Text version
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[music]
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Hello everyone. It's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, which means
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we're live in the Navalny Live studio, and Alexei
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Navalny is here to talk with
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you about what's happening in the country
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and answer your questions, which you
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can send me on Twitter using the hashtag
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#Navalny2018. But what's happening in the country is this:
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there's an election, and first of all I'm flooded
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with questions about how I feel about
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Katya Gordon's nomination. Alexei, what do you think
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about Yelena Berkova's campaign?
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Yelena, Yelena... that's the most popular question, and
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everyone is waiting for some kind of comment from me.
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In my last video, I showed
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several candidates, but this shot,
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the one you're seeing on your screens now,
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is already outdated, because there are lots of new
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great candidates. A few more popped up
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just today, and everyone's laughing, everyone's
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having fun, and a lot of people are asking me
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what on earth is going on. It's actually a pretty simple
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thing. On the one hand, there isn't some kind of
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grand Kremlin plan behind it, because
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elections are the kind of time when, well,
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people can just play around with it, joke about it, or
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any washed-up journalist, any
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washed-up showman, any washed-up porn actor
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can announce that he—or she—is
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running for president and get
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a bit of traffic, likes, clicks, and all
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the rest of it.
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So I don't think all of this is somehow
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being heavily coordinated, although some of it
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possibly is, in some altered form,
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coordinated. On the other hand, well,
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of course the Kremlin is happy about it,
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because it's extremely important for them to create this so-called
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"carnivalization" of the election. What
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that means is that everyone is supposed to
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look at it, see it on the news,
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watch a segment about it, and think,
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"This is some kind of clown show. It's just
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ridiculous. There's only one normal,
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serious person here: Vladimir
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Vladimirovich Putin. In this
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hellish circus, he looks like the only person
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who actually resembles a candidate. Of course we'll vote
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for him, not for this hellish
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freak show." It's important for them to turn it into
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a freak show. This is a fairly
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commonly used tactic. Remember
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the mayoral election when I
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was running? Pauk (the stage name of Sergey Troitsky, a Russian musician) was also running then.
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He ran in lots of elections, actually.
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There were some other strange figures too, and back then
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candidates had to come to these
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municipal meetings in order to
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talk to local deputies and get their
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signatures to pass the municipal
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filter. And the Association of Municipal
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Entities—I remember very well—
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organized these meetings with different
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candidates. Sergei Semyonovich
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Sobyanin came, then someone else came, and then I was
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told, "Well, Alexei, now it's your turn
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to go there." It's a good thing I simply didn't
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go. One of the people from my team went there instead,
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from my headquarters, and
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called me from there in horror and said,
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"Pauk is already sitting here." In other words, it had all been set up
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so that you would come there and
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talk to the deputies while sitting next to
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the well-known musician
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Troitsky, aka Pauk, saying all sorts of
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funny things, and people would
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watch and say, "My God, what a carnival,
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what a circus.
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Awful. And of course only Sergei
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Semyonovich
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would look very respectable against that backdrop.
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So there will be many more similar
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nominations—some more outrageous, some less
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outrageous—but all of it together will
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look very much like a monstrous circus. None
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of these people, of course, will be
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engaged in any real election
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campaign. The point is simply to turn
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people away from all of this, to show them once again
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that it's all make-believe.
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This fake, ridiculous politics exists,
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while the main, real politics is somewhere else—
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in the Kremlin. So, let me see what you've written to me so far
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on this subject.
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All right, I see lots and lots and lots of questions about
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11/5/17. Let me address that right away
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so you don't keep bombarding me with
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these questions. So, about 11/5/17—that is, about
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the idea associated with the so-called Maltsev movement,
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that is, the Artpodgotovka movement.
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As for taking part in the 11/5/17 action, I can see that
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they are, of course, simply being
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crushed—they're just being destroyed.
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Criminal cases are being fabricated against them
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all across the country right now. At this very
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moment I'm seeing reports about some kind of
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planted
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explosives being planted, Molotov
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cocktails, and things like that. There are mass
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arrests, mass detentions—there is simply an ongoing
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attempt
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to imprison the leaders and the structures of this movement,
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to intimidate everyone, and
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they do this all the time in order
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to use such demonstrative
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repression, including by planting
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various items, simply
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to neutralize the main mass of activists. I
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hope that doesn't happen. In any
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case, I have said and I say that people have
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every right to gather, including on
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11/5/17. What the authorities are doing toward
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Artpodgotovka, Maltsev specifically, and all
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these people is absolutely
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lawless abuse. I've answered that
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important question that I've been
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asked. As for what's happening with us,
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I wanted to talk a little about
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about what is happening here with us
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A real election
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campaign is underway, and it’s going really well
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very inspiring, though at times quite
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difficult.
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Because the news today,
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the news this evening that in
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our Tambov headquarters, they’ve simply
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locked everyone up in retaliation for our
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very successful rally that we held
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in Tambov. It was an experimental
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rally—we held it on private
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property. In fact, it wasn’t even really a rally, but rather
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a meeting for which we handed out tickets.
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The authorities couldn’t do anything about it, because
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it was private property, admission by ticket,
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and so now they’ve simply
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arbitrarily thrown people in jail. Already 4
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or 5 people have been sentenced, some of them getting
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20 days, 25 days.
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So, you know, it’s all being done very deliberately, with
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maximum severity. But you know, this whole
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event in Tambov, and the people I
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met there, really made an impression on me.
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Because on the one hand,
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the pressure there is monstrous, and in Tambov
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Region there is complete lawlessness—bandits
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are running the region, and the authorities,
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the governor, his deputy—they’re simply the most
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genuine bandits. And yet people are not
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afraid—they resist. There are
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businesspeople who gave us this
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private plot of land, and the headquarters is working great.
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And last night, when I learned about, uh, the
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latest arrests, I
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called a man whose wife had already
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been given five days and said, well,
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hang in there, and all that, and I said, I’m sorry
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it turned out this way. And he told me something
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that made me think: when I write a book,
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I’ll definitely include this quote. He
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said to me in a stern voice: “Alexei,
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your apologies are not needed here, and they’re not even
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appropriate. We are adults. We are doing this
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for ourselves. We understand what we’re getting into. We’re doing
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this for our own normal lives.”
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These people really are
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incredibly impressive. And that is exactly why
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this atmosphere of pressure
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that is happening is, of course, hard, but
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it is truly the most inspiring
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moment, because you see what amazing
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people—fearless, brave, unbending—
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are gathering around you.
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As for my travel plans—about the cups,
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mine today says
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“Hello, Siberia,” and in fact I should
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show you an image right now that says
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Irkutsk and another one that says
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Kemerovo. The image should appear now.
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If everything is more or less clear with Irkutsk,
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we’ll also be meeting there on
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private property, then in Kemerovo
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what’s happening right now is an absolute
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circus, because we won
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in court and we had, and still have, this venue, but
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then they urgently pushed through some kind of
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appeal decision and overturned that court
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ruling. We have already
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decided to hold it in Hyde Park there,
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where no prior notification is required, so
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on that note, I can even tell you now that we have
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a backup location—just a moment, I’ll tell you as soon as they bring it to me.
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They’ll bring it.
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So, our backup location is the square
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at the intersection of Leonov Street and Alexander
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—there it is. In any case, one way or
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another, we currently have plans for
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Irkutsk and Kemerovo.
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And we will do everything possible to
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speak there. I especially want to speak
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in Kemerovo, given what is happening there,
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given that governor there
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who has been sitting in office for I don’t know how many
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years—666 years, apparently.
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And given what is happening to our
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coordinator—you know that Ksenia
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Pakhomova has recently become a kind of
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internet star simply because
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such pressure has come crashing down on her.
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It perfectly shows the
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vileness of this regime. Here is a young woman
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in Kemerovo coordinating the headquarters,
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a perfectly normal person engaged in
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perfectly normal civic activity, and her young man
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gets expelled from university—though now
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he has been reinstated after the scandal—despite
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the fact that he is a straight-A student.
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Her mother is fired from her job; she
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heads a state-funded institution, an arts
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school. In other words, they are simply
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openly, shamelessly, and lawlessly
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putting pressure not even on the person herself, but on
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that person’s relatives in order
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to force her to give up
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her political activity. You have to hand it
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to this Ksenia—she’s a fighter too, a person
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who does not give up, and her family continues
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to support her. And I would very much
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like to get to Kemerovo to
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say a few choice words
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about the people who are
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orchestrating this, and to say a few words
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of support, to meet these
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wonderful volunteers. So yes,
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we do have plans for Irkutsk and
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Kemerovo—come. One more image
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I need to show today is
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the address of our Moscow headquarters. You know
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that our headquarters has already moved for the third time.
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Verification is taking place there; we always
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invite people. The address is
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10 Letnikovskaya Street, Building 20. And here’s
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some exclusive news for you:
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this time we set a record with this headquarters.
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The headquarters worked for two days, and it too is already being
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evicted. This is the fourth eviction
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of the Moscow headquarters. We still for some
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we'll stay there for about a month
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later—the contract says we can't, and we...
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we've already paid for another month, but I...
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we'll have to move out—that is, they're literally
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evicting us in Moscow in a very harsh way
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and dispersing us because they're very afraid, and so
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again
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I get a lot of questions: explain why
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they do this, and so stupidly, when it's much
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simpler to just let all this happen and
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then no one will be able to use it for PR around you
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the few media outlets still writing about you will stop
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and you won't have anything to angrily talk about on your
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program
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The answer is very simple: much more than
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any PR concerns, the Kremlin and personally
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Putin are worried that we are running
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a real election campaign. Once again,
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they are terribly afraid of this
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No one ever does this—but who opens
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campaign headquarters across Russia? Who holds campaign
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rallies? No one, never, in any
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elections. That's just not done, I can
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tell you that. After many months of this
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election campaign, I am absolutely
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convinced that these people can be beaten
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in an election. But you have to actually run a campaign, you have to
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work actively, gather
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people around you, recruit volunteers, and
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the political situation changes when you engage with people
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Come, talk, discuss wages in
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the region, and they will vote for you. They may have
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some disagreements, of course
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there's a lot of propaganda
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but those candidates who actually run
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an election campaign can achieve
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success. The Kremlin and Putin personally are used
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to dealing only with candidates
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who don't campaign—they are easy
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to defeat, easy to beat with
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results like 84 percent, 70 percent—well,
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the way they do it. That's why they are terribly
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afraid of us. They're afraid of these things, afraid that
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we travel around, campaign, go door to door
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They can see that all of this is real, and
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that this is a real
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force that can beat their virtual ratings
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That's why they pressure us like this
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That's why the Moscow headquarters scares them, because
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they can see it—oh, excuse me, there are
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some, what, maybe 15 people just sitting there
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little worker-bees, so to speak—I wasn't sure
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about the correct stress in that word—and they
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see that people are coming by the hundreds for
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verification—real, live people
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come in for verification in order to
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confirm their signature, so that
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when the crucial moment comes, they can come again and
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sign once more. That scares them
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Any rally that we hold in
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Tambov, Kursk, or Ivanovo scares them
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because they roughly estimate
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and ask themselves in meetings: well,
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comrade vice-governor, tell us this:
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if we now hold a rally in support of me, the governor
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who got 70 percent in the election
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how many people will we gather there for the rally?
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And the answer is: zero, zero
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They can't get people to come to their
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rallies for free. That's why all of this infuriates them so much
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That's why they need to jail people, they need to
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harass them. And that's exactly why we will not
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give up, and we are counting very heavily
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on your support—financial
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organizational, any kind at all. How about
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coming to my small town,
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Nevel, in Pskov Region
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How about finding us
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a venue in this
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town? Right now we can hold
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rallies and events only where there is
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private indoor space or private land, because
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if you watched my latest video,
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I say there that they are not giving us permission
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for anything at all. There should be
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a graphic with the statistics, by the way
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if it's there, please take a look
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Since the beginning of September, we have submitted 1,267
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notifications. Of those, 731
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were simply flat-out refusals—basically, just "no"
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and "not allowed"
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191 were relocations, also completely
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illegal—basically to the middle of nowhere, to
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a cemetery, literally, or
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several dozen kilometers from the city
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and things like that. In 181 cases they simply did not
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respond, which is effectively a refusal. 103 were
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also relocations to completely
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unacceptable venues. And proper
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approvals—where we asked for a square,
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a specific square, and got that exact place—there were only 4
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such cases out of 1,267 where we were granted approval
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So everything we have done up to this point
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comes from the second-to-last line: 57
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relocations to acceptable venues. That is,
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they are usually not convenient—they gave us places
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away from the city center. In fact, I think I probably
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held only the very first rally in Murmansk
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in the city center
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Everything else was already fairly
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far from the center, and that's where we
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held them, because we became convinced that
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even at less-than-ideal venues
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people still come. That is exactly why they are now
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not giving us any approvals
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at all
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That is exactly why we appealed, and
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why I am appealing again: I am saying that if anyone
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has a space that can hold
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a thousand people or more
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depending on the size of the city, send it to us
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At this point, we're not in a position to be picky—we just need to survive
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People ask me whether filing applications for
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holding rallies has stopped. No,
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of course it hasn't stopped. This is our
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right, and we continue to submit applications for
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rallies. Military equipment is being brought into Moscow
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Apparently, today they know something is going to happen
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They ask whether this is connected with the fifth.
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Commentators ask, but...
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And whether there will be some kind of 5/7 event here, or...
16:30
There will be massive police forces here, I have no...
16:32
doubt about that, but I think it is connected with...
16:34
the parade that will take place—actual military...
16:36
hardware. It is connected with the parade that will be held...
16:38
on the 7th. Here, the main view is...
16:44
the opinion. Arthur asks whether it would be enough to do...
16:47
But he will do a lot for domestic policy...
16:49
while ruining foreign policy, in which...
16:51
Putin is great—what can you say about...
16:52
that? What I can say about that...
16:54
is that Putin is no kind of hero to me, and...
16:56
foreign policy under President...
16:58
Navalny will become much better. Your...
16:59
President Navalny will stop...
17:01
throwing money around. Under President...
17:03
Navalny, Russia will stop waging wars, and...
17:06
President Navalny will make sure that...
17:08
much more money stays inside...
17:10
Russia. We will trade with everyone and...
17:12
make our own citizens richer instead of engaging in...
17:14
this trash that...
17:18
the current authorities are busy with. Makar...
17:21
Margulis. Alexei.
17:22
If you become president, will you release...
17:24
Davydych? What do you generally think about his...
17:27
arrest and detention? I do not know this situation that...
17:29
well. You mean...
17:32
Eric Davydych (a Russian car blogger), as I understand it...
17:34
the famous racer from smotra.ru. I do not have any...
17:39
personal sympathy for him, because...
17:42
well, he is a pro-government person.
17:44
Even when he was on trial, he was shouting there...
17:46
from the defendant's bench, saying, 'Why are you jailing...
17:48
me? Eugene, Navalny, I love this...
17:50
government.'
17:51
But nevertheless, as far as I can see, his...
17:54
case is clearly fabricated, and...
17:57
at the very least, what he was tried for...
18:01
is so obviously stitched together with white thread (a Russian idiom meaning 'crudely fabricated')...
18:03
His wife—or common-law wife—was also...
18:06
jailed. He clashed with the police...
18:08
and the police threw him in jail lawlessly. There is...
18:11
no doubt about that. So I am certain that...
18:14
he will win in the European Court, but time...
18:16
will pass, and of course any normal...
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honest court—at least, because of what he is...
18:21
being charged with—would not have jailed him. It is...
18:23
obviously a politically ordered case.
18:27
All right, a question from Ksenia Belova.
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In St. Petersburg, we never did manage to...
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talk—the meeting was canceled, of course.
18:34
The meeting in St. Petersburg...
18:36
was canceled at the last minute.
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St. Petersburg.
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It is one of the key—one of the key cities...
18:41
in the election campaign. There is enormous...
18:43
support there, an enormous number of...
18:45
voters, a strong campaign office. We opened our first office...
18:47
in the city of St. Petersburg, and so...
18:49
of course we will hold it. But...
18:51
you see, every time you get ready...
18:53
to come to Piter (St. Petersburg), you end up not in Piter but in...
18:55
a detention center. But nevertheless, I am not...
18:58
giving up on trying to come to Piter (St. Petersburg).
19:02
Nikolai Aseev asks: will a visa regime be introduced...
19:04
with Belarus after your...
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election? No. We do not need a visa...
19:08
regime with Belarus. We function perfectly well...
19:10
under the visa-free arrangement. We do not need...
19:12
a border with Belarus; we do not need a visa...
19:14
regime with Belarus.
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Not at all, not in the slightest. Alexei...
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my friends in Stavropol, guys...
19:22
do not ask that. The question does not make...
19:25
sense. I want to come to every major...
19:28
city individually. I want to come to all these...
19:31
southern cities—Stavropol, Krasnodar, Rostov...
19:36
Volgograd. We really want to go there...
19:38
but it is a dead end there—they simply do not...
19:41
give any permits. But of course all...
19:43
these cities are in the plans, especially such...
19:45
major ones as Stavropol. We want to go to every city...
19:47
and will do everything possible...
19:48
to make it there, and we are constantly...
19:51
submitting applications. So, there are a lot of...
19:53
questions about the contest...
19:56
for video blogs that I announced on my...
19:59
birthday. People are scolding me...
20:00
and saying I deceived everyone. I did not deceive...
20:02
anyone.
20:03
Yes, the contest results will be announced...
20:06
and we will pay—I will pay—the cash prizes.
20:10
It is just that because of some...
20:13
of my arrests...
20:14
all of this, I apologize, was delayed, and...
20:18
it was supposed to happen in mid-September.
20:19
The results will be announced...
20:21
a little later. We now have a jury...
20:24
and that jury consists of Lyubov Sobol...
20:28
whom you know well, and Ruslan Usachev...
20:30
host at Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station), Alexander Plushev...
20:33
also from Echo of Moscow, Robert Panchvidze, famous for...
20:36
MDK, and Vasily Ishchuk from the digital agency...
20:39
Players and Pixels.
20:41
Please note that I am not on it. That was done...
20:45
deliberately, because I originally...
20:48
promised fairness, and this jury is an honest jury...
20:50
that will vote, and the voting...
20:53
will determine the top three places...
20:55
in accordance with the jury's vote. And...
20:58
next week, I hope, we will wrap it up...
21:01
next week we will do it, if I do not...
21:04
end up being sent somewhere instead of Irkutsk...
21:06
again. Yes, we will announce the results of this...
21:10
contest. Again, about St. Petersburg...
21:14
Azat asks: how do you...
21:16
see the process of finding private venues...
21:18
in major cities?
21:19
I do not just see it—it is already underway. Right now...
21:22
various people are writing to Volkov's email, saying...
21:24
'I have a hangar,' 'I have a warehouse,' and...
21:25
then we start figuring out how much...
21:27
it suits us and what documents there are...
21:29
because that is the kind of thing it is. For example, I...
21:32
was supposed to go to Krasnoyarsk, and there...
21:34
The person said, "I have a movie theater."
21:36
Formerly—come to the movie theater, everyone, already.
21:38
They had already even started it in Krasnoyarsk.
21:41
The advertising started, and then the partner began to...
21:43
She said, "No, I'm afraid"—and then the police came to him.
21:45
The police.
21:46
That is, one partner was brave, the other...
21:47
said, "No, I'm scared, I'm against it," and...
21:50
So Krasnoyarsk got canceled for us, and that's why...
21:52
There are many, many legal issues of various kinds there.
21:55
that we have to resolve.
21:58
I don't know, like Leonid Volkov, about the dialogue with
22:01
Russian YouTube—artificial boosting, manipulation,
22:03
subscriber fraud, complete lawlessness, so that in
22:04
the fact is, there is no such thing as Russian YouTube.
22:06
There is only YouTube as such. In general, in
22:08
Russia, they don't have any people there with whom
22:10
you can talk and discuss something.
22:12
But a dialogue with YouTube in general
22:14
is happening at the global level, but...
22:17
but we haven't been able to beat the artificial boosting. You
22:19
know that under every video, a huge number of
22:21
dislikes are constantly dumped on us, by the way.
22:23
Speaking of which, please hit like right now, those of you who
22:25
are watching live—don't be lazy,
22:27
leave likes under the video so that its
22:28
ranking
22:29
goes up. But so far we don't see YouTube
22:33
—not in Russia, and not globally either—
22:36
really doing anything to fight this manipulation. I
22:40
don't know why we can't get anything out of
22:42
them, and our way of fighting this
22:45
is for you to leave real,
22:47
genuine likes against their fake
22:50
dislikes. We have filed a lawsuit against Putin in
22:56
connection with this whole situation, in connection with
22:58
the fact that we are not being given permission for
23:01
rallies, and I see quite a lot of
23:03
comments of an ironic nature, like,
23:05
"What kind of lawyer are you? How can you
23:07
sue Putin when you don't even have
23:09
proof that it was Putin himself
23:11
sitting there saying, 'Don't give him permission
23:14
for a rally,' and besides, he has immunity," and so on.
23:17
There is a lot of talk, both
23:19
legal and political.
23:20
They are of different kinds, and I can
23:23
tell you this: guys, you always have to act
23:25
directly and on the merits. We know that
23:30
the political instruction not to give us
23:33
a venue was, of course, given by Putin.
23:35
Someone like Kiriyenko (Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin official)
23:37
or one of Kiriyenko's deputies—who exactly
23:39
tells the governors what to call it, says no,
23:42
let's lock everyone up—but we
23:45
know that this was done by Putin. He created
23:47
this system and gives the political instructions.
23:49
And I am suing Putin. Here the issue is
23:52
procedural, of course, but the issue on the merits is this:
23:54
what is the judicial system for?
23:57
The judicial system exists so that you can challenge
23:58
the unlawful actions of people whom you
24:02
consider villains, and
24:04
whom you believe are doing
24:05
illegal things. And we can see that Putin
24:07
is acting unlawfully.
24:08
His administration is acting unlawfully.
24:10
That is why we are suing them, and in this case
24:12
we have something to bring—we will bring
24:14
these 1,200 complaints, these refusals.
24:17
We will prove that this is systematic work,
24:20
that it is obviously coordinated, that it
24:22
cannot be the case that in all federal subjects
24:24
across the country, in all major cities, we
24:26
are being refused according to the same pattern. We
24:30
will question witnesses.
24:31
These witnesses will establish important facts, and
24:33
the chain of evidence will point specifically to Putin.
24:36
That is what should happen in
24:39
a normal, honest, independent court. We
24:42
would prove it. Here, we all understand
24:45
perfectly well what kind of system this is; we understand that
24:47
most likely they won't just refuse to hear it—
24:48
they won't even accept the claim, they'll throw it out. But even so,
24:50
we are doing it anyway. And these
24:54
comments that Peskov (Putin's press secretary) made today,
24:56
these new comments to the effect that
24:57
we are not involved in this and do not
25:01
coordinate rallies—well, what am I supposed to do now,
25:03
believe him and say,
25:06
"Ah yes, you know, it's not Peskov, it's
25:08
some deputy mayor who signs
25:11
some refusal, and Putin isn't physically
25:14
in his office at that moment"? But I
25:16
know—and you and I both know—that they are
25:19
organizing all of this, and I know that Peskov is lying.
25:21
It is the Kremlin specifically that is sabotaging
25:24
our campaign. Everyone understands this perfectly well.
25:26
And we proceed from our understanding of the situation
25:29
and act on the merits, rather than engaging in
25:31
these kinds of abstract arguments like, "Well, maybe
25:34
it would be better for us to sue some
25:37
junior
25:39
official in charge of some department in the town of
25:44
Uryupinsk"—but he is not the one doing all this.
25:46
This is specifically Putin's doing, and we need to treat
25:48
it exactly that way. And we should not
25:50
turn ourselves into fools and
25:53
lawyers for the Kremlin by arguing, "Well,
25:56
no, but to sue Putin, Alexei,
25:58
you don't have a video recording of Putin
26:00
saying, 'Do this.' No, I don't have
26:02
such a video recording.
26:04
But I am filing suit because judicial
26:06
procedure, judicial inquiry—call it what you will—
26:10
presupposes that during the proceedings
26:13
such evidence can be obtained.
26:16
That is explicitly written in the law, and the court
26:18
must request it. So we are acting
26:20
in a very formal, proper way. They, on the contrary, are not—they
26:23
constantly break the law. Let's
26:25
see what people are asking us here.
26:29
Comrade Navalny, Sasha Bukalov writes:
26:31
"I strongly ask that if you become the head of the
26:33
Russian Federation, you declassify the composition of the gas
26:35
used during the Nord-Ost theater siege." And when I
26:38
become president, all of these
26:39
things will be investigated publicly."
26:41
only the composition of the gas
26:42
and in general, the actions of the security services during the time of
26:45
Nord-Ost (the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis), and during the time of
26:47
Beslan (the 2004 school siege), dozens of people died there, including children
26:51
children died, and to say that these were
26:53
some kind of super-successful operations is
26:55
just ridiculous, especially during Beslan
26:57
when they simply started firing at the school with machine guns
26:59
so of course all of this should
27:02
be declassified and everything should be published
27:07
People are asking about Twitch, about my stream
27:11
in more detail and everything else. If you don't
27:14
know what this strange
27:16
abbreviation means that I mentioned, I do a
27:19
stream on Tuesday
27:20
a gaming stream. A lot of people laughed at me
27:23
and said, well, you're a candidate for
27:25
president, after all—why are you messing around with
27:27
video games? But it turned out that
27:29
the audience was astonishingly huge
27:31
it was watched by more people than watch here
27:34
at its peak, 51
27:38
thousand people were watching simultaneously, and it never dropped below 40,000
27:40
This stream now has around
27:42
a million views and raised 200
27:44
thousand rubles (about $3,400 at the time)
27:45
So the Twitch audience on this platform
27:49
where there are gaming videos, the audience for this game
27:51
is comparable to the audience of federal
27:53
TV channels—like Channel One (Russia's main state TV channel). So I
27:56
think I did absolutely the right thing
27:58
By the way, I got enormous
27:59
pleasure from it, and it was very nice
28:00
to talk with this gaming community. I got a lot of support from
28:03
them, though of course
28:04
they laughed at me a bit, because basically
28:07
the game consisted of everyone running around and
28:09
trying to kill me, while I was running away from them, but
28:12
it was very interesting. I think that
28:14
presidential candidates should be doing things like
28:16
this. Millions of
28:18
voters play these games, so unlike
28:21
the other candidates, I played too
28:22
I understand those people, I understand what they
28:25
do there, I understand more about
28:27
esports than the other candidates do
28:29
In general, I only understand a little, but definitely more
28:32
than any of the other candidates, so I
28:34
am counting on these voters
28:36
to support me rather than someone else
28:37
I think all of this was the right thing to do. Jazz-Funk
28:43
asks the following question: will you also have
28:46
body doubles like V.V. (Vladimir Putin)?
28:48
Well, no, there are no plans to create body doubles for now
28:53
none at all. Alexei, why are our
28:57
media silent about the fact that the terrorist in New York is from
28:59
Uzbekistan? asks Nikolai Lopatin
29:01
As far as I can see, no one is being silent; everywhere
29:03
they wrote that this person is from Uzbekistan
29:05
that he is Muslim
29:09
there are photos of him, with a distinctive
29:12
beard. As I understand it, his involvement has already been confirmed
29:14
No, I don't—I don't
29:17
see anyone being silent about it, but
29:19
what happened in the United States, of course, once again
29:22
makes us think: is everything really
29:24
all right with our migration policy?
29:26
We see that more and more
29:29
incidents, terrorist attacks, and assaults
29:31
are connected with people from Central Asia. This
29:34
does not mean that Uzbekistan is somehow full of
29:36
terrorists who are all coming to us. It does not
29:39
mean that these people inherently pose
29:41
some specific threat, but the fact remains
29:43
a fact: unlike the United States, we have
29:46
an open-door situation—come right in, no visa required, even
29:49
without an international passport, and basically no one
29:51
properly registers these people; they wander
29:53
back and forth. This is wrong, it's simply not
29:57
normal. So what happened in the United States
30:00
and
30:01
the country of origin of this terrorist
30:03
should tell us a lot about the fact that
30:07
we ought to put things in order on our
30:09
southern borders as well
30:11
Why was the coordinator of the St. Petersburg
30:14
headquarters replaced? asks Kate Polina
30:16
The coordinator of the St. Petersburg headquarters was
30:18
the first coordinator we appointed
30:22
She's a great woman, she worked very well
30:25
She's just gotten tired, really
30:27
she's worked longer than anyone else, and so much has piled onto her
30:30
an enormous number of different tasks
30:33
and it probably just became uncomfortable for her to
30:34
handle them. But she is still with
30:37
us; she will be working on election monitoring and
30:39
she is a member of our team
30:41
As for rotation among headquarters chiefs, it happens
30:43
constantly
30:44
People simply get tired, or sometimes
30:46
personal relationships within teams don't
30:48
work out. This is a completely normal
30:50
process. But the main thing is that I am very proud
30:53
that Polina stayed with our team, and
30:56
I am very grateful to her for what she
30:58
has done. In that sense, the coordinator
31:00
has changed, but essentially in the St. Petersburg headquarters
31:02
no grand changes have
31:04
taken place. I hope it will continue
31:05
to work just as brilliantly as it did before
31:07
Those wonderful rallies on the 26th, the 12th,
31:11
and the 7th
31:12
that is very much the achievement of the St. Petersburg headquarters and of Polina
31:14
What do you think of Yavlinsky's campaign videos
31:19
on his YouTube channel?
31:21
Nikita Petrov asks me
31:23
When will you have the same thing? Because as for me,
31:26
there are plenty of videos on my YouTube channel—if there's one thing
31:29
we do have, it's videos. But it's good that Grigory Yavlinsky
31:31
has at least started making videos—that's already good
31:34
I would very much like to see candidates
31:36
doing at least something during the election campaign
31:38
I would prefer that others, and I'm saying this without
31:40
any irony, completely sincerely, I would
31:42
like other candidates
31:43
to be doing the same thing. Videos, of course,
31:45
anyone can put out videos on a YouTube
31:47
channel, but I would also like to see meetings with
31:48
for voters, trips are something more
31:52
tangible in an election campaign
31:55
that is why they do it, and Dmitry Kudinov does it too
31:58
How do you get your grandma to stop watching Channel One?
32:00
You can’t make your grandma stop
32:02
watching Channel One, but you can
32:04
show her something besides Channel One
32:06
for example, our videos. Yakov, Poklonskaya
32:11
when she banned Kazantip, with its 60,000
32:14
attendees, we want to bring the festival back. Well, I
32:16
can’t say I know the situation in detail
32:18
there, but as I understand it, it wasn’t
32:20
Poklonskaya who banned Kazantip many
32:22
times
32:22
It was banned many times, moved around many times, but overall
32:26
it is an excellent example of how, under
32:29
Russia’s new rules, they are now going to
32:32
put pressure on the residents of Crimea. Of course
32:35
many of them were very happy about the annexation, but the new
32:37
reality they have encountered
32:39
they have already encountered it. We can see how
32:42
active the protest movement there is
32:47
how it is growing, what kinds of conflicts there are
32:50
within the elite, because after all they
32:54
used to live by different political rules, whereas
32:56
now everything is being crushed and steamrolled
32:58
People are having their land taken away, and people
33:00
are having their homes taken away; all of it is being seized
33:04
by officials under the pretense of
33:05
state needs, when in fact
33:07
it is being taken for their own enrichment. Enormous sums are
33:09
flowing into Crimea, and they are
33:10
being stolen right before the eyes of all the peninsula’s residents
33:13
and just today I literally read
33:17
a long article saying that once again
33:19
record amounts of money are being allocated to Crimea in order
33:20
to pacify the residents, but I think
33:24
that won’t really work, because
33:26
enormous sums of money will lead to
33:27
enormous corruption, and the residents are not at all
33:30
going to submit—and rightly so
33:31
There will be some very interesting political
33:34
processes. Among the finalists of the contest
33:37
run by Navalny, Shneki had his video channel deleted
33:39
What is his standing in the contest? Please give
33:41
a few words of sympathy. Maxim Sadovnikov
33:42
Well, if Shneki’s video channel was deleted, then
33:45
of course he has all my sympathy. I don’t
33:48
quite understand how you can delete a video channel
33:50
Was it the password, or was it taken from him under
33:51
torture? Ah, I’m being told that
33:55
the person’s phone was stolen, apparently
33:56
they used the passwords and deleted the channel. Well
33:58
he really has my sympathy. Scoundrels did that
34:01
Maybe, maybe there is
34:03
some kind of backup option, I don’t know. Anyway
34:07
in short, be careful with your passwords. My
34:09
sympathies. An unexpected topic I wanted
34:16
to say a few words about—excuse me—is
34:18
the centenary of the revolution. What is happening infuriates me
34:23
A revolution took place in
34:28
Russia a hundred years ago—a revolution happened
34:31
These were great and terrible events
34:34
that affected every family in our
34:38
country, that determined the course
34:42
of our civilization’s development
34:43
the formation of our society—they
34:46
determined it and will continue to determine it for
34:48
many, many years. Good Lord, in our country every
34:50
street—every other street, practically—is
34:53
named after some
34:55
heroes of the revolution and participants in the revolution, and
34:58
what is happening now? Absolutely no
35:02
official events. The authorities
35:04
pretend that, well, something happened back then
35:07
some kind of revolution, Kalinin, Lenin, whatever
35:09
what it was, how, why, why every
35:13
square is named the way it is—we know nothing about
35:15
it and don’t want to discuss it because
35:18
it is obvious why: the very reminder that
35:22
there was a revolution, that autocracy was overthrown,
35:24
is unpleasant to them, so
35:27
it has to be hushed up. And today I went to
35:31
various official websites and tried
35:35
to find an official event for November 7
35:37
and found only, on Red Square,
35:39
a march dedicated to the anniversary of the parade
35:43
of 1941—that is, not even the anniversary
35:46
of the revolution. I’m not saying
35:48
that we must necessarily celebrate
35:51
the October Revolution. As I already said
35:54
these were great but also terrible events
35:57
There was death
36:00
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, then
36:02
civil war. But one way or another
36:05
the events of that time, and our ancestors
36:08
who took part in them—they
36:10
determined the development of our country and, in
36:12
many ways, of the whole world. Look at what later
36:15
happened with revolutions across
36:17
the rest of the world—it
36:21
was something great and terrible, and for
36:26
some, wonderful. But surely we should
36:29
discuss it now; surely we should
36:31
remember it; surely we should give not to Channel One
36:33
three billion rubles (about $50 million at the time) right now
36:35
but to scholars and historians who would hold
36:38
conferences, publish new
36:40
books, open archives, digitize
36:43
the archives, and tell us a little more about
36:46
this revolution
36:47
because we know nothing
36:49
except these Soviet films and
36:52
Soviet historiography. Right now, for us
36:53
only Mikhail Zygar is engaged in mass
36:56
public education on the subject of the revolution
36:58
The state does not do this. Why? Because it does not
37:00
want to. This government hates our
37:04
people—not just the people, even the people’s memory
37:07
it hates that too
37:08
It truly hates our history—real ‘Ivans who do not
37:10
remember their kin’ (a Russian expression for people cut off from their roots)
37:11
They have selected certain
37:14
historical events that they constantly
37:16
drone on about, as if everything else
37:18
never even happened. Honestly, looking at this
37:22
I understand how Putin, like all the rest, does not
37:24
in fact love Russia—he hates it
37:26
Our people—they simply think that this is
37:31
in the hands of some authorities, some kind of—I don't even know—
37:34
crooks, clowns, who somehow
37:36
ended up in power, and they think they can just snap their fingers and that's it,
37:39
and no one will
37:41
discuss or remember the revolution that
37:44
happened a hundred years ago and, beyond that,
37:46
affected the entire world. Well, the Great
37:49
French Revolution was also, frankly speaking,
37:51
an ambiguous event in the life
37:53
of the French people, but they don't just let it fade away.
37:56
They study it. The Civil War in
37:59
the United States still divides society—the South and
38:02
the North.
38:04
It is a subject of constant discussion,
38:06
a subject of constant dialogue, a subject of
38:09
everything—films, books, you name it.
38:13
Why don't we discuss this here?
38:14
Why isn't this happening? I am simply outraged and
38:18
offended. As a citizen of Russia, I believe
38:20
that this is simply a crime against
38:22
historical memory. In a normal country,
38:26
a great deal of money would be allocated to historians,
38:29
we would fund special
38:31
history departments and organizations
38:33
that would deal with this, as I already said.
38:36
We would open
38:37
the archives, digitize the archives, we would make
38:40
it interesting and accessible to a large
38:43
number of people, and all year long this should have
38:45
been discussed.
38:46
We should honor the memory of the victims of repression,
38:50
talk about what happened, remember
38:53
the heroes, remember the executioners,
38:55
argue about who were heroes and who were executioners, and
38:58
none of this happened simply because
39:01
Putin does not want it and is afraid of it.
39:03
This is yet another example that this government is simply
39:06
impossible to tolerate. It is, in essence,
39:10
anti-Russian, Russophobic—simply
39:12
essentially a government of vile traitors.
39:15
Sorry, perhaps
39:16
for such an emotional assessment, but
39:20
to be honest, this really
39:22
struck a nerve with me, what happened. So, Alexei,
39:27
what is your source of income?
39:29
You're asking me, Egor? Egor, I even made
39:31
a special video about my sources
39:33
of income. I registered as a sole proprietor.
39:35
I work as a lawyer, and to this day I
39:37
still work as a lawyer. That is my
39:39
only source of income. If you,
39:41
Egor—God forbid—something
39:43
happens to you and the Russian authorities
39:45
unlawfully convict you, and you want
39:47
to appeal to the European Court of Human
39:48
Rights, then for a certain fee Alexei
39:52
Navalny will prepare an excellent application for you
39:54
to the European Court of Human Rights,
39:56
because I am probably one
39:58
of the lawyers in our country who has dealt
40:00
with that court more than anyone else, and I work there
40:03
quite successfully. So the source
40:07
of my income is absolutely transparent
40:09
and clear, unlike that of all sorts of
40:12
wonderful people like
40:14
Vyacheslav Volodin, who said some wonderful
40:18
things. He spoke at the Russian
40:23
National Assembly and once again taught us,
40:25
we foolish little simpletons,
40:27
who still don't understand what is happening,
40:29
who cannot find any life
40:31
bearings, cannot make sense of things, do not
40:33
understand life—and he explained what
40:36
the basic values and foundations
40:39
of our society, our people, our government,
40:43
and parliamentarism are supposed to be. It is
40:45
quite astonishing. If before there was
40:47
the triad
40:48
of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality,
40:50
now he simply has more—he has five
40:52
such
40:53
foundations: family, faith, unity, the motherland,
40:57
and justice. Vyacheslav Volodin—
41:00
Vyacheslav Volodin—justice? Vyacheslav
41:03
Volodin—family? Vyacheslav Volodin—faith? It
41:05
provokes only ha-ha-ha—really,
41:09
you'd have to search hard to find a more vile, insignificant crook than
41:13
Vyacheslav Volodin, and yet he
41:16
is lecturing us, you understand?
41:19
About justice, no less. And in keeping with
41:25
the traditions of our program, I would now
41:26
play you a 35-second video clip,
41:28
showing the things he says. In fact, I even
41:31
asked for a special video montage to be made,
41:33
because Vyacheslav Volodin's words about
41:37
these wonderful things, of course, need to be
41:39
viewed with a special visual sequence
41:42
that is also dedicated to Mr. Volodin. We
41:45
have 35 seconds—please watch.
41:48
You must learn to value and protect
41:51
the existing way of life, to understand
41:54
how, within this way of life, our
41:57
basic values are expressed: family, faith,
42:01
unity,
42:02
the motherland, and of course justice.
42:06
Any shortcoming that can introduce
42:09
division into society, create fertile ground for
42:11
the activity of revolutionary marginals, and
42:14
ultimately destroy what seem to be
42:17
the unshakable foundations of the state—on
42:20
these very principles we must build
42:23
the legislative process. You see,
42:27
this little thief, who does not even bother
42:30
to hide it and owns real estate
42:32
worth hundreds of millions of rubles,
42:34
absolutely luxurious real estate—
42:36
please find me
42:38
a speaker of parliament in a developed, wealthy
42:41
country who has such
42:42
real estate. You won't find one, I assure you.
42:45
You won't. Look in Germany,
42:47
or the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States—you
42:51
will not find real estate like that owned by any
42:53
of them.
42:54
And here sits this face,
42:57
telling us that we must not
43:00
bring division into society, and that is simply
43:03
It’s disgusting, and it’s clear why they’re so afraid of us.
43:06
They’re so afraid because in any,
43:11
in any debate, in any discussion with these
43:15
people, it’s actually very easy
43:16
to argue with them. Just imagine the same
43:20
Tambov or Kemerovo, and there’s a debate, and there are
43:23
ordinary people, and Volodin is trying to tell them
43:26
something. We want to tell them something
43:28
about this government, and he’ll start going on, excuse me,
43:31
about all these things like
43:32
justice. We’ll simply show one basic
43:34
fact: Mr. Volodin’s real estate. I
43:37
still insist that there is no
43:39
explanation for where he got all that real estate.
43:41
All those stories about his business in the 1990s
43:43
are complete nonsense. There couldn’t have been
43:46
any kind of business
43:47
in the 1990s that would still
43:50
allow him to receive income in the hundreds
43:52
of millions of rubles (millions of U.S. dollars in equivalent terms). In fact, we understand perfectly well
43:54
that this is corruption, and one hundred
43:57
percent of people will be convinced by us and
44:00
will vote for us. That’s why they’re
44:02
so afraid. That’s why there will be no fight against
44:05
corruption in Russia under this government.
44:07
And today there was yet another great
44:09
confirmation of that, because
44:13
the governor, the head of the administration
44:15
of Dagestan, has become Mr. Vasilyev,
44:18
a United Russia member and former police general, and
44:21
he headed the committee for combating
44:22
corruption.
44:23
And now, according to the State Duma hierarchy,
44:25
since he left, the committee ended up
44:28
in the hands of Volodin, and
44:30
now it is precisely Vyacheslav Volodin, one of the
44:33
biggest corrupt figures, one of the most brazenly
44:36
corrupt and immoral types,
44:39
who is officially the chief fighter against
44:43
corruption inside the State Duma.
44:44
Well, what is there even to say? And that’s why
44:48
people will always be on our side. They may
44:51
agree with us on some things and disagree on others,
44:53
but no one is prepared to tolerate
44:55
this kind of arrogance, of course.
44:59
Let’s see what you’re writing to me. When is the
45:01
next rally, Alexei? Well, we are preparing
45:03
the next rallies. That is,
45:04
you can announce an unauthorized rally
45:06
for tomorrow if you want, but it still has to be
45:09
prepared. First of all. Second, I
45:12
am ready for that kind of development, but
45:14
they’ll lock me up for 20 days again, and once more
45:16
my election campaign will be
45:18
carried out without me. What do you think of
45:21
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russia’s first president after the Soviet Union)? Alexei Shorokhov asks me:
45:23
what positive
45:25
qualities would you point out in him? I
45:28
used to be a fan of Boris Nikolayevich
45:29
Yeltsin, but now I do not want to point out
45:32
any positive qualities in him,
45:34
because the main thing Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin left in history
45:36
was Vladimir
45:38
Vladimirovich Putin. He traded away people’s hopes
45:42
and aspirations, traded away all our
45:46
country’s prospects for the safety,
45:49
money, and comfort of his crooked family.
45:53
That’s what Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin did — he
45:55
sold all of us out. So as for positive
45:58
traits,
45:58
yes, there’s his museum,
46:01
a wonderful one in Yekaterinburg, but all of that
46:05
is canceled out for me, because now,
46:08
from here in 2017, I want to ask him:
46:12
Boris Nikolayevich, why did you do all this
46:14
for the sake of 200 million dollars,
46:16
which your daughter somehow managed to make somewhere,
46:19
while you handed all of us over to this mafia?
46:23
That’s why I have no warm feelings whatsoever
46:25
toward Boris Nikolayevich. I know many people won’t
46:27
like
46:28
this position of mine, but I’m not going to
46:30
hide it. Anton Kalyuzhny writes:
46:34
“I’m a streamer, and I’ll vote
46:36
for the streamer president.” It’s his birthday today.
46:40
Happy birthday, Anton.
46:42
Well, I can’t really say I’m a streamer — I won’t
46:44
claim those laurels for myself exactly, though at least I
46:45
have done it a couple of times. Will there be a rally this
46:51
Friday? Well, on Friday evening I’m flying to
46:53
Irkutsk, and on Saturday I’ll have a rally in
46:55
Irkutsk.
46:58
Andrei Shpagin writes: justice is
47:01
double — one kind for slaves, another for
47:04
masters. The well-known formula: everything for friends,
47:07
the law for enemies. In Russia it has simply
47:09
gone even further: for friends,
47:12
everything; for enemies, not even the law — because when the law
47:15
isn’t harsh enough for enemies, they also get
47:17
lawlessness. People live in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug too,
47:21
someone writes — you don’t read me here.
47:24
Agnes Okvint: people live and work
47:28
in the conditions of the Far North; we are also
47:30
voters, and not a word about Western Siberia.
47:31
You can’t imagine how many
47:34
applications we’ve submitted for Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk,
47:37
and the others — they don’t issue any
47:41
permits at all. But listen, you
47:42
understand that in December, in Western
47:47
Siberia, holding an outdoor rally — well, I’ll hold
47:49
it,
47:50
and I don’t even doubt that many people
47:51
will come. But to also hold
47:54
an unauthorized rally in that kind of
47:56
freezing weather — that’s quite a difficult thing.
47:58
So we are doing everything we can
48:01
to come to all these cities.
48:03
Guys, understand this once again: it’s not as if
48:06
I have 80 cities in front of me to choose from and
48:08
I go to whichever cities I happen to like.
48:10
It’s not like I think, “Oh, it’ll be warmer in Krasnodar,
48:12
so let’s head there, maybe stop by Sochi
48:15
and have some kebab.” That’s not how it works.
48:18
We send applications to 80 cities,
48:22
or even to 200 cities — we send them
48:24
every week. If there is even one
48:26
permit, then we go there and then
48:29
look for some venue somewhere nearby.
48:31
so that over the weekend we can at least get around to a few places
48:33
two or three cities, or even travel to completely
48:36
different parts of the country, because one
48:38
city is in the European part, another is in
48:40
Siberia, and we do that too, but once again
48:43
there goes our wonderful
48:45
statistics. So I want to go everywhere.
48:49
That works; that's a candidate's job. I would
48:52
not even be sitting here on weekdays
48:54
I'd be traveling around the regions, but they won't give us either
48:57
a venue, and they won't approve
49:00
a rally. There's literally an entire
49:01
department in the Presidential Administration
49:03
that, together with the police, is զբաղվում only
49:05
with making sure we aren't allowed to do anything
49:08
to hold any events. So what are you going to do—
49:17
not with laws, but with stickers on the end wall, apparently?
49:19
There seems to be no ban on filming. No need to ask, Andrei.
49:20
There cannot be a ban on
49:23
filming in public places. Under this absurdity,
49:25
everything you're talking about should be отменено.
49:28
Hi, Alexei, yes, please, Alexei.
49:30
Semyonov asks: will there be rallies in cities with
49:31
populations of 10,000 and up? And how many
49:33
people have you already verified? How many
49:35
have been verified—I can't say exactly.
49:36
Volkov is handling that, a very important
49:38
very important process. Today, for all of you who came,
49:40
a video was recorded about how important verification is.
49:41
They'll send this video to all of you—go and complete
49:44
verification. As for rallies in cities with
49:47
populations of 100,000 and up, we will
49:49
hold them.
49:49
That wasn't in the original plan
49:52
because we still haven't held them in all the million-plus cities
49:54
yet, but the million-plus cities have long since been blocked for us,
49:56
then
49:58
they blocked the 500,000-population cities, and then the 300,000 ones,
50:00
and now, basically, from the
50:03
100,000-plus cities, I'm ready to go if it's possible
50:05
to hold something there. So
50:07
we'll do it. The eyes are afraid, but the hands keep working.
50:09
We'll go everywhere, everywhere. Why have the words
50:15
"democracy"
50:17
"human rights," and "freedom of the media" disappeared from your rhetoric? Will you
50:20
build a democratic state?
50:21
Roman Berezovsky asks me.
50:23
Well, it seems to me that, first of all, nothing has
50:26
disappeared. I constantly talk about human
50:28
rights, media freedom—for example, the absence of
50:30
censorship. That's an absolutely key thing in
50:32
the fight against corruption. You know, that's my
50:34
main issue.
50:35
And that's why I talk about it constantly, but
50:37
I don't see the need to focus too heavily
50:39
on that right now. It seems to me that
50:40
my political activity over the
50:42
past many years, which you've
50:44
been following, has already made it clear to everyone that I'm for
50:47
human rights, for democracy, and against
50:49
censorship.
50:49
I want to talk about other things too. I don't want
50:51
to be a traditional liberal candidate.
50:53
What matters to me is our
50:55
social and economic agenda. I
50:56
talk about the minimum wage,
50:57
I talked about
50:59
[music]
51:00
people's incomes. I talk about the monstrous
51:03
budget that Russia has now. By the way,
51:05
that's a separately outrageous issue.
51:06
Look at our media—they endlessly write about what
51:09
presidential candidates said,
51:11
Sobchak mentioned Kadyrov, Kadyrov responded to
51:14
Sobchak,
51:15
but can someone please discuss Russia's budget
51:17
that has just been passed in its first reading?
51:19
Discuss that—47 percent of it, once again,
51:21
goes to officials and to military
51:24
and police spending. That's what we're discussing.
51:26
Here in this studio sits Vladimir Milov, and on
51:29
the program *Where's the Money?* he talks about this constantly.
51:31
I talk about it at rallies. We
51:33
see that even the free press just
51:35
ignores topics like this, even though these are
51:36
absolutely key issues for the country's
51:39
development—what Russia's budget actually looks like.
51:42
In essence, this ugly
51:43
police state is a projection
51:46
of the money that's in the budget. That's what we
51:49
want to discuss, and that's what I do discuss. They just
51:51
need to know it and come out. Igor—
51:52
Guys, I'm for human rights. We all
51:54
understand that. It's clear I'm for human rights, so what's the point
51:56
of repeating it a million times? About
51:58
biomaterials.
51:59
I'm being asked how I feel about
52:02
what Putin said about biomaterials.
52:04
A lot has already been written about it, and rightly so.
52:07
People say that, well, the man clearly doesn't
52:10
have everything quite right in his head.
52:12
But I think it's even more interesting to look
52:13
not just at his answer—those strange
52:16
things about foreigners allegedly planning
52:20
some kind of biological war against Russia—
52:21
but at the question he was answering. Let's
52:24
play it—we have 54 seconds, and it includes both the
52:26
question and the answer, and it's astonishing.
52:29
After all, 50,000 views
52:32
from September 10—almost a million—were initiated
52:35
from IP addresses abroad.
52:38
The question is: why are so many
52:41
interested parties watching our elections and
52:44
making video recordings, in effect, of a person's
52:47
image, and how will it then
52:48
be used? As for the fact that images
52:52
of our citizens, voters, are being collected
52:54
by someone, somehow, and
52:55
used—but images, all right, fine. You
52:58
do know that biological material
53:00
is being collected all over the country,
53:03
from different ethnic groups and from people
53:06
living in different geographic
53:09
parts of the Russian Federation. So that's
53:12
the question: why are they doing this?
53:14
They are doing it deliberately and professionally.
53:18
We
53:20
are apparently an object of very great interest.
53:25
wrapped it up at the end
53:27
a person who gave 70 answers to questions, so
53:29
come on, man, you were also asked about
53:31
the elections — you were asked about the elections, and you
53:34
start answering about biological materials
53:36
that’s the most astonishing thing — Putin
53:40
has genuinely lost his mind, according to his own
53:42
formula that after two terms a person goes
53:44
crazy. By now, to any question, absolutely any
53:47
question, he answers only about what interests
53:49
him. He’s got it stuck in his head that
53:52
there are supposedly some foreign plots
53:55
that, in every field, generally speaking,
53:59
and in particular, they want to go around collecting
54:02
some kind of biological materials here
54:03
in order to do something with them, and he
54:05
just feels compelled to say it, and
54:07
like someone always trying to squeeze in his two cents (literally, “5 kopeks”),
54:10
he keeps forcing it into the conversation
54:13
no matter what people are talking about. He’s simply
54:16
obsessed. First of all, he is genuinely obsessed
54:18
with the idea of some kind of enemies. Second, he
54:20
understands the main thing about domestic
54:24
politics: without this, without
54:27
these lies, without this filth, his
54:29
domestic policy simply doesn’t work. What
54:31
is he supposed to say — that for the fifth year in a row
54:33
real household incomes have been falling, and that
54:35
there are still no roads, that in Russia there isn’t
54:37
a single kilometer
54:39
of proper high-speed railway
54:41
because what runs between Moscow and St. Petersburg
54:42
is not a high-speed railway, and in 18
54:47
years they haven’t built anything. But somehow they don’t want to talk
54:49
about that, so
54:51
it’s always something like,
54:52
“Why are salaries so low?” Well,
54:55
“the Americans are of course plotting against us,”
54:57
scheming against us.
54:58
“And why are the roads so bad?” Well,
55:01
“our European partners are pushing
55:03
NATO expansion.” That’s what everything is
55:06
built on. He’s simply, on the one hand,
55:08
a senile crank, and on the other hand
55:10
a cunning senile crank, with these two
55:13
mechanisms working somewhere in his head, and
55:15
he keeps inserting them everywhere. It’s
55:19
just a nasty, characteristic trait.
55:21
By the way, speaking of elections, he said
55:25
all that about biological materials in response to
55:28
a question about elections. And right now
55:29
a very interesting thing is happening, actually.
55:31
You know that a bill has been introduced
55:36
under which election observers
55:38
will now be sent to polling stations
55:40
by the Civic Chamber as well,
55:43
which means we are now seeing not just the falsification
55:46
of the electoral process, but the falsification
55:48
of election monitoring itself. Because what are
55:50
the Civic Chambers in Russia — both
55:52
federal and regional? With very rare
55:55
exceptions, they are basically gatherings
55:58
of crooks — I’m not exaggerating, and I’m not
56:01
afraid to use that word — just a pack of swindlers,
56:03
some kind of
56:06
groveling nobodies appointed
56:09
by the administration — meaning the regional administration
56:11
or
56:14
the Presidential Administration in the case of the federal
56:16
Civic Chamber — people who
56:18
justify any kind of filth. And now,
56:22
since there is public demand for monitoring,
56:24
since people believe that elections
56:25
are rigged — “give us more
56:27
observers, let’s make the process more
56:29
transparent” — the Kremlin responds
56:31
to this rather cunningly. It says: yes,
56:34
we’ll do that, we’ll start sending observers on behalf
56:37
of the Civic Chamber.
56:39
And these will be exactly the kind of observers
56:41
who come in, sit there
56:42
with their little eyes shut, their
56:44
little ears shut, and won’t observe anything, won’t notice any
56:48
falsifications, won’t see any ballot stuffing,
56:49
and then at the end they’ll declare that the elections
56:52
were conducted very honestly, that we
56:57
noticed no violations, there were no complaints — except, of course,
56:59
for those connected with certain
57:03
so-called candidates from the
57:06
so-called non-systemic opposition
57:08
who were barred from the elections because
57:10
their candidate is basically a criminal.”
57:13
That’s what they want to do for 2018.
57:14
Please pay close attention to this
57:16
entire procedure
57:18
that is unfolding right now. How do you
57:22
feel about the fact that Nabiullina
57:24
has been recognized as one of the most influential
57:25
women in the world? asks not Makar
57:27
but Margulis. Well, isn’t she an influential
57:29
woman in the world? A trillion here, a trillion there.
57:31
In what other country are such absolutely
57:34
strange, opaque decisions
57:37
made? So yes, indeed,
57:38
trillions of rubles are allocated for this and
57:41
stolen completely openly.
57:43
In what other country do such
57:45
fantastic, astonishing bank bailouts
57:47
take place, when someone is given money
57:50
— again, trillions for bank rescues —
57:52
and then the banks doing the rescuing
57:55
end up needing rescue themselves because
57:56
it turns out they are on the verge of
57:58
going bankrupt? Of course, a woman who
58:00
controls that kind of money, who
58:03
is involved in that kind of corruption,
58:06
is one of the most influential
58:09
women in the world — and of course that is simply true.
58:11
And Putin too is one of the
58:14
most influential, perhaps the most
58:16
influential person in the world,
58:17
not because he’s especially impressive, but because
58:19
he holds absolute power in a
58:21
giant country.
58:22
In other countries — richer, more
58:24
powerful countries — there are presidents and
58:26
national leaders, but they do not have
58:29
the ability to make so many unilateral decisions.
58:31
to make decisions, while Putin has
58:32
here he is effectively a tsar, and therefore
58:35
a tsar is, by definition, more influential
58:38
than any president. So, Alexei, what about
58:43
decommunization?
58:45
Rashim John asks me: all right,
58:48
decommunization—I just don’t really understand
58:49
what decommunization means in practice.
58:51
Renaming streets? Holding another referendum?
58:53
Let’s do it locally, let’s rename
58:55
streets. I mean, it seems to me that we’re a little
58:57
too fixated on this word, decommunization, but
58:59
it’s not very clear, not very well understood what
59:01
it actually means. I can see that our time
59:03
is coming to an end, but I can’t help saying
59:05
a couple of words about the situation with those same
59:08
Putin comments on this recent
59:10
event where he talked about bio-
59:13
these
59:14
hunters for miracle products, for
59:19
the biomaterials of Russian citizens.
59:20
There he also commented on the situation
59:23
with the attack on the journalist from Moscow,
59:25
Tatyana Felgenhauer. We have
59:27
23 seconds—let’s take a look.
59:30
Echo of Moscow, but here again: “a mentally ill
59:33
person came in; this has nothing to do with freedom of speech.”
59:37
Let’s play it and then finish.
59:39
He came from Israel and attacked this
59:42
journalist.
59:43
Echo of Moscow operates on state
59:46
money. There’s nothing like that in any country
59:47
in the world. Can you imagine
59:50
a radio station like that anywhere? Or
59:52
it’s impossible. The man lies in every
59:56
single line.
59:56
First of all, when he wants to say that
1:00:00
Gazprom is a private company,
1:00:02
Gazprom suddenly becomes a private company.
1:00:05
Here, you see, Gazprom’s
1:00:06
Gazprom-Media, strictly speaking, Echo of Moscow
1:00:09
doesn’t even belong directly to Gazprom there—it’s
1:00:12
already the state. It’s all such a muddle.
1:00:17
But the most brazen, disgusting lie is the one
1:00:19
suggesting that somehow because he came from
1:00:21
Israel, that has anything at all to do with it. It
1:00:22
has absolutely no connection—there is not the slightest
1:00:25
link between these
1:00:28
hysterics whipped up by
1:00:30
Solovyov and all the others about supposedly
1:00:32
independent journalists, about them,
1:00:34
and Echo of Moscow,
1:00:35
and specifically Felgenhauer,
1:00:37
who was literally being called an enemy of the people
1:00:40
and people were saying, “So when will someone finally
1:00:43
shut her up?”
1:00:44
And then when some lunatic ran in and started
1:00:47
slashing her throat with a knife, they say: well, a psycho
1:00:49
ran in, it’s completely unrelated. They lie
1:00:53
in every word. That’s why it’s impossible
1:00:56
to tolerate this government—so hypocritical,
1:00:59
so vile—because their
1:01:01
lies turn into our poverty and into
1:01:05
problems for our security, and this
1:01:08
gets worse every day. In other words,
1:01:11
if we do not remove these people from power,
1:01:13
if we do not somehow push these people aside,
1:01:15
do not make them reckon with us, then
1:01:19
every day things will get worse and worse. As
1:01:21
the program hosted here by
1:01:22
Sergei says: it will get worse. But we will fight
1:01:25
to make it better, and I am confident in
1:01:29
the success of our effort. So, folks,
1:01:32
I’ll be holding a rally in Irkutsk.
1:01:34
Show the slide again. I’ll have
1:01:37
a meeting with residents in Kemerovo—please come
1:01:39
to these meetings. I’ll be very
1:01:41
glad to see everyone. This is Kemerovo—we
1:01:44
see here the backup venue.
1:01:46
And in Irkutsk, it’s the shopping center,
1:01:48
the furniture shopping center called
1:01:50
Moscow.
1:01:51
It will be on the grounds of the furniture center
1:01:53
Moscow; in Kemerovo, at Arts Square, or
1:01:57
the backup venue will be at Hyde Park. I
1:01:59
am waiting for you at our meetings—please come.
1:02:02
Please do. Well then, I’ll see you
1:02:04
next Thursday. Happy
1:02:06
[music]