Degtyarev in Khabarovsk. The “liquidation” of the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation). The mystery of Shaposhnikov’s financial disclosure

[music]

Hello everyone, good evening. In Moscow, it's exactly

8:00 p.m., which means we're live with

the program *Russia of the Future*. I've

finally gotten the hang of saying that phrase.

I used to mess it up on practically every broadcast,

but now I can say it just fine, and, and, and...

the permanent host, Alexei Navalny, or

today, his worthy student, as I was apparently

called this week on the

wonderful channel Russia Today

— that wonderful channel, Russia Today.

Please send me your questions,

suggestions, and complaints on Twitter with

the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture. Your question will

show up for me, and I'll try

to answer them.

You can subscribe to our channel,

become a sponsor, and subscribe,

and become a sponsor — there's

a special button below. And I'd also like to draw your

attention to the fact that we also have several

other buttons.

There's also a special link — by clicking it,

you can send ducks swimming across the screen. There are

updated ducks there — ducks with slogans from

Khabarovsk.

So there are more different ducks and

more fun little things

that can float along the bottom of the screen. And when

they float by, that isn't even money

going to the Anti-Corruption Foundation

— it's money going

to those people who were independent

candidates in the Moscow City Duma elections whom

they barred from running, then jailed, and now have also

fined by many millions of rubles (tens of thousands of U.S. dollars).

Because they organized protest

rallies, and we're raising this money for

all of these people. And they are by no means

only employees or friends of the

Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Although, of course, most of them are. Once again, many thanks to Vladimir Milov,

many thanks to Vladimir Milov,

who is overseeing and organizing this

work, and on his Facebook page you can also

find the donation details for this. As for us,

a lot, a lot happened this

week. I'll try to talk with you about the most interesting things.

And if, of course, I've

forgotten something, write in and ask.

Savina Figur: Alexei, please comment

on that situation with Zelenskyy.

And — sorry — remind me which situation exactly?

With Zelenskyy? Please write in more

detail. I assume you mean the situation

when he recorded that Facebook video,

basically complying with a terrorist's demand. But

this situation is ambiguous. On the one

hand, of course, everyone says that

if you comply with terrorists' demands, you'll

create more terrorists who

see that demands are being met

and think: let's go take hostages too,

because it really is something

that works. But on the other hand,

it wasn't difficult for Zelenskyy to record it, and

human lives were at stake. So despite all the

complexity and, again,

the many sides of this situation, I think

that in this particular,

very specific situation — which can't be mechanically applied

to other cases — he did the right thing.

Because yes, he recorded it, he talked

about that film *Earthlings*, which actually isn't

a bad film at all, and it's useful for everyone

to watch. I'm promoting it here too, without

any hostage-taking involved — it's just that

several different people,

committed vegetarians, told me that

I should watch the film. I'm not a vegetarian

at all, but still,

it's a useful perspective. So in

this situation, it seems to me that it wasn't hard

for Zelenskyy to do it, and the good and the benefit

he brought into the world with that

gesture, with that action of his,

were far greater than the potential threat,

which of course also exists. 20,000

people are watching the live stream.

A lot of people are asking about Inozemtsev, about...

We'll talk about that in more detail.

A user named 'Sorceress' — with an obscene word that

rhymes with 'sorceress' under a rainbow —

asks me: what do you think about

the unlawful detention of Mila Zemtsova?

As I understand it, Mila Zemtsova — I saw this situation

on Twitter — is

one of the members of the Libertarian

Party who was detained at one of the

pickets. As with any person,

detention at a public event

— as I understand it, even just

for being photographed there, or later in court — is

absolutely unlawful. People have

the right to take part in public actions, and on this matter there is both the

Constitution of the Russian Federation and

rulings by European courts.

Therefore, the detention of any person,

including Mila Zemtsova, is of course absolutely

illegal, and I don't doubt for a second that

Miozin...

Zemtsova posed no threat whatsoever to society that

could possibly have justified

detaining her. And speaking of

a threat to society, I wanted to begin my

program with an astonishing video from

the city of Kaliningrad.

I was in

the Kaliningrad region not that long ago — I went there for five

days to relax — and there were a lot of people following me there,

following me and my wife,

literally a huge number of police officers

who walked after us, watched us,

filmed us — I mean, there were clearly

significant police

or security resources involved. And then when I watched the video, and in general

when I watched the video, and in general...

I’ll show you one of my own examples — I mean, there are a lot of them.

A lot of thoughts came to mind, but one of them was:

what kind of nonsense are you doing in a country where the

crime rate is high — very high, actually.

So anyway,

let’s imagine a situation. Suppose you are

a man named Anatoly, who at two

in the morning is at home with his family and

child in his apartment, and suddenly someone

knocks on Anatoly’s door, and he,

confused, asks, “Who is it?”

They say, “Police. Open immediately.”

Then the situation develops like this:

as follows — 1 minute 4 seconds.

Anatoly’s situation in Kaliningrad. I’m filming everything.

Everything.

[music]

[music]

What happened to Anatoly? Nothing

happened to Anatoly. What happened was that

the police simply made a mistake, and you see,

they were investigating some local online group

in Kaliningrad where someone had written some

insulting post about police officers.

After that, these police officers, being

immoral and very stupid people — and I say that because

in the next segment I’m going to

talk about insulting the authorities, about how

a person was arrested today

for insulting the authorities — but when

I watch this video, I can call these

police officers from

Kaliningrad nothing but stupid degenerates, because

they broke into someone else’s apartment at two

in the morning, cut through the door with a chainsaw,

then rushed in and a man in his underwear

was thrown to the floor — just because of some

post, in front of his wife and child, with everyone screaming. And

even if we assume that this

Anatoly had written an insulting

post — which later turned out not to be the case — it still isn’t serious enough

to cut through his apartment door at two in the morning,

rush in, and arrest him over a post

on VKontakte (a Russian social network). And on top of that, they got the wrong person. So

these are real bandits,

idiots who should be put on trial. And besides,

just imagine the degree

of depravity in these people, who

rush in and see terrified, defenseless,

unarmed people — genuinely, extremely

frightened — and they had just started breaking

down his door. Behind the door, a terrified

man is yelling, “What are you doing? My

wife and child are here!” Because any

normal person would be terrified. He

would think, “They’re going to break in and shoot me,”

like what happened quite recently in

Yekaterinburg.

They burst in, see terrified people, and

start throwing them to the floor. The child is screaming, they

are shouting something, forcing him to the ground — this is

simply vile.

They’re worse than any bandits, and in that sense our

Interior Ministry system (MVD, Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs) — we can see its

rapid degradation. It’s just

astonishing. They have completely stopped

being of any use.

They behave worse than any bandits, and when they

rushed at this Anatoly, thinking they were

going after another person, they wanted to

punish him because he had written a damn post

on VKontakte. No matter what he wrote there,

send him a summons to court, let the local police officer come to

him, detain him

at the door, take him to court, say:

“Here, he insulted us with various words,” and then

let’s bring him to administrative

liability, if there are grounds for it. But no, damn it,

you see,

they had to saw through his door at two in the morning.

And listen — they were enjoying those

screams.

They were probably reveling in their own power there.

In Kaliningrad Region, when

they planned this operation, they

understood that there would be terrified,

panic-stricken family members there, that

that this poor child — a little girl, apparently —

would obviously be traumatized

for life. Just imagine: a small

child will remember for the rest of her life how some

degenerates were sawing

through the door, stormed into the apartment, threw her father down,

the mother is screaming, everyone is screaming, and there’s nothing

you can do because this government — really,

what else can you call these people but degenerates and scoundrels?

And again I want to say:

this week I spoke a lot with

police officers, and as usual, you know,

when you’re being interrogated — we’ll

talk about that — it all goes on for 10

hours, you sit there talking with police officers.

And everyone has their own truth: “Well, it’s hard for us,”

“and it’s hard for you too.” And every

time you just tell them about an example like this:

why are you doing this at night? What is the point?

How do you expect anyone

to like you after that? And here a big

question arises:

Will these police officers be fired? Will their

superiors who planned the operation be suspended?

Will any of the people who

authorized sawing through someone’s door over a VKontakte post

at two in the morning be punished? No, of course not.

They won’t be fired, and nothing will

be done to them. And that is exactly why society will

hate these people even more.

And it will be right to do so,

because how could you not hate them for this?

Because this is real villainy.

Scoundrels. I told you last

week — the week before last, actually — about

Meduza correspondent Frenkel

whose arm was broken by police officers

when the journalist was at a

polling station. But the latest development

is that against this journalist they have opened

a case against this journalist.

an administrative case for resisting arrest

those police officers who broke his arm

for no reason at all — there is video footage from three

angles showing them breaking his arm for

nothing

but nevertheless he is considered guilty and must be

punished because police officers were breaking

his arm. The level of hatred — once again

I’ll repeat a banal point that I have often

made: the level of hatred in society toward

police officers right now is such, and

the level of distrust is such, that

this will not end well, and responsible for

this is the leadership of the Russian Interior Ministry

of the Russian Federation, because right now they are

systematically turning all

police bodies into nothing more than a gang that

nobody likes. 45,000 people are watching us

live

Someone is asking me, Alexei, what

the new non-profit organization will be called

exactly the same as before — dog

Listen, well, I wrote here: dog

forever, and that’s all you need to remember

because apparently our whole future

life — dog — is just this

endless смена of legal entities

or else working without any legal

entity at all, because they won’t register one. When

when I submit an application to register a

legal entity, they simply do not

register it, that’s all. And you, you might now

ask: but how can they do that?

Like this: they just don’t register it, and that’s it

The same with media outlets: they won’t register any media outlet if

I am the founder. This has been the case for many years, and we

have gone to court over it, but still the cart is

still there. In that sense, we just need to

forget it and not even concern ourselves with the question

of what the legal entity is formally called

What difference does it make? We will

be called whatever, and I will always

say FBK, but the legal entity, that

FBK legally, which I created

several years ago — we’ll talk about that now

more as well. Well, they’ll come for us — well, if they do

they do. Fine. The main thing is that you are not

taken away. As I was in fact

saying in that video, this topic is relevant to

me. In this, in this program, I do like to

insult representatives of the authorities

to tell the authorities to go [__] — that is probably the most

popular thing we do here on this

program. Probably many people

watch for that reason — they are interested in seeing how I

insult the authorities. And today the first person appeared who was

the first person who

arrested — he was taken away for 7 days of administrative detention

precisely because, simply because, he

wrote a tweet, and in those three tweets he wrote

nothing extraordinary

but he did curse the judicial system twice, and

nevertheless, this was monitored

he was taken to court and today he was arrested

Fyodor Krasheninnikov

a fairly well-known political analyst

a columnist for *Vedomosti*

a good friend of mine; we have known him for many years

a very smart person and, well, a normal

person. Any normal person

when they see unjust court

rulings

writes plainly. The first time it was

a tweet like this

where he used obscene language about Putin’s

judges. For now, please show us

that tweet — can we take a look at it?

Yes, well, you see here — really, how else

can one describe Putin’s judges? I cannot

quote that word, not because I

think otherwise

I feel about Putin’s judges exactly as

Fyodor Krasheninnikov does. In that sense, I am

absolutely in solidarity with him; it’s just that

this is a live broadcast, and I cannot call them

that specifically. But, of course, they

are exactly that. And then, some time later,

he wrote about the judges of the Constitutional Court

what we think about them. But we think of them

in much harsher terms than Krasheninnikov

wrote, and he described the judges of the

Constitutional Court who approved

those amendments

to the Constitution, which are absolutely

unconstitutional — any lawyer knows that

and any normal person knows that. In that

sense, the judges of the Constitutional Court showed themselves

to be absolute political

prostitutes, without any doubt they

are exactly that. But in Sverdlovsk Region

there sits some exactly such

pointless fool somewhere there

who writes reports, and he wrote

report one on Krasheninnikov, report two, and

today they simply stopped him as he was leaving

his apartment building, took him to court, and the judge

said: ah, you are insulting the authorities, you must

be arrested

banged the gavel, and Krasheninnikov

was arrested for 7 days. This also

shows the speed of the degradation, and

well, it is not exactly hard to recall my

prophetic words, frankly speaking

In Putin’s Russia, predicting such

things is not difficult. But as I said many programs ago

you should know that the main trend for

the coming years — I said this about two years ago

and when I find that episode I will

show you that clip

the main trend in the coming years will be

that the authorities will constantly try

to act offended, take offense, look for people

who insult them, who offend them, and

they will simply use this endlessly

for their political purposes. That is exactly what

we are seeing. Krasheninnikov, as a

columnist and political analyst, writes articles

that are very good and interesting; he does not criticize

No normal person can praise the authorities.

So they sit there,

see that someone insulted them on Twitter,

and arrest someone. Why is this done?

So that 100, 200, 300, 400, even 8,000

people who saw it will think:

do I really want to call Putin’s judges names,

the way Krasheninnikov does?

Probably not. Better not write anything at all.

So this is a way

to shut people up. And yet the only

way to fight this, these

repressions against people who

express their opinions online, is only

one thing: simply tell the blunt truth. The more

they jail people under these kinds of charges,

the more we need new words and terms

to insult this government, which

doesn’t deserve a single kind word. In other words,

mass non-compliance with this

repressive, idiotic law.

Krasheninnikov was jailed for 7 days; I

could be jailed for 15. Some people

will be fined, a handful of people

will be punished, of course. This repressive

system will start picking people out

and demonstratively locking them up. That is the price

some people will have to pay. But we

all have to do it, because if we

get scared

and stop, then that means the law

has worked. And we cannot allow

a law like that to work, because

then they will have put

a muzzle on all of us. If we can’t even on Twitter

write about Putin’s judges,

about these judges, say everything we

think in plain language, then really,

we simply cannot

speak about politics at all, and we possess not the slightest

political rights.

Because this is still a basic,

probably the most basic right, the basic

freedom. Of course, you can still in the kitchen

tell your relatives what you

think about the judges, but writing

something on Twitter isn’t all that far removed from that.

It is simply a basic freedom of speech,

a basic freedom and the right to self-expression,

and that is exactly what is now under active attack. Therefore,

Krasheninnikov, I express my support. Fedya,

serve your 7 days — you’re serving them

for all of us, for every one of them, and we promise

you — at least I do — that we will not

stop insulting these disgusting

people. 53,000 people are watching live,

and that brings us to

the next topic: the searches

that took place at my home, and the

insults, because this is exactly

a typical case. There sits a gathering

of the most disgusting people, some kind of

thieves, specifically — if we name names —

there’s Simonyan (Margarita Simonyan, RT editor-in-chief). By the way, there are many questions

about her relationship

with the Armenian authorities.

So, Simonyan and her husband Keosayan,

and this whole pack of crooks from Russia Today (RT),

after our

investigation, our series of investigations into how

the business of this particular family is structured,

how Simonyan’s family operates, how RT is run,

we, as the fashionable phrase goes,

completely exposed them. That is, now

everyone knows this is a gang of thieves, and

no matter what they write or say,

people reply: what are you even trying to do?

We know exactly how things work over there.

We know how much money you stole on

the film *Crimean Bridge*. We know how much you

get paid for your disgusting,

cheap show. And so they sit there waiting

for a chance to put themselves in

some position — not even of moral

superiority, but at least to try

to pretend. This situation with this [__]

criminal case, because of which I will soon, for the fifth—

no, for the fourth time, be sitting on the

defendant’s bench,

in a criminal case, the full routine:

‘Defendant

Navalny, rise. Defendant Navalny,’

‘closing arguments, Defendant Navalny, now give

your final statement and await

the verdict.’ This will be the fourth time. I’ll already be reading it as:

four times tried, four times convicted

on criminal charges. Did they really

make a scandal out of this video? Let’s once again

watch the one-minute video from the RT channel

because of which, in fact,

all this began.

We, the multinational people of the Russian

Federation.

united by a common destiny on our land,

affirming human rights and freedoms,

civil peace and accord,

preserving the historically established

state unity, proceeding from the

universally recognized principles of equality and

the self-determination of peoples,

honoring the memory of our ancestors who passed on to us love

and respect for the Fatherland, faith in goodness and

justice, reviving the sovereign

statehood of Russia and affirming

the inviolability of its democratic foundations,

striving to ensure the well-being and

prosperity of Russia, proceeding from

responsibility for our Motherland before

present and future generations, recognizing

ourselves as part of the world community,

adopt the Constitution of the Russian

Federation.

[music]

An ordinary video — there were many like it. They took

some small group of hangers-on

who recorded a video in support of

those disgusting amendments that

have made our lives worse and will make them worse in the future.

which, overall,

will make our country weaker, more

fragile, more dependent on

a corrupt ruler and his

corrupt clique.

So, basically, I wrote

this tweet, called all these people out, and I

absolutely consider them all—and I would like to

state my position completely clearly:

everyone who supported these amendments,

who campaigned for them, I of course consider

traitors and enemies of Russia.

But really, who is going to be impressed by the fact

that I called some random

pro-Putin clown from that crowd

a traitor and a lackey?

No, but among all those people

they found a veteran—which is also rather

absurd: a veteran who turned 16 in 1945.

He said

that he had taken part in some kind of partisan

fighting, and then it all started. Margarita

Simonyan, like some little spider,

set things in motion, and a criminal case began.

Together with the grandson of that

very veteran—who had no idea

what was going on there—and as far as I

understand, this wonderful

man sitting in a convertible, this offended

grandson of the veteran. And it was very interesting:

when all these

state media outlets wrote about him, they

presented him as if nobody knew this

person—some minor PR man

who had worked for Russian Railways.

Everywhere they wrote: “The grandson of a war veteran has stated...”},{

. “The grandson of a war veteran”—as if that were already

some kind of official position: grandson of a war veteran. Yes, in

our country, roughly the entire population are grandchildren or

great-grandchildren of war veterans, but for them that was

exactly what mattered, because this

whole gathering of political hacks, they turned

this unfortunate old man into

a kind of human shield, and they climbed onto

this old man’s back and from behind him started

shouting that they were the good guys, while

Navalny—look!—had insulted a veteran.

What’s really funny is that all the other people

then, it turns out, when the investigator

opened a criminal case claiming that

I had slandered

specifically veteran Artyomenko, whose

surname I never even mentioned, they thereby

de facto admitted that if, in their view, I

called this Artyomenko, in their terminology,

a dick and a traitor, and that is supposedly untrue,

then all the others—those various

figures, those artists, and so on, Artemy Lebedev included—

then from a legal point of view

it follows that our state has признed

that they are lackeys and traitors. I mean, this

case is so contrived,

and so obviously so, that of course to any lawyer

it is ridiculous. It’s especially funny that even in the court

materials this video is officially

referred to there as “patriotic.” So when

I’m asked why I said

something about a patriotic video—well,

there you go: “patriotic video clip,” channel

RT (Russia Today).

But jokes aside, all of this is clear enough. Nevertheless,

the searches really did happen,

both at home and at the office, and personal

searches, and a search of my wife’s car.

As usual, a whole pile of various things was seized,

and expert examinations were carried out.

Today I was informed that

the investigative actions have been completed. That

means the case will soon be sent to court

and there will be another

well, basically a new season of this series,

which will be called something like

“Navalny on trial for insulting a war veteran.”

war veteran.

But we’ll see how well that works, because

the people who came up with all this

—certainly Simonyan herself, who

together with her crook and accomplice

Gromov, the deputy head

of the Presidential Administration, through whom

they obviously deployed their experience and

administrative resources to launch

this case in criminal form—think

it’s a great idea, and that a huge

number of people all across Russia

will be outraged when they write headlines like

“Navalny insulted a veteran.” But

I don’t think it will work for them.

First of all, most people in our country

especially those who at least read

the text, understand that there are many different

kinds of people, and veterans are different too. Besides,

anyone understands that the old man is

94 years old; of course he

is not doing any of this himself and understands nothing about

what is happening, and it is his grandson together

with Simonyan who are simply using him, and

the use of this unfortunate elderly

man comes across as very, very

disgusting. You all understand perfectly well what

is happening. And besides, okay, if they

want a trial, then I will use

this court as a platform to once again

get up there and say everything I think

plainly about this constitution, about

the people who campaigned for it. The days are gone

when they could wheel out

some respected doctors or

actors or others who would say any

nonsense for money—pay that actor and

he goes on about how much he loves

Vladimir Putin. Those times are over. No special

moral authority attaches to all these doctors and actors anymore;

nobody loves them anymore

just because, and nobody is going to

listen to their words—their paid-for

words about how much they love President Putin and

his wonderful constitution. So

Let's take a look at

how all this will end, Vitaly Sharov.

Alexei, good evening. What is this million about?

What is it for exactly, and what does this gesture mean?

Or is it fake? And a few more questions.

A few questions about what was proposed, well...

The whole mechanism is actually very simple.

As I said in my video, they have been trying for a long time

to shut us down.

And it's quite obvious why: we do

investigations that are very painful for them,

and we are engaged in political

activity, with 40 headquarters across the

country, and we organize rallies, so for

many years now there has been a struggle against our organization

in various forms: I get jailed and

arrested,

then released thanks to you—or not released,

and I end up under house arrest.

Or under administrative arrest.

A huge number of our people have been prosecuted

criminally; there are people who were

forced to flee the country. Almost everyone

in our organization has had their home searched.

Accounts have been blocked—in other words, there is

an active campaign against us, and the Kremlin's main problem

here is that you

support our work. In that

sense,

another organization can be shut down easily

because you can cut off the flow of

funding to the organization,

and you need money, you need an office, you need salaries.

And most often politics works like this: there is

some wealthy person, and that wealthy

person gives money, and then you either go after the wealthy

person,

or shut down the channel through which the money is transferred,

and that's it—the organization falls apart. But for us,

everything is both much simpler and much more complicated,

because you are the ones giving this money. You can

block one channel, but that channel only has

400 rubles on it, and there are thousands—many thousands—of such channels.

So it was important for them

not just to pressure our organization,

not just to arrest accounts or do something else,

but to seize it outright. And to do that,

they needed us to owe

some colossal amount of money.

They had to make it look as if we owed someone

a huge sum, because our

expenses are small: you transfer money to us, we

pay salaries, pay rent, and in that

sense,

the economics of the fund are very simple.

So they came up with

this trick, which they

seem to think is very clever. In a way,

it worked, but again, in the medium term

I'm not sure they will be

happy with what they're doing, because I

will probably talk next week about

the results of this whole

fundraising effort. Please subscribe to support us again.

By the way, in the description of this

video there will be a lot of links through

which you can send us

some money. There will also be a link to

the site; if you go there and sign up for

any monthly donation, of any

amount, you too can take part in

this campaign. I'll talk about it on air, or maybe even

release a video about how it all went.

The results are good; we

are very pleased with how people responded

to this trouble of ours. The trouble here

is this:

it's actually very simple. The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and, specifically,

Sobol spent a lot of time

exposing one of these important

Putin-era corrupt figures named

Prigozhin, also known as “Putin's chef” — a crook

dating back to the St. Petersburg days, a kind of half-

bandit type.

There are all kinds of sophisticated crooks, but he's not one of them—

he's very crude, very greedy,

and thinks he's a great PR mastermind.

He supplies food and is effectively

a monopolist in supplying

food to Moscow daycare centers and schools.

But of course, in order to make

money, together with Putin's system he supplies

bad food, often spoiled, to

Moscow daycare centers and schools, which led to

mass poisonings, and they

tried to cover them up. Sobol worked on this,

interacting with the parents, and in the end

they failed to hide it, and people

found out. More than that, we proved in court that

it really was Prigozhin, “Putin's chef,”

who poisoned children with his spoiled food.

Let's watch 40 seconds from Sobol's video,

where she talks about how, together with

the children's parents, she won in court. You did not

give up and secured a court ruling

that in our country would have seemed

simply impossible: the court recognized

the liability of the company Kombinat

and of Yevgeny Prigozhin's structures.

It ordered them to pay compensation

to the parents of the poisoned children—of that very

Prigozhin who is known for

his ties to Putin; companies linked to him receive

state contracts worth billions of rubles.

He appears in the case involving interference in

the U.S. elections, and he is linked to a private military company

that fights in Syria and

Libya. He was even spotted at talks with

a Libyan marshal. But still, we

managed to get the court to recognize

the liability of Prigozhin's companies. The court

awarded compensation of 10,000 to 15,000

rubles per poisoned child.

So, as you can see, everything was going

very well for us. It was a major

effort. Filing a class-action lawsuit is

really very difficult in Russia, especially under

conditions of resistance from the authorities.

He did everything, and we won — we’re celebrating.

It’s like something out of a Pushkin fairy tale (Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s most famous poet) — and the mosquito...

...is getting angrier and angrier, and they did a very

simple thing. So, one of Prigozhin’s

companies entered into this

effective agreement with another Prigozhin

company, under which they would receive 88

million rubles (about 880,000 USD), and then they terminated

that agreement, saying, well, you know, you’re

being attacked all over the internet, so we’re

terminating our agreement with you. If

nothing had happened. And then the company with

which the agreement had been terminated

went to court and said: you know, because of

Navalny, the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation), and Sobol,

we suffered lost profits, because this

company here promised us 88

million rubles (about 880,000 USD), but because of Navalny it

terminated the contract with us. And the same

absolutely corrupt [__] and the judge

of the commercial court, who all

understood perfectly well, said: lost

profits? Well then, let the FBK

compensate you for your lost profits.

They banged the gavel, and just like that it turned out

we owed 88 million rubles (about 880,000 USD). That amount

was divided up, and 28 million — well, you see,

28 or 29 million, what difference does it make now — 29

million for me, 29 million for Sobol, 29

million for the FBK.

I mean, in the case of me and Sobol,

it really makes no difference — anyway

it’s impossible to get that money from us, although of course

the long-term consequences will be

unpleasant. That is, bailiffs will

constantly seize our property,

freeze accounts, and your account

will basically be permanently

blocked. But in the case of the FBK, that’s

even worse, because this whole

thing is hanging over us. Of course, we have no intention of paying those 29

million rubles (about 290,000 USD) to them

or even trying to raise it — the amount is too

large. So we understand that

they will take the FBK legal entity

for themselves, and, well, basically that’s exactly

why we’re moving to another

legal entity. Then it’s entirely possible

that tomorrow we’ll have to move

to a third, a fourth, or give up

existing

as a legal entity altogether. That’s entirely

possible, actually. And as for that million

rubles (about 10,000 USD) that people ask about — well,

Prigozhin is a very stupid man, but he

thinks he’s a PR genius. That’s exactly

why he has this huge number of

texts, media resources, and so on,

an entire huge conglomerate

of newspapers that absolutely nobody reads,

but he likes feeling like

a media mogul, and he pulled this

stunt that seemed to him very

successful: he went ahead and transferred 1 million

rubles (about 10,000 USD).

He put out a statement saying, basically,

that Navalny had asked for help, and I’m

transferring 1 million rubles. Well, we received

that 1 million rubles and sent it

back with the words: you earned this

through your supplies of rotten meat to

Moscow kindergartens, which is the plain

truth, and we returned that

million rubles to him. I don’t think this PR

stunt ultimately worked — it’s even hard to understand what he

was trying to achieve with it. But what he did achieve

was simply reminding everyone once again that

he supplies rotten food to kindergartens and

schools.

A lot of people already knew that; those who didn’t

found out, or we reminded them.

But one way or another, it’s going to be a fairly long

saga, and

they’ll be seizing things from us,

trying to push us from one

legal entity to another, and so

on and so on and so on. In other words,

it will be an endless backdrop to our work,

on top of everything else.

In addition to all the criminal cases against us, there will now also be

these bailiffs and these Prigozhin people with

their army of enforcement officers running

after me, after Sobol, because of the FBK. So

let’s just make one thing clear once again for ourselves:

the foundation is the people. We will call

it the foundation.

Legally, the FBK may already no longer be ours,

they’ll take it away, and Prigozhin will take it

for himself. For all I know, he’ll start

using that legal entity’s name to

supply his rotten meat to Moscow schools or something

like that. But really,

whatever — it’s part of the job. And in conditions

where the regime is becoming more and more

insane and is acting in ever more

illegal ways,

something like this was to be expected. So,

there are a lot of questions about Furgal now, I’ll say something. Anton

Nimrod: Alexei, is it possible to find

lawyers for Furgal who would take on

his case without being afraid of pressure? Anton, I

am afraid that if we start looking

for lawyers for Furgal or try

to help him directly in some way,

it could end with Furgal

— excuse me — probably with his

relatives not being very pleased

to hear the question of whether he’ll be killed in that SIZO (pre-trial detention center), and in

that sense, we don’t want to try

to help Furgal

by getting ahead of Furgal himself. The man is

really in a very difficult

situation, and God knows what they’re doing

to him in that detention center, how exactly they’re

persuading him, intimidating him, or trying

to resolve the problem

of rebellious Khabarovsk, which we’ll

talk about — but for now, let’s talk about

the most wonderful, marvelous United Russia party member

named Alexei Shaposhnikov, because

the situation with his two billion

has taken a very interesting turn

well, very interesting, though on the one hand

it’s sad and infuriating, but it’s also

useful, because we’re going to use it

we’re going to use it, and keep using it

in the election campaign, during Smart Voting

we’re going to use it there too

use it, and talk about it, remember it

and that’s all about this Shaposhnikov: we found

his property, we showed that

he earned 2 billion rubles

and 1 billion of those 2 billion

he did not declare, and every tax law expert

looked at our

documents and said, well yes, he

didn’t declare it, after which a deputy of the

Moscow City Duma

together with independent deputies led by

Mikhail Timonov, who is

a member of the commission that reviews

and verifies declarations

of deputies, said: well, let’s

check it

one complaint came in, another complaint

came in, we have to check it, and

naturally, the review begins with

taking Alexei

Shaposhnikov’s declaration and seeing what exactly

is written in it, and it turned out, can you imagine,

that the declaration is kept under lock and key

and the key to that lock is held only

by Alexei Shaposhnikov, because no one

else

can look at these declarations. There was

an appearance on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station); we won’t repeat all

of it, where Shaposhnikov said, and we

will review it in the commission, and the members

of the commission will be able to verify it and will be able

to look at the declaration

but the thing is, just as everyone

expected, a United Russia member always lies

a crook and a fraud, and they arranged things so that

even the commission members, let alone the members

of the commission who initiated the issue,

never got to see that declaration. Just

take in how perfectly they’ve set this up

it’s unbelievable: there in the Moscow City

Duma there is a commission for checking income

a commission member

Simonov says: let’s check the income

give me the declaration, I’ll look at it and

verify it. And they tell him: sorry, you can’t, because

it contains personal data. Let’s look at

the speech by Stepan Orlov, a man

from United Russia, about whom we also

did an investigation, who

explains that this all supposedly cannot

be shown because it’s personal data

it can be disclosed only, only to the

deputy whose personal data it concerns

and that information on income, property, and

property-related obligations

submitted by a deputy of the Moscow

City Duma

contains personal data

the dissemination of which is not permitted

without the consent of the personal data subject

information on income and property and

property-related obligations

of deputies of the Moscow City Duma

of the current convocation may be provided

for review only personally

to a Moscow City Duma deputy with respect

to their own personal information, or during

a duly established

review by the commission overseeing

the accuracy of information on income,

property, and obligations

of a property-related nature

submitted by deputies of the Moscow

City Duma. At the same time, Duma deputy

Shaposhnikov

took the initiative to voluntarily

present to a group of deputies chosen

by the commission certificates concerning his

income

Deputy Shaposhnikov answered all

the questions put by the deputies and gave

detailed explanations during

their review of the submitted

documents. The deputies were convinced that

the source of funds for acquiring the shares

in Vash Konsalting was money received

from a securities sale transaction

involving securities that Shaposhnikov had acquired before

being elected to the Duma

See how neatly this is arranged: as if he

voluntarily decided to show everything

voluntarily. Thank you so much for

your declaration. I mean, you’re running for deputy, you

are supposed to have a declaration, a full and detailed one

and in general it should be shown to everyone

but they spin it as though he voluntarily decided

to show it to some deputies — United Russia members

the United Russia majority created

a small commission made up of United Russia members, after which

Shaposhnikov showed his declaration only to them

they looked at it and said everything was perfectly

legal. And here is the speech by deputy

Timonov himself, who initiated all this

he is a commission member, and they showed him nothing

let’s listen to 57 seconds

Colleagues, this is not about a confrontation

between deputies Shaposhnikov and Timonov; this is not

a matter of personal relations

the story of sudden enrichment and

the lack of clarity regarding the timeliness and

completeness of the declaration of income by our

dear — very dear — 2-billion-ruble

chairman has caused

broad public resonance

answering the questions that have arisen undoubtedly

required the participation of experts and the media

moreover, our Alexei Valerievich

declared that he was undoubtedly ready

to provide access to everyone who is interested

to the documentation that was supposed to prove

that he disclosed everything properly and on time

and in full

none of this was done; instead, there was

a closed-door review arranged at

which even I, a member of the

commission,

was not allowed to attend, precisely because I asked this question

on the air of Echo of Moscow (a former Russian radio station) with Venediktov

Shaposhnikov was sitting there and said, yes, I’ll show everyone

the declaration, but now for a year he has

been saying he would show it to everyone, and yet, you know,

my colleagues from the party, United Russia members,

decided otherwise. They decided to show everything to me—

or rather, not to show me anything, but to look at it themselves, and then everyone

declared that everything was perfectly fine. This case

is, of course, infuriating. This is

our investigation; we carried it out, we

caught Shaposhnikov out, we exposed him

and he should have been removed from office. He

should resign, he should

stop being a deputy because he is a

corrupt liar, but with the help of

United Russia (the ruling political party), he simply managed to

make this problem go away and hide the documents from everyone

even from his fellow deputies

It’s a sad story, but we simply have to

look at the bigger picture: will we be able

to keep using this story

against them? Of course, yes, because this is

the perfect example of complete

lawlessness and mockery of

the voters. On that same

commission, he spoke emotionally and very

correctly—he said this really is

mockery, and with this case involving

Shaposhnikov, whose lies are now simply

extremely well documented—his lies on

Moscow’s biggest radio station,

the testimony of all the experts who said

that even this commission itself ought to resign,

this very commission

where the complainant, the person who submitted

the complaint, wasn’t even shown

the document—because of United Russia members. All this

shows that United Russia members need to be driven out

with a filthy broom. Even some Putin supporters

or, well, I don’t know, people

brainwashed by propaganda—if you tell them

about this case,

they will never vote for

United Russia again. Stupin, let’s watch 1

minute 3 seconds.

Today, with all this legal polish,

you’re wrapping all this up and thinking that somehow

people should believe you. No one will believe you.

No one. The commission leadership,

which is controlled by United Russia, appointed five

deputies according to some unclear principle,

showed them something behind closed doors—unclear

what exactly,

and then says, well, everything is fine, all 2

billion are perfectly legal, absolutely. While pensions are

10,000 or 8,000 rubles a month (about $110–$85), and 2

billion—sure, totally normal, let’s

all be happy for him. And on top of that, they want

to convince us—while there is poverty in the country. We are now

being told: well, we didn’t really review everything, but

he gave us a couple of extra papers,

well done, Alexei Valeryevich

what a fine fellow, absolutely priceless—2

billion. Let’s wish him luck. And no one else will ever

get to see it, comrades.

He’s right, he’s absolutely right

when he says no one will believe them. They can

say whatever they want, as much as they like,

that, you know, we reviewed it, we saw it,

but no one will believe them, and that needs

to be used, because after all our

struggle against this regime cannot

consist of, you know, going out to

one big rally and defeating them

because even if someday we force them

through a huge, very huge rally to hold

normal, fair elections

the election commissions will still remain, and

there will still be some long transition

because in any case there will still remain in the

country some United Russia people, genuinely

some real ones will remain one way or

another, as will a large number of

Putin supporters—deceived people

and we will never be able to just

snap our fingers and in

one second make everyone understand what

is happening in the country. Of course not. And even in the

best possible moment of transition, when

we achieve elections, achieve access to

the ballot for all candidates, myself and everyone

else

achieve the registration of political parties

even then the situation will be difficult, and ahead

there will be absolutely no guaranteed

bright future shining in the distance. All these things—

our campaign to dismantle

United

Russia as a specific party, United Russia

as a way of doing politics—before that it was

just any party of power. It is simply

a gathering of brazen people who are constantly

lying and deceiving, and we simply must

well, of course one wants to say

crush them like a steamroller, but for now

we do not really have the strength for that. What we can do

is that many people simply do not believe

but with the help of cases like this we must

keep explaining, explaining, showing

showing that these are lying people, scoundrels,

villains

because if someone thinks that Panfilova,

Putin, or the prosecutor general, or Shaposhnikov, or

Sobyanin think this is right—

that he earned 2 billion, failed to declare

1 billion of it, and did not even show the declaration

to his colleagues on the review commission—no one

thinks that. No one will believe them. This

needs to be used, and we simply need to keep going

and carry out daily, day-by-day

daily campaigning on this issue, by the way

speaking of which, on the subject of Smart

Voting—does it make sense? In fact,

it absolutely does make sense, and a lot of people are writing to me now

saying, damn it, forget that, why don’t you focus instead

on your investigations—what do corruption exposés

and Smart Voting have to do with anything? What kind of

nonsense is that?

What we need right now is something else. We need

to go out into the streets, like in Khabarovsk (a Russian city known for mass protests). We need to go out

like in Khabarovsk. Igor, we’ll talk about that separately in a moment,

but these are

interconnected things. Great

deputies like Timonov and Stupin, whom

I showed you—and there are others too,

quite a few of them, actually, more than just a handful—

where did they come from? They came out of this

routine work, from organizing Smart

Voting, from the investigations that

were being released, from campaign work. In other words,

for even a few really good

guys to emerge—people with whose help we can

expose Shaposhnikov, and make the kind of videos

I can show you—we need a lot of

work, and we are doing it right now.

Once again, I urge you to keep doing it,

because in September we will have

a very important moment: elections in

a large number of federal subjects (regions) across Russia, and

so we need to

make sure, as a first step, that in

many places—at least in ten regions—

deputies like the ones in Moscow appear.

Again: it took a lot of work. A lot of people were detained,

a lot of people went out to rallies, a lot of

people donated money,

a lot of people ran for office, and none of

them were allowed through, as you know. And now

we are raising money to pay fines, but this is

a huge amount of work, and without it

nothing is possible. But in the end, the prize—the result—

really was

freaking amazing, excuse the expression.

This week, there was a moment in the Moscow City Duma (Moscow’s city parliament)

when that same Stupin introduced a bill

which, as we know from polls, including

our own, is supported by 86

percent of the population. He proposed a simple

thing: repeal the law raising the

retirement age. Everyone knows that this

reform has failed, it is harmful, and he

submitted such a bill, and it was

just, simply wonderful to watch. First of all,

they showed themselves in real

politics: they literally brought in a banner and

hung it up, because they knew that

United Russia deputies would run out of the chamber, that

United Russia deputies would hide, that they

would not want to vote against it, that they would

abstain or do something else.

They brought in a banner and staged a whole

showdown in the Moscow City Duma.

And then there was the speech by that same

Stupin, the bill’s sponsor. Let’s listen to 1 minute 45

seconds of it—this is an important statement, and thank God,

what a blessing that in the Moscow City Duma

for the first time in all its existence, in

the past year, speeches like this are being heard from

the podium. People have simply had five years of

their pension taken away. With the retirement age now at 65,

the average life expectancy for men,

according to Rosstat (Russia’s official statistics agency), on its official website, in

the Amur, Novgorod, and Pskov

regions, the Tver region, and Khabarovsk Krai (territory),

is 64 years. Men

now do not live to reach retirement

age. In Zabaykalsky Krai and Irkutsk

region,

and in Kemerovo region, it is 63 years.

In Chukotka Autonomous Okrug,

the average life expectancy for men is 59 years.

United Russia deputies may

object: how can that be, our incomes are rising here—

ours, meaning theirs. They make 400,000 to 500,000

rubles a month (about several thousand U.S. dollars), and someone—we won’t

point fingers—

the presiding officer—has 162 million

rubles a month. So maybe they think

life is improving for everyone as well. But by the end of

2019, according to Rosstat, the real

incomes of Russians, compared with 2014,

had fallen by 7.5 percent. And I don’t think I’d be

lying if I said that in 2020

that decline would be dramatic. These are

the results of 20 years of Putin’s rule and

United Russia’s rule. It is the duty of each of us

today to make every effort within our power

to improve the lives of the most

needy. The ideal opportunity to

show

humanity is to repeal the pension reform.

But that’s not all. The main thing here is not

just Stupin’s great, emotional speech

from the podium. What happened next? Next came

the vote. And many people, including

me personally, have been criticized because with the help of

Smart Voting we got some deputies

elected

—including some who are mentioned as having, well,

somehow drifted closer to United

Russia, whether they were bought off, persuaded, and so

on. But this time, even on this

bill, even all the deputies who

take that sort of position—all of them

voted in favor. Nineteen voted yes, and 20

United Russia deputies voted against or did not

vote. So we were just a little short—

we lacked 4 votes to pass

the bill abolishing the higher

retirement age. But that means that

politically, we can simply finish off United

Russia in the city of Moscow.

Those four votes—that is exactly what Smart

Voting in Moscow is about. If just 10,000 more

people had come out, we would have had

more deputies, and they would have lost

their majority.

That is precisely why it is so important to take part in all of this.

Of course, the regions are different, and in

Moscow there was an opportunity to take part in

these elections a year ago, and the falsifications

were not everywhere; in other regions, the situation is different.

Kazan.

But it will be absolutely

fantastically difficult, because there

they have always falsified things there, but nevertheless

in this particular situation, this is

a real vote. Here, many people

ask me a lot whether it still works

for Smart Voting strategies if

the voting itself is now going to take place

over three days. For now, it is not taking place over three days; we

do not know what will happen next, and we will

of course take certain measures.

But for now, as far as we understand and can see, and

under the law, in September there will be one day

as usual for voting, so go to

the Smart Voting website, sign up

as an observer, and if in your region there is

an election, make your contribution to the fight against

United Russia. If there is no election in your region,

send money to a candidate who is running in

another region, help them

with information, because only this way can we

really move them all. And right now there is

an excellent opportunity for that. From the person in the white

T-shirt, they ask me: what should be done about

Khabarovsk? They are simply ignoring

the protests. Given this importance, would it be reasonable

for all of Russia to support Khabarovsk?

Yes, the person in the white T-shirt is asking a sensible question.

Turning to the topic of Khabarovsk, I want to begin with it

by showing this cool

billboard that is hanging in Irkutsk

Region, which by Russian standards is actually not that far

from Khabarovsk.

This person, in Irkutsk Region, even

somewhere, to be more precise, in Irkutsk itself, is

running for head of a municipal

district, and as you can see there

you can see that he is a former United Russia member.

And in order to attract the attention

of voters, in order to tell them

something good about himself, the main thing he does is simply

run on the message—not, you know,

"Guys, I am a strong manager," as they used to say,

or "I am a good father and husband," or "I am

a patriot," or "I was born on this land." He

writes in huge letters: "I am no longer

a United Russia member." And this poster

best explains what is happening overall,

what is happening in Khabarovsk, and what

we should do when the ground is burning under their feet.

United Russia deputies are hiding,

they are disguising themselves, but they continue

to win

solely because we

are passive and our votes are split.

Because there are 78,000 of us here with you,

watching this live stream, and some of you

would vote for the Communists, some

say, "No, I’m going to vote for Yabloko (a liberal political party),"

someone else goes for the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), and someone for

A Just Russia. In the end, we have 45

percent, but we have scattered it

into four piles of about 10 percent each, while the United Russia candidate

with the help of administrative resources

gets his 22 percent, which is half

of what we have collectively—yet he still wins.

That is exactly why Smart Voting is needed. And

in fact, what is happening in

Khabarovsk, as I said today—you

can see it in the investigation that came out, if

you have not yet watched it, about Trutnev—this is

precisely the consequence of the fact that the people

of Khabarovsk Krai dealt a political

defeat to both Putin and United Russia. For

that, they are going after all of them, and specifically Furgal.

And in general, what is happening now

is an attempt to restore United Russia’s control

over that region, and the attack

on Nizovtsev today is exactly the same thing.

They genuinely do not know what to do:

people have been taking to the streets for 13 days. Dmitry

Nizovtsev is a staff member at

the regional level, a manager dealing with

the regions, but he is also a journalist on Navalny LIVE.

He is a very good journalist, a principled

person, and among other things he is our main

star on the Shtab channel. He himself is from Khabarovsk

and went there.

He made reports—one report got 1 million

100 thousand views, others got 400 thousand, 500

thousand—so he really made a serious

contribution to breaking the information blockade

around Khabarovsk. By the way, subscribe

to the Shtab channel. And

it seems to me they simply did not

forgive him for so boldly

doing these reports. Secondly, he

understands very well what is happening

in Khabarovsk and knows whom to talk to. Thirdly,

most importantly, probably, he

in his great style trolled all

those plainclothes operatives

in his reports. Let me show two examples.

I’ll show 24 seconds of how he walks up to these

guys and, while filming them, asks where

Oleg’s office is located here—could you

tell me? You are with cameras too—who

can we speak to, who can we talk to? We are new here.

What, you do not know? We were told

to come from this Center for

Countering Extremism (a Russian police unit). Do you not know

anyone here?

Someone was standing around somewhere with a small camera, and with that

attentive look. All right, we’ll keep looking.

They are probably off smoking and lurking around there.

But he posted all of this in a very funny way.

A huge number of people saw it.

Of course, it infuriated the police and all

the security apparatus there, really the whole

Khabarovsk authorities, who do not know

what to do with these people. All they can

do is send all these people away.

who film and photograph everyone and

also capture it all in a very absurd scene

on exactly this topic, a 51-second clip as

Nizovtsev and his colleague mocked the jerks

trolling, specifically, the person who was filming them

for us. 71 seconds. Today, our new

segment.

We’re filming the phone guys and technicians.

[music]

Hello, how’s life? What are you doing? And you,

are you here by accident? And someone was scolding with a ruler.

Keep supporting us.

Let’s move on to the questions.

First question: why were you filming us?

Photographing? I wasn’t filming anything.

You weren’t filming us? What if we show on

screen right now that we have your

photos of us? We almost don’t care,

but you were filming us. Why? Will the authorities praise you for it?

Will they commend you for doing something? Will they give you

a bonus for filming

the film crew? Anyway,

hang in there. Your work is difficult, useful, and

interesting. It’s clear that Dmitry was simply

showing that he isn’t afraid of them, that

he is mocking them for their stupidity, but

it’s obviously stupid, these endless

recordings. Go to any rally and

you’ll see these people in caps with

a little shoulder bag and a camera

filming—it’s completely unclear why

This is apparently their important operational

work. And my version, honestly, I do not

doubt that they were certainly the ones

directly involved in the attacks.

These very thugs

who are now

being sent out, and at rallies they themselves

certainly, just as in Moscow,

are controlled by representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD)

and the Center, most often.

And of course, this was done with

the approval of the MVD leadership. We

asked Dmitry Nizovtsev, who was in

the hospital, to record a video especially

and exclusively for our program. Let’s

watch 53 seconds from Nizovtsev

from a hospital in Khabarovsk.

I’m a bit uncomfortable with how this looks,

someone might think I got completely beaten to

a pulp. It’s just that my face is swollen and

my elbows and knees are banged up, but

the funny thing is, of course, we were filming in

the square today, and we saw these pumped-up

guys there who were noting down those who

were saying, ‘Don’t shout, keep track of who

was shouting about Putin,’ and during the

broadcast we went up to one such pumped-up guy

and asked, ‘So, you work out a lot?’

and he tried to pull us aside and

was arguing with us. But then I drive home and see

a man of the same build standing

next to my building. I just started heading home,

went into the entranceway, and while I was there

someone called out to me loudly.

And then they jumped me, more or less like that, so everything

is fine. My face is swollen, and I think

my ribs hurt.

Dima is such a cheerful person

and it sounds like I’m telling all this

as a joke, but in fact

a person was attacked at night near

the entrance to his building and beaten. If he hadn’t

fought back—and the point is absolutely not that

he shouted and drew attention, and they

ran away because of that—but they could have done a lot

more to him. And we know very

many examples of attacks on journalists.

Of course, Nizovtsev was targeted because of his

journalistic work in that sense. Here you

have a clear example of that.

When I was finishing up, everything was very good, and we

of course will not leave this matter as it is. Dear

Governor Degtyarev, acting

governor—Misha, I do not

doubt that you will watch this broadcast.

So I believe this is in your

interests.

I don’t know, I understand that in the end no one

will hand over these predators who

organized the attack on

Nizovtsev, but I think that at the very least

it is necessary to make a statement and take it under strict control,

to declare that this is unacceptable, and so on, so that

nothing like this ever happens again, because

this is already turning into

a confrontation with the authorities in Khabarovsk

who attack people and use these

gang-like, bandit methods against

the press, and it is also becoming something

personal, which we of course always

love to highlight. Today, probably

the presidential envoy to the

Far Eastern Federal District

Mikhail Trutnev felt a lot of it because of

the investigation we released. It is now

holding the number one spot in the trends. Go

watch it обязательно—it will be very important

and useful. It will be a great help to us

—a great help to all of us—if you

share it, especially across the Far

East, Siberia, and the Urals, where

Trutnev is from, in fact. This is important

because Trutnev is a man who

has been in power for many, many years. He

is very rich, very cautious, and

usually does not stick his neck out, but in

the Far East specifically, you can

ask anyone who follows

politics there, and they will tell you that

Trutnev personally bears responsibility for

the overwhelming majority of conflicts,

lawless abuses and силовые наезды (heavy-handed pressure by security agencies)

that take place in the Far East.

This is the man who rules on behalf of

Putin, and his style of rule is such that

it’s like: here I have the FSB,

here I have my people sitting around, and I

Right now, we’ll just make up criminal cases against you here.

And arrest you. And that is exactly, exactly what he does.

He does. And this whole situation with Furgal

and the entire strategy and operation against

him, and against Khabarovsk Krai as a whole,

was specifically conceived, organized, and

carried out by Yuri Petrovich Trutnev. In

that sense, he is a kind of little

Far Eastern Putin, a derivative of

Putin. And for us it was very important

to explain who he is and to show that

Trutnev is just like all the rest of them, and he has

not the slightest right to lecture anyone about

the rule of law in the Far East, because

right now he comes there as a man

who says: well, there was a

governor here, he broke the law, and I, as a

representative of the federal government,

at the same time—with prosecutors and investigators in tow—

personify the law here. But no,

absolutely not.

Yuri Petrovich Trutnev is a man

who should first be sent into

retirement, and then should be brought to

trial, because there are an enormous number

of questions about him. If you watched

Vladimir Milov’s program today, he

said it absolutely correctly there—he has always

dealt with him skillfully, back when he was still a government

official. When they tell us that

Furgal was connected to some kind of

organized criminal groups

from the 1990s—maybe he was, of course, but

seriously, is Trutnev really going to tell us

about that? This whole crowd from Perm

that seized power first in the city of

Perm and then in Perm Krai—among them

there were different people, they did bad

and good things—but seriously, in essence they were

ordinary Perm gangsters, and Trutnev was

part of those plain gangsters who

seized power, first in the city

and then in the region, who simply

set up a mafia-style system there. Everyone

in the city of Perm and in Perm Krai

knows this perfectly well.

Absolutely everyone knows where

Trutnev came from and what kind of person he is.

But now we have also presented, it seems to me,

very clear legal

evidence that he should be removed.

Let me show you. If anyone still

hasn’t seen it, let me remind you—one

minute

15 seconds. Here are two flyovers over his

property. And those little elephants—

of course—next to his mansion at his

Moscow residence in Serebryany Bor

are really something extraordinary. When I

looked at those elephants, those antelopes,

I thought: my God, these people have billions.

And this is also an additional

bonus of our video: we can simply

understand why such ugliness is everywhere.

At least from the standpoint of

construction—there is a sea of money in the country, so why

is everything so hideous?

So grotesque everywhere, from new buildings

to monuments. Because

a billionaire, with all his money, in

his own house worth 2 billion

rubles, puts two little elephants and two antelopes

to guard the entrance by his stone

staircase. Because, fundamentally,

these are people with the imagination of a stool.

They are malicious, they are cunning, they are unprincipled.

They can be good at business,

at squeezing people out, at making money; they can

do many different things. But at the same time,

it is still as if they remained,

you know, in the district Komsomol committee (the local Communist youth organization), as if

he was 23 back then and

he thought: damn, it would be great to steal enough

money to throw up a huge mansion.

I’ll build myself a mansion, he thought, and then

I won’t just have a staircase—on both

sides I’ll put little elephants, and then

my wife and I will walk there, and I’ll have children,

and there will be these little elephants, and I’ll

sit next to them drinking tea. And that

is the image of his dream that he made real.

Let’s take a look—just one second.

The little elephants, the little elephants—we laughed at them, sure, but

there is also a huge undeclared

piece of property there. In fact, he should resign

because he did not disclose, did not declare

most of the land.

Serebryany Bor is a protected natural area in

western Moscow,

right within the city limits—an enormous

artificial island where not only

do dozens of Russia’s richest people live,

but where real estate is more expensive

than on Rublyovka (Moscow’s elite luxury suburb).

And here is the brand-new house of Yuri

Petrovich Trutnev himself: a three-story

wooden terem (traditional ornate Russian mansion) right at the water’s edge.

A huge luxury log house, 820 square meters.

Three stories. On the property there are also two

smaller cabins for guests and staff.

Living in Serebryany Bor is incredibly expensive.

Just look around and you’ll understand why. Right

now, a house half the size and far

less luxurious than Trutnev’s

is being sold for 1.2

billion rubles, which means his little mansion

can safely be valued at 2 billion

rubles at a minimum. We fly over the river and

head toward a small peninsula. At

first glance there is nothing unusual—well,

except perhaps for this neat

hangar and the brand-new helipad

in front of it. The entire peninsula, the neighboring land,

and the buildings on it are the country estate of the

Yuri Trutnev family. Their estate stretches

across almost 3 hectares (about 7.4 acres). There is even

a small bay here. We rise higher and fly

a little farther ahead, where protruding above the trees you can see...

The weathervane says we should definitely go that way, because here...

there’s yet another even more elaborate *terem* (ornate traditional Russian-style mansion).

Knock-knock, who lives in the little *terem*?

The presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal

District.

The hectare we’re flying over is officially

leased by a company that was initially

registered in Cyprus, in an offshore jurisdiction, and then

re-registered to yet another one of the eldest

sons of the formidable Dmitry. Next:

for 45 years, Dmitry Trutnev will lease

2 hectares (about 4.9 acres) of land here for just 30,000

rubles a month.

And Trutnev wants to score four goals here—

no fewer than Putin, and no fewer than

any other United Russia member from any other

region. In fact, it doesn’t necessarily have to be

Khabarovsk, or even the Far East in general,

because this is vitally important, because

people have stopped voting for United

Russia. And the story of Khabarovsk—what happened there—

is also important to tell in the video. It’s not

just about today’s protests, and also

the chain of events: Putin losing

the gubernatorial election, and losing

the city council elections in Khabarovsk and

Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and the regional legislative assembly

of Khabarovsk Krai, including because of Smart

Voting. After all, we did that too.

I recorded videos about Smart Voting,

we ran them across Khabarovsk Krai, across

the city of Khabarovsk. I said: people of Khabarovsk,

sign up—back when very few believed

it would work. But it did work, and it will work in

your city too. And when they

lost all the elections, they started locking him up,

and people started taking to the streets.

It’s very important to understand how Khabarovsk

is now fundamentally different from

any other region. There, tens of thousands of people

are coming out into the streets, and those

tens of thousands know that they are

supported by deputies.

The entire legislative branch—well, some of them

joined in directly—but essentially the whole

legislative power of both the cities and the entire

region is outside United Russia and against

United Russia. Some got scared, some

didn’t.

That is, this is the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), which

of course varies a lot from region to region.

More often than not, it’s made up of businesspeople

who bought their seats.

But in this situation, they are businesspeople

who bought their seats, yet they are against

United Russia. This is some other part

of the elite. And all the people going out into the streets—well,

I don’t know, some may stay quiet at home,

but others are out there too, and here in the square they

support them as well. That’s what

is fundamentally important. And people will go out

into the streets, and it will be much easier.

They will feel much

safer, much more

if they know that, for

the deputies, we are the majority. And in that

sense, this is not just a plain fact,

it is, in fact, a legal fact

recognized by Ella Pamfilova.

That in Khabarovsk Krai, United Russia

has no support whatsoever,

it lost every vote, and the people against

United Russia are the absolute majority.

This is the only region where that has been proven

one hundred percent. And it can be proven through Smart

Voting. So sign up and

take part right now. Trutnev is a member

of the Supreme Council of United Russia. Yes, he needs

this Khabarovsk here, because in order

to preserve his *terems* (ornate mansions),

and his little elephants, in order to preserve his

mysterious business, of course he needs

United Russia to have

a majority everywhere, because otherwise people will start

asking: where did the money come from, dear Yuri

Petrovich Trutnev? And that is a question he

does not want to hear.

A completely classic type of guy who

has been around for a long time—now they’ll start

asking him questions: what exactly are you trading in?

Why are you so rich? He says: I had a big

business. That’s true—well, not huge, but a fairly large business.

But since 1996, as mayor—

in 2006 he was elected mayor of Perm—and

he could no longer be engaged in that kind of business. Nevertheless,

he keeps getting richer. In the last year alone, he

reported income of half a billion rubles.

Where that income came from, we don’t know. No one

understands—or rather, we do understand, because

we started looking into

who actually handles it: his son. And we found

an absolutely astonishing interview. Let me

show you a 53-second clip where he

talks about it—or rather, not 53 seconds,

1 minute 20 seconds—where he says that

my son will never be involved in

subsoil use (natural resource extraction), and that is exactly what his son

does. That 1 minute 20 seconds

actually explains

the astonishing income of the presidential envoy to the

Far Eastern District. As for

Dmitry Trutnev’s eldest son, in one

interview his father, the official, philosophically

reasoned that, well, ministers’ children

have to do something with their lives too.

So his son does have an occupation, but under no

circumstances is it connected to his father in any way.

Quoting our presidential envoy verbatim: “My eldest

son is an adult and free to do whatever

he wants, although if he does something

in the field of natural resource extraction, I would probably

be very ashamed.” What fine and

wise words. But do you know what

Trutnev’s son does? Oil extraction and refining.

He has a stake in a joint venture

with Lukoil, and in this year alone

they received four new licenses

to develop fields in Perm Krai.

the region

So, by his own logic, Yuri Petrovich Trutnev

should, in his own words, every day

and every hour simply burn with shame.

To make it clear once again: daddy spent 8 years

serving as minister of natural resources,

and his dear son is making money off those

natural resources—oil and gas.

The younger Trutnev’s business partners are exactly

the same people daddy

did business with in the 1990s, so tell me—who, exactly,

is involved in the oil business here: the younger

Trutnev the businessman, or the elder Trutnev

the official?

And we released this video in order to

once again support

the people of Khabarovsk, and second, so that they know for sure, once again,

that the person who

put Furgal behind bars

and arranged to have him taken to Moscow

and concocted this case, which was obviously

fabricated—if it weren’t

fabricated, they wouldn’t be trying him

behind closed doors. This is unprecedented

nonsense: this isn’t some espionage case,

it’s just the case of an ordinary, ordinary

arrested governor, and all such cases

are heard publicly, one hundred percent.

Because when the Kremlin wants to do this

openly, they do it openly, because they want to show,

supposedly, that they’re fighting corruption. But with Furgal,

the hearing is closed, behind closed doors, and

they won’t show anything because it’s all

pulled out of thin air, all invented on the

basis of one person’s testimony.

That poor man, Meniukov/Striukov, has been held for half a year

in Lefortovo (a Moscow prison), seriously ill, I mean

the man has cancer, and he understands that he will

die if they don’t start treating him now.

They’re not giving him medication. You know that

cancer patients suffer horrific pain

when they are not given painkillers.

He was visited there by a member of the Public Monitoring Commission in that

cell, who simply

reported that the man is in

a horrifying condition. In other words, they really

grabbed some aide or partner

of Furgal’s, in business or politics,

are effectively torturing him in prison, and beat out of

him testimony. And he wrote the

statements they extracted from him under torture.

Well yes, under torture he would confess to anything.

Probably most people,

any of us, if subjected to pain

of the kind experienced by

a cancer patient, would sign anything.

Anything at all. We know many such examples.

And he signed. But this is complete nonsense, and

everyone understands that perfectly well. That’s why they don’t want

to try him in Khabarovsk. They don’t even want

to try him openly in Moscow. They’re hiding all this everywhere.

Trutnev came up with all of this. We want

everyone to know that Trutnev came up with this,

and for people to come out to rallies, if anything,

even angrier, because no

Trutnev has any right to lecture them about

legality, because this is a man

who cannot explain where his

money came from, a man who does not declare

his income, and who in the 1990s

was, for all I know, exactly the same. If he

calls Furgal a Khabarovsk gangster

from the 1990s, then Trutnev himself is a Perm

gangster from the 1990s—the exact same thing.

There’s no need to tell us that this is somehow

different. But these people chose him.

They chose him, and they want him

to be their governor, and they have every

right to that. There are many questions here

specifically about Degtyaryov—what I think about

Degtyaryov, how the situation will develop,

and in general what the Kremlin will do

in connection with this. The Kremlin will now, of course,

stall. People have been coming out for 13 days

in a row. They will wait. First of all, they

will wait for people to get tired of going out.

Basically, no one understands how the situation

will develop from here. Who could have

imagined that such huge

rallies would happen, and that the people of Khabarovsk

—and, as it turns out, not only Khabarovsk residents, but in a broader sense

all the residents of the region, including Komsomolsk

and Sovetskaya Gavan, and whatever other major

cities there are—would turn out to be so tough,

persistent, and consistent?

So they’re simply waiting, and they’ve now

dragged in this Degtyaryov in order to

reformat

the confrontation—so that it’s no longer Khabarovsk Krai

versus Putin and Trutnev, but rather

Khabarovsk Krai versus Misha Degtyaryov.

Calling him Misha is a bit familiar, but

I know him; he was elected alongside me,

you know, he’s that kind of LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) figure.

LDPR people are different, as you know: they’re either

just regional figures who joined

that party because, well, because

they wanted to belong to some party,

local businesspeople controlling licenses,

and entrepreneurs,

or else the kind who are called

Zhirinovsky’s “bathhouse boys” (a derogatory term for his close protégés), and

Mikhail is more from that

particular cohort. But I won’t go into detail

and I don’t want to talk about this topic, but it’s

a very specific type of politician, and

Zhirinovsky, to our amazement, has quite openly

talked publicly somehow

about the political genesis

and origins of all these people.

Let’s watch for a few seconds

these boys again in our video.

Today’s video: “As the future

mayor of Moscow, I also guarantee that with

Muscovites,”

“I will go out every week.” That’s a classic.

“The Russian soul demands

weekly communication—weekly...”

park

pink tongues, a really good jawline

just appoint governors left and right, however many you want

there are enough of them there; you need one for every region

send in a governor like that, and they

they're all ready-made, and of course the Kremlin has

a strategy right now made up of

several elements. Those who seriously get in the way

we saw it today, in the case of Nizovtsev

they are subjected to physical pressure

to attacks today, or they start

drawing up the first police reports. In other words, people who

are doing the most important thing, namely

politicizing the protest

they begin actively cracking down on them

everyone else they try to draw into

a confrontation with Degtyarev, because

well, Mikhail arrived in his usual style

and just started talking nonsense. He's trying to imitate

Zhirinovsky, but while with Zhirinovsky

it always comes off as very funny, here we

can look at this video about pink

tongues and a good jawline, and yes, we laugh

a bit awkwardly, but it's funny because

Zhirik (nickname for Zhirinovsky) knows how to take his own

quirks and perversions and present them

in a funny way, whereas Degtyarev

tries to do the same, but all it produces is

a kind of heavy, genuine bewilderment, and

then there was this 1-minute-50-second livestream of his

that he put out today—well, yesterday—in

Khabarovsk. Very early in the morning he

walked through the streets and recorded a livestream

so that everyone could see what a

democratic person he is, and he says

things in this kind of freestyle manner

like Zhirinovsky does, like, oh,

honeysuckle, and now let's get some ice cream

I'll buy some. It looks—not in the sense that everyone

is laughing like they do at Zhirinovsky—but that everyone is watching

and thinking, what on earth is this?

Just imagine the residents of Khabarovsk

looking at this and thinking: is this really supposed to

be our governor? Why the hell?

I mean, this is a person who has literally, for the first time in his life

or maybe the second, come to Khabarovsk and has absolutely

no connection to it whatsoever

He ran for mayor of Moscow twice

he really wanted it

and declared that he was a Muscovite, even though he's from Samara

though that doesn't matter—everyone who moves here

can become a Muscovite. I myself am from

the Moscow region and I'm a Muscovite; he's a Muscovite, he's

someone who wanted to be mayor of Moscow, and then some

people decided, and

he became governor of Khabarovsk Krai (a federal region in Russia), and

now, of course,

people will be drawn into

a confrontation with him, because with him it

is impossible not to get drawn in when

you see something as wonderful as, for example,

this stroll through Khabarovsk. Let's watch

Goodest morning to you all, and only...

"Degtyarev, go away"—I'm not leaving

because work needs to be done, you understand, a whole pile of

tasks. The region has been without a leader for 10 days

a stack of documents on my desk

has piled up to a height of one meter

you understand? Well, if I leave, someone else will come, so

for now let's work temporarily as

the president's acting

appointee

and 2021 will show. Honeysuckle.

Do you have ice cream? I'll buy some ice cream now

apricot. People here are cultured

they smile, say hello, goodbye

though in principle they could also tell me to go to hell

but you know, I can do that too

Someone's honking, probably unhappy with my

arrival, but that's fine

we'll get through it. We've reached the square where they feed

the pigeons—they're already swollen

they're fed every day, a lot, with bread and

sunflower seeds

In Khabarovsk, the pigeons are the fattest pigeons

and the happiest in all of Russia. That's how it is

and let me warn you right away: shouting under

my windows, "Degtyarev, come out," is unnecessary, it's

uncultured. Just because you shouted under

the governor's windows, "Degtyarev, come out,"

or fed all the pigeons, life won't get any better

You see, this falls into the category not even of

funny videos, but strange videos that

are trying to be funny. But for 1.3 million

people, this is now

the governor installed by Putin

You can already hear it being blown up: the region has been without

a leader for 10 days, documents have

piled up—unbelievably important, you understand

the most important thing is to send someone

from Moscow so he can sort through the documents, and

otherwise, after the previous governor

was simply snatched away and taken somewhere

no election was called, which is also

an astonishing thing. Fine, they arrested

the governor, so what—no election? There will be no election?

Instead they appointed some great guy who goes on about

honeysuckle and "I'll buy some ice cream now." Why

should he be governor? Who decided that?

But still, even with the new

Constitution and everything else, somehow

formally there are still gubernatorial elections, and

in the regions people choose them—it's an elected

office

Nevertheless, it has been announced that the election will be

only in a year's time, and for now let's let Misha (diminutive of Mikhail)

Degtyarev

spread his wings. And so, well, this is

the Kremlin's complex strategy at work

against the protesters' own complex strategy

The protesters also have it very hard because

there is an information blockade

there is total discrediting going on. People know

something about it, but it seems to us that everyone knows

about Khabarovsk—no, not everyone knows about

Khabarovsk, not everyone knows what's happening there

only those who

watch YouTube know

use the internet, while people who

watch television number in the tens of millions.

So tens of millions of people know that

foreigners and various outsiders are coming in,

along with bloggers. Let's look at a video of how

what is happening is being covered on the federal TV channels.

Here is what is happening, at minute 57.

Immediately after the detention and arrest

of the governor, the center of Krai (region) was taken over

by visiting bloggers who now consider

our square to belong to their own crowd.

An odious figure urgently flew into Khabarovsk:

a Moscow blogger.

Alexei Romanov, who professionally

covers protests. According to some reports,

he was sent on assignment. Also there was the leader of Global Vostok;

both are from organizations allegedly controlled by the U.S. State Department.

Natalya Bugayeva from the United States also arrived, along with

others who came as well.

Despite the investigators' evidence

of Furgal's involvement

in murder, some of his supporters

said they were ready to support

the governor even with a criminal past.

In this situation, that plays into the hands of all kinds of

provocateurs and bloggers hungry for action

and likes from the footage. Someone even

deliberately put out a call on social media:

"Let's gather those who like

to express dissatisfaction with or without a reason."

"A journalist I know is looking for local residents

to talk about the protests. Can anyone

help?"

"Which local residents are ready to give an interview

on the topic of Furgal's arrest to one very

good TV channel?"

Journalists from

England, France, and Spain were waiting for vivid footage.

Here, a representative of the foreign press

is scanning the crowd for ordinary people, as are these

itinerant activists, and those who openly suggest

that people set up tents, which many find

off-putting.

According to political analysts, such appeals are understandable:

the script is not new, and behind these actions

stands a coordinator of a pro-Western online

movement, Sergei Naumov. In February he flew

to the United States, then in May to Denmark to learn the basics

of the craft. Even Yulia Tsvetkova is hurrying to step into the spotlight,

Yulia Tsvetkova, known as an activist in the

LGBT movement. By Sunday, on

the square, before people's eyes,

only a small number had gathered, and they began to disperse,

while the capital's handlers in the camp

and professional provocateurs on the street

were thinning out. According to your information, they have already

flown out of Khabarovsk—the English

journalists—and by Monday the return

tickets of the French and Spanish TV channels' correspondents

were also booked. You see, all day long on

the federal channels, to millions

upon millions of viewers, this is what

is being broadcast. It's really just

a stream of consciousness pouring out: this

blogger traveled to the U.S. and Norway, and these people were sent here,

and here is a BBC journalist, and

an ordinary person watches and knows that in

Khabarovsk something is happening—but what exactly?

Well, they show a small number of people,

some foreigners; everything is filled

with foreigners, some people who came in from outside,

someone who had previously been in Washington and

somewhere else too.

So the viewer concludes that in Khabarovsk

there was a cult governor who killed everyone,

and he was arrested completely justly;

then Muscovites, Americans, and

Brits flocked there and started making noise, plus

Arab terrorists too, because the FSB

simply puts out an entire staged scene,

one that is obviously completely fabricated—there is not

the slightest doubt about it. And here, look:

this is an FSB special operation to

detain a terrorist who allegedly wanted

to blow up a crowd. "Take this

terrorist away." They found a Tajik taxi driver,

put him in handcuffs, and then tell him,

"Now, with your own hands..."

"You have to open it." First,

they handcuff him, and then somehow he is supposed

to open his own backpack himself, which of course would

leave our fingerprints on it.

"Use your own hands, take the knife, whatever,

and the flag too."

And people who understand Arabic

have already had a laugh—there, now the fingerprints

are in place, of course, for all of this,

for the whole setup.

As for the ISIS flag,

people who know Arabic have been laughing for a while,

because all the

slogans that were supposed to be written there

on the ISIS flag were written with mistakes.

Apparently the Khabarovsk FSB couldn't

scribble it any other way. But now there are fingerprints on it too.

And here, on this bottle

with an incendiary mixture, supposedly made by

some unfortunate taxi driver—

in that sense, there is no doubt that this is simply

a complete fake and forgery. But they do

this all the time. Remember the Moscow

"terrorists" who were detained in exactly the same way?

Detained,

some Uzbek man at a bus

stop with a grenade—and then it turned out

that Uzbekistan's Interior Ministry said, "You know, we

actually handed him over to you at the border.

He had been in the hospital; we handed him over to you, and you

took him to Moscow,

put a grenade in his pocket, and then

staged the arrest." That is,

this is called a disinformation operation.

The same kind of people are sitting there now, the ones who organized

the attack on Nizovtsev.

And their task is this: when 80,000 people take to

the streets, they need to frighten some portion of them.

So they say: let's claim that here in

Khabarovsk there are terrorists with an ISIS flag.

who want to throw grenades into the crowd

well, maybe at some point there will be something

some number of pensioners will get scared and

won’t show up somewhere, so that’s why they’re using various

methods to influence some of the people

to redirect some people toward Degtyarev

to frighten some people with supposed terrorists

to convince some people that political

slogans aren’t needed; to affect some people

through Vladimir Solovyov, who

just goes around calling everyone drunken

scum. Let’s listen to Solovyov.

Why won’t federal TV channels show

the rallies? And why should they?

Why should they show them? And if they do, not in the way

you would like—for example, all this

all this drunken scum at night, through

the disgusting picture of drunken brawls

So of course the situation there is very complicated

and people don’t know what to do

A resident of Khabarovsk asks: what needs

to be done now in order to achieve

what they want, some basic things?

Take this Degtyarev away, for God’s sake

We don’t want him as governor, or rather, we

want elections. Give us, give us a choice, and we

will then vote for someone else, for anyone

but not for Degtyarev. But they aren’t being given elections

They aren’t being allowed to do anything

On top of that, some titushky (paid pro-government thugs) are being sent in to convince

people that political slogans aren’t needed

that they aren’t necessary. No, of course they are necessary

Everything needs to be politicized as much as possible

This is unquestionably a confrontation

a political one. United Russia was defeated, and Putin

is punishing the people of Khabarovsk because they defeated

United Russia. So this needs to be politicized

These rallies need to continue, because there is no other

way. They need to be held, and people need

to stay longer and gather more people

more and more, and all the practice

we see shows exactly that—that is,

it’s simply a matter of who outlasts whom, who can

hold out longer, and not just

hold on a bit and then leave the streets. And that means

that, well, that’s it—Mikhail Degtyarev

that absolutely wonderful man, will remain

and will go on telling everyone that

he is the president’s representative and the rightful

governor, while people have flocked here

from abroad. So notice this as well

pay attention to how Degtyarev and Zhirinovsky

are really pulling off this maneuver

He comes and tells fairy tales about how

people have come here

foreign bloggers, and then he also goes on

Solovyov’s broadcast, where the very people who

came to see you are being called

drunken scum

and on his program he talks about how

foreigners have supposedly flocked here

foreign journalists, and so on

Let’s listen. I’ll put it this way: those first

demonstrations by the people of Khabarovsk were absolutely

righteous anger over the manner and circumstances

of the detention of their popularly elected

governor. But what is happening now, all these

weekday evening

events—we have all the оперативные data (operational intelligence)

showing that they are being stirred up

People have flown into Khabarovsk, including citizens of

foreign states. Right now

law enforcement agencies

and state security are dealing with this

Just think about it—state security agencies. He is, in all seriousness,

saying this about his own city’s residents

about the people of the region, his own people, because

after all, he says: I came here, I love

all the people of Khabarovsk. State security agencies,

foreigners, and so on—what kind of

whether you call them drunken scum or sober

scum—it’s all absolutely disgusting

These are utterly dishonest people, and there is no

other solution for the residents of Khabarovsk Krai

except to keep coming out, to stay

in the streets longer, and to politicize things more and more

There is no other solution. There has already

been a rally where a resolution was adopted

supporting Putin’s resignation. That is

an absolutely correct decision. That is the only

way forward, because if

you demand only practical administrative things—well, let’s say

replace Degtyarev with his

new version, or let’s do something without

political slogans—but this is

a political matter. Your governor was

stolen from you because he was not from United Russia. How

can anyone talk about this in non-political

slogans? And in that sense

the demand for Putin’s resignation is absolutely

correct, because Putin is behaving

outrageously toward the residents

of Khabarovsk. Up to 46 seconds of this resolution

calling for Putin’s resignation

[applause]

was cut out

He defends the interests of a group of oligarchs, and not

those of his own people, and on that point, the majority

personally, I already have serious doubts

You know, Russian President Putin...

did

has lost the trust of the people and must be removed by the people

and after that

as well

[applause]

The counter shows that we are being watched by

200,000 people live. That is, of course,

not true—definitely 201,000, I’m being told

This, I’m told, is a variation of a DDoS

attack against us: a huge number of

users are being connected through some kind of

I don’t know, systems, in order to

make the broadcast crash. I should say that actually

before this attack, we had 86

thousand people watching live. I think

the number of real viewers is about that

so unfortunately I’m not going to claim

an extra 120,000 viewers for myself

All of this, all of this is obviously some kind of bots.

I don't even know who's making them there, on the inside.

In Khabarovsk, what is happening right now is also very

complicated, and it's a confrontation, because some

people are being intimidated, and some are being bribed.

The speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who

was still Furgal's ally just yesterday—he

helped get her elected.

She got in with the help of Smart Voting, among

other things, and then she comes out and

says that the mass rallies of many thousands—

quote—"the mass rallies of many thousands are killing"

the region.

I'm not exaggerating. What are our losses? They are

enormous. There is no money; budget revenues have

fallen fourfold in the regional budget.

And then there's the coronavirus, and so on and so forth.

The worst thing is that the region will

be associated with some unhinged,

uncontrollable cauldron. But the fact that the region

is associated with the fact that they simply took

the elected governor and hauled him off to who-knows-where

and appointed God-knows-who in his place—that doesn't scare her.

So, basically, this woman was simply

bribed, intimidated, somehow pulled over

to their side. But there is a reverse process too.

A deputy in the regional parliament, Pyotr

Yemelyanov, announced that he is leaving

the LDPR party because he joined it because of Furgal, and

now LDPR has clearly started playing

a game against the residents, against Furgal, and in favor of

Putin. Eighteen seconds. Regional parliament. Pyotr

Yemelyanov.

Dear friends, the latest news has compelled me

... the capital of our Motherland ... but that...

an honest and decent man from the party...

City council deputy Alexander

Koyan said the same thing. Thirty seconds. He said that

he is leaving the LDPR party. In other words,

that process is happening there. I am a deputy

of the Khabarovsk City Duma, Alexander

Koyan, and I am publicly announcing my departure from

the LDPR party. I joined the party because

I support Sergei Furgal

and considered him the driving force of this party in

Khabarovsk Krai.

Given the current situation, I no longer have

the moral right to remain a member

of the party. I also ran for office in order

to have the opportunity to help people, and I will

continue doing so as an independent.

But in this, I will need your help, and

your support most of all.

Thank you for your understanding. In fact,

that's true: they need help and support,

because Khabarovsk Krai is now

a kind of rebellious region, really.

A rebellious region: three times they voted not

the way Putin wanted, they sank United

Russia's result to a very low level, and then in the

nationwide vote on

the Constitution, and on top of that they are taking to the streets, and

nothing can be done to them. Nothing like this

has ever happened before. This is a rebellious region

that they want to crush. And right now, while

the Kremlin is explaining what all this supposedly means,

what is happening now,

Peskov said it was a fashionable trend among

representatives of this kind of quasi-opposition,

who don't mind making noise and trying

to score some political points from this

situation. In other words, they are passing off a real movement

and a genuinely mass protest as some kind of

quasi-opposition stunt. Our

main help

to Khabarovsk can consist of three

things. First:

breaking through the information blockade—simply

talking about it, because television

has enormous influence.

It shapes everyone's views. Second, and this primarily

concerns

the Russian Far East and Siberia, as well as other

regions: solidarity actions. I know that

they are taking place in other regions.

There were actions in Vladivostok, in Birobidzhan,

there was one in Novosibirsk as well. But

this is especially important for the Far

East. And third, most importantly: right now

there is only one rebellious region, so it is being

targeted with all possible force. There need to be

several such regions, at least at

the first stage. At the first stage, we need to vote out

United Russia candidates, the way they did in Khabarovsk

two years ago and a year ago.

We need to try to do that. It will be harder,

because in Khabarovsk there is less

election rigging, and that's why Furgal was able

to be elected governor there, and that's why

later they were able to vote United Russia out there. In other

regions,

it's much harder. I mean, in places like Pskov,

it's super difficult. In Novosibirsk, it's possible and

absolutely realistic. In Tomsk, it's possible and

absolutely realistic. In other cities, in

Tambov, it's absolutely possible too, but

the falsification there is also very heavy.

But our task is at least to try, at least

to make some contribution and show that

there is a large popular movement against

United Russia, because either it spreads

across the whole country, or one rebellious region—

Khabarovsk—which of course they will try to crush

with all their strength. And that is our task:

to resist that. The main gesture

of solidarity with Khabarovsk right now

is to take part in Smart Voting and hit

United Russia the same way it was hit in

Khabarovsk Krai. And the authorities are so afraid

of all this. As I wrap up the program, I

want to show a speech by a remarkable,

truly very important figure for Russia,

for the Russian state, despite the fact that

the man—despite the fact that

he looks like a drunk homeless man—well, he

is, in fact, a drunk homeless man.

This is a well-known TV host and now

the press secretary of the entire RussNeft company.

incidentally, a high-ranking official

Mikhail Leontyev, with an enormous salary

Sechin’s personal press secretary

the press secretary for Rosneft (Russia’s state oil company), who

comments on various things and simply

actually says that, well, of course

looking at what is happening, we understand

that young people should be stripped

of the right to vote altogether. Why does he

say this? Well, because they’re not

stupid — they see the age segments and

they understand that where there is

55 plus

there are many people who use

the internet, and in big cities they still

vote against United Russia, but in

the under-35 segment there is no support

for the authorities at all, there is absolutely no support

for Putin. So if these people go to

the polls, that’s bad for them, and they are already just, yes,

literally saying on the air of federal

radio that, you know,

young people need to be deprived of

the right to vote. Let’s listen to our Mikhail

Leontyev, the press attaché whom you

know is mostly called by everyone the press

drunk

We have now reached roughly the same

level of knowledge of our own history among

our younger generation, and we are faced with

the need to deprive young people of

voting rights, probably in the near

future

because otherwise we will lose the country, that’s

true

because these people know nothing, this is

almost Ukraine — it’s monstrous. Well, my

opinion is that young people simply do not need

voting rights at all, because

youth is a painful condition

that passes with age. If young people

vote, we will lose the country, says

Mikhail Leontyev

So our task is to make sure that Mikhail Leontyev,

Igor Sechin,

Vladimir Putin, Yury Trutnev, and Mikhail

Degtyaryov

actually lose the country. Well, this

consists of various small parts

— rallies, protest actions, road blockades

— anything at all, but also

voting against these people. Therefore

on September 13 there will be elections in 31

regions. Don’t wait, register right

now, sign up as an observer. No one

will help you except yourselves, no one

will help us — the rescue of drowning people is the work

of the drowning themselves, and our country right now

is truly drowning. Thank you very much to everyone

who watched. See you

next Thursday. Bye

[music]

[laughter]

[music]

[laughter]

[music]