edmond Kiasayan, David's son, line

producer. And even Alyona Khmelnitskaya,

Tigran Kiosayan's ex-wife. And she

appeared in this film too. 9 million rubles (RUB).

That is exactly how much of the Film Fund money

was transferred to Margarita's personal

account. To Tigran Kiosayan's account at

Sberbank went 14 million rubles (RUB) for his services as

director and music producer.

The final financial breakdown, taking into account

money from Putin's friend Rotenberg,

looks like this: some relatively

substantial money was spent on

computer graphics and equipment

rental. The rest is far less

significant. And any, any expenses on

the picture simply pale in comparison to

the parasites' fees. They receive 30% of

the film's total budget.

When we started working on this

investigation, *Parasites*, well, we immediately

saw that they were stealing a lot of

money in the production of this

disgusting program, uh, *International

Sawmill*. And we understood that with

*The Crimean Bridge*, there would be something there. Because

these are the kind of people who simply cannot help but

steal. Basically, everything

they do, they do with the idea that

something can be stolen from it. But of course,

I didn't suspect, and none of us

suspected that this could be done

so openly. Just go ahead and

pay yourself 9 million rubles (RUB) for the screenplay.

Everywhere, in every interview, emphasizing

—we didn't force them to say it—in every

interview they said they wrote it in the evenings, that it was

a hobby. Why? Because

it was a gift. Because Margarita

went to her main job—glorifying

her boss. She got very tired, but

still came home and stole away

minutes from her children, from her loved ones, from

cooking, from the things she loved. She took

time just to sit there

and secretly write the screenplay for

*The Crimean Bridge*. What a heroine. And then—bang—

9 million rubles (RUB). More expensive than a screenplay by the most

renowned screenwriter in Russia. And that is,

of course, well, that's why they are

silent now—they're suffering now. Well, the Film

Fund allocated 100 million rubles (RUB), and they took it

half of it, 50. This is, of course, well, this is

really something criminal. And

right now, of course, there won’t be any criminal case there

there won’t, there won’t be one, they’ll hush it all up. But how are they

supposed later, this Cinema Fund, to deal with

other directors, and with other

producers, and how are they supposed to build

relationships at all, when now everyone knows that,

guys, you can’t make

any claims against anyone over misuse of funds.

If out of 100 million rubles, Simonyan and Kiasayan

took 50, and took it, uh, well, like

directly there—and what’s more, we only counted

the direct expenses. Well, there, if there is

a contract, Simonyan gets 9 million rubles, Kiasayan

gets 14 million rubles. We added it all up

and saw that overall, from the budget, with

Rotenberg’s money included, they took for themselves

30%, and 50% of the Cinema Fund’s money. But people

who understand film later told us

already said, guys, look here,

here’s Kiasayan’s brother, uh, David, he pays himself

13 million rubles there as a producer. Plus

he hires two producer’s assistants, uh, and

pays them there—his son and his son’s wife, I think

his son and his son’s wife—and pays them 3–4 million rubles there.

Plus, look, another 8 million rubles.

for the production team. You understand,

that those three people are

the production team. So that money

was stolen too. Same thing with the directing

team. There’s director Kiasayan, 14

million rubles. His daughter, the second director, 4

or 5 million rubles, I don’t remember off the top of my head.

And then there’s also the directing team, also

several million rubles there. That’s them

too. So in fact, the amount

stolen was even greater. But we

just didn’t want to get into those

film-industry weeds. We just did it the way

people who don’t understand film would do it:

we simply looked at the budget estimate and saw everything.

These are, of course, astonishingly greedy

people. And to just steal like this right under

the noses of Putin and Rotenberg over

the very holiest thing they have,

the Crimean Bridge, well, that’s really something.

And it’s interesting. We monitor

the reaction, including the reaction of various

pro-government guys to our film.

And, well, naturally, all

the opposition people are outraged, all

normal people are outraged. But there is

this Konstantin Rykov—old internet-timers

will remember one of the most

disgusting things there ever was

that the Russian

internet had seen, back when the show

*International Sawmill* (a Russian political satire TV show) didn’t exist yet. Before that, the most

disgusting and vile thing was this

KontrTV, which was made by Kremlin

political strategist Rykov together with this

crook Anton Krasovsky, who

now works for Rusha Today

and another crook, Sergei Minaev. It was

some completely, well,

disgusting, pathetic show. Nobody

watched it. They shut it down, as I understand it,

after siphoning off a huge amount

of money there. And now they’ve remade

the program, and someone sends me a clip of it. He

says: “Look at what these

pro-Kremlin people are saying about Margarita

Simonyan. It’s very interesting. Let’s

listen.”

The complaint there, in my view, is

an aesthetic one about this film. It’s awful.

You just want to turn it off immediately

on aesthetic grounds. A film’s function is to be

beautiful aesthetically. And moreover,

well, to carry some meaning, you know,

you can’t just engage in pure speculation

using the word “Crimea.” That’s, that’s what

my personal complaint is, and it’s a very awful

simply disgraceful execution. There are, uh,

certain people to whom, well, film

shouldn’t be entrusted at all. Uh, this is

exactly what the Crimean Bridge is an example of,

that films like this are better not

made at all, so as not to disgrace yourself.”

Well, maybe Tigran Kiasayan has

some good film to his name. I haven’t

heard of it, to be honest. So. Well, this is

just a very bad project, uh, from the very

beginning, and a very bad story. And all

the people who got involved in it and

knowing the film was bad, said: “Oh,

how wonderful it is, oh, how

marvelous it is.” In reality, well,

God will judge you all. If you

call it

marvelous, it won’t become marvelous

because of that,

right? How much are writers’ fees

for books, for example? Obviously there

are certain models by which this is

calculated. There are also

certain models for how—well,

there is, yes, of course, a market. Of course,

9 million rubles, uh, that’s, let’s say,

about twice too much for—well, no, for this

project, I really don’t know. I think

here, well, what, did this film even have

a script?

You’ve just seen a conversation not among opposition figures, but

from Putin’s chief internet man. Well,

maybe he’s no longer the chief one now, and that

same Margarita Simonyan has become

the main one. But Konstantin Rykov was simply

Putin’s number one fighter. We did

an investigation into him and found

his villa, of course, in Nice. So this is

the man who was the internet director of Channel One

(Russia’s main state TV channel). In other words, he stole a lot of money,

bought himself a villa in Nice. Everything is going very

well for him, and he loves Putin very much. The second one, this

young woman here, her name is Maria Kasatonova

or Katasonova. Ah, Katasonova, yes, she’s also

That’s how it is.

Mm.

an internet diva from the support apparatus of all these

pro-Putin brigades. I mean, these are people

who are, of course, pretty small-time, these

Putin cockroaches, obviously, but still

just listen to the words they use. You can’t endlessly

exploit the issue of Crimea. You can’t

double the budget for scripts. That’s

important. And, uh, I’m very

satisfied that, as it seems to me,

this is also a good way of influencing

that whole pro-Putin audience, so that

they can see just how deceitful and disgusting

all these people are. I saw a question here:

"Alexei, why do you think Margarita

Simonyan makes all these awful films?"

Well, she makes them for two reasons.

First, because she simply cannot

do anything properly.

I mean, it’s a case of negative selection.

Only very stupid and

talentless people rise to the top. Do you think Simonyan

and Keosayan wouldn’t like to come up with good jokes

for their, uh, that

little comedy revue of theirs? Or that they wouldn’t want

to write a good film script? They would,

but they can’t. They are, in

essence, talentless, stupid people. That’s

the first reason they do it. And second,

well, they need money. Our state is

very rich. There is an enormous amount of money

in these corporations, and they simply

make the rounds. And everywhere they take a little—or

quite a lot, as we’ve seen. And

we simply can’t imagine

how much these people make from Rusha

Today. Because everything we described in

our investigations—all those schemes involving,

uh, NTV and Aeroflot, all those schemes with

the Crimean Bridge—they pale in

comparison to RT Today’s budget of 20 billion

rubles (about US$250 million). Just think: if on a

film with a budget of 150 million rubles (about US$1.9 million) they stole 54 million (about US$675,000),

how much are they siphoning off together with Gromov

and various other people from

Russia Today. These are enormous,

colossal sums of money. And someday,

when Margarita Simonyan is sitting on the

defendant’s bench and we find all her

accounts and pull out of some basement

some gold bars or

diamonds—I don’t know, whatever it is

wherever she keeps that money—we, I

think, will be very shocked by the scale

of the wealth these people have. Uh, and, uh,

many thanks to everyone who is helping us

spread this investigation right now,

when nobody is interested in anything

except coronavirus. It’s very important

to show that these are not just some

ordinary guys from Krasnodar who came

here, simple folks who love Putin. They are nothing

of the sort. They are greedy crooks,

multimillionaires.

And when they say—when Simonyan says

that she donates her salary

to children, to charitable

projects, she should be told: "Please be quiet,

Margarita, because you

may well donate your large salary—I don’t know, a million

rubles a month (about US$12,500)—you may donate it

to someone, but from those same sick children

you are taking hundreds of millions of rubles." That

is exactly how this should be viewed.

63,000 people are watching live.

A reminder: you can ask me questions

using the hashtag Russia of the Future on

Twitter. I’ll try

to answer them.

And Putin

has postponed his idiotic vote. This is

the best news of the week, but he

couldn’t avoid doing it. It’s clear that they

dragged this out until the very last moment. It was

obvious that Putin personally wanted

to hold this vote on April 22 after all

and get all this over with,

all of it, and finally enthrone himself as

a super-mega-president

with super-mega-powers. But in fact

these really are extraordinary

powers. Any lawyers

or political scientists who study what

Russia is, how its system is structured, what it’s

called—they call it a super-presidential

republic, where the president has

super-powers. That was before. Now

to this super-presidential

republic they are adding powers that,

well, simply should not exist in a country

that declares, for example,

the separation of powers. In other words,

the president will control

absolutely everything. And, uh,

the revolting, vile, disgusting

people who

are urging, really urging the general

public—pensioners first and foremost—to

go vote in this. They inspire in me

a special kind of disgust. I wanted

to talk about them, yes. This

vote, it

has been postponed; it will take place at some later

time. But at the same time, I repeat, it has already

entered into force. Even former, former

former Constitutional Court judge,

Constitutional Court judge Tamara

Morshchakova, wrote a long

detailed opinion on the matter. You

can read it, and especially if you’re a

lawyer, you’ll find it interesting. She is one

of Russia’s best-known legal scholars.

She writes very clearly that, folks,

under Article 136 of the Constitution,

all of this has already entered into force. Therefore

the Constitutional Court, when it was

reviewing all this, should have

to regard these amendments as

already in force, because in the

constituent regions of the Russian Federation

they voted, so all of this has already been adopted. And

this so-called nationwide vote is

a clown show, but they need it. And these

disgusting people here, I won’t, I won’t

hold back on derogatory, uh, whatever

insults and comments about them,

despite the fact that they’ll be there

squealing back in response, all these Moshkovs,

Bezrukovs, Gazmanovs. And I urge

everyone to treat them exactly the same way. Well,

yes, a talented actor, fine,

a talented actor. You skillfully portray

other people on screen, but then you

step off that, that stage,

go back to ordinary life, go to the

Kremlin and lie for money. And for money

you deceive people, you deceive these

poor pensioners and say:

"Folks, let’s come out and vote for

the Russian language." But everyone will come out and

be voting to give Putin more powers. And all of

this has been arranged deliberately in such a way

as to fool everyone, to deceive everyone. So

now we’ll have more time before the

fake vote on these amendments.

We, uh, despite the fact that right now

there’s a postponement and everyone has already forgotten

about the vote, to hell with it, there’s

coronavirus, we’re just trying to survive. But this

can’t simply be dropped. Every

day we have to campaign, explaining to

people what a lie this is. Did you see, uh,

what Gazmanov is urging people to vote for?

Let’s take a look at

the disgusting Oleg Gazmanov.

My parents lived through the entire Great

Patriotic War (the Soviet term for the Eastern Front of World War II). My father ended the war

in Berlin, and my mother in distant Khalkhin Gol.

And I will vote for those amendments to the

Constitution that will not give even a chance

to distort our history, trample on the memory of

our heroes, or desecrate the graves of

my ancestors. It is important to come and

vote.

What a shameless man. He’s combed over his little fringe,

all gray, looks respectable enough. Khl-

Khalkhin Gol, the graves of his parents, his ancestors,

he’s dragged all of that into this. He knows,

the bastard knows, that all this was done so that

Putin would get the votes he needs

for his powers, for resetting

his term limits. And this has absolutely nothing

to do with it. No one is going to revise the outcome,

no one will be able to mock it. What could you

possibly write into the Constitution so that no one could

mock it? What does any of this even

have to do with history? You can’t

write something about history into the Constitution.

He knows that perfectly well, but he took the money

and lies to these people. Then he’ll sing for

them, jump around, spin like a top,

performing “Yesaul,” “Eskadron,” and all

his other songs with their stolen

melodies, and keep on lying,

what utterly repulsive people they are. And those

very people whom you now ought to, uh,

protect from coronavirus—first and

foremost the elderly—they watched this

Gazmanov, many of them like him, and these are

familiar tunes, we all know Gazmanov’s songs

and so on, but you simply need to

tell them: you’re being lured in, folks,

that these people, with their respectable

appearance, with their gray little fringes, are

lying brazenly, they are deceiving you, they

are doing it so that you can be

robbed. Moshkov,

good Lord, has grown his beard down to his waist. And

with that beard he comes out too and lies just

completely shamelessly. Let’s watch

the disgusting Moshkov.

Our country is not just a territory,

it is a big family with centuries-old traditions

and a unique culture. I want

the borders of our homeland to be inviolable and

for no one to have the opportunity

to take part of our territory for themselves,

or rewrite our history. The amendments to the

Constitution guarantee the protection of

Russia’s sovereignty. If this matters to you

as much as it does to me, come to the

vote.

Well, it’s just, it’s simply impossible

to watch. What hypocrisy too. And those

supposedly intelligent eyes. And there he is,

nodding his head. And that’s it. And it was all

deliberately conceived and

done that way. People sat around saying to

each other: "What can we do?" Well, in order

to better deceive those people

who do not follow

politics very closely.

Let’s bring out Moshkov. He’ll have

that full beard, and with his

smart-looking eyes he’ll lie right to the faces of all these

people. But in fact, I know perfectly well,

no one wants to tangle with actors.

Well, they’re famous people, many people love them.

And so politicians generally try, well,

why, so to speak, criticize Moshkov or

Gazmanov, because in response they’ll

say something back, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth

to get involved. I think the stakes now

are high enough that it is worth

taking them on, because they really are

scoundrels who will damage our country

for years to come. So, things are already fairly

bad here, very bad, but they got

their fees at the cost of

making life worse for us and for our children.

They, uh, will continue to destroy

the country’s economy. Just look at what

is happening now. In fact, for the sixth year in a row

people’s incomes have been falling. And these people come out and

do everything so that Putin can

to be elected in '36, in 136,

and so on, and so on. Ella

Pamfilova, when discussing these amendments,

also

sort of let something slip in a very revealing way.

She also effectively admitted

that these amendments already have legitimacy,

because they have already been voted on.

Let's listen.

We all already understand that the

procedure, in accordance with the currently

effective Constitution, which

has taken place, already legitimizes those

amendments that have been adopted. It is absolutely

legitimate already on the basis that

the legitimately elected State Duma

and the Federation Council, and our legitimately

elected legislative assemblies

of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation

by two-thirds, three-fourths, and three and two

thirds, this law has already been adopted, these

amendments have been adopted. This

process itself is already legitimate

and one can only treat with

great respect the fact that

the president did not stop there, and his

political will and desire to hear, in this

case, something not provided for under the

current Constitution: the opinion

of the people. Additionally—the key phrase—he

went for it, and that deserves great

respect. Well, that's already a bit of a lyrical

digression.

Did you hear that? The opinion of the people is an extra,

you see—they've already done everything there, but

the opinion of the people is additional, and therefore

deserves great respect. So,

this person, too, is just dancing this

dance full of lies,

of hypocrisy. And here, of course, I cannot

help but say that I feel

great, great satisfaction from the fact

that neither I nor the colleagues with whom I

worked and work, not for a single

second ever doubted that Ella

Pamfilova is such a corrupt,

disgusting woman. Ah, let's recall 2015,

when she had just replaced Churov, and

we went after her, because back then there were

elections in Barvikha, and we carried out this kind of

experiment, where we put forward an entire team

of people. We wanted to take over,

we said outright that we

would take over the municipality in Barvikha, and

see whose land this is and what kind of

rich people live there, and we would simply

establish real people's rule there. And either

Ella Pamfilova would ensure fair

elections there, and we had no doubt that we

would win, or they would let no one in, and

then we would find out whether she was a good head

of the Central Election Commission or not. And they,

naturally, began rigging things.

A huge scandal broke out. She

canceled the elections. And, my God, Dmitry

Gudkov, Vladimir Ryzhkov—not to

mention all those Vinokurovs, Baronovs,

everyone under the sun kept writing to us endlessly: "How

wrong you were about Ella Pamfilova,

she's so good, she canceled the elections,

she's an honest person." Ella Pamfilova

held those elections again six months later,

having completely falsified them, and then

continued down that path of falsification. And

the only person who has since

come up to me and said:

"Alexei, I admit that I was

wrong," was Dmitry Muratov from Novaya Gazeta,

who argued with me fiercely and wrote

entire columns saying, what do you mean, Navalny, don't

go after Pamfilova, because she and I

went somewhere together in our youth, and

she was so good, such a great

woman. And we all believed in her. Well, maybe

maybe once she really was a good,

great woman. Now she is absolutely

a corrupt, hypocritical thief. And there is no other

way to describe her. And I said this

back then. I am very glad that now, on this,

it seems to me, absolutely

everyone is convinced of it. And of course, I am waiting—not that

like Ramzan Kadyrov (head of Chechnya), I want, so to speak,

everyone to apologize to me for

defending Ella Pamfilova back then, but

simply—guys, if a person is in this

system, we cannot expect that he or she will be

even in the slightest degree

honest. And if, within this system, that person is also in a

responsible post like the CEC, we understand very well

that when they took that position, they

were already compromised up to here. They, uh,

have absolutely agreed to any monstrous

fraudulent manipulations that they

will have to carry out there. Alexei, why

do you think these actors, singers, and

other talented people are promoting these

amendments and the vote on them? Daniil asks

me. Money?

Actors, of course, are also very

dependent people. And I often

hear this from decent

actors, who say: "Why are you

going after Bezrukov or

someone like Vladimir Mashkov? You

have to understand that Vladimir Mashkov is

a slave, uh, and he works in a theater; officials

can throw him out at any moment.

He can lose his job, he can

lose everything. So, well, that's why he

does their dirty work." But I don't think that's

an excuse. After all, everyone else isn't

doing their dirty work. In the end, Vladimir

Mashkov probably has enough to eat. As I

understand it, he has an apartment in Miami,

he spends a lot of time in the

United States. He's doing very well. He is

very, very rich, but he takes part in

all of this because he wants even more

money, because he wants more

administrative leverage. Bezrukov

why do any of this at all? But he wants

to be given an extra pat on the

cheek, you know, to be let into places where

the powers that be are, and to be allowed

to have some tea somewhere and eat a sandwich from

their table. That’s how the allure

of officialdom works. That’s why they grovel, because

they want to be useful to these

villains. Ah, it turned out to be a great parody,

really great, a little crazy, of

Bezrukov. And it was made by the comedian Sobolev.

But first, let’s spend a few seconds on Bezrukov

and recall him, because his, uh, his

campaigning for the Constitution was the most

nauseating, because in all that

typical Bezrukov-style act of his, where he’s

either impersonating Yesenin (the Russian poet), or maybe even someone else,

let’s watch Bezrukov first.

The Russian language is one of the richest

languages in the world. No other language in the world has

such metaphors, comparisons, epithets, and imagery

as Russian. That is probably why it is so difficult

to translate the poetry of Alexander Pushkin

into a foreign language. And it is in this language that we

speak, feel, and declare our love.

That is why, it seems to me, the amendment

to the Constitution of the Russian

Federation on protecting and preserving the Russian

language is so important.

[applause]

[music]

And Sobolev recorded a crazy parody, but

a very funny one, about fishing floats and

prostitution. Let’s listen. And here,

it seems to me that, uh, there’s no need

to look for too much meaning in it. Just as there was no need

to look for too much meaning in what

Bezrukov was saying. But all of this here

is captured perfectly. Let’s listen.

Language is a means of communication and

mutual understanding,

and fish are basically rabbits, just without

paws, without ears, without a little tail, without fur,

without a skull—exactly the same.

There’s a saying: "To eat the fish and

eat the rod too." But I’m not Mashkov (likely referring to actor Vladimir Mashkov), I don’t do that

kind of crap.

Shnurov (Sergey Shnurov, musician) has a wonderful song, "The Fish

of My Dreams." I have a dream too.

I dream of shooting lasers from my eyes and

climbing trees using only

my legs. You climb to the top, let go, fall, and

it doesn’t hurt.

And I also dream of fishing with

prostitutes.

That is why fishing floats and

prostitution are so important. It concerns every one of

us.

[music]

Constitutional amendments, fishing floats, and

prostitution. And humiliating this vote

every single day is something each of us should do.

Humiliate it, expose it, denounce

it absolutely, I’m not afraid to say it,

denounce everyone who is taking part

in all of this. Marianna Maksimovskaya,

you remember, she used to be so good. She

was one of those journalists who was genuinely

honest and decent, and she left television

because, well, on television it had become

impossible

to remain honest and decent there. And what

do we see? Good Lord, now here she is in 2020,

not even for some election, but specifically

for the most outrageously fraudulent thing

that has been done in the entire history of the

Central Election Commission. You know,

the 2011 elections were fraud on this level,

right here.

The 2018 presidential election

was fraud on this level. But

the fake vote was

fraud somewhere out in space. And Marianna

Maksimovskaya, having arranged her hair like

Joan of Arc, came to the CEC and

simply made a complete fool of herself there. Was it really worth

it for you, Marianna Maksimovskaya,

to spend all that time building your

reputation only to destroy it and

trample it into the ground? Let’s watch. 70,000

people are watching us live as

Marianna Maksimovskaya humiliates herself, after

which, of course, she can no longer be considered

a decent person. I now present to your attention

an online resource

created specifically for the

nationwide vote on introducing

amendments to the Constitution. We also have

one additional

option for convenience and faster access to

information—a chatbot. We named

our chatbot Konstantin because it sounds similar

to our Constitution, yes, we chose that

name for our chatbot, Konstantin. Well,

at any rate, it’s easy to remember.

I think it’s important to add that, in general,

for easier access to this website,

special banners will be displayed online

with the option

to go directly from them to the website

Constitution 2020 RF. All you’ll need to do is

click on the banner. We very much

hope that creating this resource

will help people make an informed and

responsible choice.

A man who has been in power for 20 years

is resetting his term limits, and she comes out

and says: "Chatbot Konstantin, ha-ha,

what a great thing. We came up with this

brilliant creative concept. At our PR agency

we thought it up—hilarious. And then, of course, Ella

Pamfilova and all the other cronies

sitting around him are supposed to

clutch their stomachs laughing and say, "How

great—Constitution and chatbot Konstantin,

it’s simply impossible to even think about without disgust

watch." And after that she was still there,

presenting some absolutely disgusting

videos. I don’t even want to—maybe in the

next program I’ll show them to you—but it was simply

an absolutely nauseating spectacle. And on top of that,

we’re the ones paying for all of it. And what

I showed you—all that stuff with Moshkov

and Gazmanov—you have no doubt, do you, that it was

obviously campaigning in favor of

those amendments. In other words, it wasn’t just

“come out and vote,” it was campaigning for those

amendments. But we’re being told, we’re being

told that this is neutral advertising

funded from the state budget. And so this

whole gathering of parasites, from

Maksimovskaya to some Gazmanov,

sit there and grub around in budget money.

And then they look at us and say: "Guys,

there’ll be a chatbot named Konstantin, and you’ll

have fun with it, ask it

questions, and it’ll give you funny

answers." Big spit. I’m being asked:

"If Moshkov doesn’t know, then in 2005 Putin

handed over two of our islands to China."

That’s absolutely true. Absolutely true. All these

people saying, “we won’t give up a single inch of land”—

Putin handed over two islands,

huge ones, by the way, on the Amur River, to China.

That was a completely illegal

transfer of that supposedly sacred Russian

land over which Moshkov tears out his

beard and, well, scatters it

to the wind. People just

don’t pay attention. Well, money,

money. Vlad Chestyakov asks me:

"Alexei, please tell me, will the

coronavirus epidemic interfere with resetting

Putler’s term count to zero?" Well, it will only interfere

if the coronavirus kills the entire

population of the Russian Federation. For

Putin, this is an absolutely fundamental

task. He wants to,

I’ve said many times that Putin’s goal is

to remain president for life,

a tsar-emperor. But now this

tsar-emperor—and that’s no

exaggeration—wants to be, uh,

the ruler of Russia with extraordinary powers.

He can even dismiss judges. Powers like that

have literally never existed for

anyone. He really wants to be

Russia’s autocrat until death. And absolutely everything

is aimed at that. And yes, they’ve

postponed it for now because they’re simply

afraid. If they held that vote now, on April 22,

it would be—well, it would go down

in human history as

the greatest crime in the field of

epidemiology, because it would be

the largest planned operation to

infect people, especially the elderly,

with this very coronavirus.

They were afraid to do it, so they postponed it.

So, you watched, uh, you all watched

Putin’s addresses. It was a very, uh,

very highly rated program, a highly rated

speech. And really, this is

very important; this isn’t some

made-up crisis, it’s a crisis affecting all humanity

right now. And of course, we were expecting

some kind of, well, clearer response

from Putin. He’s supposed to be a tough guy. All

the others around him are tough guys too.

Judging by the number of medals they’ve

hung on themselves, they all fancy themselves as very

tough guys. What is Shoigu, some kind of

generalissimo or marshal?

Rotenberg, Hero of Labor—everyone got handed

various stars and honors, everything’s great for them. And

then a crisis situation hit us, and

we expected from them some genuinely,

well, at the very least sensible decisions.

After all, the coronavirus reached Russia

a little later, fortunately for us, and we

saw the mistakes that were made in

Italy, the right things that were done

in Singapore, first the mistakes and then

the very right things that were done

in South Korea, which

carried out an absolutely remarkable operation

to contain this

coronavirus. We see Germany’s very successful

experience, France’s less successful experience,

and the drama now unfolding

in the United States. So, in

principle, you can look at what was done

well and implement it.

And I saw a very apt tweet on this

topic—I don’t remember who wrote it, I won’t

pretend otherwise—saying that for the first time we’re seeing

as a measure

to fight the coronavirus, as a measure

to fight the coronavirus, the adoption of

higher taxes. That’s absolutely true.

Putin came out and said that, well, basically, we’ll

give you a week off. Let’s listen

to him.

Right now it is critically important to prevent the threat

of the rapid spread of the disease.

Therefore, I am declaring next week

non-working

with pay preserved.

That means the days off will last from Saturday,

March 28, through Sunday, April 5.

That, essentially, was the main measure

that was adopted. I mean, you’re supposed to

take measures to prevent

the disease from spreading, in order

to support the population. And as a

measure, what do they do? A week off.

A week off is not a quarantine. It

doesn’t require people to stay home. And even

if we assume that, uh, well,

our people will be sensible and won’t

go out for barbecues—and that’s already not the case. I

saw photos today from somewhere in

Sokolniki, I think, with some little shelters

for those barbecues, or from Serebryany

...yard. Everyone is busy, of course, everyone has gone

out for shashlik (grilled meat cooked outdoors). They grill, talk to

each other, drink wine. Naturally, people

will go to their dachas (country houses). So this is a strange

measure. Why did you do this? Well,

probably, yes. If, uh, you look at it overall,

then during the days off, fewer

people will leave home or take the metro. But

overall it's a strange measure, because

there is no quarantine and no support for either business or

ordinary people. Because why aren't people

staying home? Because they have no money. They

need money. It's simple. Why

are businesses suffering now? Small

businesses practically howled after Putin's address.

Well, because they're being told:

"Send all employees off for a week of

paid leave." And most likely

it will even be extended. Fine, you're

a restaurant or a café or, I don't know,

a workshop making whatever.

You have to send everyone home. And where are you

supposed to get the money? You're closed, you have

no revenue, nothing at all. You want to pay these

people because they are your

employees. You understand everything, you're in the same

situation yourself, but you have nothing. In

the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson made

the decision that all these small businesses,

bars, restaurants, little

shops, are being given £25,000. In

America, if your income is

under, I think, $70,000,

they're giving out $1,800 per person; in Canada

they're giving about $2,000. So

people are struggling, they need money, and they're being given

that money, because that is what

the state exists for. This is exactly

the kind of emergency that has happened. Give them

money. Here, basically nothing

is happening at all. Milov made

an excellent livestream today. Watch it today at 14,

it was at 16:00. He said something very

important. They didn't even declare

a force majeure situation. This is very important,

because, look, our office

is still operating; you just give us donations

and subscribe to the channel. So we

can pay the rent for this office. But

if we were ordinary lawyers, I

would send everyone home right now. I have no revenue.

I go to the landlord, and he tells me,

"Pay." I say, "Well, you understand,

I had to send everyone

home." He says, "Well,

there is no force majeure situation. If you

declare force majeure,

then you can stop paying utility and housing-service bills."

And the utility company can,

the management company can stop paying

the utility provider. In other words, at

least legally, for a time, we can

somehow pause these chains of payments. If you do not

declare force majeure, then

some people still demand

rent from others. You still cannot

go to court and say, "I didn't pay

because I couldn't, because there was

a force majeure situation." It may seem

like a legal technicality, but it is very

important. They didn't even do that.

They didn't declare a quarantine; in fact, nothing

is really happening. And of course,

there's also this super-measure that

just leaves you astonished. It's like

suddenly, you know, like that meme:

Nobody, absolutely nobody: Putin: let's tax

your bank deposits over

1 million rubles (about $12,500). What? Why? How is that

connected to coronavirus at all? How does it

help anyone right now? It will help the budget,

sure. But presumably there are other

ways to fill the budget right

now besides taxing citizens' savings?

Let's watch this statement by Putin,

29 seconds.

Second. In many countries around the world,

individuals' interest income from

bank deposits and investments in securities

is subject to income tax.

In our country, such income is not taxed.

I propose that for citizens whose total amount of

bank deposits or investments in

debt securities exceeds 1 million

rubles, a tax be introduced on interest

income at a rate of 13%.

And this was announced as a measure to combat

coronavirus. So here is the situation:

a quarantine is needed, and everyone is running around saying:

"Quarantine will kill our economy." Everyone

is getting poorer, everyone is losing money, nobody has

any money. And you say: "Well, let the rich

pay." Peskov said this—Peskov, the one with

that same Navka, who paid 8

million rubles to a person who did not take part

in her figure-skating, in that skating show

mentioned at the start of the broadcast—for those who have just

joined, you can go back and watch it.

74, because 1,000 people are already watching us

live. These are the people with

watches worth, what was it, 37 million rubles,

who spend 20 million rubles on a week-long

yacht trip. Peskov comes out and

says: "You know, this

taxation of those who have deposits

of 1 million rubles—this is a restoration of

fairness."

And there are two things here. First,

think about this: how bad things are in

our country—how dreadful it is—that the people considered rich,

the ones who are supposed to be taxed,

are those who have $12,500

to their name. And they themselves said that this

would affect 1% of people. So it turns out that

Russia, which for 20 years sold oil

and gas for trillions of dollars, has

only 1% of the population with

$12,500.

dollars. Well, first of all, this is, well, that

is, basically, well, insane. It

means total collapse. If, if you

have governed the country for 20 years in such a way that here

there is no one—only 1% of people have

even 1 million rubles (about 10,800 USD), then resign

immediately, the sooner the better. You can’t do

anything. But in reality, this is just

a way of increasing income

tax, because of course 1 million rubles

is something a large number of people have. Well,

someone sold an apartment, some

pensioner saved up for a lifetime. Those are

funeral savings, spread across accounts,

and notice, they did it very

cunningly. They, uh, they add up all

the accounts. You won’t be able to say, if you had

1.5 million rubles (about 16,200 USD), you can’t split it into 500

here, 500 there, and 500 there. Nothing

of the sort. Through a special system, they’ll

count everything and say you have 1.5 million

rubles. And on those extra 500,000

we will levy a tax on

your interest income.

Why do this now? If you want to

do it, let’s discuss it. Because

this is not, not, not a tax on the rich.

These are obviously not rich people; it’s a tax

on those who earn at least something in

our impoverished country. You want to do that?

Fine, then let’s discuss it. Why the hell does this need to

happen now? Like Sberbank is now

introducing a fee on transfers over 50,000

rubles (about 540 USD). People have no money. They’re being forced

to stay home. If you have some

relative stuck somewhere, and they

text you, “Hello, Kolya,” or write or

call and say, “Please send me

60,000 rubles (about 650 USD), because I’ve ended up in

this situation and I have nothing to feed

my family with.” You go and have to pay

this fee to Sberbank. Why do this

now, when things are bad for absolutely everyone?

It’s astonishing, staggering, and, and

unthinkable. Russia has a police

state. It is a police

state. Not as efficient a

police state as China,

which simply put entire cities under lockdown

right away and shut everyone in. But we

also have a police state. And what of it?

Apparently, we can impose a lockdown.

But they don’t impose one, and instead they keep

coming up with measures to take more money

from people. From these poor, miserable people. I

saw a photo of a woman. She was standing there with

a sign: “I’ll stay home, but only if you

feed my family. Give this woman

money.” Because really,

she has no chance of staying home. How

can you stay home if your business

will shut down, if you have no salary, and

of course no business owner can

keep paying that salary? Right now everyone has been

told: “Well, send everyone on leave,

but keep paying their wages.” Where are they

supposed to get the money if they’re shut down? Well,

nobody has it, they just

Putin seems to assume that somehow

they’ll muddle through somehow.

I talked about this when we were here with you

discussing that astonishing gem about

how the middle class consists of people with

a salary of 17,000

rubles (about 185 USD). That shows a loss of

touch with reality, a fundamentally distorted

sense of aim. Neither Putin nor the others

basically understand anymore how life

actually works. There are just some people out there,

running around, some kind of, you know, some

vagrants or whatever. Maybe they get 17,000 rubles,

maybe 700—who the hell knows,

we don’t. Well, 17,000 is the middle class.

Then, I suppose, a million means you’re very

rich. Let’s tax them heavily.

These people have nothing, and now you’re trying

to take something from them. The whole world

is announcing support measures for

businesses, saying they’ll give something. They gave

nothing at all. There are some measures

that have been announced, and maybe you can

get tax deductions or something

else. But for all of that, you have to

run around, bring paperwork, prove things,

and after some time they’ll allow you

not to do something or other. Well, right now that’s

supposed to be a good measure, right? They deferred all

these mortgage loans, but they deferred them

only for a while. Because look, for people,

this will all end eventually, and then

people will be told: “All right, folks,

now you start paying your loans again.” But all that

time, people weren’t earning anything. They

still have nothing. They’ve

used up what they had and gone into debt. Well,

maybe not huge debts. But if we want

the country to stay at home, and we

do want the country to stay at home,

then give money to these people and give money

to these businesses. Because when there was

the 2008 crisis, we spent half of the National Welfare Fund

(Russia’s sovereign reserve fund), half

of all reserves, simply

handing it out to oligarchs. And that was apparently fine.

And now no one even remembers it,

no one worries about it. All that happened was

our billionaires were turned into even

richer billionaires. Now, when

Nabiullina says: “Maybe, like in

the United States, or in the United Kingdom, or in

Canada, we should give people a little money.” They

say: “Good Lord, have you lost your mind?

Who does such terrible, terrible

populist things as giving these people

10,000 rubles (about 110 USD)? What for? So that

they can buy food? That’s an absurd idea.

But why would they need to buy food? says

Elvira Nabiullina. I come home,

I say to my housekeeper, “Glasha, bring

the food to the table.” And Glasha brings the food

to the table for us. And that’s why I don’t understand why these people can’t

do exactly the same thing. It’s just

some truly gigantic

mockery, what’s happening. And I,

well, still, uh, hope that, uh,

the situation with the coronavirus won’t deteriorate too sharply

although everything we’ve seen

so far points to exactly that. But if

it does get worse, then I’d like

them at least to take some

very clear measures and say which

model we’re following. We can say that,

well, basically, like in Belarus,

there is no coronavirus, we

don’t care. We’ll just wait until

everyone over 80 here

dies, and we’ll pretend that nothing

is happening. Or else we actually go

down the path of quarantine. It looks like they are going

down the path of quarantine. Well then, let’s go

with quarantine and pay people. But they’re not doing that.

That shows that the authorities

are pointless. They put on this image of being

tough and formidable, but they can’t do

even the most basic

things. But what they can do,

good Lord, is once again stage a PR stunt

over all this nonsense with

Italy—it’s just impossible to watch

this. I mean, in principle I

understand the political idea. Things in Italy are

very bad. And many people around the

world are making some kind of symbolic

gesture of support for Italy, sending something

some masks, for example, or simply

saying, “Italian friends, stay strong.”

We should do that. And you can, well, in

principle, it seems to me—uh, I know that

many people criticize me for this position.

It seems pretty absurd to me when

we have sheer poverty here and doctors have no masks,

nothing at all. And then we go and send nine

planes of something to Italy. That’s

just a slap in the face to our own citizens. I mean,

these are the same kinds of doctors from

the regions. They look at the television, their

mouths hanging open, and the TV tells them:

“You know, we sent nine

planes, and what did we get in return?”

I mean, what political

effect was there? That video they, good Lord,

ran on every channel about the Italian

old man who took down the EU flag

and pulled out a Russian flag. All

the Kremlin Telegram channels were flooded, all

the TV channels too—with that video of the old man. That’s what we got

for sending nine

planes there. Let’s watch that video, since it’s

so, uh, dear to the Kremlin.

indeed

Quite possibly, the man with the flag is a very

good person, and he did it sincerely.

He may have thought that

the European Union had abandoned them there, while Russia

sent nine planes and helped them.

By now, the newspaper *La Stampa* has already published

an article saying that almost everything we sent

there was basically unusable.

We didn’t send any virologists there

at all. Well, that’s more or less

understandable. What we sent there were

vehicles that disinfect asphalt. And

here, unfortunately, to our great regret,

we don’t have any tests, nothing real.

Why is it written on my cup—I wanted to write on it

14,500 rubles. Instead I wrote

afterward: “May God protect you.” 14,500 rubles.

That is the salary a virologist receives

in Novosibirsk. We have the main, uh,

the main institution that is, basically,

supposed to come up with a vaccine for us

that will defeat the coronavirus. I went onto

the job listings page of this, uh, wonderful

institute. They really do pay people there

14,500

rubles to a research associate specifically in the

virology department. So it’s obvious that, well,

we can’t do anything when we spend

this kind of money on science. And we cannot

actually, unfortunately, to our great regret,

give absolutely anything either to Italy, or to Stavropol Krai (a federal region of Russia),

or to Uryupinsk (a small Russian town),

nothing at all. And yet, good Lord, they whipped up so much pomp

around this Italy story. And here

it says: “May God protect us, God protects

our land.” Because the fuller, more genuine

quote is from State Duma deputy

Svetlana Khorkina of United Russia. In my

view, everything that happened is because

the Olympics were canceled too, right? And why

was it necessary to insult Russia, including

our athletes? You shouldn’t do that; it’s not for nothing

that our anthem says that our

land is protected by God. Right now

this deadly filth is spreading all over the world,

but there was no need to stage these

political distortions,”

Svetlana Khorkina tells us,

a State Duma deputy. And you look at that and

think: well, Svetlana Khorkina is great.

She jumps well and runs well and

does all sorts of things. And we’re proud of her

when she’s an Olympic champion. But,

good Lord, athletes come in all kinds.

Like ordinary people—like all people—they

can be smart or stupid. Why is it that in the State Duma

only the stupidest people end up there? I mean,

really, why did I connect this

to Italy in my segment?

Because, uh, in principle,

our authorities lie about everything and twist

everything around. Even in situations like this, uh,

truly difficult ones, they cannot

help putting on some kind of clown show

with Italy, telling everyone that in Europe

things are absolutely terrible. And we are riding at full

seriously, saying, we're going to save

Europe. And somewhere nearby stands Khorkina (Svetlana Khorkina, a former Russian gymnast and politician),

spouting some nonsense about how our land

is protected by God. And that this coronavirus was sent by God

because people were offending our

athletes. Be quiet. Just be quiet. Svetlana

Khorkina, please go and do

the uneven bars, or whatever it is you're supposed to be doing

instead. Jump around with a sword. You do not

need to be in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament),

because you simply cannot

speak competently about things

that have at least some

logical connection to each other. But they

really are sitting there, and they are passing

laws for us, and those are our laws, and now

they are passing ones under which Putin

will reset his presidential terms to zero. It's just

completely, well, just monstrously

unbearable. And it's especially unbearable

to watch all of this, really, during

the coronavirus crisis. And if

you watched Sobyanin (Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin) meeting with

Putin on the eve of Putin's address, you could

see it written all over his face that yes, he was lying,

of course he was lying, but he understood everything.

Before we watch

Sobyanin, let's take a look at Moscow's chief

public health doctor, who quite

recently came to the Moscow

City Duma, explaining how everything

was great, absolutely excellent, nothing to worry about, everything

would be fine, we had enough ventilators,

let's listen.

But nevertheless, we have strengthened control over

flights from Thailand, and in total we have

screened 150,000 passengers.

And

we have no registered cases. If

we identify sick

passengers, we have an established protocol

under which we immediately send them to the airport's medical

station. After that, we decide

whether to hospitalize them or not. That

is, this is a well-established system. I won't even

talk to you about it from here right now.

So, we have identified all routes of entry

and exit into the city involving citizens of the People's Republic of China.

We have placed under special

control all entry points, not only

airports and railway stations,

but also, naturally, bus connections. So

that area has also been fully worked out.

It's just that we are not in a position to

talk about this openly from the podium, but you

should simply know that every point,

every group, if it raises

concerns among our colleagues, they

pass the information on to us, and we provide

follow-up monitoring.

Together with the Health Department, we carried out

an audit of all existing

resources for disinfection measures,

protective equipment control,

transport, medical

masks, oxygenation equipment — that is,

our ECMO machines. I want to tell you right away

that as of today

there are absolutely no complications in the city

at all.

That was Moscow's chief public health doctor,

who told us: "Everything

was in place, everything was wonderful, folks. I won't even

tell you about it from this podium. Just

believe us, just trust

the professionals," as they always

say. You know, always in that

slightly condescending way, as if it's all just

panic, some kind of fuss, some articles,

whatever those idiots are writing in their

Twitter and Telegram channels. Just

believe us, guys. Every single

point is under control. Everything is just fine.

Citizens of the People's Republic of China — uh,

everyone was absolutely under control already at that

time. And everyone was saying:

"Guys, this is going to be a huge problem." They lied

and they keep lying. About the number

of people being tested — it's just

the lying has reached such a scale that at

that meeting, where Sobyanin, Putin,

and Golikova (Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova) were sitting — watch this clip now —

Sobyanin is already saying outright that

we have a huge number of untested

people. And Golikova, as you'll hear there,

says: "No, we have checked

190,000 of them. Let's listen."

We have now introduced... Well, thank you very much.

We supported measures for

those over sixty-five, who are now

the risk group. If before we considered those who

came from abroad — and 1 million of them arrived

in Russia over the last 10 days.

And we have to make them stay home

for a while. That's one story. But

today the real risk group emerging is

older people aged 65 and over. Especially,

yes, we have

put them under quarantine. Starting Thursday,

they are staying, and will all stay, at home. Even

those over 65 who are still working

will move to a different режим. I think we need

to adopt a similar measure

and recommend it to those places where

there is a fairly serious trend. We have

basically created an identical system. This needs to be done in

St. Petersburg too. It needs to be done in all

cities with populations over 1 million as well,

because our main

problem now will be with them: they

will be lying in intensive care

beds. They have the most severe course of

the disease. And this peak, when

they all start coming into our hospital system,

needs to be flattened as much as possible,

so that it happens gradually. Otherwise

the system simply will not cope with them. The volume

of testing is very low, and the real

and no one in the world knows the real picture.

To test

it is objectively like that there. I’m not saying

whether that’s good or bad, it is objectively like that everywhere,

but we need to understand that if 6,000 people arrived in Primorsky Krai

(a region in Russia’s Far East) who had been abroad

in infected areas, that is still

a problem, a big problem. And sooner

or later, that problem will surface.

You see, when they’re actually in

some real meeting, all this

empty bravado is gone. Besides,

Sobyanin is someone who

has now really come face to face with this. You

know that I, uh, am definitely not someone

who likes praising Sergei

Semyonovich (Sergei Sobyanin), but at least we

can see that he is in a situation

where he more or less understands the real

picture. And most importantly, he understands

that he will be the one left holding the bag if everything

goes badly—and hopefully it won’t

go badly. But if it does, and for now, unfortunately,

the graph shows that everything

is moving in that direction, Sobyanin will be

the one blamed. And those kinds of attitudes

are already gone. But at the same time, for them everything is split into this:

“We’re saving Italy, everything here is

great, Europe is dying.” But

here he understands. And he says that

there is no testing. It’s all a gigantic

lie. And the main crime that

the authorities are committing now against their own

people, and against themselves, because

they will have to deal with the consequences, is

that they lie endlessly

about testing. They made up some

190,000 people who supposedly

have been tested. But even now, if you

want to get tested, you won’t be able to.

A doctor will only send you for one if you have

really severe symptoms. Even

if you came from abroad, no one will

send you for testing. And

when they do send you, they’ll take the test and

after a few days it’s unclear whether

they’ll tell you the result or not. By now

the entire internet is full of stories

from people who tried to get

tested. 81,000 people are watching us

live. That’s a record. Ah, well,

you’d almost want to say thank you

to the coronavirus, but I’m not going to say

thank you to the coronavirus. Uh, all of you are in

self-isolation and watching the broadcast.

That’s great. 81,000 people are watching us.

Sergei Dichenko asks: “Why is Putin

in such a hurry? All his actions are unreasonably

hasty.” No, actually, unfortunately,

their actions in this situation

are unreasonably slow, because their

idea is that later on,

after some time, if by some miracle

they dodge it, they can say: “Well, you see,

Europe over there was, as usual, a complete

disaster. In Italy everyone was dying. Italy

only survived at all because

our military virologists went there. And

the EU didn’t help them. We

sent our ordinary military guys,

and they saved the Italians. And here

it’s like God simply protected our land,

as Svetlana Khorkina (Russian Olympic gymnast and public figure) said.

So everything turned out more or less normally

for us. Therefore, let Putin remain

forever. That is, of course, their idea—

to make it look as if things were better here than in

the rest of the world. But looking at what

is happening in Russian hospitals, it very much

looks like things will be worse here. And this

lie about the number of people tested will

backfire badly. And this lie is, well,

being exposed by absolutely everyone. I

specifically asked for a short

one-minute video for our program

from Mark Shirchenko, a local council deputy from the city of Dubna.

This is a city where physicists and scientists live.

And those scientists travel

constantly all over the world. So, in

theory, if testing is being carried out across the whole country,

then a lot of people there should simply

be getting these tests. What is actually

happening in reality? Let’s listen. Mark Shirchenko.

Hello everyone. My name is Mark Shirchenko. I

live in Dubna, a town outside Moscow. And,

I am a deputy of the local city

council and an employee of the Joint

Institute for Nuclear Research. Yesterday

I read the wonderful news that

our—what is she again—Deputy Prime Minister

Golikova had counted nearly 200,000 tests

performed for coronavirus. That

rather astonished me. Naturally, I can’t speak for all of Russia,

but

I can speak specifically about Dubna. And for

context, Dubna has a population of 75,000,

with nearly 5,000 employees at this

international institute, many of whom

travel abroad, mainly to

Europe and to China. And this

happens all the time. Accordingly,

during the entire period of this

epidemic, 54 tests have been done here.

Just 54. So there can be no talk of

anything like 200,000. Even by simply multiplying by

Russia’s population, the numbers don’t add up. In

my replies, though, a whole

sect of math lovers immediately showed up, saying:

“That’s only half as much

as Golikova promised.” Come on, do you

really think that in a city with

a population that is constantly traveling on

business trips abroad, the ratio should be the same as in

some other city—say, if you take

my native Voronezh—the proportion should be identical?

So, well, I don’t believe these figures

at all. I think that

the problem is precisely that there are not enough tests.

enough. For example, here tests are being done

only for those who have returned from abroad and

show signs of illness, and for those

who are admitted with serious ARVI (acute respiratory viral infection) complications and

pneumonia to hospitals. Those are,

essentially, the categories that,

as I understand it, are being tested here.

All the other categories

are simply put under quarantine, and a fairly

basic one at that.

And if you ask me why they are lying

about this testing, I genuinely do not

understand. I mean, this lie is going to

become more and more obvious

as they keep

increasing the supposedly

tested count. If right now they are lying

about 200,000 people having been tested,

then after a while they will have to lie about

250,000 people. And at the same time

there is a growing wave of people who tried

to get tested. And these people

were unable to do so. And they will be posting on

VKontakte, Facebook, telling you,

their friends, their acquaintances, that it is impossible to get

any tests done. And even when you do

manage to take one, getting the result of that test

is impossible too. And it is unclear

there are no tests in Russia at all. And in

fact, our authorities are carefully

making sure that these

rapid tests do not enter the country in large numbers,

the kind they have now learned to make in

Israel, South Korea, and China. They are already

making tests there that can show results in 2

hours or even less

than that. None of that exists here.

There is plenty of money in the country, at least

enough that these tests could have been

brought here. But they are not bringing them in. Why

do they not want to identify the true number of cases? I mean,

I mean,

well, after all, no one is

accusing Putin of bringing

the coronavirus to Russia. And no one is accusing Sobyanin (the mayor of Moscow) either.

Just tell it like it is.

Say: yes, this is how it turned out. All over

the world things are bad. And here right now we do not have

tests, there are this many infected people,

but they lie. They say that in

Russia the number of cases is lower than

in Luxembourg. Just look at the size of

Russia and the size of Luxembourg. You can,

of course, say that in Luxembourg

the population is more mobile, it is in Europe,

whereas Russia is more remote.

Russia is remote, of course, but in Moscow and

in other major cities there are hundreds

of thousands of people who also travel

abroad, and they bring this, this

virus back here. And of course there is far

more of it. That is not a reason to panic, but

why lie about it? Well, because they

simply always lie. They lie and stage

some kind of PR stunts. Anatoly Dast asks me:

"8,000 people are watching us live.

When will you, how would you

comment on Putin's yellow protective suit

?" Well, let me

comment on Putin's yellow protective suit

now. This is, of course, a typical

example of how this entire government

does everything for television. They sat there

thinking not about how to fight

the coronavirus, but about what kind of, you know,

picture they should present.

And the picture they came up with was the same kind

they always come up with,

more or less the same thing. One moment Putin is riding

a horse, the next he is flying with some

Siberian cranes, then he is

well, flying a plane, diving down and

coming back up with amphorae. And now

let us put him in some kind of yellow

suit and send him to a hospital where

patients with

coronavirus are being treated. And this is the main,

indeed essentially the only

specialized hospital. Why the hell go there,

is beyond me. And from the standpoint of

the risk of getting sick, the president should not expose

himself to such danger. And from the standpoint of

the fact that, well, you understand, in our

country, where the president's motorcade is 8 km long

(about 5 miles), for him to go anywhere simply

paralyzes the work of an institution for

several hours. Why the hell do you need

to go to a hospital? Just call in those

doctors; if you need a photo op, put on

a white coat and hold some kind of meeting.

But no, it was absolutely necessary

to go to that very hospital. So I think

this was, of course, simply

some monumental stupidity. But there was also

a rather amusing

situation involving Dr. Dmitry

Gorkaviy, who, probably, whom

I did not treat entirely fairly when I

went after him; he got caught in the crossfire. And so I wanted

to explain in more detail

so that no one is left with the impression that

I unfairly accused the man.

This whole PR stunt was devised

so that Putin would go there. And then all over

television they said that

Putin was the only person who

visited this dangerous

medical facility where he could have turned into

a zombie. And Ksenia Sobchak spoke very well

about this on Channel One (Russia's main state TV channel).

I will stay on screen now so that

Channel One does not block us, and you

watch Ksenia Sobchak.

Our president is the only one among

European leaders who has visited

a clinic where people with

suspected coronavirus are being treated. Today he

visited the hospital in Kommunarka (a district of Moscow). Here are these

footage.

But our film crew also

went there.

This footage here—it’s a pity she didn’t say whether it was,

some kind of sacred footage or just

remarkable footage. I saw some kind of

after that there was a joke that Putin was

the only one of the European leaders

who visited the hospital in Kommunarka (a settlement outside Moscow).

Ah, well, it was obviously a PR stunt. And in

this PR operation there was a man involved,

Dmitry Gorkavi, who

ended up in the hospital. Frankly,

it looked rather suspicious. I

saw a post by one of the doctors saying that

a man had ended up in the hospital with,

pneumonia, severe

pneumonia, and at the same time had developed

some kind of hyperactivity. He started running

Telegram channels. On Telegram he began

talking about what a great hospital it was,

how tasty the food was there. He photographed

the food, posted it, and, well, discussed

how wonderful everything was in this

hospital. Then Putin comes to this hospital,

meets with this Dmitry

Gorkavi, and has some kind of conversation. After that

Dmitry Gorkavi, despite his

pneumonia, gives interviews to

pretty much every channel—Channel One, Channel Two,

Channel Twenty-Seven. And generally appears

everywhere, telling the same story, and everywhere

the headlines come out: how a hospital patient

described meeting Putin—as if,

so to speak, Young Pioneers had met Grandpa

Lenin (a Soviet-era propaganda-style comparison). And then the next day, or

maybe even that same day, it turned out that

Dmitry had tested negative for

coronavirus. And apparently he had almost

recovered, and I saw a sarcastic post

from one of the doctors, reposted it, and

wrote that, uh, well, it looked like they had even

used a fake patient. But I

got in touch with people—I didn’t speak to

Dmitry himself, but several doctors wrote to me

that, well, maybe because he turned out to be a doctor too.

This Dmitry Gorkavi, he

turned out to be a doctor. And, naturally,

everyone started writing: "Well, this is just

some absolute fake fabrication." But,

apparently Dmitry really was

being treated there for pneumonia.

Probably, simply in order to

help his colleagues in the profession, he

approached

Putin’s visit with a bit too much enthusiasm and made those cheerful

reports. But nevertheless, he

is certainly not a fake

patient. He is there with

pneumonia. And so I offer my apologies

to Dmitry and to everyone who, so to speak,

after reading my tweet, uh, thought badly

of him. Uh, and of course a separate apology

for the fact that people wrote him

a lot of rather unpleasant things

in the comments, uh, under his

various posts. But overall, of course,

this whole situation also shows that

they don’t want to do anything; they’re simply

producing some kind of PR product. But as for any

real, uh, product of fighting the

epidemic, they don’t understand it, they don’t know how,

there is no strategy. And that is where

all these rumors come from. At the beginning I

was answering the question of whether they would

send troops into Moscow, whether there would be

a state of emergency, whether there would be

a quarantine. All of this is genuinely very

unclear and uncertain. And in his address Putin

should have said something straightforward,

namely: you know,

we are now introducing a non-working

week, but if things get worse, we will impose

a quarantine, so be prepared that we will not

let you leave your apartments. For some reason he

didn’t say that. And that simply

just

uh

and that shows that they simply

really don’t know what to do. But out of

inertia, out of habit, they still

keep on lying and producing

these kinds of staged reports with those very

yellow suits, reports with

fishermen, like the reports they did with everyone

else. And all of this, all of this, all of this

will lead,

unfortunately, to a bad situation,

because the reality is that, especially if we

move away from Moscow somewhere, even to

some nearby part of European

Russia, things are very, very bad. If in fact

we end up with not hundreds of

thousands of infections, as in Europe, and

even if the mortality rate—we hope

it will be very low—and

even if it mostly affects only

very elderly people. But if in Europe

it is already difficult to save these elderly people, and there

you really very often have to face

a choice: they bring you

a thirty-year-old and an eighty-year-old, and

you start treating the, uh,

thirty-year-old, while the eighty-year-old

is essentially written off. A tragedy, an enormous

human tragedy. You understand that

the person will die because you simply

do not have a

ventilator. In

Europe everything is very difficult. Here, in

principle, not a damn thing works in

healthcare. And one of the

unfolding

catastrophes happening before our eyes,

which, unfortunately, not many

people are paying attention to, is the complete

lack of protective equipment for medical staff. And

Italy’s mistake was that

From the very beginning, they did not deal with protective equipment

for medical workers, and doctors turned into

people who infected everyone around them.

They infected elderly people in all

the hospitals, because at that time

they did not understand that a doctor, of course,

will save everyone, but an infected doctor without

protective equipment is simply a mechanism

for infecting everyone around them. And today on

Twitter I just logged in and saw a video from a doctor

from Vladimir Region. Let's watch.

Hello, dear friends, respected

colleagues. I am ready to go out to a coronavirus

hotspot. This is what the

suit looks like. True, I don't have gloves, but

I will put them on later, when I go in to see the child.

They get in the way. This suit was issued for only 4

days. There are no more suits left at the outpatient clinic.

There are no masks.

No disposable spatulas—there is nothing at all.

They are forcing us to work.

Mr. Putin promised a bonus payment, but they said:

"No, on top of that,

for January and February they cut our

salary by 5%."

This is Aleksandrovsky District,

Vladimir Region, the town of Strunino.

That's all, bye. I'm off.

This is a town, not a village; this is not a

feldsher-midwife station (a small rural medical post), this is a

hospital in a town, and there is nothing there. In fact,

across the whole country there is an absolutely

colossal, simply terrible,

monstrous situation. And instead of

admitting it and saying that,

guys, we have a major problem right now,

we cannot buy ventilators for Russia right now,

even though we could, we have

enough money, well, at least let us

buy protective equipment for medical workers. But they,

do not buy it, and instead lie that this

protective equipment exists. Moreover, both

the management and the Ministry of

Health are forcing chief

doctors to lie about it. Yesterday I posted, uh,

a letter that was sent to the Doctors' Alliance union

by a doctor from the town of Kalach

on the Don, in Volgograd Region. Well, and

she writes, and accordingly the Doctors' Alliance

forwarded it to me: look at what

is happening. And she writes: guys, we

have nothing in the hospital. We have three

machines, one of which is broken. We

have no antiseptics. They are making us sew

gauze masks by hand ourselves, and then

wash them. I post this, and it,

naturally, spread widely. This morning

they sent me a screenshot: some chief

doctor at that hospital was writing to a nurse,

not saying, you know, how great you are,

Alexandra, for writing all this,

because now

the Volgograd regional government

is finally buying us masks and protective

equipment. No. Instead, he writes to her: "Why did you

do this? See you in court, I'll fire

you." And then starts intimidating her. Well,

simply

why? You really do have nothing.

Why try to hide it? Because

if in the town of Kalach five

elderly people with this coronavirus

just five elderly people will

need artificial lung ventilation

and they have three ventilators, one of

which is broken, then that means two can be

saved and three will die. And the doctors who

work at the hospital in the town of Kalach

on the Don are in fact

going to be sources of infection,

because without protective equipment they will infect

everyone around them. So why are you

covering all this up? Why are you hiding all this? This is

simply a catastrophe. When

people start dying later, what are you going to

say? You will just write it all off.

Because when one person dies, it is

a tragedy. When 1,000 people die,

that is already just statistics. Well, that is probably

the calculation. I asked

the union to contact this doctor. Such a

brave woman. She did not give in to

pressure from this chief doctor and even

recorded a one-minute video about

what is happening there.

Friends, my name is Tatyana. I am an

anesthesiologist-resuscitation specialist.

I work at the Central District Hospital. I am also a Zemsky Doctor (a state program for doctors working in rural areas).

I have been working here for a year now. This is

Volgograd Region, a small town.

Medical workers are not being provided with

personal protective equipment, because

we do not have anti-plague suits, we

do not have N95 or FFP respirators, we

do not have special

face shields, we do not have goggles, we do not have skin

antiseptic, we do not have

reagents. The chief doctor issued, issued

a local order stating

that gauze masks must be sewn.

The management claims, reports at

every doctors' conference, that we

have all personal protective equipment,

that we are fully supplied, that everything will be

fine, that we are ready for anything. All of this

is a lie. We are not ready, we have

nothing. And we are not provided with any

personal protective equipment.

And if a patient like that actually

comes in and I have to go up to

them in the admissions department—yes, if they are

serious, they will call me, and I will go

wearing nothing but this little mask.

An amazing, brave doctor, whom I

called Alexandra, but in fact she is

Tatyana. Glory to decent, honest

doctors who are helping right now,

who are working and are not afraid to speak about

problems. And of course, shame on this

chief doctor, who right now,

you understand, there’s an epidemic raging, and yet his

one task is to make sure no one sees

that Navalny wrote on Twitter

that they don’t have this skin,

God, they don’t have antiseptic, damn it.

But they’re trying to hush this situation up. And,

uh, right now, of course, each of us simply

as a top-priority and genuinely

very cheap measure. But this is practically

nothing in terms of the country’s budget,

in terms of the healthcare budget,

to provide all doctors, nurses,

orderlies with protective equipment—it costs

next to nothing. But they’ll do it only

if there is pressure. But there is no pressure; we

only we, together with you, can

create it. And this is something we need to work on

every day. As I wrap up the program, I want

to show you a very, very horrible,

horrible, disgusting photograph. And

if you think I’m about to show you zombies

created by the coronavirus, well,

it’s even worse than that. Please show this

photograph. This is the Boyarsky father and son. Uh,

Mikhail Boyarsky, a wonderful Soviet

actor. And who now is also

put the photo back, keep it up, let

people look at it. 85,000 people are watching it live.

They’re looking at this awful photograph.

Mikhail Boyarsky is a wonderful actor, but

now, of course, he is an utterly bought-and-paid-for

toady, singing some kind of

hosanna to Putin. And standing next to him is a completely

vile little creature. This is his son Sergei

Boyarsky, who, unlike Mikhail

Boyarsky, means absolutely nothing to us. He

didn’t star in *The Three Musketeers*. And this

crook, who sits in the State Duma

as a deputy from United Russia, and these two

hypocrites are standing there with signs saying: "Thank you

doctors." Here’s one: a Putin campaign surrogate.

The other is a State Duma deputy

who votes on the budget. Because of

both of them, Tatyana from the town of Kalach-on-Don

does not have hand sanitizer and does not

have a proper mask. She has to

make one herself, sew it herself—in the 21st century, in 2020, she herself

has to sew a gauze mask. So I have

therefore, uh, a proposal for the Boyarsky

family, such a powerful, well-connected

family, one that, well, comes from that old

St. Petersburg clique—they lived in the same building as

Sobchak (Anatoly Sobchak, former mayor of St. Petersburg), they socialized with Putin.

Please, dear Boyarskys, make sure

that instead of standing there with your

hypocritical signs saying, "Thank you, doctors,"

you make it so that at least in the hospital

of the town of Kalach-on-Don

in Volgograd Region there finally appear

basic protective equipment

for doctors. Once you do that, then

you will have the moral right to stand there with

some signs, thanking

someone, or saying anything at all

in public, because right now you are

part of the authorities, and you bear

responsibility for everything that is happening.

Thank you very much to everyone who watched. It was

great being with you. See you

next Thursday, if the coronavirus lets us

do it. Bye.

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