Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #002, 27.04

Hello everyone, Moscow time is 20:18, which means

that it's time for the program *Navalny*

on the Navalny Live channel.

This is *Navalny in 2018*, and you've probably

already noticed that today everything is

a little unusual, and that's true.

I really am not wearing a tie. We had

actually assumed that on this program

I would always appear only in

a tie, and preferably looking into

the camera with both eyes open. Today

I can't manage that. You've probably already

heard why. I'll explain briefly.

Today I was supposed to speak at

a major event called the Event

Forum.

A lot of different people invited me

to speak officially as a candidate for

president. I was supposed to talk about

the vision of the future in

Russia. I was on my way there, all dressed up,

looking very sharp, in a shirt and tie, and as I was leaving

our office, some thug splashed

brilliant green antiseptic on me. I didn't even understand what

was happening. It got into my right

eye, and unfortunately I couldn't go

to that Event Forum. Even though I had

plans for a great speech and to

convince the people gathered there to even

send us money for the election

campaign. Instead, I had to go to

City Hospital No. 1, where I was

given the

diagnosis of a chemical burn to the right eye, and

right now, well, I can open it by sheer

force of will, but you won't like what you

see, so I won't do that,

or else we'll get

some kind of warning from Roskomnadzor (Russia's media and internet regulator).

So what do I want to say about this? Well,

does it infuriate me? Absolutely, it does.

And on a separate note, I have long arms,

so it's hard for me to buy shirts. Today

I'm wearing a shirt with sleeves

made to order, and now I'll have to throw this shirt away

because it's covered in brilliant green. That

makes me even more furious. But

essentially, first of all, it changes

nothing. And second, it once again

proves that we are completely, absolutely

right. Just listen: I have a sheet of paper here

from which I was supposed to

tell you various bits of news, and the first

item was yachting news:

that the yacht Fotini,

belonging to Dmitry Anatolyevich

Medvedev,

has apparently

opened the sailing season, and right now we can

see in the yacht tracking system how

it is now traveling from the Finnish city of Kotka,

where it spends every winter, to

Plyos, and Dmitry Anatolyevich will once again be able

to enjoy wonderful trips along

the Volga. But here's the question. Fine, I might have

said this with a more or less pink face,

and now I'm saying it with a more or less green

face. But does that actually change anything?

It changes nothing. Medvedev stole

money from us.

With stolen money, he bought the yacht

Fotini. Okay, so what?

If because of what I say, and what we say, and what

the Anti-Corruption Foundation says, and everyone around

is talking about Medvedev's corruption, talking about

how we refuse to put up with it, and

fine, then instead of spitting at us,

they'll throw brilliant green at us every

day—will that change anything? No, it won't.

It won't. Good Lord, I have a monitor here

where I can see what I

look like. Honestly, I thought I

looked a bit more glamorous. I

assumed at least that I had some kind of

more even green complexion. But even

if this is what I look like—do you agree that

your money is being stolen and used to buy

the yacht Fotini? I don't think so. Do you agree that

that

Medvedev spent 70 billion rubles on his

yachts and palaces? No, you don't. Do you agree with

the fact that someone like Peskov wears a watch

worth $400,000? Of course not. Do you

want, because of all this

that's happening, to come, for example, to our

new anti-corruption rally on June 12? I

hope you do. So a lot of people ask me

about how I feel about this. Well, of course

it irritates me a lot. It irritates me

the way the police behave. It irritates me

that the police are participating in

all of this. In all of this, there is also involvement by

the security services, which provide these

brilliant-green throwers with precise information about

who went where, on what flights,

who is flying, and everything else. But will this

lead us to stop our

work, or speak more softly

about corrupt officials? Of course

not. It won't lead to that. On the contrary, I

think we will become angrier. I hope

you will become angrier too, and help us

even more. I have a billion, a billion

questions about

security. Let's talk about security.

"Navalny wants to be closer to the people, but

he needs security," and so on and so forth.

My friends, no security detail will

help us, because we hire security when

we go somewhere.

Naturally, when there are rallies or

something like that, we use those services. But

for a person who

just wants to splash brilliant green in your face

and run away—today, for example, I simply

really didn't feel anything. I

open the car door, bang—right in the

your eye is burning like fire and you can't understand anything, and

the person ran off literally in an instant

just vanished. For example, Mikhail Mikhailovich

Kasyanov

has a large security detail protecting him

officers from the FSO (Federal Protective Service), or former FSO officers

So these are super-professional

bodyguards, but even that doesn't help him. So

from the point of view of these kinds of creeps

who just want to splash you with something

no security detail, unfortunately especially, really

helps. The goal is obvious: to make it so

that we don't go anywhere. It's obvious.

If every time you go somewhere and

then come back all

green, as they see it, after that

after a while you'll get tired of traveling, you won't

go anywhere, you won't speak publicly

you'll keep quiet. And in the end

you'll say to yourself, damn, why am I

doing all this? I'm kind of sick of it

so let me just stop. No, that won't work with us

that won't work, and I'm sure it won't work

with all those they've splashed with brilliant green

either. That's exactly why they splash them in the first place

because those are the very people who

people who, well, who

have probably already demonstrated

some firmness in their intentions

An important thing in this connection that I want

to say: in my original

plan, I meant to say a few words about

Varlamov, who, as you know, was attacked in

Stavropol too — they threw brilliant green on him and also knocked him down

and covered him with some kind of flour

and he doesn't at all

engage in politics, but to the extent that he does

engage in politics, it's

politics that, let's be honest, is fairly

comfortable for

the authorities. But the important thing is that he was attacked

and absolutely nothing was done about it

He was attacked twice, and there, just like in the

1990s, there was an episode when

they chased his car, beat on it, and all that

sort of thing. Remember, one of the main

achievements of Putin's government, broadly speaking,

is considered to be that he got rid of lawlessness. Well,

yes, there's still illegality everywhere

and lots of problems, but this kind of

outright lawlessness like in the 1990s — when

you could run up to someone in an airport

douse them with brilliant green, knock them down, and walk away — supposedly

that was gone. But now it's back, and here's why

because you cannot allow

lawlessness against specific people

You can't call the police

from the Presidential Administration and call

the FSB or the local Interior Ministry office and say, "Navalny is coming to you there

Navalny — he's Hitler and an American agent

so go ahead and bring some guys in

let them splash him with brilliant green, and then

the police, please, should do nothing

let them just stand aside, and when they

see them, don't detain them." As soon as you do that

you are authorizing lawlessness against a broad

range of people, which is what we

saw with Varlamov, because, as I understand it,

he was attacked by some

property developers, and those developers

basically legalized this violence of theirs

this lawlessness, with one simple phrase. They

shouted at him, "Take your America and get out," and suddenly

it was politics again. And that's how it

works. You cannot

fire a police chief, you cannot

reprimand them for not

investigating crimes against

Varlamov or any other person

who was attacked in this lawless way

because a week earlier you

called that same police chief and

said, "Listen, Petrovich

do us a favor, carry this out, do this little

illegal thing." How are you going to

remove him if you were giving him equally illegal

orders yourself? This is just a kind of

corruption that is already destroying the entire

fabric of power, the whole system of government. People

understand that decisions are coming from the Kremlin

that are no longer just basic illegal ones

like rigging elections, but outright

criminal orders like "attack

someone." Well, today I saw a news report

that a female journalist was doused with brilliant green and had

a dead rat thrown at her house. That's how it

goes, one thing after another: if it's allowed against

someone, then it means it's allowed against

everyone else too, and the system will work

that way

And we can see that those efforts

there really were efforts to establish

a degree of order in

the law enforcement sphere, which were

undertaken roughly from 2001 to 2010, are now

now, within

months, being completely

wiped out, back to the state of the cursed

1990s. Today there was the usual

automatic payment, but I'll send some extra money too. Thank you

very much. To be honest, I'm not prepared, for the sake of

good fundraising, to keep putting myself through this constantly

The truth is, yes, that every

time incidents like this happen, we

get sent more money

No photos of that

goblin who was splashing the brilliant green were left, as far as I

understand, though there is some video out there

it's pretty low quality. But I have

not the slightest doubt that no

investigation will happen. Remember, a year

ago the whole FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) — there were lots of us there, kids too

a lot of people — we went on a trip, and at the

airport we were attacked. It was all recorded by

a million cameras right there in the airport. Artyom

Torchinsky

from Public Oversight, the head of the Public Chamber,

said, "We insist on a thorough investigation" — and still nothing

Let me repeat: it’s not just that the investigation there led nowhere.

It didn’t even result in a criminal case.

There was no case at all, that’s it. But nevertheless, our

this does not

stop with this. Alexei, we’re with you. Thank you for

your work, and our shared bright future is with us

ahead. Thank you very much, thank you for

your support. Together with you, we are fighting to make sure

that people with green faces should not

be appearing on television. An important thing

that the lawyers asked me to say:

an email address should appear next to me now, and

the email isn’t appearing. Well, it should appear now,

probably. And this email concerns

compensation of fines for those who were

fined over the rallies on the 26th.

You know that most people

were fined 10,000 or 20,000 rubles (about $110 or $220). We

raised money in order to, well,

pay these fines together so that

people would not have to pay this amount

out of their own pockets, and the money

has appeared, I can see it. We raised the money.

Please contact this address if you

have gone through two levels of review and the decision on

your fine has entered into legal force.

Send it to us, and we will then pay that fine for you,

reimbursing that money, and so on.

That is, none of those who were

detained either in Moscow or in another

city and fined should have to

pay their fine themselves. Let me remind you that

655 people have now turned to the FBK lawyers (Anti-Corruption Foundation)

for help.

From Moscow,

361—well, 369. We have prepared appeal

complaints; 418 people are currently being handled by us.

We had quite a lot of people who were

detained and then released, and in fact were neither

fined nor arrested, fortunately. But

even in such cases we are doing

certain work in order to take them

to the European Court of Human Rights.

And I

once again confirm that

indeed, yes, for

everyone who makes it to the appellate

instance, my colleagues and I will file

a complaint with the ECHR, and I think we will, in

fact, even try to win it.

Open Russia has been declared

an undesirable organization, and I also wanted

of course to say something about that. And while

all this green-faced nonsense was happening

to me, we learned that searches were underway right now

at their offices, and in general the obvious question is

why this is being done. The authorities really do not

like Open Russia, this government does not,

and they do not like Khodorkovsky. They do not like the fact

that Khodorkovsky has money,

that he can finance this activity.

They do not like that they call people

to rallies.

They decided to try to shut the organization down

and acted in this rather

curious new way: they

declared Open Russia undesirable.

An undesirable organization can only be

designated as such only if it is a foreign organization.

But this has

rather serious consequences.

You cannot receive money from such an undesirable

organization or cooperate with it.

And despite the fact that here

Open Russia is, legally speaking,

made up of Russian legal entities, which cannot be declared

undesirable organizations, the fact that

foreign organizations were declared undesirable

has opened up a wonderful field

for this kind of nonsense that is now

going on. They will constantly carry out

searches over whether they are cooperating

with them,

look for money, keep dragging people in for

questioning, and generally try in every possible way

to crush them. With regard to different

organizations, they apparently use different strategies. As

you saw with respect to the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

they were actually fairly

unsophisticated in what they tried to do: they simply

came in here and took away absolutely everything

that was here. With Open Russia, it’s a different

tactic, but I am sure that nevertheless

nothing will come of it. I am sure that

Open Russia will continue its

activities, and I simply wanted to express

my support to them.

Ah, the five-story apartment blocks—I of course spent a long time

preparing. This was my main topic, and

again, I’m annoyed that with such a

green face I have to talk about it

and distract attention

from truly important things. This really matters not

only for Moscow, but for all of Russia.

This is 2 trillion rubles (about $22 billion), 2 trillion rubles,

collected from all across Russia in order

to be spent here in Moscow, roughly speaking,

quite

quickly and

cunningly. And I had this thought that

I would go after them now, and then

they would explain something over the course of a week, and

the issue would sort of die down on its own because

there would be some more or less reasonable

approach. But I can say with surprise

that everything has only gotten worse, and

what has happened over the past few days shows us

that in fact the main

idea behind all this Sobyanin-led

five-story-block program is simply

to pump a lot of money into Moscow’s

construction sector. And right now, first of all, we need to watch

closely

where the Moscow city government will

buy housing to relocate residents from

these apartment blocks. After all, Moscow City Hall itself is building

millions of square meters of housing; they have built

all this high-rise junk of theirs and created

in effect, quite a large

construction bubble. This housing isn't

selling; developers are heavily in debt, they

are barely hanging on, and they need a constant flow of

money in order to keep building and

the Moscow city government has found this

great little trick. The law on demolishing

five-story apartment blocks hasn't even been passed yet, but the Moscow budget has already

allocated almost 100 billion rubles (about $1.7 billion at the time) for

the initial work. And those 100 billion rubles, as well as

the money that follows, will be poured into

Moscow's construction sector, into this

kind of black hole, so that it can swallow up that money

and go on building this

garbage that won't sell by any means

other than through administrative pressure. When

their housing starts being bought up with

budget

money, the main point is this unpleasant

stupid

and nasty thing:

for now, there really is no such single category in Moscow

as "five-story buildings" as a whole—they're all different. There are

five-story buildings that really do need

to be demolished, and the residents want them demolished;

there are Stalin-era brick five-story buildings

and, as they've announced, this renovation program

can include housing of any height, and

that has already led to a large number of

scandals. Here are the obvious signs

that this program is a complete mess. Two—

three—how can you launch a 2 trillion ruble program

that affects hundreds of thousands of

people by just suddenly announcing it like this,

as if demolition is starting practically tomorrow?

It is being announced that starting May 15, some kind of

vote will be held on the Active Citizen system

which, as we know, as we all know,

is absolute fraud. People are running around

in circles: my God, on May 15 some kind of

vote is supposed to decide our fate;

we don't know what kind of vote it is, we

don't understand anything at all, but we're being forced

to vote. Money is already being

allocated for demolition and the purchase of new

apartments; meetings are being held in

district administrations, and at all these meetings

there are huge scandals because they do not

let real activists in. All of these are

signs that in this chaos, at this

staggering speed, enormous sums will be embezzled

for the benefit of Moscow City Hall.

It's like the last days of Pompeii. Here they are, these 2

trillion rubles—this money exists in

the budget for several years ahead. Moscow now has

quite substantial revenues; there has been a sharp rise in budget income

because money is being collected from the whole

rest of the country, and so Sobyanin

Khusnullin, this whole Moscow mafia

intends, in this last day of Pompeii,

to make a very nice profit.

And they will make that profit if you and I

do not resist it. The Anti-Corruption Foundation

for its part

will

investigate this situation. I know that

the movement of residents of five-story buildings is preparing

to hold rallies—and that's right, they should hold

rallies. Today there was news that

this renovation program will not

apply to Arbat, Khamovniki, and

Yakimanka because residents there are very

unhappy. And in other districts people are very

unhappy too, but apparently—well—we'll demolish them anyway.

It's obvious that

in Arbat, Yakimanka, and Khamovniki, even in

five-story buildings, quite a lot of

high-ranking officials live there. Those high-ranking

officials can raise their voices loudly;

them

you can't

ignore, unlike the people who

live somewhere in the northwest

or in Izmailovo. So

the center is being taken out of the program,

while the other buildings remain. And the fact that

the announced demolition of five-story buildings

is changing on the fly—they first wanted to demolish

everything, then they remove some newer districts—

shows that absolutely nothing has been

thought through. How can you run

a 2 trillion ruble program if you

have no plan at all, no clear

list of buildings from the outset? You

didn't discuss anything with anyone, you

didn't tell residents anything. It's just—well, this

meeting between Sobyanin and Putin at which

all this was announced—when did it happen? Well,

less than a month ago, as I understand it,

and then suddenly

they abruptly started doing something.

And as I already said, this will end in simply

grand-scale

theft. To all residents of five-story buildings I want

to say this: Moscow City Hall is made up of people

who always lie.

Do not believe a single word they say; you need

to look only at the documents. The

document that has now passed its first

reading allows people to be relocated to other

districts, allows non-residential premises to be taken away,

allows buildings of any

height to be demolished, allows compensation not at

market value, and so on and so

forth. This is total lawlessness. In the

rest of the country, no one is even

thinking about demolishing five-story buildings.

The last campaign office I opened

was in the city of Cherepovets, and I was driving past

five-story buildings there too, and I thought: how

does this happen? Cherepovets is supposedly a wealthy

city—Severstal and PhosAgro are there—so, in other words,

it's an industrial city considered one of Russia's richer

cities, and yet here no one is even remotely

thinking about this. But apparently everything has been

taken to Moscow, and in Moscow they've created this

wild panic over five-story buildings. And of course

the main goal, once again, is to steal.

So please be attentive.

Keep following this and support it.

Be sure to come out to the rally.

Otherwise you will be

robbed, stripped, and they’ll even take your home away.

So I set my alarm for 3 a.m. to

watch from Vladivostok. Wear glasses.

Alexei, I hope your eye recovers. At the

hospital they told me that the eye

would recover, like from a chemical burn, but

they said it would take about a week.

Everything should more or less heal. Thanks for watching from

Vladivostok.

at 3 a.m.—that’s the beauty of YouTube, that

you can watch it

later, on another day or in the

morning. The main thing about the renovation program is

to distract Muscovites from the opposition

movement, writes Pavlina Stefanova.

Pavlina Stefanova, I don’t think so.

I think the Moscow city government

simply failed to realize that actions like this

—so brazen—would provoke some kind of

response. But there had been brazen things before, well,

for example,

the demolitions—what Navalny talked about, the demolition of kiosks. Yes, when

Sobyanin said, well, why are they shoving

fake ownership papers at us? But

they simply overestimated their capabilities,

and this movement

of residents of five-story apartment blocks means we’ll see them at rallies

including at the rally on the 12th.

Don’t be ashamed of your face. I’m not

ashamed of mine—what difference does it make?

What difference does it make?

It’s a bit crooked right now, as far as I can tell, but

you don’t care—the main thing is that I say

the right things. I’m sitting here and

trying not to lie, trying to tell

the truth, trying not to avoid difficult issues.

I say it as it is, as I see it, as

the documents show. So I think that

even with a green face, I can perfectly well

say this: on June 12

I feel people will come out into the streets with green

faces, writes Arina

Prokudina. On June 12, let’s come out first and foremost

with Russian flags. It’s

Russia Day, after all, so it really is

a good moment to, on Russia Day

—a public holiday—come out with a Russian

flag against the main problem that

is preventing Russia from developing: corruption. And

as for the green face—well, today they splash us with

brilliant green (a common antiseptic dye in Russia); tomorrow they’ll splash us with, I don’t

know, pink paint, and we’ll come out with pink

faces or something. That’s just how it is; there’s no need

to spend too much

time figuring it

out or paying too much attention to it. Will you

sue the police for inaction?

We will, but in the same

way

as in the case in Anapa—we’ve been trying for a year to sue

the police for inaction. And again,

nothing happens. The system, well, it has

completely degraded. This isn’t even

2010 or 2011 anymore, when, for example, I

used to win quite a lot of cases against

the police for inaction. Now absolutely

nothing happens. When they

stole all our equipment, they just walked in

—police officers, not even embarrassed by the cameras—and carried everything

out of here. We filed in every court, and

what did they tell us? They returned all our complaints

and said: well, you don’t know

the surnames of the police officers who, as you

say, stole your equipment. You don’t even know

what unit these people were from. Well, the FSB (Russia’s security service) and

the FSB—but tell us which FSB department,

which operative. You can’t? Well then

we’re returning your complaint. It sounds

wild, yes, but that’s what’s happening. To this day we still

can’t get either the local Danilovsky

court or the Basmanny Court, where the

Investigative Committee is, or any other court

to accept our complaint

regarding the outright theft of all the

equipment. And you ask whether we’ll complain.

Yes, we will complain, we’ll do everything

we can. We’re doing all this work because

we’re unhappy with what’s happening, but

to expect the system now to

help us with something

would, I think, be

very naive.

Let’s auction off the shirt—the opening bid is

2,000. Which shirt? My stained one?

The thing is, it’s not about

the money. The point is that that shirt

had long sleeves, and I have long arms,

so I simply need a shirt

that you can wear with a jacket and not

look like some kind of idiot because it’s

sticking out below. So it’s not about the money,

it’s that now I’ll have to spend two

months getting another shirt made

with extra-long sleeves or whatever.

I think my wife is very upset about this

and about what’s

happening. Please comment

on the expansion of the powers of

the National Guard (Rosgvardiya). Personally, this news

worries me. Why does it matter to you what

powers Rosgvardiya has? Rosgvardiya’s powers are

some kind of

intra-agency matter.

For some reason they gave it authority over

licensing and permit work, that is,

now, to register a weapon,

you have to go to Rosgvardiya. So what is that?

It means money. Plus they control

private security companies—that’s also

money. So these additional

powers they’re giving Rosgvardiya, these things

they’re writing in that say it can do

some extra things—this is

simply them taking budget money away from the Interior Ministry.

in order to make money from them. Well,

it's obvious that all private security firms in Russia, they

used to be in cahoots with the police in order to

in order to open one, you had to

pay bribes to the police, and now you

pay bribes to the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), and that's

basically the full extent of Rosgvardiya's powers.

Sorry.

It's awful that the state has sunk to this level of

settling scores, writes Ilya Zakharov.

It's kindergarten-level stuff: green antiseptic dye (zelyonka), flour, eggs,

a dead rat. But when it comes to answering the actual accusations,

they can't say anything. But that's the most

important thing. That's the most important thing. If, you know, I were

waiting here by the entrance and Ilya

Eliseev

were standing there with a cup of

zelyonka and said, "Alexei, right now I'm going to

prove to you with documents that you, well,

have slandered our wonderful foundation, that we have

a real charitable foundation, that

we didn't buy Medvedev's palaces, I'll

prove all of that to you"—and then splash

zelyonka in your face—I would say, "Go ahead, prove it." But

he can't do that, and nobody

can do that. And what we've been told

now, and oligarch Usmanov, who paid

bribes to Medvedev, and Medvedev's money man,

Ilya Eliseev—these are just, well, pathetic

excuses. On our channel, we will post videos

on this subject. They can't

offer any substantive rebuttal to us on

any point, from the important and

complicated ones involving Medvedev to the

simplest ones, like: why did Putin's son-in-law, Kirill

Shamalov, become the youngest billionaire in

Russia? Well, explain to us how that

happened. Dear Vladimir Putin, why did you

personally have a state loan issued to his company

for, what, a billion dollars at a

low interest rate? Tell us. No, they can't say

anything. So that's why they sit there

in some meeting—Kiriyenko is sitting there,

Putin, I don't even know who else, maybe

Anton Vaino—and they think, "So what are we supposed to do

with all these people who on June 12

want to go to the rally?" So they sit there and think,

and then some smart guy says, "Listen,

why don't we maybe start splashing them with zelyonka?

Well, at least

they approved that point, and they are

carrying it out. Beyond that, they can't do anything

substantive. In Nizhny Novgorod, and also

City Day will be on June 12 as well, writes to us

Natalya Baranova. "It'll be wonderful if

they start detaining people with Russian flags."

Well, I think

it won't be wonderful if they do

start detaining people. We will do everything

to make sure there are no detentions. We

will submit the applications; we'll do everything

absolutely correctly from a legal standpoint.

We'll file everything properly. Well,

yes, it would look pretty strange

if the police, or I don't know, the National Guard, or

someone else, start detaining people with

Russian flags on Russia Day

who are chanting slogans that, in

general, are no different from

official state ones. In every presidential address, Putin says,

"I support the fight against

corruption," and they applaud him there, they stand up—those

idiots stand there clapping: "Vladimir

Vladimirovich, we love you so much." And we'll

go out and say, "We are for the fight against

corruption," and they'll haul us off despite

the fact that everyone is carrying Russian flags. Well,

we'll see how that goes. In any

case, March 26 showed that they can't haul everyone

away. Alex from Moscow says, "My wife is a

seamstress. If you want, we'll sew a shirt personally for you."

I do, very much. Write to us, we'll send you

the measurements. Thank you very much. When will it be possible

to buy merch? As I understand it, that's a question

about all this stuff. Yes, I'm wearing this

sweater of ours because we tried

to quickly get all the clothing ready; it's unlikely to help much

for now. We're not selling it yet; all of this will be distributed through

the campaign headquarters. And over here Volkov

is sitting in the corner—Leonid, tell us,

when are we going to start selling all this?

At the end of May, at the end of May, Leonid Volkov prompts me.

Leonid Volkov. I hope we'll get all this

up and running, and basically we'll be

selling it, and part of your money will go toward

the production cost of this little shirt here, and

part of it will be your donation to the election

campaign. Som Ben asks me: the authorities are

actively preparing the ground for

fraud in the upcoming elections in order to

guarantee victory; a law has been passed on

abolishing absentee certificates. What

do you think about that? I think about it, of course.

They are preparing the ground. Well, listen,

they—they can't win honestly. Really, who

among those who

for example watched the film *He Is Not Dimon to You*

would vote for this government? There are 25 million such people—20 million on

YouTube and at least 5 million on

Odnoklassniki. Nobody is going to vote for this government.

There are people who

support Putin; that's a kind of approval rating in a

vacuum. But actually to go vote? Well,

you can herd state employees there, but truly committed

people who just can't wait to go to the

polling station to vote for Putin—well,

there are practically none of those in the country.

So

indeed, without

fraud, they haven't been able to

win elections for quite a long time. They may even

get some kind of relative majority

of votes, but we will fight.

It's clear how we will appeal to you: we

will recruit observers, real

observers. There will be many of them, no fewer than

100,000 people, and first we will

fight for the votes, and then we will

to fight to preserve them—there’s

nothing else that can be done here, and

of course, this whole issue with absentee

certificates is fraud

being carried out by the wonderful Ella

Pamfilova, the head of the Central Election Commission,

who until quite recently was so

beloved. Alexei, by what means are you

planning to raise salaries to 25,000

rubles, since, as we all know, “there is no money”?

In quotation marks. Dmitry

Romanov. Dmitry: Well, uh, that quote

you mentioned—“there is no money”—who is it from?

Well, it is in fact from that

guy who stole, for example, 70 billion rubles

It’s from the guy who heads

the government, which every year spends

on

public procurement something like 5 to 7 trillion rubles

and Medvedev himself says that every fifth

ruble is stolen. Well, if every fifth

ruble is stolen, then think about it—that’s

an enormous amount of money. Even bigger money is in

state corporation procurement. And most importantly,

we simply need to reduce the tax

burden on business, reduce the tax

burden on wages so that

right now, for an entrepreneur—or, I don’t know,

an employer—to pay you one ruble, they

need to have 1.47 rubles, because the taxes are huge.

That’s first. And second, we are not

proposing to simply go ahead and raise everyone’s

salary to 25,000 rubles

by just forcing that onto the current economy,

stretching our nice idea of a minimum wage

of 25,000 rubles onto it. We believe—there is no doubt in our minds—that

Russia, at its current level of

economic development, taking into account our

reforms and

the economic growth program

that we are proposing, can make it so

that in Russia, for a full working day,

no one earns less than 25,000 rubles. We

are obliged to do this. Countries poorer

than ours—I’ll record a separate video

comparing Russia and Argentina, I promise, right here

on air now—countries poorer

than we are pay higher

wages. I recently saw an enormous

demonstration in that very same

Argentina by teachers who were

outraged that their salary was

800

dollars. Russian teachers, by and large,

would be outraged over something like that—or not?

Or maybe it was 1,000 dollars—well,

I’m afraid of getting it wrong right now, actually.

I’ll record a separate video, but it is

simply a plain fact that in poorer

countries there is a higher

minimum wage, and we can

pay it. There is nothing special needed for that,

nothing extraordinary to invent—simply

saving on the corruption markup alone would give

the Russian budget enormous sums of money.

And I’m being asked—first of all, I’m

being told that 40,000 viewers

are watching us live online. Sorry,

I exaggerated. Second, I’m being

asked:

“Alexei, my name is Timur. Will you

carry out nationalization of

stolen property

taken from the state budget that has passed

into the hands of officials, in favor of

low-income citizens?” We simply have a law laid out

for this; it is called the law on

combating illicit enrichment. This is

Article 20,

which provides that if an

official

cannot explain where he got

the money—well, Medvedev cannot explain

where he got the Fotini yacht from, how he

uses the Fotini yacht, which costs

hundreds of millions of rubles, if he has no

such income—then if you cannot

explain it, a criminal case is automatically opened against you,

you are

put in the defendant’s cage, and your assets

are, of course, subject to confiscation, and that

confiscated property will go to

the state budget, and the state

budget will then do what it is supposed to do:

take care of the poor. That is how it works

in a normal state, in a just

state. A state that declares,

as it is written in Russia’s

Constitution, that it is supposedly a social state. We

generally support

fighting inequality. That is

the main objective of our program. If 84%

of the national wealth belongs to 1%

of the population, that is a catastrophe, and we say so

plainly—it is a catastrophe, and yes, we will fight it,

including through the confiscation of

corrupt, corruption-derived

income. Kash Bro asks: and then on

the federal TV channels they’ll say,

‘Look how many patriots came out on Russia Day,’

meaning our idea of calling

everyone to an anti-corruption rally on June 12.

Let them say it. We are patriots, and those

who come out on June 12 to rally against

corruption—they are the patriots. And you know

what I’ll tell you? Even if the authorities bus in

some people to the June 12 rally—some

state employees—well, those state employees

are also against corruption. Great—then

we’ll march together with them, and they

will be patriots too, and I am sure that

they will support our slogans as well. Yes,

patriots. The authorities on television will always

lie about something, but in essence, by

trying to lie—‘look how many

patriots came out’—implying that these

patriots support the authorities, in fact they

will only be saying that indeed

Patriotically minded people came out

on the twelfth to speak out

against corruption. The same question is how

on June 12 to distinguish people who are against corruption

from those who are

pro-Putin? Why do you care about these pro-Putin people, why

distinguish them? There are no real pro-Putin people; there are

just people who have been more deceived by propaganda

there are state employees whom they herd into

rallies; they are exactly the same normal

people. They are just as much against corruption

there is no need to separate them out; they need to be shown

our film about Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev). They need to be a little

scolded; they need to be told why we came out

whether you support Putin or not, tell them: we

came out today, June 12, against corruption

— do you support that? He’ll tell you, well,

of course I do. Any normal

person would say that.

And

moving on, Krasnoyarsk doesn’t seem poor either

what demolition of five-story apartment blocks? We still have plenty of two-

story buildings. That’s exactly what I’m talking about

that’s exactly what I’m talking about: in any, even

the largest city — let’s take only

cities with over a million people, let’s take wealthy

cities like Yekaterinburg or Perm — there

everywhere there are five-story buildings, everywhere

there are still barracks left over, and all

of them — well, not every single one, but most

of them — are in much worse

condition than the worst Moscow

five-story building. But there, nothing is being demolished and

nothing is planned to be demolished in the foreseeable future

and no one is planning to relocate anyone

and that shows the monstrous problems

that exist today in

Russia, across the whole country — and across the country in such a way

that, as we can see, Muscovites are up in arms too

and are afraid of losing their

property.

And Armin van Burer says, Alexei,

tell people about Chile. It would be

a more interesting example than Argentina.

True, true — Chile, in fact,

is a country very similar to Russia if

we’re talking about GDP per capita, and

the minimum wage there is higher than in

Russia.

And

Alexei, after taking office as

President of the Russian Federation, is there any hope of

reviewing unlawfully handed-down court

verdicts issued under the current criminal regime?

asks Milana Sedanovo. Dear

Milana,

why are you even asking me this? Well, I

assume you support me, since you

watch the channel — support me for

president. Why am I running at all? Well, of course,

this is one of the main things. Through

the judicial system, Russia has been turned into

a state that works against

the people. This judicial system is

designed, like in the cartoon about

Cipollino, to protect a handful of brazen

villains and to torment all the

rest of the people, rob them, and make them

poor. So of course — I’m even surprised

by the question. Thank you for sending

questions. But of course yes, otherwise everything

loses meaning, otherwise everything loses meaning. We

saw this in the example of

Yeltsin himself: he was elected on a democratic

wave, gathered around himself some of those former

Komsomol members who said that, well,

they were now great democrats. But those

unlawful decisions that had been made in

Soviet times — he did not

revoke them. There was a dissident, Anatoly

Marchenko, one of the most steadfast

dissidents. He died in Chistopol prison

in 1986. What was stopping them

in 1991, in

1993, from overturning all those unlawful

decisions and conducting an investigation? Why was

Marchenko, and all the others, persecuted?

Why did he die there after a hunger strike? Why

was he killed? But none of that was done. And

that is one of the main reasons why in

Russia we suffered a fiasco in

building democracy, because

we simply, well, forgot all those

crimes that were committed in

1989, the 1980s, in

the 1990s, the 1970s, and

left the very same judges in place

left the very same prosecutors in

place, investigators who, back in

1987, had someone prosecuted

for speculation, and then in 1992

became great

champions of the market. So nothing worked out, and

of course our main task — well, not

the main task, but one of the main tasks — is to

change all of this.

And Anya from Moscow asks: today

a pollster called me. First they discussed our

five-story building, which is not unsafe, and then they looked

into online how I feel about the authorities

and whether I would go to rallies if they start demolishing our building.

There, you see — that’s exactly it. They’re

monitoring things, and their question is simple. Sobyanin is sitting there

discussing it with Khusnullin: my dear

Khusnullin, how do we steal everything from these people

but in such a way that they don’t go out to

protest? If you do go to a rally, then

at least they will have to, or at least want to,

do something — they’ll get a little scared.

If we keep saying, well, we’re outside

politics, why do we need all this, you won’t

achieve anything. Then they’ll write in their

questionnaire: in this apartment lives

a quiet one — you can do whatever you want

to him. And they’ll take your apartment, they’ll

relocate you somewhere

far away. That’s all. That’s how it works, and

we’ve been through this and seen that only

Rallies and mass protests help

people defend their rights right now, and another important

point about the five-story apartment blocks: well, now

someone will definitely write in the

comments, “You criticize everything, but where is your

constructive plan?” A constructive

approach is needed, because really, many

of these five-story buildings do need to be demolished. A constructive

plan? I have one. What I am proposing

is absolutely constructive, without question.

A significant share of these five-story buildings needs to

be resettled, but I want transparency. I want

it to be clear what this program actually involves.

You understand? If you say, “We will spend 2

trillion rubles,” I want you

to explain where these buildings are. Why is there no

list of them? The entire Moscow city government is sitting there,

the prefectures, the district administrations—well, give us

the list and publish it immediately.

When you

say people will be resettled from here—show us the buildings. There are no buildings.

Then at least name the districts. First they said everywhere,

now they have excluded three districts. Explain that.

Explain the eviction rules too—those rules

do not exist. The law passed at first

reading is insane and criminal, absolutely

contrary to the Constitution. And they say,

the Moscow city government says, “We’ll fix something by

the second reading.” Then why did you introduce this garbage

in the first reading in the first place? So my

constructive program consists in

this: I want it to be clear to me and

to absolutely everyone else

down to the specific building and

down to the specific apartment what the government,

what the Moscow city government is planning to do.

How exactly will compensation work? I

want it to be clear what happens to

non-residential premises that fall into

the so-called renovation zone. Will they simply

take them away from people and offer them something somewhere

unclear? Because it says there that it is not compensation at

market value, but just compensation.

But if they took your non-residential premises in

the city center and gave you non-residential premises in

Butovo, that does not work. I want it to be

announced at what price, and from whom, on the

secondary market, apartments will be purchased.

Because if they

are going to put people into housing built by the Moscow

construction complex, that does not suit me either.

First admit that

all these Khusnullin-style ideas (referring to Marat Khusnullin, a senior Moscow official) have failed, and

they built their millions of square meters of housing, and

no one is buying it, and now they simply

want to prop up their bubble in the real estate

market. I want everything to be very

clear. I think you want that too,

because it is your money.

Now let’s see what else people are asking.

Emil Regis writes that this demolition of five-story buildings

is like the fire in ancient Rome that Emperor

Nero set so that, on the ashes, he could

build a palace. Well, that is exactly why I

drew the analogy, yes, with the last day

of Pompeii. But they still have a large

amount of money, a great deal of money in the

budget, and they understand that, well, everything is going

downhill somewhere, and this money needs to be

spent. At the same time, the Moscow city government

cuts budgets every year for

education and

healthcare, and against that backdrop—well, because

in education and healthcare it is much

harder for them to siphon off money and steal it,

because there is decentralization there,

it is distributed in small portions—so

they sit there thinking, thinking: “My God, there are

trillions lying there, we need to do something with them.

How can we steal them in one big fat chunk?

Let’s put it here, into construction, into demolishing

five-story buildings, where nothing at all is clear.

We’ll quickly rig it, demolish, build, and pocket

all the money.” That is how it works. You are absolutely right.

Absolutely. I live in a two-story building built

under Stalin by German prisoners of war. Major repairs

are scheduled for around twenty-something twenty-five.

Volgograd, writes Michael Fox. Well, that is exactly right.

That is exactly right. And in Volgograd—what five-story buildings

are we even talking about there? No one can repair the roads.

Again, this brings us to the question

of why the system in Russia is absolutely

unjust. Syoma Dolgov asks:

Is the trip to Astrakhan being canceled because of

your health condition? We are all very

worried. If tomorrow morning my eye

opens, then I will go to Astrakhan

and open a campaign office there; at least,

those are the plans. If my eye really

does not open at all, then

Leonid Volkov will go and open the office. We are not

going to change our plans. And I

went on air today because

I understood that it would not look

very presentable and everything would be

rather chaotic, but for me it is important

to show that our plans cannot be changed by some crap

like zelyonka (a bright green antiseptic often used in attacks on activists), and our plans for

opening campaign offices will not be canceled. And when I

was in the special detention center, offices were still opening.

That is why our campaign relies on

people who want change, on people

who believe they need

political representation.

They do not want to be deprived of that

political representation. They are not

satisfied with either candidate Putin or candidate

Zyuganov.

They are against corruption, they support ratification of

Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption, and they support transparency on

the five-story housing issue. There are millions of these people—they exist.

They are, in essence, opening the campaign offices themselves, and I

just go there and speak. People welcome me,

for which I am very

grateful. I live in Magnitogorsk,

which is home to one of the largest

industrial plants in the world, but at the same time next door there

stands

As I understand it, the building is in an emergency condition.

which has basically been left in a ruined state for 20 years, yes.

That’s also an astonishing thing, yes.

Magnitogorsk is home to one of the largest

industrial plants in the world. A lot of money

that ought to stay in the city

of Magnitogorsk so that local residents could

live a little better, but it gets taken away to

Moscow, because in Moscow

and

that

this money is easier to steal.

Alexander Baulin writes: “I forcibly turned on

the film for my mother, a brainwashed vatnik (a derogatory Russian slang term for an aggressively pro-Kremlin patriot).” It’s not good to talk about

your mother like that. What’s good is not to force

anyone to watch films in the kitchen, but the film about

Dimon (a colloquial nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) — I hope that’s still just a metaphor

of some kind. You just turned on the film and planted

some doubts; then she looked it up on her smartphone and found a video

by comedian Shevchenko about Dimon. I doubt

she’ll be voting for Putin. And that’s exactly how it should be.

Of course, you shouldn’t force anyone

to watch anything, but you do need to show people

the film. Look, on my blog we

published today the results

of a sociological survey

that clearly shows that people who

have seen the film undergo a certain change in

their worldview. They already knew all about corruption,

they understood it perfectly well, they regularly

say the stupid phrase: “Those stole,

the new ones will steal too.” But when they

see this visualization of corruption — all

these yachts, palaces, and everything else — it

hits them. Tell us about

charity, by the way. One of

my latest videos on

the channel is about

comparing real charity

with what, under the guise of charity,

Medvedev and Medvedev’s circle steal.

Well, it’s a monstrous thing. All

the charity workers in Russia are wonderful people. We

adore them, we practically idolize them, we’re

constantly writing to them, saying what a great

thing they’re doing. They really do save thousands

of children. If not for them, those thousands of children

would die. They also treat adults, they

treat the most complex illnesses, and all

these people together raise less money

combined than Medvedev spends simply on

maintaining his palaces — not buying

the palaces, but maintaining them — that is, on

maids, decanters, on things like

polishing the yacht Fotinia, which sails from

the Finnish city of Kotka to Plyos (a small town on the Volga River) and

so on and so forth. We often

— well, I’ve seen it on social media — have this

debate between

charity workers and politicians, a debate

that seems to me a little

artificial. They’re constantly

discussing what’s better to do: is it better

to engage in politics and pursue

big goals there, to achieve

systemic change, or is it still better

to be a charity worker in order to

save a specific child?

Look at these numbers and it will become

clear to you that of course we need to save

a specific child — noble people do all

of that.

But if we achieve systemic change,

if we succeed in fighting corruption, then

right in front of us lies a source

where you can simply take that money and

double all charitable fundraising,

meaning twice as many

children could be treated. Yes, with the money

that Medvedev stole, we could

pay for surgery for absolutely every

child in Russia who needs it, I

think, over just a few years. So

yes, of course we need to solve certain

smaller problems, but without solving the big

ones, this is what we’ll have: we’ll be collecting

20 rubles by text message, while they’ll be

stealing in the billions

and trillions, continuing to destroy both our

education system and our healthcare.

And someone asks about the opening of six campaign offices.

We really did open over the weekend

offices in Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kostroma,

Vologda, and Cherepovets. I’m very grateful

to everyone who came to the opening of these offices.

Was it hard to speak at two offices in

one day? Hard, yes, but very

rewarding — and you get a lot of support, people ask

you many interesting questions. It’s very

important. In any city, you simply see

a very simple picture: if someone from

United Russia (the ruling political party) came and said,

“Come join me, United Russia volunteers

who want to take part for free in

United Russia’s campaign,” how many people would

show up? Zero. But hundreds come to us.

They interfere with us, they spray us with all kinds of

colored substances, confiscate our equipment,

spread stories online about Hitler, endlessly

lie, but even so, hundreds of people

come to us in order to work

for free, and thousands are joining us — we already have

90,000 registered volunteers across

the country. And they have nothing. Yes, they

still control the entire

state system, but in essence, they have no people

who are actually willing to support them.

Yesterday, United Russia members came to our school. How do you

feel about

that? We’re wholeheartedly with you, we’ll go

vote for you. St. Petersburg is writing to you,

Dmitry Levin. Well, how do I feel about the fact that

United Russia

came to a school? It’s illegal.

Political campaigning in schools is prohibited.

And these same United Russia people — they came into

a school, and in that school they’ll be saying that

Navalny is supposedly targeting schoolchildren and

they call schoolchildren out to rallies, but at the same time

they themselves come into these schools, they themselves

lie to schoolchildren and directly violate

the legislation of the Russian Federation

which prohibits political campaigning there.

Well, all I can say is: crooks and swindlers.

Even

using things like this to fight them,

to make them look ridiculous. And I’m very glad

and happy that we are seeing so many

examples both in Russian universities and in

Russian schools. Well, you remember what happened

with the Bryansk schoolchildren.

And when schoolchildren and students run into

this kind of blunt stupidity from the authorities

or pressure from

teachers, from some

hypocritical principals, they push back.

They do not stay silent; they say what they believe

is right, and that is very, very cool.

So, what else do we have? Bloomberg asks

and writes that Medvedev is more concerned than ever

about his political

future — his political future, seriously.

Zakhar Egorenko writes to us. Well, of course

they are worried. It’s obvious why Medvedev is worried.

We can see that his approval rating

is collapsing because of the incompetence of his

government, and we greatly helped

bring down Medvedev’s rating by showing

that it is, in fact, clear why

the government does nothing: because

the man is busy. Look, if you have

10 palaces, you simply won’t have enough

time for anything else. If you have

an apartment and a dacha (country house), for example, you already spend

a huge amount of time maintaining all that

real estate of yours. And if you have

eight palaces — even if you have 23

assistants or whatever — you still need

a tremendous amount of time to

manage all that corruption.

Naturally, when a person is involved in that, he

has to steal, he has to make deals with

oligarchs, and take bribes,

he has to somehow legalize all of it, and

at the same time run the government.

He simply cannot do that. He is

an absolutely incompetent person. He

must resign. Without a doubt, he

has become concerned about his political future

because his economic future, well,

as we can see, is very well secured at

our expense, at the expense of our

money. But I hope this will not last

forever, and the moment will come when Dmitry

Medvedev will have to give back everything he

stole from us. Let’s look at more questions.

What else am I being aske—

Alexei, how do we fight corruption at a more

local level? Alna Yakovleva writes: as

is well known, the corrupt system has spread through

not only the highest bodies of state

power. My answer may sound pessimistic,

but at the grassroots level, fighting corruption in

Russia is generally impossible. I mean,

you can file a complaint with

the Investigative Committee or with the police,

but it will not work.

To fight corruption,

you need free

m

you need honest elections at the local level.

None of that exists at all, especially free media.

There is none of it whatsoever. Therefore, to defeat

grassroots corruption, we

need victory over high-level corruption; we

need political signals that

are sent from the very

top. At our school, the history teacher, a member of

United Russia, Karina writes, gave us

top grades for going to United Russia rallies.

Well, excuse me, but she is a lying scumbag,

and that is how she should be treated. You might

want to say it to her in milder terms

or file a complaint with the principal,

but I believe this should not be

tolerated. No, you should not be afraid of such a

teacher — she should be afraid of you. You need

to come out and say it, because, in the end,

if we stay silent and put up with

this, then things will always be arranged this way,

and this teacher will always be giving

top grades for attending United Russia rallies. This

teacher harms Russian education. This

teacher makes her students worse, and

therefore such teachers must be

fought. Such a

teacher is dangerous and harmful, because this is

not just some lazy or cowardly

person whom United Russia

forces to do something and who complies. She

is, on her own initiative, engaged in

this kind of filth — making

other people’s children go out to rallies. We will fight these

people. We will fight these people,

including through our

election campaign. With these people

we will fight by uniting ourselves and addressing them,

by exposing them, by making them

feel ashamed, making them feel the disgrace

that society brings down upon them. We

will absolutely do this, I assure

you. They are very well aware of their

wrongdoing, and in fact they fear us

much more than we fear them. I see

that the time is already

9:17 p.m. I’ve spent a whole

hour on the air. I hope you

haven’t dropped off. How many people are watching us now?

Oksana, tell us — 30,7122

people, 30,7122 people. Thank you very much.

I was very glad that you

listened to me. I hope I answered

some of your questions. I hope I at least slightly

entertained you with my exotic appearance. We’ll

meet again in a week at

20:1 on the program Navalny 208. Thank you.

[music]

big

U