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My platform, with which I am running in the election,
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for President of Russia, is based on a simple
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fact:
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Russia is a very rich country. We need
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to stop believing the lie that
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the poverty of the people and the collapse of the economy have
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some real underlying causes.
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“There is no money, and we need to hang on” (a reference to a well-known phrase by former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev). In fact,
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the main reason for our poverty is
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corruption and appalling
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governance over the course of
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the past decades. The goal of my platform
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is to direct the resources
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we already have toward
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raising, right now, the incomes
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of Russian citizens and their quality of life.
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Russia’s development strategy, under President
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Navalny, should be
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to invest in people, in human
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capital.
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Our main objective cannot be to build
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so many pipelines and stadiums.
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Our goal is to give every person, our children,
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the best education in the world and decent,
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high-quality healthcare. That is the foundation
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for Russia’s prosperity, and without it everything
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else is meaningless. Only in this way
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can we make our country rich.
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In the modern world, it is people who create
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a nation’s wealth, not oil, gas, or raw materials.
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Those exist everywhere.
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But the ones who develop and succeed are only those who
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invest in people.
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Now let’s move on to the actual numbers, because my
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platform is entirely concrete. This is
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Russia’s consolidated budget, that is,
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the federal budget and the budgets of all
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the regions. This is Putin’s budget, and in it
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spending on officials dominates,
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along with support for state corporations and military
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and police spending. My priorities are different.
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I want you and your children
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to be healthy, so I will double spending
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on healthcare. I understand
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that education is decisive for
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the country’s development, and therefore I will increase
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spending on education twofold as well.
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A working person should not be poor,
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and therefore I will set the minimum wage at 25,000 rubles per
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month as the statutory minimum wage
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(about 25,000 rubles a month). We need to lower taxes on small
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businesses, because they are suffocating, and this is
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the source of jobs; without them, there will never
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be a middle class. I would like
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every family in which there are two
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working adults to have the
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opportunity to buy a home. To do that, I need
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to lower the mortgage interest
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rate
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from the current 11 percent to
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2 percent annually.
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As you can see, all of these expenditures require money.
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So where will I get it? I know where. First:
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the fight against corruption will give us
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enormous additional resources.
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Right now, they are simply being siphoned off to
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offshore accounts. Look:
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annual state procurement is 6.3 trillion
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rubles, and procurement by state-owned companies is 19.8
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trillion rubles.
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Applying the formula of the Chairman of the
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Russian Government, Medvedev, we can
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calculate
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that out of these 26 trillion, no less than 5 trillion
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is stolen. Fighting corruption in
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public procurement is something my colleagues and I
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have been working on for years. We know what
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to do, and we will quickly be able to redirect this
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money toward the expenditures that need to be
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funded. Second, let’s look at
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the budget: what is Putin currently spending money on?
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Officials.
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A gigantic, constantly growing amount. We
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will cut spending on them. Security and
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law enforcement
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have simply turned into a black hole:
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endless new agencies, new
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general’s posts. We will cut what is unnecessary
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and do it painlessly, so that
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the salaries of rank-and-file personnel can even
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be increased.
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We will not cut defense spending, but
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we will change its structure so that more goes toward
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salaries, and this will give us the opportunity
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to create a professional volunteer army where
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professionals receive very good
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pay.
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Right now, the “national economy” budget category is mostly
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subsidies for state corporations and
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senseless, corrupt vanity projects.
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We will cut subsidies to state media, that is,
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funding for the propaganda machine,
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and cut them radically. Now let us turn
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our attention to the revenue side of the budget.
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Taxes on the gas industry are negligible.
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Instead, companies enrich Putin’s friends.
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Under us, they will pay taxes and
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bring in an additional 2 trillion
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rubles. State-owned companies currently do not pay
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the dividends they are supposed to pay. We will make them pay and
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receive an additional trillion. As
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you can see, there is more than enough money right now.
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And a government that thinks about the country
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rather than how to line its own pockets
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can absolutely solve all the urgent problems.
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For example, you have heard on television
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a million times that Russian science
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is suffocating for lack of money, and the Russian government
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says that it is simply impossible
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to allocate additional funds.
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But did you know that all spending on
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fundamental science amounts to only 106
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billion rubles, while
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spending on gas propaganda is 120 billion
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rubles? In other words, we pay for what is harmful and
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unnecessary, and we do not pay for what is very useful and
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good. I will change that. It is easy to do.
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The talk about there being no money for culture
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It’s time to stop funding environmental programs and sports altogether.
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Those are laughably small amounts on the scale of the
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budget. Russia has terrible infrastructure,
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appalling roads, but there is enough money allocated to them
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already; there’s no need to increase anything there
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at all. Nearly 1.5
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trillion rubles are allocated every year—simply
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because right now that money is being brazenly stolen.
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If we stop that,
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we’ll get decent roads for the
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funds that we
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are already spending. Very often, there’s no need to look for more money
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at all;
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it just needs to be redistributed.
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For example, right now the federal center is simply
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robbing the regions and cities, whereas I would leave them
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with at least another 2 trillion
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of their own tax revenue and give them the authority
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to organize their own lives. That is exactly what
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the program is about:
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using what we already have right
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now in order to become more prosperous. And
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when we add to that the demonopolization
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of the economy, a reduction in the administrative
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burden on business, an honest judicial
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system, and a real parliament with
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actual powers, we will also get
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substantial economic growth, and with
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each passing year we will be able to spend more and more on ourselves.
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Our wages and
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quality of life will rise. This is what
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our country needs right now. This is the path to
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the Beautiful Russia of the Future, and I will be able
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to lead Russia down that path.