The black prison van and the white minibus. Sign up to be election observers.

[music]

8:18 p.m. in Moscow. Alexei Navalny's studio.

Or a person who quite plainly does not

match the political scale and

of the largest country in the world, as one

Kremlin political analyst once called me. I am

very, very glad to be with you, because

by all my calculations,

and not just mine, most

observers were assuring me that over the next

three episodes at least, I would not be able to host

this program because I would be spending time in

a special detention center. Nevertheless, that did not

happen. Something I don't quite understand

took place: on the 28th, I was detained and

I was preparing to go away for 30 days, but

then suddenly they released me, having confiscated

my phone, and now

the astonishing thing is that, in effect, I

am now trying to get the police and those who are

handling this to do something already—come on, put me on trial

at last—but they don't want to. My lawyer

comes, and they don't give her a single document.

They still haven't given me a copy of the police report

in hand. When the court hearing will be, they say, is unknown. But

apparently the plan is quite simple:

not to lock me up now, because if

they lock me up now, I'll be out in 30

days—that is, roughly speaking, by March 1. They need to

put me away in such a way that I

am jailed right before the election,

on voting day, or better yet, on the day

of the vote—or better still, so that I spend the whole

of March sitting in a detention center, because

for some reason Putin seems to think that if

they throw me in jail then, you will work less

and the headquarters will, let's say,

lose the momentum of our strike. That

most definitely will not happen. Just

be prepared for the fact that after some

time, other people will be replacing me on this broadcast.

That's nothing страшного—after all,

they've already jailed all the hosts of

*Cactus* (a Russian political talk show); we found people who

could replace them, and they'll replace me too. Everything will be

completely fine.

Great job—well done to everyone who took part in

the January 28 protest.

It was really cool, it was

simply wonderful,

just amazing. People are asking me here in the chat

how I assess the results of the protest. I assess

the results this way: you and I

have seen for ourselves

that we have created a living political network. The

protest took place in 118 cities across Russia, and

in 27 of them, we didn't even really understand

who exactly was organizing it or how it was being organized. In

most of the country, it was already

for the most part terribly

cold. In 26 cities, the protests were

not authorized at all, and nevertheless

they still took place. That means that you and I,

my friends, did not pour 225 million rubles (about US$4 million at the time) into

some unknown void, but built

a real political network. In some places

more people come out, in others

fewer people come out.

When only a few come out, of course you wish

more had come—but one way or another, it works. We

come up with something and decide together:

let's hold a nationwide protest. We

press the launch button here, and

it starts working—this

nervous system, signals pass through it, and

in every city people do something. No one

forces these people, no one

pays them. They themselves understand

that they are part of this living political

system. That is the most important thing. But still,

protests—and politics in this country in general—

have to be understood by comparison. We have

a country that is, in principle, very inert, and

in general, doing anything here in terms of

politics is very difficult, especially

when it comes to holding mass protests. What can we compare it to?

Well, I made a note of something just now,

simply out of curiosity: the Communists

are holding a nationwide protest for

social justice in February, and on the 3rd

of February they announced there would be

a nationwide protest. It's not that

I want to laugh at

the Communists or troll them—let's

just look. This is the country's second-largest

political force, which

receives billions of rubles from the state budget,

and has deputies in every federal subject (region)

of the federation.

There are deputies in every city; this is

hundreds of thousands of members. In the State Duma (Russia's lower house of parliament), they have

had a faction for many, many years; they had black

cars and

even flashing lights, or used to have them, and all that.

But just watch: their

nationwide protest will take place,

and compare it with our nationwide protest.

They are happening at roughly the same time,

so you can't really blame it on the weather,

and you will see that you and I

have created the largest truly

existing living political network

in the country. Usually, how does it happen?

There was an election, or some party-building effort,

a ton of money was spent, and then all

of it just dissolved and ceased to exist.

But that's not how it is with us. We built this thing, and it

works for us. That is a very great

achievement. This network does not belong to me,

it does not belong to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and it does not

even belong to the election campaign headquarters.

It belongs to you. I am very glad

that this is exactly how you see it,

that you use it, take part in it, go out

and do all of this. It is

simply amazing. We are, of course,

naturally seeing quite a

brisk reaction from the authorities to the creation of it.

this network and the work of this network, this is

a pretty brisk reaction, and it shows up in

all kinds of ways in the regions right now

let me look at the statistics now, quite a

a lot of people have been prosecuted

by now, people have already been unlawfully brought to

liability; as for those arrested, we have

probably around 40 people already, which is quite

a lot of people who have been fined

illegally. In other words, they’re afraid of us. For me personally,

it was quite difficult to make it to

Tverskaya Street on January 28. It was a whole kind of

either a second-rate action movie or

a comedy, because after me, because of

the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

the campaign chief

Roman Rubanov, and the campaign chief

Leonid Volkov, after our chief

lawyer Ivan Zhdanov, on the eve of any

actions there was this really very tight

surveillance: too many people, too many cars, every

your

every one of your steps is monitored, but

I really wanted to get to the rally

because I was there on March 26, but at all the other

rallies I didn’t even manage to attend, because I was

always detained at home. At some point I said

to myself,

“Alexei, please try, even if

despite the fact that you’ll have to do

these fairly comical things, act like you’re

running from a chase, please try

to make it to Tverskaya on the 28th after all.” I

managed it, but really, in fact, it

looked like some kind of second-rate

action movie, except nobody was killing anyone and

nothing was exploding. I was on Sanders

somehow jumping out of a car, into the metro

literally running away from surveillance, and these

people who are following you, at first they

pretend they’re just walking and don’t

notice you, then they literally suddenly

start running; you jump into a metro car, and they

jump in after you. If anyone

ever, I don’t know, gets footage from

the metro’s surveillance cameras from the

exact moment when I escaped into

the metro from that tail,

it will be very funny. And really, you’re

literally running and thinking, “My God, you’re forty

one years old, and basically you’re a lawyer, you do

serious work, but on the other hand, somehow

as I was running I thought, well, this is probably what

they call an interesting life. In any

case, I was very happy that I at least

managed to be on Tverskaya Street, even if only briefly

.

The nearest police officer who

saw me recognized me, of course—I could clearly see it

—reported it immediately, then this bus pulled up and these

“cosmonauts” (slang for riot police in full gear) detained me. But still,

that running around the metro, then two days

of not sleeping at home, the phone and

it all added up into this rather

strange and low-grade spy

story. But nevertheless, as a

result of all that, on the 28th I managed to go out

into the street, see all of you, and together with

you walk at least a few hundred meters

which I was very glad about. In the regions, people are also being

cracked down on. Why? Because they’re afraid. But I’m

very glad to see that they haven’t

intimidated anyone at all, and they haven’t managed

to scare people, even though there are some pretty unpleasant, fairly

long administrative

sentences being handed down—some people get 30

days; a coordinator in St. Petersburg received

20 days in Kaliningrad

but nevertheless, no one is giving up, no one

is afraid, everyone is participating, and everyone

understands the value of this, our

political network, and how one needs to work in it

I remind you that you can

write to me using the hashtag #Navalny2018

ask questions, so send in your questions and

I’ll answer them

Alex RM asks me: what do you think,

is it realistic in the near future to organize

a rally comparable in size to

Bolotnaya in 2012? It is realistic

Well, as you remember, Bolotnaya in 2012 was

an authorized rally. Actually,

that’s why, since what year now,

probably since 2014 or even 2013,

not a single rally for our specific group has been

approved. That is,

they either send us off somewhere temporarily

to Maryino or Shchukino (districts in Moscow), or somewhere else, or

we hold an unauthorized rally

because they’re afraid. If we had a month

to prepare such an authorized event

—and authorized events always draw

an order of magnitude more people—then I think, of course,

it would be possible. The authorities are simply afraid of that

and that is exactly why they don’t allow it

Even unauthorized rallies draw

20,000 or 30,000 people there, but if you

translate that into a legal

version, a fully legal, properly

authorized one, then that’s your Bolotnaya

right there

41 people

have currently received administrative

arrest; others have been fined, and so on. They are very,

very afraid of any of our actions

Something completely comical came in today

—news that indeed

this information has been verified

Recently, some initial reports simply started appearing online

saying that in Russia’s regions

where banners with Putin are hanging, you can see

those traditional campaign banners

with Putin, and

police cars are parked there. People noticed

this and started looking into it, and it turned out

that police officers are literally guarding those

banners. All of Novokuznetsk is talking about it

There’s been yet another confirmation that this is indeed the case:

the police are guarding

Putin campaign billboards so that no one

writes “thief” on them, because that’s

what’s happening in some regions. And just

imagine what

Russian police officers must feel, those who

took an oath, those officers

who believe they’re doing something

useful with their lives—and then they have to spend the whole

night sitting in a car. And very often they’re even asked

to do it in unmarked civilian cars,

in plain clothes, guarding

a billboard of the “beloved by all” Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin so that no one

comes up to it and writes

“thief” on it with spray paint. You know what to do.

So yes—but you can spot them: if

there’s some car nearby and below it

two people are standing guard, then that’s

the police. Our leaflets—fine, the billboards—but our

leaflets are simply ordinary

guerrilla-style flyers, and they’re considered so

dangerous that the election commissions

in a number of regions have said that

they are criminal. Today in Mozdok, Rosberg, AMV—

the Investigative Committee was asked

to determine whether

these leaflets might

constitute a criminal offense.

Can you imagine the level of panic they’re in

simply because you’re printing

these leaflets and posting them in apartment building entrances?

Today Ella Pamfilova once again

greatly surprised us by saying

that

of course no one has the right

to campaign for a boycott—or rather, some

people do have the right to campaign for a boycott,

but to do that they must be registered candidates,

Ella Pamfilova said.

It’s an astonishing construct. In other words, for me,

an ordinary

average Kolya Ivanov, a citizen of Russia,

to say, “I do not recognize these

elections, I urge everyone not to go to these

elections,” I first have to register

as a presidential candidate and open

an election campaign account.

And from that campaign account, Kolya

Ivanov would have to pay for a leaflet

that he prints on his home printer.

That is utterly absurd.

Anyway, we’ve made a new leaflet,

by the way,

one that Pamfilova really shouldn’t

have any complaints about. Our lawyers removed

everything that could even theoretically

contradict the law. Look: there is no

word “Putin” here, there is no campaigning

for or against any candidate—nothing of the sort.

It simply says: “You don’t matter to them. Don’t go.”

And surely everyone has the right to do that without any

restrictions. Go to the boycott website;

the link will be in the description of this video, and

print them and distribute them. We would like to have a dialogue with Ella

Pamfilova

both on the issue of campaigning and on the issue of

election monitoring, because she

has said many, many times—and when I

was at the Central Election Commission and she was refusing

to register me, she said to the young people there,

“These are young guys, they’re such good

kids. Navalny, that scoundrel, has filled their heads with nonsense, but

you’re such good young people, just very

mistaken, and I’m ready

to meet with you, ready to talk, ready

to have a dialogue, and together we’ll

work something out.” Well then, dear

Ella Aleksandrovna, we very much want to

meet with you. We have a whole

delegation—Leonid Volkov, Ivan Zhdanov, and I—and we

really do want to, without any

jokes, without trolling, without any

antics. It’s not that we’re inviting you

to our office—we understand you won’t come,

that you’ll be afraid of what we might do to you—

but yes, we would like to hold

a meeting in order to understand

why you consider our leaflets

illegal, even though that directly contradicts

current law, and in general

what is happening with election monitoring.

Monitoring is important to us. Everyone asks

what we are going to do now, whether we clearly understand

our plan. We do clearly understand

our plan. There are

about 45 days left until voting day, a little more, and

our main task for these 45 days is

organizing election monitoring. We are

boycotting these elections, we are campaigning against them, but

we are also monitoring them. In the description of this

video there is a link—the usual one,

Navalny 2018—and it will go live tonight.

Tonight, there will already be

a special form there. Those watching this

broadcast not live, but

tomorrow, the day after, and so on—go there.

We are registering observers there. You

can fill out your form

and choose the polling station

closest to you, or we will suggest

another one. This is critically important.

Why? Because turnout is falsified.

Who among you believes in 99 percent turnout in

the North Caucasus? Who among you believes in 83

percent

in Bashkiria (Bashkortostan)? None of you

believes that Novosibirsk Region

and Kemerovo Region, which are right next to each other,

with basically the same people living close by,

and yet, amazingly, in

Novosibirsk Region, 40 percent fewer

people take part in the election. That

is simply impossible in principle. But we

understand that these votes are falsified.

That is why we are now announcing a large-scale

recruitment drive for election observers, especially in the regions.

To be honest, here in Moscow we expect

turnout figures to be falsified, but in the regions even more so

we expect especially heavy falsification

of turnout in the Moscow region

and, naturally, in the Volga region and Tatarstan

Bashkortostan, Mordovia, and of course the North

Caucasus, and it is precisely in the regions that we will

be working—first and foremost in St. Petersburg

By the way, from what I've been told, not

a single election in St. Petersburg has ever taken place without

such blatant, massive, and brazen

fraud. So

I am announcing a real call for election observers

a real call, not the usual thing where

it's something like 3,000 people in Moscow, 1

thousand in St. Petersburg, and 500 across the whole

country. No.

We are determined to train thousands and thousands

tens of thousands of people across the country

deploy them, and collect

their data and process it. We are going to do this

because we understand perfectly well that old man

Putin, in order to show his

70 percent turnout, in order to

stage a nationwide victory, needs to

falsify

the voting results. And we will fight

that falsification together with you. I mean,

I won't be able to do it alone from Moscow, from this studio

Come join us—we'll fight together.

So, questions. Let's put some questions up.

And please tell me, has Belykh

already been sentenced or not?

No, not yet, as far as I can see. Yes,

they're asking how badly

the studio was trashed. Well, I don't know how it looks

on your screens—I probably look rather

harsh right now, and that's because

the studio really was pretty badly

wrecked. They took away, again,

cameras, computers, and so we've got a terrible

mess going on. In fact, the first

episodes on Navalny Live or on Cactus

in the news—you saw them—they were not just

slightly yellowish; it was like

the hosts looked like little chicks

sitting in the studio, because we were simply

filming with ordinary cheap webcams

at first. But now we've somehow

managed to get some equipment, rented some,

kind people brought some in, and we

are continuing to raise funds for

Operation Phoenix—that is, an operation

of revival. They rob us, and we want to show

that despite the fact that they blocked

our legal entity and froze 2 million

300 thousand rubles (about 2.3 million rubles)

despite the fact that once again they've

cleaned us out of our equipment, we will still be able to

recover and still be able

to keep working, and I hope you will

help us. During the last broadcast I raised

about 200,000 rubles

The live broadcast on January 28 raised

1 million 700 thousand rubles—800 thousand

rubles—they're telling me, actually 1 million 400

thousand rubles. So we will keep raising money

until we collect this amount—2 million 300 thousand

exactly the amount that was blocked in our

account.

Jeffrey asks sincerely:

I support you, but are we going to use

other methods of nonviolent

resistance—not just rallies?

Well, Jeffrey, people ask about this often:

will you use other

methods? What methods, Jeffrey? Of course we

will use everything we intend

to do already. As I already said,

we are organizing election monitoring—that is

the main line of work. Campaigning is

another main line of work. We are trying

to make our campaigning more sophisticated, more

systematic, but given how they crack down on it,

of course

an ordinary person who prints something out

on a printer and puts it up in their apartment building is

the main tool of campaigning. That is what we

will be doing. In principle, any

methods—we want to, are ready to, and will

use them. But we need to be

inventive. People very often write:

When are you going to do graffiti? When are you

going to do, I don't know,

art photography, and so on? But

guys, all of that can be done, but still

if we're talking about graffiti, we can

hire or find a volunteer who

will make one great piece of graffiti on

some cool wall in Moscow

but that isn't systematic work. We want

to do things in which, if not all

volunteers can take part, then at least

a significant share of them can—things that matter

things that thousands of people can do. Thousands

of people still can't just go and paint graffiti

you need skill, talent, a spray can, and

everything else. So if there are some cool

exotic, effective methods

but individual ones, then please use them

yourselves. You don't need my team or

my blessing, as if I have to

approve it so that some graffiti saying

"Aristov" or whatever can be painted somewhere—go ahead, well done.

Anything you feel capable of, anything

that can be done to fight this vile

regime—do it. We will try

to do the more systematic things, which is

what

our organization is for. Vladimir

asks: when will there be car stickers with

the boycott message? We are making car stickers, well

but they confiscate them. We make them, but

we'll make stickers again and spend the money again. Khalif Ul

asks: President Vladimir Putin

spent a billion rubles on his election campaign

exceeding the legal limit several times over. How

do you think—will Putin report himself for that?

On the subject of the elections, what do you think?

Putin has effectively exempted himself from real participation in the election, right?

There was an investigation in *Sobesednik* (a Russian newspaper) where

a reporter simply sat down and calculated

how much Putin, formally speaking, should have spent on all this

and came up with about 1 billion rubles

while the maximum size

of an election fund is 400 million rubles

but I’d say it was actually much

more than 1 billion rubles. Well yes, it

isn’t even really possible to calculate it all.

All the TV channels, all the news programs, just nonstop

— all of it devoted to him, even back in 2018.

Everything is working for Putin.

Just think: how much do those top

hosts on the *Vremya* news program cost? It’s impossible

to calculate. His election campaign has swallowed the entire country.

It’s the use

of the whole country. As I understand it, this weekend

they’re starting their pro-Putin events

all across the country — that is, rallies

that, as we can see, are happening in huge

numbers.

They’re herding students there again, herding

state employees there again. Calculate how much that costs.

Calculate how much the police cost, the police who

were running around there, chasing me, Volkov, Rubanov,

and

and really people all across the country. It’s

tens of billions of rubles.

The entire country’s economy is now working

to help Putin re-elect himself.

It’s all very sad, so there’s really

— Shershavy or Seshcha, however you come up with

these nicknames — asks:

“What do you think about the list

of Putin’s trusted representatives? Do these people

bear moral responsibility for

supporting Putin?”

“Is public condemnation of

these people necessary, regardless of the awards they’ve received

for their loyalty to Putin?” You put it correctly:

they are indeed his widowed—

No, of course they are not Putin’s

trusted representatives — it’s disgusting, very disgusting

to watch. Some people, even elderly

people — my God, Yevgeny Petrosyan (a well-known Russian comedian) is there. Why

does he need this? Some athletes,

some actors, and in general even fairly

distinguished people whom we might have considered

decent people — and there they are, standing there

on their hind legs for him. Recently there was again some kind of gathering

of these trusted representatives.

It’s revolting to watch. Of course these

people should be subjected to

public condemnation, regardless

of their awards. They can’t tell us, in effect,

“Look, I’m an honored film artist,”

or “I’m an honored doctor,” or “I’m an honored

athlete, I won three Olympics.”

You won three Olympics yesterday, and today

you helped rob a hospital, today you stole from

orphans, because you support Putin.

And your Putin, through his oligarchs and

through his friends, is robbing the healthcare system

to the point where it’s impossible to get even bandages

in some rural hospital. In fact,

that is exactly how things are. These people

who support Putin, together with

him, are robbing the people, and they bear direct

responsibility for everything that is happening.

They bear responsibility for these

run-down schools; they bear

responsibility for the terrible roads; they are responsible

for all of it, because

Putin has been in power for 18 years. If it had been four

years, or even at least eight, then maybe you could

still blame Yeltsin

or the “cursed ’90s” or Gorbachev and so on. But

he has been there longer than Gorbachev and

Yeltsin combined, so

together with this whole gang

of trusted representatives, of course they bear direct

responsibility for what is happening in the

country. My next topic was

Nikita Belykh, who, as I understand it,

still hasn’t been sentenced. Well, let me

say a couple of words on that anyway.

Well, I don’t know how much time they’ll give him after all.

I haven’t spoken to him in a long time. The last time

I talked to him was probably in 2009. Before that

we of course had friendly,

companionable relations. We diverged quite

sharply in our views on things.

I certainly feel no gloating

now, looking at how he

is sitting in that cell, looking at this whole

trial, the witness testimony. He also seems to be

experiencing fairly serious

health problems. Well, I don’t know exactly what

happened there. All the people mentioned in

these materials — there aren’t that many names —

I’m not even acquainted with them.

All these events happened

after I had left. I can say

only one thing: of course it’s a pity that Belykh

was swallowed by this system, and it’s a pity he didn’t

leave in 2013, when — well, you

can see the photo there — and he, well,

he seemed like this rather gray

democratic, opposition-minded governor,

but then, after all — if you live with wolves,

you howl like a wolf.

He started playing his own games

with all these vile

characters, making friends — or pretending to make friends —

and constantly talking about how

civil society can be wrong too, and

why are you criticizing the authorities? He probably thought

that this made him somehow, well,

untouchable. It’s a pity it turned out this way.

Probably if he had left that system of power in

2013, then probably

what happened to him would not have happened.

On the other hand, it’s easy to get in and hard to get out.

And getting out — I don’t know how possible it really was

to leave from there. But in any case, I

really do feel sorry about it. I hope not too much.

He’s going to get some long sentence; he’s already...

He’s been sitting in pretrial detention (SIZO, a Russian remand prison) for two years, in my view, and I can

express only

deep, deep regret about the fact

that this happened to him. It’s strange that even now

there still, still isn’t

still no verdict at all. So,

people are writing to me here saying, I hope the St. Petersburg headquarters

won’t be shut down; they’re constantly putting pressure on us.

The coordinator of the St. Petersburg headquarters got 30

days, and several other people from

the St. Petersburg headquarters were arrested. Come on, guys, could you

even theoretically imagine

a situation where the St. Petersburg headquarters would shut down because of that?

It’s the most incredible headquarters overall; in St. Petersburg,

the most amazing rally took place

on January 28, and St. Petersburg now, of course, in terms of its

protest potential in its own way—well, it’s

just a fantastic city. I went there

when we were just starting to discuss the rally

on the 28th, and I said, so, guys, what’s the situation there?

Most likely, you’ll be denied permission.

The authorities are set up in such a way that thinking about

getting a rally officially approved

isn’t really necessary for us at all. We don’t need anyone’s permission;

even if they did give permission here, we’d

still go to an unauthorized one anyway. So

in that sense, the mood in St. Petersburg is really great,

and St. Petersburg has once again, like sometime

in the late 1990s, the late 1980s,

and early 1990s, become

in this sense a leading city overall,

a leading city for the Russian opposition,

a leading protest city. That’s wonderful,

really wonderful, really cool. So,

they’re asking about Belykh. Is it true

—tell me if I understand correctly—

that the case against him was fabricated? I don’t understand why.

I’m not up to speed on it, but I want to look into it.

The verdict takes seven hours to read—I don’t know

whether it was fabricated or not. To be honest with you, I’m not

going to get involved in that case, and I’m not

going to sort it out there. Even when

I fundamentally do not intend to get into

all of this, I don’t know any of the people involved.

I myself was tried by the same kind of judges,

including judges in Kirov,

and it’s impossible to get any justice from these judges.

Whether you’re right or guilty, it’s impossible to achieve justice.

So I don’t know what happened there; I can

only, on a human level, regret that

this is happening. Maxim Alexeyevich asks:

Alexei, are there plans to shut down anything else?

No, for now nothing is planned to be shut down anywhere.

Because the headquarters are

the network of our Voters’ Strike campaign, and we

have cut some positions.

For example, right now we don’t need

to verify signatures. We had

special operators for that system, and we’re

reducing them. But we’re also raising fewer

donations. By the way, please send

us donations and support the Voters’ Strike.

That network costs money.

Renting headquarters costs money, so we

maintain exactly as much as you

send us in donations. We have

one single source of income.

Based on the current, the current

transfers, we see that until the election we

will try not to reduce our network,

not to cut it back, not to close it down.

Some local offices, though, may

close or may not close.

They are maintained

by the enthusiasts themselves—they either keep them going or they don’t.

But despite the monstrous

pressure that exists right now, we

will try not to shut anything down. So,

Alexei, I’m begging you, I’m begging you,

please come up with a clear, normal,

clear—put it in all caps if you want—clear agenda for

people: against corruption, fair elections.

These are such vague demands, without people. We’re

for a strike—not a strike, but for Navalny to be allowed on the ballot.

That’s understandable; those are concrete demands.

asks Yozhkin M. Well, I don’t agree with

you, Yozhkin M. “Against corruption” is

also quite clear: we demand

an investigation into Medvedev’s corruption allegations.

That’s also quite clear. You see, as many people as there are,

there are that many

points of view. Some say that demanding

Navalny be allowed to run is too narrow

a topic, and they’re right. But in the end, the point

isn’t Navalny—it’s that, in general,

real elections do not exist. That’s why we

try to choose slogans that

are, as far as possible, less vague, but

that cover the whole system as a whole. Well, yes,

“Let Navalny run” and everything else—Grigory

is absolutely right to say that even with

Navalny, these would not be fair elections.

They would still be unfair, but

people would relate to these elections differently,

they would view them differently. By the way, since

we’ve started talking about this, let’s look at

the results of our new

opinion poll that we

conducted. I remind you, we carry out

polls every day and report on

the ratings. This time it’s an anti-rating—well,

that is, once again we conducted a poll across all of

Russia. Before that, there was a poll for the city of

Yekaterinburg; before this one, it was

nationwide. Let’s take a look at

the new nationwide poll, then.

Let’s have slide number one, please.

Please. So, look:

we ask people who intend

to take part in the election, and in red

the last question is highlighted. So, everyone knows about Putin;

Sobchak is in second place.

We can see that even more people

now know that Sobchak is taking part in the

election. Even more people know that

Zhirinovsky

47 percent know who Yavlinsky is.

Grudinin has about the same level here, and compared with

the poll that was conducted

from the 15th to the 18th, the number of people increased

who know about their participation. Interestingly, by the way,

the number of people who know has increased

who know that Zubanov

is taking part in the election—29 percent; that

Mironov is taking part in the election—27 percent; and

that Tsvetov is taking part in the election—25

percent, compared with 19 in the previous

This suggests that, well, people keep talking about the election

constantly—talking, talking, talking

and discussing it—and it already seems to everyone that

everyone is taking part in the election, everyone knows about it, that is,

awareness is fairly high.

Let’s look at the next slide.

The main slide is, essentially,

the candidates’ ratings.

So, something jumped there—now we can see

that the candidates’ ratings have not changed

compared with the previous measurement, that is,

support for Putin is still

80 percent among those who have decided how they will vote

—in other words, nothing has changed

compared with the other candidates.

Everyone only sees Putin.

Zhirinovsky has 7 percent, compared

with 8 percent before; Grudinin

has 7 percent; Sobchak, 1

percent; Tsvetov, 1 percent; Yavlinsky,

1 percent; another politician, 3 percent.

So it’s all the same. In this

setup that we have, things are completely

stable—the candidates, basically, aren’t doing a damn thing

at all.

That’s why the ratings aren’t changing. But

maybe there will be debates later, and after all,

one of them might, during the debates,

cause a scene or say something

striking. But for now, essentially,

this format of running the campaign, in which

nothing happens, doesn’t lead anywhere

at all—it produces exactly the same

frozen ratings, and Putin is

absolutely dominant over them. Let’s look at a new

slide. For the first time, we measured the anti-

ratings of politicians, and the results here are very interesting.

With Putin, it’s clear: he has

the lowest anti-rating. We phrased

this question in the harshest

possible format:

“Which politician would you not vote for

under any

circumstances?” And only 3 percent

dare to say that they dislike Putin

that strongly. But this is also a well-known

phenomenon in sociology: people are simply afraid

to say it. Personally, I don’t believe that he really has

such a low anti-rating. As for everyone else,

things get more complicated here, and even I’m wary, and

both Tsvetov and Grudinin have

relatively low anti-ratings—14

percent and 13 percent—but they are

simply not that well known.

Zhirinovsky is already significantly higher at 22

percent. Interestingly, Yavlinsky, in terms of anti-

rating, has overtaken Zhirinovsky. Usually

Vladimir Volfovich (Zhirinovsky’s patronymic) is one of the

leaders in anti-ratings. And of course,

Sobchak is absolutely, here,

also

the queen of the field, and her anti-rating is 71

percent—simply far, far higher

than everyone else’s.

She is, of course, one of the most

unpopular politicians in the country for a large share of the population,

and, well, well, that

is noticeable, we can see it, and overall

it matches the data we

recently showed from an independent question

that was asked in Yekaterinburg.

True, they measured it a bit higher there:

they found her anti-rating to be 84

percent, while we see only 71. So there you have it.

Essentially, in this election

campaign, movement is zero.

Nothing is happening. But still,

write to me yourselves: have you seen anything at all

from the candidates’ activities over

the past two weeks? We, at least, did something—

yes, we held this voters’ strike

(a protest boycott campaign), what a cute GIF, I’m petting

a dog. The other candidates—

I’m genuinely baffled. But

fine, obviously not everyone has a network

like ours, because they didn’t build it

over the course of a whole year. But for any

candidate, for any campaign headquarters, it was probably

a fairly obvious idea: let’s

also hold some mass rallies

in support, at least in

cities with populations over one million. If you can’t

hold one in Stary Oskol or Kurgan,

if you can’t, can’t hold one

in Vladivostok because your network doesn’t reach that far yet,

then in Novosibirsk,

Yekaterinburg, Moscow, or St. Petersburg,

surely you could have organized something.

But no one is doing anything, no one is doing

anything at all. Just watch what the Communists do on February 3,

and you’ll see

this corpse—I don’t mean the Communists specifically,

but the Russian

political system in general. It’s something

completely, completely dead, lying there without

moving.

This election campaign is not

moving even a tiny bit, not one bit.

As for our news, I wanted to tell you

about it—you probably noticed

that we launched a news program on the

Navalny LIVE channel. We launched it, overall,

in a raw, unprepared form because

we decided that on January 28 it had to

go on air, and we released it. It turned out

to be rather unusual, a kind of

baptism by fire.

But at the same time, all the people whom we

We brought them onto the news project.

They’re absolutely wonderful, and they’re all new.

They had never worked at the Anti-Corruption Foundation before.

Corruption.

They had previously worked on the election campaign,

so, well, in a way,

this was a bit new for them, except for Dmitry

Nizovtsev, whom you’ll see now.

Let’s take a look. You’ve probably seen it already, but

still, it’s remarkable footage of how

our news team worked at that very

dramatic moment when a large number of police officers

tried to force their way into this

studio. They were pounding on the

door for several seconds. Let’s watch.

If they had immediately said there was a bomb threat,

I think people in police uniform would be clearing this place out.

They’re dragging our lawyer away right from his home, and

the person who, by all appearances,

please introduce yourself.

Show your ID, please.

All right, what’s your name? As I understand it, there is

a bomb threat. What’s your name? That’s what I need—

show me your ID.

All right, your ID...

How should I address you?

Tell me—come on, say it here. I’ll

move through here past all this stuff.

There’s no one to appeal to here, we

understand that. Show us your

ID first, and then we’ll continue. Dima

Nizovtsev, who got ten days in jail,

and who heroically resisted the

police here in this footage, sitting at this

table, and then also filmed them in the lobby, for

which, basically, he was punished there.

They were trying to take his phone away there.

He’s a journalist from Khabarovsk and used to work at

a Khabarovsk outlet, and in general, in

Khabarovsk they really crack down hard. He was

arrested again, yes, even before the protest began.

He was the campaign headquarters coordinator then, so he was familiar with it.

But all the others are new people, and

they conducted themselves absolutely heroically.

They did a fantastic job. As for the news, we’re going to

hand out... I get a lot of

questions. People write to us in the comments: “Alexei,”

“what kind of news is this of yours?”

“Because your anchors are openly expressing

their own opinions. How can that be?”

“An anchor is supposed to just sit there,”

“and the news is supposed to be,”

“like robots sitting there and repeating

what the news agencies say. We’re used to that kind of

news. If you want that kind of news,

go somewhere else. Our

news concept is exactly this: we

are going to say it in our own words, plainly

and directly.

And we are going to tell the truth about what is happening

in a country with an authoritarian regime.

This “on the one hand, on the other hand”

approach no longer works. So we will have

real news. We will not lie in

our news. That is the main principle: we will not

lie, but we will say everything

plainly and directly. And all our anchors,

and the news editor, and everyone there,

including the technical team, are people with

a clear political position, and they will

express their political position and their attitude toward

those sitting in the Kremlin

in these news broadcasts. But at the same time,

we will not lie, and we will not

distort things, but we also will not be shy.

We’re not really... not настоящие (proper) professionals,

we don’t really know how to do

news, we don’t really know how to do television,

so we have quite a lot of

slips, shortcomings, and things like that.

Of all of us, only one person—Yelena

Malakhovskaya, whom you also saw—

was a professional TV presenter. She is

the only person who had worked on camera

before. Everything else, well, we’re going to

build together with you. In that sense, this is

a kind of media startup—sorry for such a

corny word—that we are launching together with you.

So watch the news,

help us, advise us, but please don’t

tell us that the anchors should just

read dry copy and not express

their attitude toward events, because for that

we wouldn’t have launched a news project like this.

This kind of news—

go elsewhere. There are news outlets where

anchors speak dryly and keep their attitude toward

events hidden, and please look at what

has happened to all those dry-speaking

outlets—what happened to *Kommersant*, what

has now happened to *Vedomosti*, what

has happened to all the others.

So we are going to say everything

plainly and directly. Support us.

The activities of the other candidates—zero. And in

answer to the question of whether, in theory, there is

a possibility that because of calls for a

boycott, people will go vote out of spite:

I saw a video where some elderly women literally said,

“A boycott? Then I’ll go vote just out of spite.”

A reverse effect. Well, an elderly woman goes onto

YouTube, watches my videos, and says,

“I’ll go vote just to spite Navalny.”

Of course, that effect can happen, but only on a

small scale. You know, someone

might watch and say, “I didn’t want to go to

the polls, but I dislike Navalny so much

that I’ll go vote.”

Sure, there is probably some number of such people,

but I think not many.

After all, people’s actions in life, their

basic attitudes toward politics, toward elections, toward

their own future and the country’s future—those things

still are not derived from

their love for me. They go to vote or they do not

because they do or do not consider

this to be an election. And the task of our boycott

is precisely to explain that. There is 198.

"Ways," writes to us Mariy Ustinova.

of nonviolent resistance, including

rallies. Your official support for one

action or another generates a great deal of

sympathy for your position and more

actively spreads information. More

large-scale turnout at protest actions.

Think about it. Maria, well, 190 methods

of peaceful, nonviolent resistance

including rallies — that's what all sorts of

political scientists and various theorists write about

in all kinds of books. In reality, well,

I mean, I'm not arguing with that. If you know

190 ways to deal with vampires, share them with

us. Well, you can probably google them.

Do it.

Method 196, 198, 199 — we are trying

to implement the formats for which

our network is needed and that will be

mass-based.

The kind that can involve a large number of people.

Let a million flowers bloom. Of course, I do not

for a second doubt that somewhere

there are people sitting who are a hundred times better than I am

at coming up with what needs to be done. Great.

There are always people who do something

better. Then do it — and I say this without any

irony or sarcasm. Come to our

headquarters, or without any headquarters at all, organize

a few of your acquaintances, or if your

123rd method allows for individual

work, then do that individual

work. That's generally the coolest thing

you can do. Everything we have is built

on that. Listen, Viktor Bondarenko asks:

"Alexei, what do you think about the Venus

Project? You promised to look into this

issue." Second, in every... from the physical to people... (unclear)

Someone writes about the Venus Project. I confess, I was

going to google it right now or

look it up on Wikipedia. You look and think:

the Venus Project — for now, we are not discussing the Venus Project,

and I'm not ready yet. Let's

talk instead about anonymity on the internet.

This is a very important topic, and Putin

at roughly the same time when my

press secretary Kira Yarmysh and press secretary

company... Ruslan Shaveddinov, who

were broadcasting live, were detained at

Sheremetyevo Airport and then put in

— literally, this is not a joke, I'm not making it up —

so, in the official ruling it says: for

tweets, and for some reason they added

"forming a negative attitude toward

one of the president's candidates/associates". At that

same time, Putin stated that

this is not 1937 now

and the black Marias (NKVD arrest vans) are not coming for anyone.

So why, then, do we need anonymity on

the internet? Why hide? Write whatever

you want — nothing will happen. Let's see

what he said. A short video, 25 seconds.

Here it is:

"Internet anonymity, on the one hand,

seems to be good for democracy, but on the other

hand it creates many problems because

behind these accounts no one knows who

is hiding, and indeed if a person

something...

Even now it's not 1937,

right? People say whatever they want, especially

on the internet. No devilish black van is

coming for you tomorrow. One and a half million

rubles (about 16,000 USD) is what we've raised so far. To take part in

the fundraising, within the framework of the

Phoenix project, we want to raise as much money as

the villains took from us by freezing the

funds in the account. You just heard Putin

telling us that, in general,

internet anonymity is unnecessary, and

the astonishing thing is — well, fine, he lied

about the fact that we don't need

anonymity because supposedly you can write

whatever you want on the internet. We both know that

right now, every week, some people

are being prosecuted for what

they write on the internet. But what interested me

even more was this kind of double,

double hypocrisy of this position, because

these people — Putin specifically —

in recent years, his entire

rule, all of it,

his whole new style of governance has been built on

anonymity, and anonymity — the attempt to hide

something — is his main trademark. Well, let's

look at who is in this photograph. In this

photograph there is some sweet,

very sweet chubby little man, and you

will probably say, "Oh yes, he looks very much like

the younger son of Prosecutor General

Yury Chaika." No, he has a completely different

official name. Our state believes

that this person's name is

"I Shou 9," and that is exactly how he

is officially entered in Rosreestr (Russia's state property registry). He

is hidden from you and me. The state has

officially and unlawfully granted him

anonymity so that you or I could not

find his property. That is, this is not even about

some posts on the internet, but rather

a simple public record of the existence of

apartments. Your apartment in the registry

can be found by anyone

under your full name, but Chaika's son

we will not find. Now let's look at

the next person. And those of you who

have seen the film *Chaika* will say: yes, that's

the elder son, Artyom Chaika, owner

of all sorts of monopolies in the country, owner

of real estate in Switzerland, and so on, and

real estate in Russia. But no, this is not

Artyom Chaika. Officially, his name is "LS Dush"

or "LSD 3" — no one even really understands.

The same goes for his property.

It is officially encrypted. These people again

receive official anonymity. Just think about it:

they even wrote it on the little cups, and we

were once struck by the fact that they...

officially, at the state level, already

we went to court over this; we filed a

lawsuit and said: how on earth can you

turn a public record in a public

state real estate registry

into a secret one like this? And they told us

no, we have the right to do that, and we lost that

case. But fine. Let's

look at the next person, and here

you can't say we don't know who he is — this

is the man who wanted to be out there, burning

in a tank in Luhansk and spending years in the trenches

but life turned out so hard that somehow

he didn't make it to Luhansk, and instead he works as

Deputy Prime Minister of the government

this is Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin

and no, no, no, no, because in

Rosreestr (Russia's state property registry), for his wonderful, luxurious

very expensive real estate, it simply

says directly: private individual

value unavailable — in other words, a paraphrase

for the word anonymous: an official anonymous person. So

the state grants Rogozin

anonymity, while to you it says: you must

register with your passport, your

Telegram, your username — I don't know, Pink

Dog27 on Twitter, VKontakte, and

Facebook. And now let's look at

the next person. Who is this?

This is Kirill Shamalov

the youngest billionaire in Russia and the son-in-law

of President Putin

So, let's see what he's called in that

very same registry. And actually, not at all —

not in any way. If Rogozin had

"value unavailable" written there, then

for Kirill Shamalov there's just some

strange abbreviation: L.S., LCP

and just a number — not even a name, damn it

from official databases, the state gives him

illegal anonymity. But there are people about

whom it's as if they don't exist at all — phantom people. Let's

look at this nice young woman here. Who

is this? This is Katerina Putina, the younger daughter

of President Putin and the wife of Kirill Shamalov

and accordingly also

a young billionaire. And in accordance with

the Family Code — or perhaps as if she

doesn't exist at all — the state

officially gives her a cover identity

because there she is Tikhonova, with

some unclear surname. To this day, about her

we all know she is Putin's daughter, but

that is, as it were, confirmed nowhere. Any

newspaper writes "the alleged daughter

of Putin." In other words, a man has been in power for 18 years

and citizens actually have the right

to know. We're not interested, perhaps, in

the details of her private life — how she

dresses and what goes on there. We

understand that for security reasons

there is probably some sense in concealing

her exact place of residence. But at least

the basic facts — what her name is,

what her surname is, what income she is supposed

to disclose — none of that exists

Let's look at the next

photograph: an even more mysterious

person. To this day, in fact,

it's not even clear whether it's her at all

This is President Putin's elder daughter, supposedly

named Maria — or maybe not. What is known about her

informally is that

she works at one of

the medical

one of the medical centers in

Moscow, but neither her real surname nor

her real workplace nor even the facts

of her existence as an adult, or of her

children

— none of it exists. So this is also official

anonymity: absolutely everything is hidden. And then

this person, who created all of this,

says to us: come on, everyone should

disclose everything — why would you want to hide something

from me?

Vladimir Putin. I certainly won't send to

you a white minibus like the one that

came for Kira Yarmysh and Ruslan Shaveddinov

at the airport, or a black prison van

if you cut off my access on VKontakte, can we

— well, no, we can't. And of course we

must, but I believe that the issue

of anonymity on the internet is even a matter

of national importance. People have

the right to some degree of privacy on

the internet, even people who are not

involved in politics. Because as soon as

they reveal all of this, well,

someone who wants, I don't know, to find out

what their wife or husband is writing in

Telegram will go and hand over

a small bribe to the police and get

all the data and messenger records. Someone

will hand over a small bribe to the police or

the FSB (Russia's security service) and get all the correspondence data of their

competitors, and so on and so on and so

on. People must have the right to

private correspondence, at the very least. And now we're being

told: let's make people register

on Telegram with their passports. Besides

the fact that this would require spending

billions of rubles additionally

in government expenditures, this is super

idiotic. And in that sense, of course, we

all need to take a united

position: guys, if you want, if you even

so much as mention

fighting anonymity on the internet, then for

us, please, all these your

L.S.s and "private individual

value

unknown" entries — disclose them to us first, and

then we can discuss anything else

So, I'm answering your questions, and at the same time

I'm looking at one for Navalny: have you listened to

the song "Russia for the Sad" by the band Pornofilmy

? I'm seriously waiting for an answer, I know that

There’s a song like that—I think I’ve even heard it.

They might teach me, but I honestly wouldn’t be able to sing it back. I’m talking about...

what exactly the candidate has, if it’s not a secret?

asks Ivan Ivanov, your press secretary.

He was probably shaping a negative opinion of them.

Grud... day.

Well, my press secretary insulted Grudinin.

And because of that, she was sentenced to five days of administrative arrest.

Right, right—about election monitoring in Moscow, a good...

...Kovi asks me. Ksenia Simonova, we...

will conduct monitoring everywhere and

work with everyone. Our main

task, after all, is regional monitoring.

But Moscow, even though it’s a big city, is the boring part.

Whether they send one percent or five percent

of polling stations, we expect

falsification in Moscow.

But we know for certain that

there will be falsification in the Moscow region.

There will be falsification in Bashkortostan.

There will be falsification in Tatarstan.

And in Dagestan, there most definitely will be falsification.

That’s why we have a huge project that

requires extremely high-level coordination on

a scale of a kind that, so far,

no one has ever done before—simply because no one

has had this many volunteer resources. We

will, of course, involve absolutely everyone,

bringing in anyone who can take part in these

projects. We’ll work with everyone.

Let me ask: why not direct a larger

share of your efforts and resources toward working with

state-sector employees who are being forced to go

to the polls for Putin? We are directing them there, well...

Actually, when we work with

teachers—the same state employees—or doctors,

that is, state employees, and the people who

walk through your apartment building where they put up

a leaflet—they include both state employees and non-

state employees.

The opportunities to work

directly with state employees are

fairly limited, because it

requires

campaigners who reveal themselves and who will be

inside that environment—that is, among teachers

who campaign among others. And yes, there are people like that.

Of course, we always urge

state employees to work with us and not be afraid

to help. There are quite a lot of them, but this is

also, as you understand, quite

a difficult task. So, a regular

commenter, Inferno Overkill, writes:

“Just put them all before a tribunal. That’s not even a question.”

Down below they’re saying: “Put them all before a tribunal, every last one.”

“Before a tribunal.” Right, Mari says:

She writes, correcting me: Sobchak is running

her campaign with videos, spamming obvious

points on federal TV channels, pushing

democracy. The problem is that Ksyusha (diminutive of Ksenia)

Sobchak has a negative rating, and then she goes on

in every possible way

to criticize Ksenia Sobchak. But videos

are not enough. Listen, I was releasing videos

and I still am, from the very beginning

of the campaign until now, I’m still putting out

videos—more videos than all the others

combined. And of course,

interviews, appearances on television, on

federal channels—they showed Grudinin,

Yavlinsky, and Sobchak, but for running

a nationwide campaign, that is absolutely

not enough. But we can see that even in

a more informationally developed society like the

United States,

you just recently watched how

the election campaign unfolded, and still

the main emphasis was on meetings with

voters, mass rallies,

network-based organizing, volunteers—it’s that

grassroots component that

comes into being when the core of your local

campaigners is doing something every single day.

That’s what’s missing, and only in that way

Besides, it’s not enough just to release videos

and appear on federal TV channels.

Dear Maria says you need to peel off

percentage points from the main competitor—that is, from

Putin. Every one of your television

appearances should be an appearance

that lowers Putin’s result and

raises yours. That is what an

election campaign is. And then there’s the

sociology—that is, the polling—we’re showing you, but

frankly, judging by people’s perceptions,

it’s obvious that this is not happening.

The Saudi prince has shown us an example.

People here were writing about putting them before a tribunal—well, over there

roughly the same thing happened. We have

a truly striking example of how

the sheer political will of a leader,

the current main prince of

Saudi Arabia, led to the point where he

shook down all the other princes who

through corruption had simply

carried off the oil money—107

billion dollars. What is 107

billion dollars? That’s five months’ worth of

revenue from oil sales for Russia.

Now, I’m not saying that we should

resort

to using such methods

in dealing with our oligarchs—they are

obviously illegal. But listen, if even

Saudi Arabia, a country that is thoroughly

corrupt and, on top of that, a monarchy,

is taking at least some general measures and steps

to recover money

made through corruption, then maybe

we ought to do a little of that too.

What’s funny is how they handled all those princes.

The main prince gathered all the others,

and then this prince locked

them in the Ritz hotel. And recently, this

—I won’t even try to pronounce

his name because I’ll get it wrong—this main

prince, the one you can see in the picture now,

locked the other princes in the Ritz hotel.

I got in there as a BBC News correspondent.

Not in Latakia—the interiors, well, let me explain quickly.

The basic idea was that they were living in some kind of

house arrest in that hotel.

There were golden rooms, golden showers,

and, again, golden toilets—every possible luxury.

So they were not being kept in a cell at all,

but they were held there for a while, kept there,

and in the end they started letting them out only when

they agreed to share these

corrupt funds. And I’m simply

just saying that Moscow has one too—

there is this mechanism there as well, this

version—probably not as beautiful,

probably not covered entirely in gold, but at the very least

it is worth thinking about. Maybe not immediately

locking someone up in that hotel, but

gathering all these oligarchs together,

bringing them in, showing them, and saying:

Guys, you have to pay taxes in Russia.

Through legal mechanisms,

there is no need to seize anything from anyone, but simply

through a proper legal mechanism, somehow

the nation’s wealth should be redistributed.

Because it is only in Russia

that all these oil magnates and oligarchs,

the owners of oil companies, pay so

little in taxes and rise so quickly

in the Forbes rankings.

They should pay as much as

oil company owners pay in the United States,

in Europe, in the Scandinavian countries. When

they pay that much, then probably we

will all live a little better together, and the

state will have a little more money

to cover certain

social spending and simply develop.

You see, by different methods—legal ones in

Europe and the United States, and completely, well, not

legal ones in Saudi Arabia.

Only Russia is stuck somewhere in between and cannot

choose either side; it is simply

slowly, slowly sinking into a swamp.

And you and I are fighting so that it does not

sink into that swamp.

Take part in the voters’ strike.

In the description to this

video there is a link where you can

download a leaflet, and another link through which you can

sign up as an election observer. Let’s fight

for our country. See you next

Thursday.

If, before next Thursday, they suddenly decide not to

let me stay free—or if they decide to

lock me up for a while—well, in short,

sooner or later, we’ll see each other again.

[music]