Text version
0:01
[music]
0:07
Hello, Moscow. It’s 20:18, which means that in
0:11
the Navalny Live studio, I’m Alexei
0:13
Navalny, here to discuss with you
0:15
the latest news and answer your
0:17
questions. I hope you’ve built up quite a few over
0:20
the past week. If so, then please write
0:22
to us on Twitter, not in the YouTube chat
0:25
because it flies by at an enormous speed.
0:27
On Twitter, please use the hashtag
0:29
#Navalny2018. There was a lot of news this
0:33
week—take, for example,
0:36
that hearing when former
0:40
FBI Director Comey testified before
0:42
Congress. He’s probably in the closed session
0:44
right now; we’ll discuss that. But to start,
0:45
of course I want to begin with the June 12 rallies.
0:48
That is the main thing happening in
0:51
the country right now, and without any exaggeration, without
0:54
any, I don’t know, bragging, I
0:57
can say with complete certainty that right now
0:59
the administrations of most major
1:02
cities in the country are doing nothing
1:04
other than trying, one way or another,
1:06
to stop us from holding these rallies.
1:08
Because the geographic spread of the rallies
1:11
this time is simply astonishing. Right now
1:13
I’ll give you a bit of statistics: in total,
1:15
we have 211 events registered.
1:18
172 applications have been submitted. The difference in
1:23
the numbers
1:24
is due to—explained by, sorry—the fact
1:27
that in some cities we simply don’t
1:29
have enough feedback.
1:31
This is a genuine grassroots
1:33
movement: people themselves are doing what they want. We
1:36
organize or help organize only a fairly small number of groups and
1:38
rallies ourselves, or take part
1:41
in organizing them. In the overwhelming majority of cases,
1:43
it’s simply people—you wonderful people—
1:45
who decided to hold these rallies. So,
1:48
172 applications have been submitted, and of those,
1:51
the authorities approved—meaning permission to
1:54
hold them was granted for—115. That means in 115
1:56
cities there will be perfectly
1:59
safe, fully legal,
2:02
absolutely excellent rallies. We have
2:06
only
2:07
26 refusals. As I said on the last
2:09
program, the authorities have now realized
2:11
that it’s pointless to refuse, because people will
2:14
come out anyway, so there aren’t many refusals,
2:17
of which
2:18
21 came without any alternative being offered—that’s what
2:21
you’d call outright lawlessness. In 5 cases, the alternative
2:25
didn’t work. Some small towns
2:27
got refusals there, so they’re going to the district center.
2:29
I want to say that this is absolutely
2:32
wonderful. It’s amazing what’s happening
2:34
in these last few days.
2:36
Wherever you go, someone comes up and says,
2:39
“See you on the 12th. I’m in Moscow,”
2:41
“See you on the 12th. I’m in such-and-such city, but
2:44
we’ll still see each other on the 12th.” That’s very important.
2:47
And as I already said, there is nothing in
2:50
Russian politics right now more
2:52
important, and the authorities understand that
2:55
very well. That is exactly why all these
2:57
these
2:58
panic-driven
3:00
lectures at universities and schools, these
3:03
summonses of activists in various cities for
3:06
special “talks,” these attempts to convince
3:08
an entire generation of young people that they
3:12
shouldn’t go to rallies, shouldn’t do
3:13
anything, that it’s extremely harmful, extremely
3:16
dangerous—well, that means it’s extremely useful. It is
3:19
safe, and that is the most important thing, because
3:22
when we discuss—if you happen to be discussing—
3:25
whether to go to the rally on the 12th
3:26
or not, just answer a simple
3:28
question:
3:30
Have you received more answers on corruption,
3:32
at least regarding the investigation *He Is Not Dimon to You*?
3:35
Has anything happened over these months that
3:38
personally convinced you that, well,
3:40
maybe it’s not worth going? The answer is no. Well,
3:43
of course not. On the contrary, everything that has happened
3:45
has been either this kind of demonstrative rudeness,
3:47
as in the case of Usmanov, or again this kind of
3:50
demonstrative contempt.
3:52
The authorities haven’t even tried, not even a little,
3:56
to answer anything or refute our
3:58
information.
3:59
Medvedev could have said something more than “nonsense,”
4:03
“don’t stir up trouble” (a dismissive Russian phrase). No, they have been 100%
4:07
focused entirely on
4:09
getting in our way, and sometimes this takes completely
4:12
comical forms. Bring up—show
4:15
the image from Naberezhnye Chelny. I really
4:17
liked it. In Naberezhnye
4:20
Chelny,
4:21
there is some wonderful young woman—I gather
4:23
she’s an employee of the city administration. Well,
4:25
where is my image from Naberezhnye Chelny?
4:27
It’s not there.
4:28
Sorry, then—I’ll tell you everything
4:30
in words; they didn’t prepare the image.
4:34
There is an administration employee there
4:35
named Alina. On May 17, she approved
4:38
a flash mob—a flash mob that from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
4:42
will take place in all the city squares
4:45
of Naberezhnye Chelny, without exception. That is,
4:47
everywhere, in any square in Naberezhnye
4:50
Chelny, there is supposedly some
4:52
administration employee of Alina’s
4:54
holding a flash mob there, and therefore we cannot
4:57
hold our
4:59
anti-corruption rally. And this perfectly
5:02
shows just how panicked the reaction is
5:04
specifically to the geography of our
5:07
protest. That is our main task right now:
5:10
geography—to show that more
5:12
cities are taking part, to raise this
5:15
issue everywhere, including in small
5:17
towns. And if it seems to you, well,
5:20
how much longer can we keep shouting, how much longer can we
5:22
keep making statements, how much longer can we keep spreading this
5:24
This video, handing out leaflets—after all, it's already...
5:26
I saw that it already has 23 million views on YouTube,
5:29
plus 5 million on Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network), so 30 million in total.
5:31
People—come on, guys, 30 million people in a
5:35
country of 145 million is a lot. But that's
5:39
still far from everyone. Our task through these
5:42
rallies is to create and gather around us
5:45
a critical mass of people who
5:48
cannot be ignored. The authorities, of course,
5:51
will do everything they can to make sure we don't
5:53
succeed. That's what this whole contest is about:
5:55
we are gathering people around us,
5:57
and they are doing everything so that people won't
5:59
join us, or will be afraid, spreading
6:01
all kinds of nonsense. In some places, they ban it.
6:04
They're ready to put up visuals like this, in huge
6:07
letters. People wrote to me: well, show us
6:08
Naberezhnye Chelny after all—everyone's interested.
6:10
Here, you see, this so-called approval is just
6:13
some scrap of paper scribbled together on the spot, and
6:16
there was an administration employee sitting there,
6:18
and she was simply listing every square, every
6:23
possible venue there is in
6:24
Naberezhnye Chelny. But put it back.
6:26
Thank you very much.
6:27
Will that stop us? Of course not.
6:29
Will it stop the residents of St. Petersburg that
6:32
in St. Petersburg,
6:34
one of the cities where the application was not
6:35
approved—and I've received
6:38
just a huge number of questions about it? Well,
6:40
here it is.
6:41
In St. Petersburg, they sent us to the middle of nowhere,
6:44
and naturally it's impossible to hold our
6:48
anti-corruption rally there. Will you call on
6:50
Alexei to take part in an
6:51
unauthorized protest?
6:53
There are no unauthorized protests,
6:56
none.
6:58
What there is, in this particular city,
7:00
St. Petersburg, is two crooks:
7:03
Governor Poltavchenko and Vice Governor
7:06
Albin, who do not want an anti-corruption rally to be held in the
7:09
city, for an obvious reason:
7:11
because they
7:13
have been running this city incompetently
7:14
and have simply robbed it. They
7:17
have looted it. Just look at what
7:19
the whole story with Zenit Stadium has turned into.
7:21
It's just some kind of clown show. News about
7:24
Zenit Stadium—it's just a spectacle, seriously.
7:26
And now again, the pitch—
7:30
that magnificent pitch they
7:31
allocated a ton of money for, which they ceremoniously
7:34
declared finished—has to be relaid. The roof
7:36
leaks. The retractable roof doesn't retract.
7:39
The roof won't open, the sliding field won't
7:41
slide out. All of this cost billions. So
7:44
do you think Poltavchenko and
7:46
Albin want to be held responsible for all this? Do
7:49
the people who made billions off it
7:51
over many years want
7:53
anti-corruption rallies? Of course they don't. But
7:56
we have to hold them. So without question,
7:58
I believe—and I now call on all residents
8:02
of St. Petersburg to come out at 2:00 p.m. to
8:06
Marsovo Pole (Field of Mars), for a real
8:09
proper legal rally—legal
8:11
because we have the right to rally there.
8:13
The same goes for Vladivostok,
8:15
where it turned out that there are no places at all
8:18
where people can
8:20
talk about corruption. It's obvious why.
8:22
Because power in Primorye (the Russian Far East region) has been seized by
8:24
actual bandits and thieves. That's exactly what they are.
8:27
No qualifiers needed. They can sue me
8:29
like Usmanov did, they can do whatever they want,
8:32
but I'm not going to say it in some
8:35
different wording or with softer language.
8:37
In Vladivostok, in St. Petersburg, and in other cities,
8:40
they are bandits and thieves. What bothers them less is
8:43
the federal agenda—they may even be ready
8:46
to gloat over Dimon (a mocking nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) and
8:48
his sneakers, but of course they do not want
8:51
people gathering in their cities and
8:54
talking about corruption inside those cities,
8:56
in Vladivostok in particular.
8:58
So our shared task is to come out and
9:02
exercise our constitutional rights.
9:04
Especially since in St. Petersburg last
9:07
time, on March 26, something
9:11
amazing happened. What happened in St. Petersburg
9:14
then—could you please play the video? I
9:17
can't
9:19
stop admiring it. It was truly
9:22
a wonderful, magnificent sight: 10,000
9:24
people in the city's main square,
9:27
and they reminded everyone watching
9:32
that video in fear what the city
9:34
of three revolutions is. I very much hope that
9:37
the people of St. Petersburg will come out this time in even
9:39
greater numbers and put these
9:42
people sitting in Smolny (St. Petersburg city administration) in their place,
9:45
and those sitting in other administrative
9:47
buildings, who despise
9:49
the city's residents so much that they assign them
9:52
some out-of-the-way sites. Our place is not on the
9:54
outskirts—our place is in the city center, on
9:57
Russia Day. We have every right to come out under
10:00
Russian flags with our slogans about
10:04
defending the country.
10:05
This is important.
10:07
What's happening matters. Have you seen the latest
10:09
Levada Center poll about whether people even
10:13
understand what kind of holiday June 12
10:17
is? Most citizens of the country
10:20
have no idea what holiday it is. There's
10:22
some day off—Russia Day—but what
10:24
does it mean? Something about the flag, or
10:26
someone freeing someone from someone else,
10:28
or some declaration being signed. This
10:30
holiday has no political,
10:32
ideological, or meaningful content. But
10:34
we are doing this because our rally is,
10:37
in essence,
10:39
a rally against a broken country. They
10:42
really have broken the country, when even
10:45
the most enormous corruption scandals...
10:48
Crimes that millions know about
10:50
have received not the slightest answer, nor
10:53
has there been even the tiniest formal
10:55
investigation—not even a local police officer is dealing with it.
10:58
That means the country is broken in every
11:00
sense—in politics, because
11:02
members of parliament stay silent; in terms of regional
11:06
authorities, because governors stay silent; in
11:08
terms of the media and newspapers, because they too
11:11
are mostly silent—not to mention
11:12
television. In that sense, the country is broken.
11:14
And on the 12th,
11:17
we are coming out to fix it.
11:19
More than that—
11:21
because, as I already said, we are gathering
11:24
around us people who are not prepared
11:26
to stay silent and who are ready to change this
11:30
political space by bringing, and continuing to bring,
11:32
into the public agenda the question that
11:34
officials should answer to us, should
11:36
respond to questions. Naturally, many people
11:38
are asking about the Moscow rally.
11:41
Moscow City Hall, as usual, is showing off
11:44
because these are
11:46
crooks and swindlers who want to
11:50
take a jab at us somehow,
11:53
who constantly want, in one way or another,
11:55
to humiliate us
11:57
in some especially petty way.
12:01
But nevertheless,
12:03
as things stand now, the application has been approved.
12:06
The rally will take place at 2:00 p.m. on Academician
12:10
Sakharov Avenue; gathering starts at 1:30 p.m. A map has appeared.
12:13
Here you can see the exit from Komsomolskaya metro station.
12:16
Gathering starts at 1:30 p.m. There is not much room there
12:20
for a march as such; some kind of
12:23
grand battle and bureaucratic fuss is going on right now over whether
12:25
they will allow us to put up video screens. You
12:28
can see the street bends there, so
12:30
video screens are simply needed so that
12:31
people can see better. Of course, they
12:34
will try to do something to our sound system,
12:36
something underhanded—in other words, they will do
12:38
their usual small, nasty
12:42
dirty tricks, the kind the Moscow mayor's office is capable of
12:45
and, really, seems to exist for.
12:47
Nevertheless, it is absolutely necessary
12:50
to come; it is absolutely necessary
12:52
to take part. And yes, they may cut off the sound
12:56
on us—so what? I remember I had
12:58
a fairly large rally in Sokolniki
13:00
during the campaign in 2013, and
13:02
some OMON riot police officers cut off the sound there.
13:04
They ran up and took me straight off the stage
13:07
and put me in a police van. So what difference
13:10
does it make what happens to me? Even
13:11
if they cut the sound, you should come to this rally
13:13
for yourselves, in order to
13:16
fix the country, in order to get
13:18
answers, in order to show that, well,
13:21
actually, we do not agree that in
13:23
Russia there has been established
13:24
a feudal state, that in
13:26
Russia a system of self-rule has been established. Therefore,
13:28
Moscow, 1:30 p.m., Academician Sakharov Avenue—
13:32
be sure to come. That is the most important thing.
13:37
So, I owe you something, and I keep being reminded about it.
13:41
I am constantly reminded, and that debt
13:44
concerns our investigations department.
13:46
For the rallies on the 26th, we announced
13:49
a contest for the best poster and
13:53
promised the winner sneakers like
13:56
Medvedev's. We have not forgotten our promise.
13:59
There were just so many
14:02
photos with simply wonderful,
14:04
amazing posters that our
14:06
investigations department—the very one behind the sneakers story—
14:08
grew a little overwhelmed while
14:10
looking through it all, and it took time
14:14
to choose the best poster among those that
14:17
were submitted. But nevertheless, we did it, and with
14:19
pride and gratitude I present to
14:22
you the winner. Please show us
14:24
this young woman. We do not know her. Her poster is fairly
14:26
simple, but our
14:29
investigations department thought that this
14:33
simple poster—
14:35
this simple poster very well symbolizes
14:38
the importance of what is happening: that we will not forget
14:42
and we will not withdraw our demands. We will
14:45
wait for these answers, we will demand
14:48
these answers, and no matter what they tell us,
14:50
no matter how they try to seize the agenda,
14:52
no matter how they try to push at us with their
14:55
television, we will still say:
14:56
guys, we are waiting for answers. We have not forgotten, we have not
14:59
forgiven. Let
15:01
Dmitry Medvedev explain where the
15:04
70 billion rubles went. Let
15:06
Vladimir Putin explain why Dmitry
15:09
Medvedev was allowed to take 70
15:11
billion rubles for himself. Why is the FSO (Federal Protective Service) guarding some
15:14
dachas that were, apparently, bought with
15:18
what were supposedly private funds, and so on and so
15:20
forth? That is why we liked this poster.
15:22
The investigations department chose it as
15:25
the main winner.
15:26
Dear author, please write to us
15:29
at
15:30
the email address fbk@fbk-info, but please
15:35
confirm somehow that it is really you; we will verify
15:36
your identity. Medvedev's sneakers are
15:40
men's; you can either receive them, or we can
15:43
buy you a men's pair in the right size, though I do not
15:46
know whether there is an identical women's version.
15:47
We will try to buy a women's pair. So once
15:50
again, congratulations to the winner,
15:52
still unknown to us for now, and once again I thank
15:54
everyone who took part in this poster
15:56
contest, because it is very important. It
15:59
helps spread information online;
16:01
people like it, and more people
16:05
learn about what is happening.
16:11
Komi
16:14
This is an astonishing story; it happened
16:16
literally just now. It is completely
16:20
fresh news.
16:22
The former FBI director, it is true, gave
16:26
testimony
16:27
before
16:31
the U.S. Senate
16:34
This story is at once
16:37
monstrous and wonderful.
16:40
It feels monstrous to me because
16:43
it seems monstrous because
16:45
it’s starting to resemble, a little bit,
16:47
Russia. I had just turned on today’s
16:50
broadcast after landing and driving from the airport.
16:53
It was all live, and
16:56
the word “Russian” was being said there
16:59
constantly: “We know the Russians are
17:02
interfering in our elections, we know the
17:05
Russians did all these bad things,”
17:08
“former Director Comey, do you know that
17:10
the Russians were involved in all this? I know
17:12
the Russians were involved in all this,”
17:13
“there were suspicious contacts with Russians
17:16
there, with our officials, there were suspicious
17:19
contacts.” Frankly, this already
17:22
looks very much like what I’m constantly
17:24
accused of: that I meet with
17:25
some ambassadors — “Navalny meets with
17:28
ambassadors,” whom, by the way, I don’t even meet with,
17:30
and that supposedly means something, that it’s
17:32
something improper, it already looks
17:35
criminal — any contact with
17:37
foreigners.” It very much looks like
17:40
part of the American establishment has
17:43
simply adopted all these
17:45
Putin-style tricks, where, well,
17:48
just like in Russia we have “the Americans” and
17:50
“the State Department,” and all these
17:52
TV propagandists run around talking about Americans
17:54
and the State Department, in exactly the same way now everyone
17:57
is running around talking about Russians. It really sounds
17:59
wild, because I, for example, had the good fortune
18:02
and pleasure to spend a short
18:04
time
18:06
studying at Yale University, and
18:09
all my life I thought that would be
18:11
a major plus for my personal
18:13
growth and for my biography. But now even
18:16
at meetings with
18:18
supporters, I often hear: “What were you doing at Yale
18:20
University? That seems kind of suspicious, doesn’t it?”
18:23
I studied there, man. There’s nothing
18:25
suspicious about that. We should
18:26
welcome people who studied at
18:28
the best American universities. And the
18:31
same thing is happening in the U.S. now: any
18:33
contact with Russians is treated as
18:36
criminal — uh, it is treated as
18:39
suspicious. Yes, of course, no one
18:42
doubts that Putin and the security services
18:46
hacked those emails. They were trying to
18:48
interfere somewhere, and of course they will
18:51
use the slightest, uh,
18:55
frictions in relations
18:57
between Republicans and Democrats in order
18:58
to wedge themselves in, drive a split, do something
19:01
to set people against each other, shift attention
19:03
onto themselves. That was certainly happening, but
19:06
the paranoia toward Russians in any
19:09
form has now somehow become completely
19:11
and looks
19:12
strange and fantastically
19:14
wrong. And it seems to me
19:16
that in the medium term this
19:19
will, of course, hurt us even more than
19:21
any sanctions, because people will simply
19:24
be afraid to communicate with Russians, with our
19:27
businesspeople, with our representatives.
19:29
That will be a major problem for business,
19:32
because it will be: “He met with a Russian,”
19:33
“there must be something wrong with him, let’s conduct
19:36
an investigation into whether he met with
19:38
Russians.”
19:38
I hope this hysteria
19:41
dies down a little, especially since I
19:46
recently spoke with a
19:49
correspondent
19:50
from a very respected American newspaper. He
19:53
was interviewing me and asked me
19:55
something, and then said this phrase: “Well,”
19:58
“Russia isn’t really that
20:00
interesting to everyone in the U.S. right now.” I told him, “How
20:03
is it not interesting? Are you kidding? I open
20:05
the newspapers and see nothing but Russia, Russia, Trump,
20:07
Russia.”
20:08
And he said an interesting thing:
20:10
it interests everyone only
20:13
as an instrument of struggle, as a mechanism
20:15
for Democrats to fight Republicans, as a mechanism
20:17
for
20:18
bringing down Trump’s ratings. But actually
20:22
what is happening in Russia itself,
20:27
Russian domestic politics, is not
20:30
all that interesting. In other words, this is purely
20:33
the use
20:36
of a foreign-policy
20:38
foreign-policy problem to
20:39
solve domestic problems. Absolutely.
20:41
You’ll tell me now: “You sound like Putin,”
20:43
and I think Putin even literally
20:44
used that exact phrase. But it certainly seems
20:48
that in this whole enormous
20:51
discussion, that is largely what’s happening: it is
20:54
simply a struggle among domestic political
20:56
groups in the U.S. that find it advantageous
21:00
to endlessly use the topic of
21:01
Russia right now. And so when I watched
21:03
a bit of the broadcast, it looked,
21:05
I repeat, rather bizarre. Why was it
21:08
wonderful?
21:09
Well, you can see in the photo this
21:11
man — the former FBI director.
21:14
He testified today, raised his hand, said,
21:17
“I swear to tell only the truth,” and answered
21:21
the toughest questions, quite harsh
21:24
and directly. They were put to him — not
21:26
that they were rude, but they were definitely tough
21:28
questions. They had some kind of, of course,
21:31
closed session there, but in the open part
21:33
of his testimony, we saw and heard all
21:37
the most important questions that
21:39
American society is asking its intelligence agencies.
21:42
asks the FBI, and in particular, uh,
21:45
asks the former FBI director point-blank:
21:48
they ask him directly: was there
21:50
an investigation into this or that person, and what
21:53
did you do? Did it turn out that you were
21:55
being fired because you
21:57
halted that investigation?
21:59
Did you suspend it? What were your
22:01
feelings? What were they whispering in your ear? And
22:04
tell us something specific. And so,
22:06
here’s the question, my dear YouTube viewers:
22:09
Can you imagine the current
22:13
director of the FSB, Bortnikov, or the former
22:16
FSB director, Patrushev, appearing in exactly
22:19
the same way before the Duma, before the State
22:22
Duma, before the Federation Council, and answering
22:24
at least some of these kinds of questions? Like, what
22:27
really happened with the Ryazan bombings (the 1999 apartment bombing incident in Ryazan)?
22:30
Was it an FSB training exercise, or was it really something
22:32
suspicious? And what actually
22:35
happened in Beslan?
22:37
The Mothers of Beslan ask that question at
22:40
every single mournful anniversary
22:43
of that terrorist attack. They stand there with signs
22:46
with those questions written on them, and they
22:48
are arrested and jailed for several days,
22:51
but no one answers them. I would be very
22:54
glad to see former FSB director
22:56
Patrushev in exactly that position,
22:58
right there in the State Duma, where he would
23:01
answer where he got a house worth no
23:03
less than 1 billion rubles in Serebryany Bor
23:05
that the Anti-Corruption Foundation
23:07
found and filmed—we showed you
23:09
that house, and so on and so forth.
23:12
We have never had that—not in
23:16
the Yeltsin years, not in Putin’s time, not in
23:18
the Soviet era. Never at all. That is what
23:20
the country should aspire to. That is what
23:22
the political system should aspire to.
23:24
That is what it really means:
23:27
the people’s elected representatives sitting in
23:31
representative bodies,
23:32
in a representative body—sorry—
23:33
in representative democracy, asking
23:36
the questions that matter to the people. They
23:38
may want, perhaps, to get some publicity
23:41
with a sharp question. Fine—that’s how
23:43
politics works. Let them get publicity, but
23:45
those officials must answer. It doesn’t matter if it’s
23:47
the security services—if they have some secret
23:49
information, then, well, in that case, in
23:53
the closed session they can answer. But at the very
23:55
least, a substantial portion of the answers to
23:57
those questions must be given, just like that,
23:59
live on air for everyone to watch,
24:02
so that any senator or
24:06
congressman, having received such a question from
24:09
their voters, could voice it there. That’s
24:10
the kind of State Duma we need. As for us,
24:14
all this time we haven’t had a single
24:15
parliamentary investigation, not a single
24:17
tough question. Neither representatives of
24:20
law enforcement nor the security services
24:22
have ever been asked one. Why, even Medvedev
24:24
came to the Duma,
24:25
we discussed it on this program,
24:27
and there were no tough questions at all—nothing.
24:29
That is what democracy should look like, and we
24:32
will definitely achieve it, so that both the
24:35
president and the heads of the security services
24:39
will be obliged to come in from time to time and give
24:41
testimony under oath. And now, you know,
24:45
in the Usmanov trial I summoned
24:47
Medvedev, and everyone writes to me: come on,
24:49
not only Medvedev—even some of his
24:51
former classmates—that’s unrealistic, that’s
24:54
nonsense. Why are you filing
24:55
a motion to call these witnesses? But
24:58
why is it unrealistic? That is exactly how it
25:00
should be arranged. If there is
25:02
a serious court proceeding with
25:05
a huge amount of press present, that
25:07
means there is major public interest.
25:09
Officials, including high-ranking
25:12
ones, both former and current, should come and
25:14
answer all questions just like that, like
25:17
little rabbits, and we will definitely
25:19
make that happen.
25:21
Alexei, please comment on the situation with
25:24
Murad Amriev. Total
25:26
lawlessness is happening, Aslan Sovev asks me.
25:29
Well, total lawlessness is happening. This is
25:30
completely insane. An MMA fighter,
25:36
if I’m not mistaken about
25:40
that abbreviation,
25:43
the tournament system he competes in—I
25:46
saw the news today: in Chechnya
25:48
a blood feud has been declared against him, and now he is running
25:52
from city to city. Somewhere in Bryansk,
25:54
some murky Chechen special forces unit
25:57
surrounded a police building; now they’re extraditing him from
26:00
Belarus. But it looks outrageous, and I
26:03
have said this many times and I’ll say it again:
26:04
if any official or
26:08
journalist or anyone at all declares
26:10
that they have declared
26:13
a blood feud against someone, they must be immediately
26:15
arrested, because blood feuds
26:17
are prohibited. There cannot be
26:19
any such thing as a blood feud in Russia. This really is
26:21
lawlessness: some strange people,
26:23
bearded, armed, claiming to represent
26:26
who knows whom—apparently some kind of
26:29
security services—they travel around Russia and
26:32
literally try, not even just to
26:34
intimidate people, but to seize them, openly
26:37
kidnap them in broad daylight, including
26:39
taking them out of police custody.
26:40
This is yet another example of a broken state. It
26:43
simply cannot be allowed to happen.
26:45
Even in those so-called cursed
26:48
1990s, this did not happen. Yes, there were kidnappings from
26:51
Russian territory, but not like this—not with
26:53
strange people roaming from city to city and
26:57
hunting down someone who had somehow
27:00
offended them, in order to carry out
27:01
their blood feud. That simply cannot
27:03
This is absolute madness.
27:07
Alexei, do you think Putin, on the 15th,
27:09
will announce that he is running for a fourth term?
27:11
Artyom Salikhov asks me. I think
27:14
he will not announce a fourth term then. But I
27:18
have not the slightest doubt that he
27:19
will run for a fourth term. I think
27:21
there will simply be
27:23
a lot of
27:25
endless prearranged questions to
27:29
which Putin will, as usual, respond by rattling off
27:30
statistics, and say that it is still too early
27:33
to think about the election. We are busy working on things. And of course, a great deal
27:36
very much
27:37
of what Putin says on the 15th during
27:40
his Direct Line call-in show depends on how
27:41
our rallies go. They moved
27:43
this Direct Line broadcast to a date after our
27:47
rallies precisely so they could gauge the situation. They are
27:49
sitting there now, thinking, watching how many
27:51
people will actually come out. Will we be able
27:54
to ignore this issue again, or not?
27:56
Will we be able to brush it off and say
27:58
a couple of words along the lines of, well, some
28:01
"this gentleman," as they like to say,
28:04
has spread some rumors, but in
28:06
court they were all refuted; a few
28:08
people came out in various cities, but overall
28:11
law enforcement agencies will, of course,
28:13
sort it out"? Or will so many people come out
28:15
that this issue
28:19
can no longer be ignored, and Putin will have
28:22
to speak clearly and in detail on the 15th
28:25
specifically about Medvedev and
28:28
about certain episodes, and explain why
28:30
under his presidency something like this can
28:33
happen.
28:34
There are many questions about whether I will run a marathon
28:37
with Roizman. No, I will not run a marathon with
28:39
Roizman, unfortunately. Although
28:41
Yevgeny was actively inviting me, but I am not yet ready to attempt a
28:45
marathon. I do run
28:47
a little, and I dream of running a half marathon, but
28:50
a full marathon, no. Let Roizman run it on his own.
28:53
I admire the way he prepares for these
28:57
marathons; he runs very well. I would very much
29:00
like to, but for now I am afraid I am not ready.
29:03
I will not lie.
29:06
So, we discussed Comey, and I
29:10
said that this is an example
29:12
of remarkable transparency: the former
29:15
FBI director answers questions before the whole country.
29:17
Now let us compare that with what
29:19
is happening in Russia. Here is my question:
29:21
do you even remember this person?
29:23
Show us a photograph of a man
29:25
whom almost certainly no one remembers.
29:28
I bet you have forgotten him, and this is,
29:31
by the way, the Prime Minister of Iceland, with
29:34
an unpronounceable name and surname that I will not even
29:38
try to say.
29:39
But the point is that he resigned
29:43
after the publication of—remember those—
29:46
the Panama Papers, the offshore leaks.
29:50
Many months ago, documents were published
29:54
that pointed to
29:56
cases of corruption or failures
29:58
to disclose information in various countries, and
30:01
the Prime Minister of Iceland, a very wealthy
30:04
country where the average salary is, I think,
30:06
more than $5,000 a month, resigned
30:09
simply because
30:12
if I am not mistaken, there was an offshore company
30:15
registered in his father's name, and he
30:18
failed to mention it. Legally, he was not even
30:21
required to disclose it, but people
30:23
took to the streets of Reykjavik and said, well,
30:25
you are the prime minister; even if you are not
30:27
legally obliged, you still should have
30:29
told us, of course, that your father
30:30
has an offshore company; that is connected to you too, somehow.
30:32
And the man resigned. And what
30:34
did our Prosecutor General's Office say then? Please bring back
30:36
the quote. There was also
30:39
a major scandal here too: in those Panama
30:42
documents, a large part was devoted to
30:45
Russia. As you remember, many
30:48
schemes involving billions of rubles were exposed, and then they
30:51
said—well, the wording got cut off here—but
30:53
he promised, I can see it on the screen. But
30:56
this official, and so on, promised that
30:59
they would openly report to society on how
31:03
the investigation into these Panama
31:04
offshore schemes was proceeding. What do we see this week?
31:08
The position has completely changed, and now they
31:11
say that all of this is for official use only,
31:14
that it cannot be discussed, and
31:16
that, generally speaking, they thought, well,
31:19
this is probably not interesting to Russian
31:21
society.
31:22
So apparently it can all be forgotten, precisely
31:25
because, by the way, this happened since
31:27
no one protested. Well, if no one is protesting,
31:29
they are outraged on Twitter, they post on Facebook,
31:33
they write things, but there is no one in the streets, so
31:35
the issue can gradually be washed away. But just think about it:
31:39
really.
31:41
A cellist was found—a childhood friend
31:44
of Putin's—with $2
31:47
billion in his account, and that account
31:50
was being filled by Rosneft, its subsidiaries, and
31:53
other state-controlled companies. That is,
31:56
in other words, there was found
31:58
Putin's offshore wallet. We do not
32:01
doubt, do we, that this wonderful
32:02
cellist Roldugin was not in a position to
32:05
earn $2 billion. Even
32:07
if you are the best cellist in the universe,
32:10
you cannot earn that much money. But
32:12
somehow he got that money.
32:15
State companies were paying into it. So what did
32:17
Putin and Roldugin manage to say to us then?
32:19
They mumbled something like: with this
32:22
money he buys
32:24
wonderful musical instruments and
32:26
gives them to someone. Where are these musical
32:29
instruments? How many cellos, even ancient ones,
32:31
could you buy for $2 billion?
32:33
dollars, and no one told us about it.
32:36
And now everything has been classified. Why?
32:38
Why is it classified? It’s obvious why. Because
32:42
the results of the inspection can show only
32:43
one thing: that state-owned companies
32:46
were effectively paying bribes to Putin himself
32:49
by transferring personal funds to the offshore account
32:53
of Roldugin, and that is why now everything can
32:56
be hushed up, classified, everything can
32:58
be forgotten. But we must not forget.
33:00
Because what does $2 billion in the account
33:03
of this guy mean?
33:05
It means that everyone in Russia who needs a paid
33:08
operation could have had it done—everything could have been made
33:11
free. People often tell me,
33:13
“Stop using paid
33:15
operations, sick children, and expensive
33:18
medicines as examples.” No, I will not stop
33:20
doing that. Because really, how can we
33:21
claim that we are
33:23
a social state, we claim that
33:25
we have
33:28
free healthcare, and I would bet
33:31
that every one of you has
33:32
some acquaintance—or an acquaintance of an acquaintance—
33:35
who either raised money for their own
33:36
paid operation, or for their child’s
33:38
operation, or else helped some other
33:41
person they knew raise money for a
33:42
paid operation.
33:43
And people all over the country do this, all these
33:46
wonderful, noble people are involved in
33:48
it. But none of this would be necessary
33:49
at all. Those $2 billion that were simply
33:52
stolen from state companies into Putin’s offshore account—
33:55
into Putin’s offshore account—everyone, every single person
33:58
could have been treated; everyone who
34:00
needs expensive medicine and cannot
34:02
afford it could have been given that
34:04
medicine for free. All of us would have become
34:07
better off. All of us would have been healthier. We all
34:09
would have been happier if they had not taken those $2
34:12
billion away. That is why, once again,
34:14
we need to come out on the 12th, because if we do not
34:17
come out, then it’s $2 billion there,
34:19
$2 billion here, and in the end
34:21
we end up with no decent roads,
34:23
not a single high-speed highway,
34:26
in Russia—neither road nor
34:28
rail high-speed
34:30
line exists here.
34:32
Because what runs between Moscow and
34:35
St. Petersburg—the Sapsan—is a fast train, but
34:37
of course, you cannot even remotely call it
34:39
high-speed. We have nothing. But
34:42
we do have wonderful cellists.
34:48
And
34:54
speaking of that, I cannot help but recall
34:58
the remarkable continuation of the story with
35:01
the renovation program: there were absolutely
35:05
astonishing hearings in the State Duma on
35:08
the renovation program. First of all, almost
35:11
no one was allowed in. They did not even
35:13
let in some deputies of the Moscow City Duma, and
35:15
real residents of the five-story apartment blocks
35:17
were not allowed in either. Everything there was filled with some kind of
35:20
well-wishers who had come from a list. Well, you
35:22
probably saw it, so I will not go into detail
35:23
about how there was some kind of unauthorized
35:25
rush by those who were not let in. But
35:27
a phrase was uttered by Minister Kozak
35:31
that was absolutely
35:34
fundamental to Putin’s Russia. This is
35:37
what everything is built on. Let’s
35:38
listen, if you have not heard it yet: “In 1991, a decision
35:42
was made
35:58
regarding apartments in multi-unit buildings. If
36:02
those rights are made absolute and are not
36:04
limited in any way, the residential building will certainly fall apart.
36:09
“There is no need to absolutize the right
36:12
of property.” In a normal country,
36:15
a minister who said something like that would have resigned the very
36:18
next day.
36:21
It is just unbelievable: “There is no need
36:24
to absolutize property rights,”
36:26
because otherwise it will lead us to something
36:28
bad, things will go badly for us. But everywhere else
36:30
they do absolutize it, and people live perfectly normally, and
36:33
it is precisely in countries where private
36:35
property is respected that things actually work. Notice this:
36:38
they already consider even this part of
36:40
privatization to be somehow not
36:43
real. “How could that be? In the 1990s,” he says,
36:46
he says,
36:47
“in those first years they just handed apartments out to whoever happened to get one.
36:50
What a disgrace. They should not have
36:52
given them away like that; they should really have been given to some
36:54
deserving people. But instead we
36:56
gave them to everyone indiscriminately. What a horror, what a mess
36:58
we made of it.”
37:00
But in fact, those apartments were received by the people
37:03
who lived in them, who actually
37:05
worked in the Soviet Union, who
37:06
had earned those apartments. Those apartments were, more often than not,
37:09
small and poor-quality. It was a small
37:12
piece of property that people
37:15
received in exchange for their hard labor, and
37:18
now even that is supposed to be meaningless? Well,
37:20
that’s something. Why “absolutize”
37:21
it? It’s just some apartment, after all. It is only
37:25
everything this person owns. Why should
37:27
we care about that? And these same people—
37:30
the government, United Russia (the ruling political party), all of them—
37:34
when I say that, for example, I do not
37:37
like the loans-for-shares auctions, and in general I
37:40
do not consider privatization fair or
37:42
sacrosanct, they immediately start shouting, foaming at the mouth,
37:46
“Populist Navalny, what are you
37:49
trying to do? You want the oligarchs
37:52
who took part in the loans-for-shares auctions
37:54
to pay more taxes? That is impossible!”
37:57
They all say it is impossible: the property
37:59
has changed hands already. What are you saying? Stop saying that.
38:02
That’s revolution, or something like it.
38:06
So apartments, and the privatization in which
38:10
millions of people took part,
38:12
the only truly honest
38:14
privatization that has taken place since
38:17
of the Soviet Union, so to speak.
38:19
We can talk about that here, to sum up.
38:21
it needs to be reconsidered. Well, they privatized
38:23
your apartment in a five-story apartment block (the typical Soviet-era low-rise building), that's a kind of
38:26
conditional property right, basically.
38:28
Usmanov's.
38:29
Oleg's, Potanin's, Prokhorov's, whoever's
38:34
you like, some fishing-industry
38:36
all these people who seized
38:37
giant raw-materials enterprises—well, their
38:39
property rights are treated as absolute, monolithic.
38:42
That means no one can touch them, no one
38:44
should, and we supposedly don't even have the right
38:46
to tax them for having privatized, for next to nothing,
38:49
what in fact
38:51
is worth billions. But these
38:54
pathetic residents of five-story blocks—well, their rights
38:56
shouldn't be absolutized. Well, that's
38:59
I understand, of course, that maybe my
39:02
program sounds strange because I
39:04
don't know—turn it on and listen for an hour
39:07
to me constantly getting outraged about something, but I
39:11
can't help being outraged. Because, really,
39:12
in fact,
39:14
he says this, and the deputies are sitting there, and next
39:17
to him is the mayor of Moscow, and next to him another
39:19
minister, and it's shown on television, and
39:22
nobody gives a damn. And nobody at all
39:25
is going to be outraged, and you don't see on TV
39:28
people clutching their heads
39:29
and shouting, "My God, what did Kozak say?
39:31
You're the populist here! They say
39:33
Navalny is a populist—how can you
39:35
insult all these people? How can you
39:37
possibly strike at the very foundation of a market
39:40
economy, the foundation of normal
39:42
human existence in society—private
39:45
property—and just like that
39:47
cross it out and say it must not be
39:48
absolutized? You've just struck a blow
39:51
at everything.
39:52
People won't buy anything if, if
39:55
they're told, "Guys,
39:57
even your ownership of your apartment
39:59
isn't really 100 percent yours.
40:01
How can we expect them, then,
40:03
to buy stocks? How can we expect
40:05
them to buy bonds?
40:06
How can we persuade them that they should
40:09
go into small business and help develop
40:12
the economy—or large business, or any kind of business at all?
40:14
Who is going to register as a sole proprietor and pay
40:16
taxes? Of course they won't do that
40:18
because from the State Duma podium
40:20
fundamental words are being spoken to the effect
40:23
that private property in our country
40:25
is being denied. This is simply, simply
40:27
a monstrous thing, absolutely, and I would very much
40:30
like Kozak to resign, for him to
40:32
apologize for his words, explain
40:35
what he meant by them, for Medvedev to
40:37
apologize for them too, and for Putin, during his live call-in show
40:41
on the fifteenth, to apologize for them as well,
40:42
and then for all of them to resign
40:44
and for a new government to come in
40:46
that would say: you know, a person's right
40:49
to own an apartment
40:51
is absolute, and a person's right
40:55
to the land under their building is absolute. And yes,
40:58
of course there may be cases—rare cases—
41:01
when these apartments need to be taken from people,
41:04
but I don't know, say we're building a nuclear power plant
41:06
or some important infrastructure
41:08
facility. But even in that case, the right
41:10
of property still remains absolute, and
41:12
there must be a buyout at a fair price,
41:15
possibly even above market value, because
41:18
this is the most important thing our society rests on,
41:20
a society that tries to call itself
41:22
itself
41:22
capitalist.
41:25
Sergio Pogano asks me: Do you agree
41:28
that the renovation program and the hellish roadworks
41:30
in Moscow are one big grab ahead of
41:32
something serious in the near future?
41:34
Not only do I agree, I talk about this constantly.
41:36
And something serious in the near
41:39
future is simply that the money will run out.
41:42
These trillions still exist, they're still sitting in
41:46
the budgets. Moscow's budget is 2 trillion rubles a
41:49
year.
41:50
For renovation, they're already saying 3.5
41:52
trillion
41:52
rubles they want to spend—that is, over
41:55
the course of several years.
41:57
Money is still coming in while the price of oil
41:59
remains relatively high, and they are
42:02
carving it all up, no question about it.
42:04
All these mega-projects, especially in Moscow, are
42:07
exactly one big grab. It's the last days
42:10
of Pompeii. It's an attempt—or rather,
42:14
a highly successful operation to
42:17
skim off the last petrodollars and
42:20
ship them out to various offshore havens and
42:23
turn them into wonderful villas with, uh,
42:26
uh,
42:27
on the southern coast—not even of Crimea, but
42:31
of France.
42:32
Vladimir Volkov asks me: Alexei,
42:34
when you become president, what will happen to
42:36
television?
42:37
Honest journalists will work in television.
42:40
Television will not belong
42:41
to the state, television will not
42:43
belong to oligarchs; it will
42:46
compete internally. There will be
42:47
freedom of speech. In other words, it's very
42:49
clear what should be done with television. Speaking
42:51
of television, we have
42:55
Ksenia Sobchak.
42:59
For the last few months she has simply
43:02
been battering me and besieging me—well, not exactly
43:05
that, but saying that she is
43:07
a quality journalist and demanding that I
43:09
give her an interview, and that she will have some
43:11
super-sharp questions, and that she will
43:16
wipe the floor with me—and today at 11 p.m.,
43:18
simultaneously on TV Rain and on our
43:22
On the channel, you’ll be able to watch Ksenia
43:24
wipe the floor with me with her
43:26
super-sharp questions that she’s been saving up
43:28
for several months. It’s going to be
43:30
a wonderful collaboration with the TV channel
43:32
Dozhd (TV Rain), and it will be on their website, and this
43:36
video will be available for free, and it can be watched
43:38
by absolutely everyone. And on our channel too,
43:40
everyone will be able to watch it for free,
43:42
absolutely everyone. They’ll use it to
43:45
attract a larger number of
43:47
paid subscribers, and that too
43:49
is something the media
43:51
— independent media — should be encouraged in; they need to get
43:52
money from somewhere. So that’s the idea
43:54
behind this campaign. Unfortunately, on the same
43:56
day, maybe I’ll just be a little
43:57
too much for you.
43:59
I’ve been talking for an hour now, and at 11 p.m. I’ll be
44:02
talking again. But at least at 11 p.m.
44:04
the thing will happen that I’m, so to speak,
44:08
or rather, the thing I’m criticized for will come to an end
44:12
by many journalists who say,
44:13
“You’re broadcasting there on your own Navalny Live, but
44:16
what about our tough questions? How come you
44:18
don’t answer something like that — something
44:22
you can’t answer?” At 11 p.m., watch
44:25
Ksenia — it’s going to be brutal.
44:29
I’ve been flooded — flooded with questions about
44:33
a rather strange press release that
44:35
circulated today. The wonderful
44:37
organization Open Russia, which I
44:40
think highly of and which is an ally of ours,
44:42
our ally.
44:44
Can we show it on screen, or
44:46
a snippet of the press release? Here it is:
44:48
“A campaign called the ‘Permanent Regiment’ will take place in Russia, and
44:53
its ‘heroes’ will be Putin, Sechin,
44:54
Kadyrov, and others.” In other words, they
44:57
are supporting our
44:59
anti-corruption rallies on June 12, but they’re coming out
45:01
with this campaign
45:03
called the ‘Permanent Regiment.’ So of course I’m
45:06
grateful to Open Russia for
45:07
taking part in the June 12 rallies and protests across
45:09
the whole country — that’s great. But I find the name
45:12
‘Permanent Regiment’ extremely,
45:16
extremely unfortunate. The idea itself — carrying portraits
45:18
of those who have overstayed in their positions and who
45:21
should resign, because
45:22
these really are people who
45:23
have been sitting there for decades — is absolutely right.
45:25
But call it, I don’t know, something like
45:28
the “Disgusting Company” or the “Repulsive
45:30
Eight.” Don’t call it
45:32
the ‘Permanent Regiment,’ because that will offend
45:33
a lot of people, because it’s obviously
45:36
an echo of the ‘Immortal Regiment’ (a public memorial march honoring relatives who fought in World War II).
45:37
The Immortal Regiment is a wonderful initiative
45:40
that was created by journalists from Tomsk’s
45:43
TV-2, which, incidentally, was later
45:45
shut down. Hundreds of thousands of people take part
45:47
in this event.
45:48
And it’s a very good initiative, so I don’t
45:52
think there’s any need to
45:55
play around with names related to it so
45:58
heavily. I hope Open Russia
46:00
— maybe they’re watching me — Mikhail
46:01
Borisovich, hello — will come up with some
46:03
other name. In substance, of course,
46:06
they’re right: we do need to stand against
46:08
these people who
46:11
have dug themselves into their posts.
46:14
Nelogichny wrote to me: “An interesting
46:16
bit of math: with $2 billion, you could buy
46:18
seven and a half million
46:19
cellos.” I don’t know, that seems a bit
46:22
too cheap for a cello to me.
46:24
The assumption is that Roldugin, whom
46:27
we were talking about, buys some expensive
46:29
Stradivarius cellos. But even so, I
46:33
don’t think old Stradivari made
46:36
that many cellos and other musical
46:38
instruments that you could
46:40
spend $2 billion on them. Even if he bought
46:42
all the existing instruments,
46:45
you still couldn’t spend $2 billion.
46:46
So we understand, of course,
46:50
that no musical instruments were being bought
46:53
on any large scale. Sure, maybe they bought one cello,
46:55
two or three — but all the rest of the money
46:57
went into Putin’s personal wallet, simply stolen
47:00
from the state budget.
47:05
These are our campaign headquarters, and what’s happening with our
47:08
headquarters? First, I want to
47:10
say thank you. There’s a man named
47:12
Leonid Volkov — he appeared on screen — and
47:15
right now he’s walking around the office constantly
47:17
singing, “Unfortunately, birthdays come only
47:19
once a year,” and that’s because
47:22
my birthday was on the 4th, and I wrote that if
47:25
you want to congratulate me, just send
47:26
some money to the election campaign. We
47:28
received 1.5 million rubles (about 16,000 USD), and
47:30
now Volkov goes around
47:31
lamenting that my birthday doesn’t
47:33
happen all the time, because the money
47:35
is very much needed. So thank you very much to everyone
47:37
who has funded this
47:39
campaign of ours — on the 4th, before that, and
47:42
after that as well. We need money, and we
47:44
spend it rationally. We’ve now opened 44
47:48
headquarters, we’re constantly traveling around
47:50
the regions, and we’re doing major work under
47:52
pressure — pressure that is, of course, now
47:53
simply unprecedented. I began
47:56
the program by saying that right now local
47:58
administrations
48:00
are occupied with only one thing: stopping us
48:02
from holding rallies
48:04
on June 12. And the second task for all
48:07
administrations, at least in major
48:09
cities, is to stop us from opening our
48:11
campaign headquarters. In this photo is
48:13
our Moscow headquarters. Moscow is not
48:16
some godforsaken backwater, not some small
48:18
region known for lawlessness. In
48:21
our Moscow headquarters, it’s on Brestskaya...
48:23
The fortress is holding out there; they've already cut off the electricity.
48:26
They tried to shut it down, but we have a lease agreement.
48:28
For several months. We told them, "You do not have the right—"
48:31
"—you do not have the right." They changed the locks, simply by force.
48:33
They burst in there. Well, then they simply
48:35
cut off our power. Do they have the right to cut off
48:39
the electricity? Of course they do not.
48:41
It's complete, absolute lawlessness. We brought in generators,
48:43
they cut it off, and as you can see, a huge
48:45
number of people still come to
48:47
these campaign offices, despite the fact that the power
48:49
is being cut, despite the fact that
48:54
they deprive us of premises, first in one place, then
48:57
in another. Our Volgograd campaign office has been operating out on the street
48:59
and organized its work for several days
49:01
after they forced us out of
49:04
several premises in a row, and we
49:06
will continue this work, because we have
49:08
the main thing—two main things. First,
49:11
the knowledge that we are right. We are right, we
49:14
understand that we are doing what people
49:16
need. And second, you support us.
49:19
There are already more than 110,000 volunteers now.
49:22
In every populated place in Russia, there is
49:24
a volunteer for our campaign, and of course they will
49:27
keep evicting us from our offices. We
49:29
understand perfectly well how afraid they are of this
49:32
election campaign, how afraid they are
49:34
of the very creation of a real political
49:36
network. Not the kind that usually exists in Russia
49:39
as a political structure—
49:41
some party with regional
49:44
branches that mostly do nothing,
49:45
sometimes waking up once every
49:49
four years for elections. More often than not, they
49:51
do not wake up at all.
49:52
They wait for some money to be transferred from
49:54
the federal headquarters. But we have a real,
49:57
genuine political structure in
49:59
which tens of thousands of people work
50:01
for free. They are ready to hand out leaflets,
50:04
they are ready to campaign. Of course, that
50:06
terrifies them. They do not understand what to do
50:09
with it, how to fight it, but
50:11
they resort to their favorite methods—
50:15
not even favorite, really the only
50:16
thing they can still do.
50:18
If they had—if they had
50:20
set up, by the entrance to our office—sorry—
50:24
their own campaign picket outside our office, where
50:27
people would stand and tell everyone who
50:28
comes in, "You know, Navalny is mistaken about
50:31
this. These parts of Navalny's platform
50:33
are unrealistic. And here he slandered Medvedev,
50:36
and here he unfairly offended Prosecutor General
50:39
Chaika, and here Roldugin
50:41
actually bought cellos worth
50:43
$2 billion, rather than simply stealing that
50:45
money"—but they cannot say that.
50:48
Because we are right in all of our
50:51
criticism, and the provisions of our platform
50:53
are realistic and supported. They have nothing to object to,
50:55
so instead they cut off the power in
50:58
our office. But that's all right. We can probably
51:02
do many things without electricity, however
51:06
ambiguous that may sound.
51:07
As we're talking here about pressure and the shutting down
51:11
of campaign offices, a window just flew open with a bang, and
51:14
I hope riot police (special forces) don't climb in through it right now.
51:16
But on the other hand, if they do climb in and
51:18
burst in, this channel—this
51:20
episode—will get a huge number of
51:21
views. In huge letters they wrote:
51:23
the donation link is right there on the screen. Say
51:25
that they should just click the letter—click
51:28
the letter on the screen—and you'll be able to send
51:32
us money. Lots of questions about the condition of my eye.
51:35
Oh, that eye—it is a constant topic on this program.
51:38
I have just flown back from Barcelona,
51:40
where
51:42
the surgeon finally removed my stitches. As for my eye, I
51:46
already feel like a whole
51:48
person again. It no longer bothers me
51:50
so much.
51:51
The doctors are very pleased. They say everything
51:55
is going well, that maybe my
51:57
vision will recover—not one hundred
51:59
percent, of course—but it is getting
52:00
better than I expected. Everything is very
52:03
good. A useful tip for anyone going
52:06
to see a doctor in Barcelona: do not call him
52:08
a Spanish surgeon, because when I
52:11
said something—some kind of
52:12
compliment about Spanish surgeons—everyone there
52:15
was offended and said, "We are Catalan
52:17
surgeons, not Spanish ones." That is also, by the way,
52:19
an excellent example of how, within
52:22
a prosperous country—what on earth is going on, everything here keeps
52:24
opening up. Excuse me, please. I
52:26
hope—I do not know whether you can hear these
52:27
frightening sounds.
52:29
How, within
52:31
a wonderfully developed country, there can be
52:33
serious confrontation. But one part
52:36
of the population—a large part of the population—
52:38
demands independence,
52:41
not wishing to recognize themselves as Spaniards, not
52:44
wishing to submit to Madrid, yet nevertheless
52:45
they live, and everything is fine. Everything
52:47
works. The federal system works.
52:49
Madrid does not take the money away, does not appropriate it
52:52
from Barcelona, and so on and so
52:54
forth. Everything is very good. So thank you
52:55
very much for the questions about my eye. It is much
52:58
better now; the stitches are out, and in that respect everything has
53:03
become much better for me. As for the contest,
53:05
a lot of people are asking about the contest.
53:09
Here at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, people
53:12
all laugh at me because I adore
53:15
contests, and every time I say that
53:17
I am about to announce some contest, everyone
53:19
rolls their eyes, because I wanted in
53:21
this broadcast to announce some kind of contest for
53:23
June 12, but everyone told me not to. Still, I will
53:26
announce it somehow later, before
53:27
the 12th.
53:28
You have probably seen that I announced a contest
53:33
for creating YouTube channels.
53:35
including regional ones. To be honest,
53:37
I believe in it. I understand the skepticism many
53:40
people have who say that only
53:42
crazy people will take part in all this.
53:43
But even now, it's far from being only
53:46
crazy people, and we're seeing quite decent
53:49
content. I have the statistics here. As of
53:52
today, 293 applications have been submitted to
53:55
participate, 171 channels are operating, and the first
53:58
videos have already been recorded by 89 people, and I
54:01
continue to strongly urge everyone
54:04
to take part in all of this.
54:06
Well, even from the standpoint of—excuse me—
54:09
money and fame. Look at all these
54:12
YouTubers who have channels with millions
54:15
of subscribers and equally massive fees.
54:18
With very rare exceptions, these are people
54:21
who made themselves entirely on their own.
54:23
They set up a camera, and a girl just started
54:26
talking about her life, that's all.
54:28
Now, to buy advertising from her, you have to pay hundreds of thousands
54:30
of rubles (roughly thousands of U.S. dollars). Same with Ivanгай (a popular Russian-speaking YouTuber), these are
54:34
all people who simply started doing it
54:36
themselves. They had no producers, nothing.
54:38
YouTube gives us amazing opportunities,
54:41
so I truly believe that
54:46
YouTube can beat television—or at
54:50
least land some painful blows against it.
54:51
I believe that among the viewers of this
54:55
program right now, there are people who
54:57
could run interesting channels. If you're
55:00
a journalist, if you're a political activist,
55:02
if you're simply someone who cares
55:05
and wants to speak out, then you need to
55:08
do it. And it's important because, well, I
55:11
will spend a million rubles (about tens of thousands of U.S. dollars), we will spend
55:13
a million rubles, because a million rubles
55:14
is what we'll raise to pay prizes
55:16
to the winners. But to
55:19
launch one small regional
55:21
newspaper, you need several million rubles.
55:23
To launch one small
55:26
regional TV station, you need several
55:28
tens of millions of rubles, whereas a channel on
55:31
YouTube costs almost nothing. But in terms of
55:34
view counts and actual
55:36
reach, if you want it, if you work
55:39
properly, if you
55:41
really try, you will become the most influential
55:43
person in your city. I'm not
55:45
exaggerating or joking right now.
55:47
10,000 subscribers on a channel that
55:52
operates in a city of over a million people
55:54
is an absolutely realistic goal. That
55:56
means you're the most popular
55:57
journalist. It means you're being watched by the
55:59
governor,
56:00
the deputy governor, the entire administration is watching.
56:03
They're all curious to see whom you'll criticize in
56:05
your new episode. They all watch you,
56:07
they all listen to you, and
56:09
local advertisers will come to you. You will become
56:12
an influential person. If you're—well, again—
56:14
a journalist or studying at a journalism school,
56:16
then it's practically your calling to take part in this.
56:19
You don't need to go around to various newspapers
56:22
asking them to hire you, and then
56:24
have some vile editor-in-chief
56:26
tell you, "You can't criticize this person,
56:27
but that one you can criticize. And here
56:30
we have sponsored content—we're obliged
56:32
to publish it so that our newspaper
56:34
can survive." Why do you need any of that?
56:36
Start your own channel. On it, you can
56:39
if, again, you really try,
56:41
earn more than journalists at
56:44
any newspaper. If you're a political activist,
56:47
if you want to make a name for yourself, if you want to inspire people to follow
56:49
you, then do exactly the same thing in
56:51
Russia.
56:52
I think there are probably 103 or 105
56:56
channels right now with more than
56:58
a million subscribers, and all these people are
57:01
just that: a computer, a webcam, and
57:05
the internet. They have nothing else.
57:07
Determination and hard work—and millions
57:09
of subscribers. And that's money, that's influence. And
57:13
most importantly, it's an enormous benefit to people
57:15
that your channel can bring. So once
57:18
again: take part. Don't be afraid. Don't be shy.
57:22
And it won't turn out badly, it won't, if
57:24
in the end, from this whole effort, we get
57:27
two or three decent, regular channels
57:30
that talk about their own
57:32
regional news—I will be happy. But
57:34
I think
57:36
there will be many more of them.
57:39
Alexei, what do you think about
57:41
the beating of a young man at the administration building in
57:42
Novorossiysk?
57:44
Well, you know, you could really use a template here
57:48
for the question, "What do you think about
57:50
this or that?" and my answer would always include
57:51
the word "lawlessness," of course. Yes, this is yet another
57:55
sign of a broken state. A man
57:56
came to the Novorossiysk city administration
57:58
to submit an application for a rally on June 12. What happened
58:01
to him? He was thrown out, he was attacked
58:04
right inside the city administration building.
58:06
Then, uh, some kind of scuffle
58:09
continued outside, after which he
58:11
was detained by the police—a person whose only
58:14
goal was to gather a group
58:17
of people. He was representing a group of people
58:18
who wanted to gather peacefully in the streets
58:20
of the city and say: we're tired of corruption,
58:22
we don't want to be robbed, we
58:25
want answers to our questions. And
58:27
these bandits and thieves attacked him in this way.
58:31
Of course it's lawlessness, of course.
58:33
It's a symbol of what's happening in our
58:36
country. It's a symbol of the fact that, unfortunately,
58:39
by no
58:41
you know,
58:42
evolutionary methods
58:44
or methods of self-improvement will any
58:46
fight against corruption happen. We should not
58:48
wait around hoping that Putin will suddenly, on his own,
58:51
whether he decides to do it in a fourth term or a twenty-fourth term
58:54
Perhaps I’m a little afraid when it comes to corruption
58:56
this will not happen—we have already reached the point where
58:59
such a stage that this will not happen without
59:01
outside pressure. Therefore, we need to keep
59:04
putting pressure on them. But of course these
59:06
people have millions
59:09
they have stolen. These people are terribly afraid of us
59:12
terribly afraid, because they do not want
59:15
to lose all of this. They do not want to lose
59:18
what they have already stolen; they do not want
59:20
to lose the opportunity to steal more and more
59:23
and more. Therefore they will
59:24
resist, and they will
59:26
push back. From time to time, some
59:28
people—well, of course, someone may suffer, someone
59:31
may be attacked—but nevertheless, overall
59:33
there are many of us
59:35
the likelihood of some negative outcomes
59:37
is small. The authorities intimidate us, each person individually
59:40
they intimidate us individually, but
59:43
they are afraid of us—they are terribly, terribly
59:46
afraid of all those people who
59:48
will come out on the 12th, and then those who will force
59:52
a change in the political paradigm that
59:56
exists in Russia and make it so that
59:58
a real fight against corruption begins
1:00:00
make it so that officials start
1:00:02
answering your questions. On the 12th
1:00:04
we will meet you in the streets
1:00:06
of Moscow and St. Petersburg, in
1:00:08
Vladivostok, Novorossiysk, and all
1:00:10
the other cities. So, if there is
1:00:12
official approval, go; if there is no approval
1:00:14
go anyway. This is our right, this is our holiday
1:00:18
This is our Russian flag. Thank you very much
1:00:20
see you next Thursday
1:00:25
[music]