May 5, Durov, bad and good millions

[music]

Well,

hello everyone, it's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, which means

that I'm here in the studio, Alexei Navalny

or, as NTV so wonderfully called me, a twice-convicted blogger

in its wonderful

sensational report, "Sun-Tanned Navalny"

returns from vacation in Egypt.

I really was on vacation in Egypt,

which is why I missed the last broadcast.

At the airport, I was met by several

cameras from all sorts of hack propaganda TV channels

that ran after me all the way to the car, shouting,

"Why were you vacationing in Egypt?

And how dare you hold a protest on May 5?"

Yes, I vacationed in Egypt—don't try to read anything into it.

I was very pleased with the trip, by the way.

And despite the fact that getting to Egypt these days

is rather difficult—there are resorts there, but

planes don't fly directly, so you have to go through

Cairo or some other country—I

wanted to go specifically to Egypt in order

to finally try scuba diving.

I tried it—it was great. I

saw a turtle. You can't imagine what

a joy it is to see a turtle. I never thought

that

it could bring me so much happiness. It was

huge, beautiful, and, well, it didn't look

like it could bite off half of

your arm.

So I'll admit honestly:

I didn't dare tap it on the shell, although

I really wanted to. I recommend diving to everyone—

it's a wonderful sport, and Egypt is a wonderful

country. There are almost no Russians there, unfortunately, and all

the Egyptians are very upset about it. There are quite a lot of

Ukrainians there.

The entire staff speaks Russian

for those very Ukrainians, and everyone is really

looking forward to the Russians coming back,

because their income dropped after

flights to Egypt were banned. Anyway,

it was wonderful.

Vacationing is better than working, the weather was sunny,

everything was great. Thank you very much for

being patient and waiting for me here on

the air. But Egypt is Egypt—let's talk

about where we'll be on May 5.

On May 5, my dear friends, we

must, of course, be at the nationwide

protest action that we are holding on the eve of

the inauguration that Vladimir

Putin will hold on May 7. I've gotten quite a lot of questions:

why the 5th? Why

not later? Because May 7 is

a working day, while May 5 is a day off, Saturday.

It's a good time, after the May holidays, and

new regulations are coming into force under which

all mass events

must be coordinated with the FSB (Russia's security service) because of

the World Cup. I think that's a minor

obstacle for us, because it's just one of those

forced measures, but it seems to me—and not only to me,

I've received quite a lot of

letters and appeals on this subject—that we need

to hold this action for a very simple

reason.

Putin is beginning another term—already

his fifth. He will rule for six years, and many

people thought there might be some kind of

changes, some improvements, in connection with

this new term. But we can already see that any changes

will not be for the better—there will be none at all.

Just this past month alone,

the authorities have shown us that Putin and his people

intend to govern the country as if

53 million people simply do not exist here.

That is the most important number for the next

six years: 53 million people did not

vote for Putin, for various reasons.

But he has no right to behave as

if they don't exist at all. Let's take those 53 million

and divide them in half, divide them into three parts,

into four parts—either way, you still get

millions of people who disagree with what

this government is doing. And these are full-fledged

citizens. There are a great many of them, and

their voice matters. It must be heard.

For various reasons, these people are not yet all

ready to come out into the streets together. So

on May 5, we must come out and say that we

represent all those who say: Putin, dear man,

you are not our president. We did not vote for you,

we do not agree with your policies, and we are not prepared

to put up with this daily rudeness,

not prepared to endure this humiliation, not prepared to endure

this corruption. That is why we are

coming out before the inauguration

to say: in the Russian Federation, there are

huge numbers of people who want

to live differently. Until we start

showing up,

we will achieve nothing, nothing

will change. Naturally, they really

don't like our actions. We have filed applications

in 87 cities across Russia. And not only us—

right now we have headquarters in 45 cities,

and in the other places it's simply

former headquarters staff or just

wonderful, enthusiastic people submitting them.

So far, the statistics are as follows: out of these

87 applications, 22 have been approved, 10 of them

in designated free-speech areas, and 19 have been denied.

In one case, the rally was approved, but

the march was not. And in 38 cities,

it's still unclear, because there's been neither a yes nor a no.

It's obvious that the authorities, on the one hand,

do not really want, on the eve of the inauguration,

to stage mass arrests, but on the

other hand, it is extremely important for them to show

themselves and everyone else that there are, well, no

protests, everyone is happy, everyone wants

Putin to do whatever he wants and behave like

an emperor, like a tsar, in this country. But we

will not allow it. And strange as it may seem,

paradoxical as it may be, the slogan "Down with autocracy"

is once again moving right to the forefront.

becomes one of the most important things

because what they are doing is the very essence

of true autocracy

They absolutely do not care about us, and until

we start coming out into the streets

there is no way we will persuade these people

to listen to our opinion—not

with op-eds, not with reposts, not with any

other actions. All of that is important to do.

It is important to write op-eds, it is important to make

reposts, it is important to spread information

—all of it matters. But in a situation where

neither the judicial system works, nor does

parliament, and there are no other

ways for you and me to influence

the authorities, we have to take to the streets. That is

the only way, and no one

will go out there in your place. There is no such

system—do not fool yourself into thinking, well, if I do not

go, for whatever reason, other people

will come out for me. Those people will come out, they

are great—but until you come out too,

our country will have no prospects

whatsoever. In any case, we are facing six years of degradation

if Putin remains

in power for six more years.

The extent of that degradation depends very heavily

on our activity. So, in the

description to this video, please go

right now—there is a link to

the VKontakte (Russian social network) group. Find your city

and be sure to take part. Now, separately,

some information about Moscow and St. Petersburg:

in St. Petersburg, things are still unclear; the

approval process is ongoing. In Moscow,

the situation is roughly the same. For now, we are

proceeding on the assumption that it will be Tverskaya Street at

2:00 p.m. on May 5—Tverskaya Street at 2:00 p.m.

We told the Moscow city authorities, without

all this endless bargaining,

one very simple thing: give us a street in the city center

and we will consider the options. We are not going to

dig in our heels. After all, there have not been

any large authorized

events for a long time. We are ready to consider any

other street in the center, as long as it is within

the Garden Ring (central Moscow ring road), where people can march

and where a rally can be held. They first offered us

Maryino and Tushino (outlying Moscow districts),

then they even suggested the Three Stations Square area

somewhere with a stage. We are going to a rally, to an

action against

the humiliations to which this government

subjects its citizens, and to hold our

rally in the format of yet another humiliation—we are

absolutely not prepared for that, and we are not going to do it.

Do I want

to be jailed again for 30 days?

To be detained? No, I do not. Am I prepared for the possibility that

I will be jailed for 30 days? I am. This too is

a matter of dignity, simply a matter

of basic self-respect. And I very much

hope that quite a lot of people, together

with me, will go, including with that in mind. But I

am not going to call this unauthorized

or unapproved. It is authorized by the Constitution;

it is their actions that are illegal,

and we are going there to defend

our rights. If there are many of us, good; if fewer of

us come, not so good—but all the same

we still have to go. Personally, and I advise everyone to do the same, I

conduct this kind of mental

experiment for myself. When I leave

the house—assuming I am not

grabbed in the stairwell and jailed—I walk and think:

what if I am completely alone there? What if I come out onto

Pushkin Square or Mayakovskaya

and there is no one there except curious

passersby and police officers running

toward me, and I am standing there alone with a placard?

I might even feel a little foolish, and

it might seem to me that I am the only one in the whole

country, and it would be a little awkward, of course.

Of course, I would prefer to be in a huge,

wonderful crowd of people. But if I am alone, am I ready

for that? I am ready. And everyone should

approach this in exactly that way.

But fortunately, all these

mental exercises are important, they

are useful simply for cultivating the citizen

within yourself.

There are a lot of us, a great many of us. We

understand that in any case there will be many

people at this action, so come.

There is no need to clash with the police. If

it does end up being on Tverskaya, and we see

that the likelihood of detention there is not so

high—but in any case, there is no alternative.

People achieve their goals only if they

come out. Nothing else works. Do not

deceive yourselves. So if you

want a future for yourselves and for your

children, come out into the streets on May 5. As things stand,

what we are seeing now—if this month,

the first month of Putin’s new term,

is extrapolated over all six years, well, I

do not know—this will not be rock bottom, but some kind of

we will punch through the ground and end up somewhere in

Australia or New Zealand, because

it is an absolute nightmare.

450 rubles—so, 450 rubles.

450 rubles is your contribution to these tricks

that Roskomnadzor (Russia’s communications regulator) is pulling right now.

The first month of Putin’s term will, of course,

be remembered for this hellish war on

the internet, and today there already appeared

a first estimate saying

that it amounts to almost $1 billion—that is,

how much would that be, around 62 billion

rubles in damage inflicted on

the Russian economy

by Roskomnadzor’s actions. In other words, you were

charged for it.

That is, of course, you did not literally take

450 rubles out of your pocket and hand it over to some

guy—that is not how it looked—but

in some other way, you did pay those 450

rubles: your tax money went somewhere.

An indirect payment: you paid for a VPN.

Some company earned less.

It paid out less money, and therefore less in taxes, and so—

those 450 rubles (about $5) never made it to your

local clinic, or to your—didn’t make it to your

school, where that money was supposed to go.

This damage to the economy is not some abstract

thing—it’s something completely concrete.

In the first month of his new

term, Putin has already stolen from you

450 rubles (about $5), and he’ll steal much more—but

that’s not even counting how much inconvenience he’s caused.

Just look at how many

websites have been blocked.

YouTube has problems, Google has problems,

various messaging apps aren’t working—

because of whom? Well, well, well—actually,

simply put,

even if you try, irrationally, to somehow

justify going after Telegram,

there are plenty of other

messengers that offer the same

encryption, and no one is chasing them—and that’s good.

They banned Telegram, but why all these

idiotic, maniacal

blocks, which, as is obvious,

cause harm and take money away from people?

But they do it because they think

they’re so powerful, that they can

do this because in Russia there are no

organized groups of people, you see,

who will stand up and resist this.

That’s why on May 5

people need to come out and show that such groups do exist.

By the way, on April 30

there will be a special rally on Sakharov Avenue (in Moscow)

in defense of Telegram, specifically over this issue.

I absolutely support this

rally, I’ll be there, and honestly it’s even

strange to hear things like this. I

read

on Twitter that people were saying: they announced a Telegram defense protest

for the 30th, right before the 5th, and so

the action on the 5th will suffer. And my question to

the people saying that is: guys, are you

citizens, or are you lithium batteries

in a mobile phone? You know, you

charge up to 5 percent, then 35 percent,

and that’s all the life energy,

energy,

political will, and civic

awareness you have—enough for one rally, on the 30th, and

once you’ve gone on the 30th, that’s it, you’re done,

you’ve exhausted yourself, and on the 5th you already can’t

go anymore—you need to wait half a year

before going to the next protest? But if you’re

not human batteries, then that means people will

treat you accordingly. As for me,

I have enough energy to go both on the 30th and on the 5th, and if

necessary, I’m ready to go every day and every other day,

because only this way, as I’ve

said a million times on this program,

do people achieve change. So people need

to keep showing up and keep fighting for what’s theirs, because

otherwise these guys will, so to speak,

trample all the good things

and destroy them. Let’s listen.

After all, Putin was only just recently

talking about how great things would be

for the internet here. Forty-five seconds of Vladimir Putin’s promise:

Vladimir Putin’s promise, forty-five seconds.

How effectively we will be able

to use the colossal opportunities

of the technological revolution, how we respond to

its challenges, depends only on us. And in that

sense, the coming years will be decisive

for the future of the country.

I emphasize: truly decisive. The point

is that the pace of technological

change is accelerating.

It is rising sharply. Whoever

rides this technological wave

will surge far ahead.

Those who cannot do so, this—this

wave will simply, simply overwhelm.

Just look: a decisive year,

a technological wave is crashing over us,

coming straight at us—and this technological wave is here

because Vladimir Putin opened the floodgates.

And it would seem—this too is basically

obvious—the man understands that he is

quite unpopular among educated urbanites,

and completely unpopular especially

among technical professionals; he is not popular at all

among programmers, among IT people—they

absolutely hate him. And there is one simple thing

that really could

make it easier to run

an IT business, could truly make

Russia a country where it is easy

to work on all these trendy things—

blockchain, bitcoin, and all the

other buzzwords that

German Gref and other Russian corporate executives

love to use in their speeches.

But instead of doing that—free it up—

in just one month they have inflicted

more damage on the internet than it

suffers over years in other countries. Besides

the fact that we have lost this money,

companies and people can see that—well, how—

why invest in Russia? It’s foolish

to invest in Russia now.

It’s foolish to create startups, foolish to

register companies here—simply foolish.

If you do online business in Russia,

you’d be a fool to keep doing it,

because at any moment, at any

second, your website can be blocked, and

then you’ll be running around, knocking on doors everywhere,

saying, ‘Hello, Roskomnadzor (Russia’s state communications regulator), how

could you block me? I was just—’

all in this supposed fight against Telegram, and no one is even

discussing at the state level

that this is, in fact, a crime.

You cannot just block someone else’s website—it’s like

walking into someone else’s apartment.

It’s like taking away someone else’s business, taking away someone else’s—

a car, to take something off someone, a jacket, in a

back alley—because websites, this business,

these are entirely tangible things, aren't they?

It may seem like some kind of nonsense, just an image on

the internet—not real, like, what is it really?

You can't eat it or take a bite out of it,

or carry it away. It exists somewhere

out there in the wires, you know, some kind of

ephemeral thing, an electrical

signal running around, and these things, these images,

layers—it all seems unreal, so people think

you can smash it. But they smash it, and by doing that

they take money from us; through this

they simply destroy everything. So

of course this has to be resisted, because

tens of millions of people are absolutely

against it—even some pro-Putin people, and

just ordinary reasonable people, any more or

less normal people who aren't crazy,

they will oppose this, and no one

except us

can represent their interests right now.

And by the way, notice what a

particularly infuriating kind of cynicism

there is in the officials' statements. These people, for the sake of

fighting Telegram, blocked 18,000

IP addresses in Russia—or every 200th

IP address in the world. I mean, they are

literally just trying to break the

internet so that

Telegram won't work. They're chasing after it, and by the way,

a lot of people are happy that

Telegram has supposedly been blocked—and yes, they

rejoice over that—but think about

the fact that they can block you too,

very easily, and they'll block us too. I mean,

Telegram, with its enormous resources,

with all its capacity, talent,

and programmers, can run from them and

by buying

space in various, I don't know, cloud

services or whatever—anyway, Telegram can keep dodging them

because they're smart and rich.

But we won't be able to run from them like that, so

think about that. So, they

blocked a huge number of addresses

in order to bring down Telegram, while they themselves

keep using it—and they do it

quite openly. And today Dmitry Peskov

said that, well,

we shouldn't treat this ironically,

he said, and then added: as for me,

Telegram works. You see, that shows a decidedly

non-ironic attitude—and an absolutely

quite

astonishing quote.

Today Arkady Dvorkovich came out with another one;

he was asked about Telegram. But this

official, who receives a huge salary

and works in the government—the very same

government that just

blocked 18 million IP addresses

in order to destroy Telegram—

Dvorkovich says: it works for me.

Great approach, Arkady Dvorkovich.

Great approach from the Russian government. So

if you've brought everything crashing down on all of us,

you yourselves are, of course, in some kind of

cloud of cynicism and arrogance. Well then,

let's keep going—let all officials say things like

that.

This could basically be the

great slogan for the next six Putin years:

a neat formula, so to speak. Dvorkovich said,

"Everything works for me." And Veronika

Skvortsova

the health minister, could then

say, "Nothing hurts for me," in response to

any questions about the disastrous state of

Russian healthcare. And our

wonderful Puchkov, head of the Emergency Situations Ministry,

when asked why there is such a

horror show in that ministry and why Zimnyaya Vishnya (the Winter Cherry mall) burned down,

would say: you know, nothing is burning for me.

Right. And Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee,

would then say:

you know, when asked why there is so much

corruption, why everything is so rotten, he'd say:

"I don't know what you're talking about—no one steals around me these days." And the mayor

of Moscow, when he is

asked, "Dear Sergei Semyonovich,

you spent billions solving

transport problems, but traffic jams in Moscow

are still insane, a full ten out of ten," he would say:

"You know, I don't sit in traffic." That's

all a joke, of course—but that's exactly why

we need to go out to rallies on 1, 2, 3, 33—

because it's impossible to tolerate this humiliation any longer.

And really, this is no joke. We

twist these little quotes around ourselves on

Twitter, but in essence they're simply

telling us to our faces that we're cattle, nobodies,

that we're nothing. People who are paid

with our money think it's acceptable to

say things like that straight to our faces. They say:

we use Telegram; you

don't worry about it—we just want you not to

use it, while everything works for us.

That's what Dvorkovich says. That's why we need to

go out. A lot of people are discussing

Armenia right now, and you know, the kind of comments that personally always

really irritate me are these:

"The Armenians are great, but all

Russians are hopeless, and nothing will

work out for us. We have this kind of

terrible, nightmarish country, whereas

over there they have these wonderful citizens

and everything worked out for them." The difference is one thing:

people are the same everywhere. The difference is this:

the situation in Armenia—I wanted to say a little about it—

perfectly demonstrates

the only thing we lack:

persistence, determination. This is exactly

the point.

It's an illustration of when people say,

"Well, if we've gone to a rally 30 times, we won't go a 31st,"

and it shows perfectly that what we need

is precisely persistence.

It all happened in Armenia.

It wasn’t just a single rally there, and

the country’s prime minister resigned.

No, there was a president who, oddly enough,

had served two terms and wanted to stay in

power, saying, “I’ll become prime minister,” and

he was supposed to become prime minister.

After that, the opposition had already announced in advance, even before

it happened, that on April 11 they would begin

protest actions. They started coming out into the

streets, they started sitting there in the street, and there

weren’t many of them. It must have seemed to them too, well,

damn, we’re sitting here and this isn’t deciding

anything. They sat there on the 11th, then on the 12th,

then they sat there on the 13th, and probably they were also saying something like

“Come on, we’ve already spent a full three days

here and achieved nothing.”

“Let’s go home, this is all pointless.”

Just like people here are always saying: “We came out three

times to protest, and Putin is still

still there, so we’re not going anymore.” But then on the 17th,

despite the fact that they had been sitting there since the 11th

—a week had passed—and Sargsyan was elected

prime minister. They were basically told,

“You can sit in your streets all you want, but we

are going to elect him anyway, because we’re

the ones in charge.”

“We’re the majority, and you’re nobody.” After that,

the protests continued, and

many more people came out. And this huge

number of people who took to the streets forced

President Sargsyan

to meet with the opposition leader, Ni-

kol Pashinyan. There was a meeting, and people there

were standing and saying, “We demand a meeting,” and

the prime minister said, “All right, a meeting.”

Do you know how long that meeting lasted?

Three minutes. And during those three minutes,

the prime minister, who was confident in his own

invincibility, despite the fact that people were standing there,

said, “Well, you know,”

“Dear Nikol, the last time your party

won only eight percent,”

“so you don’t represent anyone.”

“Get out of here.” But the people kept standing there.

Even though, probably, many people also wanted to say

at night, “So, we’ve been standing here

for several days, and they still got

elected. We forced them to receive the opposition leader,

and they still told us to get lost.”

“Let’s go home.” But no—the people showed persistence.

The people showed solidarity, and there

they had already started dispersing them by that point, and

they used water cannons, detained 100 people,

and even detained some schoolchildren.

They had a rather “interesting”

way of detaining minors in

Armenia: they would grab them, put them into cars,

drive them somewhere far outside

the city, out into an open field, and let them go there.

Basically: “Now get back on your own

two feet.” Back for 40 kilometers (about 25 miles).

That’s the kind of thing they did. Even so, people

stayed.

People stood in the square, and only on April 23

did some of the internal troops begin

to go over to

the side of the protesters, and only after

that did Sargsyan resign. So what

has happened now?

Did people leave the streets? No, they didn’t. They

continue to show persistence, because

it’s one thing for him to ritually announce

that he is resigning, but it’s another thing

to secure new parliamentary elections,

to create a new coalition. That is what people

are trying to achieve, and they are not leaving the streets now

because they understand that they will be

deceived in parliament. The same people are still

sitting there now with bogus and

stolen mandates, and they will arrange

elections and a system in which

Sargsyan and his oligarchs will still continue

to control power. Besides that, they

really do have some degree of

public support, so there is partial

support. There are citizens of Armenia who

support Sargsyan,

naturally. Partial support plus

their de facto control of power will lead

to them seizing it again. That is why

people are not dispersing, and they did not disperse there either.

By the way, there were also

criminal cases opened under the article on

mass unrest, and all the rest of it was there too,

but people did not disperse, and

these rallies are still continuing now, despite

the fact that now the country’s second-largest party

—it is called Prosperous Armenia—has

gone over to the side of the protesters, despite

the fact that, by the way,

quite recently this very party,

Prosperous Armenia, had voted

for Sargsyan as prime minister,

fully supported him, and was part of

the ruling coalition. Why did they

do that? Well, there are also some cunning

deputies there who look around to see

which way the wind is blowing, and they joined

the people. Why? Because the people showed

determination. They came once,

they came twice, and they said, “That’s it, we’ll

come on the 22nd and the 32nd too,” because only in that

way can change be achieved. But

these people in power, whether in America

or in Russia, make billions.

How can you make them give up

those billions?

Just like that, with a single rally?

Of course not. It’s a big, routine job.

Just as they have a big, routine job

deceiving us, robbing us,

constantly staging rigged

elections, producing this idiotic propaganda,

organizing TV shows—it’s the same kind of

work, and they do that work. So we, on

our side, have to do even more

work—the work needed to force them.

They can be made to step down peacefully.

They can be compelled to do it peacefully, just as

happened in Armenia, when they saw that

people had come out, they thought differently: they needed

to leave, step aside, and then try to

deceive them afterward. Now, if people succeed and

it becomes clear that they will not be able to

deceive them, then those who are now

in power in Armenia will remain there

and fit themselves into some broader, more

democratic conditions, and gradually

lose power. Someone from Nikol

Pashinyan's side will come to power, then lose an election, and there will be

a normal democratic process. And I

hope this democratic process

will be launched, and there will be specific people—

specifically Armenian national heroes—

those who came out into the streets, who

stood their ground and made this

possible. If we all hope that Armenia

will become a prosperous, wealthy country,

whereas right now it is a poor and very

corrupt country, then these specific people

were the very heroes who

made it possible. And you and we must

become such people for modern

Russia.

Otherwise, we will constantly be ruled by

crooks and oligarchs who, in particular,

have just filed a lawsuit—Mikhail

Prokhorov, whom we released an investigation about today.

Literally as I

was walking here to the studio, news came in that

he was suing over T-shirts—

well, not over T-shirts, strangely enough; they say they are suing

the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) because I posted the

investigation.

In that sense, we pay fairly close

attention to all sorts of legal matters,

because for me personally it is easier to be sued

than for a legal entity. I hope that

you've already seen this investigation; if not,

we'll show it to you now—

literally one minute and 30 seconds. The full thing is

13 minutes long, please watch it, but

for now, here's a brief summary—one minute and 31 seconds—

so you understand

what exactly Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian

oligarch, is planning to sue us over: how

our oligarchs bribe our own

officials. It turned out that his

Italian villa was sold by official Khloponin

to oligarch Prokhorov. Right in front of us is

an entirely unremarkable house with a pool;

there are plenty like it in the area.

The house has an area of 429 square meters.

It has only three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and

a living room and an attic space.

Well, that's about it.

All of this used to belong to Khloponin.

We move a little to the left and see the guest house,

with an area of 209 square meters. It has two

bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms and a small

kitchen for guests. And to the right is

a garage combined with the servants' quarters.

It has just one bedroom and one bathroom.

The whole building is about 140 square meters. More than

2 billion rubles—35

and a half million euros.

That's a lot of money, so let's simply

look at what 35.5

million euros can buy in this

area, in Forte dei Marmi.

The short answer: nothing. But Prokhorov

paid 35.5 million—three and a half times

more. Why? Because Prokhorov was buying

not some mediocre

villa that he definitely did not need, but one belonging to

one of the top officials in the Russian government.

And this is the perfect time to remember that

Khloponin oversees subsoil use and natural resource licensing, while

Prokhorov's interests are tied precisely to this

sector.

Send your questions on Twitter with the hashtag

#Navalny2018, and I'll answer them.

Let's suppose I'm an official. I need money, I

want to make money, and over there I have sitting

directors—well, let's suppose they're not

directors, they're oligarchs—and I oversee

natural resource licensing. The oligarchs badly need

licenses. There's oligarch Oksana sitting there; she

needs a gold deposit, and over there is

another oligarch; she needs

to make sure there's a railway to

her deposit, or to get some other

paper from the government. So we have

a mutual interest, and there is

a format in which I simply say: guys,

please prepare cash

and bring it to me. But how are they going to bring me

30 million euros? That's

several suitcases' worth—where would I even put it?

Just bring it to apartment number...?

People do that, we've seen that many do it that way,

many officials do. But again, how on earth

am I supposed to spend it?

If I want to go to Europe and buy

my wife some necklace,

well, paying 20,000, 50,000, or 100,000 euros in cash

probably hand to hand somewhere

is eventually going to create problems crossing the border

and worrying over that money.

That doesn't work for me. I want this

money to be cashless, but cashless

money can't just appear from

nowhere—I have to file disclosures. So together

with my oligarchs, we've come up with

a great scheme. Here's a cup. The market price

of this cup is 5 rubles.

They come to me and say, 'Alexei, what a

great cup—nice and red, and it says

those very proper numbers on it: May 5.

We'll buy it from you for 1 million

rubles.' Deal. But hey, it's the market—

market economics. Here is the product, here are

the buyers who came. Look, look—

this is what Prokhorov tells us now, and what

Khloponin tells us: it's a contract, we've done nothing

were hiding it

On paper, it says that this specific

villa was supposedly one Prokhorov wanted—he came, he saw

the villa, and decided to buy it for 35

and a half million euros. All perfectly above board.

Just like with our little cup—it really does exist.

The people are real, alive; they signed a contract.

They bought my little cup for a million and transferred

that million into my account, and I showed it

in my declaration.

I’m an honest, open official like that.

Look, I even included

that million rubles in my declaration. But we all understand

that all this nonsense

we all understand that all of this

is a mockery, and we all understand that this is

a bribe. If someone buys from me, a government official,

a little cup worth 5 rubles

for a million, that means he wants

to give a bribe of a million rubles. And the same goes here.

Here there is a specific villa—yes, an expensive one,

a nice villa, in a very fancy

place, something like a Russian Courchevel (the luxury French ski resort), if

you like. By the way, if you want a laugh, look up

it—it’s easy to find on Google.

the society-column reports by Bozhena Rynska

that described this very

place—Forte dei Marmi in Italy

which has been almost entirely bought up there by Russian

oligarchs, businessmen, and various

gangsters who have flooded the whole area,

driving prices through the roof—like a beach lounger

costing €200 a day, something like that. But anyway,

in that very Forte

dei Marmi, there was Khloponin’s house,

an expensive, respectable one—€5 million there

is the kind of range expensive houses go for there,

from €5 million to €10 million. There isn’t a single house above that.

Even if we imagine that Khloponin’s house

was worth €10 million—the most expensive house in that

area—and we can see, just from the footage,

that it cannot be that—then if this

house was bought for €35 million, then we

should call things by their proper names. Dear

Mikhail Prokhorov, if you happen to watch this

video, then please try to fool someone else,

not us.

It is impossible to buy a villa worth

€4 or €5 million for €35 million.

Even if you feel like just

throwing money around like this, like that,

then throw it around on your

basketball players or on girls in Courchevel (the luxury French ski resort),

or on someone else—but if you’re

throwing it at Russian

officials,

and Deputy Prime Minister Khloponin is

a high-ranking official overseeing

subsoil use—the very sector that

interests you, Mikhail Prokhorov.

When you do something like this for him,

that means you are paying him

a bribe, because he is not supposed to

receive, for a house with a market value of

€5, €6, €4, or even €10 million,

€35 million. That is called a bribe. That is called

abuse of office.

These facts must be investigated, and

Khloponin’s duty in this situation

is to explain in detail what happened.

Prokhorov’s duty in this situation

even though he is not an official, since he entered into

a financial relationship with an official, is also

a matter of public interest—to explain in detail

what happened.

And it is the duty of our authorities

to take an interest, because we and the

BBC journalists looked into this

and did an excellent investigation, well done—but

we already saw that, bang, a person has two

billion rubles. A public official who has already been an official for 18 years,

Khloponin—yes, he was once

a businessman, but he is now an official. And 2

billion rubles in income appears in

his declaration—well, surely that ought to

raise some red flags. Someone should

be going through declarations, you know,

scrutinizing them. They see something like that—wow,

two billion—and off they run to financial monitoring

to find out: let’s take a look. Or at least

someone should call Khloponin and say: Oleg—Khloponin—

where did the 2 billion come from? That is how things should

work in a normal country, because

2 billion doesn’t just somehow

fall into the lap of a deputy prime minister, I mean,

if it does, it’s obvious someone sent it.

It certainly wasn’t Allah—some person did,

someone who wants to buy or obtain something

in exchange for those 2 billion. But that did not

happen. Why? We are the ones who did it now.

Now lawsuits are raining down on us—go ahead, sue us, and so on.

But please explain this to us:

does anyone really want to say this shack is worth 35 million?

No, it’s not a shack, of course—it’s an expensive

Italian villa, but it is not worth 35

million. We have the contract; we obtained it

officially. You won’t fool us by saying that

inside the villa there are paintings or something

made of gold, or that there’s some

football, hockey, or basketball

team sitting inside, and that Prokhorov, together with the

villa, also bought it for his—whatever it was—

what’s it called, that team of his,

forgive me please, so basketball fans don’t peck me to death,

I don’t really follow it very closely,

some great team, and inside it there’s

a player worth €35 million,

and that he bought the player too. No—there is

an inventory of all the property, and in that inventory

it does not say, in small letters

or fine print, ‘and also

basketball player so-and-so, 3 meters tall (about 9 feet 10 inches), and

therefore one of the greatest basketball players

who will play brilliantly.’ None of that

is there. Everything is listed, and we have only

one explanation: that Mikhail Prokhorov

in this way gave a bribe to Mr.

Khloponin.

to our government's deputy prime minister, and we

are going to speak about this plainly

whether they all like it or not, I

understand that not everyone is worried, and Usmanov

was worried, and Medvedev was worried, and

Prokhorov has probably spoken by now, or

Paska was certainly worried, and Prokhorov too

has probably gotten in touch with Khloponin by now

and they discussed what to do now that we

have caught them, exposed them, and laid out the documents

"Sue them" too — that's how it works for us

you know how the judicial system works

any person who files a case in Russia

against Navalny gets stitched up that way, because that's how it is

the judicial system is set up — there is

a special rule when it comes to me

you file a suit, you win, and then you go around everywhere

saying, well, Navalny lost in court

so then let's go to court with each other

we'll show our documents, and you, please,

show yours. But first and foremost, we work

with the citizens of the Russian Federation

and present all these things for their judgment

and I am sure that any person

is capable of visually telling apart a villa

worth 4 million euros from a villa

worth 35 million; and if they can't

tell visually, then they'll go to a real estate website

— fortunately, everything there is

in Russian — and they'll compare and understand

how it works. So

Mikhail, we will gladly see you in court

we would prefer it if Mr.

citizen Khloponin also filed a lawsuit so that

we could see him in court, preferably in person

rather than through lawyers, and so he could explain to us how

exactly this house became the most

expensive — the most expensive house in Forte dei

Marmi

and one of the most expensive houses in Italy

even though it obviously is no such thing. But

in general, when we talk about courts,

let's move on to the courts topic more often — answer the

question. But before that, I'll show you a hoodie

that is sold in our store. I'll

say that we're giving away this hoodie

we need calls to come to the May 5 rally, and whoever

writes the best tweet urging people

to come on May 5 during this

week — well, in the

next broadcast I will sum it up, and this

cool hoodie will go

to that person. So take part in the

contest, not only in order to

get the hoodie, but so that

more people simply come. Go ahead,

send me your tweets, please, and I'll

respond to them. Alexander Sukhov: Alexei, tomorrow

will it be the anniversary of when they splashed

brilliant green (zelyonka, a common antiseptic dye) in your face? By the way, how is your eye

and what is happening with the investigation in that case? Well,

if you look not at this broadcast of mine

but at my Instagram live streams, where I film myself

a bit closer, you'll see that one of my

eyes doesn't look like that anymore. Of course, one eye

is a little smaller than the other, but that is far,

far better than what the doctors

told me at the very beginning. They told me

that either I would not see anything

with my right eye, or there would be a cataract-like scar on

the eye. So I am very happy, I am very

grateful to all the doctors, both Russian and

Spanish, who made sure that there is

no scar on the eye

and I don't look like an old witch from a fairy tale

there is no investigation there at all

none whatsoever. To this day, I haven't even been

questioned in this case, even though there is supposedly

some kind of criminal

case somewhere

nothing is happening. The people who

splashed the brilliant green — I see them at every

rally

they work for the police, for the Center

and apparently they're just crooks of that sort

basically half-bandits, hooligans, con artists — they

they stand at every rally, they

keep doing this kind of crap, they

constantly vandalize the Nemtsov memorial (for opposition politician Boris Nemtsov)

everyone knows them, everyone sees them, but for the police

it's supposedly impossible to find them, and well

the police work with them — they can't very well

catch themselves

Arkady Khudyakov asks: why not

agree to Sakharov Avenue in order to hold

an authorized rally?

Obviously that would be a larger-scale and

more effective action. Arkady, of course, yes, and we

told Moscow City Hall: dear Moscow City Hall,

we demand Tverskaya; we have

the right to it. But if you think that Tverskaya itself

is impossible because there will be

a parade rehearsal and so on, then at the very least

there is the traditional march route

used every year for the Nemtsov march (in memory of Boris Nemtsov)

— along the Boulevard Ring, and then a rally

lately there have been no rallies, but a rally

inside the Garden Ring, on that same

Sakharov Avenue, would be an acceptable

option in the city center — we would agree

for us, what matters is holding the rally. But when

they make us an offer, they say it is

called Sakharov in the press releases

but in reality they are offering a stage somewhere

in the area of Kursky railway station — no, not Kursky

station, but Komsomolskaya Square (the "Square of Three Stations"). No, as

I already said, we will never agree to

a rally whose organization is part of

the humiliation of all the people in Russia, of those

who come to this action. No, and

you know, I have held rallies there

before as well — we've had different experiences. But we

now see and understand that in this

situation, here in 2018, there are things where

you can make some small

compromise, and there are things after which

you cannot retreat, because all our

activity would become meaningless. Therefore

Of course, an acceptable place in the city center.

We would agree, not out of stubbornness, but if it's on

the square by the Three Stations area (Komsomolskaya Square in Moscow), I personally

will go to Tverskaya, in general.

In this situation, I will only feel like a human being

only when I go

to the place where the Constitution allows me to go,

where my civil rights allow me. Alexei's girlfriend—

Navalny's—well, well, well, you've got it wrong there.

That's incorrect, he doesn't have any girlfriend.

A question for Alexei Navalny: how is Kostya Saltykov doing?

Does he need any help?

Konstantin Saltykov, who was at the

last protest, was detained; a case was opened against him,

it has been publicized, and you can watch

the video of how he was detained there, already on the spot.

They made up some pretext about a significant code and

about assaulting a police officer; his detention period was extended.

So, in other words, he

Konstantin Saltykov has now become one

of the political prisoners

in modern Russia.

Unfortunately, this is part of this

deformation, this degradation of the regime.

There are becoming

many, many more political prisoners every year.

The overwhelming majority of them, by the way,

are not connected with any rallies or protests.

Writing posts on the internet is a much more

dangerous thing. Well, we are providing

Saltykov

with legal assistance. We have quite a large

group of supporters, including people from the protest movement,

from Moscow, from the Moscow штаб (campaign office/headquarters). In any

case, of course, for his family and for him

personally, this is little consolation, but nevertheless

we are trying. So, Anton Monster

Card asks: what's happening with the party registration?

The working title remains, but on May 19 there will be a party congress.

We will continue to seek

its registration. This is the most important thing

we will be working on.

Since you're talking about courts and parties, I started

speaking about it, and there were a lot of questions

about yesterday's Supreme Court hearing.

The Presidium, the Presidium of the Supreme Court,

is the highest judicial instance of that kind.

Most lawyers in Russia

who work on court cases

have in fact never had the chance

to attend a session of the Presidium

of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, and

if you've been there, it's not really something to boast about.

There's nothing good about it, because

I end up there because we

win cases in the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights): we

prove that the cases brought

against me and against my relatives

are fabricated.

And yesterday, something actually quite

sad happened for all lawyers in Russia,

because the Supreme Court refused

to comply with the ECHR ruling under which it

was supposed to review, in some form,

review—well, actually, it was supposed to overturn

and send for a new investigation, for a new

trial, the verdict in the Yves Rocher case. It should have

unconditionally released my brother yesterday,

Oleg Navalny, who has already spent 3 years and 4

months in prison as

a hostage. For most of that

time he has been kept in solitary confinement; he

is still being held under strict conditions

of detention, so-called. They should

have released him, and we understood that this

judicial system is so vile,

so disgusting, that they might come up with something.

But honestly, I went there

with the feeling that there would be some kind of

catch, but overall they would let him go.

And as far as I understood, he still

expected that they would release him after

some time, maybe then make him

serve the rest later—there were only two months left anyway.

But that did not happen. We had hoped and

counted on them complying with

the ECHR ruling in some deceptive, formal way,

because such a direct

failure to execute a ruling is still a very

scandalous thing, a direct violation

of the Constitution. The European Court is

part of the Russian judicial system. In

the Kirovles case, they did it differently:

they overturned the verdict and sent it for a new trial,

and the court issued exactly the same verdict,

down to the spelling mistakes in

the text of the judgment. We thought there would be something

like that this time. They did something much simpler.

A mustached man came out there, and literally

the whole thing took about 15 seconds. He said:

"Resume proceedings in the case." We

were waiting for the next phrase to be

"overturn the verdict,"

but instead he said, "leave the verdict

unchanged." And there really was this

silent scene—us, the journalists, everyone

just standing there in silence, asking, "Is that it? Is that all?"

That was all.

"Leave the courtroom, there's another hearing here now."

For lawyers, for those who understand

the process, it is clear how

important and very sad this is: a

literal refusal to comply with rulings. And this

is not about me, not about

political cases, but a great deal depends on it

for a great many people.

Tens of thousands of people in Russia appeal

to the ECHR, and many win. Russia

has once again now come out on top in terms of

the number of complaints filed—the highest number;

Turkey or Ukraine is in second place. Russia has again

taken first place. This is very important, and

once again it shows us that in just

the first month—just one month—

with Putin in power, we are quite literally

plunging rapidly, just falling straight down,

down, down, down. And the country's degradation, if

we do not stop it, will be very severe.

very quickly, and it will be felt not only in

certain political matters — the courts and

freedom of the press

the internet — but it will also hit simply in

money, in incomes, in the fact that businesses

will collapse, there will be fewer jobs,

salaries will be lower, and food will become

more expensive — we will all simply become poorer.

Not all money in Russia is bad, and on

our program I mostly talk about

bad money of one kind or another, because

that’s the nature of our work. But now I want

to tell you about some very, very

good money: 372 million rubles (about 3.72 million rubles? no, 372 million rubles) — that’s wonderful,

magnificent 372 million rubles,

because those 372 million rubles are yours.

Literally — this is the money

that you sent us for running

the campaign.

Yesterday, Leonid Volkov, the head of

my campaign headquarters, published the full

financial report. It took us some time

to reconcile all the money, but we are a

transparent campaign: we said there would

be a report, and we published it. So, we

raised

once again set a record for independent

fundraising. Before this, the record was in 2013,

when we raised, for the campaign in the

Moscow mayoral election, 103 million rubles. Now we

have far exceeded that amount.

Despite the fact that — you remember

what it was like — Yandex.Kassa (a Russian online payment service) was

shut off for us,

there were arrests, there were constant problems, and we

still managed to raise this amount. More than

100,000 people took part

in the fundraising and sent their money.

Out of this amount, we

spent 368

million rubles, and some amount of money —

several million — got stuck in an

frozen account, and to this day we still

cannot access it. But the overwhelming majority of

that sum we successfully received from you,

spent it, and spent it honestly.

We spent it well. I think everyone

has seen that we ran a campaign on

this kind of people’s money and, effectively, under

guerrilla conditions, accomplished far

more than any candidate who

officially took part in the presidential

election and spent the same amount of money

officially from their account — and twice

as much again unofficially off the books. We

did this together, guys, and once again I

want to thank everyone who transferred

money, and thank everyone inside

the headquarters who

processed these tens of thousands of payments,

because that was also a colossal

accounting job — all these

micropayments had to be properly

allocated. With this money, we financed

the work of 84 campaign offices, and now

we have 45 left. By the way, money is still

coming in, and we will

continue financing this political network

in exactly this way. And thanks to that,

you and I are strong.

We do not depend on oligarchs. I don’t need

Mikhail Prokhorov, and on this program

or any other program, I can criticize any

oligarch and say everything I believe

is right — everything we believe is right —

about any villain, because we do not

depend on any villain. We don’t need

to go around

thinking, well, maybe we shouldn’t say

anything bad about Mikhail Prokhorov — he’s already

supposedly considered a kind of democratic

oligarch, he sort of finances

certain people, so if we

catch him taking a bribe and then go to him

asking for money, he won’t give it to us. But we won’t

go to him asking for money, because

I will ask you for money on this broadcast, and

if I conduct myself properly

and work honestly, you will give it to me. That is

very important, and a very great

achievement of ours. So thank you very much

to everyone who contributed even a single ruble to these

wonderful, very good 372 million

rubles. As long as Russia has people like this,

it has a future. But that future, of course, they want

to suppress completely, and

this week there was an absolutely

monstrous case.

But what honestly shocked me was the way

this case shows exactly

how the authorities relate to that future.

And who are the future of Russia? These are

talented people, first and foremost — people

who will be able to work properly, to

contribute something to the economy, to science, who will

lead other people forward. They are simply

— well, forgive the somewhat

high-flown

expression — advanced minds,

people who are interested in things. And this

week we heard the story of how, in

the Moscow region, a young chemistry student,

a multiple winner of academic Olympiads (subject competitions),

took his own life because he had come under

investigation by the FSB (Russia’s security service). He was a chemist, a talented

person, he wanted to be a chemist, he

was interested in chemistry, and among other things

he conducted some experiments at home, and the FSB began

checking up on him because if a chemist

makes something in some molds or containers,

then that must already mean he’s making a bomb.

Of course, somewhere there is some

thug sitting in the local office

of the FSB in the Moscow region, thinking:

he has to write some kind of report,

to write that they carried out

preventive work and stopped the

activities of a chemist who might have

make a bomb and

and may have told someone about it on Telegram

about this bomb. Anyway, they went to the boy's apartment

for an inspection; they came once to check on him

another time. He was 16 years old—you have to

understand that when a 16-year-old is approached

by people from the towers (i.e., the authorities) and they start their

talk: "Please stop what you're doing there,

or you'll have problems, your

parents will have problems. Your whole life is still

ahead of you, you're young, and we'll make sure

you won't be able to go abroad to study,

and we'll make it so that someone just happens to beat up

your mother by the entrance to your building, someone

will beat her up there, and we'll do something else too."

Not every adult could endure

that—I can tell you that much.

Goodbye. No, really, not every adult could

handle it. People come to you, and they

have official IDs, they have power, they can

simply lock you up, throw you into a police van

and take you to jail, without trial or investigation, and

by the time you get any higher court to hear it,

you'll lose. When they came to that

teenage boy, he ended up jumping

out of a window. He left a note, absolutely

horrific. Here you can see

the handwritten text, and I can't fully

read it because it is, of course, heavily

profane—which is understandable in that situation.

But it was addressed—he writes—

"To the police, the FSB (Russia's security service), and other

agencies: your government,

to paraphrase, I couldn't care less about it; all it wants

is to ban things. You don't need

the people—you need a crowd of zombies who follow

your orders." And separately, and this is

a quote, "I hate Yarovaya (Irina Yarovaya, Russian politician). You can all go to

you know where."

So, the boy jumped onto the asphalt, and

that person is gone, and there is no longer

a talented schoolboy, no longer

a winner of chemistry Olympiads, and so

we will not have

some talented chemist-scientist

who might have made some kind of

breakthrough

or at the very least supported a family, earned

a good salary, paid taxes,

did important work. He would have had

children whom he would have taken to school and also

taught something, bought them things,

backpacks, taken them places. He would have had a wife,

a home, and he would have been creating something,

contributing something to the economy, and everyone would have

been better off for it. Instead,

we got a dead schoolboy, parents

destroyed by grief, and unrealized

discoveries, or simply

an unrealized

but never-realized good career in

the field of chemistry. What is happening is simply monstrous,

and the main thing is that for this

no one is being held responsible.

Do you see a huge scandal in the media over

this?

Someone's resignation? The arrest of those

FSB officers who drove him to suicide?

There is a criminal statute for

incitement to suicide.

Well, maybe they didn't literally tell him, "Jump out the

window," but he was a minor; there should have been

a juvenile commission involved,

and he should only have been spoken to

in the presence of his parents. They could have

talked to him, they could have provided some

help.

Because he was a child, a teenager. Nevertheless,

he jumped out the window because of them, and no one

is being held responsible for it. And they

tell us about some kind of

Blue Whale, these so-called "death groups" for teenagers,

and all of Russia gets worked up about it,

children's TV shows are all in an uproar,

showing that there is this Blue Whale

group,

teenagers jump out of windows—and meanwhile the FSB goes around and

drove an honor student to jump out of a window.

Who is responsible for that? No one. And all right,

this is an extreme case, a horrific

situation involving

a schoolboy who took his own life,

but at a lower level there is simply

constant pressure. I want

to tell you about our Yegor Chernik, our

coordinator of our headquarters in Kaliningrad.

I don't know him that well; I came to

Kaliningrad for a rally, and that's where I

met him. But actually, the first time I heard about him

was when our regional manager

came up to me and said, "Listen,

we have this one guy there, very

talented—he's applying to Harvard.

He applied last year and didn't get in,

and he wants a recommendation from you." And I thought,

wow, someone is applying to Harvard,

considering that getting into the best

university in the world

means enormous competition—tens of thousands

of people per spot—and

for him to think he could get in there,

he must have worked brilliantly. I said that I

couldn't write a recommendation for someone I didn't know;

that's not how it works. He

worked excellently, and by the end of

the campaign I said I would give him any

recommendations at all, because he was one of the

best people in the Kaliningrad headquarters. And they

simply started harassing him there. And in fact he really is a

very talented guy. He

finished school with honors, with a medal,

graduated from music school,

let me check now

yes, so I don't mislead you—music

school he finished with honors, art school

he finished with honors, and he was preparing

to apply to Harvard. A gold medal—well,

just exactly the kind of person any government and society should value.

should cherish someone like that

We spent money on this boy,

his parents raised him, society raised him,

we ended up with a great young man, and he

will graduate from Harvard, come back here, and we

will have a very good, outstanding

specialist, covered in gold

medals, who will be of great use

to the country. What happened? They started

chasing after him and saying, basically, “So, Egor,”

the police and the Center for Combating Extremism (a Russian police unit) literally came and said,

“You’ll report to us on what’s going on

with you, and if you don’t report,

we’ll send you into the army.” A very clear

message for everyone. For some people—well, for me,

I turned 27,

you understand, the army is used as a threat. They’re saying,

“We don’t care how many gold

medals you have,”

“or that you graduated from Harvard, and

if we want, we’ll send you into the army if you

don’t inform on your comrades.”

And that led to this. Let’s just watch a short

clip—44 seconds. Andrei Loshak,

a well-known journalist, made films about

people in our movement, and he filmed Egor

separately, before all these

events. Forty-four seconds. Who is Egor

Chernyuk?

Besides working at headquarters, I try to regularly go

to the library, study mathematics and

physics, and prepare for exams.

So in that sense, it’s actually

very strange: one moment you’re being dragged along

the asphalt by the police, and an hour and a half later

I’m sitting in the library, flipping through

pages. Really. But you get used to it. It

really helps you relax, and talking with

people keeps you from losing your mind over everything that’s happening.

I love the headquarters, and I respect it all, but

if I go study abroad, I’ll do more for

Russia than if I stay studying here. I was

at an interrogation at the Center for Combating Extremism, and they

told me directly: if you don’t give

us information, we’ll have you drafted into

the army.”

Is this young man an enemy

of our country? Is he a problem

for our country? Is he something that

the police should be paying attention to? And yet

the police, the FSB (Russia’s security service)—they were all after him,

forced him to leave the country, and at

least for now. But I very much

hope that Egor will return.

What we’ve seen so far is that the state has once again

done great harm to our country

by driving out a talented young

man, driving out

a piece of the future. But I hope that

Chernyuk will be doing very well. Today

I asked him to record a few

seconds about what’s happening with him now.

Forty-nine seconds, and Egor Chernyuk talks about

his situation: “My name is Igor Cherny,

I worked as a coordinator at the headquarters in

Kaliningrad. Over the course of a year, officers from the Center

tried in every possible way to

put pressure on me through threats, attacks, raids

on the headquarters, and so on. The easiest way for

them, it seemed, was to open a criminal

case against me for draft evasion, and on April 12

they brought me to the military enlistment office.

They told me, “Igor,

either you check yourself into a psychiatric

hospital, or right now we’ll send you

off.” I signed papers

saying I would go to the hospital, and instead I left the country

without waiting for a travel ban or

other legal complications, because

in July I was planning to go study for four

years. So it’s all fine: I’ll study,

gain experience, and then together with you

build a wonderful future. Don’t

worry, everything will be great. That’s

how we’ll win.” You see, these are two opposite poles:

the pole of normality—a person saying, “I’m going to

leave,

study, and definitely come back to my country,”

“and I’ll do something good”—and the pole

of idiocy and criminality: police officers

running after a young man and saying

to him, “Either the psych ward or the army.”

Who gave you that right? Who are you even

working for? Does this country belong to you

that you would even dare

to say such a thing to a citizen?

They are the enemies—they are the real

enemies. And we must go out to rallies

to show that the country does not

belong to them. It belongs to people like

Egor Chernyuk, because they are the future

of the country. Aman Tuleyev (former governor of Kemerovo Region) is our last topic.

He took offense, and it turned out that this

apparently was why he, well, said that we—the Anti-Corruption Foundation

(FBK)—drove him into resignation because

he suffered moral humiliation from

our video. We released

an investigation, and Tuleyev gave an interview to Klav...

He said he suffered such humiliation

that he simply could not remain in his

post. And in general, we showed everything—not just

some villages. If you

watch our video again, you’ll see that

Aman Tuleyev, of course... well, either he misspoke or

he is lying. But it was simply

interesting how he says,

“I have nowhere to go, they humiliated me, and I

resigned,” as if he were not

the all-powerful governor who

controlled the entire region,

but some kind of opposition figure.

Let’s listen—one minute and three

seconds of Aman Tuleyev talking about his

humiliation: “They took drones, filmed from above, 100 grams...”

They showed two villages, Mazurovo and Kamysh...

As an example, in a village there is usually...

there’s a small lake in the middle, and it runs...

all of this was presented as if it were the whole picture.”

the governor or maybe you—well, basically, for me

there was only one end to it, somehow, jam in

lease

and this is in a village, an ordinary village

the administrative utility complex there

and the inability to get a word in—I appealed

to the official prosecutor's office, well, you check

so in the end, give an answer, after all

all the same, I am a human being—don't you recognize me as

a governor, a person? Otherwise it's all pointless

I would have stayed silent, but that's why the first thing that

made me go

was this, this—simply, that is

this moral humiliation, this insult

cynical lies, disinformation of the public

you could practically seat Aman Tuleyev (former governor of Kemerovo Region) right here in this studio

sit him down, and the man says: well, I'm, I'm an important

governor, but I'm also a person—that's exactly what

I've been repeating throughout this entire program, in every

video of mine, throughout all my political

activity: we appeal to this government

and say: but we're people too, we're just like

you. Why are you so rude and boorish with us?

Why do you treat us this way, why do you humiliate us and

and then suddenly Aman Tuleyev, having seen our video, also

suddenly undergoes some kind of

rebirth, transformation, and he says: but

I'm a person too—why do you treat me like this?

Why are you morally

humiliating me? Dear Aman, dear Aman Gumirovich, I

know that you watch this program

closely and care very much about how

people discuss you. I'll help you now, you know

so that it will help you overcome this

moral humiliation and get out of this

situation, I'm now going to show you one great

man. Listen to what he says and

do it together—let's do

as he does. Forty-four seconds of the man

who will save Aman Tuleyev from

moral humiliation

Therefore, I believe there must be a system

if I am dissatisfied

I should be able to go to the judiciary, but it

must be independent, and say: there, he

insulted me

he violated my dignity, he did not

pay me my wages, or for example he

did something else there. But now—who are you going to go to?

No one. Right now everything runs on bribes. If you have

money, they'll issue a ruling in your

favor. No money—you are nobody.

Now, when the constitution is being adopted

you cannot hand everything over into the hands of one

person. And he already has parliament in his pocket

the judges—he appoints them; the army, the bankers—he

so if something goes wrong for me, who

do I complain to about him? It's ridiculous—the court? He

appoints it. He'll say it, and the judge will do it that way

Dear Aman Tuleyev, I sympathize with you

it really is like that. And if you

feel morally humiliated, you should

go to court—but the court must be

independent. But as things stand now, the judges are

in one man's pocket, and parli-

parliament—how is it independent now?

No, it's in someone's pocket too. And of course we must not

hand power over to one person

Right, Aman Gumirovich?

Therefore I urge you, having heard how

brilliantly that man we just showed said it all

how absolutely correctly he

speaks about the judiciary: if in

the city of Kemerovo

we are not allowed to hold a rally, then we

must go to court and win that case

but the court must be independent, and it is not

independent. If people stand behind us, and they do

stand behind us, then they should go to parliament

and be elected to parliament. But can we do that?

We cannot be elected, because

parliament is in one man's pocket

all power is in the hands of one person

who has been sitting there for 18 years. Therefore, in order

to stop this, on May 5—whether in

Moscow, or in Kemerovo

or in Novokuznetsk—join

us, come out to the square and say these

wonderful words. See you next

Thursday. Bye, everyone

[music]