A Wealthy Propagandist, the Kremlin Got Scared of Protests, Billions Were Buried in Zaryadye

[music]

Hello everyone. In Moscow, it's 8:18 p.m., which means

it's time for the Navalny Live studio. I'm Alexei

Navalny, here to answer

your questions and discuss with you

the important things that happened this

week. Please write to me on Twitter

right on Twitter with the hashtag #Navalny2018

and I'll try to catch your

messages.

your questions and answer them, though

as best I can. And to begin, of course, I want

to start with Vladimir Rudolfovich

Solovyov.

I know many of you have been waiting for this. We got a lot

of messages saying,

do something about this wonderful man,

write something about him, show

his finest moments. We tried to do that. Today

we released a video. I'm not sure how many

of you have watched it yet. If you haven't,

please do, and help us

spread it around, because it's

very important. Right now, at the start of the

program, I wanted to briefly discuss

whether you feel that his money is your

money. And on that note, right now,

I'm going to launch a poll on Twitter. I

prepared it before going on air and was sitting here

just waiting to press the button. Now I'll press

the button—let's see whether it works or not.

This time, on my Twitter, we'll be doing

a poll. I can see it's up. Plus, we can

vote on VKontakte (Russia's social network) as well.

The story about Solovyov is, of course,

obviously, by now a familiar one: it's a story

of monstrous, truly monstrous hypocrisy. But

this man really does constantly

without the slightest embarrassment take

the exact opposite position

literally within the span of a month.

He obtained Italian residency. We

understand that he mostly lives in

Italy, or at least lives there most of the time. In any

case, on official paperwork he wrote

that he asked the local municipality

to record that he is a resident of this

Italian town and

that he considers it his primary

place of residence. At the same time, he comes here,

earns money here,

praises the authorities here, and here he does

everything he can to make our lives worse. But

what's interesting is that they took a

comment from him.

I think it was RBC (a Russian business media outlet), and he said

something absolutely astonishing: well, what's

the problem? I'm rich. That was such a

great, universal, probably

comment—one that many of

them could probably use. Peskov, tell us

please, where did you get this yacht from? What's

the problem? I'm rich. Tell us, please,

Shuvalov, how is it that you fly your dogs on a private

jet? What don't you like about it? I'm rich.

It sounded so slick, but

also very cynical. Though you can

compare him to them: some of them make

tens of millions of dollars. But overall

his income is comparable to theirs, except they work

in a huge market, in a country with a gigantic

population and an enormous advertising

market. Russia is a much poorer

country. If we compare Solovyov's income

to the incomes of TV hosts in countries where they honestly

earn their money, in countries with a comparable

TV market size,

comparable populations, European

countries of some kind, we'll see that this

man is simply swimming in

money, even by the standards of a normal,

honest, successful TV host. He

earns far more than he

should. So I absolutely believe that

the income

Solovyov receives is all corrupt income. And the separate episode with

his

apartment, which the Moscow city government

essentially gifted him—gifted, that is, by selling it

to him at five times below market price—

that's a textbook case of corruption. For

that alone, they should all be jailed.

That's causing damage on an especially large

scale to the Moscow city budget, because

if something is worth one ruble

and you sell it—and you're a government

official—and you sell something worth one ruble

to someone for one kopeck, that means you've

caused 99 kopecks in damages, right? That's exactly

what happened with him. That's precisely why,

by the way, notice that he hasn't

really commented much

on what's happening around him, at least

so far. He's saying everything very, very

calmly. But by the way, I'm looking at the

poll, which has only just started, and

my point of view is not

super overwhelming: 63 percent

of people think that Solovyov's income is

money from their own pockets. 37 percent of people

think it isn't. But then I have

a question for that 37 percent: where

do you think that money came from? I mean,

it didn't just appear out of thin air. Where

does the money for Rossiya 24 come from? It

comes from the Russian state budget,

from your pocket, because

Rossiya 24

is a completely loss-making

enterprise. And Solovyov, as far as

the press reports, signs some very

strange and highly suspicious

contracts with Sberbank (Russia's largest state-owned bank),

and he himself—I mean, how else can you put it—

is very dubious. I'm very sorry that

German Gref is involved in all this,

but we understand that in this way they could

simply be supporting him—financing him, really.

Sberbank was saddled with the obligation to provide

money to maintain, essentially,

all these splendid

dachas (country houses) and buildings that you can see now

on the screen. So where did Sberbank get it from?

It’s a state-owned bank. The money

paid out to Solovyov has effectively recently become

dividends the state did not receive, in a way

in the background. So please

help us spread this

far and wide. People need to know who those

liars sitting on television really are.

I can see that the results aren’t changing much

in our poll: 64 percent

believe that Solovyov’s money, his income,

is money taken from your pocket. Thirty-six

percent say no, that this money

came

from somewhere else. But perhaps Vladimir

Rudolfovich

will tell us where it came from. So far he’s

very uncharacteristically for himself

commenting on all this. Usually, after all, he

would already have called the entire Russian internet scum and lowlifes by now,

but for now he’s simply

banning everyone, blocking people, and not answering

questions. He only muttered one phrase: “I’m

rich.” But I don’t think he’ll hold out.

He’ll comment, he’ll tell us everything

he thinks about our investigation. It will be

quite interesting to watch. As for what

I’m doing now and our other affairs — I’m

heading out to the regions now.

It’s fairly difficult, I’ll be honest,

quite exhausting, but it’s simply

wonderful. Our calculation proved correct.

To be honest, it was a rather bold idea

we had: that we would now

travel from city to city, and not just

hold small meetings with

voters indoors, but actual

rallies. A rally is a risky thing:

you gather people outdoors, and no one may

show up, and then they’ll say, well,

some presidential candidate you are — nobody

came to see you. But I can tell you honestly

that what is happening now — forgive

my saying so — is such an important thing,

it has exceeded our expectations. We did not

expect that so many people would come.

For us, a perfectly

normal, honest goal was 400 people.

A good rally — really a good

rally — 400 people at a meeting with

voters is a lot. That’s about as many

as presidential candidates

in the United States get at campaign events

during the primary stage — even fewer sometimes. Well, 150

people is less, of course, but we were prepared

for a small turnout. For us, it was a huge

surprise that people

are coming. And of course for the authorities this became

an absolute nightmare, and we can see that now

basically the entire regional agenda

of local administrations is aimed at

simply denying us the chance

to hold such meetings, because they

make an impression on people, they

make an impression on officials, they

make an impression on the police.

They stand there and say, “My God, it seems like

who, then, actually supports this

government, if here at this rally, as happened

in Khabarovsk and Vladivostok,

where our venues were very far from the center,

very inconveniently located,

thousands of people still came?” These same

police officers also guard the rallies

held by the governor’s administration, and they

understand that this here was a real

rally, while that over there was fake. If that many

people came to a real rally, then

it turns out nobody supports the authorities.

That’s terrible for them; they suffer because of it.

And we are seeing very practical

consequences. Please show the two

images.

This is how many approvals we used to get

for our rallies just a couple of weeks ago.

As you can see, red marks places where there were

refusals; yellow means bad venues;

green means something more or less

acceptable; and a few

dark-green cells show places where there was

something actually normal — decent venues.

Now show what it looks like now.

Please — it’s red. In other words, everywhere there are simply

flat-out refusals, refusals, refusals.

That was last week. And if we showed you

the following week, our applications wouldn’t even

be worth showing, because it would be

like a Malevich painting called

“Red Square,” because nowhere and for nothing are we

getting anything but constant, nonstop

refusals.

And in the most exotic forms, too. For example,

in Nizhny Novgorod, on Friday

evening I’ll be speaking in Nizhny

Novgorod. There are supposedly no problems at all, and

yet they keep doing this thing all the time:

they don’t issue formal refusals, they don’t give formal approval either.

Publicly, they interpret it as though

the rally is banned. But when you go to

court, they say, “Good heavens, folks,

we were simply waiting with our signs

standing around the corner to join

your rally, but for some reason you never came.”

Quite something, isn’t it? That’s how it works.

Please show the response from Perm — it’s

simply marvelous. Take a look at it now.

In Perm,

they literally wrote it out directly like this:

“This means that, judging by the fact that

what you have going on is, in fact,

a planned meeting with Alexei Navalny,”

and since a meeting with Alexei Navalny is not

a constitutional event, therefore you are

prohibited. That’s it.”

I just want to say to the administration as well

of the city of Perm—Perm, as they like to pronounce it—

to Perm itself and to Mr. Reshetnikov

the new governor of Perm Krai, that

we regard this kind of refusal as

approval, because you should have

provided an alternative venue or

written something coherent

so we will simply come and hold

our rally, because, well, this is just

nonsense, what is written there—they understand

that in court, even in today’s

Russian court, they would lose with such a

trick like that. So acting this way

that is why we regard all of this as

approval, and we will press for

what is ours. We already have some experience

of holding these rallies; we have held them in

different cities under different conditions

but all these rallies were united by

one thing: they took place with

excellent public order, so

we have proved to everyone that ours are excellent

wonderful peaceful rallies whose

real purpose is for me to tell people something

for them to ask me questions, get my

answers, disperse, shake hands—everything is fine

therefore we have every right to hold

such events, and we will continue to hold them. We

of course now have

an interesting situation in St. Petersburg

where it is very important for us to hold a rally

of course, there are many supporters there

a wonderful city with democratic

traditions

you have probably seen my video where I

said: guys, for weeks and weeks

for many weeks, in good faith,

we submit applications to you, and you keep sending us

to the middle of nowhere

so, on October 7

either you approve a perfectly acceptable

Marsovo Pole (Field of Mars), where there actually was

a Hyde Park-style free speech area. To deny the obvious—Solovyov

is a talented journalist and not a third-rate one

or will you say that this is your personal

opinion, while the fact that he is a paid

propagandist is certainly my

personal opinion—that he is, after all, a third-

rate journalist, in my personal opinion

and it is based on the fact that, well, I have lived

I am 41 years old, and I saw NTV in the old days

I saw a great number

of different talk shows, back in the days when

Yevgeny Kiselyov was there

Savik Shuster, Svetlana Sorokina, and all

the others who

there were many of them—who were later fired or forced out

some of whom were driven out of the country

some of whom were forbidden to practice their

profession because, well, they did not agree

to do what Solovyov does. In those

days he was among the baggage of third-rate

journalists—he was a third-rate

journalist, and now he is everywhere

on all channels, the main kind of host

solely because there is no

competition, because only he

is entrusted to say these things and do

what he does. Not many are willing to

well, listen, probably if we compare him

with those who are there now

some kind of—I know them well

I know Kiselyov, and on Channel One

there are just some hellish

crazy people hosting things. Probably, if

you compare him with them

then Solovyov, although he can joke and

he has some of his own little tricks

all sorts of theatrical effects that matter for a

host, but that does not make him any less

of a third-rate journalist, because compared

with real journalists

who were driven out—well, of course

he is third-rate, and that is what I think. I am not saying

this because I want to additionally

insult someone weak—no, it is just simply

a normal assessment. So, we are having problems with

the internet. They are writing that I should

apologize to you—for what, for

some delays or what?

oh, how awful, I see that right now

7,000 people are watching us—probably some kind of

jerky feed. Sorry, please

here I am going on and on, trying

to joke and say various things, and you

maybe cannot hear me, or hear me as

some kind of clown (Petrushka, a traditional Russian puppet clown)

but right now we are trying to sort out

the internet. I do not know what is happening to us here

on Channel One—or maybe some kind of scheming

scheming by Vladimir Solovyov, who came and chewed through

the cable here, and that is why

he is silent on Twitter too, because he came

here, sneaked in, put on some kind of wig

and chewed through the cable. So, Grif, he

writes: Alexei, on To Reach, congratulate

me—I managed to persuade my own uncle

my uncle, a lieutenant colonel at a military unit in the city of

Kirov; the unit number is here. I managed

to do it after three years. Now 70

percent of the unit is for you. Grifon, you are

absolutely fantastic, and that is great

it shows that methods of persuasion still

work. People can be

as stubborn as you like

and call black white, but if you

spend some time to actually

explain things, it is impossible to deny many

facts—well, they simply exist, like

that Italian villa of Slava (likely referring to Solovyov)

it simply exists; there are the Rotenbergs (powerful Russian oligarch brothers) and bad

roads out there on the streets—they simply exist

therefore you need to work with people and you need

to

to explain things to them. So, let me finish

the topic of my trips—please show

the card. I will be there on Friday evening at 18:00

o'clock in Nizhny Novgorod, in Orenburg

I will be there on September 30 at 12:00 in

Arkhangelsk. I will be there on Sunday, the 1st

of October, at 6:00 p.m. in Arkhangelsk. It's very

interesting there: the local administration

has organized a fireworks display so that, basically, no one

would come to our rally, to distract

people. For the first time in the history of

Arkhangelsk, they have arranged a fireworks

competition and are holding it at 5:00 p.m., that is

during daylight hours. They are holding

a fireworks display. You'd think they'd even manage to ruin the fireworks

with this stupidity of theirs. But anyway, they felt they needed

to put on something, so please

come. It is very important to us that you

show up, and it is very important for the authorities that you

show them that people do come, they do come

to rallies like this.

Tell us about the police officer who was hit by

an FSB car. I have a quick one here

— Gonzalez writes. I will talk about that.

How do you plan to defend the ruling you received

from the ECHR? Well, that's exactly how I plan to do it. I

am already doing it. I received a ruling from a whole bunch of

bodies; the Council of Europe also said that the decision has not

been implemented and that I must be allowed to take part in

the election. So I travel around the regions, climb up

onto the stage, and from the stage—and in delightful

discussions on Facebook.

No, I don't want to engage in delightful

discussions. I want—if I have a couple of hours—to

play and do this Twitch stream. Why?

Because, first of all, I want to support

esports. Second, I think it is

perfectly normal when young people take part in

games, and children take part in games and play

because it develops them, it

introduces them to technology in some way. It is

a useful thing. We'll raise some money there too, yes,

but many people treat it ironically.

On Twitch, people raise a lot of

so-called donations, yes.

Well, some people will laugh at that, and to that

I say: fine, but at least I am honestly

earning money. If they have cut off all

the other avenues for us, then fine: I play, people watch,

they send me 100 rubles each (about $1) so that you

know where the money for

financing the election campaign comes from.

And Tovar Chernenko asks: I hope for

Twitch they choose a proper game and not

some kind of dictator simulator. Well, I don't

know, maybe there is such a game—

a dictator simulator. I won't

play it. I'm not a dictator; leader worship is not

my thing. PlayerUnknown's

Battlegrounds—I hope I didn't say

something stupid or get the name wrong, so that people don't

laugh at me. But anyway, there are a lot

of questions about Twitch and all sorts of things related to it.

I really appreciate it, and

and... UE4, but for someone who has played before, it will be

the hardest and the easiest at the same time.

Guys, I don't even know what that means, and

for now I find it hard to answer. I will try

to figure all of this out. It will be my

first experience, so just come

and, if nothing else, have a laugh at me as I

play this game and

stream it all on Twitch. Alexander

Vladislav Ander asks:

Please comment on the phenomenon

of German Gref. How do you feel about his

personality, his position that the masses

cannot be trusted with decision-making, with the right

to choose? Well, that is already a rather old

statement by German Gref. It seems to me

he said that more than a year ago. As for Gref himself,

I am rather sympathetic to him, but

at least at Sberbank there is a very

problematic organization, and despite all the

enormous, enormous problems,

screwups, and everything else, he tries

to do things.

A lot of things. I have even sued it, by the way,

as a Sberbank shareholder, and I criticize

him constantly. So in that sense I

criticize him a lot. But if we compare

him with other banks like VTB, or with other

state companies like Rosneft, it's like night

and day. But Gref's statement is

absolutely, of course, unacceptable, and it

perfectly shows it: he simply expressed what people in

the Kremlin think. They really do think that way. I mean,

how could we possibly entrust these

people with anything? Look out the window,

look at them.

How could we entrust decision-making to

people like that? No, of course not.

They really do think that way, and Gref

really thinks so too: that they

are some kind of privileged caste, that they are

Russia's elite managers, that the whole country rests

on them, while these people

walking around in the streets should simply

listen.

They really do think that way. Gref

just said it

out loud for everyone. It is absolutely unacceptable, and

that is why this government

cannot be supported.

They quite seriously regard everyone

as nobodies,

while seeing themselves as some kind of great, great

people. The governors' resignations—let's

discuss that. On the one hand, these are the most important

political events of the past week; on the

other hand, it was amusing to watch how

people nobody knows—except perhaps

the residents of their own region—are replaced by

other people nobody knows, and

all of this is presented as: my God, Putin has replaced

the governors, how important. Some

unknown no-names are being replaced by other

no-names. And why is this

happening? I have my own answer to that

question, which has just

sort of taken shape based on my trips to

in the region, based on how I talk to people

in conversation, I feel that they, that they

think, and what they don’t want. Everyone is really, really

fed up with this incomprehensible non-happening

of nothing. And before the election, there’s this kind of

demand, like: do something for us

it’s very bad, we’re poor, so do something

to improve our lives, do at least something

it’s all just some kind of, well, simply some kind of horror

going on. And what is it they can’t do?

They can raise the minimum wage

No? They can return the stolen

pension savings. No? They can boost the economy

No? They can start by repairing the roads

No? It’s not true that they can’t do anything

except maybe some personnel changes. It would be better

if they made those personnel changes

in the government, and the whole population wants that

and dreams of simply sending

our Dmitry Anatolyevich

Medvedev into retirement

and Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev), but that’s difficult

Changing ministers is hard; Putin is used to them

they’ve been sitting there for so long, and

but governors are actually the

weakest link in the whole system

of executive power, so now they’re

getting rid of governors more often. I just

understand it that way, based on polling and

and the coolest thing, from my point of view

the most interesting thing about all these resignations

please show the table of how much

support the ousted governors got in

elections recently

or rather, in their last elections. Just look

look: Merkushkin got 91 percent, well, two

of them were sort of appointed by parliaments

in Dagestan there’s a different system. Shantsev got 86

percent, 60, 376

So it turns out, my friends, that

they sent into resignation, just like that, all at once

with a snap of the fingers, the most popular

politicians in the country, no less. There you go

there you have it. Good Lord, in Samara everyone was supposedly

voting for him

and before that, in Mordovia

an insane number of people voted for

Merkushkin. For Shantsev, 86

percent — so that means the whole

Nizhny Novgorod Region was practically ready to

throw itself in front of bullets for him. And what does it turn out? It turns out

they were removed, and there was complete silence

I’m not even talking about some kind of

protest rallies, I’m not talking about

protest rallies — but at least maybe some

press reaction? Just yesterday that

press was gushing about what a uniquely

brilliant politician Valery Pavlinovich Shantsev was

how he was the very best, the very best

the one and only, and the same thing

with Merkushkin, and all of them — exactly the same

they were removed, and nobody even noticed

nobody cares, and no one is interested in

91 percent or 86 percent

it means nothing. It turned out

it turned out that it means absolutely nothing

at all

and it’ll be the same with Putin, and with Putin

it’ll be the same — all these percentages

mean nothing; politically, his

cocoon... Look, they’ve just replaced him now, and

basically, if there really had been

popular love — 91 percent

of popular love — and yet, bang

they replaced this Merkushkin with some

Dmitry Azarov, and in Samara Region

still

good Lord, who is Dmitry Azarov anyway?

Why Dmitry Azarov? Right now we have this

popular joke that they replaced the governors

and picked new candidates because

they all look alike

there are really a lot of people there, but they just

look so much alike. This photo

was very popular on the internet, that they

apparently, with the new iPhone

could unlock each other’s phones

because of the face ID thing, and

these two are like identical magic helpers (a reference to a Russian fairy-tale pair)

nobody knows them. Gleb Nikitin, who

is going to be appointed in Nizhny Novgorod Region

I know him; I think I even

sued him once, because he sat on

the boards of directors of all those companies and

covered up the corruption that was going on there

while representing the interests of the state. In other words

this is actually a man who for many

years worked with corrupt officials and did

everything to make life comfortable for them. But

who in Nizhny Novgorod Region even knows

what he looks like? Nobody. And yet they removed

the popularly elected, beloved

Shantsev and replaced him with just some guy in

glasses. And what happened? Nothing. That’s exactly what

shows that all these ratings, all these

talk about support for the authorities

just — simply stop

repeating it, stop listening to it. It doesn’t

mean absolutely anything. Interestingly, you know

I saw this in

Krasnoyarsk Krai

there, the owner of an independent

TV station, Vadim Vostrov, he

wrote a very apt and interesting post

with which I’ll wrap up the topic of governors — about

Tolokonsky, who has also just been removed

and people are asking why Tolokonsky was removed

whether because of his age, since he had reached

retirement age, or for some other reason, and

he asks the right question: it’s not even

about why he was removed, but why on earth

he was appointed three years ago in the first place, because

three years ago everyone knew that he had reached

retirement age, that this was a governor

who came from Novosibirsk to

Krasnoyarsk — and in Krasnoyarsk, of course, they don’t like anyone who

comes from Novosibirsk

everyone, everyone knew about him that he was some kind of

A strange person, not popular, and yet

for some unclear reason he was appointed three

years ago, and now for some equally unclear reason he has been

removed. And this perfectly illustrates, in general,

the entire personnel policy in the country. It

makes you want to rewind a little and look back.

The restream is delayed; I don't really understand

whether anything can be done about it. I’d suggest, well,

sorry, probably when all of this

is available as a recording, it will all be easier.

So, I was written to while answering questions.

Svetlana Trofim: “Are you replacing Putin with plague or

cholera? He’s incapable of anything,” roughly speaking.

That’s basically true, but “plague for cholera”

is really just swapping one bad thing for another.

They really are incapable of anything.

Of course, they would be happy to pull off some

great stunt that would help before the

election, so everyone would say, “Putin, well done,”

“just look what he’s done.” But there is no such thing.

They can’t do it. “The Motherland”

has been working overtime producing Putin — well, yes,

it does seem that way.

Zhenya Morozov: “Alexei, tell us, can Russia’s regions

get honest, lawful

economic development if you are

elected president?”

“Please answer with the regions in mind.” Zhenya

Morozov, my dear regions — I answer this

at every meeting. In fact, this is

one of the main, perhaps the main, goals

of the election campaign, because it is also

the goal of my presidency in general — or rather,

my desire to come to power — because there cannot be

any

economic development of the country without

the development of the regions. In fact,

the country’s economic development

is exactly that kind of thing.

“Development of the regions” sounds absurd,

and only in Russia does such a concept even exist:

the “development of the regions.”

What else could possibly develop, then? Because

you simply have a gigantic Moscow

and the rest are regions that are simply of no use

to anyone. But that doesn’t work; it never

will work that way. Russia will not

develop unless Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, or

Tula are developing too — unless they are thriving.

Tula.

Because that is the only way it works: when

cities grow richer, people in the regions grow richer,

someone’s salary goes up — that is

economic growth. And that is the kind of

economic growth I will pursue.

And the most important point here is to give the regions

independence — financial

and tax independence, along with various other

powers — because when we look at

developed federal states, we see

a clear pattern: where the money

and the powers are, development happens there.

Where there are no powers, everything has died.

Well, in Russia it has been dying for the last 18 years.

Alexei. Alexander Kazakov: “Alexei,”

“good evening. Domestic flights in our country — yes, in

our country domestic air travel is expensive. What

will you do when you become

president? It’s simply unrealistic

to travel across the whole country.” Alex

Kazakov, you’ve hit the nail right on the

head — right in the heart of the matter.

If Volkov were sitting here, the one who

handles the campaign headquarters’ finances,

he would have leapt up right now in

ecstasy and shouted, “Yes, yes, yes!” But we do fly,

and first of all, look at

the itineraries of our trips — they look like

exotic routes, because going from

Murmansk to Yekaterinburg and all that sort of thing

all goes through Moscow.

Because in Russia it is impossible

to get around: tickets in Russia are very

expensive.

Between a huge number of cities, from one

city to another, you can’t get there even in

a full day. It’s monstrous, absolutely monstrous. It is

simply a gigantic barrier to the

country’s development.

If I become president, we will abolish — we will

introduce an open-skies policy. That is,

everyone will be able to fly.

We will eliminate monopolies and begin

fighting monopolism both in the market for

airports and airport services, and of course

in the airline market as well. In all

countries there are low-cost carriers. Right now, throughout the

world, the air travel market is developing —

sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes

tourism grows more.

Sometimes it falls into crisis, but even so,

in the United States you can still fly from

almost any city to any other city fairly

quickly. And in Russia, with a market of 150

million people — smaller than the American one,

but still large enough —

it is certainly big enough for

airlines to develop very successfully here,

to compete, to lower prices, for prices to be at

the level of famous low-cost carriers, where if you

book a ticket in advance, you might

buy a ticket for $20 and fly

from one part of Europe to another part of

Europe. And we will introduce that in Russia too, and it is clear

how to do it. A police officer has been hit —

let’s watch the video. It’s horrifying,

of course, but let’s watch it anyway.

Here we can see it; now we will see on

it Novy Arbat (a major avenue in central Moscow).

A traffic jam, and there is this car, and it simply

runs over a traffic police officer, killing him, and this is of course

undoubtedly a crime — yes, a crime

through negligence, of course. But I am far from

thinking that an FSB car (Federal Security Service) deliberately

ran down this traffic officer. But what

has been happening around this

is truly monstrous.

It really shows just how much even those very...

So the police are not protected—meaning the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service)...

at some enormous speed, apparently.

The only thing missing is an oprichnik’s (Ivan the Terrible’s enforcer) wolf’s

head on the hood. They hit a person, and after that

what happens? Once again, this whole

license-plate removal.

Covering for them—and which garage does

this car belong to? Come on, what are you hiding, and from whom

are you hiding it? What is so secret here? Good grief.

So, apparently, some warrant officers were...

driving someone somewhere, they were speeding,

they ran over a traffic cop—but hold them

accountable. Let them apologize, then.

Let the FSB fire the head of the garage.

Why do we need all this filth and nastiness,

with the license plates being removed, with this

endless lying, with the ignoring

of this whole issue?

Today, Minister Kolokoltsev said that

he hopes this incident

will be reviewed fairly. “Hopes”?

He’s the Minister of Internal Affairs. And he also added this

interesting thing, like, well, of course,

all

high-profile traffic accidents have been

investigated fairly.

So this one, too, will be investigated

fairly. Seriously? Fairly?

Was it investigated fairly? Do you remember the Mercedes 666 case,

that Lukoil Mercedes

that got into a crash on Leninsky Prospekt (a major avenue in Moscow),

when in the end they blamed the young woman who died,

saying she had caused the accident, even though everyone

could see from the diagrams that this was not true? And all

the other crashes, all the other flashing lights—and

in cases when

because of these flashing beacons, even ambulances—has there ever

been even one case investigated properly? Even once, when

someone was held administratively responsible?

No. So now all of this is being done again

under the table. It’s disgusting.

It shows that, well, even—even

a police officer, even a traffic cop on New Arbat

and some kind of special-unit officer

from a special battalion and all that—

supposedly part of this regime’s nomenklatura (privileged official class),

but your protection is zero when someone drives over you.

That’s it.

Those above you? Zero protection, zero

chance of getting justice, at least

for your relatives—zero chance even

of hearing even some kind of respectful

word said. You can’t imagine the horror

his relatives, his colleagues,

his fellow officers are in as they watch all this. The whole

night, it’s like he was just a bug—crushed, run over,

and then they spun it and moved on. In the press—

silence. No conclusions have been drawn from any of this.

No one is even trying to limit,

for example, the number of flashing beacons. No one

asks the question: why were they even going anywhere

at night? Was there a terrorist attack there?

Had a war broken out? Did you really need to drive

with the beacon on? A flashing beacon should be used only in

exceptional cases. It’s obvious they were

just bypassing traffic, even though now they say

no one was in that car, and probably

it will be hard for us to learn the truth about it.

We assume some boss was in a hurry,

using it to get around traffic. They ran over

a person, and everything is supposedly fine—and tomorrow they’ll run over

someone else. This was a police officer; if it had been

an ordinary civilian, someone would have said, “My God,”

“well, nobody was lying there, he was crossing the street

wrong,” and that would be it—they crushed him.

This is an absolutely monstrous thing that

shows that no one can

count on justice—not even

the police. Behind you, supposedly, there stands

some kind of police corporation; you’re not

just an ordinary citizen. But justice? Zero.

You’re a bug to them, a bug to these

people who can, right now, drive here

with flashing lights. I very much hope that

there will be some kind of investigation, that we’ll be told

who did this, and that conclusions will be drawn from it—

both legal and

political ones, including someone resigning,

the number of flashing beacons being reduced,

and other similar measures

that ought to happen. Now, questions.

Alexei, so, economic development...

Ilya asks: it’s strange, why is there no

mug in the store? I want your okroshka (a cold soup) mug.

I think we do have mugs in the store, but

I’m being told that we’re introducing them gradually.

For us, it’s fairly complicated

production, because we make everything in Russia,

and that’s why the mugs haven’t appeared yet,

but they will appear. So

please come to our

store a little later, and, and...

[music]

buy a mug. Let me see the poll.

Has anything changed on Solovyov’s poll, or not?

No? Come on, come on, Twitter, load.

Load, load... 67 percent

believe that Vladimir

Solovyov’s income comes from our pockets; 33

percent say no, not from our pockets. Cannibals—

let’s talk about cannibals. I can’t

pass over this topic, because, listen,

what should happen in

a normal country where there is

a normal press and normal authorities, if

the fact is being concealed that in a town in

Kuban (a region in southern Russia), there was a family that

ate people, that killed people.

There are different reports, and at that point there were two proven

victims, while the entire press was writing that they had killed 30 people,

eaten them, made pirozhki (stuffed buns) out of them, and

all sorts of other things. It sounds like some kind of

bad 1970s horror movie,

but it’s the plain truth. And they caught these

cannibals solely because

the—what do you call him—the chief cannibal, I guess,

[music]

had photographed the bodies of his victims and left...

This phone, the phone, wasn’t password-protected, no.

Some

migrant worker opened the settings on the phone.

He saw it and, fortunately—fortunately, thank God—

he turned out to be such a decent, decent person.

He didn’t just slip it into his pocket,

he gave the phone to the person who came looking for it

and called the police, and only after that

did all of this come out, and it was like in that

remember the film *The Diamond Arm* (a famous Soviet comedy)?

There was a very good line, a running joke,

and it was: “This building is fighting for”

“the title of a house of high everyday culture” (a Soviet-era phrase mocking pretensions to refinement). And against

the backdrop of all this, we still claim that

Russia is somehow such a spiritual country. Just

think about it—you should be losing your

minds over this. Television, radio, all the newspapers should

be running reports, writing books about how this

could have happened, what our society has come to

that in Kuban (a region in southern Russia), someone was eating people and making

pies out of them. Thirty people were killed. This

wasn’t just one maniac—a whole family was involved in it.

We don’t know how many people were

involved. The police weren’t looking for the missing

victims. Basically there was no—well, there was no

notice posted across Krasnodar Krai (a region in southern Russia):

“Attention,”

“we are looking for a serial killer.” None of that happened.

They found this person by accident. Well yes, so what?

My God, and we don’t even see any kind of

public outcry. My God, in Kuban

there’s a cannibal. Well, okay, it’s Kuban—there are even

the Tsapki there (a notorious criminal gang), so fine, what a miracle, they ate

a couple of people—thirty people were eaten, well

yes, let’s keep thinking about our spirituality. In

Krasnodar, these people come running into our headquarters,

the so-called “Putin grandmas,” who

are the ones shouting, “What do you mean, you’re undermining our

our spirituality, our

stability, you’re destroying it

with your gay, European-style

ways, while everything is fine here, we

don’t need to change anything.” Well, there you have it,

everything’s fine—cannibals are living among you here.

Do you understand? In the 21st century, the police do not

investigate this, and when all of it comes out, it

ends up as the third item in the news, in the

incidents section.

Instead of getting simply

emotional coverage—but in order

to actually understand what kind of

enormous

problems there are in the country, if this

happened. It’s a failure of the law enforcement

system, a failure of the education system, well,

apparently a failure of the system for treating

people with mental illness, and then a failure

of the system for finding missing people. That’s what led

to a situation where we are discussing how

we had a cannibal in this country—a cannibal

was caught recently.

Good thing he was caught thanks to

a migrant worker. You see, that’s our spirituality.

The leader of a Christian state, whom

we discussed on the previous

program,

turned out to be a murderer who killed his

neighbor in order to steal

money from her together with some drug addicts.

And then there’s the cannibal too. Great, just great.

Here we are, building spirituality. And again,

coming back to our topic—so, who is

to blame for all this? Vladimir Solovyov.

But Vladimir Solovyov as a generalized, common-name figure,

Vladimir Solovyov who refuses to talk about

problems, who lies about how everything is

fine here, leads to things like this

happening, because when you ignore

problems, they grow—and among other things

it reaches these monstrous

forms. I was at Zaryadye Park

with my wife; we went to Zaryadye Park.

And since we still have a little time, I wanted

to share my impressions with you, although

right now, our—what—10,000

people are watching online, well

probably around 400,000

people will watch this episode as usual. I mean,

even if you live in Moscow, most of you

haven’t been to Zaryadye Park, but I kind of want

to share it with everyone, because 14

billion rubles (about US$240 million at the time) were spent on this park—one of

the most expensive parks in the world, and by a wide

margin the most expensive park in Russia. You

all—we all—

I included, paid for it. I

went to take a look. You all know how I feel

about Moscow City Hall, how I feel about Sobyanin,

how I feel about expensive parks, so

basically everyone expects that I’ll

come and trash the whole thing. So if I say,

“Alexei, come on, give Zaryadye Park a fair shot,”

and honestly say what you liked there—

it’s been praised a lot, so just honestly praise

what you liked, and

and try not to nitpick too much

about what you didn’t like”—so I

can say right away that I really

liked that there is a park there at all. There used to be

an ugly, nightmarish hotel there.

Show me a single, a single

photograph—a good photograph—that

I liked. All the photos, by the way,

I took myself—please take a look.

The sunset was beautiful; I photographed it on

my phone. Brilliant. It’s really great that

there is a park there. At last, a place has appeared

in the city of Moscow where you can

sit on a bench, take, I don’t know,

a sandwich out of your pocket and a carton of

kefir, and chew away while looking out at

the Kremlin. That’s great. There wasn’t a place like that before.

It’s an amazing thing that they

demolished the hotel there and made a park. Everything

else—if you haven’t been to Zaryadye Park,

you know what to do? Go to your grandmother’s dacha

(country house).

It’s exactly the same thing, just with a park sign on it.

Zaryadye

not even at your grandmother's dacha (country cottage)

there's a sewer manhole, just like this one

and they call that landscape design—where is it in this

photo I took? You can see some kind of

grass like at your grandmother's dacha, scraggly

little trees like at your grandmother's dacha, and

they tell me this is landscape design

all this cost 400 rubles there

there are sewer manholes all over the

park, and there are also some other

things like these—they're ventilation

I mean, these metal boxes

painted over like this with oil paint

it looks bizarre, and again, among grass like

at your grandmother's dacha—what was it they brought from

Germany, some kind of super-sprouts that

were supposedly stolen later—who would even want to steal all that

steal it? So here, this means

like this stone composition, and in it

also

there are some monstrous, monstrous

utility boxes sticking out—I don't even know what to call them

painted green, and

and this Zaryadye Park is basically this

hexagonal paving tile you see here

sewer manholes and grass that

looks like the grass by your grandmother's house

what landscape design? What 14

billion rubles? I walked around there

looking around—sure, you can see the Kremlin very

beautifully, but come closer and again, at

your grandmother's dacha, the greenhouse that

your neighbor Uncle Petya welded together for three bottles of vodka

and you'll see there these

metal structures—take this picture away

I can't look at it—these kinds of

metal structures welded together like this

just like some 55-year-old uncle welded them somewhere

and here all of this was done in that same way

maybe I'm not much of a specialist in

this, sure, but I can see it with my own eyes, and

it looks like the greenhouse at my

dacha that my dad built, and excuse me

but that greenhouse doesn't cost 14 billion

rubles, and it doesn't cost 1 billion rubles either, and

it doesn't cost a million rubles either, and this is

what the whole of Zaryadye Park looks like, honestly

speaking. After this walk, I'm almost

convinced that most of—I won't say all of

them, of course—but most of these

glowing reviews of Zaryadye Park

were of course made by paid

bloggers, and Moscow City Hall pays for that

too. There are things you can praise

and things you can praise, like the fact there's no hotel, you can

praise the beautiful view, the restaurant there

is nice. By the way, everyone criticized

in most reviews, everyone praised it

but complained about the music in the restaurant, whereas I

liked it—Bravo (a Russian pop-rock band), even Oleg

Gazmanov (a Russian singer) I'm willing to tolerate. Well, you know

we're normal Soviet Russian people, we

want to sit

and eat while they play songs about

Moscow. What, do you want

experimental jazz there or something, in a

Russian park in the center of the country? I'm

perfectly fine with Lyube (a Russian patriotic rock band)

playing there, so I have no complaints on that score

I liked that part: the restaurant is good, everything

the staff are quite nice and friendly

the National Guard officers too, well

they're normal enough. But 14 billion rubles

that's the issue, that's our

problem with this Zaryadye Park, and if it were

say 2 billion rubles, okay

Zaryadye Park for 3 billion rubles—well

fine, you could live with that, although honestly it looks

a little provincial, to be honest

for the largest city in Europe. But Zaryadye Park

and 14 billion rubles? No, I

refuse to believe it. And they were also

telling us it would cost 30—please show

us everything. The worst part is

that all of this is surrounded by some kind of

monstrous iron fence, here it is

you can see my wife here as she

comes out of the exit of Zaryadye Park, which

cost 400 billion rubles—I mean there are

just some absolutely

hideous-looking metal detectors and

just some kind of—this, this right here—this

is what's called the main entrance

this is the main entrance to Zaryadye Park, again

for 4 billion rubles, with the Kremlin in the background

landscape design, foreign

architects, everything so fancy—and this is what it looks like

all of it looks like this. To get out of there

you just have to walk through some

little metal fences and horrible flowerbeds

please show it—I took a picture of

a flowerbed. This, you understand, is a flowerbed

well, basically at your grandmother's

dacha there isn't a flowerbed like this because she

wouldn't make one—it's too

big

come on, I don't believe this was done by the best

landscape designers. It looks

monstrous. Just go there and you'll see that I'm

not lying. It looks like just a flowerbed with

petunias. They say these are unique

flowers, unique flowers that were brought

from Germany, and they even brought special earthworms

there, supposedly, whole families of

earthworms—but what earthworms?

All I see is just a park: paving, grass, and

this paving laid by ordinary

Central Asian migrant workers. Everything there

was done by some foreman, Petrovich

who was directing the Central Asian

migrant workers—and 14 billion rubles

down the drain. There's no advanced landscape

design there at all

Maybe the original project was

beautiful, but what came out is something completely

unworthy of a city like Moscow

definitely completely below that level

...to finish off the money there, this bridge they were talking about...

They were talking about it—yes, it juts out into the...

Moskva River. It should be entered—well, I mean...

it should be put in the Guinness World Records.

But it really should be entered into the Guinness World Records,

because it’s the only bridge

where people are let on in turns, one batch at a time.

That is, I have to stand there, waiting in

line.

Not because there are too many people there, but because

they’re afraid it might collapse or something.

It’s a bridge, and they only let people onto it

in small groups. The photos from there

do come out great, I won’t argue with that.

It will be the best place in Moscow

to take a selfie with the Kremlin in the background, or

with the high-rise where Shuvalov lives in the background, on

Kotelnicheskaya Embankment.

It’s very beautiful—the Moskva River, really, the views

are beautiful, the panoramas are beautiful, it’s great.

It’s a place from which you can look out over Moscow.

But we could have looked at Moscow for

far less money and not spent 14 billion

rubles (about US$150 million). You’d only need a few thousand.

I’ve said the phrase “14 billion” so many times—14

billion rubles—but I just can’t

calm down, because after all, we’re the Anti-Corruption Foundation

(FBK), so here I’m being told:

“They looted the park,” says Igor

Zhuravlyov. “They looted the park for billions...”

“They carved up the park.” “Grandmas, this is better...”

“Cormorants will peck your grandmother’s grass away.”

There are lots of jokes here, everything is packed with jokes, as I can see.

Honestly, go to Zaryadye Park

and you’ll see exactly the same thing.

Exactly the same.

Arktika writes: in Arkhangelsk, they canceled

the route buses on October 1 that go

to the area where the rally is being held, which is far from

the city center. I’m not surprised.

Well, they do everything they can to make sure no one

comes to the rally—they canceled the route

buses.

Crooks, crooks, and swindlers.

Well, what can I say? This happens

everywhere. They’re afraid, terribly afraid. But

just imagine: you’re a governor, and you

can’t even organize your own best rally.

You’ll get 300 people showing up,

students,

who were given

I don’t know, some kind of break—credit for a class, or

a day off—or you can still drag in

state employees for money or compensatory time off.

And then some, well,

“extremists” arrive, and

some random people who supposedly have no

support, and who are funded by people giving

200 rubles each (about US$2), and they hold a rally ten times

bigger than yours. Of course that stings, it’s humiliating, and

so naturally you’ll try to hide it.

What really infuriates the Kremlin, of course, is that

for many years—18 years, 20 years—

they kept saying that there was some kind of opposition

only within the Garden Ring (central Moscow).

But in the regions, they said, there was no support at all.

That’s what they always said about everything, about me too.

They said, fine, okay, he got 30

percent in the Moscow mayoral election,

but let him go troll around in the provinces and

there he’ll run into real

life. But we came, we encountered

real life, and we like this real life,

while they don’t, because they can’t

pull anything like that together. So, Valeria Kusta asks:

what will happen to journalists if you become

president? Will VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcasting company) all be fired? There won’t

be any more state media?

There should be almost no state media.

The state does not need that many media outlets.

Moscow City Hall owns hundreds of newspapers there.

What are they for?

They’re just losses, and they cost enormous amounts of money.

So what Russia needs is public-service

television, perhaps along the lines of the BBC, but

state television—what is that even for?

The state should interact with the

media the same way everyone else interacts

with the media. That’s completely normal. As for

the current journalists—

the main propagandists—we’ll fire them all.

We’ll dismiss them, and we’ll investigate

where they got their money from,

their money.

So, Yaroslav Pikunov, and you delivered it...

the Human Rights Council’s decision.

A dental clinic—something like that...

Someone writes: in Krasnodar Krai, this

Saturday all chief doctors and department heads

are being summoned to Taman—well, that is, to the

administration, I mean—

to talk about the elections, about whom

to vote for. Well, obviously. But I’m not

surprised. Have they ever done it any differently?

It always happens, it happens exactly

like this. Did I manage to say

about Tinkov and about withdrawing the lawsuit? I

I’m glad that Tinkov withdrew the lawsuit

against Nemagia, and Dmitry Navosha wrote very correctly

about this. Dmitry Navosha, who is the

editor-in-chief and owner of Sports.ru,

wrote something very true: this

shows why private business is better

than the state. If this had been some state-owned

entity, they wouldn’t have cared at all. But

Tinkov did something foolish, then felt pressure

on his business from

clients, from people, and was forced

to withdraw that lawsuit. That’s very good. Well,

at least that’s some good news, I hope.

It would be right if he

compensated all those people

for the broken-down doors and the damages

they suffered, and then dealt with them separately

over whether they told the truth in that

video or not. That would have been

the right thing to do. Our time is coming to

an end, which means tomorrow I’ll be in Nizhny...

in Novgorod

Please come to Markin Square.

Across from the river terminal, the approval process is

in place for us, well, they may interfere with us holding it.

We’ll hold it anyway, but I won’t have a

microphone.

I’ll wave my hand at you and just shout at the top of my lungs.

Hardly anyone can hear me there. Then we have—

please show the sign again.

Orenburg

Then there will be Arkhangelsk. You can see that

everywhere it happens with problems, but it does happen.

The main thing is that people come. Yes, I, I

understand perfectly well that in Orenburg too,

and Arkhangelsk—these are cities with

difficult weather, but nevertheless there are

important things worth standing up for

in the cold, in the wind, and maybe even if

it starts to rain. But still, I’ve

spoken several times like that—let’s wait, it all

goes, I think, well. Thank you

very much to everyone who watched this episode of

Navalny Live. Navalny 2018.

See you next Thursday. Happy—

[music]