Text version
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Hi, this is Navalny. Sometimes you have to
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record apology videos. Nothing can be done about it.
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You know that on this channel
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I expose the authorities and officials, and
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I don’t hold back in my language, and of course sometimes
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I go too far. In the last video, I
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criticized the chairman
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of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) and prominent
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United Russia party member Vyacheslav Volodin. At a
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meeting with voters, someone advised
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pensioners to go to sports grounds if
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they want to live longer.
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[music]
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I was outraged and called Volodin a crook and
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a thief.
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I accused him of not caring at all about the interests
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of pensioners, and of robbing those pensioners together with
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Putin. How wrong I was,
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how wrong I was, my God. There is
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no other person who loves
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pensioners more than Vyacheslav
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Viktorovich Volodin, the chairman
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of the State Duma, a public servant with
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22 years of service. It’s just that this enormous
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love is concentrated in him and
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directed at one specific
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pensioner: Lidia Petrovna Barabanova.
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Lidia Petrovna is 82 years old. She was born on
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April 6, 1936. She is a pensioner,
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a working pensioner, and there was something else I
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wanted to add about Lidia Petrovna, but I forgot.
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Ah, I remember — one small detail: Lidia
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Petrovna
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is Vyacheslav Volodin’s mother.
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[music]
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I have a document in front of me. It has never
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been published before; no one knows about it — and that’s a shame.
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If they did, people wouldn’t make
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mistakes like I did. They wouldn’t say that Volodin
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doesn’t care about pensioners. This is a document about
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love.
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An extract from Rosreestr (Russia’s state property registry) showing that Vyacheslav
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Volodin
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created such wonderful conditions of love around his elderly mother,
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such tenderness and care,
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that Lidia Petrovna acquired for herself
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a 400-square-meter apartment (about 4,300 sq ft)
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in the elite residential complex White Swan on
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Vorobyovy Gory, near Moscow State University.
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The place is absolutely stunning — see for
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yourself. It’s one of the best residential complexes
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in Moscow. But how could it be otherwise? It’s his
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mother. Some of you will say: wow,
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400 square meters — there probably aren’t many apartments like that.
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That’s 0.04 hectares, almost like
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a standard dacha plot.
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Well yes, the apartment really is
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of unimaginable size.
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But then remember what Vyacheslav Viktorovich
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told you.
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[music]
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Guessed it? Right there, in that apartment,
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there is also a sports ground for pensioners — well,
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for one pensioner, that is: 82-year-old
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Lidia Petrovna Barabanova. But that doesn’t change the essence of it.
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Just imagine: there she can
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work out on exercise machines, run,
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play badminton, gorodki (a traditional Russian throwing game), and
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tennis — and not just, by the way,
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table tennis. An area that size can fit
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almost two standard courts for
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full tennis. And Volodin is absolutely right
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when he says: give pensioners
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sports grounds,
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and you can raise the retirement age even
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to 80. His mother is 82,
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and thanks to such an amazing apartment with a
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sports ground, she is an extremely active
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businesswoman. Just two weeks ago, Lidia
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Petrovna
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registered yet another company, LLC
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Dneprova Holding,
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and contributed 10 million rubles
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to its charter capital. There’s your mother
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setting up companies at 82. No? Well, that’s because
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with your little mind you didn’t
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figure out
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that she needed an apartment with a sports
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ground, but Volodin understood that this had
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to be done — and understood it long ago. Lidia
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Petrovna bought the apartment in 2011, when her
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loving dear son was still working in
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Putin’s presidential administration. But
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clearly, even then he loved
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pensioners very much, and into this apartment
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was invested Volodin’s love for
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millions of pensioners.
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And apparently pensioners’ money too, because
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if you look at apartment sales in
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that building, it’s clear that housing like this costs
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around 230 million rubles — that’s the equivalent of the pensions of
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about 18,000 people. At the time
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of purchase, in 2011, it was
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significantly more expensive. But who’s counting,
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Vyacheslav Viktorovich?
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It’s his mother, after all.
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The most precious person
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in the world.
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In general, it must be said that the mother
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of State Duma chairman Volodin is a truly
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unique person. She could be entered into the Guinness World Records.
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Before retiring, Lidia
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Petrovna worked as a caregiver
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and an elementary school teacher, and at the
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age of 73, in 2009, she went into
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serious business. Vyacheslav Volodin has
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nothing to do with it — don’t
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even think otherwise. Everything belongs to his mother, everything
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is registered in his mother’s name. In Volodin’s declarations,
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there’s no need to list any of it. Right now, this 82-year-old
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pensioner has 10 companies registered to her name.
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The main one is LLC Agricultural
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Enterprise of the City of Omsk, and on the books of
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this company and its subsidiaries
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there is real estate and equipment worth 1.5
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billion rubles, as well as hunting grounds
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covering 50,000 hectares — that is,
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500 square kilometers (about 193 square miles), that is
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Our pensioner is so full of energy that
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she sometimes slings her housing-and-utilities bill over her shoulder like a weapon and
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wanders through her own hunting grounds
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to shoot a hare. Now that is what you call
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true love: for pensioners to choose
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someone for themselves and surround them with such care
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that is wonderful. And on top of that, a strong
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healthy family is the foundation of our
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society. These are exactly the kind of “spiritual bonds”
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that the senior comrade of Vyacheslav
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Volodin was talking about.
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Today, Russian society is experiencing
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a clear shortage
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of spiritual bonds. I think it would be very
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right if all the other pensioners
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in Russia learned about this amazing
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story and finally understood whom they should
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take as an example: quit bad habits,
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buy 400-square-meter apartments (about 37 square meters) and
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set up sports grounds there. Then they too will reach
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retirement age without
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any problems. So please help us.
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For some reason, Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel) does not want
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to talk about this, but with your
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help we can spread
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this video quite widely. Otherwise, you know,
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people will listen to all sorts of loudmouths
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from
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YouTube and then go off to protest on September 9,
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because across the country it is a unified day
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of protest actions against raising
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the retirement age. But what is needed is for the people
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to stay home and keep quiet. Then Vyacheslav Volodin
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will be happy and at peace, and he will continue
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to delight his mother.
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My mother likes it.
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If you like what the Anti-Corruption Foundation does,
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the link is below.
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Support us — you are our only
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source of funding. Subscribe
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to our channel — this is where the truth is told.