Chechen blood feuds, bad children sent to camps, and Natalia Poklonskaya’s poetry

[music]

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

You're watching the live broadcast of *Russia of the Future*.

And I'm Alexei Navalny, or

the citizen who supposedly proposed poisoning

migrants with insecticide powder, as I was called by

the magnificent Vladimir Solovyov. Let's

start by enjoying this moment right away. Notice

how much Americans love a man

who built his election campaign

in Russia, at the beginning, on the fact that he was

a certified nationalist and proposed

poisoning migrants with insecticide powder. Who is that? That is...

They fought, but it was all so new. I don't consider

myself... whoever can't be shot through...

But amazingly, he has nothing

No, well, he was a fervent supporter of the Russian March

(an annual Russian nationalist rally), while those who have no journalistic integrity...

This is not journalism—it's a disgrace.

Well, isn't it wonderful? And people are just

clucking away: Navalny, Navalny,

Navalny. By the way, it's very funny—

today on his radio show, Vladimir

Solovyov, answering the question of why he needs

so many of those Italian villas, said an

absolutely astonishing thing. He explained

it by saying that his family is large, and it's cheaper

to buy houses in Italy than to buy

tickets, because with tickets and hotels

you'd spend a lot of money. I'm not joking—

he really said that, and it's

astonishing. What marvelous people—how much

they must think everyone is an idiot. But he thought,

well, these [__] have never traveled anywhere, they

have never stayed in hotels, they don't understand, and

you can tell them anything. Sure,

of course I bought one villa, then a second villa,

but you know—I saved on hotels.

Wonderful, wonderful Vladimir Solovyov.

I'll start with something completely concrete.

I like concrete things, concrete matters,

specific people.

One of those specific people is my broadcast neighbor,

who was already on air today—

Vladimir Milov announced that he is

running for the Moscow City Duma, and I

strongly support that, because

we've had this somewhat theoretical

conversation about the elections that will take place in

September in nearly 20 regions, including

the biggest ones—in Moscow and St. Petersburg—and this is

something completely concrete, because

Smart Voting—yes, we want to inflict

damage on United Russia,

we will damage United Russia, but we'd like

it not to be just emotions. Of course, we're going after

United Russia, but we're supporting some

decent people too. So I very much

welcome the fact that nominations have finally

started. Milov has put himself forward; he

will run in the Konkovo and Tyoply Stan districts

(districts in Moscow). I urge everyone to take part in the campaign,

because, because I know him. You

watch his broadcasts—he has many viewers,

more than 100,000 views now on

each stream. He helped a lot during the time of the

election campaign. Here you can see his

website, and as a rule we know for sure that

this is a person who will go there and, on our behalf, in the end

—this is a kind of shared

public agreement between us—we will support him.

We're saying to Volodya: come on, we'll

support you, yes, please—go ahead and hit United

Russia hard. And he will. And if we

elect him, if we make the effort, then he will continue

to hit back. He won't peck timidly, he won't

be one of those quiet deputies. He will

fight the Moscow mafia, he will

fight the bureaucrats. He understands

finance extremely well. So, just a little

promotion for Milov—go and

watch any of his broadcasts. So I very much

support him, and I'm waiting for other candidates too. And all

of us are waiting, right? We want

them to be serious, strong people,

to run seriously, the way Milov is running.

Support him. On Sunday there was a rally.

Thank you very much to everyone who was there. You

know that I wasn't there, but it seems to me that I

still made a fairly significant contribution

to making it successful. Well, maybe not huge,

but some contribution, large or small, I did make.

I am very happy that this rally

drew more than 15,000 people.

I am very happy that all of us together

managed to outplay the Kremlin, which had clearly

been counting on this being a

small rally, or some kind of

failure. And they were even forced

to resort to one of their cheap tricks:

they flew a drone about an hour

before the rally started and showed everyone

when there were still few people there—ha-ha—writing,

look, nobody's here. Even though everyone perfectly

well knew that this really was

the biggest rally in recent years.

Thank you to everyone who took part, thank you.

Well done to the Libertarian Party, which

organized all of this. And separately,

many thanks to the Libertarian Party

for not letting those vile, disgusting

crooks who, by some misunderstanding, call themselves

journalists into

the area behind the stage. Right now RT (Russia Today),

Margarita Simonyan, is going on about it. But my favorite

part—the one I talk about a lot—is that they lie a lot

about how they were supposedly not allowed into

the rally at all. Those of you who have been to

rallies and came closer to the stage

know perfectly well that there is, so to speak,

the general rally area, and everyone is allowed in there.

Any journalists are allowed in there;

it's impossible not to let them in—the police handle access.

And then there is the area around the stage,

and there the organizers decide whom they want

to let in. They didn't let them in there, and

they were right not to. And now they're losing their minds

over it, writing tweets and saying, look...

Look, these people claim to stand for freedom.

Internet freedom, yet they barred all of us.

It’s all lies, absolutely all of it.

And even the libertarians are trying, just a little,

to justify themselves, saying, “Well, we let them in there,”

or “not there,” or “we were right,” or “we were wrong.”

RT (Russia Today) needs to be driven out from everywhere, to hell with it,

because these are not

journalists.

These are people who lie deliberately and intentionally.

Why should we have to see these people at rallies?

Just go to RT’s website

and try to find any socially

significant news from Russia — you won’t

find it there. What you’ll find is endless

lying. And that lying is paid for with our

16 billion rubles from the state budget (about $250 million at historical rates). If we’re

feeding this whole gang, it would be even

more disgusting to see them in the

rally area, wandering around there and

snooping about. That does not in any way infringe

on freedom of speech. Staying on the topic

of the rally, it’s interesting how officials are reacting to this.

They’re joking, they understand

that these laws are completely absurd,

idiotic laws. They understand that

they’ll be very hard to enforce, and that

the whole country is now turning against

them. Let’s watch for 51 seconds how

Valentina Matviyenko explains

the problems that arose after these laws

were passed. Yes, they joke and joke — they passed

vile laws and now they joke and laugh. 51

seconds of Valentina Matviyenko: “Just yesterday

the Klishas laws were passed, and today already

we’ve got not only smart scientists and

experts,

but an immensely talented, brilliant, creative people.”

“Just yesterday the Klishas laws were passed, and

today already — if you scold the authorities to your heart’s content,”

“you fall under the law on insulting the authorities.”

“Or rather, if you praise — if you scold the authorities,”

“you fall under the law on”

“criti— rather, if you criticize, excuse me, if you”

“criticize the authorities, you fall under the law on

insulting the authorities. If you praise the authorities,”

“you fall under the fake news law.”

And so on and so forth.

The people aren’t asleep.

So if you speak badly, you fall under

one law — and there’s your punishment.

Well, isn’t that adorable, right? I mean, we’re sitting here

furious — and we really are furious, because

ha-ha-ha, someone gets fined up to 300,000 rubles (about $4,500),

or 30,000 rubles (about $450), excuse me.

They’ll fine some person in some region,

whether in a region, in Moscow, or anywhere else,

simply because he wrote, “The mayor of our

city is a scoundrel, a bastard, and a thief” — which is the plain

truth. And they joke: ha-ha-ha.

Just look at this attitude: “We have such

talented people, listen, we have scientists,

teachers, doctors — and so many jokers

on the internet, making up jokes about us.”

“They came up with a funny joke, and now

let’s go ahead and punish all these

people — we’ll fine them,”

“we’ll jail them, we’ll lock them up for 15

days for insulting the authorities.” They will

of course snap back and joke, and we will

retell their jokes here and laugh our heads off,

glancing at our watches worth hundreds of thousands,

millions, billions of rubles or dollars,

whatever you like.

Disgusting people. Even in these, actually,

what seems like a human moment,

they laughed — but if you really think

about what’s happening there, how they

cackle, understanding that they are some kind of super-

elite, and that they can impose whatever

laws they want on the rabble, and then

receive feedback in the form of memes.

It’s very, very nasty and revolting.

Speaking of idlers, alcoholics, and the elite,

I hope many of you have already

seen our report today.

If you haven’t watched it yet,

you should. Though it’s not even really an investigation,

I don’t even know what to call it — really,

it’s more of a comparison. In the previous program I showed you

that very same Gasan Nabiyev

from United Russia,

a deputy from Volgograd who said that

a pension

of around 8,000 rubles (about $120) is received only by

idlers and alcoholics. Let’s take 15 seconds

to refresh our memory: “Those who worked properly,”

“earned a decent salary, or who created”

“something over the years, receive this…”

“The rest are drunks.”

That outraged the whole country, outraged it

so much that he was expelled. I already

saw the news this evening: he was

expelled from the party, despite his

position at Gazprom, despite the fact that

what he said is, essentially,

the official position of United Russia. They

were saying exactly the same thing for half a year before

the retirement age was raised.

They kept saying that, well, if a person

worked hard, then their pension would be good; we

would raise everyone’s now, but those who

complain just don’t want to work themselves.

Drunks, idlers — that’s basically what

they said, in different ways, many, many times,

and different speakers repeated it. But then

Gasan Nabiyev ended up taking the heat.

Maybe he expressed it in the most

aggressive way, and maybe, I don’t know,

perhaps those sociologists

who endlessly talk about secret

pollsters in the Kremlin monitoring

public opinion all the time, and that

Putin makes decisions in line

with public opinion — well, perhaps

somehow they really did pick up on the fact

that Gasan Nabiyev in particular infuriated everyone

a little more than usual.

What’s happening is that he was expelled from United

Russia, but nevertheless, here we are, on the subject of

what prompted this video was actually a very

interesting and instructive comparison we made.

We compared an ordinary pensioner

whom Gasan Nabiev should supposedly love

with someone who came out of Gazprom itself.

This Valery Golubev himself, well,

nobody knows him. You don’t know him.

Most likely, you’ve never even heard

his name, unless you’ve taken an interest in Gazprom

or regularly watch the program

by Milov. But this, it seems to me,

is the main point of what we

should be thinking about: that some

frankly, total nobodies came out of nowhere and devoured everything around them,

and not just became fabulously rich, but

super-fabulously rich. Let’s

watch 46 seconds from this fairly long

16-minute video. We’ll

just take a look at the dacha. Golubev

once allocated an apartment to a not particularly

important

St. Petersburg official named Putin,

Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Well, of course, we’re on Rublyovka (an elite residential area outside Moscow) right now.

Right now, we’re looking at the main house,

with 3,000 square meters in the main section

and along a curved gallery you can walk to

the bathhouse complex on the right. The total

area of these buildings is 3,800 square meters.

All of this—the land and the houses—with a total value of

more than 3 billion rubles belong to

Golubev, Vyacheslav Valeryevich,

the 23-year-old son of Gazprom’s deputy chairman. He

bought and built all of this when he was

nineteen years old.

Can people own houses worth three

billion rubles? They can. Even houses worth 33 billion

rubles, houses, I don’t know, steamships, yachts—

they can own them. What’s the issue? But

we would at least like these people to have somehow

actually earned that money, so that there would be

some correspondence between this person’s contribution

and the benefit he brought

to society, his, I don’t know, intellectual

potential,

and so on and so forth.

So that it would match up, however crudely

you break it down—sorry for such a primitive

approach—but what we are seeing in Russia

is literally some kind of hellish

orgy of excess.

Just random people,

utterly worthless, literally neighbors

of Putin, Putin’s former colleagues, and some

pitiful clerks who sat

in the office next to him in the St. Petersburg

mayor’s office—they were absolute nobodies,

complete nonentities. And that is precisely why, in our

case, nothing works out for us,

nothing develops; on the contrary,

everything falls apart, because Putin’s кадровый ресурс (personnel pool),

his key people who took

all this for themselves, are just, well,

neighbors, you understand? If I came to

power and took my apartment neighbors or, say,

I don’t know, went around and found

the neighbors from my parents’ dacha, like,

“these are reliable people, I’ve had shashlik (barbecue) with them,”

so I’ll bring them in and appoint one of them

—the neighbor on the right—to Gazprom, then

I’d find some former classmate of mine

from university who, back in

the dorm, slept in the bunk next to mine,

and I’d appoint him to Rosneft just like that,

and so on—let’s be honest, that would end

in nothing good. Most likely, everything

would collapse. And you’ll say: well, that’s exactly what happened here—

everything collapsed.

Now look at this Golubev, and of course the question arises:

well,

“Come on, why are you harping on about his billion-ruble house?”

After all, he was on the

Gazprom management board—he’s supposed to be

rich, right?” Fine, then let’s

assess it objectively. Let’s forget about

Putin and imagine that we know absolutely nothing

about anyone. We’ve never heard of Golubev,

or of Gasan Nabiev, and nobody has

insulted us over

the retirement age. There was Gazprom,

it was worth $350 billion in 2008,

and in 2008 Miller said that

Gazprom would be worth a trillion. Please tell me,

then: to what figure, by how much,

did Gazprom grow? It was

worth $350 billion, and these guys

got yachts and planes out of it. This

Golubev got several billion

rubles, earned them—but that would make sense if

Gazprom had grown and become something bigger. Logical,

right? But since then Gazprom has fallen;

now it is worth $60 billion.

In other words, its value has collapsed.

They simply wrecked everything there,

dragged everything away—just objectively speaking.

Even if you don’t take into account my

dislike of Gazprom and its officials, or my

desire to accuse everyone there of

stealing everything—fine, let’s say they didn’t

steal everything. But in any case, they

managed it so badly, at the very least,

that it shrank and became several times

cheaper. They ruined Gazprom for us,

they broke it. They were given Gazprom for 20 years,

and they turned it into a much worse

company than it was before it fell into their

hands. So why the hell should we

be looking at houses worth billions, and why should we

calmly look at these houses now while

for some reason OMON and SOBR (Russian riot police and special rapid-response units) aren’t storming in there

shouting, “Explain yourselves—where did you get

the money for all of this?” But meanwhile,

at the same time,

companies like Amazon and Samsung used to be

smaller than Gazprom,

but now all of these companies

They are worth exactly that same trillion dollars.

dollars, while Gazprom is not. Well, let’s

just, then, based on the results of this

performance, based on the results of actual

work, pay these people money—meaning

Golubev, apparently, should not receive

anything.

Or he should be paid, but only some kind of

ordinary salary. Let him get 150,000

rubles a month, or let him

get 500,000 rubles a month, but

let’s not pay

them—after all, they keep going there, that whole team,

Miller and all the rest, we pay them

billions for the company to become

worse and worse and worse. That’s what the video was about.

Besides all these things, professions, everything

else—against the backdrop of sheer poverty, against the backdrop

of collapse—we officially keep handing out

and handing out more, and nobody is outraged, and

even deputies there, the communists in the

State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), aren’t especially

outraged, which separately really

annoys me a lot. Fine, LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), and at least

A Just Russia—but they are formally

the opposition. Introduce a bill saying that

they should strip the hell out of them of their money—all those whose

market capitalization is falling, and it was falling even

back in the days when oil was doing just fine

and rising. That, that, that is what needs to be done. What really

gets to me—and not just me—is this

situation, because, well, time is passing

and Gazprom is getting smaller and smaller. It’s not as if

things have stopped there.

They keep tearing everything apart and

looting it.

And someday they will leave, of course,

but what exactly will be left after them

for us, or even for our children? There will be nothing left.

Absolutely nothing. Gazprom used to be worth 350,

now it’s worth 60, and how much will it be worth next—6?

That is the thing that hits a nerve and that

needs to be discussed. Chechen officials

are astonishing and continue simply to

amaze us, really.

Amaze us—I personally watched with amazement

the incident that happened

this week with the speaker of Chechnya’s parliament,

Magomed Daudov, nicknamed “Lord.”

In Chechnya, everyone knows him as Lord, and he is one of

Ramzan

Kadyrov’s closest associates—this is all well known—but

he publicly declared a blood feud

via Instagram. He declared a blood feud

against the video blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov.

Abdurakhmanov.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov—I know him a little indirectly.

He took part in my

contest

for video clips, video blogs, which I

once announced on my birthday.

Lately I’ve been following him fairly closely.

By the way, I recommend that all of you watch him.

I recommend watching him—he is quite an

interesting person. He is a Chechen who

is currently living in forced exile.

I disagree with quite a large

range of his views, but everyone

in Chechnya watches him. No matter whom

among Chechens I have spoken with, mostly

in detention centers, everyone knows him.

Everyone watches him. Go to his channel and

you’ll see that he doesn’t have that many subscribers.

It’s scary to subscribe too—someone might see it

and punish you. But everyone watches him. If you

want to understand what is happening in Chechnya,

you absolutely have to watch him. And he

speaks Russian, and in good

Russian too. Everything is very clear; he is very

good at explaining things clearly.

And in fact, this confrontation

between Abdurakhmanov, on the one hand,

and Daudov and Kadyrov, on the other,

this kind of public

confrontation, is the most interesting thing

happening in Chechnya right now, and therefore

through this confrontation

you can see the main political

process taking place in the republic.

Well, that is, it’s clear that in this confrontation

Abdurakhmanov is, of course, in favor of

Chechnya leaving the

Russian Federation altogether. Those arguing with him

have to argue with him—they are Russian

officials, despite the fact that they are Chechens,

despite the fact that they are all there with

gold-plated pistols hanging off them,

formally they are Russian officials. They have

Russian official IDs, they

sign the payroll sheets and receive

a salary. In other words, these are people who are

supported by—well, by the money

of taxpayers. But at the same time, from within

this formal structure,

they go off to various ministries, to

some state councils and who knows where else, and then a person

simply

comes out and declares a blood feud.

Let’s take a look at the Chechen-language clip, but we

have subtitles—35 seconds of Daudov.

Officially, after your words about Akhmat-Haji (Akhmat Kadyrov, Ramzan Kadyrov’s father),

we declare a blood feud against you.

You are my enemy,

you are the enemy of my brothers, and we

will look for you.

We are not going to kill you tomorrow—don’t

say that we want to kill you. We will

deal with you in our own way. I fear

no one but God. If I do what

I promised to do to you, it makes no difference to me

even if I die.

And

my brothers and I will be looking for you.

So there you have it. Well, every one of us

has heard things like this many times. It is some kind of

talk—whether real or just

bragging—that happens constantly,

but in general we expect to see this—but

somewhere in an alleyway, and

or at a market, or in that same

detention center, or some conversation

between people with a criminal past, with

a criminal present, or simply

you know, some people had a drink

or some recently discharged conscripts got into a fight with each other, and they

say to each other, "Oh yeah? I'll

find you with my brothers, we'll deal with you,"

"so watch your back now, walk carefully."

The speaker of parliament. That's why I'm

so astonished. I was watching and thinking, well,

now it's going to start, because surely they have to

react somehow, the officials, to

this. I mean, what the hell — a guy is declaring

a blood feud.

We understand perfectly well that Ramzan Kadyrov

is feeling a whole range of emotions because

Abdurakhmanov is saying something

bad about him, about his father, and Daudov

is feeling a lot of emotions too. Well, they all are.

They're all feeling a lot of emotions. In Russia there are

hundreds of thousands of people who have said, or

still say, bad things about the father

of Ramzan Kadyrov, Akhmad-Hadji Kadyrov

because at one point in his

life he fought against federal troops.

That is part of Russian history.

Obviously it's very unpleasant for them, but

so what if it's unpleasant for an official?

Tell your friends something like that,

or the other one — if he really has time

to watch a video blogger — instead

he just goes on Instagram, on a live stream,

and declares a blood feud. And this

is seen by all Chechens, and they understand: well, if they

can do that, then what can we do? And this is seen by

all Russians, all of the North

Caucasus sees it, officials in the Kremlin see it,

Dmitry Peskov sees it, and he then

refuses to comment on this

statement. He says, quote:

"I don't know, I haven't seen it myself, so I won't

undertake to comment. In general, as you

know, in the legal field there is no such concept

as the tradition of blood feud,

and it's not even very clear what that

means." Peskov is telling us that

since there is no such thing as a blood feud,

then let them declare it — they're declaring

something nonexistent — or

maybe, on the contrary, he is condemning it.

It's not very clear. But I want to say to

Peskov

and to the astonishingly inactive

Investigative Committee, the police, everyone

else, that this concept absolutely does

exist in our law. There is an article on murder, and there

are aggravating circumstances for murder

committed on the grounds of blood feud.

This has always existed. It was in the criminal

code

of the USSR, the RSFSR, and the various Soviet republics,

which Chechnya was always part of. I remember perfectly well

when I was still preparing for exams, it was

in the RSFSR criminal code — blood feud

was there, and it is still there now. And there is also

the offense of, excuse me, making a death threat. This is

an explicit, obvious death threat

made by an official, and it just

floors me. Just imagine:

the speaker of parliament — there he is at the same

address by Putin, sitting at those

other events, you know, right there,

here the prosecutor general is having a discussion about

investigations and clearance rates,

over here the human rights ombudsman

is discussing with a representative

something about the situation in prisons,

what needs to be done there — and here this guy

is talking about blood feud and the murder

of a video blogger. This cannot be happening.

Not to mention that I often say on my

program that this is

absolutely disastrous for the North

Caucasus,

for Chechens themselves, for Chechnya. This once again

reinforces the image of some kind of wild

republic where a high-ranking

official, the second most important person in the republic,

declares a blood feud. Good grief.

Wild people, wild people with beards running around,

waving pistols, declaring

blood feuds to each other, with brothers, like they're

hunting someone down.

It should not be like this. And against the backdrop of

all this, they're saying to tourists today:

"Come to Chechnya, we'll be

very glad to welcome you to our wonderful,

our wonderful, hospitable

republic." Wait a second, just hold on there,

we're just going to kill this man's soul with

our brothers — we've found him,

we want to "entertain" him our way, the

Chechen way — and then come on over and check into

our cozy hotel. It's a complete mess,

absolute nonsense. I

am simply watching very closely

the Interior Ministry, the Investigative Committee, all

the rest, because they have to do

something. We called

Tumso Abdurakhmanov and asked him

to speak specifically for the viewers

of the program about what he thinks

about all this. He responded and recorded

a short video for us. Many thanks to him for that.

Let's listen to Tumso

Abdurakhmanov, against whom a blood

feud has been declared. One minute and a few seconds. As for

the blood feud declared against me

by the chairman of the Chechen parliament,

Daudov, I have long since stopped being surprised

by anything that representatives of

the Kadyrov authorities say or do. If

even tomorrow, on the central square

in Grozny, a person were publicly executed,

even that would not surprise me. But what does surprise me

is the absence of any adequate response.

from the highest echelons of the Russian

authorities toward the blatant disregard

for Russian laws by their vassals in

Chechnya. How can the speaker of parliament

openly threaten a person, declare

a blood feud, thereby violating

Russian law, and yet there is absolutely no

reaction from either the Investigative Committee

or any other bodies? Although if, say, you

take Navalny, for example—if he merely hinted

somewhere on Twitter that somewhere

an unauthorized rally would take place, he would

be locked up for 30 days. We know perfectly well

how this works. Or how can, for example,

another representative of this same

parliament, Andreev, openly say that

he basically, in our country,

does not like Russians—and again, there is

no reaction at all. This person remains

in his post. Yes, of course, we

respect human rights, and

he is entitled to his opinion—he may dislike Russians,

Chechens, the whole world, anyone he wants—but

a Russian official, a sitting

member of parliament, cannot allow himself such

public statements. I think the

Russian authorities should long ago have

pay attention to this.

The Russian authorities really should

pay attention to this.

But if you noticed, in the second

part of his speech, Dud

also mentioned another deputy who

said that he does not like Russians.

I got curious and went to look it up.

It was a statement in Chechen,

in the Chechen language, and when we translated it, I

was once again genuinely astonished.

Now, we understand very well that people

can say whatever they want in their own kitchens.

Chechens say all sorts of things about

Russians; Russians say things about Chechens too,

and not only in their apartments but also in

various conversations elsewhere. But it is assumed

that officials have certain restraints.

And yet another member of United

Russia, Magomed Khanbiyev, also a deputy

in that very same parliament, simply

made an astonishing statement.

There he was, live on his Instagram, and

considering that this man has such an

interesting biography—during the war

he also fought against federal troops, and he

was even the defense minister of Ichkeria (the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria), that is,

if you were defense minister and then

switched to Russia’s side, joined

United Russia, and became an official

Russian official, your leader is Dmitry

Medvedev.

You simply should not be saying things like

the things he said. Let’s watch 21

seconds of it now; then it will be easier for you

[unintelligible speech]

[unintelligible speech]

[unintelligible speech]

[unintelligible speech]

[unintelligible speech]

[unintelligible speech]

Fine, no problem—if you don’t like Russians, then don’t

talk to them, if you don’t want to.

Don’t talk to them. Good Lord, there are plenty of

Russians

who do not want to talk to Chechens either.

But then don’t go into

United Russia. Then you shouldn’t

become an official. Then you shouldn’t

go around saying, ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin, you are our president,’ and all the rest of it.

This is the ruling party. How do these people

manage

to be part of the ruling party and

for that same government to keep talking endlessly about Russophobia:

look, there’s Russophobia in America,

there’s Russophobia in Poland, where

that Tumso lives, there are Russophobes in the Netherlands,

Russophobes there, and of course on

Ukraine—an entire nest of Russophobia.

And then this very same representative of the authorities,

a deputy of the Chechen parliament and a member of United Russia,

says: well yes, Russians—I don’t like Russians.

I mean, my—how did he put it—my

padishah is Chechen, I am a son of Ichkeria,

I don’t shake hands with them, I don’t speak to them.

And United Russia stays silent.

Silent about this.

That other gentleman who spoke about pensioners

and ‘a few thousand rubles’—they have already

expelled him. I am very curious what they

will do with our wonderful Magomed

Khanbiyev. I am publicly appealing to the party

United Russia and its leadership:

please, my dear friends,

either express solidarity with his words

or expel him, or at least

do something—somehow make your

position clear in connection with this,

well, with this strange position

of a member of your party. Separately, by the way,

it is simply very, very funny. I started

looking into who this person is. I do not

know very well—perhaps to my shame—the

history

and the key figures of the First Chechen

War. I went to Magomed Khanbiyev’s

biography on the Chechen parliament’s

page, and we know that Khanbiyev

from 1998 to 2004

fought against federal troops and

was defense minister. And there is an entry there, but

it is worded in such a way that from

1994 to 2005, during that time he worked in

various positions.

That, taken separately, is Homerically funny.

Well, ‘worked in various positions’—does that

mean first he shot at federal

soldiers with an assault rifle, then got promoted to shooting with a

grenade launcher, and then became defense minister

in the end? They might as well have just written that.

We know everything about Chechnya’s history.

A lot of the current police officers there were, back when...

...they were fighting against the federal troops, and then later...

So, all of that changed, well, and...

write that

at such-and-such a time, he took part in

combat operations—no, rather, worked in

various positions and continues

to work now in various positions.

United Russia still simply doesn’t

like Russians and doesn’t want to speak with

Russians, doesn’t want to talk to Russians, and this isn’t even

happening only in Chechnya—it’s a completely

wild story; today, actually, somehow

I don’t know why, but all at once online

they decided to make so many

statements. In Ingushetia, there was perhaps

an even more absurd story there.

The head—the mayor of Magas, Beslan Sataev. Magas is

the capital of Ingushetia, for those who don’t know. He, well,

seemed to take offense not even at Russians; he decided

to threaten not Russians, but an anonymous

Telegram channel. It had published his

post that he had made on VKontakte.

So, some Telegram channel wrote something

bad about him—a small St. Petersburg

pathetic little Telegram channel. Later I

tried—I got curious about how, exactly,

a small Telegram channel

had insulted the mayor of Magas.

So he declared—I’m explaining here—

“And I promise that I will find out the personal data

of this channel’s author and

the punishment will be harsh. To find and punish

you—that’s the meaning of life.” Good grief, man,

seriously? Your meaning of life is

to find and punish some guy

who writes on a Telegram channel? So I

tried to find it—I got curious how exactly

he had been so offended. I couldn’t even find that

Telegram channel—it’s impossible to find. And

basically, probably no one except

the channel’s five readers would ever have

known about it. But this has become a habit

among our officials from the Caucasus, and this

whole business of trading messages through

Instagram demanding apologies—it

keeps spreading further and further. Well,

you see, he has already declared that the meaning

of his life is to find someone and

punish them. So now he’ll be muttering all the time,

saying something like,

“Beslan, have you found him? Punished him? Have you

fulfilled your life’s purpose somehow?” And this will

just keep building up.

He’ll get worked up, and then, foolishly,

he’ll actually go and find

the author of the Telegram channel, and then what will he

do to him in some back alley? Why do these people

engage in such nonsense? Why do they

disgrace their own people, and why do they disgrace

their own republics by digging up something somewhere and

making these idiotic appeals while being

Russian officials? Look, you’re an official.

By definition, you understand that officials

are not liked by people. If I become an official, then

they’ll write that kind of stuff about me too, and

they already do. It’s an inevitable part

of public politics: you always have

enemies, and they insult you in various

ways—funny ones, nasty ones,

stupid ones, or sometimes genuinely quite

offensive ones. That’s just part of it. If

you don’t want anyone to insult you,

then don’t become

a Russian official, and no one

will insult you. Since we’ve started talking

about Russophobia, I see people are asking on the topic.

Pavel asks me:

“Hello, Alexei, tell me what the U.S. investigation

into Putin’s assets will be like.

Will it be similar to yours, or completely different? Aren’t they

taking away your so-called

bread and butter? Thank you.” And indeed,

the U.S. Congress passed a resolution

saying that they will look for

Vladimir Putin’s assets. Dmitry

Peskov immediately called it Russophobia. Before

we discuss that a little, just for

a second, so you understand better what

is going on—one second—the Americans’ statement

that they are going to do something there

regarding Vladimir Putin.

[music]

And Dmitry Peskov says that these are,

I quote,

“Russophobic attempts.” But why Russophobic?

Anti-Putin—sure. But what exactly is Russophobic

about it, really? If you set aside the fact that

they’re speaking English and

are in another country, what they’re saying is

basically this: Vladimir Putin

is corrupt; he stole a lot of money

from the citizens of Russia, and we are instructing our

national intelligence

to find Vladimir Putin’s money and

provide information about that money.

That seems to me like a pretty pro-Russian

gesture. After all, if Vladimir

Putin didn’t steal anything and didn’t hide anything, then

they won’t find anything.

And if he did steal and hide it, then they will find it,

and that will be good for us. Probably sooner or

later that money will come back to us. Why

does Dmitry Peskov call this Russophobia, while

a statement by a Chechen deputy saying that

with Russians

there is no need to speak is not considered

Russophobia? That’s no mystery at all,

because Dmitry Peskov is the same kind of

thief, and he is afraid that his money, his

Swiss—whatever—Liechtenstein

accounts, and his wife’s accounts,

will be found. So it’s obvious that

all these people are worried. However, answering

Pavel’s question about what

the Americans’ investigation will be like, I assume

it will be nothing of the sort. I assume that I have nothing...

They won’t find it, because no such thing exists

as a secret Swiss bank where

there’s supposedly a safe-deposit box with a label saying

“V. V. Putin,” and he comes there secretly, wearing a mask, and

opens it with some kind of diamond key, and inside

there’s cash, or diamonds, or I don’t know

the relics of Seraphim of Sarov (a revered Russian Orthodox saint), or whatever

like that.

There’s nothing like that. Putin and his friends

really did steal an enormous amount

of money, and that money is very much in plain sight. Well,

take Rotenberg’s money,

that’s Putin’s money. The money of various Shama-

lovs and everyone else—that’s all bribery money,

Putin’s money. Billionaire Kirill Shamalov,

a billionaire.

It’s still unclear whether he divorced Putin’s daughter

or not, but either way, that is

Putin’s money. And the money of Timchenko and

Shamalov—that is, the money sitting in

Surgutneftegas: billions of dollars

sitting in accounts—that’s all Putin’s money,

which he can use

at any moment, and do whatever he wants with it.

The other question is that with that much

money, there’s not really much special you can do,

and besides, what is he supposed to do

with money? Go to McDonald’s

and buy himself a double cheeseburger, or I don’t

know, a yacht? He already has a yacht for free.

A plane too—well, not exactly free, but he doesn’t need money for a plane either.

He doesn’t need any money, so he doesn’t need any

Swiss account either, and

since he wants to be president for life,

he doesn’t need any rainy-day stash

for hard times.

Well, I mean, he does need one, and he has one.

When, excuse me,

those very same billions belonging to the cellist

Roldugin—billions of dollars sitting in

a friend’s accounts—that is his rainy-day stash.

But again, it’s registered in a friend’s name, in the name of

a cellist. They won’t find any money specifically

belonging to Putin. And I think

U.S. intelligence will publish a report

that will simply contain a bunch of facts from

our own investigations. They’ll tell us

that Vladimir Putin and his friends stole

a lot of money, and that this money sits in the accounts

of Putin’s friends. And really,

we already know that perfectly well. Let me

take a look.

Sora V. asks me where to check

the promised salary in your field under the May decrees

relative to the subsistence minimum in your region.

How do you calculate it? You don’t need to calculate anything.

Just type in “Navalny Trade Union”

(Profsoyuz Navalnogo).

Click the first link, enter your region,

enter your profession, and you’ll have

there—you can see the link on the screen right now—

a convenient interface that

will tell you: this is what your salary should be

if you work full-time,

at a minimum, and you’ll be able

to file a complaint right there. “Northern Reindeer” asks me

why the outrage over

Klishas’s bill on illegally acquired property

died down so quickly, and what needs to be done to get

a meaningful response to this kind of law.

But the outrage hasn’t died down,

has it?

Northern Reindeer, no, it hasn’t died down for me.

Inside, I’m still boiling, I assure you.

Millions of people are boiling inside too, but

it’s not that the outrage died down—it never even

arose where it should have arisen:

in the State Duma.

So our task is simply to make sure that it doesn’t

go out inside us, and when there are

rallies, public speeches,

and elections,

and Smart Voting in 20 regions, to go out and

you, my dear Northern Reindeer, should take your

indignation to the polling station

and vote in accordance with

the Smart Voting recommendation. Right now,

the link has appeared—go there,

register right now, don’t wait,

damage United Russia. But the authorities—

I mean, what, is Klishas going to condemn himself?

No. As long as they are in power,

they won’t show any dissatisfaction

at all. When we remove them, then

that will be a different matter. When that happens, when

events start unfolding, we will remind them of all

of this. So: bad children, we’ll

send to camps, and good children

we’ll send to Yunarmiya (the Young Army youth movement).

A very interesting process is happening right now.

It seems to me that many people have treated it

as a joke, and it’s hard not to,

because it is

very funny. But generally speaking, this is

a strategy already being adopted

by the authorities toward young people, schoolchildren, and

students. You’ve seen that they’ve used lots

of different tricks: rapper Ptakha was paid

to record songs, and

to rap about how protesting is bad.

Then Alisa Vox sang, and after that they spent a long time

doing all sorts of ridiculous things, inviting

blogger Sasha Spielberg to speak in

the State Duma. And now they

are allocating money and trying, basically,

to split young people into two groups:

the good group will be

in Yunarmiya, a movement

which already claims that

it has 170,000 members, but they simply

automatically enrolled

all

students of military schools and so on,

various cadet schools. But it has been announced that

the size of this Yunarmiya

will be increased to one million people, and

quite concrete steps are being taken,

by the way, to make that happen.

for example, at every Rostec enterprise

there is a directive to set one up there

a Yunarmiya branch, and

all employees' children, all employees' children

need to be enrolled in this Yunarmiya, well,

so that way, after all, in our

Rostec, which brings together the entire defense industry,

a huge number of people work there

they'll shove a lot of people into this Yun

Army. What does Yunarmiya look like? It's very

funny, even cooler than the Young

Pioneers, which I was a member of in Soviet

times, and I tied my neckerchief myself. Even now

if you wake me up, with my eyes closed

I'll still be able to tie that red

but let's look at the Yunarmiya website

where they've posted the anthem and all that sort of thing

39 seconds of what

good children who see and love

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

[music]

with

don't whine

they keep formation

[music]

and

and the banners rustle. It looks very funny

and amusing, but we shouldn't forget that

the clichés of the Pioneer organization—good Lord, in

an instant you remember what we had there

"Bonfires blazed up"—children, not children, blaze up

like bonfires. God, I forgot Pioneer Day

why I forgot: because every time we would

sit around and drink and sing, "Blaze up like bonfires

in the blue night, we are Pioneers, children of workers," and

naturally all children, all children who

are my age remember perfectly well that we sang

"Blaze up like bonfires, barrels of gasoline, we are

Pioneers, children of Georgians, in dry cleaners"—what

Georgians have to do with it, that got lodged in

my head too. The media laughed at all this

but this was, after all, the Pioneer

organization. It was impossible not to

join it. A person without a red neckerchief

was an absolute outcast, simply in their own

class. And here too, gradually, step

by step, they'll herd people into this Yunarmiya, and I

think we'll see, especially in small

towns where Rostec enterprises

are the town-forming employers, in so-called

single-industry towns, that children will be driven there

because the money has already been allocated, and for

that money they have to report results. And what are we

going to do with the bad children?

Well, Nikolai Patrushev told us about that

the Secretary of the Security Council, former

FSB director. Speaking at this very

Security Council meeting in

Izhevsk, he said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has a working

group for preventing and solving

crimes connected with

manipulating the minds of

minors through social media

so this working group

has stepped up its activity. But when

we talk about who is manipulating

the minds of minors through

social media, your humble servant

always, in such cases,

is obviously what they mean—me and people like me

I won't name names. Their children should be read to

those who fell for the sweet talk

of certain destructive video bloggers

they will be sent, as Patrushev said,

to military-patriotic camps, well

that is, apparently the good Yunarmiya kids, they

apparently stand guard over something, while the bad ones

where

and there, under the supervision of Yunarmiya members, they

are re-educated, using, who knows,

peeling potatoes or being forced to crawl

or

being locked in cells until you

go through re-forging (ideological re-education) and become a

normal Yunarmiya member and start

marching in formation

singing a little song about rustling banners, and

in that sense, something else quite close to this topic

is also rather interesting, something that

happened: Putin met with the head of Ros

finmonitoring—Rosfinmonitoring, so that you

understand, this is a very powerful

organization because it sees all

bank transfers, all payments, everything, everything

everything, everything, everything. In that sense,

Rosfinmonitoring can see perfectly well how much

everyone steals, because all the cash-out schemes are there,

you can see it all there. And it's a disgusting

organization entirely in the sense that

it does nothing. According to official data, from Russia

billions are being taken out

tens of billions of dollars. A large

part of it, a large part of that money,

is connected one way or another with officials

with corruption and with tax

evasion, and they just cover their faces like this and

pretend not to see any of it. But they did see 80

billion rubles that, they say, are being directed

toward goals of a certain

destructive nature. Let's listen to what

this Yuri Chikhanchin, the head of

Rosfinmonitoring, said to Putin. 22

seconds—go ahead

and today, for good causes, we have

something on the order of 80 billion that we're tracking

let's try to understand—this is where I got completely lost

ladies

from foreign countries, and also from

within the country, including those that go toward

certain somewhat destructive things

What a disgusting, lying crook. What I

want to say—listen, this is phrased rather

cunningly: 80 billion rubles

came from abroad to Russian NPOs (non-profit organizations)

and an ordinary person listening at home

thinks, holy hell, I listened and thought, damn, where

do such rich NGOs come from, where

is that 80 billion rubles going, and then

When you start looking into it, you see that

the picture is nothing like it seems.

It’s presented as if

things are moving toward a certain level

of destructiveness; it makes it look as though

there’s some story in Russia that somehow

the Americans, the State Department, are pumping in a huge amount of money—80

billion—and that they’re doing something here. But in

reality, if we take the organizations

designated as “foreign agents” out of those

80 billion, they received only

600 million.

And most of the money, most of those

80 billion—do you know what it is? It’s the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church).

A nonprofit organization that

receives money from the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

which gets donations from abroad.

Then, you know what else it is?

A nonprofit organization that

deals with the destruction of chemical

weapons—that’s a state partnership.

It’s all sorts of United Russia (the ruling party) foundations, because

the overwhelming majority of this money,

of these 80 billion, does not come from

the United States.

It comes from Cyprus. And from Cyprus, what kind of money comes?

That’s right—our own money.

It was taken out, laundered, and then various

people like Yakunin, the former head of Russian Railways, they funnel the money

back here into their own charitable

foundations.

The St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, for example.

In our investigations, we talked about such

foundations—oligarchic ones, or some kind of

bureaucratic setup where the official’s wife has to be occupied with something.

So the wife sets up

a charity to help children, or

some other kind of

Orthodox cause, or whatever, I don’t know—or she

just sings songs. Every wife of every

respectable official or oligarch is supposed to have

a charitable foundation. And for those

charitable foundations, where do you get the money?

People aren’t exactly going to donate, so you

send money there from your Cypriot offshore account,

and then she spends it here on something,

makes donations, and so on. That’s what this is.

In other words, it’s the same bureaucratic

money, interstate money. And then there’s

also a large amount of completely

normal funding: educational institutions

take part in international scientific grant programs,

win them, receive this money, and with it

scientists do their work, carry out

research—and that also gets counted within

those 80 billion. It sounds better that way,

you have to admit—more ominous, as if it were for some

destructive purpose. In reality, there’s nothing

of the sort there. So it’s simply

an outright lie.

But as the elections get closer, you’ll hear about these 80

billion many, many more times.

And every time it will be framed in a context

as if it means: look, the Americans

have allocated 80 billion,

they’re giving it to Russian NGOs, so we must

give even more to people like Vladimir Solovyov

—800 billion—so that they can

take part in this information war.

German Rey asks me what’s going on with

Brilyov. He writes that Brilyov was removed from

the public council. Is that true?

Yes, he was removed, and our little campaign

against this Briton in Russia—our wonderful

Brilyov—unfortunately continues to remain

a state propagandist living off

our money. But we really spent a huge amount

of effort on it: correspondence with the Defense Ministry,

the prosecutor’s office, and everyone else. We

forced them, at least in a ritual,

symbolic sense, to remove Brilyov from

the Public Council of the Ministry

of Defense. It’s just ridiculous: here is a man

who swore allegiance to the British monarch

and the British state, sitting on the council

of Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which

regards Britain as one of its main

potential

adversaries.

At first, Shoigu and all the others

replied to us: we are not going to

remove him, even though the law directly

states that a person with dual

citizenship cannot serve on a public council.

They said, well, his term will expire and

that will be the end of Brilyov. But we

got genuinely angry and simply

bombarded them, bombarded them, and now

the deadline for the prosecutor’s office response was approaching.

The prosecutor’s office would have been forced to acknowledge

a violation of the law, so they simply moved

preemptively, and Shoigu personally struck

Brilyov from the ministry’s Public

Council. So congratulations to everyone.

Congratulations to our lawyers. We still

remain annoyed by the fact that

Brilyov is maintained on

taxpayers’ money, but at least this is something—

a small but pleasant victory. Doctors—

greedy, terrible doctors—you know, that’s how

people in white coats are portrayed.

They’re supposedly greedy, and that is exactly how

our authorities treat them. And right now it’s

extremely interesting—I strongly advise everyone

to watch how the confrontation is developing

in one small

little town in Novgorod Oblast (a region in northwestern Russia),

.

In fact, several towns in Novgorod Oblast.

.

Not Nizhny Novgorod Oblast—specifically in

Novgorod Oblast. There, doctors

have actually even announced that they

will go on strike, and it’s very interesting.

It really is a tiny hospital,

poor and very small, and they simply

said this out of desperation, even though for many

many years there have been no strikes at all.

Naturally, everyone came down on the doctors over this.

All the local newspapers are writing that no

strike is going to happen; they published a letter

from the doctors of this hospital saying that there is no

strike. But on closer

inspection, it’s clear that this letter

was signed by some economist there, that is,

not by the doctors, but by the chief physician, his

deputies,

the hospital economist, and various other

people like that. It’s an extremely interesting confrontation.

Let’s first watch 42 seconds of this

statement.

from the Doctors’ Alliance trade union saying that

there will be a strike if by March 16, in

Okulovka, an additional

ambulance is not provided,

the number of hospital beds is not restored to

last year’s level, and the salaries

of medical workers do not

comply with the president’s May decrees (a set of Russian social spending and wage targets announced in May 2012).

On March 18, medical workers will begin

a strike and will not work until

the promises are fulfilled. I am sure

that the region’s residents will support them and will

come out and demand decent wages

for those who treat them and bring them

health. The rally has been officially authorized, but we

won’t stop there; next we will

block federal highways. Together we

must make sure that medical workers can

work for the good of the people, rather than thinking about

how to buy a piece of bread.

Guys, it’s really important here to listen carefully to

the doctors’ demands, and it’s astonishing that

they are demanding this, and the authorities are saying

no, we won’t do it. They’re not asking for

some huge salaries for themselves. When I

heard about the strike, I thought: now I’ll

look at the demands and see, well,

the usual bargaining — they announce

a strike and come out with a whole list of

demands so that later

some of them get partially satisfied and something

gets granted. But what are they actually demanding? I thought they were demanding

just this: buy us one ambulance.

They’re not asking for, I don’t know, golden chairs

or Mercedes cars. They’re asking for

an ambulance to be bought. My question

to Novgorod Region Governor Nikitin is:

why the hell can’t you buy them

an ambulance? We’re an oil-and-gas

state, we have a budget surplus,

a huge one. If you don’t have enough, then go to

the Health Ministry and say: we have doctors here,

buy an ambulance for them. They are asking for

a salary increase

up to the level guaranteed by the May decrees. That

means that a nurse should be earning

31,000 rubles (about 31,000 RUB)

— not 60,000, not 90,000, not 150,000. They’re saying:

we’re not demanding salaries like in Germany, or even

like in Estonia, or Poland, or

Moscow. They’re not saying that. They’re saying:

guys, could you please

finally stop paying us 15,000 and instead pay us

the 31,000 you promised?

And also buy an ambulance

so that we can transport patients. And they’re told:

no, your demands are unacceptable.

Well, that’s exactly why I’m saying that

we need to watch this

confrontation closely, in this town — or maybe not even a town,

I don’t know, a town, an urban-type settlement, a village —

it’s called Okulovka.

And nearby there’s also Borovichi, Okulovka and

Borovichi too — hospitals there are now in revolt

because they’re being shut down or reorganized.

People have nowhere to get treatment, there are no ambulances,

so accordingly, there’s simply no one

who can even get you to the hospital. Everyone is

furious — local residents and doctors alike. And

it’s very interesting to watch how doctors

are demanding what they need: they should be bought

an ambulance. How else are they supposed to transport

patients? And the governor says no.

You can’t. You scoundrels, your strike is

some kind of political action. We’ll see — if

this strike happens, we will also

cover it in some way. It will be the first

doctors’ strike in many, many years. And again,

since we’ve started talking about the union,

let me show you 43 seconds. This story just

really got to me too; maybe it will

affect you as well.

We get sent a lot of things like this,

about miserably low wages, yes, but this one

caught my attention: nurse

Galina Naumenko. She

is from Rostov Region,

though not from Rostov-on-Don, but from the town of Bataysk. She

works there in a tuberculosis clinic.

Just imagine — a tuberculosis clinic.

That’s the kind of place we’re talking about. Let’s watch her

short video, 43 seconds.

Hello, my name is Naumenko Galina.

I work as a nurse

at the anti-tuberculosis clinic in the city

of Bataysk.

The authorities of Rostov Region report that

that

the president’s May decrees are being successfully

implemented — that is, the salary of junior

medical staff is more than 29,000 rubles.

I honestly try to do my job well,

but my salary

is 7,500 rubles, and with extra payments

it comes to 10,500.

So it turns out that for my work I receive

less than the subsistence minimum.

Please support me and the other hospital employees

in our fight for the salary that

we are entitled to by law.

Thank you. Well, you can see that this is

a real nurse. She really is one.

Not just in name — anyone who has been to a

regional hospital knows: that’s what a nurse looks like.

She’s a nurse, not some planted person or anything like that.

But I didn’t just show you some person there.

With that tiny salary, you know what really got to me?

What finished me off was that she earns less than the subsistence minimum.

Less than the subsistence minimum, and for a long time they were paying her that way.

Only when she started complaining and writing letters

to the relevant authorities did it become clear this was completely illegal.

You cannot pay less than the subsistence minimum,

especially considering that

she was actually supposed to be paid 29,000 rubles,

but instead she was getting 10,600.

And do you know what they replied? They said, well, you see,

once she had already complained everywhere,

now our bureaucracy has gotten involved,

and it turns out it was just a mistake,

in 1C Accounting (a popular Russian accounting software program).

The software made an error, and that’s why

you were paid less. But now we’ll

add another 1,500 rubles so that you cross this

poverty threshold, you see. I mean, come on.

It was obviously clear that they were deliberately paying

these people starvation wages because

they needed to spend the money on something else,

I don’t know, maybe on media coverage

of the governor’s work and

buying him yet another Mercedes,

because the old ones apparently don’t drive

fast enough. And when they get caught doing this,

they just say, here, take this.

Keeping a person below the subsistence minimum? A mistake.

A 1C Accounting error. Okay, here’s 1,500 rubles

added on. There it is, there it is—

that’s the real Russophobia. This is done by people who

hate everyone, and in particular a nurse

from the city of Bataysk. And Russia has

one main problem.

German Gref, today—literally today—

gave an astonishing answer at some forum,

at yet another forum. What was it? It was the

forum

“Leaders of Russia,” where people gathered who are

supposedly Russia’s leaders. Meaning, we’re loafers,

alcoholics, while they are the leaders of Russia. So, the leaders

of Russia gathered, and German Gref

was asked:

“Please tell us, what are the main, key

problems of our country?” And Gref said something

rather dangerous. He began: “I won’t name

several; I’ll tell you one main

problem that exists in Russia.” And everyone

held their breath.

And of course it seems like

he’s about to say: Putin.

But rationally, you understand that he’s not

going to say Putin. He’ll say something very

vague, like a lack of

economic growth,

as well as low population mobility combined

with low

labor productivity. But German Gref

went surprisingly hard on this one and

really surprised us. Let’s listen to his 36 seconds.

My name is Andrei Knysh, and I have the following

question: what are the three most important

root problems that currently

exist in Russia?

“All right, let’s do one.”

“The absence of a system—

an effective system of state

governance. That is the main thing. If this problem

is solved, all the others will be

overcome automatically. That is why I

am deeply convinced of this.”

That was it.

Did you hear how everyone in the hall laughed?

As if to say, sure, there’s one problem, got it.

If you read between the lines, Gref was plainly

saying exactly this: the absence of

an effective enough system of

governance.

And who has been in power here for twenty years?

Excuse me, who are the very people

who built this system of state

governance? Built it and built it and built it

for 20 years—and this is what they built.

They made billions, built their dachas (country houses), and then—

bam.

After 20 years, the country’s top banker,

the country’s

the head of the bank that underpins practically the entire

Russian economy, the whole banking system of Russia—

and that’s Sberbank—says that in Russia

there is one problem: the absence of a system

of effective state governance. Translated

into plain Russian, that means:

Putin is a bad president.

And when this problem is resolved,

then everything here will be just fine.

So, essentially, German Gref—

when he was a minister, he was part of

this ineffective system.

He publicly supports Putin, and

therefore he continues to support this

system. But these astonishing

moments, these flashes of candor,

are amazing even at an official forum.

Even official bankers are basically saying to each other:

“The camera isn’t really catching this, right?

What’s the problem? These officials of ours—

they’re just bad officials. Our state is being

poorly governed.” We got it.

We understood who you were talking about, dear

German Gref. And to finish, some poetry.

Though I won’t be the one reciting it. I’m no poet,

I can’t write verse. But someone who can

is

Natalia Poklonskaya’s husband. It turns out

Natalia Poklonskaya has a husband, and he

was offended that on the previous program I

called Natalia Poklonskaya “Natusik” (a cutesy diminutive of Natalia) and mocked her.

And they held a press conference

dedicated to Natalia Poklonskaya’s book, but

it turned out that the press conference was

effectively dedicated to me, because

he just couldn’t let it go.

So Ivan Solovyov, Poklonskaya’s husband,

couldn’t take it and wrote

poems about me: “Lyokha has a crush on Natusik…”

But never mind that—on to the fight against corruption.

He’s always ready. I—I just won’t be able to...

read this with proper expression because

I’ll start laughing like crazy and keep stumbling over the words.

Let’s just listen. Natalia

Poklonskaya and her husband wrote poems about Alexei

which somehow, completely unintentionally, produced this masterpiece.

It was born.

A poem was born. I’ll read it out. It’s called

It’s called: “Evidence, map, little mutt, people...”

“...collapse, hanging out”—but that’s not the point. In the fight against

corruption, he’s always ready there,

and nobody needs some enormous junk.

Personal information, who has how much...

By the end of the program, basically, about himself...

As for the actual matter, some full list—he

should announce it publicly. How devastating.

Master of Poland on the shore... you really didn’t think this through.

All the way to the very end.

Don’t think too much about the x’s.

Their day is full; from him, just slop, but also...

thrown together against it, without yeast.

Charlie, splash it around, that’ll do.

I agree—what an honest guy you are.

to demonstrate once per regiment on the second...

little ball.

Great. Take all of that, a little bit there...

someone willing to pat him on the head for it. But if

little Alexei keeps mocking my wife, then he may

lose his manly dignity too.

Investigating corruption is not the same as plowing a field.

Love, high ratings...

be proud, let it drop—but God forbid Alexei’s

...whatever she was doing—if they come by their own

territory. Hello everyone. That will surpass this.

Hello, Alexei Navalny, wave...

God forbid, Alexei, that your people come to power.

I don’t even know. Isn’t this, like...

isn’t it flattering, I mean, that Natalia Poklonskaya

and her husband sit there reading poetry and

discussing it, thinking about beauty in the sequel?

“Enormous thingamajig”—yes, I suppose I find

this situation, you know, kind of... well, yes, it’s

very strange. I’d like to stay

as far away as possible from this couple’s fantasies.

However, I am prepared, and I will by no means

under any circumstances call Natalia

Poklonskaya some kind of “collapse-mutt”; I will

refer to her exclusively as the respected

Deputy Poklonskaya—well, if she

finally does announce the whole

list—that is, comes out and says:

“Just as I wrote in my book, I have

compromising material on deputies. They have

real estate in France and elsewhere.

These deputies—I am initiating

proceedings to remove them. Get out of here,

out of my State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament).”

“I am Natalia Poklonskaya,

a real deputy, not some kind of

‘collapse-party girl.’” That’s what I’m waiting for. I’d like

the next brilliant poem from this

married couple to lash not only

me—you can target me too, okay—but also those

very deputies on whom there is

compromising material. We’re ending our program with a 22-

second amazing clip from the series

“How Moscow Has Improved”

under Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin. You know how

Sergei Semyonovich works, right? Well,

Moscow has a gigantic budget—just imagine,

a trillion rubles, a sea of money. We can

just throw this money around like this, and still

it won’t run out. All the country’s money is in Moscow.

Moscow has purchased an enormous amount of

various equipment. Sergei Semyonovich introduced

a system so that in every—down there—in

every KamAZ truck, every snowplow,

every bus, there is a

GLONASS system, and this GLONASS system

shows that the equipment is moving, and if

some KamAZ driver suddenly

decides to slack off,

then the GLONASS system will see that he’s being lazy,

and then the dispatcher will punish him.

That way, Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin

doesn’t let himself be deceived and uses

taxpayers’ money efficiently.

He organized such a great, effective system.

Let’s take a look at how it

works.

Well, everything is just great: the vehicle is moving, GLONASS

is tracking it, the fuel is burning, wages are

being paid out—high technology, everything

is excellent. To make sure this stops happening,

take part, folks, in Smart Voting

in the September elections to the Moscow

City Duma. Let’s at least try

to push as many United Russia members as possible

out of the Moscow City Duma.

Because otherwise—otherwise they’ll just keep driving

and driving and driving. See you

next Thursday.

[music]