We’re smashing United Russia members with a sledgehammer, Putin is taking children away, and police officers are rapists

[music]

and

Hello everyone, good evening. It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow,

which means we're live on air

with the program *Russia of the Future*, and I am

Alexei Navalny, or the man who

tank the ratings of the Armenia restaurant — that's

what Prigozhin-linked media called me. I

missed this terribly. I wasn't on live broadcasts for a whole month,

and I really missed these

streams. It's basically become a kind of

conditioned reflex: Thursday at 8:00 p.m., I feel like

talking nonstop for an hour. But I

talked with my cellmates, we

talked and talked, and other

wonderful people filled in for me

— many thanks to them. I'm back, back

to a slightly different atmosphere. We actually have

quite a wild situation going on,

as you know. We had searches here,

criminal cases were opened — completely

absurd ones — all our

accounts have been frozen, and they took all, all of our

equipment.

All the computers — everything they could, everything they

could steal, they stole. Remember, on my

videos on the main channel there's always

that little black notebook lying there? They stole it, they stole

the black notebook. They even swiped the coffee grinder from our

kitchen.

So my colleagues and I — well, I basically

volunteered myself to dust off

the old routine and use this broadcast to support

the team by raising a bit of money.

Today I'm going to collect donations for the Anti-Corruption Foundation

(FBK). Check the description — there's a link there

to Streamlabs, and you can make a donation, and it

will show up either down below in the scrolling

ticker — I can already see some

coming in, though the fundraiser hasn't really started yet.

It'll start in a second — follow that link,

and either in the corner, right here in this corner,

your name will appear, or down below. I also have

prizes for

the top three donations. There's this cool

T-shirt from our Navalny

OMON collection — that's what it's called — and there's also this cool

hoodie for the second-largest donation. And

I also parted with, I might add, something close to my heart: my

younger brother Oleg is going to be furious with me,

because today at our editorial meeting

they gave me the first sample of a T-shirt

from his signature clothing collection,

which we'll be selling through our

store. You see, it's made

in a prison style — prison aesthetics. Here it says

"special regime, escape risk," like the kind of thing they usually write

on various prison

uniforms.

Oleg designed this collection himself.

It turned out really great. We'll start

selling it soon, and you can get this

wonderful

artifact if you send the largest

donation. Everything will go to the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

which is somehow managing right now

to improvise and maneuver in order

to survive. I mean, of course nothing will happen to us,

because the Anti-Corruption Foundation

and our whole network of headquarters

isn't computers, or even video cameras,

or those cool red cups.

It's the people who work there. So as long as

there are people, nothing will happen to us. But

still, we do need

computers,

video cameras, and everything else, so

please donate. Thank you very much.

The main question, of course, that I

keep getting — everyone is writing and asking, and Milov

was just talking about it on air

during the 4 o'clock broadcast, I talked about it on the radio,

everyone is talking about it — but it still

requires constant reflection,

constant discussion: what the hell

is going on? Because this isn't something that

has passed — it's happening constantly. For example,

today Ilya Yashin was sent to jail for the fifth time,

for 10 days. While he was

locked up, we discussed whether he'd beat my record,

but it turned out he probably won't, if

they actually let him out.

That means he'll do 47 days or so, while

my maximum was 50 days in a row. But

he's getting it in smaller portions, which is

much, much more exhausting. Why

is all this happening? Why, over some

regional elections that

nobody used to pay attention to, has such

total chaos broken out? To be honest, we ourselves thought that

the main problem, the main

political flashpoint, would be the elections

in St. Petersburg, where already

at the end of — sorry — spring,

at the beginning of summer, they had already started some

monstrous mess with removing candidates. But

Moscow,

it seemed, wouldn't be nearly as

problematic. And yet all of this has turned into

a genuinely full-scale

political crisis. Why? And

actually, an hour before

the broadcast today, I even felt a kind of

emptiness inside, because better than I could,

much better than I could, said our now

favorite from our main YouTube channel,

Andrei Metelsky, the leader of Moscow's United

Russia. Of course, Metelsky isn't our

main opponent — that's Sobyanin and Putin — but

Metelsky is directly, technically,

the head of United Russia in Moscow. He's

leading them into these elections now, and for us he's

the person who's running,

so he's of course the main guy in that sense. He

said it a hundred times better than I ever could,

so I dedicated the caption: "Hi, Andrei."

I'm just nervously smoking on the sidelines

compared with how well he explained everything.

Andrei Metelsky, about whom we released

another investigation today, based on the results of which

we are demanding that

Metelsky resign, because

he absolutely must go, and you should

remove him from office right now.

Deputies are prohibited from engaging in

business, and even just a signed piece of paper

has been enough in general for them to be removed from office.

About Metelsky, please watch

the big 17-minute piece, almost like a radio play,

that we released, which consists simply of

testimony given in the court case that

Metelsky himself filed, in court, where

they basically prove that he

is engaged in business. That means he should

be thrown out. First, let’s listen to one minute,

a short excerpt from our investigation, because

this investigation triggered

an absolutely fantastic, dazzling,

legendary performance

by Andrei Metelsky on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station).

It was an hour ago, and I’ll

show it to you later. But first, let’s look at what exactly

Andrei Metelsky was reacting to, and why

he is a businessman and should resign.

Metelsky was introduced to you as the new

head, and that he is

the owner of the Alpin company.

A lot of “my person, my this, all of that” —

all “mine,” and we spent an hour there, not at a meeting,

but on introducing him, you see,

as the owner who was acquiring it. And then there was

another meeting — absolutely definitely this was already

after the acquisition. I remember we went to

Yamaha, even though I was the one arranging

the meeting with the management and

others, because there were issues there

with debts owed to Yamaha, something in the range of

around 100 million rubles, if I remember correctly.

At first, Ivanovsky laid out the debt sheet

to Yamaha, saying he would like to meet with him

and sort this issue out somehow,

somehow resolve this issue. So there he was,

“sorting out little issues.”

This was described in court, and now it is

absolutely grounds for

throwing him out of the Moscow City Duma, which is what we

are demanding. And in response to this

investigation, Andrei Metelsky gave

an interview in which he explained everything. But I

had thought, I assumed, that I would tell you about

the investigation and then methodically

explain why it is so important

that Smart Voting is connected with

politics, and what United Russia is afraid of. But

Metelsky came in — bam — and explained everything himself.

One minute.

Twenty-one seconds. The leader of United Russia in the city of

Moscow, Andrei Metelsky — billionaire and

deputy — explains himself.

What is happening, and why the authorities are so

simply hysterically

banging their heads against the wall — and beating everyone else too.

Here are those remarkable 1 minute and 21 seconds.

In conclusion, I want to say: yes, these fake

Navalny investigations only supposedly

have some effect, but in essence this is illegal activity.

Once again, he is trying

to insult,

to humiliate somehow, to find things that are not

connected, to twist facts — frankly,

I’m tired of even asking. Honestly, it’s not even

interesting who Navalny is — a loser,

an unsuccessful politician, nothing more

than that.

And his work is connected with only one thing: to implant

in the minds of the people who watch these videos

the idea that they need to start Smart Voting

as quickly as possible on the eighth, so that

United Russia would cease to exist as a political

party. He is deeply mistaken.

Nothing will come of it for him. You know,

as they rightly say,

“the spoons may be found, but the aftertaste remains” (a Russian saying meaning suspicion lingers). The number one task is

to win, not to let United Russia in. More than that,

to push forward this so-called Smart

Voting. But believe me, Muscovites clearly

and plainly understand what this

kind of voting really is, and what is needed there.

It is absolutely necessary to push some

Navalny-linked names so that they get through.

If people voted, then that was their own opinion.

Literally: “to start Smart Voting

as quickly as possible so that there would be no United

Russia as a political party,” so that

United Russia, as he correctly says,

would not be let in. And that is the main reason why

they are in hysterics. A great many people, however,

actually have a completely wrong idea

of how power is structured.

What is Putin’s power, then? What does it

rest on? You may say: the siloviki (security and law-enforcement apparatus),

the National Guard runs in with batons and beats people,

and that baton coming down on someone is what

the Putin regime rests on. Someone else will say:

Vladimir Solovyov — he lies nonstop

on television, and the Putin regime rests on Vladimir Solovyov.

Or the courts, or something else.

All of that is certainly true. These are a kind of

legs on which the stool called

Putin stands. But there is one main

central leg, and it is called

political power. He has a ruling

party. It is absolutely not just some

instrument that, you know, he could

simply and easily replace with another party.

That is not how it works at all. When he needed

opposition activists to be jailed for rallies not for

15 days, but longer, United Russia

passes a federal law, and people are then

jailed for 30 days. If fines need

to be not small but enormous, they pass

a law. If they need to introduce — what law? — the Dima

Yakovlev Law (a Russian law banning U.S. adoptions of Russian children), United Russia passes that

law. If they need something about the party

system, proportional representation,

no problem — they pass it. If they need there to be

Everywhere, single-member districts — the same thing there as well.

The situation changed: they simply go ahead and adopt it.

to allow gubernatorial elections in those

to cancel gubernatorial elections there

control over the federal parliament and

control over the regional parliaments

which is also an absolutely crucial thing, but

just imagine you live in the city of Oryol or

or in Moscow or St. Petersburg, or

in Vladivostok — your local council does matter.

It passes a law saying that Hyde Park

the place for holding rallies is this square

in front of the administration building, and your political

situation in the region

will change instantly, because any people

will come to the building

of the administration for rallies

and just like that, you immediately live in a different

region. One small example of how

important it is to United Russia

to maintain tight control, not just

a majority, but an absolute majority in

every parliament, so that they can

pass the budget and so that they can, without

consulting anyone, without negotiations,

approve the speaker. If there are Zhirinovtsy (LDPR members) and

other political forces there, and, I don't know,

the Communists, the LDPR — even the systemic parties

even the systemic parties, for all their, well,

corruptibility or not — let's put it this way,

their lack of courage — still, these

Communists, when there are many of them and they understand

that without us United Russia cannot

approve the speaker, then they sit there in a completely

different way — all puffed up with self-importance, they

wait for someone to come to them and rush over

and offer them some committees in exchange, to

strike some kind of deal with them. But we

are interested in the system being

more complex, with someone having to

negotiate with someone, and we sit here and think:

now we'll send more

Communists there, or more A Just Russia members,

or someone else — and United Russia will have to

negotiate. We can send more

of those, we can send more of these — we, as

voters, influence the process. But if there

is only United Russia sitting there and it has 90

percent of the votes, then it has no need to

negotiate with anyone about anything, and

that is the foundation of Putin's power: a ruling

party that can make any people

deputies — or not make them deputies.

What does it mean to become a deputy in Russia, in

Moscow, for example? It means becoming

a billionaire. We announced that

we would be putting out an hour every day

of investigations, but what we release

in our investigations is mostly about what? About

the fact that some seemingly pathetic deputy

from the Moscow City Duma, which people say

decides nothing — they are all billionaires. But

the same goes for Metelsky. Let's take another look

for a minute at all his various

Austrian assets and his astonishing

houses, chalets, and everything else.

One minute.

The wealth of just a deputy of the Moscow

City Duma: hotels.

Maximilian, a four-star hotel with its own pool

and spa area. Metelsky paid 5

million euros for it, even though at that time he

officially had nothing to his name at all,

just a deputy's salary. After

buying the first hotel, Maximilian,

Metelsky decided to expand his

holdings with this building — traditional

Tyrolean architecture, a small

hotel, and inside it, its own restaurant.

Hospitable Andrei Metelsky is ready

to offer you the terrace of his restaurant

at the hotel — he bought it too, for three and a

half million euros. We fly over

a mountain river and approach the third

of Metelsky's hotels: Mozart.

Tennis courts, a football field, a swimming pool —

it's fun and great here at any time of

year.

Do you remember how the First World War began?

They killed an Austrian prince in Sarajevo.

The Austrians presented the Serbs with an ultimatum

that was deliberately impossible to fulfill, and they did not

fulfill it.

And that, essentially, is how the war began.

The famous July Ultimatum was

signed in this very building.

The head of United Russia in Moscow,

Andrei Metelsky, bought all of this for 23

million euros. Now let me briefly

remind you about Metelsky. Right now, while

you were watching the video, I had a very

bitter sight in front of me, because on my screen

I could see how much money had already been raised on

this stream: 48,000 rubles (about a few hundred U.S. dollars). Thank you very much

to everyone who donates. We want to raise

ten times more — at least 400,000 rubles. My record

was 450,000. Let me remind you that we

are raising this money for the Anti-Corruption Foundation

(FBK). The top three donations will receive three

prizes.

And on the screen they're showing a video, and there it's three

million euros, another 10 million on top of that for

something else, while the caption says: raised 48,8

77 rubles. But at least we

are raising it honestly. Thank you for every

kopeck. So, United Russia

guards its right to control 90

percent of the seats.

United Russia is the party that effectively hands out

in effect

deputy IDs, deputy

mandates, to people like Metelsky.

And along with them it hands out a kind of billion

rubles, and in general this creates a kind of

mutually beneficial arrangement.

They vote for anything at all, so long as

this power is preserved, because for them power

means billions, and accordingly they

They support Putin. Putin simply

absolutely doesn’t just turn a blind eye

to corruption — he encourages

this corruption, because the deputies, in

exchange, give him whatever laws he wants, and you and I

with our Smart Voting simply ran

right into the center of this structure, pulled out

a huge hammer, and started smashing away at it.

And this, you know, is not without reason.

It’s not just some person banging with a hammer or their head

against a wall in sheer futility — it’s this kind of

reinforced-concrete situation, like a calf butting heads with

an oak tree; you can’t crack a whip handle with the lash (Russian idioms meaning you can’t overcome an immovable force).

And so on and so forth. But that’s not the case. Why?

I want to use the very same Metyelsky

as an example, although this isn’t even

just about Moscow now — this example applies to St. Petersburg

and, in fact, to absolutely all other regions.

Smart Voting will issue recommendations

for more than 30 elections in 22 regions.

So wherever you live,

sign up for Smart Voting.

So, here’s an example of why Metyelsky is afraid.

He won the last election — well, “won”

in the sense that he is considered to have won by a large margin. He

got 53 percent of the vote last time.

His opponent got 14 percent of the vote.

And it seems like — well, that’s that, what’s the point of even trying?

What can Smart Voting even do here?

Are we somehow going to get 40 percent of the vote with Smart Voting?

To take the strongest available

opponent and raise him from

14 to 54 percent — that seems

pretty difficult. But now let’s just

look at all this not in percentages, but in

absolute numbers.

The gap there is only — according to these figures, which they should show us now —

they’re supposed to show a graphic with these

there should be a graphic with these vote totals —

the gap is only 15,000 votes.

It may look like 40 percent versus 30-something percent,

but in absolute terms it’s only 15,000 votes.

What, in Moscow, in a huge district where

hundreds of thousands of people live, we can’t find 15,000

votes? Of course we can — in Moscow,

in St. Petersburg, and anywhere else. We just

need, at this stage, to convince ourselves

to register. This program

is watched by — I repeat, this is not an

exaggeration —

enough people

to defeat United Russia in Moscow. We

need about 550,000 people in Moscow

to take part in Smart Voting.

That means those of you who have already registered, and those

who will register today — and I hope

there are some — if each of you brings in two or three

people, convinces your relatives

and acquaintances — and you can persuade them easily, all

research shows that relatives

very easily persuade other relatives how

they should vote, and relatives and

acquaintances too — so if we accumulate

this relatively small

number of votes — say, 15,000 —

then even someone like Metyelsky

who has millions of dollars,

the full administrative machine, the leaders of United

Russia, who have completely cleared the district for

him — even he can be brought down. We just

need to gather a sufficient number of

people to vote for one person.

This has happened around the world.

What we call Smart

Voting is practiced in many countries.

It’s called tactical voting.

There’s nothing especially new about it.

There are Russian specifics, yes, of course, but

all the same, that’s why they got scared.

They got scared of a simple thing: that in Moscow and

St. Petersburg, and in other large

cities first of all, we can take up

this hammer and hit United Russia with it. This

really can be done. Maybe not

this time — maybe this time not

everything will work out, and

it’s unlikely that nothing at all will come of it.

Not everything will work — after all, this is

the first time, an experimental vote.

But if next time we achieve something,

then next time Smart Voting

will have ten times as many participants.

And since United Russia has no real popularity,

its maximum rating is 32 percent,

and its real rating in major cities is 22

percent. United Russia’s negative rating

is enormous, and with that negative sentiment we will

crush them district by district. That’s what they’re afraid of.

You often hear people say:

“You know, but then we’ll have to elect not

a United Russia candidate, but some fake

Communist who’ll just switch sides anyway.” Still, that

would be a completely different story. I

urge all of you to treat these elections

as a referendum, as a

referendum, and to take part in Smart

Voting.

It is the only way, in this

referendum, to say: no, we do not trust

the United Russia party.

The election in Moscow is not about electing specific

deputies. It is a question

put before us by Sobyanin,

Metyelsky, Putin, and all the rest. They

are asking: “Friends, do you want

the United Russia party to keep

90 percent of the seats in the Moscow City Duma for another five years?”

We must come and say no. But

the only way to vote no

is to take part in Smart Voting.

If you do something else, then you’ll simply

be voting for a random person,

or not voting at all, or

spoiling your ballot. There’s this

rather silly idea: let’s

write something on the ballot and

hand it in, and then

someone on the election commission will read it, and they’ll have...

a shock or something else, and you know, here in Brussels

the electronic machine, we’ll put it in, it

read: “Down with autocracy, and rise up”

this will happen, an electronic uprising in the morning

electronic ballot boxes — that’s all nonsense

to vote against it in this referendum

United Russia can only be opposed

by registering for Smart Voting

and we need a sufficient number of people

but at the same time, not some shocking number — I told you

I said that in Moscow we need 550,000

voters — that’s about seven percent of

seven percent only; for me, in

Moscow in 2013, there voted

30 percent. Now we need seven

percent of those who show up and clearly

vote according to Smart Voting

and of course — well, they’re not fools either

Metelsky said himself: “Navalny’s plan won’t”

work.” What does that mean? That they’ll do something,

that they’ll falsify things, that they will

defend themselves

they will defend themselves in a very

astonishing, even ridiculous

outrageous and comical way. An hour

literally before the broadcast

there was amazing news from St. Petersburg

we have a campaign chief there, Alexander

Shurshi, he’s also running in the election, and he

submitted his photo so that it could be

put up on the information board, because

as everyone knows, when people vote, they

often have no real idea whom to vote for; they

more often come up to that board and

think, “this one looks better, sort of,”

“this one is nicer-looking, this one is younger, that one wears glasses, so he

must be smarter, and this one is somehow…” Well, they don’t

look, look, read the biography

and then basically vote at random

that’s how most people vote

that’s why we need Smart Voting. So

Shurshi submitted his photo — let’s

take a look at this photo of Shurshi

I hope — look, he’s quite a

normal, decent young man

someone you could вполне reasonably vote for

but what photo

appeared on that very information

board? Let’s take a look. They didn’t just

Photoshop his jaw — they basically gave him another person’s

face. Good thing, I don’t know, they didn’t also add a beard

or attach some kind of wig

red or something else. In other words, these

crooks are resisting and cheating

and of course they will cheat and

falsify results, but in Moscow

they’re a bit afraid to falsify things because

after the previous falsifications in Moscow, as

is well known, there were the huge Bolotnaya protests (mass anti-government protests in Moscow)

they will still try to do it

anyway. So, by the way, below

there will be links

sign up to be election observers in Moscow and

St. Petersburg, especially in St. Petersburg right now

there is always much more fraud

sign up as an observer — it’s

interesting work

it will take some of your time, a day

on voting day, and before that some

preparation is needed

but it’s great, useful work, so

definitely sign up. This is what

is happening

we are standing again at the foot of this

power structure, and for a long time it has been

about voting for us, so of course Putin is locking everyone up

up

it’s important to him that no one swing this

hammer — because it’s in the hands of different people, it

would be in the hands of groups of independent candidates, there would be

independent candidates who were not

allowed to run

there would have been chances and so on; I wouldn’t have had

to stand here going on and on about this Smart

Voting

trying to persuade you how to vote for

some people you don’t know. You

would simply go quickly to the election and

take part in normal electoral politics

understanding that you need

to vote here for Sobol, there for

Zhdanov, and here for Gudkov

here for [__]sova, and so on and so forth

it would all be clear. In St. Petersburg, the same

thing — they remove people in batches

completely indiscriminately. In Irkutsk, the same thing

and in many, many regions

the same thing is happening. Nevertheless

if their task, on behalf of United Russia,

is to push these people through, then our task — thank you

Andrei Metelsky, for the clear wording —

is to make sure that task number one is to win and not

let United Russia through. Therefore

register, guys, bring in more people

we need more people, more and more as we get closer to

the day. Of course, we’ll set up a messenger in

Telegram and some other mechanisms, but

when you register on the website, we actually

don’t really need your surname; we

just need your house number and street

so that we know where you live, what

electoral district you’re in, what your polling station is, and

who your candidate is. Give us this

information so that we can tell you

whom to vote for — that’s the main thing

we’re trying to get from you. But we don’t

actually need your first name, last name, or

patronymic; we’re not going to write to you about anything or

tell you anything — we just want to give you

the right recommendation

there are places, of course, where you can

vote even without Smart Voting

everything is clear there. If, for example, you live

in the city of Novosibirsk

congratulations, you’re lucky — you live in

Novosibirsk, and you have a great candidate

Sergei Boyko. There’s a very interesting

situation in Novosibirsk: there is a mayor

who is also supported by the Communists.

Boiko is running against him from United Russia.

According to all current polls, Boiko is now in

second place, so you need to go

and vote for Boiko—and for good reason, actually.

There, Mayor Lokot

of Novosibirsk is simply running away from

Boiko, who keeps challenging him to debates. But

I have an explanation why: because

Lokot supported raising housing and utility tariffs

for Novosibirsk residents, while Boiko organized

rallies and ultimately managed to ensure that

utility rates were not raised.

It’s actually quite simple to challenge

the incumbent mayor to a debate and say: explain,

please, on what grounds did you

demand higher housing and utility tariffs for people,

so that they would pay more? Besides,

the calculations show that all that money was going

to some oligarch. And remember, there was once also

an investigation into this. Let’s

watch 30 seconds of how Boiko is trying to get

Lokot to debate him in Novosibirsk. I

am addressing Anatoly Lokot, the current

mayor of Novosibirsk.

I challenge you to a debate. Tell us

for what achievements the city council granted you

a pension of 200,000 rubles (about $2,200), or will you

hide and dodge debates the way

your United Russia opponent did five years

ago? Oh, I forgot—you yourself are already almost

a United Russia member, supporting in this election

the candidate from United Russia.

They support you, and you are the single

candidate of the two parties of power, while I am

the only independent candidate

nominated by city residents.

I have the signatures of thousands of

Novosibirsk residents who came on their own and

signed, and tens of thousands are ready to come and

vote—and all of them are waiting for answers from

you, answers to questions about your own actions.

So if you live in Novosibirsk,

great—you have a candidate. If you live,

for example, in Ulan-Ude,

you also have a candidate—

Vyacheslav Markhayev is running for mayor

of the city, a member of the Federation Council, the only

high-ranking official who

spoke out in support of the people who were

beaten by the police—despite being, by the way,

a former police officer himself. You have a candidate.

In all other cases, guys—and even

in these cases as well—still register for

Smart Voting. It’s necessary. I see that

Elena Ivanovna is asking: what exactly is

a sweatshirt and merch? Explain it to me, an ignorant

provincial woman, please. Thank you, Elena.

Honestly, I don’t understand myself why

this is called a sweatshirt. It’s a sweater.

All my life it was called a sweater. It’s a sweater. And merch—

well, “branded items” is probably a more appropriate term,

because I don’t understand how you can

call a collection of items

with some kind of brand

logos on them

“merch.” I mean, like branded T-shirts and various

branded things. Right now we’ve raised 96,000

rubles (about $1,050), guys, come on,

dig deep already. Half the broadcast

has gone by, and I’ve collected only one quarter of

the amount of money we need. The top three

donors today will get prizes. By the way,

let me remind you that you can contribute not only online

but offline as well—you can transfer these

donations there too. So, Yozhkin M asks me:

Alexei, since they’ve started again

talking about—since they’ve again started

opening criminal cases over *He Is Not Dimon to You*,

isn’t it time to remember it and boost

the rights—well, repetition is the mother

of learning.

Exactly right. A criminal case has been opened against the director of the

Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov.

A criminal case has been opened against him.

They demanded that he remove the film *He

Is Not Dimon to You* from my account. Zhdanov

—even if Zhdanov, even if he

wanted to—has no way to delete it. And

this is, on the one hand, an idiotic

situation, and on the other hand a very

telling one: they simply need to open

a criminal case against him because

a criminal case means searches,

interrogations—you can be jailed for

nothing. And the fact that, actually, the channel with the film *He

Is Not Dimon to You* does not belong to the Anti-Corruption Foundation

or to Zhdanov—

nobody cares about that. But I support

the idea: let’s simply keep

spreading this film further.

It has 31 million views now, well,

it needs to reach 145 million so that

every citizen of the country

has seen

this film. Let me remind you,

I want to say once again that in Moscow and

St. Petersburg it is very important to serve as election observers, or

please sign up—the link will be in

the description. Alexander writes something very true:

Alexei, ask Muscovites to print out

Smart Voting leaflets and have everyone

put one up in their elevator. A huge number of

people will be reached offline. We’ll try

to do that. To be honest, right now we are

just barely holding on organizationally,

because, as I said, everything was taken from us,

carried off, and looted. And here we still have to

make investigations, produce videos every day,

put out every day a huge

number of broadcasts. Look, you are supporting us

really wonderfully. The Navalny LIVE channel

now has, over the last

28 days, more than 5 million unique viewers. Well,

that’s major television, by the way,

even more than my main channel has.

So thank you very much to everyone.

That’s the main thing here—for the excellent support.

The work they were doing, Ramil, Boris.

They ask: hello, tell us, what is the

catch with voting at digital polling stations?

Is it connected with fraud?

To Melnikov, second point.

There did seem to be some story that

it had been proven that through these digital, through these

electronic ballot boxes, there was fraud, but

for now, all election observers and the community

more or less agree that

it is better when you have electronic

ballot boxes: they are harder to rig.

Absolutely amazing. On the subject of

campaigning, an absolutely astonishing thing

happened. The protesters who came out

to the rallies—wonderful people, if you

came out, thank you very much.

They did not just declare those protests.

They raised pensions in Moscow. Pensions in

Moscow have now been raised by a minimum of 2,000 rubles

and now amount to 19,000 rubles

a month, which of course

drives absolutely everyone

in our country mad, because in

most regions, pensions are around 8,000

or 7,000–10,000 rubles. Only Moscow, with its

own completely fantastical budget,

can pay 19,000 rubles a month. But

why did this happen? Because as a result of

these beatings and the disqualification of

candidates, Sobyanin's rating went down.

United Russia's rating went down. To

fix the situation, what did they do?

They raised pensions for all pensioners. So if

you have elderly acquaintances, pensioners,

or if you are a pensioner yourself, explain to others

that this increase happened because

people came out to protest. So your pension

was raised not by Sobyanin, but by those who

came out to the rallies, those who were beaten and

those who are now sitting in detention.

They are the ones who raised that pension.

They are now organizing rock concerts.

Sobyanin is throwing some kind of rock concerts,

all-day kebab festivals,

shawarma festivals. All these

gifts to Muscovites were made by the protesting people,

because all of this happened because

Moscow City Hall is trying in this way

to frantically raise its rating.

I still wanted to say a couple of words about Yashin.

By the way, just

a few seconds before he was taken

back to the cell,

he even wrote a post in support of Smart Voting

which is very important. Let's

watch 35 seconds of Yashin being

detained.

Four or five times at the exit from the special detention center

So, I am being released from the special detention center

and I walk out, and who is here to meet me?

I am met by my friends from the Second

Operational Regiment.

Report in—come with us.

Please, for calls made on August 3, 2019.

Without question.

Let's go. Please explain again. I

have explained everything to you. I am detaining you.

Got it, understood, exactly, clear. That is how it is.

That is how they meet me at the exit from the

special detention center, and apparently, Pyotr, don't ask

my father is waiting for me.

Then here we are.

It seems like—yes, ten days there, so what?

Ten days there, but in fact it is

really quite an exhausting thing.

I mean, 50 days all at once, or five times

10 days each—five times 10 days is

much worse, because you

regularly have to get dressed, spend nights in

police stations, you are everywhere standing with

that bag. In principle, it is very

psychologically exhausting. But the very idea that

at any given hour you may or may not go home,

that you may just be arrested again—I know from experience

that it is a rather unpleasant thing. So I want

to express clear support, I want to express

my

anger toward Yashin's opponent, that

Valeria Kasamara.

Until quite recently, she enjoyed great

support among the so-called systemic

liberals and the liberal public in general.

I hope that now she will lose that

support. As for Yashin, we were corresponding

directly before he was

sent away for 10 days. I assured him that he would

be released. Everyone was released, I was released,

Milo was released, Jankauskas was released,

Sveta was released—Yashin, you will be released too.

Yashin wrote back to me, quite rightly,

as it later turned out, that he most likely

would not be released, because I would get out and

campaign against Kasamara, who

is running in my district. She would of course

lose if I got out and went

around speaking,

through the courtyards, around my neighborhood, because

after all, we worked in the municipality,

everyone there knows him very well now. They locked him up

specifically so that this

woman would win the election. And our task is to

once again say that Smart Voting is the only

way to get back at them, including for everyone

who is in jail, for the way they treat

all people. That is to take part in Smart

Voting. But for those who

Anatoly Kulagin, Anatoly Kulagin,

asks me: what can you say about the elections in

Bashkortostan?

I will say that they will be anything but

something resembling an election. There too, there will be

Smart Voting—register. But

Bashkortostan, you know, I mean,

there they simply rewrite everything,

absolutely rewrite everything, falsify everything.

The new head of Bashkortostan right now, Radiy

Khabirov, is a kind of double fraudster.

The people in power there have always been that kind of crowd.

Pretty rotten people, and Khabirov is

just completely awful overall. Our

candidate from our штаб (campaign headquarters), Lilia Chanysheva,

was barred from the election, so in any

case it’ll be the same there: Smart

Voting.

But people still need to vote, they need to show up

and vote against United Russia

to make things harder for them. But there,

of course, the decisive role will be played by

fraud, election rigging, so people need

to take part in monitoring.

Hermione Vorony asks:

“Alexei, what nickname do you use among yourselves for Putin?”

Everyone remembers the ‘porter’ one. What do we call

Putin among ourselves? You probably know

we call him Putin. No, there’s no

‘Mikhal Ivanych.’ Though sometimes—remember there was that

article in *The New Times* where Sergei

Kolesnikov, who for some time

was part of Putin’s close circle of friends,

talked about the nicknames they used among themselves.

For example, Gennady Timchenko,

a well-known billionaire

and owner of offshore companies, was

‘Gangrene’; Kozhin, the head of the Presidential

Property Management Department at the time,

under the president,

they called Putin ‘Tuzhurka’ among themselves,

or ‘Mikhal Ivanych.’

But obviously that came from the film,

*The Diamond Arm* (a classic Soviet comedy), remember? There’s the line,

‘I need to consult the boss, Mikhail

Ivanovich. Mikhail Ivanovich is around here somewhere.’ Well,

we usually just call him Putin.

About Yashin, I said this: if you think

that the candidates who weren’t

arrested somehow have it

easy and are living well,

that’s absolutely not the case. Today there was another

attack on Lyubov Sobol,

who—I mean, I’m simply amazed by

her courage. She went on a hunger strike, and

over the past few months—well, it’s

hard to be Lyubov Sobol, because

I’m constantly followed by these

creeps filming me with a camera, but with Sobol

it’s even worse. And they don’t just

follow her—they provoke her too. They follow

her child, they follow her mother, and

today they splashed some kind of filth on her.

And videos have already been posted. Even this

little guy—he follows me too, I recognize him

perfectly well. What’s more, they pulled off this

‘brilliant’ combination: they

photographed him with a little sign saying

‘Lyubov Sobol,’ and now of course the whole

Kremlin talking point is this:

‘Look, it turns out this wasn’t Prigozhin’s

people—it was a Sobol volunteer taking part in

a provocation that Sobol herself

organized.’ Let’s watch—21 seconds. So,

as I understand it, this is intercom camera footage

with the guy who splashed her today.

You understand what vile behavior this is. I mean, you

deal with this every day: you walk out of

your house, heading to work, going to a taxi, and you get

doused with something. A woman, three guys,

some random people all around—you can’t really do anything about it.

Obviously she still can’t do anything to them, and the police

cover for them. And this is a pretty

nasty thing. We’re constantly

filing complaints and reports about

the harassment. Sobol has already been attacked before,

and all of this is really

organized by this police

system. It’s disgusting. Again, they’re doing all this

to stop us

from hitting them where it hurts with our hammer,

striking at United Russia and knocking it out of

the Moscow City Duma and all the other places,

the St. Petersburg municipal councils, and so on.

That’s why Smart Voting matters. I’m being told

that our Smart Voting website was being updated,

and there were lots of messages saying

it wasn’t working while it was updating. Right now

it is working. So please, don’t

put it off. I’ll even accept it if you need

to close my stream

in order to register for voting.

It’s important—register. One of the most

disgusting things happening

right now, and I think it would enrage anyone,

there are many things going on, yes,

but this whole business of taking children away—

it really shows the true face,

the real mug of this regime, all of its

genuine nastiness. When I was in jail,

I saw this one imprisoned, that one detained,

but this statement saying that

they’re now going to take children away from families who

were at a rally with those children—well,

this is Putin, no question about it.

This is a decision from the very top of the Kremlin.

I think it’s entirely likely—most likely this is

Putin’s personal decision, because they

understand just how brazenly

lawless it is, how people will be

simply shocked by the very idea that

if you went to a public gathering

with your child, and it was perfectly peaceful,

a peaceful public

event, nothing happened there, and yet

it turns out your children—well, then

anything can happen: they can

jail you, beat you, kill you—but the very

idea that they might take your children away

is just impossible to imagine. And yet

it is happening. I hope that

all of this ends well, but right now

this is happening to Pyotr and Elena Khomsky,

and I can imagine the state they’re in—

just horror, terror, fury. I want to

express my support, because really this is

an example of how one little bastard,

taking advantage of the fact that other, bigger bastards

want to intimidate everyone.

This thing here made that person's life miserable.

Khomsky, one of our volunteers, somehow...

in a pro-Kremlin film

is being called Navalny's bodyguard there,

but he's just a tall guy who worked

as a volunteer logistics coordinator, including during

the campaign in Kostroma, and during that campaign

in Kostroma.

Well, let's first watch the segment

from Russia-1 for 23 seconds about what this means.

It's basically horrifying how they want to strip people of

their parental rights.

Even

people with strollers aren't doing anything wrong.

The police come over, okay, but they're not— they're not...

taking these children to the police; they're

normal people, loving parents.

These parents are pushing their children in strollers.

And Khomsky was a logistics coordinator in Kostroma,

and in Kostroma he had a conflict with this

disgusting little crook who

was constantly running after me. His job

was that whenever I met with

someone, residents in various villages

around Kostroma, he'd jump out and shout: 'Navalny

is a provocateur, he works for the State Department,'

and so on. Between him and Khomsky, this

crook, there was an argument.

Let's watch it. For 23 seconds he's called a visiting

artist.

Well, you see. And this is

this animal, this so-called Yuri

Zorin. He was shouting at Omsky, who is a volunteer,

who came completely free of charge

and drove around delivering various

campaign materials. He was yelling at him, saying,

'You're some kind of political actor,' and that actor told him,

'You're an actor yourself.'

That little bastard remembered it, and later,

when he saw him in a video, he filed a complaint against him.

And now they are trying to take the children away from this Khomsky and his

wife.

Once again, this is a vile regime, and it must not be

supported in absolutely anything. It simply cannot be

supported in any way; against it

we must fight as actively as possible.

Because of him, and because of all the others, they are now,

by the way, beginning to use this very actively.

But they understand

that this is

a nightmare of a mechanism; it's far

more—how should I put it—

a horrifying way of intimidating people.

You may not scare a person by saying they'll be thrown

in jail—they'll say, 'Fine, then jail me,'

because I'm fighting for rights.

But if you tell him, 'Now I'm going to take away

your children and send them to some orphanage,'

and God knows what will happen to them there—

it's quite hard for a person

to endure that. And now this is apparently entering

an active

phase, for example, because

right now in St. Petersburg there is apparently

a similar situation with Maksim Kuzovmetov,

a newspaper publisher in St. Petersburg.

In St. Petersburg, he is taking part—he is running as a

candidate for deputy in the Yekateringofsky district.

They put out

some fake newspaper about him saying,

'Warning: Dad is an opposition activist,' where they wrote

that he is, supposedly, an oppositionist father,

a terrible, bad parent. This fake

little newspaper was published

by United Russia members, after which

those United Russia members, based on that fake newspaper,

filed a complaint against him. And look:

the media spread the claim that he is a bad father.

The child welfare authorities came to him because he is an opposition figure.

Just imagine this,

those of you who have children, or even those who are

already adults: suddenly, at your

apartment door, there's a knock. You open it, and

this woman says, 'Hello, I'm from the child welfare authorities,

and I've come because we received

a report that children here are being abused,

even killed, because the father is an opposition activist, so I

have to check how your

children are being kept.' She forces her way into your apartment, and you

throw her out. Then she writes complaints saying,

'They threw me out; they probably don't feed the children there

and are torturing them.' Some woman like that, and she

will be inspecting your children, they'll

be asked all sorts of questions, and then they'll tell you,

'Could you please leave the room? I want

to speak with your boy and with

your girl alone.' You will have

a very strong urge to just strangle her,

naturally, of course. But if you

do that, you'll get hit with a huge number of

problems. That's how this regime operates—a

pack of ruthless, disgusting,

lying people. That's why rallies, Smart Voting,

and any methods of fighting them

matter. You can vote for almost anyone,

as long as it's not for these bastards

who come up with methods like this.

By the way, this isn't the first

time. They started doing this back in 2011 during

the campaign to save Khimki Forest involving Yevgenia

Chirikova. Back then these

child welfare authorities came to her and meddled with her children,

but then everyone was simply outraged, and they immediately

backed off. But now even that kind of

public outrage no longer works

in the same way.

And now they have started using it very, very actively.

Using it actively. We've raised 169,000 rubles (about 1,690 USD),

and let me remind you that today's fundraiser

is for the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

It's been robbed, and the top three donors

will receive prizes—I meant branded

merch. I can never seem to pronounce it properly.

Branded merch. So, Denis Ivanov

asks: what will

the Smart Voting recommendations look like—just

a name, or some explanation of why

people should vote for that person?

Denis, to clarify: if you're talking about

Moscow, you'll find it on my blog, and most

likely, in fact, it will be a fairly

obvious explanation of why this—why

you need to vote for this person in

general. Across the country, we won't be able to issue one for every

candidate, because there are 30

election campaigns in 22 regions. That's

an enormous amount of work. Our analysts are now

sitting there, digging through data, comparing things, and

calculating which of the candidates

has the best chance against the United Russia candidate. What

will the recommendation look like? It will

look like this: you type, "I live at

175 Lyublinskaya Street, that's my address,"

you hit send, and you receive the name of the

candidate: your polling station is such-and-such,

your district is such-and-such, you should vote for

so-and-so.

That's what it will look like. I

hope it will be very convenient. I hope it will

work through websites, through a bot on

Telegram, and maybe we'll come up with some other

mechanisms as well. In other words, we

will try to make sure that

Roskomnadzor (Russia's state media and internet regulator) can't block it.

Obviously, starting from the middle of next

week, they will use

extraordinary efforts to

block Smart Voting.

We will be ready for that, and you should be too.

Try to be ready for anything, and

the best way to be prepared is

to register on the page. If you

register,

you will definitely receive an email telling you whom

to vote for. That email can't be blocked

anymore, so register.

Alexei, good evening. I can't understand

how effective Smart Voting is,

asks Vadim Dokuchaev. Because if

you vote for the strongest opponent of

the authorities from another party, they can later

still be controlled from above and brought under control.

Yes, they can be controlled, or they may not be controlled—

that's true. But as I already said,

you need to treat these elections as a

referendum. In this referendum, you are not even

electing a specific person—you

are voting out the United Russia candidate so that in this

referendum on confidence in United Russia, all of

Moscow,

all of St. Petersburg, or your entire city

wherever you live, says: no to United Russia.

If in Moscow they lose a sufficient

number of districts, I assure you, by the way,

they will cancel the election. Ella Pamfilova (head of Russia's Central Election Commission) will come out and say,

"Oh my goodness, what kind of election was that?

It was terrible, there were so many

violations."

And Lyubov Sobol was removed from the ballot, and Ilya Yashin

spent the entire election campaign in jail.

Immediately, immediately cancel

the election results"—and they will cancel them if we

defeat United Russia together. And then there will be

another round of political struggle, but in it

we will, of course, already be much stronger,

because the whole country and all of Moscow—

all 15 million people living in Moscow—

will know perfectly well that United Russia and

Putin have been denied confidence in Moscow. So

the conclusion is: you are not going to vote for some

person who, as you say, might

be controlled from above.

You are going to vote against their methods,

against the jailing of people, like those

who are now imprisoned for allegedly organizing mass

riots; against the removal of candidates;

against what they did to young people; against keeping Yashin locked up;

against attacking Sobol; against

your vote and your signature

being declared fake. That's what

we are voting against in this referendum on

confidence in the United Russia party.

The United Russia party

doesn't believe in itself at all, not

one bit. And of course, from this point of

view, the most astonishing and unique

United Russia figure doesn't even live in Moscow,

he lives in St. Petersburg. That is, of course,

Alexander Beglov.

If you look at his biography, if you go

to the website of the political party United

Russia,

you'll see that he is one of the founders of this

party, back in the days when it wasn't yet

super powerful and super popular.

Beglov was an important figure there. And now, amazingly, let's look at

this remarkable thing.

His speech.

Just from the debates, if we have the clip where

he simply says, "You know, I don't represent

any party. I want to say

that I'm the only practical administrator here,

among politicians, and I don't belong

to any political party. My only party

is our citizens, our residents. I

work to make the city

better. Thank you." Not affiliated with any party—he says it

with a straight face, as if there are some

politicians standing there, and here he is, the practical manager.

"I don't belong to any party." And yet,

here is this screenshot from the United Russia website.

Let's take a look—where was it, do we have

Beglov there, can we show it?

Screenshot—there it is. A week later

they removed it, erased everything. Can you imagine how

they actually—well, first of all—understand

how strong we are, and secondly, they themselves

despise their own party, because

it's obvious: the guy prepared

this speech for the debates, and he decided, "I'll

smile like this and say that I'm

a practical administrator, and say that I don't belong to any

party." Then someone tells him, like,

"Excuse me, but on the United Russia website

you're listed..." And then someone calls and says,

"Guys, delete me from United Russia, I..."

please from the website

and we’re not talking about, well, why you sort of...

you seem to be, like, the founder of our parking...

we’re so pathetic, nobody needs us

this worthless party will really hurt me

Beglov says, if my

ugly mug is on our party’s website, then

and they say, well yes, we understand what kind of

party we have, God help us, and so to help you

we’re removing you from the website. It’s just—well,

it’s a great story, really a great one, but

also just absolutely wonderful, really

something happened today—this is the raw

reaction of Beglov to the investigation that

we released quite recently. We discovered

that he has an apartment which he bought, bought in

2013. The apartment is worth 150 million

rubles. That’s his entire family’s annual income

for 25 years, and we asked a very simple

question: Beglov, where did you get this

apartment from? Up to 58 seconds—broke a new...

apartment, reminded...

so, from here on it would be peace and quiet if

it weren’t for this document

just look: at the beginning of 2013, our Beglov

buys a 150-square-meter apartment in Moscow

on Kazarmenny Lane, in the Pokrovka area

right in the very center

what on earth is going on? Let’s quickly

take a look. And there I read the description on the website:

the residential complex House on Pokrovsky

Boulevard, deluxe class. The House on

Pokrovsky Boulevard was created so that

every resident could

rest and relax after hard

working days. “I have hard working

days!” Beglov cries, and buys there

an apartment for 150 million rubles

the apartment costs 150 million. Beglov and

his wife earned 30 million over five

years. If you recalculate all that into salaries

at the rate of the purchase year, that’s 25 years of hard

working days you’d need to put in to

buy the same kind of apartment

naturally, we decided to use this

case, this obvious fact of corruption

and illicit enrichment, in order to

promote the campaign “Anyone But

Beglov.” Let me remind you that in St. Petersburg

you need to take part in the municipal elections

in any voting first, even if you don’t

quite know who to vote for, and in the

gubernatorial election you simply need to

vote for anyone but Beglov. And we

raised this question to him and called on

all residents of St. Petersburg, and Legislative Assembly deputies

Reznik and Vishnevsky also wrote

a statement saying: Beglov, explain where the

apartment came from. And he explained—his press service

for Alexander Beglov came out and said

something astonishing: yes, there is an apartment

in the center worth 150 million rubles, well

you know, he bought it at the construction

stage in 2010 for 16

million rubles—that is, 10 times

cheaper. And that’s just—there’s simply

one tiny footnote missing there: and also we

consider all of you stupid cattle, morons

and people who can’t read. That’s

exactly what he said to the residents of

St. Petersburg and to the residents of Moscow

who know perfectly well that, first of all, there were not

such prices for elite

new-build apartments in 2010—10 times less for this

apartment, of course not, absolutely impossible

completely out of the question. And if, if someone sold him

an apartment for 16 million rubles that

was worth several times more, even at the

construction stage, then that’s a bribe—a bribe

received in kind. He should simply

be jailed immediately. But the thing is

he just, through his press service,

says, “I bought it in 2010.” Ladies and

in our video we show that he

bought it in 2013, not at the

construction stage. It really was in

development in 2010, but it was purchased in 2013

or even in 2015. In 2010, in that

fifth... and so on—it was impossi—he could not have

bought it because he didn’t even have

16 million rubles according to the declarations, so

that is, absolutely

some kind of multilayered

disgusting

constant, every-second lying. But it’s just

you show the registry extract: 2013. And he

proudly says, “No, I bought it several years earlier.”

A disgusting, vile crook. Even if

you don’t particularly like the other candidates

running in the election

in St. Petersburg—doesn’t matter, vote for

a second round, vote for a second round—that means

for anyone but Beglov, at the very least

St. Petersburg should send a message with its

vote that: we don’t like this

Beglov. He’s a liar, some kind of crook, and

he thinks we’re all idiots. Just like his

dissertation is fake, logically enough, so

he constantly lies in every single

word, nonstop, and he lied about the apartment too

and Putin needs to be sent a simple message

with this vote: enough, stop shoving idiots

down our throats—not just here, but across the

country, some kind of guards or whatever, some

completely unclear nobodies

this is still the largest city—could you maybe appoint here

some actual politician? Fine,

let him be from Putin’s team, but let him

at least not be so helpless, not

be so disgusting, not

despise the people of St. Petersburg and the whole

country so much that he can just

brazenly lie about the party and

absolutely everything else. 207 thousand

rubles—we’ve raised that much. Half the time is

gone already, yes, there’s an hour left, and we

have raised 207 thousand rubles, which is absolutely

wonderful—even 207 thousand rubles

right now

are important for the Anti-Corruption Foundation

many thanks to everyone who has contributed

who donates by the end of the broadcast

I’ll sum it up, and the people who made

the three biggest donations will receive three prizes

So, a question from a viewer: I’m

an election observer in Kazan, so I’ll be voting

earlier. Will they send me the name in advance?

You

will find out the name earlier — that is, it won’t be

published there at 8 a.m.; it will be published about three days in advance

and the names may even be released four days ahead

Why is it actually done so late? So that

these candidates can’t be removed as soon as

we publish whom

Smart Voting will support — they would simply

start trying to throw those candidates off

the ballot, but in the final days it’s already

much harder, or almost impossible

Reading For asks: Alexei, aren’t you

afraid that after the first attempt at

Smart Voting, you could be accused of

interfering in the electoral process?

Listen, in Moscow they removed

candidates from the election, and then they even

opened a criminal case, effectively

against them, for interference in

the electoral process, so

they can open some kind of case against me

— criminal cases, any kind at all, absolutely

any kind. Tomorrow they could open a criminal

case saying, I don’t know, that I derailed a train

or did anything whatsoever. Look at the case

against the Anti-Corruption Foundation

— a money laundering case has been opened

Money laundering can only happen after

some underlying crime, but there wasn’t any

crime. The money that you

send — these current 211,000 rubles

(about $2,300) that have been sent —

they consider that criminal money,

obtained through criminal means, and

using that money is supposedly some kind of

illegal and criminal

thing

Holy Roller asks whether there are plans

to analyze candidates for the city council

of the city of Vladimir. Yes, yes, yes — under Smart

Voting we’ll be giving recommendations for 30

elections, and

that includes city councils in the capitals of federal subjects

(regions). Vladimir is the capital of a federal subject

(region), so as far as I remember, for

the Vladimir city council as well, we will

be giving recommendations. What can a United Russia

candidate do in elections, and what can’t a United Russia

candidate do? In elections, United Russia can do anything

and this was demonstrated perfectly by

the wonderful

Russian, Soviet athlete

Anton Shipulin. Why on earth did he decide

to run from United Russia for the

State Duma, in the elections in

Sverdlovsk Region?

It’s just upsetting. He was

a wonderful athlete, but no — he had to

get mixed up with United Russia. There you go

— as the saying goes, once a claw is caught, the whole

bird is lost

He was a person, then he became a United Russia member, and immediately

it was all lies and violations, because

Shipulin, for some reason, went and

hid

securities in a German bank and

accordingly had an account open in a German

bank. You’re not allowed to have a bank account there, and moreover he

took part in United Russia’s primaries

and under United Russia’s charter it explicitly

states that people cannot participate in

the primaries, and the party cannot

nominate people who have accounts in

foreign banks

He lied — whether with United Russia’s knowledge or

without it, nevertheless

he lied. Let’s watch 35 seconds of what

Shipulin says in this

situation. I take full responsibility — I’ve already

spoken about this a lot. It was purely a technical

mistake. Unfortunately, I had never before

filed declarations like this and simply

couldn’t have known all the details, but

this is just what happened. Once again,

I repeat: I had no intention

of hiding this information whatsoever

You see, and in Moscow

candidates were removed because they had

this field there: presence of foreign

property and foreign accounts, and they

left that field blank — and they were removed for it

because they were supposed to have written the word

“none”

I’m not joking — that’s literally how absurd it is

Panfilova (head of Russia’s Central Election Commission) said the same thing to Sobol

You weren’t supposed to leave the box

blank — you had to write the word “none”

and if you didn’t write the word “none,”

then you filed the declaration incorrectly. That’s how it

works with independent

candidates. But when it comes to United Russia candidates, if you didn’t

declare your foreign accounts in a German

bank — he’s lying, of course, when he says he forgot

it was a technical issue

I’ve never filed declarations before. United Russia

of course had United Russia’s lawyers

prepare all those declarations for him. But sure, here

you know, guys, there’s this new kind of

sincerity: “It’s 100% my fault, I

forgot.” And they tell him, “No problem, Shipulin,”

“high five, athlete — go United Russia!”

“Go ahead, keep running in the election.” That’s how it works

He wasn’t removed. Why? No consequences

for him, because

United Russia can do anything. And the only

way to fight them right now is Smart

Voting. Ivan asks me

I wanted to register in Riga

for the Astrakhan region, but registration did not

It says: will we have a gubernatorial election?

Smart Voting in our region right now?

I’ll remember the surname in a moment.

The United Russia candidate in the Astrakhan Region,

I forgot the name, sorry, but in any case,

Look, the voting concept for

gubernatorial elections is basically: vote for anyone

except Babushkin — for you, it’s anyone

except the government-backed candidate, possibly.

Right now, the Smart Voting website probably

is being updated, so it isn’t registering

you, but the fairly obvious advice is

what to do in the gubernatorial election.

If you’re only interested in the gubernatorial election,

Ah, Babushkin, yes — I’m being reminded.

So you do have Babushkin there, and he’s also

a rather dubious figure.

A character specially sent in from Moscow.

Oleg Shein wasn’t allowed to run in the election

in order to help Babushkin

win. You need to vote for any

candidate running against him.

I think you’ll be able

to register for Smart Voting a little later.

Even though I’ve already gone well

over the hour, I still wanted to touch on a couple more topics.

What absolutely struck me

was this whole situation over the alleged sacrilege involving Pokras Lampas.

He’s a well-known artist from St. Petersburg,

who does various graffiti and art projects, and what

unfolded in the city of Yekaterinburg

around his rather, rather beautiful

art composition

— a huge geometric

cross in honor of Malevich — and Malevich is

part of our national cultural heritage.

His portraits are shown and

it’s universally recognized — that is, at the

official level we are proud when

someone comes and creates something like that,

a genuinely great work of art.

But then some strange obscurantists, some

unclear people — and in fairly small numbers, too —

quite seriously

show up and can destroy whatever

they want. It’s just obscurantism advancing, and

look how the authorities are afraid of any

ten oddballs they know, who

show up and say rather strange things.

Let’s watch 29 seconds

of the protests against this drawing.

Against Pokras Lampas, just because he simply

decided to make everything here

painted over, against color and any

art objects — just everything in one color

so that no one would walk over it.

Or I can arrange a lot of things here,

inside these boundaries.

Am I not known across all of Russia?

Here.

A man in a cap and glasses just shows up

and says, yes, I’ll smear everything here now

with blood, that will be my art object, I

am ready for prison, I’ll kill all of you here — well,

fine, okay, no problem. But if someone

from a rally crowd, you know,

said something like that about anything or

anyone, he would already have been

in jail long ago. But here, people just

show up whom I cannot

call believers, because they are not — they are not

people I can call Orthodox Christians. In fact, they are

pagans. He says you must not

trample on a sacred object. What sacred object?

It’s a cross drawn on the ground — that’s

a sacred object? What next, are we going to pray to every

telegraph pole? That

contradicts Christianity. Are we really going to call any

image of a cross

holy?

If a sidewalk is cross-shaped, are we not allowed to walk on it?

Anything at all? Fine, someone drew it

deliberately, drew a cross — but this is not some sidewalk

where people are trampling a sacred object. Have you

completely lost your minds?

Churches are built in the shape of a cross — do you

trample it inside, then? That’s the point: the cross here

is just being turned into whatever some

idiot wants.

He put on a cap, imagined himself an Orthodox Christian,

and now walks around throwing his weight around here.

These people understand absolutely nothing. Here,

a so-called spiritual father spoke out — they want to call him

a spiritual guide, a religious mentor —

Poklonskaya’s spiritual adviser, one Father Sergius (Nikolai Romanov).

Let’s watch 1 minute 11 seconds of this

already astonishing performance

in Yekaterinburg, in Uralmash, on First Five-Year Plan Square

(a Soviet-era name).

It must make a leap — we must

not allow abuse on the road of our salvation,

the Lord’s cross.

This was painted by some visiting

artist, Arseny Sergeyevich

Pyzhikov, who changed his name to Po-

kras Lampas. The cross was painted right on

the asphalt, on a huge area of 6,000

square meters, with the intention that

passersby would tread on it with their feet. A pedestrian

path

runs directly across the horizontal

bar of the cross. At the same time, this wretched

artist spat not only on the feelings

of us believers, but also on the law, which

provides for liability for

public actions expressing clear

disrespect for society and committed

with the aim of offending the religious feelings

of believers, in the form of a fine of up to 300,000

rubles (about several thousand U.S. dollars) or imprisonment for up to 1

year.

Part 1 of Article 148

of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Such sacrilegious desecration...

“The horizontal line runs along...” Well, so to speak —

are you even really a priest?

Because not every person who

has grown a beard like that is one.

as a priest, because this person

apparently understands very little about what

is happening in the Christian religion, because

this talk about something being trampled underfoot—what are you

even saying? A road is not any kind of sacred

object, and the Christian religion is not

paganism; there is no Mother Mary here,

there is no stone here to pray to, and there

cannot be some kind of Christian

object fixed in the ground that is

holy and is being trampled underfoot.

The Christian religion is not about that. But this

this one, this schema-

abbot Sergius, so glibly, actually

talks about these articles of the Criminal

Code—and by the way, he received in the

1980s, as people who knew him write, 13

years for two murders, two thefts, and

robbery. He served his time, reflected on it,

turned to religion, came to believe—fine,

wonderful, very good. At that point,

of course, one could say the thieves were hanging there too; I

am not even being ironic at all. He

killed people, he realized it, he came to

religion—but that does not mean that we now

have to believe him and have to listen at home

to the nonsense he spouts. Why are these people

ordering us around? Who are they? A beard,

some cassock on him, and all this

changes his life?

He doesn’t come to Yekaterinburg,

and they’ll paint over this whole thing.

Why? Because just some people

who understand nothing about

Christianity, who are pagans,

who tomorrow will see that somewhere, I don’t know,

someone has drawn

a cross on a wall, or again, a tree in

some shape, and they’ll go around with

bells, dancing around the tree

because it’s a symbol of our religion. No,

the symbol of our religion is not just any

cross-shaped thing drawn

who-knows-where. Any person can, without any problem,

walk over any cross-shaped

objects; that should not be forbidden.

Jesus Christ, it’s disgusting. Not only

is it obscurantism, but these are also people who

understand nothing about Christianity and

in general about Christian principles—they

are something else entirely. And of course these Christians

must resist this obscurantism with all

their strength. They write that the coordinator of

Navalny’s headquarters in Samara was arrested for 10

days. I don’t even know what he was arrested for

for 10 days. Well, apparently they just, just

need to regularly detain some

people, arrest people from Navalny’s headquarters.

Well, what can I say—Smart Voting

Smart Voting against all these people—well,

simply, on September 8, we don’t have that many

methods available to us at this stage, and

to hurt them. But on September 8, through

Smart Voting, we can deliver them a serious

slap in the face, and I urge everyone to do it.

This issue should not be connected with these

police officers—of course, I’ll say more:

an absolutely nightmarish situation happened

in Anapa.

A 17-year-old teenage girl—it’s all clear, she

came to Anapa with a volleyball

team, with some boy, and so on the

beach she was spending time—what else are

17- and 18-year-olds supposed to do?

Please, peace and love to you, love and

happiness, everything is fine—the main thing is

to use protection and not catch anything.

Do whatever you want; all of that is fine.

Police officers approach her, after which

the boy runs away, and two or three police officers

one stands lookout while two of them commit

lewd acts with her there, forcing her into

sex, and

besides the fact that this is absolutely, this is

a monstrous grave crime, because

first of all, it is a gang

rape; second, it was committed by

police officers in uniform.

I mean, under any laws, simply by

social standards, human standards, moral

standards, simply under the Criminal

Code,

this is a very, very serious crime,

and simply a case of

not merely on a Krasnodar regional scale,

but on a Russia-wide scale. And what does

Dmitry Peskov tell us?

Naturally, the whole country is outraged.

Completely.

I mean, how is this—police officers intimidating

a child, saying, “Right now we’ll

bring you to administrative

liability too; what you were doing was illegal,

there on the beach; we’ll fine you right here,”

“we’ll tell your coach, your parents,”

“everyone will laugh at you, everyone

will talk”—and in this way they began

to intimidate her. And of course everyone thinks

that something like this could happen either to

them or to their child. Everyone is outraged, and Peskov

gives a comment: there is no need to shift

all of this onto the police; the incident is

disgusting and unacceptable, and thank God

he said that, but there is no need to connect this

with the police. Tell me, please—with whom

are we supposed to connect it? Should we

connect it with cosmonauts or with miners?

Who are we supposed to connect it with? We’re not

saying that all police officers

necessarily rape defenseless children.

No. But it was police officers who did this, and they did it

because there is a situation of

impunity—general impunity

for police officers, and specifically in Krasnodar Krai

there is a situation of total chaos and

lawlessness going on there.

Remember the Tsapok gang case?

They raped; they would come there and

They would go to schools and pick out girls just like that.

And take them away with them. Why did they do it?

Because the prosecutor's office was protecting them.

And Chaika (Yury Chaika, former Prosecutor General) was covering for the Tsapok gang even now.

He is sitting there, directly connected to the governor.

Tver—sorry, the prosecutor who was in

Krasnodar Krai became a deputy

prosecutor general, because

there is absolute impunity. They feel

that nothing will happen to them, and this

impunity is born, among other things, out of

the Moscow protests, when you are openly

breaking the law and your unit commander,

who knows perfectly well that you

must have an ID badge, that your

face must be visible, that you must

identify yourself—he says instead:

"All right, guys, cover your faces, remove

your badges, start beating everyone," and then you

immediately create an organized

criminal group. After all, you agreed

that you would break the law. You

violated the law on police.

Then someone gets beaten—you have violated

the Criminal Code. You are an organized

criminal group. And this is treated as normal, and this

is encouraged by Peskov, it is encouraged by Putin,

and covered up by Sobyanin, and then—

the minister ordered it to be done this way. So afterward,

well, if you broke the law once, if you broke it

twice, then later they raped someone—right there, brazenly.

On the beach—because if it's acceptable to beat

a person over the head with a baton,

if you can just take some

cyclist or runner and break his leg,

and then afterward say that the consequences

—the Investigative Committee—amount to nothing, everything is fine,

fine, we broke a leg—well then why

can't you also simply force

someone into sexual

acts? Well, after all, plenty of things have already been let slide.

We didn't even break that much—it's all fine, we'll get away with it.

Because we are a caste of untouchables, and

one way or another, every person will feel that.

That is why when Peskov

—that vile crook—says this should not be linked to

the police, he shows himself to be

a double crook and a double scoundrel.

Because if we do not connect this with

the police, then we will never overcome it.

This absolutely must be connected with

the police; it must be part

of the discussion: why can police officers do this?

Why have they still not

removed the head of police for the entire

Krasnodar Krai? Why haven't

inspectors gone there? Here, to the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

they rushed in wearing masks,

sawed through doors, did all sorts of things, seized everything.

Why is that not happening in

the Krasnodar police? Has anyone introduced

any personnel review or training and disciplinary measures?

Why haven't these people been removed? Who was

the head of the unit?

Three people did it: one stood lookout,

and two were raping her. I mean,

let's call it what it really was.

The minister should be explaining himself, but nothing

happened. Why? Because of impunity. And this

impunity was

demonstrated again very recently,

once more, in that same Medoev case,

in the Golunov case. Remember Medoev?

The one about whom we all—and the journalist—

said that he had ordered drugs to be planted on

Golunov, and about whom we

first found that he had some kind of

real estate worth a billion rubles, and then much more besides.

We found a lot more about him. In other words, he is one of the

senior officers of the Moscow FSB internal security service.

Let's watch 1 minute and 44 seconds

to remind ourselves how, working in the FSB,

how much money one can make. This is

an extract confirming that FSB officer

senior Medoev

in 2016 bought a 200-square-meter apartment

in one of the most elite

and ostentatious residential complexes in Moscow,

Italian Quarter.

One square meter here costs 1

million rubles, so his apartment cost

200 million rubles accordingly. And that's not all—here are

two more apartments—not quite as

elite, of course, but both 100 square meters

each, and in the city center.

We just need to walk along

Kazakova Street for another 200 meters, and we see

a building where the Medoev family owns a 180-

square-meter, two-story apartment.

That one costs 80 million rubles. And now I'll make the situation even clearer:

behind this building there is

this 1,000-square-meter little property,

and yes, it also belongs to the family

of the Medoevs, the chekists (security-service officers). Igor Medoev bought this

building in November 2016, and two

months later registered himself as an individual entrepreneur,

and immediately leased the building

to the Moscow road traffic inspectorate.

From the lease documents for the premises on

Kazakova Street, they explain that

they would actually be happy to rent

anything at all, but they were simply required to rent

this exact Medoev property because

Sobyanin personally wrote a letter—here are

the number, the date, everything official—in which he

approved the lease of this specific property.

Cars: three Mercedes

of different classes, two Audi Q7 SUVs,

a Lexus, a Porsche Cayenne, and six motorcycles,

Harley-Davidsons and BMWs.

The man works for the FSB, responsible for fighting

corruption, fighting terrorism, and

so on. But at the same time, through absolutely

corrupt means, he and his family

earn billions, drive around in Range

Rovers, and plant drugs

on a journalist who is investigating some of

his business dealings. He was recently removed from

He was removed from his post after all — hooray, a big victory.

for civil society.

He was finally removed; he is no longer

the head of the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service). It turns out that he

was appointed as an attached officer at

Mosenergo. At Gazprom, there’s this thing

called the system of attached

employees. It is a

form of effectively legalized corruption

that exists within the FSB, when this

large company — they assign some guy

from the FSB, and he is simultaneously

an FSB officer and works there, receiving

a salary. The best thing for him is simply to do

some side deals with the security service.

In theory, he is supposed to make sure

that at Gazprom or Mosenergo there haven’t

been any spies sneaking in,

agents, or some kind of

corruption taking place. But as you know, in all these

companies — Rosneft, Gazprom, and VTB — the most

monstrous, unimaginable corruption exists, and everywhere

there sits

this whole apparatus of attached officers, and

instead of throwing him in

prison, dealing with the consequences, and sending him to a detention center

at Lefortovo (a notorious Moscow prison),

they place him in Mosenergo. That means he will

sit in a big office

and now, legally, receive a huge

salary, while still remaining

an FSB employee, an officer, driving around in

a car, and he’ll have this little document —

a special order, not subject to

inspection. No one will be able to stop him.

For money, he’ll issue the same papers to other

people — and this is supposedly the punishment for

planting drugs. He should have

been sentenced to 15 years, actually, just like

everyone else.

That’s why police officers rape people on

beaches

— because of impunity. But these ones simply

got caught. So that means

some coach turned out to be principled,

wasn’t afraid, and it took a complaint.

Basically, at night they think of them as,

“We’re tough, we’re sheepdogs, they’re sheep, so

we can do whatever we want.” And that

is exactly the kind of system that leads to absolute,

total decay. Another FSB officer might think:

should I take bribes or not?

Maybe I shouldn’t — what if I get caught? But then

look at Medvedev: he was caught, and not just

caught — the whole country heard about it, and

did anything bad happen to him? No, only

good things. He kept his wealth, kept everything,

and is doing perfectly well working at

Gazprom. So what does that mean? It means you should take bribes,

it means you should steal. That is exactly how

the system is set up. And one last thing before

we wrap up and announce the prizes, of course:

the story with the ice cream seller is just incredible.

I mean, everything is so

fake and phony that they literally have

a special fake, staged

ice cream seller. People noticed

that in 2019, when Putin

bought ice cream for himself and Erdogan,

let’s look at that 2019 footage.

There it is.

Where is she pushing it?

Well, he bought ice cream from some girl,

and then people looked back and saw that in

2017 he did exactly the same thing

too.

The very same person, the very same cart.

And then photos of this girl started turning up — she

has apparently appeared quite often at various

Putin events. In other words,

it’s all plainly visible if you look closely.

Anyone interested can see it. This is Ivanova,

just some girl supposedly selling ice cream there.

Apparently this girl works somewhere in the system,

or somewhere else, I don’t know, because the funniest thing

happened today, when

reporters from Moskovsky Komsomolets (a Russian newspaper)

went to that air show trying to find

the girl and ask her how on earth

she got so lucky that she

got to sell ice cream to Putin twice. But no —

the girl wasn’t there. That girl does not exist there.

There’s no cart either. That’s how completely

everything is built on fakery and lies — some kind of

endless Potemkin village — that they

literally bring along a girl to sell

ice cream. And after that you ask yourself

why we live so badly, why nothing

develops. Can you imagine

how many years, how far they have drifted

over these 20 years from reality, from

actual life, if Putin, even in

his ordinary everyday life,

never even encounters a real

ice cream seller? There, instead, they have

a special one. In 2017, maybe they gave her

the rank of senior lieutenant because she

performed this important function, and now

she’s probably a captain, or maybe even

got promoted early to major, because

she sold ice cream once again to

the boss. You can’t build a normal state on lies

like this, and that is why this state

must be fought — and first of all

by taking part in voting. Thank you to everyone

who watched. But that’s not all: we raised 263

rubles — no, 4,200 — I’m getting tongue-tied, sorry,

please forgive me, I’ve lost the knack over the month — 263

thousand four hundred

two hundred sixty-seven — they’re correcting me

live on air,

490 rubles. Thank you so much to everyone who

made these transfers; this is very

important for us now, under conditions of this crackdown.

Every kopeck counts. We really are going to

be asking for money often, sorry — both for

ourselves and in order to help

those who have been arrested, in order to help.

pays the fines

right now, obviously, one of the state's

strategies is simply to try to take away

all the money by fining as many people as possible

people who take part in protest

activity, so that's why Solidarity

has to work very hard to pay out

1 million rubles or 300,000 rubles

for people who have been fined several times

300,000 rubles each, but she can't pay it, whereas

all of us can chip in—1,000 people

contributing 300 rubles each—and that already helps a lot

very well. So, Ksela, thank you very much

she donated 11,101 rubles

and gets this T-shirt from our store

Sasha gets this sweater—I won't

call it anything else anymore

or a sweatshirt, because I agree with

the commenters: “sweatshirt” is a silly word, and

an exclusive, you could say, T-shirt, and

"Cancel My Brother Oleg" goes to

Alexei, who donated 15,001 rubles

thank you, guys, thank you all so much

for watching. I missed you terribly. I'm glad that I

came back to you. I’ll try to go live

for these Thursday broadcasts every time

and I’ll only miss them when

I physically can’t do it, but

even when there is no physical

possibility, I hope you will still

watch someone. Most importantly,

you will do what is already obvious needs

to be done. Right now, it is important for us on September 8 to strike a blow

against United Russia. On September 8, each person’s fight

is with United Russia, and everyone’s contribution is needed

don’t think that all of this will happen without you

without you, it will not happen

register for Smart Voting

right now. Next week we

are entering the final stretch, and on

next Thursday we will have with you

some kind of—I’ll try to make it

a really fiery broadcast, but

the Sunday after that is a big battle

that we must win. A big

thank you. A true Thursday.

[music]