Yekaterinburg vs. the Altushkin clan, the Superjet is a bad plane. Siberia is burning, and Putin doesn’t care

[music]

Hello, everyone. It's 8 p.m. in Moscow, which means

that we're live with the program Russia of the Future,

and I'm Alexei Navalny,

or the head of an organized criminal

group, because that's the only way I'm described now

by all the mass media

owned by Putin's cook.

Hello to all of you.

I haven't been on air for three weeks, and I've really

missed you all. And a special hello,

my applause, I don't know, my hugs,

friendly, brotherly, and kisses to the residents

of the city of Yekaterinburg, who are right now

in the square by the Drama Theater. I

don't know, maybe some of them are watching me

on a mobile phone, or maybe no one is watching

and they'll see the recording later. You

are great, you're really awesome. I'm proud that

I know many of those who are standing now in

that square. I'm proud that our штаб (campaign office)

is playing a major role there. I'm proud that

the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF),

that I and my colleagues today made some,

perhaps small, contribution to your struggle,

to your struggle, which is now our common struggle. I spoke

a little more about the remarkable family

of the oligarch Altushkin, who is such a Russian,

so very Russian, so very Orthodox—but

for some reason they like teaching us how to live from London.

In London he behaves very, very, very

decently. In Yekaterinburg, of course,

something extraordinary is happening.

In fact, for the fourth day now there have been

large unauthorized—

"unauthorized" is a stupid word,

because there really is no such thing as

an unauthorized protest—large demonstrations, and

every day they get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And today is already the fourth day, and

I was just looking on Twitter

at photos—judging by them, even more

people came, despite the fact that today

they already rolled out, dragged out even Putin

and put him forward, and he started talking about

how, well, they'll conduct a poll—that is,

they're trying to play out the whole situation.

What is happening in

Yekaterinburg is actually very important.

Recently we've seen several

similar things—in Ingushetia,

in Arkhangelsk Region, and now in

Yekaterinburg.

What is emerging is this:

there are two completely different Russias in terms of

information flows. In one Russia,

the television Russia, none of this exists at all.

There is no Yekaterinburg, no

protests, no thousands of people there

who broke down the fence and threw it into the pond, no

thugs being sent by

oligarchs, no landfill issue in Arkhangelsk

Region, no protests in Ingushetia, and even

the Superjet crash wasn't covered very much there,

despite the horrific tragedy.

Forty-one people died.

And then there is the real Russia, and the real

news agenda. For the last

four days, it's been all Yekaterinburg there.

And that's very good, very cool. The

people who gathered in the square now are

an example of people who influence their own fate.

Listen—they really are influencing

their own fate.

We don't know how all this will end, but

we hope, and we will all work to make sure

it ends in the residents' favor. Still,

just four or five days ago everyone

was saying: well, there are papers and papers,

everything's signed, look—here's a signature,

there's Vysokinsky's signature here,

then the Patriarch's, and here Pushnin signed,

the money has been allocated, the church will be built, and the square

will not remain. Everything had been decided, the money had been divided up,

all the little issues had been settled.

But people came out and changed their fate.

At least for some time, they changed

the fate of their city. Among other things, they

broke that fence. First they forced

the local media and the local

internet to talk about them, and then all of

Russia started talking about them.

Then people started lying about them endlessly,

saying that they were nobodies and that

they were all some kind of Western agents sent in from outside.

Nevertheless, they did not disperse.

They kept coming back, returning to that

square, and now Putin—now the old man

Putin—crawls out of his den. He ignores

absolutely every issue on the news agenda

and speaks only when he can no longer

avoid speaking, because everything else

has already been tried, already tested—Vladimir

Solovyov—bang, didn't work, fizzled. They dragged out

all these old—God, what humiliation it was

to watch Shakhrin from the band

Chaif, and then some fake hope that

Butusov would provide the right picture, saying that

a church is needed. All these old and, alas,

bought-off rockers—they dragged them out, these

old-timers, put them on display. It was so pitiful

to watch. And they didn't work, and the priests kept

lying endlessly, and none of it worked, and

so they said: all right, Putin, go out there.

And then Putin comes out and starts talking, and

the tone is already completely different. Guys, just

yesterday everyone gathered in the square were nobodies,

and just yesterday they were supposed to be harshly dispersed, but

now Putin comes out and says, well, you

know, on the one hand, on the other hand,

let's think about it, let's conduct a poll.

And that's what they did—they practically

changed the political situation, simply

because people came out and refused

to go home, to disperse, and who

showed just a little persistence. Only

that works in today's Russia.

Nothing else works. Not a damn thing.

works, apart from actually going out into

the streets. This government is afraid of that.

That is what it respects.

It is when people show persistence and

then it starts, at least in some way,

to react. It tries to intimidate,

to manipulate, deceive, disperse people, but only that

it is prepared to deal with. Nothing else

works at all. Absolutely nothing. Let’s

still, for those across the rest of

Russia who know what is

happening — or maybe do not know —

I would just like to remind you what

is happening in Yekaterinburg.

A monument is being built for a family of oligarchs. A very

rich man there, one of them is Altushkin,

and there are two of them.

Another oligarch involved in this, in this

conflict, as I understand it, plays a slightly

smaller role — Kozitsyn. Two major

really very rich, not ruble

billionaires, but dollar billionaires. They

are lobbying for the construction of this church.

It is a very large, very expensive

project with many different interested parties.

But mainly they just want

to build a monument to themselves. And since

they pay off everyone in Yekaterinburg,

all the officials — every corrupt [ __ ] in

the Urals

gets a little money from them. But they

are very rich: one billionaire has 4.5

billion dollars — Altushkin,

the other has 4.3. That is a lot of money. A small sum

like 5 or 10 million dollars a year, and

if you set that aside, all the crooks, all the

political prostitutes, you can

buy them. Plus, they financed

the election campaign of Mayor Kuivashev

— also an outright crook and scoundrel —

and the local United Russia party members.

And so on and so forth. And since

they gave them money, they said: guys,

now you can repay us somehow

with a site where we can build ourselves this

huge, gigantic

ugly monument. They were given the public square, but people

did not agree. They started

fencing off this square with a

barrier. People came and took that fence down.

The next day they put up

a solid permanent fence there. Let’s watch 20

seconds of how they just built

a special heavy-duty fence in a day so that

it would be harder for people to tear it down.

Vodka.

So, what is happening there now? Well,

as far as I can tell, there is a public square there.

This site is fenced off by one

barrier. All the residents of the city and the region so

desperately want this church built that

one fence surrounds it, then a second fence,

the police stand around it, and also some

special barriers were put up around it today.

Brand-new barriers. Let’s

watch 12 seconds.

So just imagine what kind of popular

love, what kind of popular desire there is to build this

church, if it requires a triple ring of fences and

also hiring these kinds of

monstrous [ __ ] guards, maybe

thugs, maybe athletes, or maybe

athletes who were paid money and

simply turned into bandits. You

have probably already seen many times this

video: whoever comes up to the fence will fall.

Let’s watch a few more

seconds, because this is the face of the authorities.

That is why there are more and more people there every day,

because it seems to me that any

person, any resident of Yekaterinburg,

of the Urals — after all, it is a special

region, where the issue of

regional patriotism is very

important, and the issue of self-government is very important too. After all,

there have never been falsifications there

as massive as somewhere in the Volga region or in the south

of Russia. Until recently, there was

quite an active political life there.

There was an independent mayor quite recently, and

that is why the actions of these

young people, it seems to me, have really

added fuel to the fire.

Whoever goes near the fence will get it, otherwise

why did you all come here, and so on. Yes, I

take it that for your future... But let’s

first simply get to the heart of the question

and try briefly to understand whether a church is actually needed there

or not. Many people wrote to me when I

was preparing for the program, saying something like: Alexei,

sure, young people need the square,

but there are also elderly people there, and they need a church.

There are believers too; you cannot deny

that believers exist. I cannot deny that. You

yourself are a believer. Believers who are against

this church are not against churches.

And that is exactly the point: there is no such

situation

where some are for the church and others are against the church. There are

those for the square and those against the square. Today I saw a very

interesting, well, not exactly an

infographic, just a calculation: someone went and

counted how many churches are located

in this area. So please look

at the table: in the immediate

vicinity of this square there are

25 churches, of which 6 are within

a radius of less than one kilometer. That is,

there are churches everywhere there, and in fact in

Yekaterinburg,

as in Moscow, as in any other

large city, or especially in a village,

if you go into any church, except

on Easter, when everyone has their eggs blessed,

or on Epiphany, when everyone has their

water blessed, and not on Apple Spas (a Russian Orthodox feast), when everyone

has their apples blessed — which for our

secular public has effectively turned

Bruises—a pagan ritual, everyone brings things there.

Little apples, because if you sprinkle them

with some water, they become magical. Well, it has

nothing to do with Christianity or Orthodoxy,

none whatsoever. So, if you don't count

those three days a year, all these churches stand

empty. There are no parishioners in Russia

in anything like those numbers, really.

There aren't that many genuinely Orthodox people. Ask someone on the street,

what their denomination is, and they'll say, well, I'm

Orthodox. Ask him whether he attends services—

don't even ask him any

complicated questions, basically just ask when he was

last in church, and he'll say, well,

three years ago at Easter we had a drink with

friends and joined a procession somewhere.

That's the kind of Orthodoxy we have, whether we like it or

not.

There are no people. Let's look at the picture,

actually. This here, this

is the place where they want to build—this square, yes, you

can see it, yes, madam, Adam.

This square is important to the city, but they

want to carve it up in order to build

a church there. Of course people are outraged, well

of course they're not against churches, good

Lord, just build the church. This is

Yekaterinburg, not Tokyo, not

Singapore, not Hong Kong—there's plenty of space there.

Not to mention that you could take an old

church and restore it—there are plenty of them,

old empty churches in Yekaterinburg.

There is one church where you can

meet a lot of people, and that is this one here,

the Church on the Blood, where the

royal family was executed, because tourists go there.

Tourists come to Yekaterinburg, and they

go to the Yeltsin Center

and they go to this Church on the Blood. It's

a tourist attraction, that's all.

There are no more parishioners. And so it seems to me

that the most important reason why a huge

number of people came out into this square and

aren't leaving—I hope they won't leave—

is because everything connected with

the construction of this church

is wrapped in this triple, tenfold

net of lies, endless lies.

Starting with the claim that there supposedly aren't enough

churches—everyone in Yekaterinburg knows

there are enough churches. They say there isn't

enough space—everyone knows there's plenty of space. Lies

from the local people in power.

Then there's this influential priest there, Archimandrite

Hermogenes, writing a Facebook post

and calling the people gathering in

the square, quote, "paid-for goats." I mean,

you know, it's like in a joke—you just

want to say, excuse me, are you sure

you're really a priest, Father? You somehow...

Put the picture back so maybe people have time

to read it. How can you, as an ordained

clergyman, how can you, in principle,

say to any people, call them

goats—especially about those in their own

city? Especially since you know you're lying,

you scoundrel in a cassock. You know perfectly well that in

your post you write something like this:

that the paid protesters got 2,000 rubles

for knocking down the fence—modern Western

protest technologies. Today, out of

curiosity, I read this man's Facebook,

this, if I may say so,

clergyman's page. There's poison in every word.

One post says that this is

Western protest technology, that it's a Maidan (the Ukrainian protest movement),

that it's outsiders who came in,

that it's America and Navalny's headquarters that paid for it.

Then his next post is about what a

wonderful man this Altushkin is,

marvelous Altushkin,

a Yekaterinburg patriot, only here

does he live, his family lives here, everyone lives here.

Thank you to Igor and Tatyana Altushkin and

the Altushkins, they're the very best. But we've

shown today, proved that your

Tatyana Altushkina is a British subject

and your Altushkins are buying

real estate there.

But they lie and lie, and everyone knows it.

Of course everyone knows it. The local chief

propagandist,

they have one there, the journalist Sheremet,

Innokenty Sheremet, acts as the

main, let's say, pro-Orthodox

lobbyist. He's very active everywhere,

a fairly well-known figure in Yekaterinburg,

someone who speaks a lot on this

topic. Let's listen to how he

on today's Echo of Moscow broadcast simply

lies—he just brazenly lies, saying

that the Altushkins

don't have palaces and villas in London, even though

they do. Let's watch 56 seconds.

Otherwise why are we on the side of the rich people who

have bought up the city and the region?

Is that from your TV channel, or did you read it from

some St. Petersburg source? That's my question. On the side of what

rich people? I'm telling you again—well, the ones who

are building it. Go talk to them.

These are some astonishing people, really.

You see, they buy all sorts of tasty things in London,

they're buying things up there—come on, I

assure you. Oh, come on. Do you have any idea how much

money they invest? You simply don't

understand. Just accept this, just—

come personally to the office,

I'll arrange a meeting for you with this one and that one.

And you know these people.

Why get so worked up? They buy

English football clubs—why are you

getting worked up? Abramovich does too.

What a level of shamelessness—they all know

everything. And their house in London isn't

some discovery we made today.

What we revealed exclusively today was that

Altushkina has had British citizenship

since as far back as 2011, and that his children live there.

His children and grandchildren are born in London.

But they lie, even though they do know about the house in

London — a luxurious, genuine palace.

17 million pounds, yet without batting an eye

an eye.

without batting an eye at all.

He lies very insistently and aggressively.

Solovyov lies. So let me tell you what

this means. And these “demons” in Yekaterinburg

also showed this video. Well, I can’t help but

show one more.

Give me 51 seconds just to appreciate

what a scoundrel he is, and how this scoundrel

simply

he, in front of the residents of Yekaterinburg, he just

is effectively deciding whether to go or not

to go. You watch this and think:

you really shouldn’t go there to the square if you

know that about you and about your neighbors

this brazen mug with a villa on Lake

Como

spends most of the year in the West,

and comes here to make money,

accuses you, a resident of Yekaterinburg, of there being something

wrong with you, that the West is behind you, while

actually — here are 51 seconds.

of the disgusting gasbag Solovyov.

Maybe you don’t remember very well what exactly

the city of, if one can put it that way, became famous for —

Yekaterinburg.

Have you never asked yourselves this question? They

asked themselves the question: where was

Nikolai Romanov (Tsar Nicholas II) and his family executed? And this

city, in which the demon still walks and roams to this day,

this city that destroyed its own

cathedral and did not restore it,

this city has once again shown itself to be possessed by demons.

The heirs of those demons are still holding

their sabbath now, and of course for all of us

it is absolutely clear that this is an attempted Maidan (an uprising/protest movement),

in the center of Russia. This is purely a Maidan-style

technology.

You are the city that killed the last emperor.

You carry this curse, whether you like it

or not. Just imagine

an ordinary resident of the city of Yekaterinburg. You

are there with your wife, with your child, with your girlfriend, or

a girl with her boyfriend, and so you were

walking in this park, and out of nowhere they decided to build something in

the park and put up a fence.

Everyone loves the square, and you come and say:

well, take down your fence, we don’t want

you to build the church here — build it somewhere else first.

Then some thug comes running up and shouts: whoever goes near the fence

will go down. And then a person, well,

quite reasonably outraged, having done nothing

terrible at all yet,

is told: you killed, you killed

the royal family. His jaw is already

dropping. Maidans and technologies,

and then the descendants of demons go after him for it on

Facebook and shout: paid-for bastards,

bastards, and so on and so forth, and, and

at the same time they all shout: Altushkin (the businessman Igor Altushkin) is

the most wonderful, honest billionaire,

he earned it all, a true patriot,

while you’re a paid-for goat. Maidan

technologies — you can treat this as

nothing but mockery of people. That’s why

they came out. I hope they will continue, even though

Putin is lying.

Putin, Putin. And today, of course, they

rolled him out, brought him out

so that he would say something. But he

said it for what purpose? To deceive,

to string people along. Let’s hold a poll, and then

there’ll be something else — look, over there, there are

interesting things, what is it, godless people

have gathered there? Let’s see. Putin, for one

minute, had supposedly only heard about it, and even then

only in passing, just yesterday. Well, he was even

surprised, he didn’t understand what was happening. This is

your purely

regional story. As a rule, people

ask for a church to be built here, someone

objects, but everyone has the right to

their own opinion. And if we are talking about

the residents of this neighborhood, then of course

that must be taken into account. But if we are talking

not about local residents but about habitual activists there and

some hangers-on who came there in order to

make noise and promote themselves — if we are talking

about local residents, then of course this

cannot be ignored.

Therefore, I think that a church should

unite people, not divide them. Therefore, from

both sides some steps are needed

in order to resolve this issue in

the interests of all the people who actually

live there. There is a simple way to conduct

a poll. So there he is, acting like he knew nothing,

like he just woke up, somewhere out there some kind of

regional issue in a neighborhood of yours,

not everyone is happy about the church. Well then, just

go and do something there.

Well of course, it seems that you have, what was it,

professional Moscow activists, yes, yes,

you have to insert that Maidan thing.

Professional Moscow activists came there.

What Moscow activists? And yet

everyone knows this is a lie. In Yekaterinburg this is all

anyone is talking about right now.

Taxi drivers, mothers with strollers,

I don’t know, military men, police officers — everyone

is discussing only this topic. Everyone knows perfectly well

there are no professional Moscow

activists. But there he sits

on federal television and says:

professional activists, hold a poll.

What is a poll? Please explain that to me.

There is no such thing as a poll. A referendum —

let’s have a referendum. But they are afraid of it, this whole

gang, this whole Altushkin crowd, all

these Altushkin people — they are afraid of a referendum. But

a poll was conducted, a poll

by the highly respected Socium Foundation, which everyone

knows in the city of Yekaterinburg, in the Urals. It

conducted a poll and found that 55 percent

city residents against the destruction of this square

there is already going to be a poll, so here’s what’s happening now

to hold it. What’s more, the Yekaterinburg mayor’s office

has, in a sense, already told Putin to get lost

because it said, well, we will hold the poll

but while the poll is taking place, we

will not suspend the construction work, well

that means—what does that mean? It means they

are saying, not even very thinly disguised, yes,

to hell with your poll

but we’ll rig a poll—what kind of poll is that?

we’ll show you signature sheets later

saying that, supposedly, 80 percent of city residents

said

we are for the church and against demons and against

godless people. That is exactly why it is very

interesting—look at how today

they greeted

Mayor Vysokinsky, who is now no longer elected by direct

vote, but is simply elected

by the local deputies—how he was

received. At first, for a few seconds,

there he was, he thought he would come and be surrounded

by a crowd of people who would ask him

questions, and he would explain how he was going to

carry out the poll and so on. Instead, they shouted at him

“Shame!” and “Resign!” That’s how he

arrived. And now let’s look at how he immediately

left

22

uh

uh

nobody wants to talk to them, nobody

believes them, because once again it’s lies, lies

I already said, these people lie at every turn, and

and the way they lie so amazingly about this Altushkin

—you start reading all this stuff there

about him and everyone else, my God, he’s presented as a real

philanthropist, a self-made man, which means

Altushkin built a business and created

his Russian Copper Company, well

let’s go to Wikipedia and see

what the Russian Copper Company consists of, and

there you’ll simply find a list

of enterprises. Take, for example,

Karabashmed, an enterprise that was built

and launched in 1910

Altushkin probably didn’t build it himself

Altushkin probably just later bought up

shares in the privatized enterprise

and made his money how? By

buying non-ferrous scrap metal, you know

some guys cut out a cable somewhere

brought in some copper, handed it over so they could

buy vodka afterward, and someone else stripped an entire factory

brought it in and turned it over—this is how Altushkin

made his money on that, and then

took advantage of the poverty of the time to buy up

several enterprises during the so-called “cursed ’90s” (the turbulent post-Soviet 1990s)

including that very Karabash

Copper plant, and in fact

he became so rich for one simple

reason. If there are people watching me right now

from Chelyabinsk Region, residents

and of course from Sverdlovsk Region, and so

on—Altushkin is so rich because

you have so many

cancer cases, because you

are coughing your lungs out

because Altushkin, essentially, and

his partner Kozitsyn are known

for owning some of the most monstrous

filthy enterprises. Take the city of Karabash itself

where Karabashmed is located—it is the most

polluted city on planet Earth, google it

and you’ll see lots of these striking

astonishing photos, like the ones on screen right now

where the water glows in every color of the rainbow

and the ground too. These are the dirtiest enterprises. If

Altushkin and Kozitsyn were spending on themselves and

on what they are doing there in Voronezh Region

—and the same in Chelyabinsk Region

in Yekaterinburg, in Yekaterinburg

and so on and so forth, in Sverdlovsk

Region

if they spent money the way they are supposed to

on treatment facilities and ran

their operations properly from a technological standpoint

then they would have not

4.5 billion, but rather

1 billion or 500 million. But

they are so rich because these harmful

monstrously harmful, terrible enterprises

are run in a way that poisons you, and thanks to that

the production costs at these enterprises are low

the products are cheap. And the Tominsky GOK (Tominsky mining and processing plant), they

right now in Tominsky, in Tominsky, in Tominsky

I think, in Chelyabinsk Region

I took part twice in rallies in Chelyabinsk

on this issue—they are building it and building it

in such a way as to simply poison

the sources of drinking water, and they will

poison them. But they do it this way because

it’s cheap, because Altushkin wants

to get rich much faster than anyone should

who works in

harmful non-ferrous metallurgy, and we are

being told—good Lord—what a saintly man he is,

what a benefactor, he has a family, let’s all

listen. This Tatyana Altushkina, who is

Altushkin’s wife, she

acts as the main lobbyist for all

of this, and moreover she is not just

a lobbyist

as I said in today’s video, she

treats all of us like some kind of

simple-minded, stupid people

who understand absolutely nothing

who need to be taught everything, need to be, well

for example, instructed that right now, I don’t know, instead of

looking at all this on a mobile phone

or a computer—no, you shouldn’t be using a computer

you are supposed right now

to go play lapta (a traditional Russian bat-and-ball game), or I don’t know, play

blind man’s bluff, or sit around with girls and an accordion, or

write with a goose quill or something

she seriously wrote a letter to the

Ministry of Education saying that they need to introduce lessons

that children should write with goose quills

let me—I couldn't include it in today's video

in full, but give me 51 seconds

Tatyana, all—Pushkin's subject of Britain

which will tell us, for now, by what and according to what

principles Russian

education should be built

Since 2016, the trendiest and most talked-about

political trend has been the digitalization

of all spheres of our lives, including

education. The complete dismantling of the traditional

school system is scheduled to be completed by November 2025

All school education will be

moved online—that is, children

who were born in 2018 will never know

what a traditional school is. One

female teacher

schoolbag with textbooks and a notebook

all of this will be replaced for them by smartphones and tablets

new abbreviations—cut, muscles, sauce, and

float—these are already the emerging outlines

of totalitarian transhumanism

[music]

So, a person moved to England and obtained

citizenship there, and children and

grandchildren are born there, not in that education system

not in the system where there are tablets 10

digitalization

under the action of dar these ravans and tests, where

education develops in this kind of

normal way, and then coming from there

to here

enjoying those benefits, they say, well no

guys, what tablets for you? You should

take a goose quill. After all, we

saw in books and films once upon a time

that people here wrote with goose quills. Let's

amuse eg and us here, like

our slaves, their Louis, amuse them and us with the fact

that you will write

with a quill on special yellowish paper

made to look antique

This is in Yekaterinburg, in a city that

is one of the largest educational

centers

in a city where the competitive programming team

constantly wins, where

one of the centers of Russian

programming in general—but this city

of educated people has always been proud of that

it was proud of that, of mechanical engineering

engineers—this is Yekaterinburg, and then they come

and say, well guys, some kind of

digitalization—you'll ruin your eyes if

you keep looking at screens

goose quill, church, abstinence

prayers, fasting, under the protection of our

Orthodox militants—you here

behave yourselves

don't stain your little linen shirts

and meanwhile we'll fly to London, here we have the

Lamborghini and the whole rest of that lifestyle

these Orthodox people, I repeat, where all of them

are still so rich and have the right to

any lifestyle—but then don't

teach us to love God, you understand?

There aren't only Orthodox people here. 25 seconds

of the wonderful lifestyle of the son all

of Pushkin

I mean, well, you just can't act like this

toward everyone, you can't be this rude

to people, brazenly wallowing in

this luxury while at the same time calling on

all of us residents, who are in fact permeated

They want to switch the whole country over to

goose quills, to writing with goose

quills—you can't, you can't

try to do this at the same time. If you already

present yourselves as such

Orthodox merchants, sort of Old Believers (members of a traditionalist Orthodox movement), then

like long ago—well then conduct yourselves in the same

way. Those very Old Believers

lived in wooden huts, lining them

with stones, I mean, that's how they were

they built those churches, but they prayed in

those churches all day long. They didn't live in

London, they lived at home there, probably all

of them—but he spends a lot of time in

Yekaterinburg, in Sverdlovsk Region, that's

a fact. But his family mostly lives there, and

he probably lives there too, I don't know. By the way,

if he has UK citizenship

I wouldn't rule that out at all

judging by this citizen's habits. But I

want to say that this is total hypocrisy

Addressing the residents of Yekaterinburg, I want

to say: keep it up. And to everyone else I

want to say: follow their example

Now comes the hardest period. The authorities

are frightened, and they will try to

simply deceive all of you. The first thing that will happen

just watch: today is the fourth day, and

then you'll gather on the fifth day, the sixth day, and then

posts like this will start appearing

well, we've gathered for the fifth day

in a row, nothing worked, so I'm

not going anymore. So either we will

write all sorts of things

planted guys will say: come on, either we burn everything

with Molotov cocktails, or we

won't go at all anymore. I'm interested in this, and

then a whole movement like that will begin

We've achieved nothing, five times already

just imagine, five times they went, every time

they stood there for three hours and achieved nothing

they retreated—well of course they didn't

retreat. Just think about it yourselves

that information is already available now

there was a big report written about it there

and besides the church in

honor of the Holy Great Martyr Catherine

there—Saint Catherine—there will also be

construction of a grand

multifunctional center and parking lots

and a residential building

This is tens of millions, many millions in

dollars—a project involving big money

big bribes—who would just walk away from that?

will back down, let alone on a matter

of principle.

That is, Latyshkin, Kozitsyn, and

Kuivashev all basically believe that

some city residents who came out into the streets

have no right to tell them what to do. I mean,

they sit there and say—well, almost literally—

the conversation goes like this: if we show

weakness now, then later they’ll force

us to do what the people want.

So we must not show weakness. We

have to act tough now, like,

that means punishing the organizers, and already

they’ve arrested, what, about twenty people

including

the coordinator of our headquarters, who was jailed for 10 days,

and they’ll keep going after various

organizers.

It was very funny to watch how

they invited some people to a meeting,

and then afterward the police came to all those people, to

every single one of them. On the other hand, they’ll try to wear people down and say,

"Maybe it’s better

not to keep going out there—we haven’t achieved anything, let’s

stop, we’re already tired of going out." On the

third hand, they’ll conduct polls and

set up working groups, but that’s not really

the point either—they just want to drag everything out, because

what they really want is to remove the main thing: the people

who are present in the streets, the large

number of people who can even tear down

a fence.

So it’s very important simply to be

patient and not disperse until you

get what you want. Victory, it seems to me,

is quite close. And Putin certainly doesn’t need

an uprising in Yekaterinburg. In the end,

he’ll say: money is money, but

please make sure that

there is peace and quiet, because

social stability matters to me.

After all, this is ultimately a blow to

Putin’s approval rating. He doesn’t want that. And that is exactly what this government needs to be told:

yes, we are

dealing you a political blow—remove

all of this.

Move it elsewhere, or things will go badly for you. I’m sorry,

I’ve spent a full 38 minutes on this

topic and couldn’t stop, but it really

is extremely important, and it’s very

important to talk about it now, because

while sending our strongest support to the residents of

Yekaterinburg, we should of course also send

our strongest curse at the same time

to all journalists on the federal TV channels,

to all media outlets, really to everyone, because if you

look in any federal media outlet—I even have

a special chart; one of our journalists put it together—

try right now

to find any news about this—zero.

There is absolutely nothing. This topic is being totally

censored. So, well, at least I

will talk about it on my program, and maybe

a couple of tens of thousands of people

will learn what is happening and will

support the residents of Yekaterinburg and

do the same. And now, a small

town—a very small town, really just

a station in Arkhangelsk Region—

which I very much want to talk about, because the

situation there is very similar to Yekaterinburg,

and in fact in some ways it is

much harsher. It’s just that no one

knows about it, because, well, that’s how things work here:

it’s far away. Yekaterinburg is far away too,

but it’s a big city, and there are

lots of people there with mobile phones; they’re

posting everything on Twitter. Arkhangelsk Region,

though,

is sparsely populated in that sense, very

far away—and that is exactly why it was chosen

as the site of a monstrous, disgusting scheme involving

the construction of a landfill there. Very few

people know what is happening there, but the confrontation

there is already getting close to

armed conflict. Private security guards and various

security personnel—in Yekaterinburg they looked like

one thing, but let’s look at what the private security guards

and guards look like in Shiyes—we should have

a photo or a special

video showing it. Yes, well, you can see

that this is really how they walk around there—

literally with assault rifles, or at least

with carbines. So these are armed

people. We can see that there are regular reports coming in from there saying that residents

are

blocking fuel deliveries, gasoline tankers,

there are even reports of them nearly destroying bridges—

they’ve moved on to guerrilla tactics. So

that’s what’s happening there. By the way, on the 19th

there will be a rally in Arkhangelsk on this

issue—please come to it

without fail. So what happened there? Sobyanin needed

somewhere to take the garbage.

Moscow generates an enormous amount

of waste. It used to be taken to Moscow Region,

but Moscow Region started to rise up in protest.

Putin said: no, I do not need

any protests in

densely populated parts of the country. And so

Sobyanin’s personal idea, his personal project,

was: let’s take it all

to Arkhangelsk Region.

To Arkhangelsk Region, because, basically,

there are supposedly some ridiculous yokels there who talk about

milk and cows—why bother talking to all

those slow-witted northerners? Let’s send it there,

those suckers won’t even notice,

and we won’t even tell them. And they announced that

at Shiyes station they would be building

some small facility that had absolutely nothing

to do with garbage. Well,

word got out, and the locals immediately

understood that there would be a huge garbage

dump there. But they were also brazenly lied to that

this would not happen. But they came and

saw with their own eyes that 50 hectares

They cut down forests on a massive scale,

earthworks are underway—in other words, they’re building

a gigantic landfill

that, with its runoff, will

poison everything around it. But the calculation

of those crafty Muscovites was that

they could do it at night—Arkhangelsk Oblast is huge, after all,

who cares about it, no one would pay

attention.

But here, this

actually remarkable—and admirable—

trait of our people who live in

the North came into play.

They were genuinely offended and said: we do not

want to serve as Moscow’s dump. We

already live a hard life here, we

already live in a harsh climate,

and we are not going to be Moscow’s garbage dump.

And amazingly, on top of everything else,

besides the rallies that took place in

Arkhangelsk and in that small town there,

let’s take a look—on March 2,

there were rallies, like the one that was held in

Arkhangelsk and in villages that are dying out,

in these small districts that are also

slowly fading away. If they had given us money for

developing agriculture, for developing

our own industry, then rallies like these

wouldn’t even be happening. But today we

didn’t come here just to stand around and

listen to what people are saying—we want it known that we

want to decide the fate of our district ourselves.

We ourselves

want to decide what our district should be like,

and as for garbage—garbage, I’ve already said—

we can process it ourselves.

In the rural settlements there are facilities, and we

have proposed that our local authorities take responsibility for

waste collection, but for that

you need a decision, you need procurement of some kind.

I mixed it up, of course—sorry, this rally was

not in Arkhangelsk but in Shiyes,

a local rally. So, as you can see, on

March 2 it was still very cold there,

a real winter, and almost all the local

residents came out.

Let’s take a look at the rally in

Arkhangelsk.

[applause]

[applause]

There.

[applause]

Ooo.

These are huge rallies by the standards of

Arkhangelsk Oblast, and they are also being held there

without official authorization, and marches

are taking place too. And you can see that the police are fairly

lenient toward the local residents.

That’s precisely why they’re bringing in the National Guard (Rosgvardiya)

from neighboring regions. And let’s look at

what an ordinary elderly woman there says,

on a commuter train, somewhere out there

in the region. And Shiyes, in fact, is

very far away—it’s probably

about as far from Arkhangelsk as it is from

Moscow. It’s a huge region. And yet

they thought they could turn all this

place into a dump and no one would pay, no one

would even squeak—the beaten-down local

residents. Let’s watch the conversation on the

commuter train with National Guard officers

who came from other regions.

May you be cursed—and again...

This is very important, and it is in fact

a direct consequence of these 20 Putin years:

any conflicts end up

taking on this bitter,

hardened character. In Shiyes, this is already

really getting close to a kind of armed

confrontation, and I hope it won’t

come to that, and Sobyanin will stop doing

this nonsense. But it really is close to that, because

guys, how else? What else could these

people do? Just think about it:

they were told, well, we’ve fenced this place off here, we’re

doing earthworks.

No permit documentation

is required. They cut down a huge amount of forest, dug

gigantic trenches, and everyone can see that a major

construction project is underway. They lie straight to people’s faces. And who, in

court, is going to help you? The local

administration won’t help you, there are no newspapers there,

you can’t call television,

so what else is there to do? So people

block roads, someone set a bridge on fire, and

they went out into the streets. Other than

going out into the street,

it’s impossible to do anything else to make

people pay attention to you, to make yourself

noticed in Arkhangelsk Oblast.

You understand?

What struck me separately, and why I so very much want

to help these people, is that, well,

first of all, their land really is being

turned into a dump. That’s why people here

live to 55 or 65, because

the environmental situation is monstrous. It seems like the country is

big, so people think: let’s put a landfill here,

another landfill there, there’ll still be enough clean water

for everyone. Oh no. In America, in practically any

place, you can drink water from the tap. In

Germany, you can drink water from the tap. In

Russia, there are very few places where you can drink

water from the tap, because it will be

bad. We have ruined our country’s environment,

and people do not want that.

There’s already amazing folklore around this. Today I

was watching on YouTube—there are videos there with tens of

thousands of views.

People are actually composing songs,

essentially war songs, about how they will

defend their Arkhangelsk land. Let’s—well,

I can’t play the whole thing, though it’s a great

song—let’s just take a couple of seconds so you can

kind of feel the mood. Fifty-two

seconds, basically. It’s like a

liberation song by the residents

of the Arkhangelsk region over the great taiga.

on innocent land

put a black mark

on the date

the Kremlin

[music]

Arbat, the silence

the beasts scattered

from the south, the first train came to us, sent by no one

[applause]

called people to our cause

in this

wasteland

in this corner, no one has

loved us in the mornings

so, what can I say, who

here are Muscovites

against Muscovites, well, that is

maybe someone will laugh at this

little song, but it looks like

it looks like a song of a partisan

national liberation movement against

the occupiers, but admit it, that is exactly what it looks like

I'll show you another man now

playing the bayan (Russian button accordion), look at the

ones he has

posters behind him. Let's watch 39 more seconds

of this piece

of this northern Pomor (White Sea coastal Russian) koch

if you like, Astrakhan-style

Astrakhan and Arkhangelsk folklore

against turning this land into a dump

[music]

whoever comes at us wanting to turn this into a landfill

we want emptiness

curb your appetite, point to the gate, say

to me

they said: this is our swamp

[music]

sit there

people have been driven to the edge; they have nothing, neither

decent wages, nor healthcare, nor social

guarantees. All they have left is the swamp, and now they

say: our swamp. And you, you have taken from us

everything

and now you want to dump your garbage on us as well. Very

briefly, once again, so everyone understands what

the garbage business is about. Garbage

is produced by all of us, and once a day

you either take it out or throw a bag

of trash down the chute, and you pay a fairly

high fee, and it keeps going up, for

supposedly taking that garbage somewhere. Now, in

Europe, they take that money from you

and then sort the garbage: sheepskins here,

cores here, scraps here, metal here,

plastic here, and the garbage becomes

much less in volume; it is then recycled

these landfills are reclaimed

and parks are planted in their place

there is much less garbage because it has been

processed. But you paid, let's say,

10 rubles for having

your garbage taken away, and the contractor

earned one ruble; he reclaimed the site and

earned one ruble. But here is how it works here

Sobyanin, Chaika's children—this is their

joint business. They got 10 rubles and they

want to spend one ruble to haul this

garbage to Shiyes station and dump it there

onto the ground, and pocket 9 rubles. That's the whole

difference. But it will be a dump, and from it there will

really flow highly toxic

leachate and all sorts of garbage runoff, and landfill

gas and so on—in other words, it is

genuinely very toxic, poisonous filth

but it is very profitable, so of course

people say no, we don't want it, and I very much

want to support them and call on everyone

to support them. The media barely talk about

this at all, unfortunately, they hardly mention it

the federal media, the internet says little. On the 19th

there will be another rally there—come

and take part. The Superjet—it's a terrible tragedy

what happened with the Superjet. I wanted to say

a couple of words because there are a lot of

self-styled aircraft experts around. I do not claim

to be an expert on air

travel, but nevertheless I spent a year

on the board of directors of Aeroflot

so I understand the Superjet situation, and

it seems to me that right now there is

a major deception going on, both deliberate and not

well, first of all, naturally, our entire

state machine began to lie and

say that everyone else is to blame

the crew is to blame, the crew is to blame for

a lot; there were pilot errors, they

are to blame, but they say that they are

the only ones to blame. Remember, they

first blamed the passengers

who were supposedly grabbing their belongings; they claimed that

people in business class were snatching up their bags

then it turned out all of that was a lie. Everyone

around them was blamed, but the Superjet was

supposedly fine. There are people—good people—who

just really love airplanes, and so

they always have this mantra:

the machine is good, the airplane is good, it's all

just a technical error. So on the

one hand there are these airplane enthusiasts,

and on the other hand our

state machine, for which it is important

to prove that under Putin they can make

good airplanes, because if

it turns out—if everyone realizes that in 20

years you were not even able

to build a medium-haul civilian

airplane—then what the hell kind of

hypersonic missiles or supersonic

missiles and super-mega developments are we talking about? There is

nothing, if your airplane usually does not fly

they cannot admit that, they cannot

admit the failure—not Rogozin, not

Chemezov, not all the other people who

received billions, many billions, for

the design and construction

of the Superjet—they do not want

and will never admit that they

They failed, so now they’re saying that

the Superjet is wonderful, and all the propaganda

By the way, pay attention to how it was

set up for them—this is their pattern now, you see.

Mark my words: with any

tragedy—a building explodes, a plane crashes—they

do the same standard things now. First,

they understate the number of victims. A building

exploded—one person died.

Then boom—five people died. And in fact,

far more people died. With the Super

jet, what happened? They also said no one was

hurt.

The plane burned, people burned to death there. They

knew from the very beginning that half of them had

burned alive.

They said no one was hurt, then

they said one person, I think, had died there.

Then they said seven people had died.

Well, of course, once it became clear

that seven people—once it was established that

that was the death toll, by naming the figure of seven

people dead.

They knew that 41 people had already died, but

when you feed a tragedy

to the public little by little, in stages,

public opinion doesn’t go into the same kind of

shock as when a plane crashes and 41

people die.

Everyone would simply be genuinely shocked.

But when they say it made an emergency landing, or that

the injured were taken to the hospital, it

sounds different, you have to admit. Then they always

make this absolutely cynical,

vile, disgusting move: in order not

to discuss the tragedy itself, they

start inventing some kind of heroic

story about rescuers or participants. We

already know now—the investigation says

that everyone who was in the tail section, on impact,

suffered injuries so severe that they could not

even unbuckle, and almost immediately

suffocated in that smoke, including

those unfortunate people and that unfortunate

flight attendant who was there. But all these

crooks—Margarita Simonyan among them—

immediately came up with a story about how

the flight attendant was leading people out.

You probably read about it

on Twitter—there was a lot of discussion there.

Flight attendants wrote that all of this was a lie,

that there is no evidence. So it is entirely

possible that this person did, in fact,

behave heroically in some way,

but no one knows that for sure. Everyone

who was there died, and the impact was such

that he likely could not do anything at all anymore.

But they shift the discussion: let’s not

discuss the tragedy, let’s discuss

the heroic behavior of some individual.

Remember, after the apartment building explosion, what did they

talk about?

Not the terrorist attack, but the fact that rescuers saved

a one-year-old baby, and about that

there were reports: great, bang, the rescuers

saved this child.

A lucky break for him, but overall it was

a tragic situation. But let’s

talk about the fact that the building was blown up—about that

nothing has still been said. But about

the rescuers, they put out a million reports.

That’s how propaganda now

messes with our heads.

I wanted to say something about the Superjet, yes. When I

was on Aeroflot’s board of

directors, this was one of the main topics

of discussion.

The plane was designed in such a way that it

could not be operated normally. It

was constantly breaking down. It would fly somewhere,

some sensor would fail,

some part would break, and they would no longer clear it to fly.

There are aviation safety procedures there,

especially abroad. You have to

send another plane there in order to

replace that part, and then ferry this

plane back. You need to send a replacement

aircraft, or charter another one, in order to

carry those passengers.

In other words, the Superjet constantly caused

a monstrous headache,

and monstrous losses, because it

was constantly breaking down. On Twitter you can

find this very interesting thread—I recommend it to everyone—

a thread by a flight attendant

who worked on Superjets,

who talks about the huge

number of technical shortcomings there, about

how one of its extendable stairs

doesn’t work, and it keeps flying

like that all the time. But the main thing,

the main lie that everyone is ignoring,

is this: the official version now, and

aviation enthusiasts, and of course

Aeroflot, and of course the manufacturer of the

Superjet, say that this was pilot

error—that the plane crashed because the

pilots

made a bad landing. Yes, the pilots landed badly,

but why did they land in

Moscow? The plane was flying from Moscow to

Murmansk.

But it landed—badly landed—in

Moscow. Why? We are told it was struck by

lightning, as if that were some extraordinary incident.

Lightning struck it—so what? Lightning struck it, and then

communications failed, and

the automatic systems and navigation failed, and, and

the guidance systems too. So apparently that alone—well,

guys, don’t let them fool you.

A plane flies in the sky;

quite often it encounters things like

storm fronts and

there are special procedures

for dealing with that, there are instructions on the subject,

specific ones. But when lightning strikes

an aircraft, that is not a rare occurrence. If every time

a plane was struck, planes fell out of the sky, or they

the automated systems would shut down from the strike

we would be getting news every day right up to the hilt about

planes falling out of the sky and

terrible tragedies, and then people wouldn't be talking about it as if

it were normal

if lightning really posed such a threat

Right now you're watching this

video on YouTube

Please type in "planes struck by

lightning" — the first video there will be 10 recorded

instances of planes being hit by lightning on camera

Take a look — let me show you 50 seconds of it,

20 seconds, showing how lightning constantly

strikes airplanes

There's nothing good about it, but

there's nothing terrifying either — a modern airplane is built

in such a way that it is assumed

it may be struck by lightning and will

keep flying without problems. But if its

automated systems shut down

if its navigation and communications go out

and you have to return to the airport

that means the plane is bad. The Superjet is

an aircraft that could be good,

but it hasn't been properly finished; it was designed with

errors, and most importantly, it is manufactured

very poorly, and there are too few spare parts for it

so it is constantly grounded. In other words, it was

made badly because Putin destroyed

Russia's aviation industry, and this whole

aviation industry

is headed by — and by the way, you remember who

is in charge of it now

the United Aircraft Corporation

which includes Sukhoi and the Superjet program

Anatoly Eduardovich Serdyukov is there

as chairman of the board, the main man

Now Serdyukov is apparently our top aviator, and this whole

system — naturally, Rogozin

and all the rest of them

they can't produce anything. They

lie nonstop and steal nonstop, and

do nothing else. So the Superjet — we

can finish it properly

we need to spend tens of billions more

we need to, well, somehow finally

do the work properly instead of just handing things out and not

letting the money be stolen, and the Superjet

will become a normal aircraft. But for that

we need to admit the mistakes, we need to stop

operating it and say: guys, we're going to spend

another three, four, five years

eliminating all the design and

other shortcomings. That needs

to be said. But Putin can't do that

he's afraid to do it, and he lies to us that

the Superjet

is some kind of excellent aircraft and that

it's perfectly fine to fly on it. More precisely, don't try

to say now that if you see a Superjet

you should run away from it — no, you don't need to

run away from it. But it is an aircraft in which

breakdowns happen often enough that, simply

simply so that all these people who

lie to us nonstop

can somehow finally

be brought to their senses, we all need to

take part in Smart Voting

constantly

and first of all this September

in every program, every single broadcast,

I remind you, and I'm reminding you now: Smart

Voting will be not only in Moscow, not

only in St. Petersburg, but in 20

cities. It will be, in particular, in

Novosibirsk, where we have our candidate

Sergei Boyko. He is running in the mayoral election

in Novosibirsk. It's a very important election because

the situation there is unique

United Russia has made a deal with the Communists, and

there is a joint candidate there

from United Russia and the Communists, and running against them is

Sergei Boyko. His campaign office will be opening soon

— on May 21 the campaign headquarters opens

come and help, it's a very

noble cause

Another thing I want to say, and the second

of my final topics

but one that just — I don't know — makes everything

boil inside me. First, it is actually connected to

what I was saying in this

program: our federal television

doesn't say anything about anything anymore, and

today came the news that they

will be allocated another 7 billion rubles (about US$75 million)

Six federal broadcasting organizations among

the federal media will receive 7 billion

rubles, of which two and a half billion will go to

Channel One for content production

So these propagandists don't have enough

money to lie, and I mean —

about Yekaterinburg, about their own people there

though I have to admit that Ivan Urgant

turned out to be the only decent person there

he said it in the form of a joke, but at least

he mentioned on Channel One

the situation in Yekaterinburg. In general

there is total silence, and they tell us nothing

about Ingushetia

or Yekaterinburg, and if they say nothing about anything

we are still supposed to pay them

another 7 billion so they can lie and

keep things quiet. I want to tell you:

there is an ongoing discussion, especially closer

to elections, about small deeds

charity, all these wonderful

people who do small good deeds — as if this were

some kind of alternative to politics. Well

we are handing 7 billion rubles (about US$75 million) to Vladimir

Solovyov, Konstantin Ernst, and Dmitry

Kiselyov so they can steal it and keep lying

further. That is more than all

charitable organizations put

together. These are wonderful people, very good

remarkable people, collecting money

for sick children, adults, everyone — but they

collect less altogether than this amount

significantly less. So therefore

You need to take part in Smart Voting.

Because there are big, important things that need to be done.

To treat all these children, we

don’t need to invent anything special. We

just need to take this money away from

Solovyov, RT, and so on—all the other

companies too—and the problems faced by sick children

would be solved.

The issue of these operations that need

to be performed abroad would be resolved instantly.

That’s how it is: the money exists, and

And the last topic: they were allocated another

seven billion. But have you heard even

anything about the fact that all of

Siberia is burning right now, and the Irkutsk region in particular?

Homes are burning there, and whole

settlements are under enormous threat. Not

a word is being said about it. If anything

does appear anywhere, it’s buried as some last-minute news item:

the Ministry of Emergency Situations is supposedly dealing with something.

I asked our Irkutsk штаб (local campaign office), I said:

Guys, if there’s anything somewhere near Irkutsk,

can you film it with a drone?

Simply because, well, in order

to show the scale of it. I’m looking at local

news, and people there are just in shock.

And they’re in even more shock

because no one is covering it.

Everyone has simply forgotten about it. So what if it’s burning?

Big deal. Our news covers fires more

actively in California—when something is burning in

California and celebrities’ homes are

under threat, they’re ready to talk about it

as a top news story. But about the fires in Siberia, they

say nothing. And when I asked our

Irkutsk штаб (local campaign office), I thought they’d tell me:

Well, you know, there are fires, but we won’t be able to get there

because it’s 300 kilometers away, and the region is

huge.

What you’re about to see was filmed from

a drone.

It was shot about 80 kilometers by road from the city of

Irkutsk, or roughly 50 kilometers as the crow flies

from the city of Irkutsk. This is video

from our Irkutsk штаб (local campaign office): Siberia is burning.

Right now we are located not far from

the settlements of Saygut and Bukhun

in the Irkutsk region.

Two days ago, people managed to save these

villages

from the advancing fire. However, even today the air

still carries a distinct smell of smoke, and

behind me you can see smoke

from a forest fire. Clearer and more detailed

footage can be seen in the drone recordings.

We did not see any Emergency Ministry personnel,

unfortunately, nor any aerial or

ground equipment.

[music]

They even put sad music over this

video, but honestly, guys, the situation

is very grim there. Millions of square

meters are burning—some thousands of hectares,

losses everywhere.

And the fire is approaching populated areas.

No one is putting it out; there’s no Emergency Ministry anywhere nearby.

And no one is paying attention to it. That’s what’s happening.

People are writing to me—they’re not even

just using all caps, they’re sending furious emails saying:

For God’s sake, will someone finally

talk about the fires in the Irkutsk

region?

It feels as though we don’t even live

in the same country, as if no one

cares about us at all. And yet here we are,

a large region where we pay a lot of

taxes; the whole energy sector is here in the Irkutsk

region. It’s a donor region, it used to be one until recently,

and still nobody gives a damn.

If something had burned down on Rublyovka (an elite Moscow suburb),

they’d be reporting on it nonstop. But there,

no one pays attention. Well, it’s burning, so

it’s burning—maybe the rain will put it out on its own.

It’s just burning by itself. So what if

a couple of villages burn down? To hell with them, because

if it doesn’t exist on television,

then it doesn’t exist at all. And we

pay billions to those same federal

journalists who simply

close their eyes and see nothing in

the Irkutsk region. We pay the Emergency Ministry

billions and keep funding

this black hole endlessly, despite the fact

that they don’t do a damn thing. They

do nothing in the Irkutsk region.

And these are just some isolated episodes, these

sorts of things that were filmed.

I could have shown you footage there from

literally dozens of locations. I

just asked the штаб (local campaign office) to be careful

when doing this, so as not to put their

lives in danger. So

they couldn’t film some of the truly

monstrous epicenters. But the situation

there is actually much worse than what you saw in the

video. So I also want to talk about it.

I wanted to speak about

this on the program and express

solidarity with the residents of the Irkutsk region

and simply send rays of hatred to all

federal media outlets that pretend

this doesn’t exist—as if in Siberia, in our country, there live

some kind of second-class people whose problems

we’re not going to talk about at all,

not going to cover, because we don’t care.

They’re far away, and good Lord, who cares about Irkutsk when

on the show The Voice, Alsou’s daughter was somehow

declared the winner—or maybe not,

whether there was a recount or not—and that got

and

kilometers of tape, recordings, and so on devoted to it.

But in the Irkutsk region—well, what is it,

just that

millions of square meters burned? Millions

of hectares? So we won’t say anything about it.

In the Beautiful Russia of the Future, the mass

media will serve

to help people, and the Emergency Ministry will

to work in such a way as to fulfill

its normal function. Forest protection

will carry out preventive

measures so that these fires

do not happen, because every year, every year

it burns there, and every year the federal

center does not care. Once, in 2010,

Moscow was burning

and here there was just smoke, while peat bogs were burning near

Moscow, in the Moscow region

there was smoke here, and back then everyone was talking about it

but when it burns every year, everyone just

does not care. That is wrong, and we

must fix it. Thank you so much to everyone

who watched my livestream. See you

next Thursday