Putin is obstructing us, but we will keep going

[music]

Hello everyone. It's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, which means

we're live in the Navalny Live studio, and Alexei

Navalny is here to talk with

you about what's happening in the country

and answer your questions, which you

can send me on Twitter using the hashtag

#Navalny2018. But what's happening in the country is this:

there's an election, and first of all I'm flooded

with questions about how I feel about

Katya Gordon's nomination. Alexei, what do you think

about Yelena Berkova's campaign?

Yelena, Yelena... that's the most popular question, and

everyone is waiting for some kind of comment from me.

In my last video, I showed

several candidates, but this shot,

the one you're seeing on your screens now,

is already outdated, because there are lots of new

great candidates. A few more popped up

just today, and everyone's laughing, everyone's

having fun, and a lot of people are asking me

what on earth is going on. It's actually a pretty simple

thing. On the one hand, there isn't some kind of

grand Kremlin plan behind it, because

elections are the kind of time when, well,

people can just play around with it, joke about it, or

any washed-up journalist, any

washed-up showman, any washed-up porn actor

can announce that he—or she—is

running for president and get

a bit of traffic, likes, clicks, and all

the rest of it.

So I don't think all of this is somehow

being heavily coordinated, although some of it

possibly is, in some altered form,

coordinated. On the other hand, well,

of course the Kremlin is happy about it,

because it's extremely important for them to create this so-called

"carnivalization" of the election. What

that means is that everyone is supposed to

look at it, see it on the news,

watch a segment about it, and think,

"This is some kind of clown show. It's just

ridiculous. There's only one normal,

serious person here: Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin. In this

hellish circus, he looks like the only person

who actually resembles a candidate. Of course we'll vote

for him, not for this hellish

freak show." It's important for them to turn it into

a freak show. This is a fairly

commonly used tactic. Remember

the mayoral election when I

was running? Pauk (the stage name of Sergey Troitsky, a Russian musician) was also running then.

He ran in lots of elections, actually.

There were some other strange figures too, and back then

candidates had to come to these

municipal meetings in order to

talk to local deputies and get their

signatures to pass the municipal

filter. And the Association of Municipal

Entities—I remember very well—

organized these meetings with different

candidates. Sergei Semyonovich

Sobyanin came, then someone else came, and then I was

told, "Well, Alexei, now it's your turn

to go there." It's a good thing I simply didn't

go. One of the people from my team went there instead,

from my headquarters, and

called me from there in horror and said,

"Pauk is already sitting here." In other words, it had all been set up

so that you would come there and

talk to the deputies while sitting next to

the well-known musician

Troitsky, aka Pauk, saying all sorts of

funny things, and people would

watch and say, "My God, what a carnival,

what a circus.

Awful. And of course only Sergei

Semyonovich

would look very respectable against that backdrop.

So there will be many more similar

nominations—some more outrageous, some less

outrageous—but all of it together will

look very much like a monstrous circus. None

of these people, of course, will be

engaged in any real election

campaign. The point is simply to turn

people away from all of this, to show them once again

that it's all make-believe.

This fake, ridiculous politics exists,

while the main, real politics is somewhere else—

in the Kremlin. So, let me see what you've written to me so far

on this subject.

All right, I see lots and lots and lots of questions about

11/5/17. Let me address that right away

so you don't keep bombarding me with

these questions. So, about 11/5/17—that is, about

the idea associated with the so-called Maltsev movement,

that is, the Artpodgotovka movement.

As for taking part in the 11/5/17 action, I can see that

they are, of course, simply being

crushed—they're just being destroyed.

Criminal cases are being fabricated against them

all across the country right now. At this very

moment I'm seeing reports about some kind of

planted

explosives being planted, Molotov

cocktails, and things like that. There are mass

arrests, mass detentions—there is simply an ongoing

attempt

to imprison the leaders and the structures of this movement,

to intimidate everyone, and

they do this all the time in order

to use such demonstrative

repression, including by planting

various items, simply

to neutralize the main mass of activists. I

hope that doesn't happen. In any

case, I have said and I say that people have

every right to gather, including on

11/5/17. What the authorities are doing toward

Artpodgotovka, Maltsev specifically, and all

these people is absolutely

lawless abuse. I've answered that

important question that I've been

asked. As for what's happening with us,

I wanted to talk a little about

about what is happening here with us

A real election

campaign is underway, and it’s going really well

very inspiring, though at times quite

difficult.

Because the news today,

the news this evening that in

our Tambov headquarters, they’ve simply

locked everyone up in retaliation for our

very successful rally that we held

in Tambov. It was an experimental

rally—we held it on private

property. In fact, it wasn’t even really a rally, but rather

a meeting for which we handed out tickets.

The authorities couldn’t do anything about it, because

it was private property, admission by ticket,

and so now they’ve simply

arbitrarily thrown people in jail. Already 4

or 5 people have been sentenced, some of them getting

20 days, 25 days.

So, you know, it’s all being done very deliberately, with

maximum severity. But you know, this whole

event in Tambov, and the people I

met there, really made an impression on me.

Because on the one hand,

the pressure there is monstrous, and in Tambov

Region there is complete lawlessness—bandits

are running the region, and the authorities,

the governor, his deputy—they’re simply the most

genuine bandits. And yet people are not

afraid—they resist. There are

businesspeople who gave us this

private plot of land, and the headquarters is working great.

And last night, when I learned about, uh, the

latest arrests, I

called a man whose wife had already

been given five days and said, well,

hang in there, and all that, and I said, I’m sorry

it turned out this way. And he told me something

that made me think: when I write a book,

I’ll definitely include this quote. He

said to me in a stern voice: “Alexei,

your apologies are not needed here, and they’re not even

appropriate. We are adults. We are doing this

for ourselves. We understand what we’re getting into. We’re doing

this for our own normal lives.”

These people really are

incredibly impressive. And that is exactly why

this atmosphere of pressure

that is happening is, of course, hard, but

it is truly the most inspiring

moment, because you see what amazing

people—fearless, brave, unbending—

are gathering around you.

As for my travel plans—about the cups,

mine today says

“Hello, Siberia,” and in fact I should

show you an image right now that says

Irkutsk and another one that says

Kemerovo. The image should appear now.

If everything is more or less clear with Irkutsk,

we’ll also be meeting there on

private property, then in Kemerovo

what’s happening right now is an absolute

circus, because we won

in court and we had, and still have, this venue, but

then they urgently pushed through some kind of

appeal decision and overturned that court

ruling. We have already

decided to hold it in Hyde Park there,

where no prior notification is required, so

on that note, I can even tell you now that we have

a backup location—just a moment, I’ll tell you as soon as they bring it to me.

They’ll bring it.

So, our backup location is the square

at the intersection of Leonov Street and Alexander

—there it is. In any case, one way or

another, we currently have plans for

Irkutsk and Kemerovo.

And we will do everything possible to

speak there. I especially want to speak

in Kemerovo, given what is happening there,

given that governor there

who has been sitting in office for I don’t know how many

years—666 years, apparently.

And given what is happening to our

coordinator—you know that Ksenia

Pakhomova has recently become a kind of

internet star simply because

such pressure has come crashing down on her.

It perfectly shows the

vileness of this regime. Here is a young woman

in Kemerovo coordinating the headquarters,

a perfectly normal person engaged in

perfectly normal civic activity, and her young man

gets expelled from university—though now

he has been reinstated after the scandal—despite

the fact that he is a straight-A student.

Her mother is fired from her job; she

heads a state-funded institution, an arts

school. In other words, they are simply

openly, shamelessly, and lawlessly

putting pressure not even on the person herself, but on

that person’s relatives in order

to force her to give up

her political activity. You have to hand it

to this Ksenia—she’s a fighter too, a person

who does not give up, and her family continues

to support her. And I would very much

like to get to Kemerovo to

say a few choice words

about the people who are

orchestrating this, and to say a few words

of support, to meet these

wonderful volunteers. So yes,

we do have plans for Irkutsk and

Kemerovo—come. One more image

I need to show today is

the address of our Moscow headquarters. You know

that our headquarters has already moved for the third time.

Verification is taking place there; we always

invite people. The address is

10 Letnikovskaya Street, Building 20. And here’s

some exclusive news for you:

this time we set a record with this headquarters.

The headquarters worked for two days, and it too is already being

evicted. This is the fourth eviction

of the Moscow headquarters. We still for some

we'll stay there for about a month

later—the contract says we can't, and we...

we've already paid for another month, but I...

we'll have to move out—that is, they're literally

evicting us in Moscow in a very harsh way

and dispersing us because they're very afraid, and so

again

I get a lot of questions: explain why

they do this, and so stupidly, when it's much

simpler to just let all this happen and

then no one will be able to use it for PR around you

the few media outlets still writing about you will stop

and you won't have anything to angrily talk about on your

program

The answer is very simple: much more than

any PR concerns, the Kremlin and personally

Putin are worried that we are running

a real election campaign. Once again,

they are terribly afraid of this

No one ever does this—but who opens

campaign headquarters across Russia? Who holds campaign

rallies? No one, never, in any

elections. That's just not done, I can

tell you that. After many months of this

election campaign, I am absolutely

convinced that these people can be beaten

in an election. But you have to actually run a campaign, you have to

work actively, gather

people around you, recruit volunteers, and

the political situation changes when you engage with people

Come, talk, discuss wages in

the region, and they will vote for you. They may have

some disagreements, of course

there's a lot of propaganda

but those candidates who actually run

an election campaign can achieve

success. The Kremlin and Putin personally are used

to dealing only with candidates

who don't campaign—they are easy

to defeat, easy to beat with

results like 84 percent, 70 percent—well,

the way they do it. That's why they are terribly

afraid of us. They're afraid of these things, afraid that

we travel around, campaign, go door to door

They can see that all of this is real, and

that this is a real

force that can beat their virtual ratings

That's why they pressure us like this

That's why the Moscow headquarters scares them, because

they can see it—oh, excuse me, there are

some, what, maybe 15 people just sitting there

little worker-bees, so to speak—I wasn't sure

about the correct stress in that word—and they

see that people are coming by the hundreds for

verification—real, live people

come in for verification in order to

confirm their signature, so that

when the crucial moment comes, they can come again and

sign once more. That scares them

Any rally that we hold in

Tambov, Kursk, or Ivanovo scares them

because they roughly estimate

and ask themselves in meetings: well,

comrade vice-governor, tell us this:

if we now hold a rally in support of me, the governor

who got 70 percent in the election

how many people will we gather there for the rally?

And the answer is: zero, zero

They can't get people to come to their

rallies for free. That's why all of this infuriates them so much

That's why they need to jail people, they need to

harass them. And that's exactly why we will not

give up, and we are counting very heavily

on your support—financial

organizational, any kind at all. How about

coming to my small town,

Nevel, in Pskov Region

How about finding us

a venue in this

town? Right now we can hold

rallies and events only where there is

private indoor space or private land, because

if you watched my latest video,

I say there that they are not giving us permission

for