United Russia got trounced, Putin is stamping his foot, and Dud is the spawn of hell

[music]

Good evening, everyone. In Moscow it's 8:06 p.m. Don't

worry, we're not being searched, I haven't been

arrested — it's a technical delay

connected with the fact that after the searches

everything here is being held together a little bit

by sheer goodwill, and something broke off, so it was being fixed. Still,

I'm still here in the studio — Alexei

Navalny, or a U.S. Marine, as one

Kremlin military expert called me. If you

look at

various Kremlin TV shows, you'll see

a military expert there, and that expert

stated that while I was at

Yale University, me — that is, not

the real Navalny — was kidnapped,

and replaced with a U.S. Marine. So

the person sitting before you now is a U.S. Marine. Today we

will be raising money for

restoring the structure of our

regional headquarters. Apparently we'll be raising it

for quite a while, because

today we've had more than 200 searches in 41

cities across Russia. I'll talk about that later, but

first, of course, I want to start with

what caused these searches, because of which

there's a link below this video

for donations, so I'm asking you very strongly

to take a look there. In fact, the reason

was, naturally, our victory. Congratulations

my friends — it's genuinely so nice to say that.

It was so nice to read those great

comments and messages saying, you know,

"For the first time in my life, I voted for

the candidate I was told to support, and he won." It's so nice.

In all my recent broadcasts, and in the last

broadcast, I started with rather strange phrases

like,

"Guys, we need to believe in our own strength." It

all sounded strange. I admit

it sounded strange, and even to me

— I mean, it had to be said, because that

was the main thing, but it was pretty hard

to come out with some kind of pompous

phrase, because what does "believe in yourself" even

mean, really? But it turned out that this

was the key thing. We believed

in ourselves, and we gave United Russia a pretty serious

beating. We just didn't believe in ourselves quite well enough,

because it turned out

already now — as became clear by Tuesday —

that we actually could have taken from them

even more, at least in Moscow. Back on

Saturday, and even on Sunday afternoon,

it seemed unlikely, but it turned out that we

were this close

to simply taking everything from them. In that

sense, Smart Voting did not

crush United Russia across the whole country,

no, certainly not, and we didn't — we didn't

take everything. Though we did take from United Russia

its majority in Moscow.

But still, if a few mandates hadn't been stolen,

Smart Voting and various

additional circumstances in

Khabarovsk completely destroyed

United Russia in Khabarovsk and the Khabarovsk region. Smart

Voting — but overall, the main thing happened:

we elected deputies. Together, we decided

which people we would support,

then we came and voted

and made them deputies in Moscow, in

St. Petersburg, and in other places.

This had happened before, but previously it

was the exception.

It was assumed that only through party

lists

could opposition candidates be guaranteed

to get in — everyone understood they'd get

15 percent or so, and that you had to

squeeze onto that list in order

to become a guaranteed deputy. But

running in a single-member district — that was a dead

end, because wherever there were just names on the ballot,

United Russia always won. And

we changed that. Yes, for now we've changed it in

Moscow, because for now in Moscow

there were enough people

who believed in themselves. But we'll do it

across the whole country. So right now I want

to give you just a few figures and examples

showing how great it is that

Smart Voting worked. But our task

organizationally right now is simply

to tell everyone about it, because right now

several hundred

thousand people took part in it. If in the next cycle

it's a couple of million, and in the cycle after that 10

million, then that's it — goodbye, United

Russia. We will win in every

election. We won't turn into garbage, and we won't

of course turn into United Russia ourselves,

but in any case, we will turn all of

this into a basic

confrontation with United Russia, the party

of power.

Smart Voting — and that's great, because

because

in fact, no party is going to

object to this, because we

helped everyone: the Communists formed a large caucus,

bigger than they've had in Moscow for a long time;

A Just Russia formed a caucus;

Yabloko formed a caucus. Everyone is pleased, everyone is

happy, everyone got a success they hadn't had

for many, many years. So, the overall

framework: let's remember what elections

actually are. Right now, in 25, in my view,

regions of the country

election campaigns were underway; in total there were 31

campaigns covered by

Smart Voting. Elections are always structured

like this: there is a party list,

where you vote for a party, and there are

single-member district candidates, where you vote

by name. In Moscow there was no party-list

component — here people voted only for names,

because United Russia was confident

that in this way they would take one hundred

percent of the seats, because wherever people vote for

a specific name, the opposition had never won

before, xxx

let's start first with the party

lists. This is very important, because the leader

of the new United Russia is, well,

nationwide—in general, the formal leader

of United Russia nationwide is

Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin, and, and

is the spiritual leader, but the main

figure speaking here is Mr. Turchak. He

heads it—let's take a look at what

he said. He said verbatim: United

Russia crushed everyone in these elections.

Can we show the graphic? I hope that

they're showing you this graphic—I can't see it.

United Russia crushed everyone in these

elections. So let's see exactly how

they supposedly crushed them—let's see in what way.

United Russia's representation

changed on the party lists. You

can see that it shrank absolutely

everywhere. Nadia, I'm very—I apologize for

the technical problems. I really hope that

they're showing you this graphic. Guys, come

over to me—sorry.

And tell me, are we showing the graphics or

not? It would be strange otherwise. We are showing them?

Finally, thank you very much, hooray. And once again,

sorry—when you send us a bunch of

money, everything will work perfectly for us

because we'll get properly

equipped. You're looking at the party

lists.

of United Russia. You can see that almost everywhere

they took a hit; in some places

Khabarovsk Krai

as I already said, they were completely

wiped out. Very interesting—look below.

Do you see the city of Sevastopol?

There of all places, it would seem that everyone

prays to Putin's portrait, and there the effect

of the 'Crimean Spring' (the 2014 annexation of Crimea) and everything else

should be at its maximum.

works in the city—but in Sevastopol, not at all,

excuse my language: United Russia lost 38 percent

there. So you see,

just about everywhere, except in

the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic,

the elections were absolutely, totally

falsified. Everywhere they lost

well, in some places a lot, in others a little, and that

is already great. Most importantly, we can see a trend

across the whole country. I'm sure that of course this

trend is also connected with our campaign

that we ran against United Russia,

the Smart Voting campaign. People were going out

and looking for ways to vote

against United Russia, which is why it fell. As for

this talk of 'crushing'—United Russia definitely didn't

crush anyone on the party lists; on the contrary,

everyone

—I apologize for the wording, that's Turchak's expression—

everyone crushed United Russia. Now let's

look at those single-member

districts, where there was an individual name on the ballot.

United Russia always thought that everything

was great there. You know that now they

even want to make State Duma elections so that all

450 seats are elected only in single-member districts, that is,

people would vote only for a name, because

that was where they were kings. In total, there were

up for grabs

in this kind of election in the previous

electoral cycle—in 2014,

there were 762 seats contested, and of those 762

United Russia then, as you

can see, won 643.

So, in other words, it had complete dominance.

Now, as a result of Smart Voting

and other factors—but nevertheless Smart

Voting was obviously the key

factor—in all of this, United Russia

seriously lost its

representation. It dropped—well, this is

of course not in a dramatic way, but as

you can see, quite significantly. They

lost ground in the number of single-member

candidates.

Of them, 145 people across the country were

backed by us through Smart Voting. That is,

we can see that it worked, one way or another,

across the whole country, although, to be honest, yes,

it's clear that first and foremost you

made Smart Voting happen through your efforts,

through those who watch this program or

through those who watch the videos. But broadly speaking,

essentially, your own

Smart Voting—you and those whom you

persuaded—mostly live in

large cities, and it's fairly hard for us

to reach smaller towns and

more remote areas, but even there

it worked—worked absolutely brilliantly.

But let's look at Khabarovsk again.

Yes, Khabarovsk is a special case. There,

basically, the governor represents

not United Russia but the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), and there

United Russia was absolutely trampled.

Because there, essentially, the

administrative resource was removed: the LDPR governor

simply chose not to help

United Russia. Look at what happened

to United Russia: in the Khabarovsk City

Duma and the Khabarovsk

Legislative Assembly, they have nothing at all.

In the legislative assembly they controlled one hundred

percent; now they control zero

percent. And you can see that most of the

candidates were Smart Voting picks. Zhirik (Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nickname)

was ranting about this very amusingly. Let's

watch Vladimir Zhirinovsky

shout that Smart Voting has absolutely

nothing whatsoever to do with

Khabarovsk. 'Navalny's got some nerve,' he says,

'claiming he did this for us. Have you completely lost

your mind? You need a psychiatrist...'

We’re winning there, and somehow he tried to latch onto it.

He also said something there about helping the LDPR in Moscow.

He doesn’t understand that—I heard it myself.

with my own ears... give him a piece of my mind.

under no circumstances for United Russia, but for

the Communists in that round—it's astonishing.

because of Yabloko and the LDPR, and you’re a scoundrel.

normal [__] you’re morally

[__] you, Navalny—well, actually I

really am not going to

credit Smart Voting with everything that

belongs to the vote, of course.

The main factor in Khabarovsk Krai was

that there was no administrative machine behind

United Russia, but nevertheless Smart

Voting kind of finished it off for good.

That was the final blow, and in that sense

Zhirinovsky was completely wrong when

he says that I was supposedly calling in

Moscow not to support the LDPR—that’s just nonsense.

In Moscow, Smart Voting basically could not

support the LDPR, because

there simply are no strong LDPR candidates here, and

in Moscow people don’t vote for them; they

vote for them in the Far East.

That’s where they have an advantage, and so in the Far

East we supported Furgal’s candidates

and

LDPR candidates; in that sense they are against

United Russia, and we are breaking United Russia’s monopoly.

We made our contribution, and you have

a very active штаб (campaign office) in Khabarovsk.

There’s a great story involving the singer Vika

Tsyganova—you know her? For the youngest

members of our audience,

17 seconds—let’s take a look.

This is what I’m talking about... 7.

[music]

In short, Vika Tsyganova really is

a fairly popular singer, at least

among the older generation—one hundred

percent of them know her. Tsyganova has that kind of

patriotic image,

with songs like “Russian Vodka,” “St. Andrew’s

Banner”—she’s well known, and

United Russia’s idea was very simple.

They thought: well, the LDPR people are sitting there everywhere,

but now we’ll just go ahead and

wipe out the entire opposition—both the Communists and the LDPR—

because we’ll simply nominate a famous

person, Vika Tsyganova, and pensioners will come out for her,

they’ll say, “Oh yes, that’s Vika,” and

they’ll vote for her. And Vika Tsyganova

came in third because she ran from

United Russia. But that’s not even the best part.

The best part is not that.

The best part is that Vika Tsyganova

said after the election—and after the election

she gave an interview and said, “I lost

because of that lousy United Russia.”

Let’s take a look: “United Russia

disgraced me and sank me, so I am not

going to lobby for the interests of those who

disgraced me—the people who ran my

election campaign.” In other words, a person

ran from United Russia and lost

because she was with United Russia. Out of affection for Tsyganova, had she run from another party,

from another party, then with a high

probability she would have won. And just

a moment earlier she was standing there with all those

slogans and banners, and it said

“Vika Tsyganova of United Russia,” and the

next day she comes out and says, “They

disgraced me, they sank me.”

A similarly great story happened in

Moscow too, and I’ll talk about that a bit later, but it’s

great—people recoil from all of this.

United Russia should become like a plague party,

one everyone runs away from, and we

—the people who make Smart Voting happen—

must make the single biggest

contribution to that.

Irkutsk—I’m talking about the whole

country right now, but let’s look at Irkutsk.

United Russia was absolutely crushed there.

Look: in 2014 they controlled

fully two-thirds and did whatever they wanted in

the city duma (city council); now they are the opposition.

And nine out of 21 opposition candidates

got through thanks to Smart Voting, so here too

we can see

the success of our whole undertaking in Siberia.

Moscow.

That, of course, was the most dramatic of all, and we sat

here through the night until 5 a.m., until 6 a.m.,

sitting in the штаб (campaign office), and actually everyone felt

very, very sad, even though it would seem

we should have been very, very happy, well

yes, because even when they stole

seats, 20, 24, or 25 people out of

45 got through thanks to Smart Voting,

thanks to their own work and to Smart

Voting. Of course, Smart Voting is not

some magic button where we can turn just anyone

into a deputy [__]; the candidate has to

do the work, and we simply

help, and then he becomes a deputy.

That’s more or less how it works. But they

were taking away seats.

And honestly, the mood here was just depressing,

and it was depressing for one reason: we

sat there saying to ourselves, “My God, damn,

if only we had understood that we just needed to bring

a few more people out, we would have killed ourselves doing it,”

because the main number regarding

the Moscow elections is this:

in Moscow,

the people who came—the people who came to

the polls—mostly, the majority of those

who showed up voted for Smart Voting

candidates. You can look at this

figure on this slide, and if not, you can

check my blog: 580,000

people came to vote for Smart Voting

candidates, and 550,000 for United

Russia. So basically,

the majority of Muscovites who came out

voted for the opposition. If we had...

That was our turnout, right there.

And because of that, I just sat there thinking: we didn't quite push it far enough.

I was genuinely devastated on

the victory night — we only needed

50,000 more people.

We just needed to add them to the number we already had,

just 10 percent more — 50,000

people is nothing at all for Moscow.

United Russia would have gotten nothing, and I

just sat there, and that thought

was killing me: that we just

fell a tiny bit short. We have a huge number

of candidates

who lost in places where there was

fraud, where there was

and United Russia simply stole the victory,

padding its total by 100, 200, or 300 votes.

There really are districts where, for an

opposition candidate, without any fraud,

backed by Smart Voting,

500 votes, 700 votes, 1,000

votes would have been enough.

Such a ridiculous number. We really could have

absolutely crushed them. I don't know what they

would have done — I mean, they would have

canceled the election, one hundred percent, or

declared some kind of martial law or whatever

else — I don't know. But it was so

close, and we could hardly believe it ourselves.

We ran a kind of office pool here at the Anti-Corruption Foundation

about how many, how many

Smart Voting candidates would get through in

Moscow. I said the number would be 15; I talked about it in

a video. Mostly people were like,

when I said 15, they were like, sure,

you're just trying to cheer yourself up. They were saying 8, 7, 2,

people — Bogomolov from the video

production team and Sobol said 20 or 22, and I

thought: these people don't understand anything,

they're just talking nonsense. I mean, they seem like

grown adults involved in politics,

especially Sobol saying 22 — well,

completely crazy. But that was exactly the kind of swing we needed,

we needed to go in with exactly that kind of momentum,

because in reality, we won more

than anyone predicted, more than even we

predicted.

Still, in the end,

it turned out great. Look: we got

20 people elected; 6 more mandates were stolen, making 26.

The Communists now have a huge

faction of 13 people, and I was already waiting

for all sorts of people to start

showing off and shouting, "Alexei,

look what happened — the Communists got in, and they

must be silent about Stalin," that the Communists

moved faster than A Just Russia, faster

than Yabloko (a liberal Russian political party).

They've already put forward a resolution. Let's look at

this resolution — what does it say, what

have the Communist deputies written? We can see

this resolution — they'll show it to us now.

And it says that they demand — here,

please — a statement by the newly elected

deputies of the Moscow City Duma

demanding an end to criminal cases. They write

right here, using the words "political prisoners."

They demand the right to assembly, they demand

and declare that they will demand

release, that they will fight. They declare that

electronic voting must be abolished.

They declare that it is necessary

to investigate corruption cases that

received broad publicity during

the election campaign. And obviously,

they mean the investigations that

we carried out. So you and I not only

elected these deputies ourselves, but at least

for now — and of course deputies do have a tendency

to go bad; they can be bought,

they can be manipulated, they can be deceived, and

so on — but at least for now we

see that the people who stood there

and said those things in the square have now made it

into the Duma and are saying exactly the same things. That's

really cool, and I just want to

congratulate everyone very warmly. The video I want

to show about Metelsky and Shuvalova — I've shown it

several times — has this moment in it:

a deputy from the very center of Moscow,

Yelena Shuvalova — she really fought, and on

election night they wanted to steal that

victory from her. You could clearly see that the protocol

from one of the commissions was missing; they wanted

to throw her out because she was so sharply

oppositional, so firmly and sharply

opposition-minded. And after the election, when it was already clear

to the city authorities

what was happening, she posted a short video

of a verbal clash with deputy Metelsky,

who was probably the main trophy for the Anti-Corruption Foundation

in this whole story. It's simply

the best demonstration of what

happened. Listen to how Metelsky

talks to her in the Moscow City Duma chamber,

how confident he is in his victory — and

two days later he was no longer untouchable.

Let's listen.

Today they plan to consider

legislative proposals that are disastrous for the city and for the country as a whole.

Draft laws.

I ask

everyone sitting in this hall to think

about the degree of responsibility they are

taking on today. People trust us.

And Muscovites, unlike you — and we are not

calling for any upheaval in the country,

coups, or all the rest of that

nonsense that is now being told to us in the name

of all Muscovites.

So I strongly recommend always thinking about

what you are saying. And Muscovites,

believe me, will sort it out — and we won't have

to wait long. We won't have to wait long.

You see, that's the whole meaning of what

happened: these brazen faces sat there

saying, "Unlike you, we are not calling for this, we

know better what Muscovites want, and they..."

They’re lying — Metelsky had been sitting there for, what, 15 years or so,

I don’t remember exactly anymore, and there he was, sitting there,

completely convinced that no one would ever force him out of there,

that he had become glued to that place.

Because he’s a billionaire, a hotel owner,

a United Russia party member — he paid these people off, paid those people off,

everyone around him was bought, and so, well,

Muscovites came and said — by the way,

additionally, it seems to me this was to a large extent

the Metelsky effect: what actually happened was

a total purge carried out by

United Russia in eastern Moscow. Usually,

the opposition vote comes from the center and

the southwest, but here, look — it was precisely in

eastern Moscow.

They simply wiped them out everywhere there, and it seems to me

this was also part of the effect of

Metelsky, who was heavily involved in all sorts of things there

in eastern Moscow, and simply

the sheer brazenness, arrogance, and audacity of these

people reached such proportions

that when we gave people this

small tool for consolidation — Smart Voting —

goodbye, United Russia. Smart Voting

worked.

Well, they had their own rigged kind of voting,

and United Russia set up

electronic voting in three districts, and

of course we understood that most likely this

would be some kind of mechanism for falsification,

but this whole thing was actively pushed by

Alexei Alexeyevich Venediktov, editor-in-chief

of Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station).

And it was supposedly hard to

suspect him of directly

working for some kind of

fraud machine. Well, you could assume

that he was, say, helping Moscow City Hall

put together some kind of, well, something or other,

some shady scheme — but it turned out that this electronic

voting, this broken

thing, crashed several times during the day,

and then it turned out that, well,

everything there was simply faked. Let’s look

at the table for this electronic voting;

just by looking at it

you can see that the results at these

polling stations, where people voted

electronically, are just completely

different from

— you see, compare ordinary

voting, where people brought in paper ballots,

and compare it with electronic voting, and

you immediately see how different the bars are.

Rusetskaya, Tsvetkov, and Kartavtseva — these are three

United Russia candidates. You see how much fewer votes

they got at ordinary polling stations, and

it was precisely through these electronic polling stations

— each of which had 4,000 people

who supposedly voted — that there was

straight ballot-stuffing. They stole victory from

Roman Yuneman in District 30 — they stole it from him,

even though he wasn’t originally a Smart Voting candidate,

but we can see that by the

regular polling stations he won, and it was exactly

the 500 votes obtained through electronic

voting that took victory away from Yuneman. And in

Zelenograd, the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) candidate

Ulyanchenko had victory stolen from him in exactly the same way through this

same electronic voting.

They stole the victory, and I once again demand

— and I’m glad that in the statement by the elected

deputies there was a direct

demand that this

electronic voting must be abolished. It is criminal.

If they keep electronic voting

in elections, then there will simply be no point at all

— I mean, it will lose any meaning to go

to elections, because some kind of black

box

— after all, they originally said there would be

electronic voting: you vote,

and then you’ll supposedly be able to check how your

vote

was counted. None of that existed. This thing just

popped up asking, “Who are you voting for?”

You vote there for Yuneman, Alyoshin, Zhukovsky,

and then the system just went — whoops — and said:

everyone voted for Rusetskaya. It was just

that kind of fraud, that kind of simply

blatant, shameless deception, frankly,

that no one even expected. I join

the demand to cancel all of this.

Of course, the victory over Ms. Khamzaeva

was gratifying.

That really turned out well, and it was

a pretty nerve-racking story for all of us,

because in the last

three days before the vote

we had to make Smart Voting somehow

get the word out to everyone around and

get them to vote for candidate Yandiev,

who had neither the time to run

much of a campaign, especially since

Khamzaeva from United Russia had become

such a symbol. I mean, she was literally

everywhere, on every corner, and she was

of course absolutely sure of her victory.

Yashin wasn’t allowed to run, and the Communists,

who pose a threat in Moscow,

more than anyone else, were kept out too.

They weren’t allowed in, so everything seemed guaranteed.

Yandiev, in no way, in anyone’s view,

could pose any threat. And yet we see Yandiev

here now — from A Just Russia (a Russian political party),

but nevertheless, first of all, he himself

really proved to be a solid guy. He

put out a statement saying, “I’m going to support everyone here,

I’ll be a deputy for everyone,”

and people looked at

him and said, “All right, we’ll vote for this

Yandiev.” Yashin endorsed him, he

did well, and Khamzaeva lost — and that was

great. But even better was that, as

Vika Tsyganova later said,

it turned out United Russia hadn’t actually needed

all that all this time, and all the trash that

was staged for her sake, it turns out...

There were attempts to throw a wrench in the works. Let's take a look.

A few seconds from the interview in Samara.

On the right is the AR channel... here it is in front of you.

They were clearing the field, and yet despite that...

No, that's not it.

That didn't happen, because in the end it simply...

In order to support someone.

They voted for this person.

...for him, whom, I'm sure, the majority...

...of those who voted for him had never heard of before that.

Maybe it wasn't worth taking part in this.

Valery, wait, you just...

...described the situation as if, for my sake...

...they were clearing the field for me. I believe that...

Everything you've just...

...listed was not clearing the field.

It was putting spokes in the wheels, and if that hadn't...

...happened, then I think the probability of our...

...victory would have been much higher.

What astonishingly brazen people, honestly.

They threw everyone out of the election, and handed her...

...what was it, 20 million rubles or so?

They spent it on Yashin's election campaign.

They kept him in jail until the very last day, and so...

And it turns out all of that was just obstacles...

...put in the way. Well then, she should have said so directly.

She should have said: I demand that Yashin be allowed to run, I...

...demand that the Communist candidate not be removed, I...

...will come to the debates. But she refused those...

...debates, even though Sobol had challenged her to them.

She refused, and now it turns out that of course...

...she would have won.

But evil United Russia was getting in the way.

It kept throwing obstacles in the way, and once again we...

...end up in a situation where this government...

...of disgusting crooks and thieves is simply...

...plague-ridden — the United Russia people are like plague carriers, and from them...

...everyone should run away. And all these various...

...people from Samara.

These are the kind of people who, with their...

...shifty little faces, are trying to figure out...

...which way they need to run.

They should all be running away from United Russia.

That's very important, and you and I will be working on that.

The funniest thing is, I talked about this...

...in my main video, and...

...this is now the most interesting...

...thing: waiting to see what came of it.

Yes, of course, this is in the district where we elected...

...the fake Solovyov.

Remember? The district where...

...the real Solovyov was supposed to be blocked.

Now you can see in the photo — he wasn't...

...allowed in; he was jailed.

And there was basically nobody there at all. There was this...

...woman running named Tsvetkova.

And for some reason this woman was very important...

...to the mayor's office, and they removed everyone there.

There was a Communist candidate there, quite a decent one...

...Timur Bushaev, I think.

Now, because of this Bushaev — here he is...

...you can see him in the photo...

...he was the only one left, and then later this...

...he too was removed. So the entire CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) slate...

...was registered — I mean, you have to submit signatures...

...and yet he was removed on some completely...

...fake grounds. It was done solely...

...so that Tsvetkova would win, because...

...she can't win on her own, and there we...

...looked around and there was nobody: there was a fake...

...Communists of Russia candidate, a technical candidate...

...there was a United Russia candidate, and there was a lookalike of this...

...Solovyov, whom nobody had ever...

...seen in person, just in case Pavel...

...did end up being registered. So we...

...wrote, all right, under these circumstances...

...I want to do this, Slava:

We have to support someone, maybe...

...just for the joke of it, out of principle...

...the fake Solovyov. He tells us at night:

"All right, let's do exactly that." They...

...put up a double, so let's see...

...you reap what you sow. Honestly, it looked...

...like a kind of...

...adventurous stunt, because it's hard...

...to elect someone just by getting people to come and...

...simply, you know, as a kind of hidden gesture of defiance...

...with a fig in the pocket (a Russian gesture meaning covert mockery or defiance).

...vote over two days. And now...

...he's a deputy, and nobody can find him. Some...

...profiles are appearing, and his photo...

...has surfaced showing that he was at a meeting with...

...Miron.

But not a single interview, nothing. I hope...

...he knows how to speak, and I hope he knows how...

...to read and write.

Well, maybe he'll turn out to be completely...

...normal. We don't know. I won't be ashamed of...

...everything I've said somewhere if he turns out to be...

...normal. But there will be some...

...Moscow City Duma session, and we'll see. I'm sure...

...that more journalists will run to him...

...than to anyone else, because all of us are terribly...

...curious about whom exactly we ended up electing.

To wrap up on Moscow, I want to draw your...

...attention to the party Communists of Russia and...

...this special little community of crooks...

...that takes part in every election...

...for the purpose of stealing...

...a few percentage points from the CPRF, but...

...in Moscow...

...it was a tool of the mayor's office. They...

...nominated candidates in every district, 45 people in all, and...

...everywhere supposedly through signature collection.

And based on those completely fake signatures...

...the mayor's office registered them. And now...

...it turns out that — let's take a look — I...

...misled you: not 45 people. They actually put forward...

...31 people, and out of these...

...31 candidates right away...

...each of whom supposedly brought in 6,000...

...signatures, and they were told: what excellent signatures you have.

How many of them do you think...

...received at least 6,000 votes? Out of those 6...

...thousand signatures they were supposed to collect...

...the answer is two people. Two people.

All the others received fewer votes...

...than the number of signatures they supposedly submitted, which of course is yet another...

once again shows that the whole thing was somehow...

absolutely—I, absolutely, I’m a fake, and...

I very much hope that the newly

elected deputies of the Moscow City Duma will deal with this.

My congratulations.

Sergei Boyko—my, well, basically my

congratulations to the city of Novosibirsk, which

failed to remove

the mayor—United Russia–KPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) man Lokot. But

still, Sergei Boyko received quite

substantial support, came in second place,

and won 18 percent of the vote.

We’ll also connect with him later today.

We’ll watch a funny video from a search raid—another

example of why you need to believe in yourself. Everyone

thought, like, Boyko won’t win, he has

no chance, so what difference does it make?

We just need to consolidate.

Instead of voting against Lokot for different

candidates,

now it’s clear that if everyone had

consolidated and voted

smartly, only for Boyko, and if just a little

more effort had been made to turn people out, then

Lokot would have lost. In fact, Lokot got

with all the administrative resources at his disposal only

51 percent of the vote, while all the other

candidates got 49 percent.

If we had united around Boyko, he

absolutely could have won the election too. This is

an absolutely realistic scenario, just

super realistic. There’s nothing here that should

make it seem like some kind of

impossible thing—to unseat the mayor

of a major city. Novosibirsk is the third-largest

city in the country—though, though, people always

argue with that statement in

Yekaterinburg, but formally it’s still third.

It was absolutely possible, and

as residents of Novosibirsk, I urge you

to keep working with Boyko. You’ll soon have

elections to the city assembly and so on.

Boyko is now the main opposition figure in Siberia.

He proved his support in the election.

He proved that he is Siberia’s leading opposition politician. Let’s

consolidate around him. I’ll wrap up

this topic with the rest of the country, because

I’ve seen comments like, well,

sure, Moscow, sure, St. Petersburg, and so

on—but in the rest of Russia,

Smart Voting worked. Smart

Voting worked much better than

in Moscow, for example in Mari El (a republic in Russia),

because in Yoshkar-Ola there was an outright

super-mega triumph of Smart Voting.

Let’s take a look at Yoshkar-Ola. Do we have

the graphic for Yoshkar-Ola? There were 32

United Russia members out of 35 there. The graphic is missing,

so I’ll just say it out loud, sorry

please, I’m repeating myself here,

technical difficulties. There were 32

United Russia deputies out of 35—that is, complete,

absolute domination by United Russia.

Now it’s 16 out of 35.

So we can see that the opposition, with the help of

Smart Voting—and of those 16, 12

people were Smart Voting picks—simply

came in and landed a solid blow against United

Russia in a place where it seemed, well,

good Lord, in Mari El you just couldn’t

break through—and yet they did. The same thing

happened in Birobidzhan: there were 18 United Russia members out of 21,

now it’s 10, and we got 11 opposition candidates elected.

Of those, 7 were Smart Voting picks. In Penza,

United Russia was simply

crushed, I’d say. There it had 32 out of 35,

that is, an absolute majority, and

now they’ve reduced the number of

seats to 25, and 15 of them are opposition-held, so

that’s a majority. Of those 15, 9 are Smart Voting

candidates. So in that sense,

big city, small city—

in a small city it works even better.

And of course our task is

to bring people together. We need to make sure

that several million people join the Smart Voting

system. If we do that,

again, it comes down to believing in ourselves.

As for United Russia taking a hit—St. Petersburg, you

all keep asking me about St. Petersburg.

I can’t say the same clearly about St. Petersburg,

because nobody knows what’s happening there.

Well, that is—rather, the only thing we do know

is that some kind of outrageous chaos is happening in St. Petersburg,

something monstrous.

But what the election results actually

are is quite hard to say. This chaos

is confirmed by a rather amusing recording

from one of the polling stations.

The chair of the commission wanted to call

the higher election commission, but his phone had died,

so he asked an observer for a phone. The observer

simply turned on a recording, and now we have

a phone conversation showing how

the commission chair—in the Admiralteysky District

of St. Petersburg—

was talking to the higher-ups...

[inaudible] sit and listen [inaudible]

for another 20 minutes, but here he shouted a couple of

necessary things—how long can we keep stalling?

What are they even making up over there...

[inaudible] some kind of hypothesis...

it’ll work out.

We have only called, what, fewer than

12—three of them, or maybe only four,

have submitted the protocol, while everyone else

hasn’t yet been given the go-ahead.

So what happened in St. Petersburg overall

was that Smart Voting candidates and

opposition candidates in general

simply won across the city, overwhelmingly.

After that, they simply

won all the municipalities. And

municipalities in St. Petersburg have

much greater power and much larger

budgets than in Moscow. And United

Russia—not even United Russia as such,

but the small-time United Russia people sitting there...

And the people who run these districts siphon off funds

for themselves—tens of millions.

They carve up the budget and hand it out to their relatives.

They simply started brazenly rewriting the election results

and are still rewriting them now.

It is literally Thursday now, and the voting was on

Sunday. In St. Petersburg, all of this is still going on.

In many municipalities, the final

election results still have not been announced, and the internet was simply

flooded with all sorts of absolutely

outrageous footage—almost like entertainment, except it is infuriating.

entertaining

videos—for example, one showing how, over there,

at Morskaya Zastava, at the 41-second mark, they simply

count the votes, see that

they are losing, grab a stack of ballots

and run off with them. I mean, can you imagine?

The person is apparently laughing nervously—

this female observer—because, well,

there is a camera hanging right there in the commission room.

There is supposed to be special monitoring, and ballots

are absolutely not allowed to be taken out.

They count the votes, realize they have lost, and

simply carry off the ballots. And this is not an isolated

incident. We had several cases in Yekateringofsky.

Our Dasha and a big team were running there,

and she won. After that, the people

who were counting the votes

realized they had lost.

They said:

"Well, our workday has started,"

but they waited until morning, and then

they took all the ballots and said, "We are handing them over

to the local police officer for safekeeping," which

is completely impossible under the law. They

are required to count everything and record it all, then

submit it to the GAS Vybory system (Russia's state election database). Instead, they handed them over

to the local police officer and then drove off. After that,

the officer returned the ballots—but obviously

not the same ones.

The checkmarks were completely different, and this

is happening everywhere. There were also simply

attacks and beatings of election commission members.

There is a video you have most likely already seen.

I want to show one more minute of footage—

absolutely disgusting footage of how one commission member

pressures another commission member,

how one member leans on another, and how

the police react to it. One minute.

I feel sick—they just punched me in the stomach.

Very, very hard. These are your colleagues—your

people saw it. I am asking you for help.

I was just punched in the stomach.

I am a commission member with advisory voting rights.

I was just punched in the stomach.

It hurts very, very badly. It was all recorded—right

there, on the cameras. Everything was absolutely

seen. Please take action.

This too, this too—just like the USSR (the Soviet Union).

The "cultural capital"—and at this polling station there was

ballot stuffing; at this polling station, victories were simply stolen.

Naturally, victories were stolen. But even so,

even now, if we look

at the rough figures I am about to give—

and they are very rough, because

everything is constantly being recounted and changing—

naturally, what we can more or less say now is this:

previously, United Russia members

held seats in all the municipalities of

St. Petersburg—around 1,400 people.

Now there are 900. So we

can see that roughly 500 people—and we

again, this is only approximate—we

estimate that 340 people backed by

Smart Voting managed to

break through all of this. In other words, there were

hundreds

of elected candidates whose victories were stolen from them. But even

in the middle of this trashfire, the victory

of Smart Voting, the victory of independent

candidates, was so significant that

340 people got through—340 people

broke through, and some municipalities

are even now completely under

the control of independent candidates.

That is great. It means everything worked.

And yes, for us, of course, that is great—but

I have been talking to you for so long, and the main

point is the victory of Smart Voting. As you understand,

we are celebrating here, while someone else

is very upset. And they

started getting upset much earlier than

we did. They have access to polling data, they

are very good at math, and

Putin's people, to our shame, have plenty of that. And we

have to admit that they realized

that Smart Voting is very dangerous

much faster than we realized

how powerful it is. Because all these

raids happened immediately before Smart

Voting in order to derail it. And now

what is happening is basically the largest

police operation in modern Russia.

Today there were more than 200

searches

in 41 cities across the country, all following exactly

the same pattern. A search is carried out—well, I

call it a search, but in reality it

could more accurately be called

a violent robbery or mugging, because

the goal is simply to come in and take away

all electronic devices.

And then the person's

bank cards are all blocked. In other words, they want

I am telling you here: let's get several

million people involved in Smart

Voting. And over there in the Kremlin they are sitting and

saying: they must not pull several

million people into Smart Voting, because

otherwise we are finished.

And absolutely everything must be done

to make sure they do not bring several million people

into Smart Voting. Their first step was

to smash our network of headquarters. That is exactly why

I am raising money through the link that you have

below in the description, so that we can still

stop them from destroying our system. And so they

carried out searches and seizures in every

at the office, then at each employee's home, and then at

the homes of those employees' parents

these searches, well, they really looked like—this

really looks like armed robbery

let's take a look at Chelyabinsk

such an insolent brute, you understand, he

pulled this mask over his face and thinks that

you'll never find him. We will find every last one of them

because in the police paperwork, everything

still shows who went where, which

unit was sent, so sooner or later

dear participants in all these searches

every one of you will be sitting in the dock

watching this video of how you

dragged someone by the leg there, crying and

saying, "Guys, I was forced to do it"

"I won't do it again, it was my

boss who made me do it"—that is what will happen

sooner or later. They're all young men, they

will all live long enough, and the statutes of limitations on all

these things will be lifted, because what

is happening, you understand

they declared all these donations illegal

funds and are carrying out searches over them

they break down doors, and how they were sawing through doors in

Vladivostok

that's Chelyabinsk again—oh, sorry

sorry, we showed Chelyabinsk again

let's look at how they were sawing through doors

in Vladivostok

[music]

in general, the actions of these people

who call themselves police officers

are in fact just some kind of thugs

their finest representatives of the citizens of

Russia—they really do look very much like

the actions of

you know, occupiers fighting partisans

the way it was shown in films—that is exactly how they

behave. Let's watch

or rather, let's listen for a minute and a half to the coordinator of

our Vladivostok штаб (campaign office)

telling how they forced her to undress

a woman officer, supposedly—the only one allowed

to conduct a personal search, although

it's unclear why anyone needed to undress

during a search in the department for combating money laundering

the anti-money-laundering department

they made her undress, and then

male police officers walked around as if

nothing was wrong. For a minute and a half they

were searching for my personal phone

I was trying to stay calm

to see exactly what they had managed to hide

and in the safe, where there was a postcard and my personal

diary. During the interrogation, I was asked whether

I knew Navalny and Volkov

whether I knew the Doctors' Alliance and the Teachers' Alliance

things like that, even what these organizations

actually do. Naturally, the first charge

Guys, hi everyone, but all my things

that they took—I understand that they

will be sent to Moscow, and I probably won't see them again

the host says: some kind of madness—they went in there

so, I undressed, and this woman asked me

to take off my bra. I took it off, and she

started feeling it over, as if God forbid something

might be sewn into it. Then this

guy walks in—and the main thing is, you're standing there

with this crazed look in his eyes, like he might

you know, corner you or start barking orders at them

waving documents around, and there I was, standing there

without a bra. How could they allow that?

The authorized female officer just stood there

and didn't say a single word on my behalf

that men weren't supposed to be there while a woman was being searched

you understand, these are just absolutely

brazen swine who demonstratively

behave like occupiers on our land

really, like occupiers on our land

this whole business with the searches

was absolutely

massive. That's exactly why I have no

slightest doubt that this was simply

personally ordered by Putin. This was

planned at the level of the Security

Council

200 addresses across the country, and everywhere

at exactly 6 a.m.—that is, in

Vladivostok at 1:00 p.m.

while in the European part of the country, where

it was 6 a.m. Moscow time—even the police

the National Guard, the Investigative Committee

interagency coordination—meaning

of course this operation

was organized personally by Vladimir Putin

who is suffering because his party,

United Russia,

got hit hard by us in these elections, and will keep getting hit

going forward. Let that party

of United Russia suffer. But what is striking, you know, is

really how much effort they once again put into

showing that Putin personally

controls all of this, how meticulously

for example, our coordinator from Kurgan also

says that at his

parents' home in a village—those who've been to Kurgan

will know, and those who haven't: I never did make it to

Kurgan, for which I constantly apologize to

the residents of that city. I even had

a meeting planned there, but frankly

it's far away, it's a fairly

remote region. It's not in Siberia, somewhere

else, but still remote. So

they even

went to search the home of the parents of

a coordinator who live two and a

half hours' drive from Kurgan, in a village

let's listen

My name is Alexei Shvarts, and I am the coordinator of Navalny's штаб (campaign office)

in Kurgan. I work at the office

because I hate

crooks, and today OMON riot police came to me and my loved ones

with bags, personally to me

They arrived early in the morning, they sawed through

the door to the house and burst in. The police acted as if

there was simply nowhere to step, and they

seized all the equipment, bank cards, cash, and

All my notebooks as well. OMON (Russian riot police) and the police

came to my parents' house in

the village, which is only

two and a half hours from the city, and they didn't think twice about making the trip.

They came, they searched everything, they

went through the bathhouse, even the shed,

went down into the cellar, looking for something,

though it's unclear what. They frightened my

mother so badly that she fainted.

But these actions won't scare me.

I will continue fighting this, these methods of

the authorities.

Well done, Alexei Shvarts, and well done to all our

coordinators. We had quite a

lively exchange of messages with them, with

everyone.

So far, no one has been scared. On the contrary,

everyone is just angry, fired up, and

of course, for some time

life will be quite difficult, because, well,

for all of them, and for some even for

their parents, their bank cards have simply been blocked.

That means, first of all, everyone has had

their money taken away. I remember somewhere in

Vladivostok, a fairly large amount of

money was taken away—someone's savings. He

had been saving for a very long time.

For a car he was planning to buy, or

for an apartment—they took from him something like 10,000 or 20,000

US dollars, like from our Vitalik

the cameraman in Moscow. He sold

an apartment, and he has documents showing that

he sold the apartment, but all that money

was taken away, just like that.

Maybe, say, a young man brings

a certificate saying, "I

bought this currency from the bank," and they tell him:

"No, now we're taking all of this away,

seizing it just like that." A personal bank card

is blocked, meaning you can't receive

your salary, you can't send money to anyone,

you can't pay for anything. It's a fairly

serious problem, and our entire

structure is, of course,

in limbo right now.

We don't fully understand yet how we will

rebuild it from scratch, but we

absolutely, definitely

will rebuild it.

You see that wonderful link—if you

go there, you'll help us. Billions are being

entered there precisely in order to

block a person's account. How does it

work? If they want to block

your account, the bank basically puts a negative balance on it, saying that you

owe money. You may have 10,000 rubles (about 10,000 RUB) in your account,

but it will show that you owe 75

million. You see, for example, one of our

people had a billion blocked on his account.

He's a coordinator of our headquarters, and

they blocked a billion—a negative one billion—so

in order for your account to be

unblocked, you would have to deposit 1

billion and 1 ruble. Sergei Boyko,

who came in second in the election in

Novosibirsk, certainly amused us with a video

from the search of his home.

Let's watch a few seconds of it now.

It was important for him to preserve certain

electronic storage devices. Let's see

how Sergei Boyko, a resourceful

man—people didn't vote for him for nothing. They

should have voted for him in even greater numbers.

How did he solve this problem?

Hi, friends, this is a drone with hard

drives.

Very important ones, containing all the valuable digital

information. And why is it flying, you may ask?

Because people have come with a search warrant.

The police have arrived. Right now we're sending off the most

important thing, and after that we'll get back to

the discussion. Well, clever idea, I have to say.

You can't deny that. But you know, I kept

seeing in the morning reports saying

there were searches in 10 headquarters, 20 headquarters, 40

headquarters, then 150 headquarters, 150 searches. I

texted Volkov

who was sitting there monitoring everything: "Are

you sure you're not mixing anything up? 150 searches? That

can't be right. Nothing like that has ever happened before.

You simply can't pull off an operation like that across

the whole country, and coordinating it

would be difficult.

He wrote back: "150 is the minimum." And then

it turned out there were around 200. We still don't

know the exact number.

There have truly never been operations on this scale—not against terrorists, not against

drug traffickers, not against corrupt officials.

There have never been operations of this scale

at any point, ever. And how can one not

recall the remarkable words of Dmitry

Medvedev, who explained why

the topic of corruption never really leads to

any searches, because

one party has basically claimed that issue for itself.

And as for the commission

on combating corruption,

I can say only one thing: this is a matter

for, of course, the leadership of the State

Duma. That is my opinion.

Dear friends, do not give up this

position, because this is the most fertile

issue, and you yourselves know that perfectly well.

Make sure that the fight against corruption

is led by United Russia in the

State Duma. Otherwise, the

number of reproaches about the

concentration of crooks and other

unreliable elements will only

grow. You need to deal with this yourselves.

You need to deal with this yourselves—and they do.

I really liked that in the front row there were

people sitting there—Vorobyov from Moscow

Region, Surkov—these are all major

corrupt figures.

They need to deal with it themselves, and they are.

And that's why they are carrying out these raids on our

What they actually have there is some kind of

There seems to be some kind of elaborate grand plan for a crackdown.

As for us in particular, there is this rather

amusing commission for combating

foreign interference, which has already

been given its first assignment on combating

foreign interference in the elections, and

it turns out that the people interfering in the elections were me and

Lyubov Sobol.

There was a very funny speech there.

By Zhirinovsky, though of course it was in that usual kind of

still, it ended with the fact that

the commission officially said: now we will consider

this—the State Duma is considering

the question of whether Sobol and I

organized interference in the Russian

elections. Let’s watch it—1 minute 14

seconds.

You just can’t sort yourselves out.

You’re creating an opposition for yourselves.

You’re creating your own gravedigger, just like they created

for the Democrats. They’re all over the place, and you’re building it up around

Lyuba, whipping her up so that she

takes the place of Navalny, Bolotova, and so on—and you did it yourselves.

Why did you start banning them?

It’s against the nation. Let them do it—I’ve said a hundred times

in the Kremlin:

let them walk around and shout whatever they want.

Eventually they’ll stop shouting and talking. But no—you

arrest them, hit them across the back with batons, and make things worse.

Last time you didn’t do anything

but make Lyuba into some kind of

You keep talking about some powerful Lyuba,

all day long. What Lyuba is this?

The Constitution, Klitschko, a sex symbol—

they keep throwing all this at him, so what is he supposed to do with it?

Once you’ve let it all out, you can’t stop it.

It was that girl, the activist—Lyuba, that is,

Sobol. Sobol is probably Navalny’s

mistress.

Let’s instruct the commission to

study all these issues. You were saying

that Navalny was recruited at Yale

University—let the commission look into it.

There.

Lyuba—let this Lyuba sort it out.

The commission.

50,000 people were watching live.

It was a funny speech, really funny.

A funny speech, and it seems like nobody really

looks at Zhirik (Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s nickname) as anything more than a kind of funny

old man saying all sorts of ridiculous things about Lyuba,

whipping her up, and yet in the middle of all that silliness

he was also saying some correct things: Lyuba

was whipped up—well of course, you

built her up for the elections and then didn’t let her run, while

arresting her endlessly and using violence—so what

is Lyuba supposed to do? Naturally,

she goes around campaigning against you.

But all of this ends with them, on the one hand,

sort of egging him on there,

fumbling around over who this Lyuba is and

saying, “Lyubasha Sobol,”

but it really ends with

an official procedural instruction being issued:

that Navalny was supposedly recruited at

Yale University, that the Marines were somehow swapped in—

let the commission check it.

The commission will be checking into it, and when this

commission sends me some letter

saying, “Please provide proof that

you are not a Marine,” I mean,

it’s all funny, but it will keep

growing and growing and

growing, and in fact it will affect

everyone in our country, because these people,

in their panic and in their fear of us,

of our coordinated action,

of our Smart Voting strategy, will

trash and destroy everything here—from

the economy to absolutely anything.

Just watch: right up until the elections to the

State Duma, these people will

keep pulling stunts like this and doing things like that.

You’ll remember my words later.

But our task is to remember that our

coordinated action is the most

important thing. Yury Dud is the new enemy

of the authorities.

Apparently he has even drawn some

attention away from me for now, and fortunately

there haven’t been any searches yet.

They’re threatening him with criminal cases—in

the literal sense, they’re saying that he

is opening the gates of hell, because Dud

has done terrible things. First of all, he

—terrible from the authorities’ point of view—

released a film. Everyone is praising it. I haven’t

seen it yet because I simply haven’t had

time, with the elections and all, but absolutely everyone

is praising it and saying it’s a wonderful film

about the events in Beslan (the 2004 school siege in North Ossetia), and naturally

they immediately accused him of

presenting the terrorists’ point of view, and already

saying a criminal case should be opened and he should be jailed for

that. But then this terrible Dud went even further

and did something outrageous: he spoke at the

GQ awards and said, basically, why

should we stay silent? We must speak the truth.

Let’s watch 45 seconds of Yury.

The next day, when

this was all happening—well, in batches, all over the place—

electoral.

I’m asking you to speak out, and it seems that

silence has already stopped being a virtue. Thank you.

Before

it means they can come to any house,

including one on Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway (an elite residential area near Moscow),

and if there’s no difference, then there’s no need to meet

lawlessness with silence—you have to confront it face to face.

And after the film about Beslan, after

this video, Dud has now become an even bigger, doubly

enemy, because

it would seem that Dud just came out and said

some obvious things, but he

broke that silence. You know, there’s this huge room full of

all these people,

at the GQ awards,

who basically all think the same thing.

They understand that this is lawlessness, that

it’s absolutely awful, but they all stay silent and

cower, and then suddenly someone walks out onto the stage

and says: no, I’m not going to keep quiet about this, I’m saying everything

and I’m doing just fine. And you can absolutely

say all of this too, and

it has the effect of an exploding

bomb, and the Kremlin is terrified that

tomorrow someone else might come out and say it,

and then someone else will say it too, and if

this whole little gang of nice but rather

cowardly people from all these awards and

events starts speaking up, then it will be

impossible to contain. And now Dud (Yury Dud),

really does look, in the eyes of our

authorities, like some spawn of hell. Let’s

take a look at what was brilliantly said about him—well,

I simply enjoyed listening to this.

My favorite, Vladimir Solovyov, said this

after the Beslan film (about the Beslan school siege). Let’s

listen. Dud cheerfully says that

the state is to blame for everything.

What a degenerate. He’d be better off advertising

Head & Shoulders—in that head of his, apart from

chemical elements and Procter & Gamble products,

nothing else has been found, that’s all.

A sports journalist, talentless as ever,

has now crawled into something else and is just spewing filth

little by little for three hours, with not the slightest

understanding of

why, how, and what really happened.

Look at those faces, just look at this

fatness, this scum—look at

this anti-dandruff crusader.

There’s zero empathy there. Who even is this, anyway?

They’re hyping up some nobody—what kind of

money is behind all this, who’s inflating it all? The very same

liberal creep is trying to push him to the top.

They don’t understand that by doing this, they are opening

the gates of hell.

Polished-up nobodies, vermin—the gates of hell.

Of the liberal creep.

So thank you, Yury Dud, for

driving Vladimir Rudolfovich (Solovyov) into

yet another state of ecstasy. We really

enjoy watching it, and if it triggers

Vladimir so badly, then Dud is doing

everything right. Many thanks to him.

To wrap up my program, I absolutely have

to talk about what

is happening in Buryatia, because it is

an excellent example of how truly

explosive the situation in the country is, and how much

this government, with great difficulty and only

through force, is keeping things under control.

What is happening in Buryatia? Well, on the face of it,

nothing at all seemed to foreshadow it.

There is a shaman who is heading to Moscow, and we

can laugh at that.

We do laugh—there’s nothing wrong with

laughing at some people, at

I don’t know, excessive religiosity or whatever. But

even so, if you look at

polling across Russia, you’ll see there is

a significant part of the population that

supports shamanism. A shaman is going to remove

Vladimir Putin from Moscow.

He has every right to do that. And amazingly, along the way

people began joining him

because he’s walking along and saying

some obvious things—about

justice,

about how badly things are organized in Russia,

about how this bad, evil

government needs to be driven out. It’s a kind of, you know, new

naivety. We like to talk about

a ‘new sincerity’ among hipsters, and among

shamans there is also this new

sincerity: I am going to cast him out. People

join him, and these people

simply started being jailed.

So Putin, with all his

National Guard and everyone else,

was horrified to see that somewhere out there,

in the middle of nowhere, this had already gone beyond the purely symbolic,

they were approaching Ulan-Ude, and

thirteen people had already joined him, and

Putin was already scared, stamping his feet,

already crying out: my God, save me from

this shaman—what if he really does

cast me out? Because Putin understands that he is

an accidental man, appointed by a drunken

Yeltsin and his thieving family,

and maybe, just maybe, they really could drive him out.

So they gave orders there to arrest him

and his supporters. At the same time,

mayoral elections were taking place there, and

a remarkable man was running,

Marhaev (Vyacheslav Markhayev), a senator from the neighboring

Irkutsk region. He is the only

senator who spoke out in support of the protesters.

A former police officer, a former OMON riot policeman,

he fought in Chechnya and was regarded as a hero there.

He had quite substantial support, but

naturally, the election was rigged.

Markhayev did not win, and in Buryatia

protests began, and people gathered there

in the square, and they refused to disperse.

They stayed there overnight. What

did the police start doing? Well, first

they began detaining some people, and

they even detained a deputy of the

People’s Khural (regional parliament), Tsyrenov, but he

was freed by the protesters right during the rally.

Let’s watch—it’s just three seconds.

Well, as you can see, it’s pretty hard to say

that there was any outside interference here.

These are simply genuinely outraged people—Buryats and

non-Buryats, local residents, residents of Ulan-Ude.

They are outraged by this trash

that is happening, and I like the fact that

they arrested some people who were here with

this shaman. Why? On what grounds should you

arrest them? Don’t they have the right to walk with

a shaman, or with anyone at all? Don’t they have the right

to walk down the road? They do—it’s their road to

Ulan-Ude.

Excuse me, Kremlin, but to fix this

He doesn’t consider the road his own, fine, let it be that way.

Let some beat-up vehicle stop out in the middle of nowhere there,

but if someone is walking along it who is

against Putin,

then suddenly it’s “our road, we forbid anyone from walking on it, we”

“will arrest everyone.” And so there,

the standoff continues. The people in the

square are not leaving, and the police there already

can’t use the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) so easily after all,

because they all live together there.

It’s not like in Moscow. First of all, there,

people don’t know each other, and secondly, from neighboring

regions they bus in their own National Guard units there.

Here, it’s the same people who live right there,

somewhere nearby, and everyone knows them, and basically

people can come up to them and,

for lack of a better word, confront them — their neighbors can.

They can say, “So you’re beating us,”

“hitting us with a baton in the square right now,”

“and you’re not the only one with a baton, so answer us,”

“please, for what’s happening.” And the police

at night already started simply using these kind of

special little axes, but men in civilian clothes,

obviously police officers,

ran over

with these little axes and started smashing up

those buses where, apparently, people had gathered

— people

who stayed overnight. So there in

Buryatia (a Russian republic in Siberia), they seem to have their own way of holding

protests: they protest during the day, and at night they

stay in buses. And then

unknown men with little axes attacked,

wrecked all those vehicles, and with the help of those

little axes started dragging people out of

the vehicles. The police then said that

they don’t have any little axes at all,

they are not part of their official

equipment, and they know nothing about it. Why is no one talking about this?

I’ll show you now 10

seconds with one guy who very clearly has something

that looks like a little axe. Let’s take a look.

They use them when they come here to carry out

searches. They all have huge numbers of these things,

the kind you can see in

the photograph — literally little axes,

axes they use

to break down doors, with which they

smash everything. So what we’re seeing here

is a situation where police officers are simply committing

openly illegal acts already. They

hide themselves, they put on masks — I mean,

if they wear masks at a rally, they still

usually don’t deny that they are police officers.

In Buryatia right now, what’s happening is simply

something completely, absolutely gangster-like

in that sense. And even

one of the Buddhist lamas came to

that Soviets Square (the central square in Ulan-Ude), and

incidentally, here is the lama — let’s

listen to what he says.

He says: when informed people like

Dmitry Kiselyov or Olga Skabeeva do harmful things like this,

on television, that’s one thing. But when our own

neighbors start lying to us, neighbors who support United

Russia, that is very bad, says

the Buddhist lama in the Republic of Buryatia.

My friends, this of course shows a very,

very important shift

that is happening across the whole country.

The impoverishment of people plus the total decay

of United Russia — this is leading, has led, and will lead

to various consequences. But right now

in Buryatia, they seem to have managed to disperse some people again,

to jail some people there,

to fine others somewhere, and things

like that. But we don’t know what will happen next, and

this government will bring our whole country to

enormous problems, because they do not

want to understand and do not want to accept

how sick and tired everyone is of them. They do not want

to understand or accept that there are no longer

people willing to put up with the idea that power

belongs to them.

Whether it’s 100 or 80 percent, they must

share power with this shaman, with this

lama, with this Markhaev (likely Vyacheslav Markhaev, a Buryat opposition politician), who

is running, with Boyko, who is in

Novosibirsk. There are huge numbers of us in

Moscow too. Once again, the majority of those who came

to vote

voted against United Russia

candidates. What does that mean? We are the power here.

That is, we are the majority. We are different people.

There were CPRF candidates, Yabloko candidates, and others,

but all of us are not United Russia, and we demand

our unconditional participation in this

government. Guys, once again, congratulations on the

great success

of Smart Voting. We need to bring as many people as possible into this

voting effort,

and now that we have started to believe in ourselves,

we must convince everyone else to believe

in themselves too, so that we know how many of us there are and how

close our victory really is, and that

to oppose us, they need more than just these

these

idiots in masks running around and

sawing at some doors. There may be

a few thousand of them, but there are 3 million of us.

So we will definitely win. Thank you

very much to everyone who watched my program.

Until next time. It’s possible that next

Thursday I’ll miss it, because we simply need

to sort out a whole bunch of

technical problems here. But in any case,

we’ll stay in touch. Thank you very, very much

to everyone, and goodbye.