The Golunov case and the rally. Kadyrov breaks fingers. We’ll leave you and move to Canada

[music]

Hello everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, which

means that the live program

**Russia of the Future** is on the air, and I am Alexei Navalny.

Or,

as political analyst Ruslan Ostashko from the DPR (self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic) called me, "the fire of the opposition".

Please send me

your questions on Twitter with

the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, and I will

try to answer them. Our main topic today is

everything connected with Golunov.

It has already become a kind of household name —

the Golunov case.

So much has happened there

that please ask me

questions about whichever specific

aspect you want clarified — there has simply

been a huge amount of interesting developments.

But I want to start with a passionate appeal,

because we really need your

help — and in a very practical sense.

A huge number of viewers of this

program are watching from Moscow. Guys,

we need your signatures. On September 8 there will be

elections, and in order to take part in

them, an independent

self-nominated candidate has to collect several

thousand signatures. You live in Moscow, you

know what Moscow is like.

For example, someone rings your doorbell — what

do you do? You do not open it. Getting into an apartment building

through the intercom in Moscow is

hard. People in Moscow are wary of

everyone else, so here it is very

difficult to collect signatures. The procedure is

effectively prohibitive, and the deadline is very

short. In practice, there are only about

a week or two left at most, so

choose an independent candidate and give

them your signature. There are several

candidates — our "super five" candidates —

whom we are supporting. The address of each campaign office

will be in the description of this video. Go there, do not

be lazy, give them your signature. More than that,

we understand why you are not going, because

you cannot be bothered, and you say, "I do not

want to go looking for some candidate’s office

in my district." We understand that, and

that is why we have specially set up a signature collection center

where you can sign not only for our super five

but also for other independent candidates,

even if we are not necessarily going to

support them in the election. But

we decided that it would be the right thing

to help them collect signatures — sorry,

that is what this is about. So, at

10/7 Rozhdestvensky Boulevard,

Building 1 — a convenient location in central

Moscow — there is a signature collection center.

You can also stop by and see which

candidates are already collecting

signatures there, come in and sign if it is more convenient for you

to do it in the center. And to the candidates, I am speaking

especially to Yabloko members (from the liberal Yabloko party) who are waiting

for approval from their leadership —

they really want to, but they do not

understand whether Yabloko is allowing them to or not.

Come — we can help you too.

At the very least, we can seat your signature collectors there

so that it is convenient for people to come there and

submit

their signatures for you. Naturally,

I especially ask you to help the candidates

whom we support from the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation): Lyubov

Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov, as well as those whom we

are promoting as part of the super five:

Vladimir Milov, Ilya Yashin, and Konstantin

Yankauskas.

Zhdanov asked me to say that he is out

at his pickets near the Sokol metro station,

as well as Aeroport and Voykovskaya, and is also collecting signatures there.

This is a real thing

that any candidate truly needs right now,

any candidate who is genuinely collecting

signatures. Here is how you can tell

a real candidate from one whom

the mayor’s office will register using fake

signatures: a real candidate right now is

running around like mad and begging everyone,

"Please give me your signature," because it is very

hard. But those who are just

taking it easy and then later say,

"Jesus, here are my six thousand

signatures" —

all of those are fabricated signatures, and the Moscow mayor’s office

will register them because they are

not real candidates.

Besides that, there will also be elections in St. Petersburg. I have been

very much asked by our St. Petersburg headquarters

to say that there is still time to register

as candidates — go to spb. And if

you are already registered, go into your personal

accounts and use them; it is quite

a convenient service. And one more thing that

occurred to me 20 minutes before this broadcast —

or rather, it was prompted by

Vasily Utkin. I was sitting there

getting ready and sort of scrolling through

my Facebook feed, looking at what topics

were current, what people were discussing, and I saw a post

by Vasily Utkin where he writes: here are the Moscow City Duma elections,

let us turn these elections

into an election for Golunov. It is a fantastic idea,

and Utkin is absolutely right that the deadlines are tight now,

but we would definitely collect the signatures

for Golunov. He would be guaranteed

to win now in any

district. We just need to approach it sensibly, choose

a proper district, coordinate it,

sort everything out so that nobody

gets in anyone else’s way. But Ivan,

if you watch this broadcast, you know me — I would not give you bad advice.

Right now, you can be both a journalist and a deputy there,

that is, serve as a deputy on a non-full-time basis.

We need that kind of deputy, we need a deputy

who has run into the system,

who has spent time inside it,

who has been through it.

It's bad with this lawlessness involving someone who...

was pulled out of jail by people whom we...

owe it to, because a journalist can...

represent the interests of journalists.

It's interesting: those who conduct investigations...

are acting in all our interests. I join in...

absolutely. A full day, well, and there were many...

some other people reposted it.

They simply said it was a great idea, and it...

really is a great idea. You lose nothing...

you lose nothing, you remain a journalist, and we...

gain an excellent deputy, yes, so...

agree as soon as possible, because...

the deadline for collecting signatures is pressing. If you...

also like this idea, then listen, and...

write on your Facebook or Twitter...

somewhere on social media that it's a good idea and...

that you would like to see Golunov as your...

deputy. Right now, it seems to me, City Hall won't...

dare refuse to register him, and he...

will definitely win. We need...

Deputy Golunov. Golunov, come on, please...

agree. Well, basically, they put Golunov on trial...

Golunov. Let's move on to discussing Golunov.

What was it that happened? What was this? It was...

huge.

Amazing. It really is, at the very least...

the main political event...

of the year. Quite possibly it hasn't yet...

ended and will continue.

The consequences will be discussed for a long time, endlessly...

just as we have long been discussing...

for many years now, endlessly, whether Bolotnaya (the 2011–2012 anti-government protest movement in Moscow) was betrayed...

whether that protest was not betrayed, what kind of protest it was...

what could have happened and how, and what in fact...

actually happened, and what kinds of...

complications there were. More and more new...

details and conspiracy theories will keep surfacing.

And it's important to discuss all this now, while...

the event is still alive, while we all still remember, so that...

later, when you rewatch the broadcast...

and...

you can recall some, some interesting...

things, interesting facts. But most importantly...

to draw conclusions from what happ...

happened and is happening, because this is...

an ongoing political event of a sort, and...

on the 16th there will already be, uh, this fake...

rally by these crooks too, just like...

in defense of Golunov. Everyone is asking...

the question: should we go or not, what is this...

even supposed to be, what happened at all? Well, I...

will try somehow, in sequence...

to lay all this out chronologically...

and try to interpret it. Ask me...

questions, because I may miss something...

or it may all come out rather jumbled...

as a speech.

But nevertheless, so, on Friday we're sitting there, and...

I'm sitting there reading Twitter at that very moment...

and I see a message from the Russian...

service of the BBC, I think, or maybe not, or...

some account had posted something like—it really was...

the first tweet: journalist Ivan...

Golunov detained with drugs. Then a second one, and...

of course I understood that, really, this was...

some kind of provocation against him, but it looked like...

they were going to kill him now. That really was my first...

thought, and many people won't let me lie about that...

people whom I immediately started frantically...

writing to: guys...

we need to send someone to him, anyone at all...

find all those journalists...

those fixers—Muratov, Venediktov, and so on...

so that they could there, with...

their various...

crooks from the Moscow city government, in...

the Kremlin, wherever, talk to them, because...

everything else can be dealt with later, but...

right now they'll simply kill Golunov in the pre-trial detention center.

Why? And in general, it seems to me the main...

reason this truly...

huge movement emerged—and people discuss it much...

less than they should, actually. Everyone says...

why not this one, damn it, and why not that one...

why did Golunov stir everyone up...

because he was this kind of...

person who could immediately trigger...

this enormous sympathy from the very first seconds.

I do know him, though I can't say that...

we're close friends, but I know him fairly well...

because, as an investigative journalist, I...

really follow very closely...

his work. Naturally, there aren't many...

real investigative journalists, and...

everyone knows everyone else, and we all...

keep an eye on each other. Golunov is a pleasant, modest guy...

really very modest, shy, always...

smiling modestly, never really...

drawing attention to himself, just carefully doing his job.

He published several, yes...

truly landmark, significant...

investigations that everyone read, and, well...

it was simply clear that...

really...

this was a defenseless person—not just harmless, but also...

a very useful person, someone who simply...

does his job and at the same time is completely...

unassuming—a nice, normal, modest...

person. And some bastards simply...

had obviously decided to kill him, because the idea that...

Vanya Golunov is the kind of guy...

that when you see him, he's just...

smiling, saying, 'Hi, Alexei,' and he...

could somehow have had a drug-production laboratory...

and been selling those drugs...

carrying them around in a backpack—you can see, that...

what they showed there in the first few minutes...

literally, and this whole stream of...

what the Interior Ministry started putting out—like, a lab at home...

drugs in the backpack, drugs at home, he...

was cooking them—it was immediately clear that this was...

a complete lie, and the sheer brazenness of this...

lie...

personally, it immediately seemed to me that...

they wanted to kill him, apparently, or...

do something to him in the pre-trial detention center...

right away—that is, something altogether sinister.

a plan, because this was some kind of over-the-top

lie.

A person who works on

investigations in Russia, in Moscow,

who had seriously gotten under the skin of the specific

Moscow mayor's office,

Golunov specialized in

the kinds of facts that we, that the

public paid attention to. Remember that

New Year's lighting in Moscow? I talked about

it, yes. Maybe in terms of money it wasn't

that much, but all of it

infuriated everyone. Those light bulbs

were bought for hundreds of millions; everyone wrote

about it. The curb procurement, of course, those

famous Biryukov penthouses and all that.

All of that was the standard ritual stuff, while there were also

investigations into gravediggers or whatever,

which drew much less attention. But his articles—overall—made it clear that

the guy had drunk

a lot of the Moscow government's blood,

and had made plenty of enemies there.

And of course, while doing that,

to keep a drug lab at home,

with flasks, cooking something somewhere—any

person who has at least seen a movie

about how drugs are made understands that

if you're making, say, mephedrone

at home, the smell will spread through the whole

stairwell so strongly that it would be obvious

to everyone that you're cooking mephedrone.

Or you'd need some kind of ventilation system,

but in any case, you can't be

a journalist who is obviously

being watched by Moscow government officials

because you're clearly their enemy, and you're being watched by

at the very least, by that whole

apparatus of attached FSB officers (Russia's security service),

security operatives,

police, and all the rest—a huge

support staff for this corrupt machine. It

keeps an eye on every person who

does anything against it, and we can see

that half the political activists there

are being followed by all sorts of operatives, and here you have

a journalist—obviously he's under

surveillance, they're watching him.

They're listening to his conversations, or at least

recording them, and to keep at home

a lab and carry drugs in your backpack

at the same time—

while also writing articles—it was

obvious that it was a lie. And I'll repeat:

the sheer brazenness of that lie showed that he

might be killed right then, so everyone was

completely on edge, myself included. Everyone started

writing frantically, and there really rose

this wave of outrage.

And of course, an enormous role—a key role—

was played here by

that very journalistic solidarity.

Everyone is discussing it now as a kind of guild-like

solidarity, and for many people it later caused, in light of

the events that followed, which we'll

talk about in a moment—well, even at that

stage already,

some irritation. To be honest, for

me too. But back then, this journalistic

'one for all' feeling—Golunov was just

someone who had worked at Meduza, at RBC, I think, and

at many other media outlets. So, well,

all these respectable editors-in-chief

of major media outlets

knew him personally and had worked with him.

So they really did stand up for him immediately.

And those journalists

who ran straight to Petrovka (Moscow police headquarters area)

to hold those pickets, and were detained,

back then—let's just look at

those very first pickets on Petrovka.

There wasn't yet all that stuff like,

'everyone is with us,'

Irada Zeynalova, Maria Zakharova, everyone under

the sun.

Back then it looked like they were throwing this guy in jail

completely lawlessly, and were about to lock up

everyone else who spoke up for him too.

So people went to Petrovka with signs.

Standing there with an understanding of what they were up against,

here is one minute from the very first stage

of the campaign for Golunov.

Here are the signs, so no one can say otherwise over there.

There, you're being detained; red background; Hong Kong—

faster.

We'll figure it out—won't like it.

The grounds found... we'll go with you.

Let's walk over there. This is a one-person picket.

3

[music]

Where, where did you choose from 150 places,

radio

what major law connects

[music]

be in Novgorod 3

yes

[music]

Well, you see, as usual, we have a bit of

the usual situation: one person stands in a picket, and 30 people

film him. But as I said about

Yekaterinburg, and I'll say it now: two

things decide it. First, you don't ask for any

approval—you just have people come out into the streets.

And second, persistence. Journalists—we know they're people who don't really like

being detained.

They'd rather just

show a press card and be done with it. They took everyone away—

well, not these ones, but still, here

they kept going.

They were detained, and they came out again, and they

showed persistence. That

persistence inspired everyone else.

That's why the handful of people, and then the hundreds, who

came in the first days—first to the pickets

on Petrovka, and then to—well, let's show 30

seconds from here—these were the people who

actually made all this happen, because

their persistence and their kind of

—well, they told everyone, they went to

Why the hell should we ask anyone for permission?

No, we won’t — we’ll be out on the street.

That was the key point, from 32 seconds earlier.

They just showed this video, and from it I

saw several guys from FBK (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) there,

and it was really nice that they were standing there too.

And those people who were there, they

were the ones who made everything that happened next possible.

There are all sorts of versions going around, like, well,

that these journalists went there, or Muratov

and Venediktov were there, and someone struck a deal,

and Borya had some meeting with all these

members of the Moscow nomenklatura (Soviet-style political elite), and

all the rest of it — but no,

I don’t think any deal was made there. I believe, I think that

the simplest explanation is actually the right one,

the most understandable and the most truthful

version.

How does the Kremlin make decisions? They

take public opinion into account. They have

people who basically just monitor

social media, and as I understand it, they also have

a technical system that crudely measures

things — so if they see that some

name is being mentioned in connection with some unjust case,

a certain number of times per second, and

everyone is writing about it,

well, Facebook is right here, right here,

it just explodes, and everyone there is writing

Golunov, Golunov, Golunov, Golunov, and everyone

is writing: to the rally, to the rally, it’s scheduled,

and it keeps growing, and opinion

leaders are mentioning it and posting about it, and

you could simply see it with your own

eyes — how the Twitter feed was flying by

three times faster than usual, how news

was coming out several times faster than usual,

how people — these technocratic types —

well, and generally inclined, let’s be honest,

toward rather cowardly behavior — they

see people writing in fury: we’ll take to

the streets, somebody announce a rally already.

And the Kremlin is smart enough

not to wait.

They understood perfectly well that

if they didn’t start resolving the issue now and didn’t

remove this discontent, then on the 12th

there would be a new Bolotnaya (a reference to the mass anti-government protests in Moscow in 2011–2012), again

100,000 people would come out, and the weather

was good outside — they would refuse to leave,

they would stay in the streets, and what

would they do then? Disperse them with water cannons?

Or would they again have to drag things out for a long time, like in

2011–2012? In other words,

it would become some major issue

they’d have to deal with afterward.

So apparently they looked at the whole thing and

saw that it really was — that this was

simply planted drugs, and that in

fact, just judging by

the case materials, because

it turned out that

there was no drug lab at all.

I think by Friday night into

Saturday already, thanks in part, by the way, to the

excellent work of the lawyers,

from Agora (a Russian human rights legal group), who were properly highlighting

every

mistake they made, who

pulled out every single detail and threw it

to the media — all of it spread everywhere,

and it became clear to everyone that this was a complete

fabrication, total nonsense.

And of course there was this question:

could the police officers, the police in general,

really just go that far, so lawlessly,

and simply plant drugs on someone? But

inside the police and inside the Kremlin, everyone

of course understood that yes, they could.

More than that — they do plant them. Right now

there’s a lot of discussion about how, technically,

this is done. Guys, just very

recently there was that businessman,

where was he from, Chelyabinsk or somewhere?

That businessman — they simply

planted drugs on him. A businessman in Omsk

made the same accusation against the FSB (Russia’s security service); we’re talking about the FSB now,

— that they planted drugs on him.

Let’s watch a short video of how

it’s done. It’s done very easily.

Let’s take a look.

See? The same thing happened not long ago.

That businessman was screaming, “My God, they’ve

planted drugs on me,” and people told him,

“Sure, who are you that the FSB would

take such a risk to plant drugs on you?

Of course no one would do that.”

“That’s nonsense, rubbish — you’re just trying to attract

attention.” But fortunately, there just

happened to be a camera there, and on the footage

you could see that the FSB guys really had

planted drugs on him, because that’s

what they always do. And, frankly speaking,

it’s perfectly clear. And if you like, they in

the Kremlin and in the police know perfectly well that

the practice of planting drugs is

something the police do every day. It’s not

necessarily that they plant drugs on

some honest person for money —

they also plant drugs on those same

drug dealers, drug traffickers,

so that there will be drugs on them, so it will be

easier to lock them up. Because in their

frame of reference, well, he really is

— and we know he sells drugs —

there he is bringing them from Tajikistan, and

around his house, his apartment, there seem to be

some kind of

drug-related dealings — so when he comes out now,

we’ll toss him 3 grams and that’s it, off he goes.

Or he comes out, they throw 3 grams on him,

and just like in the film *The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed*,

they say to each other: “A thief

belongs in prison.” And remember how Gleb

Zheglov planted a wallet in Kirpich’s pocket?

It’s exactly the same thing. They plant evidence

every day, every single day, and everyone

understood that perfectly well. So of course they could.

plant it, and then people remembered who

he had conflicts with. And if we

had already managed to publish by Monday

even an investigation in which we proved

that in the Moscow branch of the FSB

the leadership of the Moscow FSB consists of

nothing but outrageous crooks and thieves who

had a conflict with him. Let's

watch a few seconds from that

investigation of ours. In other words, we

got it done by Monday. Obviously,

somewhere at a high level, where

decisions are made, it was simply

clear from the overall picture.

They understood that on the one hand

there was a threat of an absolutely wild uproar

from people who were about to, damn it, stage

a second Bolotnaya (a reference to the mass anti-government protests in Moscow in 2011–2012).

And on the other hand, they understood

that this second Bolotnaya would be quite serious,

because, yes, everything was falling into place:

there are some people sitting in the Moscow FSB who are

crooks;

with assets worth billions of rubles

and then there are cops

especially these ones who just, as a matter of

routine, every single day

plant drugs on someone. A few

seconds from our video about those FSB guys

who, I am convinced, are the very

people who ordered it.

In the Golunov case, here is an extract confirming

that senior FSB officer Medoev in 2016

bought a 200-square-meter apartment (about 2,150 sq ft) in one of

the most elite

and ostentatious residential complexes in Moscow,

Italian Quarter.

One square meter here costs 1

million rubles.

So his apartment was worth, accordingly, 200

million rubles. And then there are two more apartments like that—

not quite as elite, of course, but both

100 square meters each (about 1,076 sq ft), and in the city center.

We just need to walk down

Kazakova Street another 200 meters (about 220 yards), and we see

a building where the Medoev family owns a 180-

square-meter, two-story apartment (about 1,940 sq ft). One like that

costs 80 million rubles. And let me also

add to the picture: behind this building there is

this 1,000-square-meter annex (about 10,760 sq ft),

non-residential, and it also belongs to the family

of the security-service men, the Medoevs. Igor Medoev

bought this building in November 2016,

and two months later registered himself as a sole proprietor,

and immediately leased the building

to the Moscow road traffic inspectorate.

These are from the lease documents for the premises

on Kazakova Street. They explain that

they would actually be happy to rent

anything at all, but they simply have to rent

this specific Medoev property because

Sobyanin personally wrote a letter—here are

the number and date, all official—in which he

approved the lease of this exact property.

Cars? A whole fleet.

Three Mercedes of different classes,

two Audi Q7 SUVs,

a Lexus, a Porsche Cayenne, and six motorcycles—

Harley-Davidsons and BMWs.

Well, I'm not going to show you this whole

video in full, but there's also

a key point, which is that

this FSB officer Medoev sold

his own personal car to

the state enterprise Ritual—that is, the very funeral

mafia. When you sell a car to some

company, it's obvious they didn't buy it

just for appearances, which means you have

a fairly close connection. And here is simply

formal proof of the existence of this

close connection between the FSB officer with whom

Golunov had some kind of conflict, and who

demanded that his surname not be

mentioned anywhere,

and that same funeral mafia that

Golunov was investigating. And imagine that you are

Putin—or whatever passes for Putin's Politburo

there, Kiriyenko, whoever is responsible for

political matters. Before you is

the following picture: Facebook is raging, and

you understand that now all these people

are going to pour into the streets—journalists, but they are opinion

leaders. Even those who are

rather timid journalists are already

finding their voice and saying something, while

the brave journalists, meanwhile,

are swearing in blood, splattering that blood

all over Facebook, saying that they will

go after everyone every day, every day

call people to rallies, and go themselves

to the protests. And you think: damn, of course they will.

It's one thing to drag, say,

Navalny by the arms and legs

into a police van, but it's another thing entirely to drag Galina Timchenko

by the legs into a police van. We don't want to do that to her,

or to Osetinskaya, or to some—I don't

know—Alexei Venediktov. We don't want

to drag them into a police van because the image

would not look very good.

And what is all this over, if

Putin and Putin's Politburo are thinking:

if there were any justice on our side—

if Golunov really was

actually a drug addict—then we would, on an informal level,

still somehow understand it, and then, conditionally,

they could have thrown the book at him.

But by now it's obvious that it was all made up,

that there was no lab in his home, and the Interior Ministry

was lying, and everyone already knows it. Let's

look at the famous human robot

who later said that after all this

the Interior Ministry was lying

under the pressure of the evidence. Once again,

thanks to the people there who

did great work and dug all this up—

the police robot who

was forced to justify himself while

preparing the information.

posted on the official website

of the Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the city of

Moscow

in connection with this incident, there were published

photographs of the seized items; at the same time

as a result of an error made by employees of the main directorate

an error

a comment was posted stating that all these

photographs were taken during an inspection of the residence

of the detained citizen. In

reality, one photograph was taken

in the apartment where the

suspect lived

the others were taken at other addresses as part of

operational

measures and investigative actions aimed at

stopping the activities of a group of individuals

engaged in drug trafficking in the

Moscow region, to which the detained person’s connection

is being checked. In connection with this fact

an internal review has been ordered

at the same time, we express our disagreement with

the statements of certain representatives of the

media alleging deliberate falsifications

committed during the preliminary

investigation

the preliminary investigation of the criminal

case is ongoing; it has been taken under the personal

control of the head of the Main Directorate

of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the city of Moscow

Police Lieutenant General Oleg Baranov

when it became clear fairly quickly that

the laboratory photographs were not from

Golunov’s home, because all of Golunov’s acquaintances

wrote, “What the hell, this is not

his apartment,” and even people who did not know Golunov

could see that it was some kind of place where

the walls were paneled with wood; it is unlikely that

a person living in a Moscow

apartment

journalist Golunov would have finished his

apartment with wood paneling, and these are wooden platforms

on which a drug lab was set up, and

Pavlov said it was obvious that this was fake, and all of this

ended up with Putin or his

politburo sitting there and, again, thinking: if

there is at least some kind of

“underworld-style” truth on their side, they understand that it

doesn’t exist; is there now going to be Bolotnaya 2 (a reference to the 2011–2012 protest movement) over what?

Because in Moscow Sobyanin and his

crooks have some kind of funeral-business scheme, this scheme, you

know, a surname that is never mentioned, namely

Nemyryuk

who coordinates the consumer

market and also coordinates all

funeral services. Who there is going to

continue these investigations? I saw there

Meduza said a lot of loud words that they

would continue them, and I advise you to pay

close attention to this person

Nemyryuk, Biryukov, Kitov, the towers—they have

some kind of scheme there, making not a small amount

not exactly pennies for Putin and the

Putin politburo

the funeral mafia is not about such huge money

well, what are they making there, one

billion, say? I mean, that’s substantial

with that billion they bought real estate, but

still, for you they’re just some mice

scurrying around somewhere, and because of these mice there will now

be a second Bolotnaya (the protest movement); why the hell would you need that?

But I think that in fact before

all this happened, they summoned

all these Facebook people

and said, guys, somehow, like

it happened, and in their own underworld-style

language, I think, they basically

told this story, which I

for example, by virtue of understanding how these processes work

from my own understanding of the process, can

reconstruct; that is probably how it was there. So

all these Moscow crooks were sitting there, their

their boss with a crazy roof (criminal protection) was sitting there, and they told him

something like, “Marat,”

“Medev, Maratik, listen, we’ve

arranged premises for you and your family there,”

“you’re getting 2 million

rubles a month (about $22,000), and everyone’s housing is fine, and

your sister has an apartment there of 300

square meters (about 3,230 sq ft), and your beat-up

six-year-old car, we’re replacing it, and now somehow

solve the Golunov issue—he’s poking into our business, why

the hell do we need him, and what do we do with him?”

“Look, just look at him, show us

Golunov, look here—don’t

he look like a drug addict? He looks like a drug addict.”

Surely he’s a junkie, a narcotics case.”

“Well then, if he looks like he’s on

drugs, why hasn’t he been caught with drugs yet?”

“Caught with drugs? Fine, we’ll catch him with

drugs,” replied Marat Medoev—or

someone else. Then he took his

guys

from the Western District, who went to the

Central District

the first sign that something was wrong was that they

planted drugs on Golunov, then

broke into his apartment, into his apartment

and planted something there too, that’s all. And then you

Putin, you fool, we’re dealing with Putin’s

system here—why the hell do we need this

because of all this mess

to be dealing with a new Bolotnaya (protest movement). So by the

time when the question of

pretrial restraint was already being considered, of course

it was precisely the people outraged online, those

who were writing—in other words, the potential

rally would indeed have turned into an actual rally

that is, it just wasn’t yet physically in the street

but it was already on Facebook, on

Twitter, and so on, and it was already clear

that it would happen

the people who said, “To hell with you, we’re

going out into the street and we will demand his

release”—those were the people who frightened them, that is

the people who came out into the streets again, who

said that we are not going to wait for any

official approvals

And that’s why they let Golunov go.

After that, it was just a matter of the usual mechanics,

the kind that had been worked out back in 2011–2012.

They called Muratov and they called Venediktov,

they pulled strings, and wow, it was

a very interesting and truly

astonishing, almost fantastic process.

Not even a process, really—I don’t know,

maybe a precedent the likes of which we had

never seen before. Nothing like it had

happened during Bolotnaya (the 2011–2012 anti-government protests in Moscow), nothing

like this had happened in any other case either.

For example, remember there was recently that

women’s march over the New Greatness case,

there was a huge uproar on Facebook then too,

and precisely because of that noise,

even though the march itself wasn’t very large,

and there was a downpour, they left it alone.

No one was detained because it was

clear that this, too, could turn

into a new Bolotnaya. That’s how the authorities operate:

they keep an eye on people’s real

moods and try to avoid

a genuine public outburst. But this time

something astonishing happened, because

in order to defuse the tension,

they brought out and unleashed

their propagandists—or rather, not exactly unleashed them,

they gave the order.

As the Proekt publication wrote, if I’m not mistaken,

which, by the way, also did excellent work,

Muratov told a lot, and one

name, Medoev, was learned by Proekt’s journalists

from Alexei Gromov, the deputy

head of the Presidential Administration,

who oversees all of this

propaganda machine of lies. He

allowed them all to speak out on the Golunov case

.

and criticize the Moscow police.

And who didn’t we see?

Irada Zeynalova—good Lord, that’s

the very same person

who aired that infamous story about the “crucified boy” (a notorious piece of Russian TV disinformation),

the embodiment

of the vilest, nastiest lies—and she came out

in support of Golunov. And then Simonyan too—well,

there’s nowhere to put another mark on her, so to speak. But these

people—we were literally watching their Twitter feeds,

it was just astonishing. But

they had clearly already been told what to write.

They were writing: it would be right

to release him to house arrest, because

the decision to release him to

house arrest had already been approved in order to ease the tension.

They had already started saying it, and even—good Lord—

Maria Zakharova. It was very funny to see

Maria Zakharova’s posts in the context of

drugs, because that is always very, very

amusing. Even she came out and

wrote: let’s stop this—

this investigation, let’s stop

this persecution,

these awful things. More than that, they

criticized the police, they spoke up for

freedom of the press. And I’d like

to note separately that what happened

shows us how quickly this entire

Putin power vertical

will collapse, excuse my language, the moment

the tiniest little crack is opened,

the moment these people—even not when

they’re explicitly allowed something, but when they realize

that criticizing the authorities isn’t scary. Because

even the most hopeless of them,

like Irada Zeynalova and Simonyan,

people who basically never say

a truthful word—they too want

to be normal people, they too

want to write something

on Twitter someday so that in the

comments people will write, “How right you were,

Margarita,” instead of

calling her names. And Maria

Zakharova also wants some

decent people to say about her, “Now that

was a proper statement—did you see how well

Maria Zakharova spoke?”

So, in other words, there is still something human

left in them after all, at least some kind of

vanity, maybe—a desire

to be praised by decent people. And they

switched sides in an absolutely astonishing

and fantastic way. It was very, very

funny. By the time house arrest

was on the table, when all the propagandists started

writing that Golunov should be released,

when *Kommersant*, *Vedomosti*, and RBC

published that now-famous front page

saying “I/We Are Ivan Golunov,” it was clear that

these were newspapers that never

say an unnecessary word, and suddenly they came out with

something like that. It was a breakthrough, and

those journalists—they took it, and I’m

speaking completely seriously now,

without sarcasm and not trying to mock them—

it really was a great moment.

You can view it ironically in the context

of what happened afterward, of course,

but it shouldn’t be viewed ironically,

because it really was

something great: the moment the lid was lifted,

they turned into real journalists rather than

what they had been before. They even felt like

decent people, and many of us

looked at them and thought:

so after all, inside they are decent people,

they say good things. And that was very

cool. And as I already said, the most

amazing thing was watching everyone

flip in midair—those crooks

who had just been writing… show us, if we have

any screenshots, let’s take a look—

at what they were writing before that.

Armen Gasparyan, some obscure

guy who calls himself

a historian, one of the

main propagandists of that sort.

small-time talking heads, the iron, and Solovyov's force

Sergey, on the program—look, first of all,

he writes well, a decent person from

the Beautiful Russia of the Future

so they detained him with drugs, ha ha

drug addicts, archaeology, then a purge in

the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) — that's good, I'll do my part and

there was a lot of that, and they literally instantly

changed, and they were simply ready

to go out to the barricades and start tearing

their throats out. Golunov was won over—that was

really a very great moment, well

yes, yes, yes, yes. For you, from the point

of view, was it some kind of cynical political-technological

moment, because Gramov called in these

journalists and said: guys, we need

to make sure this whole protest thing is not

monopolized by the opposition side of

Facebook, and you should also start

writing about it, because later we'll announce

some bogus, fake rally

the next stage will be—I also slightly

you speak—but still, they were saying

the right things, and after all, they all

know that drugs get planted. It wasn't

pleasant to do that, and it was really

such a great moment which, I'll repeat,

shows us how quickly

Putin's regime will end, how quickly

Putinist propaganda will end, as soon as the moment

comes. And all these chains—as soon as

the leash loosens, all these attack dogs, they

I'm not saying they'll

support us or shout 'Navalny for

president'—of course not. But they, like

any journalists, will start criticizing

the shortcomings of the authorities, and our current government

consists exclusively of nothing but

shortcomings. And it won't be Meduza or RBC, dishonest

journalists, but people like Vladimir Solovyov

and Margarita Simonyan

who will smash this whole government, this whole

ideology, in three—no

potion—when finally, when they either

with him, pleasure

or are given a little freedom, then

one way or another, here's what happened next

there was this huge, already quite unanimous

mass journalistic movement, and

the authorities' next task was that, well,

as for Golunov, they decided: we'll now

release him

in one or two stages, but we need

to make sure that no unauthorized protest

no new Bolotnaya (a reference to the 2011–2012 Moscow protest movement) happens

why? Because right now I'm being written to by

Timofey Platonov

Alexei, how is Volkov doing? Leonid Volkov

the head of our штаб (campaign headquarters), who is now

sitting—Inferno overkill—asking

it's wonderful that everything was resolved with Golunov

but how many more innocent people are in prison, and so

on. These are the kinds of questions you send me most often here

quite rightly, and by Saturday they had already

started discussing it: what the hell,

they locked up Golunov, but they only

focused on Golunov, and now of course we'll go with

a sign saying 'I am Golunov,' but we're for everyone, after all

and that became the scary thing—they had to

stop all this urgently

so they brought out a bottle of whiskey

and invited Alexei Venediktov and Dmitry

Muratov, and then the wonderful Galina

Timchenko and Ivan Kolpakov. Do I want to

condemn them for everything that happened afterward? Because

you yourselves know perfectly well what happened next

they suddenly came out with some

statements of varying degrees of

strangeness, saying that

the case against Golunov was now being dropped

it was clear that on the day before

this rally, before the rally, he would be released

they released him, dropped the case, but they needed

there to be no rally, and they put out this

strange statement saying that we are not

calling anyone to rally, let's cancel it, let's go

have a drink. Well, it all looked

super strange, and of course, well, Ivan Kolpakov,

whom I think well of, and when

all this happened, I wrote to him

and to Timchenko, a letter, and I still stand by

my offer: if you need anything

to investigate further, we will help you with

Meduza's investigation. But nevertheless, he

wrote some completely

fantastical post. I regret that I didn't

run into Timchenko and Kolpakov at the rally

yesterday so that I could simply, to their faces,

tell them: this is just some kind of

fantastic mixture, at once of

cowardice and sheer rudeness toward

everyone. Show that screenshot again

where it's like, well, we got our guy back, this is

our victory, activists are needed, but we kind of

look down on activism, we don't

do that, so, like, thanks everyone

freedom for all, we've got a ton of work, and that

was, of course, very sad. I condemn them

though

I understand that they were in a hopeless

situation. We're all adults here, we

understand perfectly well how it really was

they were summoned, and whoever it was there—Sergunina

the one who handles politics in

the city of Moscow, Sobyanin's deputy, the same

Gorbenko

well, some people there who decide things, they

know the Presidential Administration and said

the obvious thing to them: guys, we'll release Golunov

right now, nothing will happen to him

he'll be fine

and everyone will be safe, we'll now deal with some cops

we'll fire some of them, we'll admit all this

it will be justice, but we don't want

there to be a rally. It was a very difficult

compromise for them. Well, then they should have

come out afterward and said

'Please understand our position; it was important for us'

And right now, the important thing is to save him, Golunov, but not

just from this prosecution, from prison, from

all the terrible things that obviously would have

happened to him and were clearly being planned for

him. And in order to save him,

we also made a certain compromise there.

So honestly, we appeal to all of you, guys:

let's cancel tomorrow's rally, well,

and in two weeks we'll submit the application now

and hold a new rally for

Golunov,

and for Volkov, and for those imprisoned in the case of

the Network case, New Greatness, and all the other such

cases—hundreds across the country, and thousands, tens of thousands

of people who have had drugs planted on them.

Tens of thousands. You all know these stories.

Every one of us has acquaintances

who have had drugs planted on them; every one of us

has friends of friends

of friends who may well have been

sent to prison over drugs, for some utter nonsense. I

even told you a story that

shook me to the core: I was sitting in

a cell with a guy who was being held

under administrative arrest because

he had violated supervision rules. He was caught in

a club with 2 grams of hashish on him.

He got 5 years. Yes, you shouldn't smoke

hashish, and I condemn drugs, and all of that

is terrible.

It starts with hashish and continues with heroin,

but damn it, they gave him 5 years.

He was a very young guy. He had finished

school,

served in the army, and then went to prison. That's his whole

life—this monstrous mess. And there are

huge numbers of such cases. And of course Meduza

—Kolpakov and Osetinskaya, in general—there was no

It's very sad that Elizaveta Osetinskaya

is involved in all this. They should have

come out and told us everything plainly.

But you're not children here, and neither are they.

You know who you're dealing with.

You know what kind of people these are.

They released Golunov; we got him back

alive and well. But the trade-off was this:

let's not hold the rally

that the authorities so badly did not want to happen.

That would have been a—well, it would have been a scandal,

of course an indescribable one, but to a much lesser

degree, and to a much lesser degree we would have

ended up quarreling among ourselves and causing more damage

to everyone than what they did.

Because when they wrote, 'Guys, ha-ha,

we're going for a drink,'

don't come out to tomorrow's rally because

those kinds of rallies are for everyone, and we've gotten our guy

out,'

'we're not engaged in activism, we're

engaged in journalism'—they did

a terrible thing. And the main offense

was that they removed

the magical umbrella of safety. When there was

a rally planned, a general rally

that everyone was going to, journalists included, and it was

fearless and powerful, and the organizers—the very

same top journalists—were saying, 'Let's go

to the rally,' no one would have been detained there.

It really would have been a huge rally.

Even without official permission, the authorities wouldn't have

been able to do anything about it; they would have had to accept it.

But no one would have been detained there. When

they said, 'You know, as for those

rallies—it's the sort of place all kinds of

riffraff go,' when they removed that, in fact I

understood for the first time that something ugly was going to

happen. And when they pushed out the

Agora lawyers from the process,

and brought in a lawyer who

starts dealing with some kind of

'problem-solving,' little arrangements, and all

that sort of thing—I knew one thing about the Agora lawyers:

they would not engage in shady dealings.

Well, that's a matter for each

person; it was Golunov's personal decision.

It's his business; everyone handles the matters of their own life

for themselves. But when

things like this started happening, it became clear that there was

some kind of deal being made. You see,

these were arrangements. I'll repeat what I said at the

start of the program: I myself wrote to everyone,

'Get the people who specialize in negotiations—

Muratov and Venediktov—and send them

into every office, because the main thing is that

Golunov not be killed.' But there was no need to treat everyone with

such contempt,

and there was no need to remove that

magical umbrella, because the authorities

then acted in a very simple way.

A lot of people are asking why, why did they

beat everyone up?

It's very clear why they beat everyone up. They had

a simple setup. Basically, they

decided: they said, 'Look, we

released Golunov. And for those who

still want to protest, we've suddenly

approved a rally'

for which all sorts of crooks had submitted applications, including

Ekaterina Vinokurova,

that same woman known for her

famous video: 'Everything was going so well

until Navalny showed up.' Remember the

protest against renovation (the Moscow housing demolition program)? It was the exact

same thing with that anti-renovation rally—there was

massive outrage, after which City Hall

organized a rally against itself,

put all sorts of crooks in charge, and I came

there with my wife and child, and the police were

escorting me out.

And then they were crying about what a good

rally they had, how everything was fine until

Navalny came. And where did that protest movement

against renovation go? It dissolved because

the mayor's office took it over, and then it was

gradually crushed. The same thing is happening here.

Is it still worth going out and protesting? But

here we are being offered our own, well, of course slightly

prostituted little rally—but it's legal, and

We’re telling you: yes, you can hold a rally, but with our

hosts, from our stage, with our

organizers, under our slogans, and we

control everything. We’re giving you a whole lot here—

what difference does it make to you? You can go straight out into the

street chanting these slogans,

put on your T-shirt that says

"Golunov," and post this

photo on Instagram. Isn’t that enough for you?

Especially since the rally will also

be a celebration. Maria Zakharova will be there rejoicing

—Maria Zakharova, who was writing posts there

about how I would pay for this.

Everyone there will be saying, “I’m crying with happiness,” and

Margarita Simonyan will say, “This is the best

day of my life.”

They’ll come out on stage and say,

“I thank the wise position that was taken,”

by Moscow City Hall, and then Sergei Sobyanin

also wrote something like, “We corrected a mistake,”

blah blah blah. But it will be a celebratory rally,

a celebration of civil society’s victory

over certain police officers from

the Western Administrative District

who, for unclear reasons—we won’t

discuss certain FSB officers (Russia’s security service), no,

no Biryukov, no Nemyryuk, and the Moscow government

has nothing to do with it. There are just some unclear

police officers who, for some reason,

decided to plant drugs, but we

beat them, we threw them out, we fired them.

We gave you Kolokoltsev—what’s not

to like? We even gave you the mini-

minister himself; he recorded a video address.

Let’s watch. Kolokoltsev: “As a result

of comprehensive biological,

forensic, criminalistic, and

genetic examinations, a decision has been made

to terminate the criminal prosecution

of citizen Golunov and to drop the

charges against him

due to the failure to prove his involvement in

the commission of a crime. Today he will be

released from house arrest.

The materials from the investigation by the Internal Security

units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs have been sent

to the Investigative Committee of Russia

to review the lawfulness

of the actions of the officers directly involved in

the detention of this citizen. For the duration

of the investigation, they have been suspended from

their duties.

A decision has also been made to petition

the President of the Russian Federation

for the removal from office

of the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Western

Administrative District of the city of Moscow,

General Puchkov, and the head of the Directorate

for Drug Control

of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow,

General Devyatkin, on the grounds that regardless

of a person’s profession,

the rights of every citizen must

always be protected.”

Do you think it was pleasant for Kolokoltsev

to record that video? No. Especially since

he personally didn’t plant anything on anyone. He

was basically just there,

and they told him, “Go fix this problem, because

otherwise it’ll be Bolotnaya” (a reference to the mass protest movement of 2011–2012). They recorded the video,

fired some of those, well,

police officers, and then said,

“Guys, but again, it’s clear.” And Putin’s

politburo is reasoning like this: we

gave them a rally and paid for the sound system,

suddenly a

sanctioned rally is being hosted by opposition

journalists,

Ekaterina Vinokurova and the well-known journalist

Pavel Gusev.

We put Kolokoltsev in front of them,

in front of everyone; he humiliated himself. Alexei, Andrei—

people are asking me about Peskov’s daughter.

They sent Peskov’s daughter to the rally,

ready to send in the whole invasion; she was there

walking around too with some kind of sign and all that.

So, in other words, we fulfilled our obligations.

Golunov has been released, we did a bit of

self-humiliation, we put on this whole show, but if

some of you are still dissatisfied and

want to run around shouting “Freedom for

Leonid Volkov,” “The New Greatness case” (a Russian political case involving young activists),

“We demand a review,”

of repressive legislation, or

to demand that the media be allowed to write all the time in

a genuinely free way—then sorry, we

are going to beat you down. And they did.

As for why yesterday at the rallies there was

real—this stupid, well, if you

really are that stupid—stupid

beatings, a stupid brutal pummeling of people: but I

was there at that rally. Why am I saying this

too? I’ll tell you honestly,

absolutely honestly: I was so upset

with Meduza (an independent Russian media outlet).

I don’t want to go to jail right now; I have a lot

to do. They deliberately jailed

Volkov once, then jailed Volkov another

time in order to isolate him from

the штаб (campaign headquarters). Everyone understands this. The candidates there

just bombarded me with frantic

text messages when the news came through

that I’d been dragged into a police van.

They were writing, “Why the hell did you go? We need

you to keep publishing investigations, we need

you to keep speaking out so that we can

collect signatures, we need to keep

Smart Voting going, and you’re going to sit there like an idiot

for 30 days. You can’t

allow yourself that.” And of course I can’t

allow myself that. But after, excuse me,

Kolpakov’s post, how could I not go when

they told everyone, “Thanks, everyone, that’s all,

you’re all free to go”? Well, I had to go, because

otherwise I’d be worth nothing as a politician.

So I went and got thrown into that idiotic

police van, sat there cursing, to a lesser

or greater extent, the whole regime.

and everything else, to a greater extent, all of it

this whole mess, but sorry that I'm speaking so incoherently

all I want to say is that this has only just

all passed through me personally. Just yesterday, at that

time, I was, well, preparing for

a 30-day arrest, but I still need

to be ready for it. I'm just trying

trying, so to speak, to describe the overall structure

that is, the complicated political situation

that has newly emerged, that now

has arisen, and in which we will be living

for quite some time. That's how it is.

So, they removed this umbrella of protection and started

cracking down. Let's watch the video.

of the detention. It's about a minute long. It looked

genuinely pretty awful.

[applause]

[music]

uh

people were being detained in a really completely stupid

meaningless, random way. I mean,

I was just standing there, that's all. Fine, I—I

was just standing there the whole time, and then

a police officer comes up and just starts dragging me

somewhere.

They were just grabbing random people, carrying them off,

dragging them away. Naturally, that especially

infuriated everyone, because we have the

opportunity to compare the behavior

of the police in different circumstances. Here,

people really came out to protest

for a just cause, and literally two days

earlier we all saw a completely

astonishing video of how the police behave

like little kittens

when they are dealing with a somewhat different kind of

public-order violators.

Let's watch for one minute.

I apologize in advance, there is a bit of

profanity there, but still.

So, you just saw how people were being dragged away

for no reason, and how the

Moscow police behave in other situations.

And why is that?

Well, you see, there's a police officer standing there

saying, 'Hey, idiot, get in the car, get out of here,'

'we'll sort it out there.' But here

people were genuinely just being grabbed and dragged away.

You saw many shots where they were simply

beating someone, and as far as I understand, even now

several people are still detained, and

I send them my best regards. I hope they

get out

as soon as possible. At the Central Administrative District police station, I think,

today they were issuing fines of 150,000 rubles (about $1,600).

Why are they herding people there? They are herding

everyone who does not want to go to this

[__] sanctioned rally, into it.

They are forcing them there. This is the authorities' clear position:

'Go ahead, protest, speak out,

but under our control. If some

socially important event happens, we do not

deny that the Golunov case is

an important public issue. Fine, we will

create protest infrastructure for you,

come up with the slogans ourselves, and arrange everything for you.

And if you don't want that, we'll crush you. That's what they

are doing—really squeezing out this group of people

who later wrote Facebook posts saying,

'You know, we did help free Golunov,

but people are still behind bars, so we are still

going to come out. We may not even feel like it, but out of

principle we'll go.' These people, to

me, are the most wonderful. They are, in principle,

the finest, the best people—the good

people, the best people in the country. They still

come out, and everything rests on them. They

still look for some kind of

solidarity; they try to show that

solidarity toward everyone—journalists and non-journalists alike.

Everyone deserves equal

rights, and people who say that

and come out to defend it are very dangerous to the authorities. They pressure them and

crush them because of that.

So that is where things stand. On the 16th,

there will be a rally organized by the very same people

who planted drugs on Golunov

—these pathetic people organized

a rally in defense of Golunov and dragged in

all sorts of their controlled clowns,

and of course we need to watch carefully

who will be calling people there, who will

be speaking there, and everything else,

because this is how they

are trying simply to divide all of us

and how they are trying, well,

to use the carrot-and-stick method. Let's see who

was silenced by the stick and who was bought off by the carrot.

It's very interesting. The funniest

moment of this rally, of course—and it is also

funny, and you have surely seen it, but I

will show it again for just a couple of seconds. It is very

funny, but at the same time, damn, how

humiliating it is—the bit where someone is basically saying, 'Let me go,

I'm American.' Let's watch 22 seconds.

After the check, that meant I could

go out for a walk.

[inaudible] Russians

[inaudible] brought me in as an American

Right, and I watched that moment together with

the cops at the police station, the ones who

had made the arrests and were writing up reports. They

naturally had nothing much to do there,

they were bored, sitting around, and just like

you, they watch all these little videos

about who hit whom, who got into it with whom,

'our guy was caught on camera there, haha,'

'now they'll write about him on the internet,' and

so naturally they were watching that video about

the 'I'm American' moment. Everyone is laughing, cracking up, and well,

naturally they said to me, 'Anatolich, why didn't you

say you were American too? They would have

let you go as well, haha, hee-hee.'

But what a humiliating moment that was,

you have to admit, really.

Well, to them, we are second-class people, all of

us, you understand. A person who simply

[fragment unclear] says 'America' and that's it.

Getting involved with him—he’s kind of... no, come on.

Let him go, but these ones—these are the ones we’ll...

...crush. These are the ones we’ll beat, along with him.

You can do whatever you want—pack in 26, even 36 people.

I think there were about that many people in the police van,

where Ruslan Shaveddinov was too, and he was also sitting there in

that hellish heat.

It was like a gas chamber in there—was it even possible at all

to get out of there without any health consequences?

Was it even easy to get out of there at all?

It’s just disgusting. A person says, well—

“A foreigner? A foreigner? Then get out.” That’s

of course just revolting. But there were also

some super inspiring moments. I want to show you

an absolutely furious speech by Sasha

Astakhova—1 minute 20 seconds. It’s really

something. She spoke brilliantly there. This was already

after I had been taken away, so I didn’t

see it live, but later I watched the video and just

thought: if only we had more people like that.

He stands there smiling, saying that his detention

is not the main issue here.

Forget the details for a second—what matters are these

key words he says. He says:

“Your colleague has been released, and I’m glad about that,”

and all the police officers who dragged me in

kept saying, basically, “Well, he’s been released already.”

But Astakhov says: “That’s not enough for me, because

the others are still sitting there.” That’s the key point.

Yes, and that’s the main complaint against Meduza (an independent Russian news outlet)

and against some other wonderful, decent people.

Really, despite how much I criticized

Meduza on this broadcast, of course they are

not enemies. They’re all on our side.

It’s just that I hope they somehow

realize that they behaved wrongly.

But all this division into activists and

journalists—how many people like that are sitting in jail?

How many unfortunates like Golunov (Russian journalist Ivan Golunov) simply

don’t know any editors-in-chief,

and that’s why Astakhov is right when he says:

“This is not enough.” And it shouldn’t be enough for us either.

I hope it’s not enough for you either, and that we need to keep coming out

to rallies like this, because for us

this is not enough. We want, in principle,

for this to become impossible.

Impossible for this to keep happening—impossible for

it to happen again. And it’s very interesting

what’s happening at rallies now:

the attitude toward

the police has, of course, changed completely.

And the police’s own actions are to blame for that.

The actions of the police are, of course, simply

pushing people to chant completely

different slogans. A few years ago,

a couple of years ago, you remember,

people were chanting:

“The police are with the people.” And now let’s hear what

people often chant now.

[music]

People are marching and chanting: “Cops are the shame

of Russia.” Before, that was something only

anarchists would chant. Now it’s being chanted by simply

ordinary people, including elderly people

who came out because of the very

actions of the police themselves.

Like, well, they detained me there, that is—

as for me, since I’m a well-known person

from YouTube, they always treat me very well there.

In that sense, I have no

complaints about the police department.

The Strogino police station was wonderful—clean,

the cell was much cleaner than the one at

Danilovsky. Everyone was polite: “What do you need there?

How are things? Do you want some water?”

“Would you like some water?” I say, “Thank you.” Well,

then you see why everyone out there is shouting

“Cops are the shame of Russia,” and they say to me, “Well, but

what are we supposed to say?” Well yes, of course, you’re

all different.

But you drag people away and then justify it

by saying, “It’s just my job,” “It’s not us, it’s

life that’s like this.” But you are the ones dragging people away,

planting drugs, protecting corrupt officials.

But inside the police there is also

a fairly large movement against all this.

This time especially, I

didn’t notice the slightest bit of joy

or gloating among the police officers

about these detentions. Sometimes that kind of thing

does happen—like, “So, what now? We’re going to

break this up, you’ve gathered here,”

“because of you we’ve got extra

duty shifts.” But this time it seemed to me that

even the police themselves were fairly

downcast.

I keep a close eye on the police union,

and we try to support

the police union, and there’s also this

public group, “Police Ombudsman,” where

the leader of that page writes huge

human-rights posts about

why the hell the police are involved in all this.

It’s obvious that drugs were being planted,

and all this planting of drugs—

they’re forced to do all of it

because the authorities pressure police officers

in exactly the same way. He posts

amazing documents Sasha found.

So, they caught some police officer

because he was moonlighting as a Yandex

Taxi driver, and they either fired him—or maybe they actually did fire him—

or gave him a severe reprimand because

“you are disgracing the honor of a police officer”

by working part-time for Yandex Taxi.

Then pay him properly! One officer

moonlights for Yandex Taxi, while others

plant drugs. And those who

plant drugs—until something like the Golunov case happened—

were doing just fine.

Everything’s fine if you plant drugs, but if you drive for Yandex Taxi

as a side job, they’ll throw you out of the force.

Well,

but still, that’s how it is. And this

sympathy

—we understand why it happens, but it

is, in a way, running out within society,

wearing thin, and of course we should expect...

What

when there are large rallies, sooner or

later, well, this could turn into

some kind of conflict with the authorities, and the authorities

actually understand that quite well

I’ve been talking more and more often about

Golunov, but it really is a

crucial issue, the most important thing

and through it we saw how

they are trying to divide us, by the way

speaking, it’s a funny thing, I just

saw today, you know what

at the same time as this rally, just like

with our rally that we

held over *He Is Not Dimon to You* (an anti-corruption investigation by Alexei Navalny), the authorities

also simultaneously organized several

meetups with various Instagram bloggers

some of these million-follower bloggers

I don’t really know them, but apparently they’re big

Karakare, Lazar Yans, David Mun, Okean

Dmitry Maslennikov, Subkhan Mamedov, they

each wrote on Instagram that

at exactly that time, some in Sokolniki, some

somewhere else, they were holding meetups with followers

come by, I’ll take pictures with you

sign autographs and all that, so

you can see how frightened they were

that by all sorts of different methods

here’s a fake rally for you, here’s something cool

to lure you in, and then, well,

the youth are immature, so come on in

take pictures with bloggers

you know, everyone needs to watch carefully

because this is exactly

the toolkit the authorities use; we need

to understand how it works, and we need once

again to clearly realize how

we can achieve something: not by

asking permission for anything

but simply by coming out. Second, by showing

solidarity with everyone, always—whether it’s a journalist

or a taxi driver, it doesn’t matter to us. And third,

by being persistent, the way those

journalists were in the first days: they lock them up

you throw him out the door, he comes back through the window; they lock them up

they come back out again, regroup, and bring in

new people. That happened in Yekaterinburg

and it worked in a case that was much less important politically there

though still very important

for the city, and highly precedent-setting

and it worked in an absolutely astonishing

way

and now, in the Golunov case, which

is ongoing and will continue, because

listen, we must keep

asking the question: who ordered it? On the 20th

there will be Putin’s call-in show, and Meduza is

preparing something there; obviously they should

ask these questions. The authorities must

explain it to us. But will they bring anyone

to criminal responsibility?

I assume that right now, of course, in

their scenario

they have no plan to bring anyone to criminal responsibility

if we look at the ruling on

the termination of the criminal prosecution

the termination of the criminal case against

Golunov, it says: due to his non-involvement

in the crime. But that means the crime did happen

it says, due to non-involvement

in the commission of the crime—that is, there was

a crime

there were drugs, someone detained someone

someone did something, but Golunov had nothing

to do with it. But that does not satisfy us

you’ll agree. As Stakhova said just now

in the video, that’s not enough for us; we want

those people to be held accountable

the people who planted the drugs

in the backpack

they committed an especially grave crime

and the people who ordered it

they are outright criminals, absolute

bandits. And the people they were protecting

and for whom they tried to imprison Golunov, all those

corrupt officials and, well,

frankly, they are the most dangerous

corrupt figures, protected by gangsters

who put people in prison. We would like

this entire chain to be exposed

but right now they’re just steering us

toward saying: come on, let’s celebrate

and have a drink. We can and should

celebrate and drink to

Golunov’s release, but

not for a single second should we forget those who

are still behind bars—not for one second

must we allow that to happen

listen, I have several

other important things I wanted to mention

first of all, of course, there is that shocking

video from Chechnya that we

all saw. It is especially important in

the context of what happened with Golunov, yes

well, drugs were planted on him, but in Chechnya

this happens all the time, and that is exactly

in a sense

a new practice that is now

being exported from Chechnya. I saw statements

at the first stage of the development of this

conflict, everyone was saying: my God, who would

plant drugs on a well-known

journalist? Ayub Titiev is a well-known

journalist

he is very well known in Chechnya. I think that

in Chechnya

among the population he was better known than

Golunov was in Moscow before all this. Nevertheless

they planted those drugs on him in a case of total lawlessness

and everyone saw it

this happens in Chechnya

but nevertheless the prosecutor’s office in Moscow

the Supreme Court in Moscow

the Investigative Committee in Moscow, all the supervisory

Moscow authorities, knowing that drugs had been

planted, said: okay

we checked the legality, everything is fine, they imprisoned

the man. They released him now, there will be a pause, but

And yet he was the one who ended up in jail, and we planted it.

The drugs — everyone knows that.

Ramzan Kadyrov knows all this, and Ramzan

Kadyrov put out a remarkable statement, because

the governor of one of Russia’s federal subjects (regions)

said that he would tear out people’s tongues there

and break their fingers. Let’s see how he

imagines it.

Then we’ll break them too, and tear out their tongues.

Keep in mind, we’ve not just

seen a single line — whether it was a comment or

a video posted — he would have gone after her.

Whatever he may be like.

You know me — Holyfield-style, I love my

talents.

What law on insulting the authorities are we even talking about here?

Here, a governor simply comes out — one of the

leaders of United Russia (the ruling political party), a governor,

a public official who is, after all,

supposed to follow all regulations,

a civil servant, and says: if you

call me names on Instagram, I’ll

tear out your tongue; if you write about cars in

the comments, I’ll break your fingers. And everyone

stays silent, and nothing happens. This is all

connected with the conflict that is now

flaring up. Maybe in the next

program I’ll talk about it in detail — right now, between

Chechnya and Dagestan over the border. It is

something similar, partly like what

used to happen earlier in Ingushetia

— Ingushetia needs to be discussed separately.

Of course, we all want

there to be no conflict there, for no one

to start fighting, on either side,

for no one to take up arms. And we need to,

let’s say, call on everyone to remain

calm online. A governor cannot

say, ‘I’ll tear out your tongue and break your

fingers.’ And if a governor says something like that,

well then, obviously, all across the country

police officers will plant drugs on

people, because the law does not exist.

They understand that as long as Ramzan Kadyrov

is saying all this on Instagram,

there is no law at all — there is only

an appearance of it, there is only a political situation.

If the political situation allows you

to plant drugs, then plant them.

If in one out of a hundred thousand cases, like with

Golunov, the political situation changed slightly

and he turned out to have powerful

connections — he was not a person standing alone,

there were people looking out for him — then in

that one case out of a hundred thousand, you can’t. But overall,

in general,

there is no law, there is no truth, and it is permitted

to tear out tongues and break fingers.

As long as this keeps happening, lawlessness will never

stop. And I’m not

even interested — it’s pointless

to wait for Ramzan Kadyrov to stop doing this.

He is constantly testing, constantly looking for

new boundaries — like children, fooling around,

acting up, and always escalating.

Because

that’s just how people are: they look for new

limits, they look for the boundaries of what is allowed.

And no one sets those boundaries of what is allowed for Kadyrov.

He no longer pays any attention

to the law enforcement agencies, to anything,

or to public opinion — to nothing. He

doesn’t care. And Putin either does not want to,

or cannot, or is deliberately allowing all this

because he needs people in

the country to understand that their tongues can be torn out

and their fingers broken. The most humiliating

video was this one.

And the humiliating video about the American

who was being released was almost cheerful by comparison.

This was a humiliating, sad, humiliating

video of the week, the month — I don’t even know how long.

This was, of course, a video from

Kemerovo Region, a video from the city of

Kiselevsk. I want to show one minute

and 20 seconds. People appealed to

the Prime Minister of Canada, asking him to

grant them Canadian citizenship and take

them to Canada. Let’s watch 1 minute

20 seconds.

[music]

We have repeatedly sent our appeals

to President Vladimir Putin, pleading for

rescue.

Our government forgives huge debts to other

countries, but its own

residents of Kuzbass (the Kuznetsk coal basin in Siberia) seem to have been forgotten. We

are tired of waiting for change, and if there is any,

it is only for the worse. It is dangerous to wait

any longer — every day things get worse.

In our city and region,

we are not betraying anyone — we simply

want to survive and have guarantees that we, as

people, as human beings, are worth more than

the mineral resources

in the earth’s depths. If the Russian Federation cannot

give us that, then we will

look for the opportunity to live in other countries.

And there were more people — over two minutes of footage.

The sound is very bad, but we made

special subtitles, because those unfortunate

residents of Kiselevsk do not even realize

that they cannot be heard in that wind, and they

are reading something in a hopeless tone. And this thing — I

saw this video spreading across

the internet, articles were written about it,

but in a satirical and comic

way. It really did seem funny: residents

of Kiselevsk — and where even is Kiselevsk? Who the hell

knows — appealed, of all things, to the

Prime Minister of Canada: take us

away from here and give us citizenship. They mine

coal there by open-pit mining, in order to

make money. They simply started digging

coal pits, blasting the ground, and simply

extracting it. It is very cheap.

It brings money to local crooks, this

monstrous, barbaric method of extraction, and it

is turning local residents' lives into hell

because everything there is covered in this coal

dust, and it's impossible to live a normal life, and they have already

been knocking on every door for many years, and nothing can be done

about it.

And now imagine this: in Kiselyovsk

they got together, whether in someone's apartment or in a club,

and said, "What are we supposed to do?" Someone

spoke up and said, "Why don't we just

appeal to the Prime Minister of Canada, and, well,

maybe then

Canadian newspapers will write about us. Russian

newspapers don't write about us." It's such a

absurd thing. Maybe everyone else in

Russia will pay attention, maybe

someone in the Kremlin will hear about us and

finally make it so that my

infant child, when lying

in a stroller, doesn't get coal dust settling on his face. This

is monstrous. It's monstrous that

residents have absolutely nowhere to turn.

There are all sorts of environmental inspections,

but they don't work. They should have shut all this down

immediately. The environmental protection

prosecutor's office,

it should have arrested all these

people. The regular prosecutor's office doesn't work either,

nor the police. In the Kemerovo region,

it's basically gangster rule there. Everyone takes

money from these coal pits.

The regional leadership takes bribes from them.

It's pointless to appeal to Moscow.

So they get down on their knees and appeal

to the Prime Minister of Canada. What could be

more humiliating for our strange country?

Good Lord, we claim global leadership,

we compete with the United States,

we have nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants,

we want to conquer space, and yet our people

have to resort to

the only way to draw

attention to themselves: making themselves look like fools

by appealing to the Prime Minister of Canada

so that some Muscovites or

officials, I don't know, scrolling through the jokes section,

might see how monstrous their lives are. This is

a nightmarish, unjust situation, but I also

just want to support all the residents

of the Kemerovo region, and of course those in

Kiselyovsk. That's why I also included in

the program—and, guys, smart voting: vote for

any party except United Russia.

I just ended the program with that very

party, United Russia, at the St. Petersburg

Economic Forum. The key words

that

were formulated more clearly than I did in my

program or in any of my videos by the head of

Dagestan, Viktor Vasilyev. You all

know him well: a gray-haired man

who served as a general in the Interior Ministry and was

a deputy minister. He became well known because during

the Dubrovka theater hostage crisis (the 2002 Moscow theater attack), he was constantly on television,

and then for many years he sat

with United Russia in the State Duma. He was even our

own

Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, one

of United Russia's leaders. That is, for

14 years

he personally passed laws and

coordinated the passage of those laws. At

the St. Petersburg forum, in 10 seconds he said

the most important words about all this work

done by him, United Russia, and Putin.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, let's listen to this

wonderful man. "What we're all saying now is

that the legislation needs to be changed.

Yes, as it stands, our legislation is written

for thieves and corrupt officials. Now it needs

to be written for honest business.

"Our legislation is written for

thieves and corrupt officials," says one

of the leaders

of United Russia, the head of the Republic of

Dagestan.

Thank you very much, Mr. Vasilyev. We

agree with you. So on September 8, vote against

United Russia—take part in Smart

Voting. If you live in Moscow,

44,000 people are watching this

program right now, and many more will watch it later.

Please spend an hour, go out and

give your signature

for candidates to the Moscow City Duma. They

will write proper laws,

not the kind that are written for thieves and

corrupt officials. Thank you very much to everyone who

watched. See you next Thursday.

[music]