Shmonka-Solovyov, Kremlin vagrants, the Saratov murder

[music]

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

That means we are live on air,

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

Navalny, or, as they call me now, a man who owes

money to the bailiffs,

as the Kremlin media have been calling me this week. And they are not

far from the truth, because I and other

people now owe money to the police, the National Guard (Rosgvardiya),

the Moscow Metro, and other

organizations, in total about

40 million rubles (about $400,000), as calculated by the head

of the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation), Ivan Zhdanov. So far the bailiffs

are not dealing with this, but they soon will.

We will see what we are going to do about it.

We will deal with problems as

they come. In the meantime, we are somehow like

phoenixes. Have you seen *Harry Potter*? There,

the phoenix rises again so beautifully.

This is *Navalny Live*, our program after

the most hellish raid recently on

the studio—hellish in the sense that

they took absolutely everything, including, well,

literally the metal stands. And this is actually

high praise not only for my

program, but also, I think,

for its audience—you—and for this program’s political influence.

Because even before, it was clear

that they were trashing the studio and taking

everything under the sun in order

to prevent us from making

videos and carrying out any kind of activity.

Now their tactic is completely clear.

Something like once every three weeks, or every one or two weeks,

maybe, as things escalate, once a week or even

every day, they will conduct searches

in order simply to seize various

technical items, and so that there will not be,

among other things, these live broadcasts.

Because we are constantly discussing here

the fact that this

program, and its viewers, and especially the part

of the audience that does something

practical—for example, campaigning for Smart Voting—

are genuinely changing politics in

the country. The Kremlin watched,

watched and watched, smirked and smirked,

kept smirking, and then in Moscow they got slapped in the face by the results,

and they realized that this really was the case. So they decided

to shut this program down. They will not succeed, and

one way or another, we will still

keep going on air. For example, right now we have

simply rented everything.

Of course, now every episode of the program

will be more expensive because

rented equipment is, naturally, more expensive.

That is exactly why today we are fundraising again,

and you can personally and directly

send your regards to Vladimir Putin, who is

trying to shut down the program, by making

a donation through the link

located below this video.

Whether during the live broadcast or outside of it,

you are sending a personal greeting

to Vladimir Putin, who wants to shut down

this program. And yes, preparing the program now

—I will not lie—of course

takes much more work. That is, we need to

rent it, bring it over, take it back, well,

basically we need to pay for

the rented equipment, because here

there is nothing. Last time they came and there were

some—well, you can imagine what

a studio looks like—things lying around everywhere,

wires, metal, these huge structures,

with lights or sound equipment or cameras hanging on them.

Last time they took

the lights, the sound gear, the cameras. Those metal structures are not

that heavy, just awkward. This time

they came and took the heavy stuff too, without even

trying

to pretend that they needed any documents for it.

Actually, the court order says

that they may seize items in which

information important to the case is stored.

It is not even clear what case this is, and it is certainly not

clear what information could possibly be

recorded on various metal

brackets, but nevertheless they

carried out absolutely everything. They are trying to disrupt our

program. Once again, they will not succeed, but

listen, in the worst case, I do not know,

I will just take an iPhone like this and

film with that iPhone. So

we are still in good spirits, and we expect

the same from you. Let us

watch a short clip from our search.

I think this video became such a hit

partly because its unexpected star

turned out to be the cleaning lady.

An FBK employee filmed 35 seconds of an utterly unflappable

cleaning lady.

You see, there is no drama there anymore, no commotion,

no fuss, nothing interesting is happening.

It is just the routine of life: the cleaning lady is cleaning,

then these idlers come in and [__] just

stand around looking about with their phones.

The main thing is, they are filming—later they will be

sending it to each other: “Look how they were

conducting the search.” Meanwhile she just keeps

cleaning something there too. There is especially nothing left

to take anymore—they come into a completely empty

place. Incidentally, what is interesting here at

*Navalny Live* is that at least we have

a seizure record, a document that

they issued there under a non-disclosure pledge to the

lawyer.

So we know the number of these metal things

that they effectively stole from us. At FBK,

they did not let the lawyer in, and they were carrying out

some boxes, stole something, and we

do not even know what it was. They did not even provide

a search record or seizure records.

That is, they came, stole something—I do not know, maybe

a coffee grinder again or something else, maybe

some flash drives, maybe they stole food from

the refrigerator, ate it, took employees’ chargers

and probably yanked them out of the sockets.

They’re trying to pick through our pockets, so to speak.

But we don’t even know what exactly they did.

Still, you know, there’s frustration—I don’t know,

anger, and a desire to work even harder—those feelings

are there, and they matter a lot. But probably

what comes first is our great

satisfaction with our work, with the fact that this whole

Kremlin state machine,

despite all its enormous,

fantastic resources, can do absolutely nothing

to us, to you. And when I say “to us,”

I don’t mean just Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

or the people working with it, but also the viewers of this

program and the viewers of the videos

we put out.

And they’re afraid, and

they don’t think they can solve their problems

by shutting us down. And actually, this was put very well

by someone who, in a way,

even summed up the political meaning

of the Moscow elections, and in general

described very well what is happening in the country.

Surprisingly, it was the head of a company—

Zhylishchnik, a municipal housing management company,

in the Kuzminki district of Moscow.

He was speaking in front of

local United Russia members in Kuzminki—

only United Russia people there, no

independent deputies at all—and he

was complaining, saying what a terrible thing it was:

you see, all those people who worked at

Zhylishchnik were supposed to come and

vote,

and then—listen to this, it’s interesting—

photograph their ballots and

send them in. But instead, they deliberately spoiled

their ballots. They still didn’t want to vote for

the authorities. These revelations from Zhylishchnik

show perfectly well that absolutely nothing

is going to help Putin—not the Investigative Committee,

not any of these crooks who

come and loot our things.

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What we found in these elections made it possible to see that

more than a thousand people

—over a thousand people—were the kind of people who

used to obediently

show up and vote for whoever

the city authorities or district administration

told them to support.

And now they really understand what is going on here.

The wording here is garbled, but the point is clear:

this system is falling apart, and then more than one

person reacted by saying they simply

couldn’t go on living like this, among other things.

We were short just 50 miserable votes,

while they had more than a thousand people at their disposal.

And that’s a ready-made base, so to speak.

That’s what the wonderful

Alan Karabekov told us. Besides

the fact that he quite obviously talked himself into

criminal liability, in Kuzminki overall,

in that district, unfortunately, we were just a little

short, and the organizer

from United Russia beat the Communist candidate. But specifically

in Kuzminki, the United Russia candidate lost, and

Karabekov says: we were short by 50

votes.

They gathered a thousand people—people who, as he says,

had always voted for

the authorities’ candidate: workers, simply

pensioners, people dependent on

the state budget, dependent on the authorities in all sorts of ways.

But they were told: listen, if you’re on good terms with us,

we bring you buckwheat (a common form of low-level election handout in Russia),

or if you work for us, then please go

and vote for Ivanov or for Petrov.

They had about 1,000 such people, and they

understand that in their own district, this is

their own version of “Smart Voting” (Navalny’s tactical voting strategy),

their own “smart voting” made up of a thousand people

mobilized through administrative pressure. But they didn’t come,

they didn’t vote for Sobyanin or for United Russia,

for them—and nothing came of it. They did not

vote. Why? Because they

don’t believe this government, because they

hate this government, because they

understand, including from the inside,

that there are no real elections at all, and there is no

real popularity for Sobyanin,

no real popularity for Putin either, because people go to them

and beg them to vote

in exactly this way. So you and I should once again

have real confidence in our own strength.

Here’s this guy complaining: we were short 50

votes. Well, in other districts we too

were short 50 votes. That’s all—it means they have no

solid core base of support.

Their so-called core support base is already spoiling

ballots, and tomorrow it will vote

for us. In reality, they have absolutely

nothing—except the enormous sums of money

they stole from us and now spend simply,

good Lord,

on utterly unbelievable nonsense.

This week there was a publication of the hacked email

correspondence

of a certain crook from the Presidential Administration

named Konstantin Kostin. The outlet

*The Insider* published it. There you can see this

con man—he used to be an actual employee

of the Presidential Administration.

He worked there for years. His wife is the same kind of

crook and thief; she headed

some pro-Kremlin foundations.

It’s one of those families latched onto the state budget.

After the hack, part of his correspondence was

published, and there are just some

absolutely astonishing things in it. I mean,

there’s a plan there for fighting Navalny,

including provocations involving

donations that were actually carried out.

They literally write there that they would take some

people who would send money from abroad

to the foundation’s accounts, and after that

they would declare it a “foreign agent,” and all sorts of

things of that kind. There’s also an astonishing

budget there—an astonishing budget, I mean.

Here they are carrying out this plan, look.

There it is now at the bottom of the screen.

Take a look: 253 million rubles.

Some kind of nonprofit foundation that

is headed by one of the same crooks.

Quite a lot of them—one of the crooks who

service the Presidential Administration spent 253

million rubles on all sorts of

things. It's just absolutely astonishing.

Let's take a look. There are methods there,

and ways of applying pressure, yes—legal

pressure against FBK, and refunding

donations—and you'll immediately remember,

some of you will remember how

during the election campaign

several people deliberately

claimed that they had sent donations

to Navalny, and that he had deceived them,

and therefore they were suing him. We win those court cases,

and then they declare that he's a fraudster.

Several people did that, and all of it

is listed in this table: discrediting

Navalny's campaigning on social media,

and Twitter provocateurs, the project Navalny

Leaks.

And yes, you can find such a site—it exists,

the site Navalny Leaks, run by this

very ridiculous [__] named Ilya

Remeslo, who presents himself as

a great lawyer. But from these Kostin documents

it's clear that he's just

some nobody they groomed

and put out front in all these documents.

So then, 253 million rubles—now I'll

show you 23 seconds of great

Kremlin, Putin-style political technology

that they implemented for these two hundred

and fifty-three million rubles.

Remember how, during one of the searches, they

seized items from our merch store, from

our branded clothing store—T-shirts and

various other things. Then, during some kind of

escalation, they took those T-shirts

that the police had seized and then apparently

handed over to some people in the

Presidential Administration. In this stunt, they put

homeless people in those T-shirts, filmed them on video, and

distributed that video for money—this video

showing some homeless people walking around in our T-shirts.

You probably remember it. Let me—yes, I remember. 23

seconds: Kremlin homeless people. "What are we doing? Are you

for him or what?"

"More important to get the newspaper than to clean up."

Brilliant technology. One more time, please.

Put the budget back on the screen. I mean, you

look at this and think, good Lord,

what pathetic stuff. In their budget, just the foundation's

management salaries alone are listed as 38

million rubles for executive salaries.

Then there's also the foundation's technical maintenance—

32 million rubles. Branch offices—good Lord, this

pathetic outfit has branches in

several cities.

60 million rubles. And they sit there, in all seriousness,

these people somehow

imagining themselves to be great

political strategists. They work directly in the

Presidential Administration, they're allocated

money stolen from the budget, and they

make a video with a homeless person wearing our

T-shirts, then post it and

spread it across social media: "Homeless people

work at Navalny's штаб (campaign office)." That's the government for you.

You see? So it's no surprise that even

employees of Zhilishchnik (a municipal housing maintenance service) don't want

to vote for United Russia, even if

you know, or my program

and in general all the other programs on

YouTube are simply shut down forever.

But that won't change the essence of anything: in the

Kremlin sit idiots, and working for them is

just a gang of the same kind of thieves. It's obvious

that out of those 253

million rubles, Kostin and all the

others, in my opinion and estimation,

stole about 200 million—just stole it outright—and

reported, as the results of their

work, these videos about homeless people. That's

how everything is built there. That's how they build

bridges, that's how they make roads, that's how they

launch rockets, that's how they fight me.

You see, they spent 250 million rubles,

something didn't work out—fine, let's

send in the cops, and let them come and

take it all away.

The teleprompter light, the iPad, these

lavalier mics—we had several of those lying around,

little clip-on mics, you know, the kind that

are used for the most important materials, the ones that may

contain information for investigations.

Everything was seized, including the lav mics. We now have to

rent them too. That's how all this

works. And of course, to any

normal person, this clearly shows that, unfortunately,

with this government, nothing

normal or healthy can ever happen. They

can't even fight me—fight all of us—in any

normal way. All they can do is

skim money off it. However, unfortunately,

not everything is quite so funny, yes.

Even their fight against us is, generally speaking,

not very funny. But

the things they're doing now within

the framework of that same Moscow department

or in the regions—they, they, they are

identical. And let's start with something both idiotic

and criminal at the same time: along with the FBK offices,

there were offices all across the country,

everywhere, yes. And they've already gone through

the apartments and offices many times—there's

nothing left to take there. And now they've gone on, but

they still need to report that they've

searched something else, so they've already started

searching random neighbors. Let's

listen to Olga Kartavtseva, our

coordinator from Omsk, whose

neighbor was searched—even though she is, basically,

a supporter of Putin and United Russia, well...

Like, they searched them too.

Her mother's apartment was searched because

she is in contact with the coordinator, well, on this

she's in contact with them—they're her neighbors in the building.

A search was conducted. Let's listen.

On Tuesday evening I came home, and my

neighbors told me that their apartment had been searched in connection with

the FBK case.

They have absolutely nothing to do with the work of

the headquarters. They are not employees, not even

volunteers. They have never attended a single

protest action. They are completely apolitical and

are simply people who live in my

building entrance. As a result of the search, their

personal electronics were seized: a computer,

a laptop, and several phones,

as well as all the cash they

had in the house. After the search, they were taken

to the Investigative Committee for questioning.

They returned home in complete shock, not

understanding what was happening. That same day,

the mother of one of my neighbors was also searched.

This woman lives on the other side of

the city. I have never seen her once; we

do not know each other at all. This whole situation

shows that in the YBK case they can come

for absolutely any random

person—your neighbor, your

acquaintance, or even someone who

has never even seen you in person and

never knew you. They want to rob and intimidate us,

but they will not succeed, just as

they failed to intimidate my neighbors.

25,000 people are watching us live.

enjoying this very description

of it. This is really madness, I mean,

it's clear: Moscow is demanding that FBK be shut down,

that all headquarters be closed. They carried out searches, searches,

then more searches were carried out already at the homes of

relatives and acquaintances. Even more

searches are being demanded by Moscow—they've started searching neighbors

and relatives. Neighbors—as

was done by the wonderful, amazing

Investigative Committee in Omsk Region.

To them we award the grand prize

for super-idiocy. But as I already said, we

are moving toward things that are actually becoming

dangerous and very unpleasant. They are

doing this in a very Putin-style way.

Yes, that's what he always does: when people

get outraged, he takes one step back, then

people calm down, and he takes two steps

forward. And when there were rallies, they

were releasing people. The rallies ended, and they

started arresting people again. And five

people are currently under arrest in the Moscow

case. I think four of them are being held in pretrial detention.

Alexander Melnikov has been placed under house

arrest, and Gory Lesnykh, Martin, Maxim

Martynov, Alexander Melnikov

Mylnikov is under house arrest. The remaining

two are still in SIZO (pretrial detention): Andrei Barshai

is in SIZO.

Vladimir Yemelyanov as well. And of course, with him, this is

just such a story—

an unpleasant, heavy one for any

person. He is that same Vladimir

Yemelyanov.

He is an orphan. He has a grandmother, and his grandmother

is 76 years old. Naturally, she depends on him

and is in his care. She is without assistance

and unable to manage on her own. He is her only provider.

He has now been thrown into SIZO, and let's

watch—1 minute 17 seconds.

This is the crime. The Investigative Committee,

all these people—and Putin first and foremost—

Putin is the one saying: lock people up.

They believe that Vladimir Yemelyanov

must be kept under arrest despite

his personal circumstances, for the terrible

crime that you are about to see on video now.

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in deliberately slowed-down footage. Everything

you just saw—that is the basis, the entire substance

of the criminal case under which

this person has been arrested. He has

an elderly grandmother left behind, and it is unclear what

is to be done now, who will help, because

yes, you can raise money for the grandmother,

but she needs daily care. Yet this

government believes

and demonstratively insists that this—this right here—

should be considered a crime in Russia.

Two idiots with rubber batons are beating

people.

One normal person simply

tries to intervene and pulls away

[__] with the rubber baton. We can see he does not

strike him, does nothing

of the sort—he simply sees that the police officer

has gone berserk, is beating people lying on the ground, and he makes

an attempt to pull him away. Straight to SIZO for that.

For contrast: Yemelyanov was put in SIZO,

while the man you are seeing now—

you are about to see on video now—the torture

in the Yaroslavl prison colony, and the person responsible for

that torture, just the other day, was transferred from

SIZO to house arrest. [inaudible] seconds.

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28,000 people are watching us live.

I am sure many of you

looked away—they wanted to stop watching now.

It really is a fairly

unpleasant, difficult sight, in which we

see what is essentially a fascist gang

One of them even took off his T-shirt so that it would be

it’s easier there to beat the soles of the feet; they laid him down

a person on a table and are literally torturing him

so, the people who organize

this torture were released under house

arrest, because, well, my God, this is

not such a serious offense; you only

used your official position

to organize a criminal group made up of

subordinates, those employees — a

criminal group of monsters and sadists

that tortured people. Of course, he should be under

house arrest so that he can lie on

his bed at home and eat home-cooked food, while

as for that very Emelyanov, who

just grabbed for one second by the

bulletproof vest — he’s the one who has to sit in

pretrial detention. His 76-year-old grandmother has to

somehow survive there — Putin doesn’t give a damn how she

will survive, because those who torture

are, of course, much closer to him. The state

is set up to protect those who

torture, to protect those who, basically,

are closer to Putin in terms of psychological type — those who

torture, steal, and lie endlessly

they are closer to him, so they need to be shielded. In

St. Petersburg

just now, the other day, a police officer

received a suspended sentence for beating

a teenager and also hitting a teenager with a car

A police officer gets a suspended sentence, while participants in a

rally were given six- or seven-year prison terms

for what? For pushing someone, for throwing a paper

cup, for tossing a trash can that didn’t hit

anyone — and that gets you 6 years, 3 years, 4 years

single-person pickets — four years. But this

police officer who beat and ran over a teenager —

what nonsense, a suspended sentence, and that’s that

let’s even take him back into the police. He could have

crippled someone, could have simply beaten

a teenager — apparently that’s no big problem

And let me remind you that we are raising

money today to send a message to

Vladimir Putin, who thinks, who

very much wants to shut down our program, and

believes that with these endless antics

with equipment he’ll manage to close it. But we say

that we will make every effort to

resist him. The fundraiser is active both

online and offline. If you are

watching the video not live but later,

later. Saratov, and the Saratov murder

the horrific Saratov murder was, after all,

probably the most important topic of recent

days, and it was of course interesting to watch

how United Russia, in a coordinated way together

with its Kremlin people, finally

launched its campaign in support of

the death penalty. Quite a lot of people

knew about this before; I wrote that they

had such a plan. There were leaks from

Kremlin political strategists saying that they

would provoke a discussion about

the death penalty because it is very important to them

that people not discuss any

real problems, but instead that there again be

a clash between liberals, who are

obviously against the death penalty, and

conservatives, who are obviously largely

in favor of the death penalty

Well, the United States does have the death penalty

and a large share of people support

the death penalty, and it is known that in Russia

an overwhelming majority of people support

the death penalty. The Kremlin very much

wants this discussion

about the death penalty to go on endlessly, and

for United Russia members to start shouting at those who are against it,

and for the others to shout back, “So what, are you defending

pedophiles?” And who exactly will your

death penalty help? Again, it’s an endless

drawn-out discussion. They had been waiting for a way

to start it, and now this horrific

murder that happened in Saratov

these disgusting

Kremlin crooks considered a good moment

to begin discussing this. But

it seems to me that what happened in

Saratov points first and foremost to

the fact that what we really need is a deep

reform of the law enforcement system. It’s just that

nothing works. Let’s once

again go over what happened in Saratov: previously

a man with several prior convictions killed

a girl and hid her in a garage. The girl

was searched for by several thousand people across

Saratov — volunteers, over the course of several

days, began going out to search

They were searching because, among other things,

huge numbers of ordinary citizens came out

because the police weren’t doing a damn thing

No one trusts the police; people were running around

and breaking into garages themselves

and then they started accusing the police of

covering up for this pedophile, and there

really were disturbances there, in fact, and

a police car was blocked there

Let’s watch 15 seconds

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What is happening? People are demanding a lynching

They are saying: this man killed a girl

we searched for her for three days and found her dead

in a garage. Hand him over to us right now and we’ll

kill him. This happens quite often in

situations like this. The main reason for it

is, naturally, rage, disappointment

people’s fury, and so on — and a lack of faith in

the system. They believe in neither the police nor the courts

because they have seen that neither the police nor the courts

nor the system did a damn thing, and they are one hundred

percent right

The direct perpetrator, of course, is the one who killed her, but

those responsible for what happened are, of course,

the authorities, because they built the system this way

and the biography of this very

killer, Tugotin, perfectly

shows that this happened because of

the people who built such a system

such a system in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, such a system in the prosecutor’s office

the penal enforcement system, so this is

Tugoten, he confessed to the murder

of a nine-year-old child, several times

he had previously served time for rape, for theft, for

robbery, for indecent acts

against minors

those are the kinds of biographical episodes listed in the verdicts

all of that is also quite unpleasant

to hear. Nevertheless, on December 31, 2010,

while returning from a penal colony, already having prior convictions,

he saw a woman on the road during the day

attacked her, strangled her, threatened to kill her, took away her

phone and camera

and then raped her at six in the evening

on New Year's Eve, right out on the street

that is, we already see a robbery

attack

and rape. How much time do you think he got?

Three years. He got three years, twice

less than in Russia this rotten

prosecutor's office

this disgusting Investigative Committee

demands for people who took part in

rallies, less than what a man received

who stood in a one-person picket. He

got three years. Then, well, here if I were to

read out the description of the monstrous things he did, I won't

I won't

read it there, it's all quite

unpleasant to read further

but the following violent acts

of a sexual nature, I won't recount either

they are also rather deeply unpleasant

in their details, believe me, damn it. He

was again given three years. But no, I won't read all of it

after all, but believe me, damn it,

it's impossible, damn, to give only that much for such a

crime—three years. Previously, repeatedly

convicted. He had been convicted of theft

then he committed a robbery with

rape—three years. Then again

violent acts of a sexual

nature, and again, damn it, three years. What is the point of

having any kind of correctional system at all?

For what purpose is there any overall system

of supervision? He even had, by the way,

speaking of which, he was once ordered

to pay the victim

compensation for moral damages. Do you know how much? 100,000

rubles (about $1,100). Yet we, to the Armenia restaurant,

because of allegedly uneaten shashlik (grilled meat), are supposed to

pay 400,000, and to the Moscow

Metro several million rubles

and to the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), we are supposed to pay

several million rubles. But here you go:

a person raped another person

robbed them, strangled them—100,000 rubles in total

and six and a half years altogether. That's as much

as people in Russia get for protests

Well then, if he had already committed crimes

against children

the system should work the way it does abroad:

if you're a pedophile

you go on a sex offender registry, you're kept under

supervision, you are restricted in the places

where you are allowed to live. That's how

the system should work

Our task is not simply to write on some

piece of paper: execution, shooting,

quartering, or something else. Our task

is to make sure these children are not killed, right?

Our task is to remove

the threat. But our law enforcement agencies

don't do a damn thing. This whole

correctional and penal system is

just complete nonsense. But I do go to

all these inspections

I mean, there are people sitting there, but they

seem like normal enough people, but they

are doing absolutely meaningless work

You come there and they ask you, well,

Alexei Anatolyevich

have you committed any crimes

over the past week? You write: no, over the past

week I have not committed any crimes. And then you leave

And this is called supervision. Damn it, what the hell is

the point of this? Of course it doesn't work

So we see a situation in which

a guy previously convicted of similar

crimes—there had been no murder before, but then

he commits one, and they still can't find him quickly

and people have to run around looking for him for three days

although, properly speaking, there should of course be

some kind of tracking system, and any

local police officer should immediately understand: in my

district there lives a person who could

do something like this, so let's quickly

look for him. This should happen instantly

A girl has gone missing, and for three days everyone

was searching, while the police, under

a normal system of control and supervision,

should immediately have a list of the first

suspects

That is what we pay taxes for. We pay

taxes so that the state makes sure

people are not killed and not raped

and we do not need—well, I am a principled

opponent of the death penalty. I even know that

among a large number of perfectly

normal people with liberal

democratic views, there are many

supporters of the death penalty. But I urge

everyone not even to get drawn into an

idiotic discussion about whether it is necessary

to bring it back

or not bring back the death penalty. And using

the example of this murderer, Tovasin,

using the example of the case of the murderer Tovatin,

we simply see the complete failure of the law enforcement

system: the interior minister should resign

the removal of all these people, all those

we have now in the Investigative Committee—

it is truly a gathering of idlers who

cannot do anything. The system

of prevention, the penal enforcement system,

the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN)—it should be

completely disbanded. That is what the situation tells us

the situation in Saratov

and not at all about the issue of applying the death penalty

and all the other situations that

just this same week, it was as if

this nightmare came pouring down

where the police and the Investigative Committee

only start to stir even a little

because people are up in arms

Yekaterinburg

sales manager Ksenia went missing

which, apparently, Gena

she had a car, and she decided

to sell the car, and then she disappeared, that was it

they searched and searched and searched; on the 15th, she

was selling the car, and after some

time the car was found by plate-recognition officers

in Chelyabinsk, and the suspects were detained there as well

the suspects

but for quite a long time this

car

was being driven around somewhere, and it was being picked up by the so-called

Potok traffic-camera system; for example, in the case files

of the fabricated criminal cases against me

all of that is found very quickly, it turns out

everywhere I drive, the police literally

track where I’m going in real time, and if needed

they’ll stop me; it’s all neatly filed away

but here, in the situation in

Yekaterinburg, they only started working after

thousands of people there began searching, such a

uproar, well

a collection effort began, of course, and a huge scandal erupted on

social media

the police were forced to start moving

and they detained those people; if it hadn’t been for

the thousands of Yekaterinburg residents who simply

went into an uproar and made a scandal

they wouldn’t have looked into this case at all

absolutely nothing was happening there. Why?

Because the Investigative Committee

of Yekaterinburg

instead of investigating the disappearance

of a young woman, what were they doing?

Conducting searches at our campaign offices

That’s where they spared no effort; there was an enormous

amount of it, and this week there too

they carried out searches at the relatives of a former

campaign staffer — I mean, really

some people who simply have no

connection to anything. Let’s listen to

Grayson Polovykh — 34 seconds

What were the law enforcement agencies doing,

the Investigative Committee and the police

of Yekaterinburg, at the moment when they

should have been investigating the disappearance

and, as it later turned out, the murder of a young

woman? Let’s hear from the person

who has already gone through this — Natalia Chast

some of the wording here is unclear in the original

Even if she did owe something, the police certainly should have

been polite and kept saying in every possible way

and justifying themselves with the words that it was not their

initiative, that the client was not in Moscow. I want

to remind those police officers that you

in a crime there are three parties: the one who ordered it,

the organizer, and the perpetrator. And those

police officers who were at the home of

me and my ex-husband yesterday are in fact

accomplices in the crime, its

perpetrators — they robbed us, well

of course, how could you possibly investigate a murder

let the volunteers from Yekaterinburg run around

there, combing through the bushes, looking for something

trying to figure things out meanwhile

the car stolen from her was being driven around and was being logged

in the Potok system, and the police could simply

have found out just like that

when the person disappeared, a report was filed

a person had gone missing

they could immediately, within half a day, within

a few hours, have seen

that the car this woman had been selling

was being driven somewhere, and by completely

different people. But they didn’t do that, and

only started acting after the scandals

they didn’t do it because, of course,

they needed to conduct a search — but at our

former campaign staffer’s place, at her ex-husband’s place

at some other people’s homes, at our

coordinator’s

Viktor Barmen, a former coordinator — but instead

they again carried out searches on a large

huge number of people, searches everywhere

after all, you need investigators or operatives

find witnesses, find a forensic expert — well, not

a medical expert, just an expert who

will conduct the examination; you see, that’s

about 15 people for each, right, each

search location. As for the murder, let’s say in

Krasnoyarsk, well, a similar situation

[music]

It’s monstrous. Sorry that I’m stumbling over my words, I just

can’t find an epithet anymore, I already

almost can’t speak when I talk about

the Russian police — the word “monstrous”

comes up every second. You see,

this video is also quite disturbing, nevertheless

let’s watch 23 seconds: two men came

and killed a man, beat him to death. They

beat him, and he did not die immediately, he died

later, but now from the characteristic

video you’ll understand what it is. 23

seconds

you’ve been feeding me this for four days

this scarecrow here

the one you saw with his face covered in blood — they

beat a man to death

almost to death — well, to death, since he later

died some time later. They filmed all of it

on video; his whole face was covered in blood. He

is the son of a former judge

he was under a travel restriction, and then two

were arrested, but this one

they came to find — I simply really do not

understand how — or rather, I do understand how this

is set up — but the police came, the very same

Investigative Committee, Bastrykin’s people (Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee)

and said: so, a man was killed, beaten to death

beaten to death — so what do we have here, a crook

One of the attackers is recording all of this on

There’s blood on his face. So what are we going to

do with the son of a former judge?

Probably just a travel restriction. There you go—

he’s apparently not such a dangerous person anymore,

unlike those people in Moscow who somehow

hold rallies. We’ll let him go under a

travel restriction. In Krasnoyarsk,

people had to hold a public gathering,

and on October 15 a public gathering took place there.

And only after that did they arrest this sick

guy with blood on his face and his tongue hanging

out.

Only after that was he arrested. Otherwise they would have

given him a suspended sentence, let him off, because

he’s connected to a judge, I suppose.

He’s one of ours—so what if he killed someone?

This was all recorded on a mobile phone. I’m telling

you, the guys were just having a little fun there, forgive me.

But holding a one-person picket (a solo protest) —

just standing there — and working at Navalny’s headquarters

there, now that’s considered a serious

crime. In Krasnoyarsk, there are searches.

Of course — let’s search the coordinator,

the former coordinator, seize everything, while here

it’s just, “off you go.” This whole system should be

for the most part not merely dismantled

but liquidated — at the very least, the penal

system. After that, it needs

to be rebuilt from scratch, because many parts

of it are beyond any reform.

Everything that Chaika did in the Prosecutor’s Office and

Bastrykin in the Investigative Committee

is simply nonfunctional.

Law enforcement agencies

cannot, do not know how, and do not understand how

to investigate crimes. We need

to talk about this again after the wave of

horrific murders

in Saratov, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg, and

so on, and so on, and so on. It doesn’t

go by every day, but I can’t help

saying that literally just

40 minutes before the broadcast, there was an

incident in this very New Greatness case

that once again shows us what the real

priority of our

judicial and so-called law enforcement

system really is. The New Greatness case — of course,

you remember it: a group of young people into which

agents were planted. This isn’t my invention anymore — it’s

in the case materials: FSB officers were planted there.

These FSB officers gathered

young people around them and themselves wrote the

manifesto and the organization’s charter. This

group of young people met in cafés, and they were asked who supported

the charter — “We wrote the charter of our

organization, New Greatness.” What were they,

kids, supposed to say? They said, “We support it,” after which

they were all arrested, and they are still being held

in detention. And today, right in court, when their

pretrial detention was extended,

two of them, screaming, simply slit

their own veins.

They just don’t know what to do. They don’t know

how to draw attention to themselves, because

it has all already come out, that all of this

was done by FSB officers, that it was FSB officers who wrote the charter,

that it was FSB officers who organized them — adults,

grown people.

FSB employees who, in this way,

were obviously, damn it, earning themselves

new stars on their epaulettes, new ranks. They wanted

to report that they had uncovered

an extremist organization by organizing

that extremist organization themselves.

They recruited basically just children through

the internet, and now these kids have to

resort to this simply so they can

say, “Guys, look at us, look at what is

happening to us — it’s just lawlessness and a nightmare.”

This is what the authorities are offering us

as law enforcement.

Can this be supported?

Of course not. Will it help? Because

they will shut down my program, which means

fewer people will learn

about all this — probably somewhat fewer, yes. But

I am absolutely convinced that all residents

in places like Saratov, as we’ve discussed,

Yekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk, and so on — they

all know this, and it’s hardly, hardly likely that

they have come to love

law enforcement any more than

they did yesterday. We have 32,800 people

watching live right now; we’ve raised

94,000 on Streamlabs, 122,000 in

Super Chat. Let me remind you that you can

send your greetings — and to Vladimir Putin,

who is trying to shut down our program,

and to his wonderful, by the way, party,

United Russia, which is always declaring

that there should be no political discussions in parliaments. And now we’ve finally

seen one in the Legislative Assembly of Ulyanovsk

Region — a rather amusing political

discussion.

Let’s take a look — it’s just

the face of Russian

parliamentarianism. Let’s watch.

A funny 1 minute and 15 seconds.

Don’t confuse me.

Take him away.

A United Russia member accordingly decided to

tease a Communist deputy, and

naturally — good Lord, these people —

all their jabs always go in one

direction, one topic: so-called non-traditional

sexual orientation. They discuss nothing else

endlessly. They have no other topic

for discussion or for jokes.

For representatives of the authorities, apart from

things related to homosexuality, there is

nothing else — nothing else, in their view,

deserves any

attention at all. And so,

basically, after that

all the prison-code mentality kicks in, and

off it goes, dragging everyone in the parliament into it.

Fights sometimes break out in parliaments around the world.

But of course, it’s oddly amusing to see this kind of

distinctively Russian twist on things.

A remarkable situation arose over the honor and

dignity of one of Russia’s prison officials.

Yes, we’ve already talked a bit about

these prison officials, but this is just

straight out of a movie or a book, you know.

There is the head of Penal Colony No. 9

in the city of Petrozavodsk, and everyone in

Petrozavodsk, really everyone in the whole system, knows

that people are tortured in this colony, and the warden

personally takes part in the torture as well,

torturing and tormenting the inmates there.

These people have already been imprisoned; they’ve already been punished.

They are serving their sentences because they

are locked up, living in barracks, working — but no, apparently someone wants

to torture them additionally. The outlet Mediazona

wrote about this and quoted people

who spoke about the torture, and then this

guy, his name is Ivan Savelyev, he

was outright indignant.

He said his honor and dignity had been offended.

There were some very funny turns of phrase there,

like: “I worked toward this goal my whole life,”

“I became head of the colony, I have an ideal

colony, no one is tormented there, no one is

tortured, and Mediazona

has slandered me, the scoundrels,”

and I was thinking, maybe I should keep an eye on this, and maybe

some of you were worried too. Mediazona

was worried, understandably, because in the local court

this crook would go and

even in a Moscow court, he could still win money from

Mediazona.

This outlet is very important and

very far from wealthy,

and everyone knows that this brute is still

torturing people, but in a Russian court he would still

win anyway. But then something wonderful happened.

A video was published — directly,

quite literally involving this very

warden himself. The video has no sound,

so perhaps that’s why it feels a bit surreal,

but there he is, this very colony chief,

who supposedly never tortures anyone, the

most wonderful person in the world, who has never

beaten anyone, and who sued Mediazona because

there is supposedly no torture in his colony — and yet

here he is, doing exactly the kind of thing he

claimed he had nothing to do with, right there on video.

And in fact, that’s not where the story ends.

The story continues

in an absolutely astonishing way, because

this same Ivan Savelyev — what do you think happened to him?

Was he immediately arrested for this?

No — he wasn’t even suspended from

his post. He still heads this

colony. More than that, he simply started

surveilling — he organized surveillance of

a correspondent who had

reported on this — not Meduza, no, Mediazona,

the Mediazona reporter who told the story. So,

the woman goes to the store and sees cars

following her, watching her, and in one of those cars

sit Savelyev himself and his deputy,

Ivan Kovalev. You can see it —

the footage is a bit chaotic on those videos,

from the surveillance cameras,

but she was terrified. This is just the height of it.

These are completely depraved people; they’re not afraid of anything.

She approaches her building entrance, and they’re there,

pointing it out to each other — not the entrance, the

store; she goes to the store, and they follow her there too.

She requested several surveillance recordings

from security cameras and established that yes,

these guys tortured people, they weren’t removed

from their posts, and on top of that they organized surveillance of her.

And who knows — what if they kill her, or do something else,

or plant drugs on her?

These people feel such complete

impunity, and they are so thoroughly

backed by the authorities, that they even keep their positions. So really,

what exactly has to happen, what else must

take place before this colony chief

is removed?

Do there have to be videos of him cutting someone’s head off

or something? There is already

video footage of him simply beating someone,

hitting a person on the head. And the most incredible part

— the perfectly logical ending to this

story would be that they

won’t even withdraw their lawsuit against Mediazona,

but will pursue it, win it, and

force this journalist to

pay, and force Mediazona to pay as well, for

the terrible,

terrible lie they supposedly told.

Let me answer some questions now.

By the way, I didn’t say this at the beginning:

we’re not taking questions on Twitter right now, only on

YouTube. Yes, we’re having technical

issues because of this raid, so we can’t

take your questions on Twitter.

So please send us your questions through YouTube.

Sorry, please. At the fifty-first

second I probably said something

our regular viewers are writing, writing

that they can’t send them through Twitter, only through

YouTube. I’m being asked:

if police activity is public under the law,

then why do people in masks

prevent video recording? That’s

a very big question.

The first thing they do is immediately run to

all those cameras and start

covering them up, because they know better than anyone

just how illegal their

actions are. And those video recordings — well, they

won’t just disappear. Whatever exists

will remain forever — in 10 years, in

20 years. Statutes of limitations won’t erase everything,

and people understand

that this is simply evidence of their

crime. Ilya asks: what do you

think — how long will this keep going, and

as far as we understand, why exactly

actually — I’m gathering my thoughts now.

Right now, they’re taking the money too and trying to control everything.

under Putin

Their whole concept is that they

will never stop; they will

keep coming constantly, once a week

or carrying out raids once every three weeks, maybe

more often, maybe less often.

just in order to keep taking things endlessly.

Everything on our side is structured in exactly this

way — it’s a war of attrition: how long

can we hold out while they simply

take absolutely everything from us — personal equipment and

office equipment.

Now we just don’t buy things anymore; we rent

them instead. And they’ll come up with something else.

I don’t know, maybe they’ll start seizing battery-powered equipment too,

or they’ll intimidate the rental

companies. But it is completely obvious that

Putin personally gave the order that there must be no

Navalny LIVE (the media channel associated with Alexei Navalny), that there must be no such

videos on the YouTube channel, that

none of this should exist, because it

hit our party very hard —

United Russia — and now they have really

decided to shut it down completely. And I think

that, of course, this will continue.

Dzhanna Rast Fletcher asks me:

“Alexei, are you aware of what’s happening in Kurgan, about

the closure of the tuberculosis clinic?”

Not only am I aware — I actually wanted

to tell you about it, because, well, you know,

I generally love stories about the adventures of the

Doctors’ Union. But what happened

in Kurgan is just the story of 2019.

It’s an absolutely incredible story. So, in the city of

Kurgan, there is a tuberculosis dispensary (specialized TB clinic).

Tuberculosis is a serious problem, and the number of cases is rising.

In

official medicine, they try

to show less of the statistics, since

tuberculosis is increasing. A lot of

migrants are arriving from countries where there was no

tuberculosis prevention, there are prisoners, and so

on. It’s a major problem, and people who

have absolutely nothing to do with any of this

are getting infected.

It’s a major problem. And in Kurgan, the authorities decided

to close this very TB clinic.

And, as usual, they told the staff and the public:

“Just submit your resignation letters, and we’ll

transfer you somewhere someday or

find you jobs.” But that’s not how it works. If you

want to lay off doctors, you have to

pay compensation or do something of that sort.

If an official is dismissed or laid off,

they pay them something, and here it should be

the same. But instead they simply decided

to brush them off and throw them out onto the street. The doctors

were outraged, and the local residents were outraged too,

which is not surprising at all, because

in Kurgan Region, there are unquestionably

enormous problems with

healthcare. The residents said, “We don’t want

this TB clinic here to be closed.”

The doctors said they didn’t want that either, and the doctors

barricaded themselves inside the building. And

the local residents — let’s take a look at

how the residents and the doctors in isolation

were living — it was literally like something out of some damn

movie about the aftermath of

a civil war. They were bringing flour,

sugar, and potatoes to support the doctors,

who, excuse me, had barricaded themselves

from the officials inside the

tuberculosis clinic building. And

let’s first watch 53 seconds

of these doctors’ appeal: “We have no water.

At the present moment, our unit

is located in a residential area

far from the city center. It is the only one, and

its closure will lead to adverse

consequences. All these patients will go into

the city, where there will be additional

infection among the population. We will remain here

until the very end. Dear

officials, leave us our department. We

will not leave this building under any

circumstances. We must fulfill our

professional duty.”

And the officials — we simply will not give up

this hospital. We will stay here until

the very end, fighting until we defend our

right to work. It’s just — it’s simply

astonishing, amazing, that these people — doctors —

are already saying: ‘Don’t you dare close

the hospitals.’ They keep closing hospitals endlessly.

And this is called ‘healthcare optimization.’

In healthcare. And yes, it does sound logical:

a TB clinic should be located

somewhere outside the city center. That makes sense — after all,

people with tuberculosis cough, they

can infect others with tuberculosis.

And then an absolutely extraordinary story unfolded — it

didn’t end there, don’t think it did. So, the tuberculosis

clinic — inside it, the doctors

and patients had barricaded themselves, and local

residents were bringing them potatoes and flour.

And what did the local authorities do? Well, logically, they

could have come and said, ‘So, the doctors are protesting there,

let’s leave them alone, or pay

them compensation, or enter into negotiations with

the union.’ But no — at 4 a.m., they

were stormed by the police. And there were

sick people inside; one of those patients

started having an

epileptic seizure. Let’s watch 23

seconds.

Twenty plainclothes men burst in there.

‘Police officers.’ ‘No — first of all, we’re not in

uniform. Who even are you?’

[inaudible / profanity]

This is all happening at 4

in the morning. They rush in and start

— and the woman says, ‘Right now we’re going to

detain all of you and put handcuffs on you.’

And notably, in the next 45 seconds, you can see how they

detain the head

of the Doctors’ Alliance union.

Vasilyeva, a regular heroine of our

program—what are you doing? Stop it.

Stop doing this. What are you

doing? Have you lost your minds? What are you doing?

What are you doing? What are you doing?

Let the person go, for heaven’s sake.

The police are killing people, damn it—some law enforcement this is.

That’s what they call it.

Stop.

Don’t the law enforcement agencies of the city

of Kurgan or the Kurgan region have anything more

important to do than detaining

doctors and some union people

who are in this hospital? The Health Department

should be resolving this issue with them.

This issue should be handled by the Health Department.

The Health Department, however, said that the unrest

around the dispensary was organized by—who else—

that’s right, orchestrated by Navalny (Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny).

To put it mildly, to be honest, the day before yesterday I learned about

the existence of this dispensary, but their answer

is always the same: Navalny did it.

So that means we need to send the cops so that

these cops can detain everyone at 4 a.m. But

does that actually solve the problem that way?

Fine, they detained them, held them, took one of them away

—Vasilyeva, in fact—and the second

woman, whose voice you heard off-camera,

was taken to court and found guilty

of an offense: resisting

police officers.

They were fined. So what, did that solve the problem?

Well, of course, now it probably looks to those

people from the dispensary, and to the local residents

who were bringing them potatoes—what are they supposed

to say to them and to everyone else? That’s why I

am calling on the entire city of Kurgan, the Kurgan

region, and in general, by the way, the medical

community—there probably needs to be some kind of

action here, a big action, in which all

doctors in Russia, when a police officer comes to them

for treatment, will treat them,

yes, they should treat them—but simply say:

“Please tell me, do you

consider it normal that in this way

the police behave toward doctors?

After all, they didn’t do anything. They were just

sitting there; they have some kind of conflict,

it’s happening on the premises, they’re treating people.

Why is it that someone has to burst in

and police have to drag them away? They shouldn’t.

But if they’re dragging people off, then what crimes are they not

solving because they’re busy doing

this? Ptits Paint asks me: what do you

think about the defendant in the Moscow Case (criminal cases tied to the 2019 Moscow protests) who

left the country? I don’t think anything in particular. I think

that everyone makes such decisions for themselves.

They decide for themselves.

There’s nothing here that I could now

evaluate or support or condemn,

or judge in any way, because everyone has their own

personal circumstances. Each person decides for

themselves what price they are prepared

to pay, and so I am sure that

in this case we are talking about a good

young man. I met him at

that protest near the Presidential Administration.

His surname is Gubaydullin—Gubaydullin, I think, yes.

Seems like a good guy, and a programmer too.

He left, and then wrote about it afterward.

I read his Facebook post today. Everyone decides

for themselves. He decided, so he decided—that means

he believes that is the right thing to do. The only

emotion I feel

is regret over the fact that he

worked at Sberbank (Russia’s largest state-owned bank), which means he is a

highly qualified, obviously

programmer who worked at Sberbank. He

worked here, probably earned a large

salary, paid taxes, spent that salary

here. He went abroad, and just like that

he’ll get another job as a programmer,

he’ll pay taxes there, he’ll spend

his salary there. So what happened? Once again, we

became a little poorer.

Once again, we made things worse. There, he—I don’t

know whether he has a wife, probably not, he’s a young guy—

I don’t think so. He’ll get married there, he’ll find

a wife there, he’ll have children there, he’ll

buy himself an apartment there, and everything that he

creates in life, all the social goods

he produces—if we do not, after all,

build the Beautiful Russia of the Future (a slogan used by Russian opposition figures),

and do not bring him back, then they will

remain somewhere abroad, and we will never

have anything great or cool

or wonderful if we keep pushing people

abroad. People can create things there,

while we will sit here only remembering our

great past. What’s more, now we

are remembering that great past, and what do we get?

Frankly, it’s just shameful. The thing that

really struck me personally—and struck many others,

people wrote about it—

the great Soviet cosmonaut

Alexei Leonov died.

People my age or older all

knew him—almost the whole country knew him.

He was the first person to walk

in open space, that is, to perform a spacewalk.

Gagarin, Tsvetov, Tereshkova, Leonov—everyone

knew and still knows these people absolutely. This is

truly, without any irony, our great

past. He died. First, let’s

look at 27 seconds

of that very moment when he goes out into

open space—27 seconds, excuse me.

[music]

[applause]

[music]

I mean, it was genuinely amazing. Back then it was

a technological breakthrough. It was incredible.

It was very difficult to do, it was very

risky—in other words, heroic. Leonov’s

achievement was extraordinary. Leonov died.

Who do you think came to his

funeral? Putin? No. Medvedev? No. Rogozin?

The head of Roscosmos (Russia’s state space corporation) did not come to his

At the funeral of the most famous still-living

Soviet cosmonaut, a hero,

Rogozin, damn it, simply did not show up at all.

But Tom

Stafford came to the funeral. He is 89 years old, an American

astronaut who flew to the Moon and arrived

in a wheelchair, as you can see,

to bury Leonov. Our leadership, our space-industry bosses,

did not come there, yes.

Because, well, what “great past” are we talking about?

They only use it for some

propaganda purposes, and otherwise,

well, they probably had some business to attend to.

They probably had to, I don’t know, carve something up,

sort things out, settle little matters in a restaurant,

sit with someone and think about what kind of

cool office complex will appear

on the site of the Khrunichev space plant

(the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center). Those are the issues they were

busy with. But to bury

yet another Soviet legend, part of our

great past, they unfortunately had no time

for.

That is very sad. Manka, is there a word

funnier than “shmonka”? Today I

stumbled across the existence of this word in the bushes; it

is magnificent, and apparently it will stay with us

for a while, because most likely

it will become the new nickname

for the delightful, astonishing,

spectacular Vladimir Solovyov.

A regular guest of our program.

The backstory, the backstory—you know,

of course, that

Boris Grebenshchikov released the song

“Evening Mudozvon” (roughly, “Evening Asshole”), dedicated to Vladimir

Solovyov. At first, Vladimir Solovyov spent a long time

trying to prove that the song was not about him, but about

someone else, and the whole country watched

and wondered and argued whether it was really about

Solovyov after all, or about someone

else. Some say it was about Urgant, but

then in the end

one hundred percent of those watching this

situation said: well of course, Vladimir

Solovyov, this song title is about you.

Then somehow it turned out that even

Solovyov’s colleagues in the trade,

people like Vladimir Pozner—he’s not the hero of my

novel, I don’t like him very much—but even

he... Let’s watch 41 seconds. He is not

ready to stand up for our Voldemar.

They crudely explained the Paris habit under

the title “Evening...” some expression, but

that’s how it is, and everyone thinks that not even

an order would help.

What does that kind of [__] even mean?

Flash Player—exactly. What I want

to say is, look: in Udar, [__] means

a castrated ram.

So I could not help but be delighted.

Vyshed 10 says it bluntly: I

think he deserved it. That is, where

you see, even people from Channel One

hate and despise

our Solovyov so much—even though he is the main

face, as it were,

of official propaganda, and his evening

show is the main platform—that even

they say quite openly, without any embarrassment:

you deserved this kind of treatment.

And then the situation develops further, and

naturally one of the main

things being discussed in

connection with our wonderful Solovyov

is that he has villas on

Lake Como in Italy, which we, among other things,

showed you. We showed you one

villa,

then we found a second villa for you. Let’s

spend 37 seconds being a little jealous of Vladimir

Rudolfovich, who may well have

an “Evening Mudozvon,” but nevertheless

lives in conditions like these. From this

side of the lake, we immediately see a large

three-story house with an attic.

In front of it there is a small pier, a private

swimming pool,

neat gardens, and several other non-residential

buildings nearby. This is

Signor Solovyov’s Italian home.

An ordinary passerby from the street

would not be able to make all this out: the villa is located

several levels below, so until

today all this beauty

was hidden from prying eyes.

We turn around and fly around the house. Its

area is more than 900 square meters.

Thank God it was built before Solovyov bought it,

so it looks quite nice.

And indeed, the most brazen thing

about Vladimir Solovyov is that

he teaches us here to love the motherland, while

he himself lives in Italy. He has a residence permit

in Italy—we showed this

document. His whole family has either

citizenship or residency rights in

Italy, while here he earns his money. And logically

there appeared this thing called a petition. It is

very funny, posted on the website

change.org. It is in Italian and says

something like: dear Italians, please kick out

Vladimir Solovyov—citizens of Russia are asking you,

please take a look at your Italy

and at Vladimir Solovyov there. And of course Solovyov

was absolutely blown apart by this.

On his show he started shouting: the petition

is gathering signatures, and there were hundreds of thousands there.

Last time it was 150,000; now it is already 200,000

people who have signed. It is clear that this is

a kind of trolling thing. He has

a residence permit there. Guys, sign

this petition—it is a good thing.

Let the Italians know, let Italian

newspapers write about it. Let’s be clear-eyed:

he is already rooted there. He

buys real estate, he has a residence

permit—he is basically Italian.

He lies about a great many things on his programs, and

he receives money from the Russian

state budget, yet he and his family live in

Italy, and no one is going to throw them out of there now.

It’s just that

Italians will be surprised as to why such a

strange thing could happen, but in the end

that is the responsibility of Putin and

the Russian state.

But the very fact of such a petition against Solovyov

simply sent him into hysterics, and he declared that

everyone who signed it, everyone who

initiated it, are informers and are writing

denunciations like in Stalin’s time (the era of mass political repression in the USSR), and he

shouted a great deal about it. And the most simply

brilliant response

was written to him by a priest, a clergyman

named Sergei. He has his own YouTube

channel called *Cleric*; you can easily

find it on YouTube—just type in *Cleric*, and there

you’ll see this priest’s eight-minute address.

I know Father Sergei a little—we met completely by chance.

He also lives in Italy, in

the city of Rimini.

And we somehow just got along very

well—a very pleasant, intelligent young man. He told me,

and I was surprised that there seems to be a Russian

community there, Russian priests. He explained to me

how everything is organized there, and then I

turned this on and watched this astonishing

address. It’s eight minutes long; I’ll show you

two minutes of it.

Roughly speaking, it sounds magnificent to me.

A Russian priest used the word “shmonka” (a slang insult),

a Russian priest living somewhere

not far from Solovyov,

and he explains to him what this

petition is for and, essentially, what

the goal is of the people who support it.

It is very funny and amusing to hear the word

“informer” from a character who, live on air,

promised to give out the contact details of a Tatar (a member of the Turkic ethnic group native to Russia)

who called you exactly what you deserve to be called—

a lackey of the Putinists. “I’ll hand over your phone number.”

“People like you need to be checked.” And then they

come out with these outbursts—I don’t know who

your attacks are meant for, apparently only

for those who are incapable of analyzing speech and

are thrilled by your piggish put-downs.

You see, the goal is not only to prevent you from

obtaining citizenship in the Europe you so despise,

but also to ban you from entering these

territories. You spit on Europe, you slander

it—so why do you need villas in Italy?

Go vacation in Crimea—that would be

consistent and patriotic. By the way, you

said you would send your son to fight in

Syria. Is he not there yet? Why not?

Russia’s interests are being defended there too.

[music]

Listen to me, Russian actor, as you

call yourself. Here in Italy, I and my

like-minded friends will first of all do everything

so that the residents of that little place where you

“vacation on a budget,” as you put it,

know who is living next to them,

know what you say about them in Russia,

about their lives, their fate. I will work on

translating your works,

absolutely free, mind you—all for the sake of your

glory and the widest possible spread

of your ideas.

Let world psychiatry have

the opportunity to study you while you are still alive. You

allow yourself to insult each and

every person who does not agree with your

pathologically inflated opinion of yourself, you [__].

Clean up after yourself—don’t disgrace Tatarstan (a republic within Russia).

[__], you [__] sawed-off nobody who has suddenly imagined himself

to be an inquisitor and yaps at

everyone in sight like some mangy mutt, with only one

hope—that your master will

protect you. The essence of such a chained little dog is

that it knows the length of its leash.

Thirty-eight thousand people watched this live—

this amazing address. I think that

we should expect our little mutt,

Vladimir Adolfovich, to not just

let it slide—his studio will explode over it, wherever he

broadcasts: on radio, on TV, on whatever second-rate channel

it may be. It will simply be very interesting

to watch. And this

wonderful duel between Father

Sergei

and Vladimir “Spool” Solovyov—

I repeat that I took this video from the channel

*Cleric* so there would be no talk that

I simply stole it. Go there,

subscribe to Sergei if you

like him. Together we raised 151,000 for

Streamlabs, 186,000 on Super Chat, and

thank you so much—that is more than

three hundred thousand, more than 300,000.

Just from what was sent during the live broadcast,

video greetings were sent to Vladimir Putin.

If you are watching the program live,

you can still send them in.

And this once again fills us with confidence that

no matter how many times they come here, no matter how many times

they confiscate our stuff—our, I don’t know,

lights, sound equipment, TV, or even

these little cups—we still will not

stop, because we will never

allow it to happen that in Russia

the rule of these mongrels is established. Thank you

very much to everyone who watched. We’ll see you

next Thursday. Bye.

[music]