Russians Will Pay for the Georgians. The Khachaturyan Sisters. The Moscow Poisoner

[music]

and

good evening, everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow

which means we are live on air with

the Russia of the Future program, and I am Alexei

Navalny — or a puppet of business sharks and

shadowy power brokers. This week I was called that

in all sorts of Kremlin-controlled

media outlets.

The first thing I want to tell you is:

subscribe to the channel. We are just a little short

of one million, so if you are watching the broadcas

t, just take your mouse, scroll down

click subscribe, and we will celebrate

reaching one million. Second, I wrote on these cups

for added effect:

Get up and go, citizen, get up and go.

Because we need your signatures. I keep

saying this on this program all the time,

trying to convince you, and even with Putin and

United Russia, I am trying to convince you

of your own power. The previous episode

of this program — my Thursday

show — was watched by 919,000 people.

Of those, 300,000 were from Moscow. Divide

300,000 by 45 Moscow districts, and that is 6

and a half thousand signatures.

The viewers of this program alone could

practically run the election ourselves. We can

register, together with you, forty-five

candidates,

and then simply show up and win.

But you are lazy, you are lazy

about doing it, so please do not

be lazy. The next chance like this will come

in five years. Elections are happening now, and

the Communists, United Russia, A Just Russia

— the systemic parties — can put forward their

candidates without collecting these signatures

because they are systemic parties.

There are decent candidates, including among

the Communists too, but

independent candidates, especially those who

are running with the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

in particular, those whom we

support — each of them needs to collect

3 percent of voters' signatures in their

district.

That is about 5,000 to 6,000 people. It is very

hard in Moscow. Why? Very simple.

Go up to someone on the street and say,

"Sign here for something," and the person

will say, "Sure, no problem, I will sign." But then

you tell them, "Oh, we also need your passport

details," and the person will say,

"No, you are going to take out a loan in my name." So

it is very difficult. Plus, in Moscow no one

opens their doors, and in Moscow everyone lives in

rented apartments.

Plus, only 20 days are given for this, and

only eight of those 20 days remain. In Moscow,

all apartment building entrances are locked, and so on,

and so on, and so on. But there are a lot of you —

enough viewers of this program

to get Sobol and

Zhdanov and Yashin registered,

and Jankauskas and Milov and everyone else. We

have a signature collection center where

we are collecting signatures for 33

independent candidates, many of whom

we do not even especially support, but we are for

everyone. We believe candidates should

be allowed onto the ballot, so we

help everyone. So next time you hear

someone saying

that the FBK or our

Russia of the Future party

are the kind of people who do not want

to cooperate with anyone, remember that we are

the only ones collecting signatures for

everyone, with no strings attached. Right now I am

rooting for all candidates. Look in

the video description — there is my post where I

call on people

to sign for Yabloko candidates and

so on. Not one of them even asked

me to make those posts. In none of these cases

did I make any kind of

arrangement with anyone. Nevertheless, I think

it is important to call on you. So, citizen,

get up and go. Your signature is needed. Do not

overthink it — only 8 days remain.

I am actually very pleased that

the elections have finally entered the political

agenda. At last they have real tension and energy,

and they can now be discussed not in terms of

me trying to persuade you and explain how

important they are, but as genuinely

important and interesting political events.

The Moscow campaign has really come alive in every

possible color. We can see that Moscow City Hall

is simply shaking. Why is it shaking? In

this city, 15 million people live here.

The city is home to 10 percent of the country's

population. The city has a colossal budget — 2

and a half trillion rubles — and in the city there are

only 45 deputies. Any one of those

deputies,

if he is a normal,

honest, courageous person, will

cause a real stir, because in Moscow

they simply steal everywhere, huge sums on every little thing.

If a person were simply

to step up to the podium and say something, even

without doing anything else, that alone would be

painful enough, because it is a public platform.

And Moscow City Hall

is now using every infernal

method it can to make sure that these

candidates do not collect the required

number of signatures. Once they collect those

six thousand signatures, the next step

will be trying to keep them off the ballot. They will

declare

that some of the signatures are fake or

invalid. But right now it is very important

to make sure that they cannot say

you failed to collect them. And for that, what needs to be done is

To do that, they need to intimidate the signature gatherers for

that—they need to turn the whole campaign into

a complete trash-fire horror show, so that any ordinary viewer

or passerby would look at these

independent candidates and think, damn, this is some kind of

weird mess. Here you have this

United Russia candidate, a so-called independent nominee

backed by United Russia, and you're told: go ahead, run as an independent and

no one will object, everyone will be

independents. But he's somehow a doctor,

an official, but still a respectable person. And then there are these

opposition figures—something is always

happening around them, someone is always splashing them with something,

excuse me, with shit. Why is that

happening? Well, better

to stay away from them

just in case. That's the task set by Moscow City Hall,

and the sheer level of trashiness and absurdity can really be

judged

by Sobol's campaign, which has clearly

gotten under the skin of

City Hall more than anything else. I think that's connected,

of course, to her investigations

into those Moscow

food poisoning cases in kindergartens and schools, and

that's why those huge contracts are still

being awarded, the whole system is being preserved. They

absolutely do not want her to become a

deputy, and now they are doing everything possible

to make sure Sobol does not collect these

signatures, and to scare off

the signature gatherers—quite literally.

Buckets—Sobyanin-style, you might say—filled with feces,

they come out and throw them, practically shouting

"Don't vote for United Russia!" Let's

watch this disgusting seven-second clip.

It's pretty unpleasant, very unpleasant,

disgustingly unpleasant—and quite

effective. You're a new signature gatherer,

you show up, you're a volunteer, you want to help,

but, damn, if there's a risk that someone

might splash you with something like that, you'll probably

think: I support opposition candidates and

I support Sobol, but I'd better stay

home. At least at home this won't

happen to me. But apparently

this great political

consulting masterstroke by Moscow City Hall—there is

no doubt, not the slightest doubt, that

they organized it, because the attackers

arrived and left in an ambulance,

and the police did everything to make sure nothing

happened to them. Still, this

video exists—fortunately, a volunteer recorded it—and

that same day, all the campaign cubes and

all Sobol posters were likewise

covered in these disgusting brown

smears; there were lots of photos.

Well, Moscow's public,

including people who are even somewhat loyal

toward Sobyanin, kind of

said, "Ugh, that was really vile," and

Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of *Novaya Gazeta* (an independent Russian newspaper),

filed a statement—really a public

appeal to the police. And the police, sure enough,

immediately found the attackers. And astonishingly,

they said these attackers—

this was in the published response from the head of Moscow's main police directorate—

were some drunken citizens who

had been drinking alcohol,

and then, on a dare—this is practically what it says right there—

according to the police chief, they took horse

manure, diluted it with water, and made a bet

among themselves over who could splash more horse

manure onto a Sobol poster and onto

the volunteers. And there was apparently a winner.

And then, hilariously, it says that after

that they resumed drinking

alcoholic beverages.

A case was opened for petty hooliganism, which

already shows, already proves, that

the police are covering for them, because these

people were damaging signature sheets,

they were pouring all this onto the signature sheets,

and that's a criminal offense. First of all.

Second, somehow it immediately disappeared—

let's watch those seven

seconds again. It's immediately obvious these were not

drunken citizens at all, but some kind of

Prigozhin-style thugs (a reference to Yevgeny Prigozhin and his network),

prepared in advance, and

wearing masks, knowing they might be filmed.

Again, they were brought in and taken away by an ambulance.

They do not look at all like drunken

citizens. Another seven seconds.

Now, of course, we will do everything possible

to examine the case materials,

to see who these people are, but I think

the police will of course hide them and

cover for them, just as it hides and

protects the people who

splash me with brilliant green antiseptic (zelyonka). These, these

people stand right next to the police at every rally,

they work together with them, but

every time I file a complaint, the police reply:

well, somehow it's impossible to find them, impossible

to establish their identities, despite the fact

that you gave us photographs—we still can't

find them. So this is effectively

their standard response to all

these complaints, and not just in Sobol's case.

Of course, this concerns others too—the same thing

is happening, similar things are happening around Yashin.

It looks like they are even filming an entire

movie of some kind about Yashin and Milov, where of course they will

say that they are American

agents. And it's very funny how correspondents

from NTV (a Russian state-aligned TV channel), or maybe some other

other

TV company, run after them asking, "Is it true

that you are..." For example, they asked Milov,

"Are you the link

between Navalny and America?" And let's

watch 42 seconds of how Milov simply

took matters into his own hands, turned on the camera himself, and

gave a great answer to all the questions from these

media operatives. "I don't receive... Miss,

are you ready? Your name is Ekaterina. I don't receive..."

Funding? I just explained it.

Only people like you receive it.

I receive no funding whatsoever.

How many times do I have to repeat it?

I only earn money through honest

work, I pay taxes, all of it

is declared, all of it is on record with the tax

inspectorate.

There is no hidden income or rent in any of this, believe me.

I have never received any funding,

ever. Where did you get that from? I’ve lived for almost

50 years in Russia. Before that, I had

many opportunities to emigrate, but I never

intended to leave.

Is it true that you’re planning to emigrate

from the country? Leave the country? I have no

doubt that this weekend we’ll see

some kind of hellish, sinister

“investigation” telling us how

terrible, terrible the independent candidates are,

that they’ve practically emigrated, that they live on

American money, that all of this is a fifth

column.

And since that isn’t enough, they’ve

really brought out all their

methods, even the rather archaic

and long-failed ones.

Many years ago, remember when I

ran for mayor of Moscow, they

put forward that “Spider,” Sergei Troitsky

from Korrozia Metalla (a Russian metal band).

A remarkable man, memorable to

several generations for his

distinctive manner of speaking, where he

constantly uses certain words, for example.

And basically, back in 2013, during

the carnival-like atmosphere of my campaign, they

put forward a whole bunch of freaks like that.

And when I came in and had some

time for meetings with municipal

deputies, they arranged it so that I

had to sit there, and Spider had to sit

next to me, so that we’d be in the same shot. He

would spout some nonsense, and I was supposed

to sit there blushing. And all of this was meant

to demonstrate, well, there you go:

here’s Navalny, here’s Spider, they’re roughly on the same

level. And in the Presidential Administration

I also have no doubt

that in the Presidential Administration there’s

some fairly stupid guy there

who likes these methods, and now

again, in 2019, they dragged this

Spider out and put him up—where do you think?

Of course, in Sobol’s district.

Where he’s making these wonderful campaign

promises.

They’re actually pretty similar to the campaign

promises from 2013. Let’s listen to what

he was promising back in 2013.

Campaign promises: in my campaign, we’ll

have a whole range of programs. For example,

with the simplest program, we will replace

migrant laborers with multifunctional

robots. For example, jointly with

firms like Masha Simmons and China Industrial,

we will build a new factory in southern Moscow

that will produce these robots. Second,

the second point: how to fight

corruption. For example, in New Moscow we

will give 1 square kilometer of territory to China.

It will become the property of the state

of China, and Chinese border guards

will be stationed there, and the whole city will be neon-lit,

everything will glow. We will heat

the water in the Moscow River, so that people can swim

there year-round, for example.

That’s one idea.

Basically, we’ll bring 100,000 onto the streets of Moscow

the trendiest Ukrainian prostitutes,

who will cost $1 per session. That

will attract a huge number of

foreigners, who will leave

a great deal of money in Moscow, which

will allow the Moscow government to carry out

grand new projects. And we will

heat the water in the Moscow River, and put

100,000 of the most impressive Ukrainian

prostitutes in Moscow, as Troitsky told us.

And I’m discussing this—see, in a certain

sense, I’m also falling for that very

trick of the Presidential Administration, because

you can’t ignore it. It’s ridiculous and stupid,

and even from the point of view

of showing just what kind of

complete idiots are sitting in the Presidential

Administration, you want to show this video,

show this candidate, and in

a certain sense they achieve their goal,

because the campaign sinks into trash.

Here we were just discussing how

people are splashing each other with horse manure, and here

there’s some Spider, and over here people are running around and asking

whether you’ve emigrated or are planning

to emigrate, and it’s all complete nonsense. Meanwhile,

standing right next to them is this handsome,

serious candidate from United Russia

—an “independent” nominee, but really from United Russia—he’s

a chief doctor, or an actor as in Sobol’s case,

or a university vice-rector as in Yashin’s case,

or a journalist as in another case—and such

a serious person, a truly serious

person, man or woman, in a tie

or in some строгом dress, and everything about

them is wonderful. They look at

all this trash and say, well, how can anyone

vote for the opposition? Just look

at what’s happening around them. We don’t even

know whether they want to fight

school poisonings, or whether they’re the same

candidates who want

to heat the water in the Moscow River.

We’ve gotten them all mixed up—they’re all roughly

the same. So please, dear

Moscow pensioners,

you’re the ones who mainly go out to vote, dear

Moscow pensioners, so vote for us,

because an old horse doesn’t spoil the furrow.

ruin it — and that is the whole point of it all.

That is the entire setup; that is the whole

deception. Our task is to expose it, and once

again, the viewers of this program are smart enough

to win the election — or at the very least, certainly

smart enough to get all

the candidates registered. So, my dear friends, don’t

be lazy.

Go right now and sign in support of

the people and the deputies who will at least

step up to the podium and say

the right things — the ones we

support. This excellent group of five

that I keep naming — they will

do much more. But even if a person

simply goes up to the podium

that alone will already be understood there as a slap in the face. And

take Maxim Reznik from St. Petersburg

in the Legislative Assembly — he is practically alone there. Yes, he

does a lot, but even his

short one-minute speeches have already

turned into a special genre of their own, when

he comes in and just tears into United

Russia. We want deputies like that

in the Moscow parliament. We want that. Give

Reznik a minute, and let’s see why the country

doesn’t believe in the fight against corruption.

Because everyone can see that the so-called

fight against corruption is being used

exclusively for political purposes, that

there is no systemic fight against corruption

at all.

Corruption has in fact become

a political category and is effectively

almost

the driving force behind the usurpation of power

that we are witnessing. This large-scale

corruption on a political scale, in such

unprecedented proportions, leads to the fact that

corrupt officials effectively usurp power. Why is it that

in our country, from the court’s point of view, the corrupt people are

Alexei Navalny

in the fabricated Kirovles case, while

the subjects of his many investigations —

the ringleaders of this gang of “patriots” — feel perfectly

fine, and they are not considered corrupt? People

see this. That is why all these cosmetic

measures connected with carrying out

compliance procedures and so on solve nothing

at the basic level. There is no fight against corruption

on a systemic level. For that, what is needed is

independent branches of government,

a separation of powers. Everything grows

out of that and ultimately comes back to it.

And after that, there is only one way left:

by any means,

by any methods, to cling to power.

We forge signatures, we keep candidates off the ballot, and

this is called Article 278 of the Criminal

Code: usurpation of power. That is what

systemic corruption, which we are not

fighting, leads to. Unfortunately, you see, even one person

who simply comes out and tells the truth

is already great. If there were 45 people like that

— even 5. Right now there are 0. But if there are 5, if

there are 10, and if United Russia loses

its majority — and we can see that, according to our

Smart Voting strategy, it can lose

that majority — we understand that to

falsify the results

they will do everything for that.

Electronic voting has been invented for exactly this purpose, but we

have every opportunity to make sure

that they lose their majority.

Register for Smart Voting.

Follow the instructions. And now go

and sign up. Since we’ve looked at Reznik and

discussed him, we have effectively moved to

our cultural capital. Of course, what is happening there

most vividly of all, and what is happening

in St. Petersburg

does a great job of showing how

the Russian state is structured. There is no

“vertical of power” at all, though we tend to think

— as people say and write, as political scientists say —

that there is Putin, he gives the orders,

and then some of his henchmen carry them out

at

the gubernatorial, local, and municipal

levels, implementing whatever plans

or ideas they have. In reality, St. Petersburg shows

that there is nothing of the sort. There is simply a collection

of bandits. There is, of course, one general line:

all the bandits are in United Russia, so

United Russia gets a complete carte blanche.

But the way this is carried out is perfectly illustrated:

in 2014 there were municipal elections in St. Petersburg.

They will be held again on September 8,

simultaneously with the election of this loathsome

creature.

And in 2014, the issue was connected with the fact that

they elect the heads

of municipalities, elect the municipal

assemblies; these municipal assemblies

elect their chairpersons. This is local government

that is, in practice, quite influential,

and it has a major impact on

who is later elected to the Legislative Assembly,

who will be elected from St. Petersburg to the State Duma.

It’s Putin’s city and all that, and in St. Petersburg

they came up with some absolutely

grandiose “innovation” in 2014:

they simply, bluntly, realizing that they could not

beat all the candidates — there were one and a half,

almost two thousand people running — and they could not fail to

register all the independent

candidates.

So they physically did not let them into the premises

of the election commission. I understand that

it sounds strange and practically impossible,

but that is in fact what happened. People simply

looked for the commission and could not find it, or

the commission was always closed. And in

2014, this led to

absolutely indescribable scandals. And after

that, Ella Pamfilova came and said that

no, this would never happen again, and

this was discussed many times, and it

She wagged her finger, she shook her fist, and...

the Central Election Commission

was discussing all of this, and we were waiting, but he...

there was a certain logic to the behavior in

St. Petersburg. So, this new guy, Beglov, he isn’t

popular. He wants to get elected, so he needs

to project one simple thing: that he is not

a United Russia member. He collected signatures, and then, well...

both he and his entire team

in the city municipal elections, they win if you

were to hold elections there more or less

honestly, while keeping up appearances and falsifying things

but without much pride. Yes, that’s logical.

If you and I were to come up with it, if we were the kind of

villains devising the scheme, most likely

that’s exactly what we’d come up with. And apparently, in the Kremlin

Kiriyenko, Putin, Panfilova

came up with roughly the same thing: Beglov, we’ll remove

all the strong candidates, and you will

beat the weak ones, and we’ll also

fiddle things a bit in the municipal

elections, but overall we’ll preserve

the majority, and even despite the fact that

he’s some completely awful, pathetic

candidate—well, in St. Petersburg, him of all people...

since the city is very restless

we’ll allow sanctioned rallies, and we’ll

get through this difficult election period up to

September 8. Logical, logical. But in

practice—good Lord—our campaign headquarters

which is not an intelligence service and certainly

does not possess any kind of super

powers—every single member of our staff

is constantly under external surveillance

both by the police and by these

Prigozhin crooks, because

Prigozhin—the very same “Putin’s chef” (a nickname for Yevgeny Prigozhin)—

is effectively the head of Beglov’s campaign

for Beglov. Our headquarters even... I just

applaud our team, and Alexandra

Shursha, who heads the campaign, and Olga Guz

the deputy head, and all the staff

they simply went to the administration

of Vyborgsky District, which is 10 percent

of St. Petersburg’s population, and right inside

the administration building they discovered how

signatures were being forged for Beglov

I mean, damn, not in some underground factory

not in some secret room, not like they took them

somewhere—I don’t know—to Leningrad Region

or to Finland and forged them in secret

or went off to Chechnya or Tatarstan

No—they were doing it right there, on the premises of a government

authority. Give me a few seconds, let’s watch

our people going in. That’s Olya Guseva

and she’s simply filming these middle-aged women

state employees sitting there forging

signatures for Beglov

“What are you copying over there? What is that?”

“There, look—a signature sheet. There you are...”

“Beglov, Alexander Dmitrievich...”

“And you have a signature sheet too?”

“Certified by Elena Loskutova... all of you have...”

“You also have a signature sheet for Alexander

Dmitrievich... to collect...”

“...for the Governor of St. Petersburg...”

“...by September 8. Here are the passport details...”

“Nikolai Olegovich...”

The instructions—you see how

simply it’s all arranged? I mean, look:

a person walks up with a camera and films them

forging signatures, and these women are so

taken aback that they basically

keep doing it, and one of them is even smiling

like, “Yeah, I’ve got a signature sheet too, so what?”

“So what, guys, we’re forging them?” And in every

administration office they write them like this. And again,

take note: this is the governor

you already have all the teachers, all the doctors,

all the housing utility workers, and all the rest

of them

a huge mass of state employees—you could simply, by order,

make sure that they

sign for you. But they don’t actually sign.

To collect 70,000 signatures

for a governor—in Moscow, here,

each candidate has to collect 6,000

signatures, while there it’s 70,000 for the whole city. So

proportionally, it’s a much smaller

number. And yet, as governor, you’re still

forging them because nobody wants to

sign for this sorry excuse for a candidate—nobody.

And our campaign did something very clever,

really brilliant—well done. Once again, I applaud them.

They first released a short video

specifically with this part, showing how

they were forging signatures

while waiting for Beglov’s reaction, and Beglov

spoke out. You have to admit, he had to—there was really

no way around it, it was right there on the signature sheets.

He responded quickly and said that it was

some kind of provocation. Let’s watch

Beglov’s first statement.

Public support

has nothing to do with this, and

I appeal to law enforcement agencies

to figure out what this is

whether it is a provocation, or malicious intent,

or whether it was some kind of cunning

trap. You see, we opened it, and our

mustached crook of a hero walked right into it, and

the trap snapped shut. He says it’s

a provocation—I don’t know what else to call it.

And then, after some time, his

press service said no, this was not

signature collection

but the preparation of signature sheets, and that all of

this was normal, all of it perfectly fine. But

after that—the next... this was on

Friday, and then on Monday our campaign

released a major investigation

which you can watch, where we simply

wiped the floor with Beglov. We went around to

several apartments. Let’s watch

how our staffer approaches

the person listed on the signature sheet

as someone who had supposedly already signed for Beglov. Thirty

seconds—here, look, this is the signature sheet.

...hours later, she turned in signatures in support of

Beglov's nomination for governor.

All your passport details are listed here.

I wanted to ask you: did you give your

personal data to Beglov's signature collectors, and did you

sign in support of his nomination? Thank you.

So you confirm that? — No, nothing like that happened.

I never signed anything for him anywhere.

And honestly, it became obvious —

obvious what had been clear from

the very first second: they had simply taken data from

passport offices and were given people's data.

They sat there copying it all out. We invited

journalists. At the same time, the same thing

happened when several people who had supposedly

submitted signatures for Beglov were contacted — all of them

said in surprise: no, we hadn't submitted

anything. Let's look further.

Meanwhile, an independent

channel — after a few seconds, we decided

to go to the addresses listed on the

signature sheets.

The people turned out to be real.

But signature collectors for Beglov had not

come to them and had not asked them to sign in support of

Beglov.

Well, at that point there was nowhere left to go, and we

forced our wonderful

marvelous candidate — that crook —

the acting governor,

to announce that he would not collect

or use those signatures at all. I'm from

the Vyborgsky District — let's listen

to Beglov's second statement.

I am grateful to everyone who

supported me in collecting signatures.

Special words of thanks, of course,

...

During elections, not only in our city

but around the world, there is political speculation. The same thing

happened in the Vyborgsky District. We will appeal

to the relevant authorities so they can sort out

this provocation and malicious intent.

...

Given that there is political speculation,

I have made the decision that

in the Vyborgsky District...

...

But I am waiting for everyone at the election on the 8th.

Thank you. Political speculation — that's what he calls it.

He is very grateful to those who supported him.

But in fact, he can only be grateful to the people

who forged signatures for him, because

apparently no one else

supported Beglov in this election. And this is

just a small part of our plan to make sure

that he abandons those signatures.

In the Vyborgsky District, our main plan

is for you to help

every resident of St. Petersburg see these

videos and learn that this vile crook

and thief forges signatures, and therefore vote for

anyone but Beglov.

But besides that,

I think this video became, in a

certain sense, a catalyst for

federal attention to St. Petersburg,

which badly needed that attention.

St. Petersburg needed it badly. Ella

Pamfilova finally crawled out from under

the couch and said that in St. Petersburg

some kind of outrage is taking place, because

it's not just forged

signatures for Beglov there — what is happening is also a repeat of

what happened in 2014, only

even worse. If in 2014

municipal candidates were kept out of election commissions

by methods such as the commission simply

disappearing or

the door being locked, this time they are being beaten,

they are being attacked. The head of our

campaign headquarters, Alexander Shishov, who is also

running in the election, was beaten. We are fielding quite

a lot of people there — about one thousand

nine hundred people, several hundred of whom

have been trained by headquarters. I urge all of you

to take part in the St. Petersburg campaign and in Smart

Voting, so that not a single United Russia candidate

gets elected. And for United Russia,

what is their method of

countering all this in St. Petersburg? Well,

they simply do not let candidates in, and this

goes on and on. It's just absolutely

an outrage. Let's

look at option one: when people come,

the door is simply locked. For the second day, we have been unable

to get into the municipal election office.

And it doesn't matter what time you come

during the election commission's working hours.

Whether you are coming to file documents as a

candidate for municipal deputy

or simply for some

private matter, the door stays shut.

According to the schedule posted here,

it says...

I am a candidate, I came

to submit documents at 9 a.m.

and even earlier there was already a very

long line on Tverskaya Street.

Probably not all of them are

real candidates.

For most of them, a security guard

is talking complete nonsense.

No one is being let in. It's total lawlessness, and

they've turned it into an absolute disgrace.

But even that was not the worst of the lawlessness.

This lawlessness is a bit different:

people are simply being shoved out by force

in other commissions too. This is happening constantly.

Look.

Just appreciate the absurdity of the situation:

a candidate comes up, pulls at the door, saying, 'I want

to submit my documents,' and some thug just

drags him away from it. The police do not

do anything. The police get 100,000

calls a day on this issue,

and nothing happens. A very funny

situation occurred in one of the...

In several municipalities, they use the same scheme.

A scheme that is used in several

municipalities works like this:

people show up, and there is always a line of

some sturdy young men. These

young men are often cadets at the

Military Medical Academy, and honestly

they look ridiculous. They

put on black sunglasses because

they are being filmed, and so they stand there in their

black sunglasses like this, as if

they are some kind of great Rambos. And one of the

candidates was not being let in. He

would come, and they would not let him in. They said,

these so-called guys, they and the candidate

are also standing in line.

And if you try to slip past them,

they will beat you up. So he figured out that he should

just dress exactly the same, put on this

T-shirt. Hold on, let me see, do we have a

photo?

No photo. He did exactly the same thing, he simply

put on that T-shirt, black sunglasses, and

got through that way, because this

team of young Rambos thought he was

one of their own. Look at this: he even came indoors in black

sunglasses, and only in this way

were they able to break through. And so

this whole situation with Belov, and with the fact that

our team and the other candidates were covering

all of this so actively, led to the point

that Panfilova was ultimately forced to

respond somehow. She said that this was

an outrage, and a special

commission from the Central Election

Commission was sent to St. Petersburg. And this is what I started with: we

tend to think that there is some kind of vertical chain of command,

that the Central Election Commission, Ella

Panfilova, is some big authority

that can issue orders, and down below they will

carry them out, as if this were some kind of mafia structure

where mafia bosses give orders

to the foot soldiers in St. Petersburg: cut it out there,

stop that nonsense, let everyone into the

election commissions. And now let's

look at an absolutely astonishing video

showing how a member of the Central Election

Commission, Yevgeny Shevchenko, who is even

the secretary of the Central Election

Commission, one of its top officials,

at the Central Election Commission,

came to inspect things. And in St. Petersburg they

know that the bosses are coming to inspect,

and that the bosses will demonstratively

walk around checking whether the election commissions are open

at the addresses listed

by every media outlet or not.

Well, as usual during inspections,

they put on a show for the bosses:

on the day of the inspection everything is fine, but when

the bosses leave, everything goes back to

the same old pattern as before.

But in St. Petersburg, the whole St. Petersburg mafia,

this whole low-level crowd of crooks and swindlers,

the people stealing money from capital repairs

and from various procurement schemes and so on,

care so little about Ella Panfilova

that they simply did not even

bother, for example, to bring back

one of the municipal commissions that had disappeared somewhere.

Let's watch a very funny

phone conversation between a senior official from the

CEC and the local crooks. So, the acceptance of documents

today in the video, for some reason,

is taking place on Lunacharsky, at least

apparently. No, one second, one second,

one second.

So, one second. How is it that you say 19

candidates were accepted when on the main building

and on the website, where the posted

address appears on all information portals,

there is not a single notice? And I am asking:

what candidates were accepted there on

Lunacharsky?

60-62, if I'm not mistaken. And so

there were no notices, and this, honestly,

and this, frankly speaking—and listen to me—

you know that regarding the candidates, a letter has been sent

to the prosecutor's office and the Investigative

Committee, and this petition is supported by

the city election commission. Are you aware of that?

I am aware. Well then, listen, listen,

please listen, please. No one is

going to intimidate anyone; I am simply informing you.

I am informing you. I would—I am listening to you—

I am informing you, and let's

wrap up this conversation for today. I have given you

the information. So tomorrow, tomorrow

we tomorrow—you on your side, we on ours—

tomorrow. We treat

your work and these people

with deep respect. It's just that

how, exactly, did these people find out that

you were accepting their documents there?

Well, great, it was published in the newspaper,

on the website, and everywhere else that the address of the election

commission,

where people are supposed to come submit documents,

is one thing, while the commission is sitting at a different address

that nobody knows about. A guy shows up,

goes to the listed address after warning that

there would be an inspection—the bosses from Moscow had

arrived—he comes and finds locked doors, and even

the great bosses from the CEC end up talking

to some St. Petersburg woman who answers them

with: don't try to intimidate me.

We are sitting here at the correct address,

accepting documents. And then the obvious question is:

how are people supposed to know that you are accepting

documents there

if your official address is different? Don't intimidate

me, I am doing everything properly. This is

magnificent.

What vertical chain of command? It is just such a

mess.

There is a stream of fraud, yes, but inside it

subordination, as we can see, is very seriously

undermined. Ella Panfilova is simply...

They just slammed them face-first into the table, that’s how they’re handling everything.

It’s the St. Petersburg crooks and Alexander Beglov.

With the signature collection, and in every

municipality, that’s how they’re behaving.

Face-first into the table. And today she said there

that she would cancel the elections. That is

wonderful, just amazing, so

instead of jailing all those people who were

manipulating the election commissions,

they’re going to punish legitimate candidates instead. We’ll

just cancel the elections altogether. Wonderful. No, there’s no need

to cancel the elections.

Everyone should be registered, and after that

those people should be thrown out of the commissions and sent to the

defendants’ bench.

Everyone involved in this—everyone who is engaged in

this blatant nonsense and just

beats candidates, shuts doors,

hides these commissions away somewhere—all of them.

But we’ll see, we’ll see how

the situation develops from here, because

Ella Pamfilova was saying a lot there,

beating her chest, saying that she would not—

that she would resign

if she were not allowed to establish proper

election transparency. But after such a

slap in the face, we’re very interested. And for those not in Moscow or

St. Petersburg, if you live in

Novosibirsk, please sign for

Sergei Boyko as soon as possible. There’s a mayoral election there,

and unfortunately there

United Russia and the Communists have

effectively united behind a single candidate,

Lokot, who even supports

raising housing and utility rates.

Sergei Boyko is an independent candidate.

He is collecting signatures at 28 Krasny Prospekt.

Go and sign for Boyko.

There will also be elections in more than 20 other regions.

There’s a very interesting situation in Irkutsk, and in

many other places. There will be elections in Bashkortostan as well,

and so on and so on. Smart Voting

will work everywhere. Register for

Smart Voting. Everything is becoming

more and more interesting, and we are ready to take on

United Russia, because they are clearly

terrified. We’ll see what

comes of it. This is our big

experiment in collective action. If

Smart Voting works for us this time,

then in the next elections

in a couple of years—well, there are elections every year—

we’ll really give them a serious

drubbing.

I’ve been talking about elections in Russia for a long time, and now I

want to talk about Georgia, because

of course this was the main

foreign policy story, and

in fact the main domestic political story too,

because the main point of what

happened is that, well,

Georgians are protesting, and Russians will

have to pay for it. That, frankly, is what

infuriated me most about the Georgian

situation, because once again

ordinary Russians have to pay, damn it, for

everything. We pay for Ukraine,

we pay for what happened in

the Baltics, and now we also have to

pay for Georgia, because Putin

uses

the Russian population, the money of actual

people in Russia, in his

geopolitical struggle. This is his

geopolitical weapon—not some kind of

diplomacy, and in fact not even

military force—well, except

as in Ukraine—but simply the money

of our people, specific people, and not

very wealthy people at that. So what

happened there? You probably don’t even know.

There’s this Sergey Gavrilov. I didn’t know

he even existed—this Sergey Gavrilov,

a Communist Party deputy.

I’d never heard of him—some completely obscure surname.

I’d never heard of him, which means 99

point 9 percent of people

had never heard of him either. And there was in

the Georgian parliament some useless, nobody-needed

pathetic event,

an interparliamentary assembly. And this same

Gavrilov sat down in the speaker’s chair.

And he had spoken there about North

Ossetia and Abkhazia, calling for them

to be incorporated into Russia, and all that, and

the Georgians were outraged. One after another, they

turned against their own parliament,

their parliamentary majority. The parliamentary

majority went and basically told them to go to hell,

after which they went out into the

streets and started protesting. And, well, they have every

right to do so—it’s their Georgian affair. They had

there, they have a certain pro-Russian

opposition and a pro-European opposition.

That’s a very rough simplification, of course.

In reality there are lots of nuances and

different shades to it.

But for our purposes, we can probably very roughly

put it that way. And indeed, this

took the form of rallies that were, in essence,

of course anti-Putin, but

the Russian media, and some Russian

citizens, consider them

anti-Russian. Well, presumably those who

are offended by chants about Putin

regard such chants as fairly

aggressive and anti-

Russian, even Russophobic. Let’s listen—47:40 to 47:37.

Seconds, sorry.

Uh.

[inaudible]

Well, in the Kremlin this was probably quite

unpleasant for many people to watch. And there

it turned out that after people

poured into the streets, even that

parliamentary majority, which was supposedly

pro-Russian, supposedly pro-Putin, immediately

started reacting to it right away.

to be outraged and

at some point it turned out that the entire

Georgian establishment, under pressure from

the public, came out with somewhat anti-Putin

positions, and Putin is upset; he believes

that some kind of his puppet

puppet party has now come to

power, and, well, the situation in

Tbilisi is that Georgians are out in the streets, running around and

shouting their slogans, yes, running around and

shouting, all of this is happening; they tried

to disperse them there; one person, a young woman,

lost an eye, and several people were beaten

after that the violence seemed to stop, but

the demonstrations continue.

Well, you might think, okay, Putin

is upset, the Georgians are outraged,

it’s an internal Georgian situation, but Putin

decided to take revenge on them. And how did he

decide to take revenge? By taking money from Russians. It’s simple.

The situation is this: Georgia

is, first of all, an inexpensive vacation destination, and second,

it’s the kind of vacation that feels familiar to a Soviet

person.

Shashlik, *genatsvale* (a Georgian term of endearment), Kindzmarauli wine, well,

all those things that we all remember and

love from the Soviet Union.

Those who lived in the Soviet Union—I also, with

my parents, when I was little, used to go

on vacation to what was then the territory of Georgia, that is,

Abkhazia, which at the time was part of Georgia, and we

went to Sukhumi; there were also some

military facilities, all those holiday resorts, and

shashlik and all that.

Look, cypress trees grow here, here is

the Black Sea,

a great beach, and many people feel

nostalgic about it. I personally haven’t been to Georgia in

recent years, but everyone speaks very

highly of vacations there. More than

1.7 million Russian citizens vacation there

every year, and people make plans, they

buy these package tours, they travel to Georgia.

Russian airlines,

seeing that Russian citizens are traveling to

Georgia,

put on additional flights. Let’s

look at an ad I found online:

I see that S7 Airlines has launched

a special new Novosibirsk–

Batumi route. Why? Because people travel to

Georgia, and accordingly our

air carriers want to make some extra money

from that. People bought package tours, people

bought plane tickets, and then Putin comes out and says:

the Georgians are shouting slogans, so I will punish

the Georgians—we are banning flights.

Russians will not go to Tbilisi. 155,000

people have to return their tickets, and 20,000

or 25,000 people are having their bookings

canceled. And what does it mean to return

tickets? It sounds so simple, like

they’ll just hand back the tickets, they had plans, they’ll

get their money back. But in practice, I looked quite

carefully through social media and forums, and here’s

a woman writing there about returning tickets;

she says yes, we can return the tickets, but

the money will be refunded in 30 days. But your

vacation is planned now—why the hell are

Russians paying for this again? We had this with Egypt,

we had this with Turkey. Putin didn’t

like something the Egyptians did there,

so he simply banned flights to Egypt. There was

a conflict with Turkey, and they just went ahead and banned

flights to Turkey. Fine, if you want

to sort things out with these countries, then

come up with something—let some

state corporations restrict

cooperation or something, lower

the level of relations, expel diplomats—but no,

155,000 people are going on vacation, they’ve

booked hotels, they’re thinking about

what kind of

excursions they’ll go on, I don’t know; they’ve already left their children

with their grandmothers, or on the contrary picked up a child

from a summer camp and are sitting on packed bags,

ready to go to Tbilisi

and drink wine there and have fun, or

swim in the Black Sea somewhere in Batumi,

and then they’re told: no, you know, Pyotr Petrovich and

Anna Nikolaevna,

we’re canceling your vacation, and as for the money,

you’ll get it in 30 days. Damn it, this is

what people are supposed to deal with? I don’t understand—how are they

supposed to frantically run around in three days

trying to buy a package tour to Turkey or

some other country? Why should Russians

pay for this? Why is Putin

disposing of the money of these not particularly wealthy

people? Because Georgia is not some luxury

destination—he didn’t ban flights to the Maldives,

he banned flights merely to Georgia. 3

billion rubles are being lost by Russian

airlines, and the state has already said, yes,

we will compensate the airlines for their losses. What

does it mean, we’ll compensate the losses? It

means that from the state budget we will pay

the airlines.

So yes, of course,

there are, of course, some people—

owners of Georgian hotels, owners

of Georgian cafés and all that—who

will lose money, they will. But the main

punishment fell on those very

specific 155,000 people, and in general on

the 2 million Russians who wanted

to vacation in Georgia. Why should they

have to pay? Why couldn’t they at least

say: well, you know, those awful Georgians

are singing something in the square, so starting

from the New Year we’re stopping flights. Fine,

until the New Year, then, we would gradually stop

buying package tours.

Why is it necessary to treat people with such piggishness and

brutality, people who already

have their package tours in hand, with children, with suitcases

by the door, ready to leave—and then say no,

there will be no more flights, and those who are already there...

they’re there, but just imagine: you’ve arrived

you’re there, kind of relaxing, sitting in a

restaurant

having a drink, planning, I don’t know,

to go boating tomorrow, and then you’re told

that flights are being canceled, so urgently

cut your vacation short

and go back to Moscow or

Novosibirsk or wherever. Why does our

government

always have to treat people

as if we were slaves

as if people didn’t earn this money themselves

as if Putin gave it to us on loan and said, well,

go relax in Turkey, and then in

Georgia, and then, for some reason, the Georgians

weren’t to my liking, so I’ve changed my mind

come back from Georgia. You can’t do that. They

earned that money with sweat and blood

Why is this happening?

It’s truly just some kind of

outright monstrous disgrace. I simply can’t

call it anything else. And it’s not even really

about Georgia anymore, although there are no reasons

for any scandal with Georgia this time. This is

a conflict between the ruling party and

the opposition party

Naturally, in this conflict

some kind of Kremlin card is being played, well

that card gets played all across the post-Soviet

space

and it gets played in the U.S. too. That’s diplomacy

let diplomats deal with it. Why should

155,000 people have to pay for it? I don’t

understand. Then they immediately declared

that, you know, the quality of

Georgian wine

has deteriorated. What a disgrace. How can you

humiliate yourselves like this? Just say it plainly: in order to

punish Georgia, we’re stopping imports of

Georgian wine. They’re bad, they chant slogans

in the square. But no, damn it, instead you have to

come out and say: yes, we checked

and the quality of Georgian wine has worsened. That

humiliates the whole country. It humiliates

Rosselkhoznadzor (Russia’s agricultural watchdog)

and Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s consumer safety agency). It shows that there is no

real consumer watchdog at all, just crooks

who, on Kremlin orders or just

at the authorities’ command, declare rotten stuff

to be perfectly fine food

as in the situation with Moscow schools, or

something is fine yesterday, and wine

is suddenly declared bad wine today

and Russian citizens are simply told with a smile

with a smile, we’re told: Georgian wine

is bad now. Well then, that means for all

the other products we eat

there’s no real oversight there either

no consumer watchdog at all. That’s what I wanted to say about

Georgia. Meanwhile, against the backdrop of all this

there’s also unfolding

a demonstration of how our officials vacation

Here we are, ordinary people,

they won’t let us go to Turkey

and where they allow us to drink—sorry, I mean go

to Georgia—they won’t allow that either, and Georgian wine is banned

and Transparency International

at the same time shows us how

vacations are spent by

Russia’s Minister of Industry and Trade

Denis Manturov. It’s just

completely unbelievable. We already knew

that these people travel in style on

business trips

but when someone goes and books

a room for himself at the Peninsula hotel for 1.4 million

rubles per night

well, that’s really something extraordinary. We have

a short video, basically an ad

for this hotel. I was curious

to see what kind of hotel it is

that has rooms like that. I think you’d be interested too

30 seconds: the hotel where

the Russian minister stayed

[music]

[music]

Now, the most astonishing part

Naturally, a scandal broke out, and Manturov

was asked: man, how are you even traveling like this?

You booked a hotel room for 1.4

million. There is no, there is no

country in the world where a minister on

an official trip paid for by the state budget

stays in a presidential suite

for 1.4 million a night. And he

said: well, you know, at that moment there

were no cheaper rooms available

Like, all the hostels were full, we checked

the three-star hotels too, can you imagine

absolutely everything was booked, so

there was no other option, I checked in

to the suite and paid 1.4 million

without batting an eye. And you’ll

be surprised

there are no sanctions for this at all. It turns out

they can do this. They can

stay somewhere for 1.4 million. They

could stay somewhere for 1.4 billion in

any hotel—if you’re a minister, you live in

the presidential suite. I’m not saying that

a minister really has to stay in

a three-star hotel

but you could stay in a regular room

at a five-star hotel

but no, it has to be a presidential suite for 1.4

million, and when asked about it, without

batting an eye, he answered. No

sanctions, no parliamentary crisis

nobody demands his resignation, nobody

raises any objections. So Smart Voting

guys, is the way to send a message

to Manturov

Only through Smart Voting can you

only by getting people into the Moscow City Duma, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly

and the legislatures in Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Moscow

and at the federal level—people who

will stand up and speak out inside these various assemblies

and started saying, that damn truck man

when will Manturov resign, for God's sake?

a critical mass of deputies across the

country who will say: no more

luxury suites for 1.4 million rubles — only then

will there be any changes. As for resourcefulness,

that also stands out especially against the backdrop of Manturov

quite remarkably, because we

keep an eye not only on, you know,

those wonderful ministers who vacation

for 1.4 million rubles a day, but also

help nurses and others who

earn 15,000 rubles a month, and just

today, the Doctors' Alliance union, which

we try to support in the media, they

carried out their own raid in Kineshma, and I

just saw this video about bureaucratic

resourcefulness, and it's very short. They

went to several different medical

facilities. Naturally, the officials

figured it out: the union is going around now,

the union is filming on video some

terrible working conditions here, and the union

the Doctors' Alliance went into one

of the local children's clinics in order

to film the awful conditions. Let's see

whether they managed to or not.

Here's the door.

During working hours, they don't seem very happy to see us.

It's just like with the St. Petersburg election commission.

Yeah... children's hospital.

After learning that people with cameras from the union

were going around inspecting working conditions, they

locked the children's clinic

with a padlock — just locked it up. And

what if, God forbid, someone had come there — maybe

a parent with a sick child?

What if someone had brought a child there, if

I don't know, they had fallen and

broken a leg, or had an allergy,

or was dying and needed an injection?

They don't care about any of that. They just

went ahead and locked it up.

Anything, so long as they don't have to show

that the floor is caving in there, and that some

horrendous toilet is there — just so that this

won't be seen in Moscow, so it won't appear on YouTube,

we'd rather lock it up. Let

a couple of children here end up in serious condition or whatever,

or their

parents run around in panic looking for

another children's hospital — to hell with them.

They'll just have more kids, have new ones.

The main thing is that those villains from the

trade unions don't get in. That's the face of our authorities. As for

the Khachaturyan sisters, I want to say

this, and I think it's very important, because

there's an ongoing debate. I'm even somewhat

surprised by this debate, because in fact

it turns out there are people in Russia who

actually think that the Khachaturyan sisters

are some kind of dangerous killers who

committed premeditated murder, and that they should

go to prison for killing their father.

So what is the story of the sisters

Khachaturyan? In reality, it is

unbelievably tragic. I mean, if

someone made a film about their lives, we'd be

sobbing watching it. It would be

worse than *Cargo 200* (a bleak Russian film), because these people

spent their entire lives in hell, in the most

literal sense.

So, there was a man named Alexander

Khachaturyan.

He had a wife, and she gave birth to

four children by him. He beat all of them — and his wife, and those

four children —

constantly. There are people like that.

He simply beat them.

He tortured and tormented his wife and his eldest son,

who, since he could fight back,

he simply threw out of the house three years ago, and

he was left with his three daughters: Kristina,

Angelina, and Maria Khachaturyan.

One of them was over 18; two were

minors.

And these underage girls — he

simply

beat and raped them all those years.

He abused them, tormented them — he

truly turned their lives into hell. It has been established

that shortly before they killed him — and

they really did kill him — he fell asleep, and

one of them stabbed him with a knife, two

hit him with a hammer, and a third sprayed him in the face

with pepper spray. And with that

same pepper spray, the day before, he had

called them into his room and, scolding them for

not cleaning properly, sprayed it in the faces of these

poor children.

Pepper spray. And in that apartment, they

had nowhere to go, nowhere at all. They were

children, living in terror; for years they had been

intimidated.

They had been turned into God knows what. The youngest, as

I understand it, has now been declared by the court

not criminally responsible — I mean, because

that's what happens when someone is driven to that point. And they lived with

this every day: you cleaned badly,

he summons you into the room, and in your

face he sprays pepper spray; you are

raped, you are beaten.

That is a life of hell. And they really did

kill him. Frankly, I was simply

shocked that some people actually

held a picket outside the courthouse. Let's look

at the photo where they are standing there

saying: they are murderers, murderers must be jailed.

Well, of course they killed him — but

this is a textbook case of self-defense.

Self-defense does not necessarily

have to mean fighting back in the middle of a brawl.

What kind of fight could there be between these

children —

these terrified girls — and a huge

grown man,

their father, who by sheer force of authority

could simply crush them in seconds?

What, were they supposed to challenge him that very second?

To a duel, like some kind of knightly tournament?

"Dad, you're raping us, we've had enough"?

Throw down a glove and say, "Let's fight"? So what

was supposed to happen? This was prolonged

abuse.

It was

a life turned into hell. It's like a hostage-taking situation,

you understand? People are just sitting there,

held captive, and there is no fight going on

between them and the terrorists. But

if a hostage kills a terrorist,

you wouldn't say, "Well, he killed him." In that

sense, yes, the hostage is a killer, but you

wouldn't drag him off to prison.

The Khachaturyan sisters were first held in

pretrial detention, then released under house

arrest, and now they are under

restrictions on their freedom, and absurdly

idiotic ones at that. They live in the same apartment,

but they are forbidden from communicating with each other, and

it's impossible to enforce. Here, you

can see in the photo that the lawyer is holding

a photograph of one of the sisters—she's covered in blood. I mean,

they really were beaten, and I just

want to address those people who, for some

reason, are still arguing with this. I really

don't understand—what exactly did you want

to happen?

That they should just—what? He rapes them,

rapes them for three years, and then what—they wait until they're 25,

find husbands, and then those husbands

come and do something? How exactly were they

supposed to resist him at all?

People say, "Well, they didn't go to the police." Their

mother—first of all, their mother

did go to the police. All of those complaints

ended up with that very man, and he

beat them.

And then he would wave those very complaints in their faces.

But this is simply a well-known fact from

psychology: family members, especially children, do not

complain when they are being terrorized.

They're afraid. Where are they supposed to go and complain?

Go to the police, while sitting there thinking, "Yes, we'll

complain to the police, and then tomorrow he'll

beat us half to death again."

No, children don't complain. Especially

girls, especially girls this broken-down,

this tormented, who have been enduring this for years,

and who had no one

to stand up for them. It's a nightmare situation,

a life in hell, I'll say it for the millionth time. And

as they were breaking out of that hell, in an act

of self-defense, they killed the man who

had abused them for years and years. They killed him.

Should there be a trial? Yes, of course. But

this is being treated as murder, and horribly so. They are

now accused of

killing him as an organized group acting in conspiracy,

which means that, in this

sense, it is being framed as a culpable act—they are guilty of

it.

And the way this trial is unfolding cannot

be acceptable to any decent

person. The prosecution's position cannot

be acceptable to any decent

person, because the context matters.

Yes, they killed him. But why did they

kill him? Why? Because it was

self-defense. So I believe that every

decent person should now

demand that before trial—and there should

of course be a trial—they should first of all be released

under a travel restriction order,

and given a real chance to recover,

because I don't think that any of

them, even if they are acquitted and released,

will ever be able to live a normal life again. These are

people scarred forever. And the situation with

these Khachaturyan sisters is exactly the kind of situation

that should make us think about what is actually

happening in this country when it comes to domestic violence.

I mean, this is a situation where

law enforcement agencies simply spend years

ignoring things like this because

well, yes, the local police officer comes, the husband beat his wife again,

ha ha, "if he beats her, it means he loves her"—but all those

sayings about how these things happen in every family,

conflicts,

showdowns, fights—yes, those can happen, but these

things are completely beyond the pale.

And we know they complained, and absolutely nothing

happened, and the police

ignored all of it. But now,

now they'll lock them up for up to eight years. Look

at them—they stabbed their own

father. But I think a simple thought

experiment

is enough: put yourself in their place. Would you have stabbed

him? I have no doubt that everyone

watching this program right now is saying, "Yes, of course."

Of course they would, because for some things,

within the framework of self-defense, that is exactly what a person

has to do. They had no other chance.

If they had not killed him and had just beaten him

a little, say, with a hammer on the head, he

would have ended up in the hospital, and then he would

have come back and turned their lives into

something three times worse. They simply did not

have any other chance. They were defending themselves. That is

my position on the Khachaturyan sisters.

We've already been on air for an hour; right now

we're live.

38,000 people are watching. I also wanted to say something about

the poisoner from the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), because this is

another absolutely astonishing

example of how the police just

do not care about anything at all. With these

Khachaturyan sisters, all of this came to light,

you see, only because they had to kill him.

The newspapers wrote about it: "Three sisters

killed their own father"—what a headline.

Everyone paid attention, and after

that people started discussing it. And here too, there is some

guy, former fighter Murat Sabanov, a former member

of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), who, by the way,

was assigned to guard a nuclear power plant.

while serving on security duty at a nuclear power plant in

his social media, he wrote that he was a mujahid, and I

just wonder what, at that moment,

the FSB (Russia’s security service) was doing, or the special department there

some Russian, uh, personnel chief or

staff officers, who, as we know, actually

even purchase services for

monitoring their employees’ social media

so there was this guy working at nuclear

power plants, casually posting that he was a mujahid, well

all right, scroll on—what’s next, bushes,

cats, funny videos—and nobody

gave the slightest damn about such an

unstable guy back then, and this

unstable guy left the Rosgvardiya (Russia’s National Guard)

and started, in Moscow, simply in the

center of the city, spiking Fanta with

phenazepam, along with some

other medications, poisoning people, and when

they lost consciousness after a while,

he stripped them of their belongings. In this way he poisoned

24 people

After that, people ended up in the hospital

in serious condition; there, apparently, one

person died. Now he is also being accused of

killing one person with alcohol and

poisoning several others with

possibly as many as 100 poisoning incidents

may have happened, but until the outlet

The Village

wrote an article about it, absolutely nobody

cared. He was poisoning them in the same

place—the so-called “Pit” in Moscow, on Khokhlov

Square, I think—where people like to

gather and drink; people come there

all the time, the police regularly disperse them, and this

movement—Lev Protiv (a vigilante anti-drinking group)—shows up

provokes these people, gets into fights, and the police then

haul away those who are drinking, since they’re

violating the administrative code. In that

place, 24 people were poisoned. Obviously

each of them went to the local police

station and filed a complaint, or their

relatives filed one for them, or they

ended up in the hospital in a coma. People were lying there and

their relatives were coming in and saying, look,

this person was poisoned, they took off his

chain, stole his clothes, his phone, and so

on. Nobody cared until the outlet

simply raised hell and caused a scandal

because the relatives of, well,

a journalist’s acquaintance had been poisoned, and then they

posted on social media: first post—yeah,

“my acquaintance was poisoned”; second post—

“my acquaintance was poisoned,” after which he was

caught immediately—of course he was caught

immediately, there are cameras everywhere, the whole

center of Moscow is covered with cameras, and if they’d

wanted to, this person could have been

caught after the very first poisoning, but

the Moscow police—if you, say, go and

stand in a solo picket, they’ll immediately drive up

in a paddy wagon, drag you off, write up reports, and

process everything; I’ve got a court hearing on Monday, so

they’ll enforce the law so zealously

that it’s impossible even to breathe there

it’s impossible to say anything without

attracting police attention. We know from

numerous case files that every

one of these broadcasts that I make is watched by

special officers from Center E (Russia’s anti-extremism police unit), who

record everything for signs of extremism and

for whether I’m calling for some kind of

rally. But when we had one poisoning victim,

then a second one—nobody cared at all

that’s how the Moscow police work. And do you know

why?

they didn’t investigate these cases? Well,

right now one of the victims will tell us

in one minute and 23 seconds how

a person who had been poisoned went to the police

and what happened. Let’s watch. On June 12, 2019,

I was relaxing at the Zolotaya Vobla bar on

Pokrovka Street in Moscow, dancing

and, well, there was alcohol too. After that I sat

down at a table and don’t remember anything else. Those who

were with me say that I just suddenly

walked off. I came to in some courtyards

in the city center, robbed, without my belongings, without

my documents, and I woke up because they were already

taking my chain off me, and

the person who was taking it looked

just like that man. I asked

the police officers for help—I saw

just

a police officer standing there and

asked for help, said I’d been robbed

they took me to the police station

it was the Basmanny police station

they told me that reports had been drawn up against me

and issued me a fine of 500 rubles (about $5–6 at the time)

for being intoxicated in public

I said that I hadn’t been detained,

I had gone to the police officers myself

for help in light of what had happened, and I simply

got up and left the police station. You understand that

all these people should simply

be arrested—the entire duty shift

of that Basmanny station at that

moment, the patrol officer whom

he approached—all these people are criminals

A person who had been robbed came to them

and they say: yes, robbed—but how were you robbed?

Were you drunk? Drunk—write a report, fine him

500 rubles. Nobody wants to mess with them

You come in there barely

alive, having just nearly died

or fallen into a coma, you have nothing left, you have no

money, and then the police tell you

well, if you want to file a complaint, then

we’ll write up a report now, and maybe you were also

causing trouble—maybe you want to spend time in the monkey cage (slang for a police holding cell)?

if you want to file a statement

The police don’t want to worsen

their statistics, the police don’t want to—it’s

such awful work, after all—they’d have to

go and watch all that CCTV footage

and look: there, you can see it, there he is spiking the drink here, and

Then you have to check another

security camera to see how he went there, and then

maybe you'll have to go around

nightclubs looking for someone who resembles the person in the

video. But no, our police are basically like, "What are we, mice?"

We want to be doing something else. We want

to detain protesters, or we just

want to stare at the ceiling, or look at

funny pictures on VKontakte (a Russian social network), or something else.

We're not going to deal with that kind of nonsense, even if

some people are demanding that we

go out and look for

those who poisoned or robbed them. No, we—we're not going to

Let me start here: for every 500 rubles (about US$5-6) we spend on

law enforcement overall, 35

percent of Russia's budget—35 percent

of Russia's budget—goes to this whole

structure which, if God forbid something happens to you

or to anyone else—because this can happen to anyone.

Personally, I have a big question for the people

whom this man—you can see him in the

footage—approached, and

said something like, "Have some Pepsi-Cola from my Fanta bottle,"

and they drank it. Well, okay, people

are prone to doing stupid things sometimes,

especially drunk people who are out having fun.

Drunk young people are partying, they're

hot, someone comes up—still, friends,

when you're drunk and somebody says, "Bro, want a drink?

Have some Fanta,"—that kind of thing

can happen to anyone. It can

happen to your foolish kid,

it—I mean, it can

happen to people, and you'd think that we

spend that same 35 percent of all

state money, all our taxes,

so they would catch people like that. But no, in fact

that's not how it works. Better not even bother calling—they won't

do anything until there's a scandal on social media.

The police won't move at all.

People posted about it, and in one day they caught him.

That's how they're built. And these same people

The last topic I wanted to cover

is one that really got to me too.

At the same time, they declare that

they supposedly want somehow

to fight drunkenness. And yes, it is right to fight

those who drink and then get behind

the wheel. A person who gets behind the wheel drunk

is a potential killer, and very

often a real killer. Our minister,

Kolokoltsev, says they want

to confiscate motor vehicles

from those who drive drunk. So, if you're

a killer, you got behind the wheel of your car

drunk

or even the next morning, if you got in and

you still smell of alcohol and you're over the legal limit,

fine then—we'll take your car away,

our police say.

And I want to say to our police: guys,

let's do it. If you

want to take cars from people caught

drunk,

then don't just strip them of their licenses

as

the law currently provides, don't just lock them up

for 10 days or fine them, but

actually take the car away. If you're so

tough and impressive, then let's do all this

on Police Day (the professional holiday of police officers in Russia),

that evening, that night, and the

next morning. Let's set up checkpoints everywhere and

catch everyone who's driving drunk.

That would be a fantastic haul, and we'd

take all their cars away, because on

Police Day

we very often see police officers exactly

like this—just like in this video at 39 seconds.

Or from their buddies—you just can't imagine.

He's saying it now—it's shocking.

[applause]

editing

Go to any police traffic checkpoint

at night or toward morning and watch: there they are,

stopping cars, and if they let some drunk person go,

then of course it's either someone who paid

1,100 rubles (about US$11-13) to be released, or someone who

pulled out an ID and showed it—cops,

FSB officers, prosecutors' people, everyone else.

They all drive drunk endlessly. I mean,

of course they're flesh of the people's flesh,

they're exactly the same kind of people, and they

very often, unfortunately, drive after drinking.

But they're the ones who get let off. So

if you, dear Mr. Kolokoltsev,

want to take away cars, first

take them from your own people, and only then move on to

everyone else. Those people there, at 32

seconds—take their cars away. But you didn't take

anything from them. Let's watch.

Where do you think you're going? Grow up—

important point here: please identify yourself, you

you've run into the traffic police.

jet

on

Well, you live in Russia, all of you have

acquaintances—

police officers, prosecutors' staff, FSB guys,

investigators—and you know perfectly well that they

to a much greater extent, much more often, and

with absolute impunity drive drunk

behind the wheel—absolutely, one hundred percent

without punishment. So if we want to take away

cars, let's take them from them. But to me,

it seems a much better way to fight

drunk drivers is still

the rule of law: so that every single person

knows that whether they have an ID

or no ID, money or no money, if

a person knows that

if they're caught, they will one hundred percent lose their license,

and one hundred percent their car will be taken to the

impound lot, and one hundred percent they'll be locked up for

10 days—then people will stop getting drunk and driving.

Only then, when there is

the rule of law. And if we're going to take away

cars, let's start with the police.

Guys, 39,000 people are wrapping up the program with us.

And many more people are watching us right now.

Even more will watch the recording later.

Get up and go — your signature is needed.

In the description of this video, there is my post with

the candidates' names. These are the candidates

that you and I want to see

make it onto the ballot, so please spend

20 minutes of your time in

Moscow,

spend a few minutes in Novosibirsk,

spend a few minutes in St. Petersburg to

support independent

candidates.

Because if we're fighting United Russia (the ruling political party), we need weapons,

and these candidates

are our weapons. Thank you all very much.

See you next Thursday.