A Response to General Zolotov

Good afternoon, Mr. Navalny. Un

fortunately, I was unable to respond immediately to your

accusatory monologue because

I was away on a business trip, but I am doing so

immediately upon my return. As they say, better

late than never.

Good afternoon, General Zolotov. Unfortunately,

I was unable to respond immediately to your

accusatory monologue because I spent 50 days

under arrest, but I am doing so immediately upon

my return. As they say, better late

than never.

This is truly an astonishing video

document. I think half of Russia

was bleeding from the eyes watching it.

It is as if you are watching a comedy film

where the main character is parodying an Arab

or Latin American dictator

with all those ridiculous uniforms covered in

gold and medals, but at the same time

you realize: this is a real Army General

living at the people's expense. And I want

to begin by thanking you for

this address. You did this job

better than any opposition figure: you proved that

the key positions in the leadership of the Russian

state are occupied by abnormal,

unhinged people—not just thieves, not

just people who cannot string two words together,

but madmen. Together with Putin, you are

turning Russia into a banana

republic, where an official is told, 'You

stole a billion in procurement contracts—here

is the proof,' and he replies,

'Let's go fight behind the garages.' You

have completely confirmed the description

given of you by your former longtime

boss, General Korzhakov, who headed

the Presidential Security Service in

He literally said:

and to put it officially, guys,

[garbled text] they shouted at me to work

[garbled text] in my view, regarding him, in this respect,

'an imbecile, and our president needs people like that'

because that is the kind he likes.

And now it has become clear to everyone: if this is

what you are, then it is obvious that you are something produced from an American

test tube—a clone and all the rest, of course.

Because if one of the country's top officials,

a close associate of the president,

a key security official and

law-enforcement figure, is like this, then we truly

have no prospects as long as people like you

remain in office. In our country there will be

no high salaries, no

technological breakthrough, no quality

healthcare, no

high-speed trains, no decent

pensions—there will be nothing. You mention

my presidential ambitions. Yes, I have them, and

now it is much easier to explain

where they come from: I do not want

people like you to rule my country,

because with your very appearance, your

stupidity, and your incompetence,

you disgrace Russia and humiliate our great

people. For example, you constantly talk about

an officer's honor—but how did you become a General of the Army

three years ago? What did you do to deserve it?

Did you fight? Guard the borders? No.

You did not serve in combat zones. First

you worked as a mechanic at the ZIL factory (a major Soviet/Russian automobile plant),

and then you guarded the only border you ever had to protect:

a two-meter security perimeter around Putin. You

simply carried out various errands for your

superiors, all sorts of shady deals like

the construction of the palace in Gelendzhik,

without forgetting yourself in the process. That is how

you got your shoulder boards. And your biography also includes

such great officer's feats as

running through the metro after the underage daughter

of the mayor, while serving as security for the family. He was

the family's bodyguard, or at least, as far as I

remember, for some time he

was responsible for the family's security. 'My God,'

and he complained so much about me,

about how much grief he suffered. Why?

Because I did absolutely

terrible things: I ran away from home, I

devised whole schemes to evade security.

As a child, I would get into one

metro car, quickly get out just before

the doors closed, and run into

another car.

I was always running off somewhere. And of course,

there was also your work for the St. Petersburg criminal

boss Roman Tsepov—you can even see yourself

at his funeral. It is a pity, by the way,

that he died, because he was the only

real witness to what kind of business you were

involved in during the 1990s at his company Baltic

Escort—and to how you truly became a wealthy man.

Factory work—well, by the way, [garbled text]

of communist labor, and then

went into business. But how, exactly, did it happen

that, by your own account, that is where you became

a wealthy man? It is a strange

situation: to spend a couple of years simply working

as a hired employee for a gangster, and then

declare:

'These billions I have now—I earned them there

working for him many years ago.' Of course,

Russia needs a president who will strip people like

you of your offices and put you on trial.

That was the first point. Second, I understand perfectly well

why you recorded this address of yours. Well,

most likely because no one has ever really

given you a proper kick in the backside,

one you could feel in your liver. I

will arrange a demonstration for the entire personnel

[garbled text]. You hope that with your

threats about putting on a show before the personnel

of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), you will force me to stay silent about

you and your activities. You can

record a video in which you appear

with even more medals, or in

an even more intimidating cap, or in a kimono,

or with a grenade launcher—I still will not

I will not back down from my opinion of you. I believe

that you are a thief. I believe that you are robbing

both the state and the people, and specifically your

colleagues in the National Guard. I believe that you are

involved in the murder of Boris Nemtsov

He was killed by your subordinates at a time

when they were on an official

assignment, carrying standard-issue weapons, and you

did everything possible to ensure that the real

organizers and those who ordered the murder escaped

responsibility. And I believe that your

family lives on dirty, corrupt

money. You are simply a walking illustration

of what

illegal enrichment looks like. Let's do

a simple exercise: I will ask

questions, and you will answer. How did your

23-year-old son Roman

buy 88 sotkas of land in

Barvikha

He spent at least five

million dollars on it, and a year earlier your

22-year-old son also bought himself a 160-square-meter

apartment in Moscow

Where did he get the money for all of this? Did he save it up?

Did he pinch pennies on lunches in the student

cafeteria?

Let's take a look at your son's Rublyovka estate

from the air: a full

88 sotkas—almost a hectare (0.88 hectares)

of land in the most expensive part of Rublyovka (an elite area west of Moscow)

The main house has an area of 670 square meters. It

is surrounded by other buildings: there is a guest

house, a garage, gazebos,

landscaping

the whole package, just as expected. And here is the plot

of his neighbor, much more impressive: 1.3

hectares, with a 900-square-meter house. Do you know

why it interests us? Because it is the house

of your son-in-law, your daughter's husband, Yuri Chechikhin

Since 2004, he has been buying up land there

So, Viktor Vasilyevich, do you have any

comments? Please explain to the people of

Russia where your son and your son-in-law, already in the

early and mid-2000s, got access to

tens of millions of dollars. Your daughter

Zhanna Viktorovna Zolotova is neither

a businesswoman nor a Stakhanovite labor hero (a Soviet term for an exceptionally productive worker)

unlike her father, yet she still somehow managed

to buy herself a 500-square-meter

apartment on Lomonosovsky Prospekt, and

somehow, as if by magic, she found

350 million rubles for it. And as for

you yourself, Comrade General Zolotov,

who exactly do you think you are? If anyone

were to talk about an inflated sense of

self-importance, yours has been puffed up

your sense of self-importance has swollen

to almost historic proportions

Look at the screen: this is Rublyovka again, just

a short distance from Putin's residence in

Novo-Ogaryovo

the village of Kolchuga. Here, among tall

trees and dense forest, we can already see

your personal dacha. Perhaps from the air

it does not look especially luxurious

but its value lies not in the glass

roof or the swimming pool. On a plot larger than

a hectare, there is a main house, a guest house,

and service buildings. And what you see

throughout all the years of the existence of the

USSR was practically the main dacha of the

country's leadership

Mikoyan, Dzerzhinsky, and Voroshilov lived there

People close to People's Commissar Mikoyan lived here; Mikoyan himself lived here

longer than anyone else. This estate

is surrounded by a brick wall

a brick fence

almost like the Kremlin wall, we used to joke. Well,

not exactly like that, of course, but something of the sort

And when we moved there, I was

five years old—it was 1927. Of course,

I remember little, but from recollections I know that

a great many people lived there, and they were on

special status: first, security; second,

provision of food and supplies, and

so on. But all of this was under the shadow of the

NKVD (the Soviet secret police)

At that time, my father

had already been removed and was no longer a member of the Politburo

He was moved to another dacha, a decent one

but of a different class. And remarkably,

he served in the Soviet government from

Lenin onward, but even he did not

have the audacity to take this dacha

for himself. It remained state property, and

after Dzerzhinsky it remained

state-owned, and after Voroshilov as well. But then

along came the greatest

statesman in Russia of the last

100 years

Army General Zolotov, and he grabbed this state

dacha into his personal ownership. How you

managed to do that, I do not understand, but the fact remains

a fact: this historic property is now

forever

in the private ownership

of Putin's bodyguard. Dzerzhinsky, Mikoyan, and the like

are just a trifle compared with

such a great Zolotov. And they say that

during the presidential election campaign

when Yeltsin was considering bringing the descendants

of the Romanovs back to Russia for the role of

an imperial palace on Rublyovka

they chose Mikoyan's dacha for the purpose

Rumor has it they even gave it a 'Euro-renovation' (a post-Soviet term for upscale modern remodeling), and

trained the servants in the proper way to interact with

royal personages

Look at the historical photographs

of this dacha's interiors

Judging by the recollections of relatives

of Stalin and Mikoyan, who spent

their entire childhood there, the dacha had Italian

stained-glass windows, marble staircases, fireplaces, and even

a bas-relief of the Madonna and Child. But now

now, beneath that bas-relief, Zolotov hangs his

gold-plated

oversized dress cap, looks around at it all, and

He’s looking around, by the way, and thinking: here it is.

This neighboring plot next to the house.

Not strangers behind the fence, but one’s own family taking it.

A 35-sotka plot (0.35 hectares / 3,500 square meters) is owned by Yuri.

Hee-hee, General Zolotov, I can go on for a long time.

Asking you questions about real estate.

Your family owns a 180-square-meter apartment in

Gelendzhik.

A house and a large plot of land in Valdai.

A 170-square-meter apartment in the same elite

residential complex on Yakimanka — all of this still

belongs personally to you.

We calculated that your family’s total real estate holdings

amount to 3.5 billion

rubles. That’s absolutely right — you say

that I’m interested in your declarations and

keep waving them around like a rag and making a big show of it.

But my declaration isn’t hidden, and if I’m waving anything around,

it’s this rag

with which I’m driving you out of the post of head of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), out of

public service altogether. I believe that you are

a lying hypocrite. In your video, you spouted

some nonsense about Poroshenko

just as, for example, you’ve now done about Navalny

and Ukraine.

And now one of Navalny’s people, someone by the surname

Kroshek, is supposedly setting up a safe base in

Marbella, and that someone is running around the

Baltic states — what kind of absurd story is that?

Go ahead, keep running around the Baltics, somewhere there

meeting with the secret Union of the Sword and Ploughshare (a satirical reference from *The Twelve Chairs*).

Why, your grandchildren live and study in England, and

it’s unclear on what money. Have you

forgotten about that? Did sudden amnesia set in?

How can you possibly have so much nerve

as to make accusations of this

kind? I insist once again: back to the point.

To the potatoes — because you’re somehow trying, in

your own words, to wriggle out of this

situation. If you start dodging this situation,

if you start wriggling away from it, we

have already proven exhaustively, with documents, that

Rosgvardiya

is buying food in bulk under billion-ruble contracts

at prices several times higher than

they are sold for at retail in Moscow

stores.

The clearest example we have is with

cabbage, because here it costs

— look — 14 rubles 89 kopecks, while he

buys it for 46. And after us, journalists

also went and proved that you have

the exact same corrupt 2-billion-ruble

contract for the supply of

uniform clothing.

Rosgvardiya buys striped undershirts (*telnyashkas*) for 385

rubles apiece,

while the Ministry of Defense buys the same ones for 137.

Good Lord, you’re even stealing on the chevrons —

the Rosgvardiya insignia that appears

on the sleeve of each of your 340,000

employees is being purchased for 87 rubles

per piece.

It sells retail for 54 rubles, and

wholesale for 30. So don’t try to talk us

into confusion, and don’t think that we’ll

be distracted by all your little tricks,

forgetting about the onions, the potatoes, and

the uniforms.

Billions have been stolen here, and there is simply no way

it could have happened without your involvement. It very much

looks like there is a direct link between

absurdly expensive cabbage and your daughter’s 500-square-meter

apartment. You see, this is not

your money — it is the country’s money. It is

the money of those parents who cannot pay for

a needed operation for their

child. And finally, about the challenge to a duel.

For that, I am most grateful to you. It is

a gift not only to me, but to the whole country,

because now you will not be able

to wriggle out of the fact that your entire

thieving group has, for 19 years, been terrified like fire

of what everyone has been demanding from you. And Putin,

and Medvedev, and United Russia — all of them flatly

refuse, categorically refuse,

to do it. Well, since you’ve decided to revive

this wonderful tradition, no one is stopping us

from reviving at least some of its

wonderful traditions too. You know that in

a duel, the challenged party chooses the weapons.

The one who was challenged chooses them. I accept

your challenge.

And as is proper, we choose the place and the weapon.

Our duel will take place in the form

of a live debate on Channel One

or Rossiya-1, or any other

federal TV channel. And if they for some reason

refuse, then on this YouTube channel,

where millions of people will watch it anyway.

As the code requires, I give

you one week to think it over. Send your

seconds, or whatever else you need

for satisfaction. Your time starts now.