Putin’s press conference, Navalny on air, State Duma elections

[music]

Good evening, everyone, hello, this is

the Navalny Live channel, and we're live on Thursday

20:00. That means we're discussing the main

political and social news

of the past week, and with you are Lyubov Sobol

and Ivan Zhdanov. But of course today

we'll also discuss Vladimir

Putin's press conference and the major investigation

by Navalny that came out this week,

which has already been watched by more than 13 million

people. In just a few

minutes, joining us live will be

Alexei Navalny, who will discuss with us both

the investigation and the press conference

of Vladimir Putin.

While we're waiting for him to join, I'd like

to remind viewers of our today's

broadcast.

Of course, don't forget to subscribe to our

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look there — there's a link for sponsorship

and also a link to launch, I don't know, on air

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a Khabarovsk flag — you can do all that

by sending a small donation and

writing your own original text there.

Yes, but actually today we're going to

be asking you repeatedly,

to chip in, because there's another reason

why we need donations. The thing is that

yesterday, in the Moscow City Court,

a ruling came into force — the decision of the

court of first instance on a lawsuit by the Ministry

of Internal Affairs, and you surely all

remember that large number of lawsuits against

all the candidates who in 2019

came out demanding that candidates be

registered for the Moscow City Duma

elections. Those were major protests

that culminated on July 27 in a

large rally in 2019, after which

many people suffered — to this day, there are still eight

people who are in penal colonies and

prisons, many received sentences,

administrative arrests, and the candidates

received fairly large fines,

which

well, we simply cannot pay on our own.

And yesterday, a lawsuit for

3.5 million rubles (about $47,000 at the time) came into force.

This is a lawsuit claiming that we distracted

Ministry of Internal Affairs officers

and OMON riot police, that they supposedly spent their

extra time — even though this is exactly the

work we already pay them for through taxes — for

the fact that they allegedly used more

fuel and lubricants, for the fact that

the lawn was trampled there, and many, many other

absurd things they wrote in

completely out of thin air. My lawyer,

Alexander Pomazuyev, a lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

is still amazed

at how it was even possible to present to the court

evidence in which

the figures had been blacked out by them, and in the proceedings

they didn't even allow the main

injured party there — the directorate of the

Ministry of Internal Affairs.

We were sued by the federal Ministry

of Internal Affairs, while they were dealing with the directorate, and so

for this insane lawsuit, we now need

to pay 3 million rubles. Fortunately,

a good person was found who

opened a Sberbank card in their own name;

the number can be seen

on the screen, and we are announcing a major fundraiser.

Previously, Vladimir Milov

raised money for these fines;

now we are announcing a fundraiser

using this image that you

see on the screen. The money from the account will

later be transferred to pay off

these lawsuits. It's a long story, and only together can we

solve this problem.

And these 3 million are not the end of it,

this is not the final amount — there are fairly

large sums still ahead. We will write a lot

about this, but in this

specific case, we need your support. And

most importantly, it must be said that these lawsuits,

which were brought against us as candidates,

as independent candidates in the

Moscow City Duma elections, are absolutely political,

and really, it's not just

Alexander Pomazuyev — any lawyer would simply

grab their head after looking at the so-called

evidence they dragged in

from all sides. It's obvious that the court

was just rubber-stamping

the documents without even looking, because it's clear that this

was all initiated by

the Presidential Administration and by

Moscow City Hall, which did everything

possible first to

provoke these rallies themselves by not

allowing independent candidates onto the ballot,

and then to take revenge on Muscovites for the fact that

they demanded that their independent

representatives be allowed into the elections — they were only

demanding that simply candidates

who were popular could appear on the ballot, which

would be unthinkable to deny in any normal

civilized country. But in Russia, such

lawsuits are possible, and courts grant them.

So now we are asking for your help so that

you can help us. I think by now I probably

also have my bank card

somewhere on the screen too, especially in stories, so that...

My account is still at minus 34

million rubles there, yes, and entered into

the negative balance there, so the account, therefore to the woman according to

my case, 5 million to another one there, lawsuits, yes

In fact, I am involved in these lawsuits

They were filed against Yashin and against Udaltsov

against Navalny, against Stepanov

Oleg Stepanov, who heads

the Moscow staff headquarters

So there are many defendants involved there

because of people who were actively involved

Often this is an important part of the story: that we

I am absolutely sure that in the European

court we will manage to get this money back

Then, after some time, and I don't know, we

when we receive this money, we will donate it to

some good foundation when we win

in the European court, because that will be

very, very far off—maybe in five years

or even more than that, yes. All right, and now

of course, we will comment on

Putin's press conference, probably in a bit

more detail. Let's bring in Navalny

to join us live, and I

personally have the impression

one main feeling that I

was left with after the press conference

of Putin is the feeling that Putin is completely

detached from reality, living in some

other dimension, probably. He does not understand

what is actually happening in

Russia, does not understand the lives of ordinary

Russians, as they say, and he exists in

his own little world where there are conspiracies

against Russia that must be countered

all the time, where the West is constantly to blame

and where it is necessary

somehow to consult with the leadership

and run the security services, because

Russia is supposedly in this kind of ring of fire and

surrounded by hostile Western

countries

and he thinks only about that, that is

why probably any other

comments we will leave for later, and now

we should play Putin's main answer

the one all the journalists were waiting for

his answer to the question about the poisoning

of Navalny and the investigation published this

week. Let's watch it, and at

this moment Navalny is joining us live

As for the patient in the Berlin

clinic

well, I have already spoken about this

more than once; I can only repeat

a few things. But I know Peskov brought me

what they, yesterday—only yesterday—told me

about the latest speculations on this matter

regarding the data from our security services

and so on. Listen, we understand perfectly well

what this is. First of all, in

this case it is legalization, not

some kind of investigation—it is the legalization

of materials from the American intelligence services, about which

we do not know whether they are using geolocation or wiretaps

or bugs. Our security services understand this well

and know it, they know

that officers of the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service) and other special

agencies use telephones there for

what they consider necessary and do not hide

their whereabouts there

If this is connected to him, then that means

that this patient of the Berlin

clinic is enjoying

the support of intelligence services in this

case. And if—if that is true—well

then that is interesting; then the security services

of course should keep an eye on him, but

that does not at all mean that he needed to be poisoned

Who would need that? And probably, yes

To finish this point: his wife appealed to me

and I immediately gave the order to let him go for

treatment in Germany

Now, at the same time, there is one

thing that the general public does not

pay much attention to, but it matters

namely, this trick consists in

attacking the top leadership and thereby

for those who do it, in that way

raising themselves to a certain

level—look, pay attention, my

counterpart is this person, and so I am a person

of the same caliber; treat me as

someone of nationwide

importance. This is a well-known

trick used around the world

in political struggle

But in my view, these are not the tricks one should use

in order to achieve

respect and recognition from

people. One must prove one's worth

either through concrete actions

or through a concrete program that can

be realistic

so that it can be implemented in

a specific country—in this case, ours

So I call on all our opponents

of the current government, indeed all political

forces in the country, to be guided precisely by

not their own ambitions or personal interests

but the interests of the citizens of the Russian Federation

and to propose a positive agenda in order

to address the issues facing

the country, of which we have many

Alexei has now joined us on air

Welcome, Alexei. I wanted to ask

first: how are you feeling and

how is your health? And the second question

of course: did you watch today's

press conference by Vladimir Putin

Hi, Lyubov, hi, Ivan, hello to everyone

on YouTube and to the viewers. I'm very glad to be

back on the air. Everything with me is

much better health-wise, and right now

I'm sitting here worrying that I don't have

a positive program, as President

Putin says—I really took that to heart

Unfortunately, I didn't watch

I usually always watch the press conference.

A lot of people write, saying they're sick of watching it all.

But I still try to watch it all,

because, of course, it's important

to realize that at literally every

press conference you can see how everything

keeps getting worse and worse with Putin, and how

the entire government is, of course, sinking deeper into absurdity.

And unfortunately, the country's entire leadership

is undergoing the kind of degradation we've been witnessing

twice a year, and today was, of course,

a perfect example of that.

But I couldn't watch it because, at the request

of Russia's Prosecutor General's Office,

I was questioned by the German prosecutor's office. And not only me—

Yulia was questioned as well. In that sense,

I later, of course, watched those

clips that were published today

on the live stream.

And, you know, it was funny to hear

Putin saying that Germany doesn't

want to cooperate with us, when I had just

walked out of the German prosecutor's office,

which had been questioning me

at the request of the Russian prosecutor's office. Alexei,

could you tell us a bit more about

the questioning—what they asked, or are you not allowed

to disclose that information? Is it a big secret?

Well, of course—I'll tell it

in strict confidence to all viewers of the Navalny

Live channel.

It was a fairly standard interview.

It was conducted במסגרת a program of

international cooperation—I don't know

exactly how to phrase it or what it's officially called,

but basically Russia's Prosecutor General's Office

writes a letter to the German prosecutor's office:

you have this patient over there,

as Putin said today, and we believe that

he needs to be questioned.

It looks rather strange, because

you can question a person only within the framework

of a criminal case. No criminal case

exists, so the Germans spent a long time

not really understanding what was going on.

Because,

what kind of questioning is this, if you're questioning someone

and there is no criminal case? Well, all right.

They didn't say, "Do you want to?"

They said, "We have to question you," and

there was simply a questionnaire

sent directly from Russia, so

they went through that questionnaire. In that sense,

I was effectively being questioned

by the Russian prosecutor's office, with standard

questions like: what's your full name, where do you live,

what did you eat in Tomsk, where did you go, who

decided when you would travel,

and, interestingly enough, whether you suffer

from diabetes—questions like that.

Whether you had taken any

medications during your

trip. In fact, I think tomorrow

I'll just publish the whole thing—

the full questions and answers. They asked

questions, but what interested them most

was the FBK staff and how the bottle

made its way to Germany. Did they ask Yulia

about that? No, nothing at all about the bottle.

Asking me questions about

the bottle is pointless, because I was unconscious

that whole time.

If you can call it sleep, when you're having

such exciting adventures in Omsk.

So there was no point asking me. But as far as

I remember, Yulia told me they asked her

as well. They were questioned separately; I wasn't

present during her questioning, and she wasn't at mine.

They didn't ask her anything like that either.

Was questioning in Germany in any way different

from questioning in Russia? You know, in Russia—well, if

you were, for example, to film how

we walked into the building and went through it,

you would never in your life think this was

Germany, because it took place in

a building that used to be a well-known prison.

It's a former prison called Moabit (a historic prison in Berlin), and it's this kind of

courthouse-prison complex that looks like something straight out of

Butyrka or Matrosskaya Tishina (well-known Moscow detention centers).

Huge walls, confusing corridors—it's a former

prison, and it was specifically designed

to make escaping difficult. If

you ran out into a corridor,

you'd definitely get lost. And the walls are shabby—so

it absolutely looks like

a pretrial detention center or some large

government building, not even in Moscow

but somewhere out in the regions.

But the difference, of course, is that everyone

is just very friendly. Back home, usually all

prosecutors and investigators

try to put on an intimidating air,

a kind of sternness. Here, everything was—well, not

casual or affectionate or anything—but

very formal, yet very polite and welcoming.

It was like, "Please sit down, we're going to question you now.

Do you understand what this is for?" "I do." "Do you

have a lawyer?" "I do." "And here is your

interpreter." So everything was simply

done without any of the extra theatrics

that they love in our prosecutor's offices

to stage. Still,

it was a formal procedure, so it took a long time

with the interpreter and all the formalities

and paperwork. So, basically, I

missed all the fun of Putin's

press conference. Alexei, was that their main

point, really—that without your testimony there are no grounds

to open

a criminal case?

That has come up in court and

with investigators. What do you think—

might they open

a criminal case now, or even after

this questioning in Germany, even after

the press conference? Or will there still be no criminal

case? Well, first of all, of course not.

They were lying.

And as a lawyer, you understand perfectly well that they do.

As a lawyer, I understand that all of this around it is unnecessary somehow.

Well, all right, but what if I had died in

the plane? Then what—without my testimony, they wouldn't have

opened a criminal case, and then how would you

say the situation is any different if they

say there was no poisoning, no—rather, there was

a metabolic disorder, meaning I fell

into a coma because of a metabolic disorder, or

died because of a metabolic disorder? In either

case, according to them, that wouldn't require any

criminal case, apparently, in their logic.

But it seems to me that all the facts, you know,

point to poisoning, especially now

after the Bellingcat investigation, in which

we also took part.

But especially now, of course, they cannot

open a criminal case, Nikolai,

because it would become a criminal case against

Putin, and certainly against FSB officers (Russia's Federal Security Service), and

after what was confirmed today, of course,

everything has been confirmed, and I am absolutely

delighted, of course, by Putin's answers,

which simply—well, simply confirmed everything.

Everything was confirmed. So let's move on

to Russia, actually.

About the strategy they will pursue.

In more detail, because just now you answered

their questions, essentially—the ones that had been

sent to the German prosecutor's office, right? So what next?

What strategy will the Kremlin adopt?

Will they try to bury it, as they did

this week? Will they mock it, will they

ignore it, will they say

that there isn't enough data?

Well, look, broadly speaking, their strategy

used to consist simply of

lying all the time and constantly adding

something like: the Germans—we'd be glad to wrap up

the investigation, but no, they aren't giving us anything.

Actually, the Germans poisoned him; it's all the Germans' fault.

And meanwhile, those poor, miserable Germans

no longer know what to do to comply with

yet another request. And this questioning

that took place today was fairly

formal—there were about ten questions, and

all of them were kind of, you know, like

without any particular trick to them.

So yes, it was a very formal

interview, and it was clearly needed simply

so they could endlessly keep saying that, well,

there is insufficient—insufficient

evidence to open a case, although in fact

there is enough evidence to open a case.

There is enough. It's just that now we've seen

a fundamental shift in strategy. Before,

they said that nothing at all had happened,

or that something had happened, but then it turned into

throwing out a million different versions.

Now, after the Bellingcat investigation,

the situation has, of course, changed completely,

because some facts are impossible

to deny, and I am very glad that the evidentiary

base—which we also worked on for a very long time,

and in which we took part for

more than a month as well—is so

rock-solid that even Putin, who is of course

the king of lies,

and for whom lying about anything is no

problem at all—even he, in this situation, cannot

deny that there were FSB officers

who were following me around. It's just that now

their lie that they were either

keeping an eye on me—as Peskov later said—or

that they were perhaps not even following me, but rather

traveling in order to somehow save me, or something else—

for some reason, though, they of course do not

discuss the idea of self-poisoning.

I think their strategy going forward

will simply be to repeat like a parrot

what Putin repeated

twice.

They'll say to Reuters: why did you

poison Navalny?

It's no accident that even here, in response to Reuters,

there was this long answer to a question

from a LifeNews journalist, which consisted

of two questions about Putin's son-in-law,

his daughters, and business dealings—and then he started

talking about the CIA. They ask him:

Man, explain how your son-in-law became

a billionaire. And he says: well, we know this

information was prepared by the CIA.

Explain how, for $100,

someone could get shares worth several hundred

million dollars. Yes, of course—the CIA and our

Western partners are trying to deal with us

in this strange way. And then

we saw exactly the same thing—yes, he

was answering questions about me, and at the same time

of course it was just some kind of

strange and ridiculous breakdown in logic: we

know that the CIA

tracks the location of the phones

of FSB officers, therefore they were following

Navalny.

What exactly that is supposed to mean is unclear. But here

it is

just any random set of words. But the main thing

here is really the idea of saying that

some CIA force is behind it, because in

Putin's view, people in Russia are not

so foolish that if you just

say those magical three letters again—

CIA—

they immediately stop thinking about everything else, they

stop thinking about the essence of the problem and

start thinking that, well, this must all be

the CIA.

But that wasn't really it, was it? No, it's just that we

know that they—that the CIA is monitoring

our FSB officers' phones,

and they even switch them on deliberately

—the phones.

So there was this hint that

the phone—and that supposedly it was no accident that they

turned it on then, as if they had somehow given themselves away.

It's unclear why. Listen, tell me please.

But really, if I were in the shoes of these

FSB poisoners and killers, of course their

fate wouldn’t concern me all that much, but

still, you can’t help wondering whether they

should fear for their lives at all, or whether

the system is set up in such a way that they’ll now be

protected, hidden away, and they’ll end up like

Lugovoi, as State Duma deputies.

It’s hard to say, really.

Here, of course, I’m thinking that someone like

Nikita Alexandrov—this wonderful

mustached man—could quite easily

suddenly die somewhere of type 2 diabetes,

like some of the others. But judging by

what we’re seeing, this is of course an absolute

failure from the standpoint of the system’s logic, and

they ought to eliminate operatives of this lower

level at the hands of operatives from a higher

level, just to make something like this go away. But

this isn’t just an FSB failure, of course—it’s

Putin’s failure. First of all, he quite clearly, 100

percent, gave the direct order, and

judging by everything, he was somehow involved—maybe

in the operation itself, or at least it was reported to him.

He knew about the operation, he knew its details, so

this is also his personal failure,

and that’s why the whole system, and Putin himself,

are protecting themselves. And of course I don’t think

they’re going to turn these people into some kind of

State Duma deputies. They didn’t make Mishkin one,

after all, or any of the others.

They’re still hiding them somewhere. They were brought out once

by Margarita Simonyan,

which was also personally Putin’s idea, and we remember

what a colossal failure that was. But

basically, they’ll just keep hiding them somewhere,

because, I mean, can you imagine this

little guy—someone you wouldn’t dream of seeing

anywhere public—well, where could they even put him?

Sure, they could stick him in the State Duma later, but that

would be even more confirmation of what

happened. If they promoted him

like they promoted the chief doctor of the children’s hospital—

they essentially promoted him, yes, they thanked him

in that way—so here too, it seems to me,

I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

I’d like to say that I think

they really do now have this kind of

strategy: they’re feeling things out,

sort of half-confirming the surveillance,

but at the same time, go ahead and explain

this point: if it was surveillance,

why were there chemists and doctors involved? And to that question,

as I understand it, Peskov has no

answer.

Well, yes, they really did

promote that chief doctor,

but still, the chief doctor held a

public position. From the very beginning he was

in the public eye, he lied a great deal, and

it was obvious to everyone—to all the doctors, both in

Omsk and outside Omsk—that he was lying,

and so it was important for them to

support him publicly in that way.

But these people are of a different order altogether.

They’re secret operatives of a sort, and

who knows who else they may have killed, really.

Just putting them on television,

you know, is rather dangerous,

because they weren’t only following me, and

who knows what other

crimes they’re implicated in. So I

think that even from the standpoint that

more details could still come out,

I doubt they’ll be made very public.

But one thing I would say is that

the Kremlin is only just trying to formulate

its strategy. They said something

because they were forced to say something

right there at the press conference, but

of course it looks very weak, because

the obvious response is: all right, if you’re saying

it’s confirmed they were following him, then

why were there chemists and doctors? No answer.

And why, if they were following me, were they flying on

different planes on different days? No answer.

And most importantly: was there a poisoning or not?

Who did the poisoning? And if they traveled

in order to save me, then why did they

go to Gorno-Altaysk instead of saving me?

All these questions

that Putin thinks

nobody is asking—but after our

investigation, which by now has been watched by

more than 13 million people,

well, of course, you can’t just brush these questions aside anymore, and

people shouldn’t be treated like idiots. Even

those who may not be

big fans of mine still

understand just how untenable this version is.

It simply doesn’t hold up. Tell me,

if we approach it from the other side,

the threat to the lives of these FSB operatives

is obvious. But today I saw on

Twitter that journalists who

ask Putin questions are also at risk,

that they could be killed too. And that struck me as

somewhat absurd. Journalists

who ask these kind of

sharp questions—are they really risking their

lives by asking them? Starting from that,

after this

investigation, we really are living in a somewhat different

reality—a reality in which there are groups of

actual killers who can murder

public figures. So tell me, what

should be done in this situation? First of all,

what should activists do,

people in the regions, and third, what about ordinary

people who go to rallies?

Has reality changed for them?

Because again, this FSB attempt

to kill you—clearly this is at the FSB level,

but other, smaller predators

in every region are going to take their cue from it,

those little predators in each region

who will think: if Navalny can be targeted,

then why not go after some local activist too?

they’re organizing something in their region too

something similar. What do you think about this

situation? Well, first of all, I don’t think that the

life or health of the LifeNews journalists

is under threat after this

question. On the contrary, it’s absolutely clear

that they wrote this question for him together with Peskov

and that’s exactly why they packed all the most

problematic parts of Putin’s answer, and this

question about me, into a single

question so they could blur everything together

and spread it all around the plate, so to speak. That’s the first point. Second,

well, of course, in principle, in any

authoritarian country—and Russia is no

exception—people who do

something independently, freely, and honestly

are, to one degree or another, under

threat. But I’ll repeat: I think I’ve said this many

times, and my opinion has not

changed after there was

an attempt on my life. I

believe you can’t kill everyone, and the threat to

each individual person is fairly

small. One of Putin’s goals is to make

people start thinking in exactly

those terms: if

they wanted to kill Navalny, then they’ll

kill me too, in my Chelyabinsk or in

Kostroma or Kazan.

In other words, by means of one

demonstrative assassination attempt or

a demonstrative murder, they want to

intimidate millions. So everyone’s task

is simply not to be afraid. Well, to be a little afraid

is natural—that’s how it really works.

Just imagine: millions of dissatisfied

people, and a little bunch of these

people in the Kremlin

who seem to us to be very

powerful, but in fact they sit there and

are dying of fear that people might suddenly

realize how naked the king is, how

they themselves don’t have the slightest ability

to hold all this back. I mean, in the country

absolutely everything has failed, and they sit there

thinking, damn,

if tomorrow even

10 million people

take to the streets and say, what the hell—why are our

wages falling for the seventh year in a row?

Why the hell are we living in poverty while at the same time

we sell trillions of dollars’ worth

of oil and gas?

They’d be finished in a second. So

all their power rests simply

on the fact that they seem to us very

powerful. It’s like that puffed-up toad,

the Surinam toad, sitting in the jungle, and

when it sees someone it’s afraid of,

it puffs itself up to enormous

size. That’s all. We just don’t need

to be afraid of this toad puffing itself up.

During Putin’s press conference on the

YouTube channels of Channel One, Russia 24,

and Solovyov Live, we saw that the

live-stream chats had been disabled so that

people wouldn’t write their true

attitudes toward Vladimir Putin. As for

our chat, it is on, so send us your questions

that we can address to Navalny

or that we can answer together with you

later on air. And I can see the questions that

people were asking just now when you announced your

live broadcast with you, Alexei. One

of the questions asked was this:

Will attitudes toward Putin in Europe

and the United States change after this investigation

that came out on your channel? Well, of course

they have changed—there’s nothing even to discuss here.

Of course they’ve already changed very significantly.

The other thing is that for us, you understand, this does not

have any huge

consequences. I mean, just because it

has changed, what do we get from that? We shouldn’t

expect Europe and the U.S., or anyone else,

to solve our problem for us, because

before, it seemed to them that Putin was

a suspicious thief who was constantly

lying. That was the attitude: well, in Russia

for some reason this suspicious thief who lies all the time is sitting there as president.

A suspicious thief who is constantly

lying, whose daughters buy homes here

in France, and

who has huge accounts in places like Switzerland. Well,

apparently the Russians keep him there for some reason.

All right then, that’s a question for

the Russians. Now they understand that he’s not just

a suspicious thief who

lies all the time, but also the kind of thief who

in order to make it easier for himself to steal

has also assembled a team of killers

who use chemical weapons.

So of course attitudes toward him are very

negative, and everyone understands that he is an extremely

dangerous, deranged man obsessed with

money and, again, constantly

lying. But their reasoning is something like this:

well, the Russians are still keeping him

as their president anyway.

So, damn, of course we don’t

like it, it’s unpleasant for us to sit

at the same table with him, but he’s a murderer, and again he

lies in every word he says—he just lies,

which is also very unpleasant—but still,

somehow he still retains his

position, so one way or another we’ll

still have to talk to him. We shouldn’t

expect that tomorrow the president or

prime minister of some European country

will jump up from the negotiating table

and grab Putin by the throat.

That’s not going to happen, of course. I mean,

yes, people have started treating him much worse;

they simply consider him a rather

utterly rotten person, but

diplomacy is diplomacy, and they will still sit there

all the same. Another question that

was also being discussed: the BBC wrote that

Zakhar

responded to Russia's proposal to send

a mission to Russia, and the response says that

for this, your consent is required

in advance for access to medical records and

medical samples. Was this discussed with

you, and will you give consent for

the OPCW to gain access to the samples

that are in Omsk? Honestly, I really don't

to be honest, even really understand

the idea of the OPCW obtaining consent

so that they can get access to

the samples in Omsk.

They are asking for your consent to access your

samples that are located in

St. Petersburg and Omsk, and they simply want

to discuss the whole situation in Moscow, but it is necessary

to listen, and first of all, this is also some kind of

very strange diplomatic game. Russia

is a full member of the OPCW

(Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical

Weapons). Moreover, Russia was one of the

founders of it, such a leading

country. For many years, Russia pushed for the

destruction of chemical weapons.

That sounds very ironic now, of course, so

Russia, as an OPCW member, already has full

access to everything. And my blood has already—

I don't know, it's been splashed around so many times—

in Omsk, in St. Petersburg, its drops ended up

there.

They tested this blood here many times, but there is no

problem. Honestly, I simply have not

received any formal request from anyone,

so I don't really understand very well even what

is being discussed. But of course, if they want

to obtain my blood samples from

Omsk,

let them take them. But there was a funny

situation when they were transporting me here to

Germany. Even the doctors there who

were drawing up the transfer paperwork for the body, they

very amusingly wrote in that document that

the blood biochemistry tests and so on were

in parentheses, 'if they are, of course, attached to the patient,'

or something like that. So I don't know whose

blood

they will show the OPCW. But if they ask me,

I will give any consent—they can have it.

I have nothing to hide, I think. And there, Ivan

Ivanovich, Alexei, why are they afraid to say

your surname and instead call you 'the individual'

'the patient'? Is this some kind of madness?

asks Ivan Ivanov. Well, of course it is.

It's madness.

It's this bizarre Putin superstition, but

really, people already laugh about it at every

press conference: what kind of

nonsense is this, inventing substitute words for him.

This is, of course, something deeply

psychological, almost primitive, but I

have put forward my own version of this many

times: wild ancient people, shaggy and

unwashed, sat around a fire and were afraid

to say the real name of a bear or

a wolf or a saber-toothed tiger, because at night

it would come and eat them.

Putin is the same kind of person. We know that he

is obsessed with all sorts of

mysticism,

esotericism, and the red string on his wrist

—in the evenings he beats a tambourine, he has

astrologers, he weighs some kind of

ribbons, tells fortunes with tarot cards, and

hangs a piece of candy over the bed at night

so that little gnomes will come and eat it.

So apparently some such gnome

came to him one day and said: if you

say the word 'Navalny,' then all these schemes...

And Putin is obeying the gnome's order.

I also have this question, which I

saw: did you yourself actually expect that

within such a short time

we would learn the names of all the killers, the poisoners, and

the entire chain, because it seemed

like maybe someday, in

five or ten years, we might learn something.

The same, the same. But you and I

did discuss this, that we were conducting this

investigation from a somewhat different angle,

gradually. But of course, such a

complete exposure, that we would directly learn

people's names—I did not expect that, first of all

because I did not believe the FSB could act

so stupidly. I never had

any illusions about this

structure, but I believed that what had completely

degenerated were the local

committees, the police, the courts. I see these judges

who, my God, are the stupidest people on

earth—they are incapable of

formulating a sentence. I see how far

the police there have sunk, along with the whole

rest of the state system.

So of course I had no

illusions about the FSB either. Those who do not want

to take bribes just drink themselves senseless,

and everyone else is busy with some kind of

nonsense. These are not some

super-professionals. But to fail so badly

to observe the most basic rules

of operational work—I honestly could not

imagine that it would happen

like this. And honestly, of course I also could not

imagine that for four years they had been

following me—almost four years. That is,

four years ago he told them,

'Start preparing the murder.' If anyone had

suggested that to me, I would have

twirled my finger at my temple.

Alexei, please tell me—another question:

what do you actually expect

after your return? They are opening

criminal cases—will they continue

trying to kill you?

I don't know. I don't know what they will

do at all, because they do not act by any rules, and

I cannot predict it. I am counting on...

Still, Ivan, that they somehow won't...

...try especially hard to kill Bellingcat.

I'm counting on that, but...

It's hard to say—I don't even want to...

...make predictions. One thing is clear:

they're offended, they're squealing like piglets, and...

Putin personally feels another...

...additional personal grievance, because...

he had been puffing up his beloved FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service) for so long, and...

there he was, planning the operation, giving orders...

and it turned out that these idiots, damn it...

you know, just switched on their phones...

their personal phones while carrying out a murder, and...

but of course this is simply a total failure. It...

shows just how much the system...

has degraded, and Putin's favorite FSB...

has degraded perhaps even...

more severely, because it's secretive, and...

the degradation of the Ministry of Education or...

the healthcare system—we see that every...

day. We just don't see the degradation of the FSB...

because we can't see what's going on inside it.

And it also became clear that Putin cannot...

do absolutely anything—he's simply not...

capable of accomplishing anything in any...

direction. Russia hasn't moved forward anywhere; we...

have failures everywhere, including here.

So of course he feels terribly...

wounded and is probably coming up with some...

terrible revenge. But let him come up with it—I haven't...

changed my views regarding...

what is happening. More than that, I am now...

much more confident in them, I think, just like...

many others. And so I intend to return in order...

to continue doing what I was doing:

working with you, going to the office, and...

carrying on, and in particular trying...

to make sure that there are as few...

United Russia deputies as possible in the State Duma, promoting...

Smart Voting. So the only...

thing I really expect is that...

the two of you will be there waiting for me at the airport.

We'll definitely meet. Alexei, thank...

you very much. In fact, the chat...

really is worried.

The people watching our live stream...

are worried. Alexei, let me ask you:

didn't it seem to you that in Putin's answer...

there was a threat directed at you—that...

Putin hinted that you could face charges of...

espionage or something of that sort?

People are asking about this because everyone...

assumes there will be criminal...

cases, some new lawsuits...

of a civil nature, and everyone will...

try to make sure you cannot...

take part in and influence the elections to the...

State Duma. There are also many questions about that.

So I'll summarize all these...

questions gathered from Twitter and social...

media and ask more broadly: what is our strategy...

for the Duma? Smart Voting is clear enough...

but whatever strategy the authorities choose, and...

right now, through Vyatkin of United Russia...

they are passing a great many restrictive...

laws—for example, saying that if people line up...

for a one-person picket...

that counts as a rally, and criminal cases for...

blocking streets, blocking people, and so...

on. So whatever the authorities' strategy...

may be, as for our strategy, people...

are asking me to clarify it with you so that you...

state it publicly regarding the party...

side of Smart Voting—what exactly...

will Smart Voting's...

recommendation be for party lists?

Because it's clear that if you're trying to...

understand the Duma, half of it is made up through...

that's the problem.

candidates from single-member districts—there...

will be a recommendation for each...

single-member district. As for...

the party vote, which party will Smart Voting...

urge people to support?

Look, it's all very simple. Our task...

is to make sure there are as few vile deputies like...

Vyatkin there as possible, and as many deputies like...

you, like Sobol, and...

like Zhdanov, or people like...

those in Tomsk, or like Reznik in...

St. Petersburg, or Baikov in Novosibirsk...

so that there are many more of them. Therefore, Smart...

Voting means that we...

all vote for some decent...

candidate in order to defeat...

the United Russia candidate. Where there is no decent candidate...

—and that is absolutely possible—we will...

vote for a not-so-great...

or even unpleasant candidate, but the main thing is...

to defeat the United Russia candidate. As for the party vote...

here too, what matters most is that United...

Russia gets as small a percentage as possible.

So whichever party you...

like best, vote for that one. That's all.

But we should remember that it is entirely...

possible that the Kremlin will use a new...

strategy that has been widely discussed:

they will create lots and lots of small...

parties so that they each get 3 or 4...

percent, and as a result...

thanks to a complicated mathematical formula...

United Russia will still end up with more...

votes. And in that case, if we see...

such a strategy, we will slightly...

modify our approach and will...

of course recommend voting for those...

parties that have a chance of clearing the...

threshold. But for now it's a little too early to talk about that.

For now, we need to focus on...

single-member races—there are 225...

election campaigns across the country.

So anyone who wants to take part now...

I urge everyone to sign up as...

volunteers—for people like Zhdanov, for everyone...

else around the country, for normal...

people who want to run for office, because...

everyone will need signatures,

and everyone will need door-to-door canvassing.

Everyone will need money, and this is the most

important work one can do.

Alexei, please tell me: Putin

said today that he still doesn't know

whether he will run in 2024.

You know, come on, enough listening to

Putin—but we all understand that this is

really one huge marathon. Of course,

he will run—in fact, he won't be going anywhere. Putin

understands that for him it is mortally dangerous

to stop being president, especially

after everything he has done. Just

imagine it: he picks some kind of

successor—say, Shoigu—and tomorrow Shoigu

gets elected even faster than Putin, and even

if Shoigu and Putin both ran in an election,

of course they would choose Shoigu, not Putin. And

Sobyanin, who has tons of money and huge

media resources—fine, so they

elect him, re-elect him, and then send

the former president Putin into retirement,

to his dacha in Gelendzhik (a Black Sea resort city), and

let him mind his own business. But still,

in a year or two a situation will arise

in which the new president—

whether Shoigu or Sobyanin—will need more

money, or his friends will want more

money, and to get it they will have to squeeze

the Rotenbergs (wealthy businessmen close to the Kremlin). And to squeeze the Rotenbergs,

they'll have to squeeze Putin too, and

suddenly—whoops—the new prosecutor general

says, taking into account

that Navalny was apparently poisoned, why don't we

actually investigate all of this, and

one, two, three, four—and Putin is already sitting in the

defendant's dock. Of course he is terribly

afraid of that, absolutely terrified. That's why I

suggest we not even discuss this whole

"will he run or won't he" question. Of course he will run.

People who say, "How could he not run?"—

it seems to me they're simply out of touch

with reality.

Understood. Alexei, thank you very much. I

actually think it's quite obvious.

There is no doubt. It seems to me we simply

need to get it out of our heads that Putin

will ever leave on his own. The point is

that we shouldn't wait for 2024. I

am not prepared to put up with Putin even until

then, so let's get to work

right now. We have elections to the

State Duma ahead of us, and the Smart Voting strategy

can cut off this

tentacle in the form of United Russia from Putin and

make it so that the State Duma

works in our interests and at the very least

can initiate a parliamentary

investigation into the poisoning of Putin's main

opponent. Because what outrages me right now

is that those State Duma deputies

are staying silent while the whole country is discussing it.

Thirteen million views in less than

a week—and all the deputies

in the State Duma are silent, afraid

to initiate—not even impeachment,

let alone that—but even a simple parliamentary

investigation, to ask questions about

these poisonings, which really are

on everyone's lips and are literally being discussed

by the entire country right now. So let's work

and not give them a pass.

Don't cut me off for saying this, I just think it's

an important thing to say right now.

But at the same time I want to point out: look

how great this is, on the one hand.

Indeed, all these cowardly State Duma deputies

—

are afraid, and there are even some there who

want to support me and wrote to me in

support—but are afraid to say so publicly. But

look: regional deputies in Tomsk—seven

people—

came out against it...

Let me tell you, not

just about Tomsk: this is the same

story—this is Smart Voting, yes, but also

there are simply decent people. We understand that

there are absolutely amazing, brave people

who are demanding this investigation, and

these people genuinely need our support.

So of course you are absolutely right: in other words,

there is no need to wait for 2024. Right

now we can dramatically change the whole

situation. There in Tomsk, they turned the city upside down—

they really did. Who could have imagined

that?

In the previous Tomsk city duma (city council), seven

people out of a small group of 25 people—

or 30 people in the duma overall—of those, seven

people would sign such a letter? It seemed impossible

to imagine, and yet

it is happening, and that is very cool. And

we did this together, and we will do much

more. Yes, you were just being asked questions here,

and now there are no more questions here.

We just wanted to go on air and talk further

about the Moscow City Duma

and the deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and

about Tomsk, where there are representatives who

were supported by Smart Voting and are now

speaking out and serving as

political representatives of their

voters, which is really very cool, and

it happened thanks to the support of Smart

Voting. So thank you very much.

Alexei, we are waiting for you—well, that's all I have.

Go ahead and cut me off too; somehow I still think

we still have more we can say.

I'm going—just kidding, just kidding. The first time, that is already

a big achievement, because the first time

I went on air, Lyubov drove me off

after 11 minutes.

She cut me off. Well, that's normal, I

like it.

That's how it all happens, really. Jokes aside,

I wanted to say one important thing: I am

very grateful to everyone who is helping

spread this video, and of course

We must not stop; we need to keep this going.

We need to keep doing it, because, basically, we can see

the reaction of the people who are watching this.

These facts speak for themselves quite clearly as well.

They simply cannot be denied.

Look at how big a breach we've already made, from

the point where they were denying

absolutely everything, to now, when they say: yes,

this did happen, but there is still,

basically, just one single

unconfirmed point they keep making:

that there was no motive for us — who is he,

that he needed

to be killed, and there is no proof of that.

Well, that proof may yet

turn up, and I am very grateful to everyone.

Right now, it is super important that

as many citizens of the country as possible

see this investigation. So

thank you all very much, and keep it up.

Thank you, Alexei. So, actually,

we are in a slightly strange situation.

Alexei and I have discussed these issues

quite a lot, and we need

to recall the questions we have discussed many

times. So, chat, thank you

very much for helping us with questions

that can be asked of Alexei Navalny.

I was looking through the questions — they are really

good. Alexei, here is a question:

Has he really gone insane?

You mentioned this already — could you talk about it

in more detail?

But in fact, everything is really

clear: we know what needs to be done. We need

to continue fighting for our rights,

because this is our country, and we want

to live in it safely. We want

to live in a country where

law enforcement and the courts actually work,

where the president is not a senile, bunker-dwelling

old man everyone is already laughing at,

because after what he said today — once again —

at the press conference, there were again so many

jokes about it on social media that

sometimes it is simply impossible to take his words

seriously. And for this country, for

this beautiful Russia of the future, we will

keep fighting — in the elections

to the State Duma and beyond.

So thank you very much to everyone who

supports us. And I also wanted to say

a bit more about the deputies backed by Smart Voting

who were supported through that voting

and who are now working. It seems that

the deputies there, in their elected positions,

really did come forward with

a demand — they submitted an appeal to the

head of the Investigative Committee

Alexander Bastrykin, demanding that

a criminal case be opened over the poisoning of

Alexei Navalny. This document was signed by

deputies of the Tomsk City Duma,

and it said the following: "We, as

deputies of the Tomsk City Duma,

are concerned that in our city,

chemical weapons were used against a citizen of Russia,

and that this was done

with the direct participation of

the state." This is a very brave, very

important statement. Many thanks to everyone

who took part. And it really seems that

people there did send this appeal. But

still, you may ask: what is the point?

With Bastrykin, it is obvious what the answer will be.

And here, someone very rightly wrote

recently, in fact, on the Navalny LIVE channel,

that we must not cultivate this learned

helplessness in ourselves. We must not

sit idly by. We need

to act. If you are

a journalist, ask questions. If you are

a deputy, submit an official appeal.

If you are a citizen, support

the candidates backed by Smart Voting, go out to

the streets, go to rallies,

and so on. Every person's

contribution is literally important.

Share this investigation,

tell your friends about it,

your colleagues and relatives. So simply

let's keep fighting. Less

apathy, less New Year fuss — come on,

let's be more upbeat. In fact,

everything is fine, and we will definitely

crush them in the 2021 elections to the

State Duma, and we will keep beating them

with our investigations, our projects,

our political actions,

our rallies, and everything, everything, everything that we

have done before and will keep doing with

even greater force. It is truly remarkable

that, in fact — look — in

Tomsk, this appeal to the

Investigative Committee was supported not only by deputies

who were directly nominated by

our штаб (campaign office), like Ksenia Fadeeva and Andrei

Fateev — wonderful people — but also by

five other deputies who had been

supported by Smart Voting. That is,

you cannot say that these were simply

"Navalny's deputies" making such an appeal;

other deputies are making such appeals too.

And today there was a strong statement —

yesterday there was a strong statement from the Yabloko faction (a liberal Russian political party),

there was a statement by Maxim Reznik in the

St. Petersburg legislature,

there was a statement by Darya Besedina in the

Moscow City Duma regarding the poisoning of

Navalny. Today Lev

Shlosberg — I saw it — asked Putin three

fairly tough questions. And there are more and more

deputies like that.

This is happening, among other things, thanks to

Smart Voting, and we urge all of you

to register for it. We have

a video of Maxim Reznik's speech in St. Petersburg —

watch it.

It's simply a pleasure to watch

deputies like this. Look, look at what's

happening right now. This is what

public opinion in our

country is discussing—it’s easy to find out.

Number one on the trending tab of

Russian YouTube for two days now

is a journalistic investigation into new facts

about the attempted murder of Alexei

Navalny.

And in response to 10 million views in

two days, the authorities—for example, federal

officials—are simply silent about the attempted

murder of Navalny, and that kind of silence,

excuse me, is worse than an admission of guilt. Or is everyone

waiting to hear what the tsar (a sarcastic reference to the supreme ruler) says tomorrow?

Gravity.

Sadists. So, dear colleagues, if

you don’t like my line of reasoning or

you disagree with what I’m saying, that is your

absolute right. You can come up to the podium,

use it, and say so.

Explain why I’m wrong. But allow

me to say what I believe needs to be said. I’ll

repeat once again: I believe that the current

government is built on lies.

Your time is up, accordingly.

[music]

I’ve watched this video over and over again.

I first saw it on social media, and it

just makes me furious when I watch

Reznik speaking and raising an important issue

that really concerns not

just St. Petersburg, but the whole country, and

as a deputy, he has the right to ask these

questions and state his position from

the podium, because voters elected him

precisely so that he

would represent their interests, voice their

opinion, and seek protection there, including

their rights. And then the speaker of the

Legislative Assembly, Makarov, sits there and whispers to him, “Sit down,”

“Sit down, take your seat.” I mean,

given their status—yes, they are both

deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.

St. Petersburg.

One is not the other’s boss, and this deputy,

Reznik,

has absolutely no right to silence him,

tell him to sit down, or do anything else like that.

It’s clear why they act this way: they

are very afraid of public discussion of these

issues from an official podium, and all

United Russia members are very afraid to answer

questions publicly. When it comes time for them to answer,

there’s simply—literally—nothing.

Please tell us about the appeals—they

concern the refusal to open criminal cases, because

there has also been a lot of speculation from

propagandists on this subject. But in fact,

a great deal of work is being done on this

issue—a lot of work—which may not be

something we publish about very often,

because these are complex legal documents.

But yesterday after—well, was it yesterday?

Yesterday or even the day before, on Tuesday—

Tuesday, that was the day before yesterday, thank you—we immediately

sent an appeal to the military

investigators, who specifically investigate such

crimes. The thing is that FSB officers

FSB

are military personnel, and cases against them

can only be opened by the special

Military Investigative Committee.

We also sent an appeal to

the Tomsk regional department, which has

all the case materials

from the inquiry. There is an investigator there,

Pevneva, who is supposedly deciding on her own

what procedural decision to make—

whether to open a criminal case or not. We

filed a motion with her saying: transfer the case

to military investigators, because you

are not even authorized to conduct an inquiry into

such a crime report.

We filed a complaint with the FSB against FSB officers.

As funny as that may sound and seem,

yes, it may seem fairly absurd, and

you might say, “File a complaint with the FSB against FSB officers? They

won’t investigate.” They will—but it will happen

after some time, when we, after

some time, succeed in making sure that we have

not 7 deputies, for example, in Tomsk

signing such appeals, but all

40 or 45 deputies sitting in the

Tomsk City Duma, and that we have a

majority in the State Duma. Then

we will set all these appeals in motion,

which, for now, I predict, will of course

go unanswered.

Besides that, everything can be documented

in fact, because they love to tell us

the same thing Peskov (Putin’s press secretary) says:

that all these are baseless accusations and

so on. It is very important that we record all

the evidence on paper, and we are doing all of that

diligently. And it is also important to receive these

amusing replies. I mean, we all

see it—we are reasonable people, as the

well-known lawyer and respected authority Benzinka said,

though not everyone is.

There is no reasonable doubt that this

was done by them. After watching the film,

he wrote something like this: “Beyond any

reasonable doubt, this was done by FSB

officers.”

But we will get some amusing replies,

I don’t know, something like:

“just surveillance officers,” for example.

By the way, it’s interesting—after Putin’s words, what

will they write now in their official

responses? Will they say it was operational

information, or what? What will they say at all?

Nevertheless, this work is ongoing. There have already been 333 court cases

appealing

the refusal to open a criminal case.

We’ve already had them, and I predict there will be about

3 or 4 more in the European Court of

A complaint has already been filed there as well, with the human rights body.

And all the materials have been submitted there along with the complaint.

We are constantly supplementing it with new

refusals and new materials, so this

legal work is ongoing, and sooner or

later it will become the basis for

opening a real criminal case against

the actual people who attempted to kill

Alexei Navalny.

Let me talk about

the reaction of the propagandists, because we

when Navalny released it—well, I mean, when it all came out—

we can also discuss the propagandists' reaction, and also this

related legal issue, which concerns

the correspondence with the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons); I asked a question

to Navalny. It's quite an amusing exchange,

56 pages long,

which is interesting to read afterward

and to examine how, in fact, the Russian

Federation is inviting OPCW staff here

so that, together with these

staff members, they can examine Navalny's biological samples.

Not exactly—they are inviting them

first to Moscow simply to talk

and consult on the issue of

this entire situation that has developed,

and then they invite OPCW staff

with their equipment

to examine these samples together with our staff,

or they propose another option:

that staff from the Russian Federation—

it doesn't say which staff, maybe

it's the same FSB officers (Russia's security service)—would come to

the OPCW laboratories, and together with

OPCW staff, they would conduct these

tests. In fact, after reading this

correspondence, I got the complete

impression that they are still sitting there

somewhere in Gorno-Altaysk and are still stunned by

the fact

of how the Germans managed it—what kind of device do they have

that's so advanced that they were able to detect

Novichok? How did that even happen?

What kind of mass spectrometer or some other

instrument do they have? They're still

trying to figure it out.

This whole correspondence with the OPCW, their

invitation—all of it is aimed at

finding out by what method Novichok was identified,

not at somehow

establishing the truth. That is absolutely clear

from these 56 pages of correspondence,

which I recommend reading if you want

to learn more about this case. And I just want

to say to the FSB officers

that you shouldn't make poisons using textbooks from the 1980s,

and then you won't be so shocked by

how well the Germans can detect residual

traces of these substances. Let's move on to

the propagandists. In fact, the propagandists

for the most part kept silent

and waited things out until Putin's press conference.

Meduza even put together a roundup

of state media outlets that, a day later,

after the investigation was released, had not

said anything—literally had not published

any materials about

the investigation into the involvement of FSB officers

in Navalny's poisoning.

Let's put it on screen, if we have it,

this image, this screenshot—well, maybe

they'll show it later. A day after

the investigation came out: TASS—nothing,

Channel One—nothing, Rossiya—nothing, NTV—nothing.

Nothing. They all sat there with their tails tucked,

so to speak, mouths shut, waiting to see

what Putin would say, because

it was obvious there wasn't much they could

really say in response. Yes, now, as

Navalny said, they'll wriggle and evade,

but in essence everything is quite simple:

you really do watch it and you don't

have a single doubt that what you're being

told is truthful information,

that this is exactly how it happened,

as presented in the investigation. This

investigation was not done by one media outlet; it was investigated by

The Insider, Bellingcat,

the Anti-Corruption Foundation team, and

CNN participated in fact-checking, and

Der Spiegel, and so on. These are the world's largest

media outlets; they conducted this investigation and

confirmed that the conclusions of this

investigation, and what was described on Navalny's channel,

are absolutely true.

Responding to this really was very

difficult, so Putin had to

take this position, which is unfavorable for him,

and somehow comment on it today,

in effect

thereby confirming this investigation and that

it really was officers

of the FSB who for a long time

followed Navalny—for four years.

But we also have a separate video

of Solovyov from Sunday Evening, because

he did decide to comment on it

in some way, and

traditionally referred to Western

intelligence. Let's watch this video.

More on that in a moment. Usually we ask

that children, pets, and people

with weak cardiovascular systems

be kept away from YouTube screens, because

this is about to explode.

Here we have the very honest journalist

who, after looking at this so-called

investigation of the 'Berlin patient' (a reference to Navalny while he was treated in Berlin), said:

"This petty Kirov

bureaucratic thief, repeatedly convicted,

who is now serving

as Germany's opposition mascot, decided

to claim someone else's glory for himself. It's no coincidence

that many Telegram channels started calling this

'the resident agent's mistake.'

So what happened? The Americans are working,

and working well, and a New York

Times journalist writes that what was published under

disguised as a Bellingcat investigation

Navalny naturally joined in as well, and

Dobrokhotov’s organization had, several

months earlier, presented

and journalist Martens mention

the intelligence services of the United States

and Britain to their German counterparts

the fact that Navalny simply takes and

voices this operation

by foreign intelligence services reveals his

true nature. What is interesting, meanwhile,

is how this is spun: we are told that, well,

listen, here’s Bellingcat, here’s

the location of this or that point, this

is supposedly so easy to buy on the black market. But

that embezzling Kirov official

understands that this is not about some cat under Garrido

— it is against the law, but Bellingcat did it

No, of course only

intelligence services can do such things, and we know how

A.N. was successfully engaged in this.

But the Americans are not fools, and realizing that

this evidence, obtained in such a

way, cannot be presented to a court, and having no

ability to pressure the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)

which did not make a deal against its own

conscience and did not confirm all the claims

that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, supposedly

three or four times.

In other words, just as Leonid Ilyich (Brezhnev) was decorated with stars,

Navalny is being decorated with poisonings.

Zakharov said that if you read

the actual text, there is not a word there about

Novichok; it says these inhibitors

but it says they are not included on the list

of prohibited substances.

But we watched only a fragment, and the video with

Solovyov that aired on Sunday on

Evening, you actually commented on it.

You spared our viewers, because I

thought we would show a clip of Solovyov

that was broadcast on air, but on his YouTube

it is simply even harsher there, though the same

basic point, just expressed in a completely

different form. Our viewers on the Navalny channel

actually, let’s say this:

Solovyov is trying to diminish the role

of Navalny and Navalny’s status in general,

calling him a petty corrupt

Kirov crook, although everyone understands that

he is one of the political leaders of our

country, a person who is supported by

millions of our citizens, a person

who won 27 percent in the

2013 mayoral election, after which he

was no longer allowed to run in elections and was barred

— he was illegally prevented from taking part in the

2018 presidential election.

He got 27 percent, second place, with a

huge lead. This is a person who

There was recently a Levada Center poll

just a couple of months ago, where

Russians were asked: who inspires you

most?

Among political leaders, the answer was

Navalny, in second place by a wide margin.

And in the category of citizens aged, I think,

40 to 50,

Navalny was even more inspiring than

Putin. And yet Navalny is also not

allowed on television; constantly, Solovyov

and people like him drag his name through the mud,

accuse Navalny, invent

various crimes for him, tell all sorts of

stories, and so on and so forth. The entire

state propaganda machine, the security services, the FSB (Federal Security Service),

the Investigative Committee, the prosecutor’s office — all are working

against the Anti-Corruption Foundation

of Navalny, and Navalny still

remains a politician with enormous

popularity and a very high

trust rating. So Solovyov can

try as much as he likes to diminish

Navalny’s role and significance, but of course

the numbers — including views, and also

citizens’ support in elections —

show exactly the opposite. Secondly,

of course, as for the honest

journalists from *The New York Times*, what

they wrote was not that Navalny took data from

some intelligence services and published

it disguised as something else, as Solovyov says. That is

literally a lie, because what was written there was

something different: a source said that

the data from the investigation is consistent with what

the German authorities’ intelligence services know at

this moment. That is an absolutely, completely

different meaning and entirely different facts

from what was published there and

reported. And of course the part about

the OPCW is astonishing, because Solovyov said that the

OPCW did not recognize Navalny’s poisoning

as Novichok poisoning, whereas in fact in the OPCW report

that we quoted in a previous broadcast

something completely different was written. It said

that the results of the analysis

carried out by laboratories designated by the OPCW

confirm that

the cholinesterase inhibitor biomarkers

found in blood and urine samples

from Mr. Navalny have structural

characteristics similar

to those of toxic chemicals from

Schedules 1.A.14 and 1.A.15, which

were added to the Annex on Chemicals

of the Convention. The specific

cholinesterase inhibitor detected is not

included in the list in the Annex on Chemicals

to the Convention. In other words, the substance

is not listed in the annex to the Chemical Weapons

Convention, but that does not

mean it is permitted.

No, all chemical weapons are prohibited.

Solovyov is aware of this, because if you

open the Convention and its annex, you will understand.

Yes, it is enough simply to look.

There was also an Interfax item; if we have it,

let’s put it on the screen, because

The Interfax headline agrees that

Zakharova confirmed Germany's findings on

Navalny's poisoning with Novichok. Yes,

even Interfax wrote that. It's clear

that Solovyov knows this, and Solovyov

is deliberately lying to his TV audience

in order to tell them there was no Novichok,

that no one was poisoned, everything is fine, that this is some kind of

petty thief and nobody of consequence.

For some reason, he does not ask his viewers

the question of what kind of shady people these were

who were monitoring Navalny for four years

— why they were doing it, why there was

surveillance of Navalny at all. Because

for any surveillance of a political

opponent of the sitting president, in any

decent system, the president should face

impeachment.

That is what happens in normal,

civilized countries. But for some reason, such questions

are never raised by Solovyov on air.

Well, yes, let's make sure there is

no doubt. This annex

to the Chemical Weapons Convention

contains a list of warfare

chemical agents.

It was created specifically for verification purposes. Those

substances that the whole world already knows about,

that are known to be military-grade chemical

poisoning agents, are included

in this annex.

And then OPCW experts can travel

and check for the presence of these chemical

substances. But here it turned out that a military-grade

chemical agent, which is also

banned because under the Convention the whole

world agreed that military chemical

agents must be destroyed, and Russia

said it had destroyed them in 2017,

turned out to be a completely new type

of this substance. So this is not just

a violation.

This is what lawyers would call

an aggravated offense, and

of course in Russia there is even

a criminal statute covering the illegal

storage and production of military-grade chemical

poisoning agents, and that is a serious

criminal offense. But as you know, no case

has of course been opened under that statute.

So if you happen to encounter

some uninformed person on the street

or really

some little propagandist like Solovyov,

you can explain to him why he is being foolish

— in the sense that he does not know that this

chemical substance is in fact banned.

Actually, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future (Navalny's slogan), and not only there,

this is absolutely normal.

In all civilized countries. I really like this

Convention because all countries

agreed to observe it — the whole world. Just

imagine: a kind of global

legal framework that operates across

borders. There is this overarching, main

rule, and everyone recognizes that this is how it should be.

Russia became a violator precisely under

that rule. So it is interesting, of course,

that the tactic Solovyov has chosen is

to belittle him, and Putin used it today too,

saying that

he has some kind of patient, not...

a patient, not some blogger who jumps up to

my level. In fact, it is as if

he is pretending not to see that there is real Russian

support for him — and that is

apparently quite frightening for them to admit.

Alexei

Navalny

does enjoy nationwide support. And they themselves admit it

by not allowing him to run in the presidential election.

Because again, if you think that

this is a person who is not supported

by the majority of Russian citizens, then let him

on television, give him live airtime,

give him the opportunity to appear in

the election, to campaign,

to run his campaign. Instead, they slap criminal

cases on him — fabricated criminal cases — and keep

his brother in prison on a fabricated case

in solitary confinement for three and a half

years. So why, then, are you

fighting him, sending operatives from the security services

to poison him,

if you really believe this is just

some petty thief who is not

supported by the citizens

of our country? With your actions,

with your opposition to him, you are absolutely

refuting your own words,

the very words you like to repeat at press conferences.

And as for the claim that there is no positive agenda — there is.

There is, of course.

Even now, on the website, on the internet,

Navalny's political

program on which he ran in

the 2018 election is still published.

Our party's program is published too.

We have specific draft laws,

specific proposals. Moreover, many

of the bills proposed by Navalny and the

Anti-Corruption Foundation gathered online

support on the government platform, where

100,000 verified users

of Gosuslugi (Russia's state services portal), that is, citizens

of the Russian Federation — in other words, the majority

of the bills that we

put forward were supported by verified

users, who voted and said

that yes, they supported these draft laws exactly.

Did the State Duma adopt them? No, I think not.

That is why we need to elect, to the tired-out

Duma,

honest, decent deputies through

the Smart Voting strategy, who

will pass useful laws

and initiatives. And as for

the press conference, let's still talk about it.

The poisoning case is itself a terrible example.

An example of journalism—or not even journalism, really.

Vladimir Solovyov has some excellent

examples that show us truly outstanding

journalistic work. I was simply stunned.

We can’t show it on air once again,

because CNN could block our video over it.

As a piece of journalism, our video on this

CNN’s Clarissa Ward comes to visit

this poisoner, with her American

accent: “Was it your team that poisoned Navalny?”

It’s just an absolutely spectacular shot,

one that, I think, will go down in history.

On Twitter alone, 1.5 million

people watched that segment. I don’t know

how many saw it on CNN—probably

millions. People watched the segment in huge numbers. I highly

recommend it. And before we move on to

the press conference itself, let me remind you

that today we launched a fundraiser to pay

the lawsuits being brought against us by the Interior Ministry.

We showed the bank card number. Friends, thank you

so much for your support—85,000

has already been raised in just the first 40

or 45 minutes. We’ve raised 85,000; we need to raise

3 million. We’ll be writing a lot about this

and talking about it. Most likely, we’ll have to pay

on this lawsuit in about two weeks,

so, friends, we’re asking for your help.

On that

lawsuit over the 2019 protests.

The press conference—what are your

overall impressions? I’ll be honest,

I had actually never watched

the full press conference—all four hours.

I usually just watch the clips that

get pulled out afterward—the most interesting parts

are always shown anyway. But this time,

I knew we were going on air today, and

I needed to watch it that same day.

It just becomes unbearable—the numbers,

which he simply makes up on the spot.

Right at the beginning, he just

started getting confused by the numbers,

grunting, struggling, coughing, making some kind of

old-man facial expressions, and it just made me

physically ill.

I was lying there watching it, and it was

just textbook propaganda.

It’s really very hard for me too

to watch Putin after all these

20 years of him repeating his

promises, spinning stories,

saying that we have the best healthcare

in the world, that we handled

the coronavirus better than anyone else, because, well, that’s

absolutely not in line

with reality. As I said at the start,

Putin lives in some kind of

information cocoon where there are only

spies, plots against Russia,

Western schemes, and so on—but dealing with the real

problems of ordinary citizens is not something he

has any intention of doing. So once

a year at a press conference he’ll recite

some figures that his aides have brought him

in their reports about how everything here is

just wonderful, the rye is ripening in the fields,

everything is growing twofold—and none of that has anything

to do with reality. So when you

watch the press conference,

it really feels like what they’re pouring into your ears is

completely empty—just, you know,

feeding you nonsense, hanging noodles on your ears (a Russian idiom meaning “telling lies”), and what do you get

out of it?

Nothing. You understand that tomorrow you’ll go out,

you’ll turn to

Russian healthcare and ask to be

treated, and you’ll realize that there simply aren’t

enough doctors there.

You may have to wait several days.

And if your relative is hospitalized

with coronavirus, they may simply not have

enough cheap oxygen for them, as

happened in the regions.

We talked about that in previous

broadcasts. You understand that everything he

says has nothing to do with your

personal life. For Putin, everything

really is fine—he’s arranged everything there

in his bunker, with two identical rooms,

all perfectly organized. He sits there, and for him

everything is wonderful. All the people who come

to his press conference

and speak to him in person have already sat through

quarantine.

Everything is fine for him. Coronavirus doesn’t

touch him. Your problems—whatever they are—

say, I don’t know, that you were fired

during the coronavirus crisis,

because businesses were given no

support—that has nothing to do with Putin.

For him, everything is just great.

For the rest of Russia, things are very bad and

very sad. People really are getting poorer

year after year, more and more. And when

you watch the press conference,

it really leaves a fairly depressing

impression: that, well,

somewhere in Putin’s world everything really is

fine, but for the whole country, unfortunately,

it is not, not fine at all. Another terrible

impression, actually, was made on me by

the journalists. That was astonishing.

People who work at VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcasting company), Channel One,

and elsewhere, in some tiny

little newspapers—they ask their pre-written questions

with such fear, stumbling over their words. But

seriously, guys,

how far

have you been humiliated? How completely have you stopped being

journalists, if you can only, with a

trembling voice, ask a question about

what toast he’ll make on New Year’s?

Who are you? Are you journalists or what?

When they were asking questions about toasts,

it was honestly hard to call them

journalists at all, because that kind of work...

At Prigozhin's—Camry, aphonia, and whatever that was.

taking photos with Maria Zakharova from the Foreign Ministry.

And that’s why there were so, so many people there from

various regional outlets who

were asking completely bizarre questions, but

they were unbelievably nervous. Honestly, I just

didn’t really like the question

from the BBC journalist, because he was

— everyone on Twitter seemed thrilled

that he asked a question about

the poisoning, but it seemed to me that he wasn’t

really prepared when Putin turned on him

with a counter-question: had the data been handed over

to the authorities? And at that point you could have simply

kept pressing him and

kept talking about it. But I understand, in

another language it’s probably hard; it’s not

his native language. Though maybe they

did it deliberately. The question could have been asked

better. That’s why the press conference itself

— I even wrote on

Twitter — is exactly the kind of format where

it’s impossible to ask those follow-up

questions. That’s why Putin likes it.

He doesn’t like giving press conferences where

he has to answer questions from

independent media.

In Russia, he doesn’t like sitting there

answering follow-up questions in detail and giving

a real response. Instead, he just skims over the surface,

says something vague, and that’s it.

Next year I’m free to do

whatever I want. I’m absolutely sure that

most of the people who watched and

suffered through that press conference watched it

not because they’re masochists. They were simply watching

for one single question, because they

wanted to see how he would

squirm when

he was asked a question about Navalny

— a question they simply couldn’t avoid

asking, naturally, at least in some

form. And he really did squirm, and in

that sense, there was still something

satisfying about watching them have to

admit that in fact the FSB officers

had been identified.

The perpetrators were exposed; the crime was solved, basically.

Well, since you started talking about journalists

and their questions, we even have

a roundup: the top three sharpest

questions at Putin’s press conference.

Today, thank you so much for this all-Union

— I mean, all-Russian — meeting.

Because it’s just wonderful that at a time like this

you gathered all of us together and gave us

the chance to tell you the truth. But the fact that

this year has not been an easy one — we all

know that perfectly well, and it’s even hard to define it.

Still, was it a bad year,

or was there something good about it too, in your view?

But of course the most important trump-card question

was asked by singer Sergey Shnurov (frontman of the Russian band Leningrad).

Let’s take a look at his question: why

weren’t Russian hackers able this time

to help Trump get elected?

Have they all already emigrated to

Silicon Valley and stopped abandoning their own,

as you like to say? What position

can Trump count on now?

And if he asks for political asylum here,

like

Snowden,

I don’t know, I was sitting there laughing, because if

you don’t fully understand what’s going on, because

Putin was writing something down while Shnurov started

talking about Trump, Russian

hackers, why they didn’t help

Trump,

he suddenly started writing furiously. What exactly he

wrote is completely unclear.

And with Shnurov, of course, all of this is rather sad now,

because from what I can tell from my acquaintances and

comments on social media, a lot of

people who used to like Sergey Shnurov as

a performer — this rough, edgy,

high-energy kind of act —

this sort of man-of-the-people performer,

you could say — now they’re

becoming disappointed. A huge number of people

who used to love Shnur and considered him

some kind of authority,

someone influential, an opinion-maker,

someone worth listening to,

now understand that they can’t trust him either.

His words carry no weight at all.

And that is actually quite sad.

And when they were trying to pull Shnurov into

politics, it seemed to me that now

there really would be some kind of

fairly serious asset for the authorities.

I understand that over this period now,

which has passed since the moment of

the first publication — Vedomosti reported it first —

the media wrote that Sergey Shnurov would be

brought into the State Duma elections,

that they would now either let him

register something or place him in an existing

party somewhere, invite him into a party structure.

Not that much time has passed since then,

but trust in him really has

been badly undermined by this

question. It seems to me he has driven trust in himself

straight into the negative now, because

he could have — but he got scared then —

asked a real question. Instead, there he was, all fidgety,

with those frightened little eyes,

too afraid to ask a question about Navalny.

He could have asked about who ordered

Nemtsov’s murder, for example, or at least

done what he had promised. Let’s

look at what he promised when faced with

Putin. “What will you say to him?” — “I’ll tell him

that

enough is enough.” So he was afraid to say it.

He didn’t stand by his own words.

How to feel about that is for you to decide,

dear viewers. Let’s move on to

a more important and serious topic from this

press conference, because there was a

major question not only about Navalny

but there was also an important question

an important, important, important one, and it really was

important, because Important Stories told us about it

Important Stories is a publication, and they

told us how Shamalov, the son-in-law,

for $100 acquired 3 whole

and eight-tenths

percent of the petrochemical company Sibur

which is involved in—well, it's a

fairly large company

and so, through an offshore firm, for $100

he bought shares whose value

is estimated at roughly 3.8

—$380 million. This is

simply astonishing. Putin starts

squirming and somehow dodging this

question. Well, look: in this

investigation it says that he is now

no longer my son-in-law. He really is

no longer Vladimir Putin's son-in-law; around

2017 or 2018, Katerina

Tikhonova and Shamalov divorced, but the

events that Important

Stories describes took place during the period

when he was Putin's son-in-law, and he

was getting this for $100. Putin

continues:

well, you know, this is— we have

this answer, actually I myself have read it many times

I have the text version on the website

of Important Stories, and on YouTube there is a video, a video

telling the story. Let's watch a piece of it

so everyone understands what this is

about.

When Vladimir Putin was asked about his

daughters, he would avoid answering. At the beginning

of this year

an anonymous source gave us an archive

of emails belonging to a businessman from

St. Petersburg who, at age 34, became the youngest

dollar billionaire in Russia

Now we can say with confidence: in

our hands we have

real documents and correspondence of

the relatives of the President of Russia. Right

after graduating from university, Kirill Shamalov

managed to work at Gazprom, Rosoboron

export, and the Russian government, and at 27

became vice president for

administrative business support

at the largest petrochemical company

in Russia, Sibur. But the most important stage of his

career came in 2013

As the international news agency

Reuters reported, Kirill Shamalov married the younger

daughter of Vladimir Putin, Katerina

Tikhonova. The Kremlin

refused to confirm rumors of the wedding of

the Russian president's daughter, but now

there can be no doubt about it

because photographs from this wedding

were found in the hacked email

of Kirill Shamalov. His marriage to

Tikhonova opened for Shamalov

the door not only to a happy family

life, but also to riches available only

to the chosen few. Shamalov acquired a stake in

the largest petrochemical enterprise

in Russia, Sibur. Shamalov paid $100

for it. Shamalov himself, in an interview with the newspaper

*Kommersant*, valued all of

Sibur at $10 billion. Thus

his stake in the company should

have been worth at least $380 million

—that is, almost 4 million times

more than what the son-in-law

of the President of Russia paid for it

We know how much was paid for Sibur

shares at the same time as Shamalov

by other top managers of the company

For example, Sibur deputy chairman of the management board

Vladimir Razumov, according to the contract,

bought his stake, whose size was

less than one-tenth of one percent, for nearly

$6 million. The laws of the market

do not apply to the son-in-law of the President of Russia, and

he was able, for $100, to buy what

was worth $380 million. These deals turned

Shamalov

and his wife, Vladimir Putin's daughter Katerina

Tikhonova, into some of the richest

newlyweds in our country

That is the most important part of this

investigation. Again, take a look

and read it if you still haven't, in order

to understand how everything works in

our country: right after the wedding

Shamalov, for just $100—$100!

What can you buy for $100?

Well, maybe around

some people live on $100 for quite a while

in Moscow, right? That is, with $100

there's very little you can buy. For $100

he acquired 3.8 percent

of the shares of the petrochemical company Sibur

that is, for essentially pennies he acquired

a block of shares in

one of the largest petrochemical

companies, and he did it through

an offshore firm. What is especially noteworthy

is how Putin often likes to

tell us, well, let's say

that no one should look to the West anymore, that de-offshorization is underway

and so on—yet at that time his son-in-law

acquired shares in a petrochemical company

in Russia through offshore entities. Let's

look at Putin's answer at the

press conference—what he was asked there

about this and what he said. Here

it concerns

let's say, my relatives. Yes, yes, I—read

this material—it's impossible to

go through it just from a sheet of paper. Since it supposedly

concerns me, but it's such a compilation, everything is

piled into one heap, so I haven't fully

I haven’t finished reading it, but what I wanted to point out is this:

right away, he keeps saying to take into account that

the president’s son-in-law—they write at the end that he is the president’s former son-in-law.

They still emphasize that he is former—and that’s the first of these

points.

As the story goes on, they keep drilling into

the readers’ minds that this is somehow just

about how he happened to receive some shares in this

company. But it turns out the company

published

its own data on the matter and its position

on the issue. It turns out there were programs

to reward senior management, and so

of course he, like other

top managers, received shares under the same

scheme. There were also other programs for other

management levels, and they received them under different

rules.

That’s the line they’re pushing. And now

let me show, very simply, with three examples,

that Putin is almost certainly lying. So, first:

yes, it really is about Shamalov—

he was the son-in-law

during the period under discussion

that they are talking about.

In Important Stories’ investigation, that is, among affiliated

persons, he clearly was one at that time.

That part is all true. Second: Sibur is a private

company.

It is indeed a private

company now, but let’s go back a little

in history and remember that in 1995

this company was created by a government

decision. Then the company later

became a holding company, which later came to

belong to Gazprom, and it was from Gazprom that

this company began passing into private

hands—again, among people in Putin’s circle. That is,

starting in 2000, this company went from

state ownership into private hands during

the period of Putin’s rule, with his unquestioned

control over Gazprom and

its management. So of course he has

some connection to the fact that it

ceased to be a state-owned company

—absolutely. And third:

the most interesting point to me is that he says

that it’s a private company, and therefore, well,

the money there belongs to private

individuals, so why should anyone care?

But that’s another lie, because Putin,

by direct instruction to the government, ordered that from

the National Wealth Fund

projects be co-financed to the tune of 175

point 1

billion rubles—750 million rubles.

So yes, supposedly it’s a private company,

the kind Putin is talking about, but let’s

put it this way: here you have one of the billions—

not rubles, but dollars, in my view—of dollars in

co-financing for this company. Over this issue,

Navalny even filed a lawsuit against

Putin. But of course, here there is

a clear family affiliation,

and clearly there is an interest in

doing a favor for his relative, so that

his company’s capitalization would increase. And

then he tells us, well, you know, this is

some private company, the money there is

from the National Wealth Fund. That is

especially rich to say at a time

when your pension savings were once again

frozen—or rather,

there’s really no softer word for it—

not frozen, but stolen. Your pension

savings were confiscated. So just like that,

even without much preparation,

you can say that Putin is lying.

And then this whole story begins

about some Western intelligence services. Guys,

I know them—I don’t know whether the staff should be glad

that Putin knows

who they are or not.

I just wanted to say that Roman Anin (Russian investigative journalist) is an excellent

and very smart

investigative journalist who for a long

time worked at a major newspaper, and now he

works at Important Stories, and they publish

truly outstanding investigations.

They’ve published investigations—I remember one,

I think, about procurement and government purchases.

They covered that whole story with

how those procurements were carried out,

so they are people who

dig through documents and uncover

genuinely important, socially

significant issues.

So when Putin, as always, says

it’s all just some compilation,

that they just stuffed in various facts—well, are those facts

true or not? Putin himself is confirming

that yes, he is now a former

son-in-law, but at the time he was indeed the son-in-law.

Back then he really was the son-in-law, yes.

People don’t like confirming it, but

it was with his daughter Katerina Tikhonova.

But in essence, in answering the question now,

he once again confirms that it really was

his former son-in-law, and that there really was

a sale of shares at an undervalued price.

In any normal

state, this would be yet another

ground for impeaching the president, because

he is using his official

position for personal

enrichment and for the enrichment of members of his family.

So this is simply one more criminal case

to add to Putin’s tally. And it’s just

astonishing, because for hundreds of millions of dollars

Putin says this was a senior management incentive system.

It’s interesting: what exactly did

Kirill Shamalov do, as a top manager,

that the company could

suddenly hand him 380 million

dollars? What kind of incentive system is that?

What did he do to earn that kind of money? And

if this really were such a private company

that could just hand out that kind of money?

So then why does she take that period?

of Putin's rule, which continues to

this day. One of the $7 billion from

the National Wealth Fund was

not a loan from our money, not a credit,

it was co-financing — in other words, money

that does not have to be repaid at all, but

yes, it's just astonishing. At first

I said 1.7 billion rubles, but

these people don't think in sums like that. What

do rubles matter here? The ruble is plunging, just flying

down very fast. One of the $75 billion

the company received, and then for $100

Kirill Shamalov buys Sibur shares. I

see. Let's move on, because we've

been on air for an hour and a half already, and we still have

a lot of topics left. I can see that viewers

in the live chat are asking

about Smart Voting, about the elections to the

State Duma, and about the tightening laws

that are now being passed in batches.

United Russia members really are very afraid

of losing the State Duma elections. They

understand, even from the official polls,

That's why, as I said on previous broadcasts,

and as Vladimir Milov explained in detail, even

even according to official polling, they do not have

even a third of the votes or a third of the support

of the citizens of our country. They want to secure

a majority, so they have switched on

the 'mad printer' (a Russian term for a parliament rapidly churning out repressive laws) at full speed, and now

they have already passed and initiated a whole bunch of

major laws. I can briefly

list them, probably, for those who are not following

the news, because there really are

a lot of them. We could start with November 17:

a bill to ban

rallies and lines for single-person pickets.

It proposes banning

mass events near buildings of

emergency and operational services, the Interior Ministry, and the FSB (Federal Security Service).

The idea is supposedly not to interfere with their work.

It also says that the authorities may

reschedule or cancel demonstrations.

A bill on the financing of rallies.

November 17 — I'm continuing.

United Russia deputies proposed

that organizers should be banned from

receiving funding for rallies through

anonymous transfers or through legal entities

registered less than a year before

the event. So this is another such

tightening of the law on holding

rallies. A bill on fines for

violating the rules for financing a rally —

November 23, 2020. A bill on

fines for the unlawful

use of a journalist's badge at a

rally — that too was introduced on November 23.

A bill on imprisonment for

libel on the internet — this was Dmitry Vyatkin.

He submitted to parliament a bill

that предусматривает up to two years of

imprisonment — that is, it makes it a criminal

offense to spread libel

on the internet. A bill on imprisonment

for blocking streets — December 16.

A fresh initiative appeared there, that from

December of this year there will be

criminal liability for

blocking streets. And there are very, very many

of these initiatives there. It is evidence that

in essence they are now trying

through deputy Vyatkin. It seems to me that

deputy Vyatkin has become a kind of

new Yarovaya

— Yarovaya number two. Earlier, through Yarovaya,

the security services and the Kremlin pushed bills

that were then passed by the State Duma. Now

it is clear that the name of Irina Yarovaya

is immediately associated with this, and if

you see her signature on one of these

bills, you understand that it was adopted not in the

interests of Russians, but in the interests of the Kremlin,

and that most likely the situation of Russians because of

this law will only worsen, and for

businesses and ordinary Russians everything will

only get much worse. Therefore,

apparently they have now found a new

United Russia deputy, Vyatkin, who

now introduces initiatives in his own name

that are obviously being advanced in the

interests of the security services and the Kremlin, who

are very afraid of the coming year,

the pre-election period before the vote for

our country's parliament. And now the name of

Irina Yarovaya is also firmly associated

with our investigation, because she

was, in a way, a co-author of the investigation:

she provided the data through her

legislation — thanks to those laws, the data

for this investigation exists. Because any

cop, any district police officer, any

operative officer in the service of the

Interior Ministry has access to a huge amount of

Russians' data: wiretaps,

billing records,

flight records — and any of that can be sold

by any police officer.

It's actually horrifying, because all

your data — where you live, what you

pay for, how you pay,

which stores you use your bank card in, where you

switch on your phone, where you travel —

can be bought for relatively small

amounts of money. You mentioned the bill about

rallies, and indeed the situation there is fairly

strange: now a person either

agrees to hold a rally

in the place proposed to him — which could be

a cemetery, for example — or refuses, and

what is a person supposed to do then? Go

protest in a cemetery?

Well, of course not. Of course these

bans, these attempts to ban even lines

for single-person pickets, do not work. Just

look at Khabarovsk, where people

come out every single week in support.

their governor, and every week there

no one applies for approval; they

go out calmly every week and don't care

about any of the approvals, because when

there are a lot of people, they can calmly and peacefully

take part in public demonstrations.

Look at Belarus — people there too, well,

they've been crushing everyone there for a long time already.

It's impossible to get any rally approved.

They just jail people indiscriminately, and people still come out.

People protest anyway.

It's impossible to ban

rallies with some laws. But an even more

astonishing bill was introduced by

Senator— not Vyatkin, Senator

Klimov. It's a law on foreign agents.

You know that the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) never

received foreign funding.

It only received two planted payments,

yet it was declared a foreign agent. And now, under

Senator Klimov's bill,

now any person connected in any way

to a foreign agent — and we are, lovingly,

connected with the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

of course — is now supposed, during election campaigning,

to campaign

and begin every public statement with the words:

"Hello, I am a foreign agent."

On signature sheets,

it will be necessary to write: "Collecting signatures for

a foreign agent," for example, for Zhdanov's

nomination in an election. It's a fairly

absurd bill. But the funniest part

is that Senator Klimov himself

got caught out for having a stake in

a Cypriot offshore company, and during that period

— something he was forbidden to do — journalists and the media

caught him at it. Deputies are prohibited

from owning stakes in foreign

legal entities.

He did it, and he got caught.

Now, let's say that was a long time ago,

when he was still a deputy, in 2004, okay.

But to this day he remains a co-founder

of a foundation.

What's it called again — the foundation for

international cooperation, something like that.

I can't guarantee the exact name,

but even the words "foreign" and "foundation"

and "international cooperation" are in there.

To this day, Senator Klimov remains

a co-founder

of that foundation. It's astonishing.

Apparently, it bothers him, and he

is somehow trying to sublimate

his fears about foreign

agents, sublimating the fact that he

is the owner,

or co-founder, of such foundations that clearly

advocate international cooperation.

But he cannot publicly admit that.

It's hard to find a person there

who, while being a deputy

from United Russia or from the Federation Council,

isn't somehow connected — really, wherever you look,

the propagandists, the officials,

Putin's deputies — they're all tied up in this,

with foreign assets. Again,

when these people have houses

in France, when Putin's

circle talks about how terrible the West is,

his daughter, with her husband at the time,

was investing in foreign

assets and building herself an estate in

France. Then there's Solovyov, whom we

mentioned on this broadcast,

with his Lake Como villas, and then

and then, and then...

there's British citizenship,

citizenship of the United Kingdom, and note this too:

hotels in Austria, and so on, and so on.

The list really could go on

for a long time. But Vanya and I have all our interests

firmly in Russia. Neither I nor Vanya

have anything abroad — no

real estate. We live in Russia, we live

in Moscow, and we care deeply about our country because

all our interests are clearly

right here. That's exactly where they remain.

And of course, from deputies you get this stench —

my favorite Senator Klimov, who introduced

this bill, talked a lot about how

we need to promote our own Ded Moroz (the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus)

instead of Santa Claus a few years ago. And this

absolute madness is showing itself in

the State Duma's final year,

because they understand that in twenty-

one they won't be there anymore. With all four paws,

they're trying to show:

look how vicious and terrible we are toward

the opposition, and what vicious, terrible

laws we pass — take us into the new

State Duma lineup. It's obvious

that's what they're asking for.

And it's still unclear which bills, in fact,

actually

will be passed. Many are scheduled for readings

next week, and it will be more or less

clear which bills will

move forward and which will not. Look

at all of this like a fire that

certainly cannot scare us. We

don't give a damn about all these bills. We,

first of all, have gone to rallies and will

keep going to rallies.

Just as we were going to take part in elections, so

we will keep taking part in elections, and we will

win. And if they don't let us in there,

the Smart Voting strategy

will always work. Everything will be fine. There is no need

to despair — we will definitely

win.

Through these laws, in fact,

they are trying to squeeze out and make

any participation in politics in Russia

not just illegal but criminal. They might simply

reach the stage where, I don't know,

they write that simply by participating,

having chosen without the client's approval

the presidential administration — up to two years

of imprisonment. It seems to me that all of you

these laws are needed in this context

to interpret, but again, like that — Vanya, yes

this will not frighten us in any way; we

will still conduct our election

campaigns because we have

the full moral and legal right to do so, and

our voters have that right as well; they

have the right to see their candidate on the

ballot, and today at the

press conference, Vladimir Putin

was saying, yes, that the choice should be

open, that voters should make the decision themselves

and so on. That was exactly where it was

quite amusing to listen to. Almost all of

us know perfectly well that in elections

unfortunately, they often allow only

those approved by the Kremlin, or if it is

an election at a lower level

then by the governor's preferred candidate, because

United Russia really understands

that they have no real majority, and they

love broadcasting on television

everywhere, spreading this

myth that United Russia and Putin

are supported by the majority. They understand

that if strong candidates are allowed onto the ballot

and given access to media platforms, then

yes, and the opportunity to campaign for themselves,

they would simply be digging a hole for themselves

and would show that this myth of

support from the majority of our country's

population for United Russia is not worth

a damn thing, literally. But on the other

hand, United Russia members will try

to put on a show, and they will also try to crush

everyone — the kind of thing politicians are now

doing from the other side: throw people a kind of bone

and say: look, we — Putin and United

Russia — care so much about our citizens

look, with just a stroke of the pen

by our own decree, with a wave of the hand,

we lowered pasta prices. It's quite

funny. Vanya, I understand you missed this

whole saga — yes, you missed that story

it was just when the great fuss about

public discussion of the percentage

was going on — I was following all of it closely, but

perhaps because I like

them; I buy them and cook them myself

from time to time. But perhaps also because

it really was quite amusing how

Putin was playing at being

and portraying himself as a kind tsar

and then there was Putin and the pasta

yes, it was like a play in several acts. It all

began with the president in December

criticizing price increases for such basic

products as sugar, flour, and pasta, and

soon Prime Minister Mishustin

as they say, snapped to attention

over the pasta issue and said — and accused

publicly accused three deputy prime ministers and

several ministers of

having let the situation with rising prices get out of hand. That is,

there is something rather funny about how they

on the one hand tell us through

Russian television that our

country got back on its feet under Putin and that

we are a great power, that just look at our

military might, that everything here is

great, that pensioners are happy with their

large pensions

that all Russians have the best healthcare in

the world, and so on — and then make it so that

the president of our country has to resolve

questions about pasta prices. I mean, I still

can't quite wrap my head around it

even now, but here Putin decided

to play the role of the good tsar

Mishustin, too, also called for

that same kind of politics, acting as though

people should not be profiteered off, and then

the Prosecutor General's Office immediately launched an inquiry into

the price increases, and the Ministry of Economic Development announced

the preparation of a law that would allow