Putin’s long reach, Medvedev goes on a rampage, protection from the wrath of God

[music]

Good evening, Moscow. It’s 8:00 p.m., which

means the program is live on air:

*Russia of the Future*. Your host is me, Alexei

Navalny, or, as

apparently a representative of the crow clan, as

the acting governor of

St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, called me,

a wonderful man, apparently.

He’ll remain the hero of our program in the macro world until

September, because we’re a collective

enterprise and he keeps doing all sorts of ridiculous things.

We will always discuss those ridiculous things,

including here on our program,

including a little later today.

If you have any questions, please write to me

on Twitter using the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture. They’ll put them up for me here next to

the screen, and I’ll try to answer.

The first thing I want to say is to make

an announcement that Ilya

Yashin asked me to make. Just a couple of hours

ago, he finally received approval for

the Nemtsov March. It will take place on the 24th

of February. It will begin on Strastnoy Boulevard

at 1:00 p.m. with the formation of the columns, and then

the march itself—a traditional procession

in memory of Boris Nemtsov.

Please come. It’s both a way to honor

Boris’s memory and an opportunity to walk through the streets

of Moscow in order to say

what you want to say—what in other

places and at other times they don’t allow you

to do. February 24, 1:00 p.m., Strastnoy

Boulevard, the Nemtsov March. And I hope many

people will take part. At the very least,

I will be there. As usual, our

first topic is that our political

little one, our funny yet pathetic character,

Dmitry Medvedev, has really gone wild.

And I’m getting a lot of questions like, what

is happening with Medvedev? Why has Medvedev started

posting on Twitter again?

Very spirited, lively tweets. And as for me,

I’m banned there after the investigation *He Is Not Dimon to You*

(Navalny’s anti-corruption investigation about Medvedev), so I can’t see it directly.

I can only look from other people’s devices,

but I went there and saw

that indeed Dmitry, Dmitry Medvedev

has somehow perked up, and apparently

he imagined that it was 2004 again, or

2008, and that he can once again announce some

national projects. Look at this tweet:

“National projects are an effective instrument

for involving business... 1,000 initiatives worth

76 trillion rubles (about US$1.1 trillion), and by the end

of the year practical work will begin.”

So what does that mean? It means that by the end of the year

practical work will begin on

carving up 76 trillion rubles. We

know that Dmitry Medvedev

may be pathetic, and we may laugh at him,

but he is very good when it comes to

siphoning off money. He’s very good at it. In that area,

he’s simply an expert. Another tweet, and this one

is even better. It’s about

the economy and even geopolitics:

“The spatial development strategy—what

even is that?—will become the basis for

regional development. We will devote special attention

to priority geostrategic

territories: Crimea, Sevastopol, Kaliningrad,

the Far East, the North Caucasus,

and the Arctic.” Please tell me,

how are we supposed to understand

what “geostrategic territories” means? Why

is Smolensk Region not a geostrategic

territory? Why is Chelyabinsk

Region, with its poverty and terrible environment, not

a geostrategic territory? Why

is Krasnoyarsk Krai not a geostrategic

territory, but the Arctic is?

And then there are the borders too—Kaliningrad,

or Sevastopol, Crimea, the Far East,

the North Caucasus—so right here, all around

the edges of the country, we’ve got geostrategic

territories everywhere.

That’s where we’ll dump 76 trillion, while everything

else—where the majority

of the country’s population actually lives—well, that will be handled

on a leftover basis. So we see once again

that

they’re just spouting some kind of nonsense.

Nonsense on the one hand, and on the other hand,

76 trillion

rubles will be very real, very, very

real.

And thanks to that money—well, 76 trillion

is a long-term story—but already now

23 trillion has been announced, which will

be allocated over the course of several years. This

will all also be what’s called hard cash.

In suitcases, it will turn into splendid

wonderful palaces somewhere in Marbella,

in Spain, in France, and in all sorts of other

places, into all kinds of fancy things. And so

Dmitry Medvedev

is practically rubbing his hands together along with his

government. But besides that, of course,

besides the embezzlement,

his renewed energy is connected with the fact that he

understands how disliked he is in this country. Let’s

look at the latest approval ratings

published by the Levada Center: 66

percent do not approve of his performance.

That’s a huge number—actually much

higher than Putin’s disapproval rating,

much higher than the disapproval rating of

the State Duma. Russians dislike everyone, yes, but

Medvedev is the one they dislike most of all.

Him, his government—he is politically

one of the leading figures in terms of

negative ratings, one of the top anti-rating politicians.

In short, our unloved political little boy,

Dmitry Medvedev, wants to start a new

life, because for him this is very

important. After all, he has the United

Russia party—don’t forget that he

He is to lead this party into

the elections in September. Besides, he

wants to remain the head of government,

the prime minister.

Of course, he is in that position because he is

a close friend and trusted associate

of Putin in all sorts of shady dealings.

Putin trusts him, so he remains the head

of the government. But he still wants

to start a new political life so that

everyone forgets, "There’s no money, but hang in there"

and other things like that. He too has started talking about

some kind of geostrategic matters in general.

Lately, in fact,

this powerful man’s speech gives us

an excellent reason to look at a short,

just one-minute long, but very viral

video from this week, where we actually

get to see Medvedev’s team. These are truly

genuinely classic

Medvedev guys. The video, which

was posted by some Telegram channel—I don’t even

know who they are, Medvedev’s enemies or

Medvedev’s friends, maybe even those specifically in

the video itself—but now we will see

a private jet carrying

several people. Let’s watch this

video clip: it’s one minute long, and it’s wonderful.

[applause]

and

come in

is that you

[music]

[music]

Wonderful people, such a heartfelt video—it really

draws you in, makes you want to sing along with them.

My fate, my fate.

They say, "the agrarian lobby."

The agrarian lobby. Who do we see there? That is

Arkady Dvorkovich, Medvedev’s longtime aide

everywhere during his time as prime minister

and during his presidency. He was basically

Medvedev’s brain.

At one time he was a fairly normal

guy, but unfortunately he stopped being

a completely normal guy. But

he got scared, lost his nerve, became corrupt—I don’t

know. In any case, Dvorkovich now, of course,

can no longer be considered even conditionally

decent. Sitting there too is Natalya Timakova,

the longtime press secretary, the

government’s chief PR person and

Medvedev’s top aide.

Now she has moved to VEB (Vnesheconombank, the state development corporation), and

she will no longer be receiving some kind of cash

in the Kremlin or the White House (the Russian government building), but rather

an official gigantic salary from

VEB. So she was given this

nice, lucrative sinecure.

Also there is

a lady there by the name of Natalya Timakova—

I mean, a woman who was singing most soulfully.

She is the former head of the Kremlin protocol office,

and those who have followed my

work for a long time have read posts where I

wrote a lot about her, because she was one of those

people back in the more innocent days, when

a Bentley still surprised all of us—the mere existence of a Bentley

owned by an official was shocking. She had one,

and she openly listed it in her asset declaration:

a Bentley automobile.

Well, I wrote a lot about it, because

how exactly could the head—well, the person in charge—

of Kremlin protocol, a person

whose job is to say, "You walk over here,

and please put

sparkling water here, and fruit compote there"—how

did she get it? It’s unclear. And of course,

of course, there too

is Mr. Tkachev, the former governor

of Krasnodar Krai (a region in southern Russia).

The former agriculture minister, such a

wonderful man, and there they are drinking to

the agrarian lobby. But really, they are

precisely the agrarian lobby, and they are Medvedev’s

agrarian lobby. If anyone has forgotten, specially

for you I will now show 32 seconds from

the film *He Is Not Dimon to You*,

where we explained in considerable detail that

Tkachev is Medvedev’s business partner

in these various ventures and

his vineyard-related amusements, at least

in Krasnodar Krai. Let’s watch

30 seconds: from the moment he acquires

the vineyards, Medvedev becomes simply

a true fan of winemaking and

actively promotes the interests of the industry in

the government that he heads.

He asks the Ministry of Agriculture and its

head, Alexander Tkachev, to

develop comprehensive measures

for state support of wine producers.

Agriculture Minister Tkachev strongly

supports all of this, and not without reason: today

Medvedev’s vineyards

are managed by the same director as the personal

vineyards of the Tkachev family. So, in other words,

this really is, in fact,

Medvedev’s team. And among other things, these

76 trillion

rubles allocated for—what was it again—

geostrategic territories and within the framework

of the spatial development

strategy—these are the very people who will, among others,

be scooping up that money in fairly generous handfuls,

and stuffing it

into their own pockets, and at VEB

where this is being done by

Timakova, and in various other structures

where others work, and in private

business where Tkachev works, and so on

and so forth. I saw a lot of disapproving

comments, like, "How awful,

they’re drinking on a plane, just look at

those faces, look, they’re singing there." Well,

let’s be honest:

probably now I’m supposed to say, "Oooh, how awful,"

something similar to what Dmitry said.

When they asked Peskov, he said, well,

there was nothing like that there, and it doesn’t actually break the law.

I mean, come on, you can say a lot

about these people—specifically about

this video. They’re sitting there, drinking

on a plane—that is, doing what

roughly every second Russian does

when they end up on a plane: turn on a mobile

phone and sing a little song.

If I showed you some Anti-Corruption Foundation party,

it would look very similar,

except they’d be singing songs by the singer MakSim

about roads and things like that. So really,

the issue with these people

is not that they’re boozing on a plane, but that

they’re boozing on a private jet.

Who even are they? We don’t know when

this video was filmed, but even if it

was shot when they were all still holding high-ranking

positions, why the hell were they entitled to

a private jet at all? Why are they sitting there?

So they’re somehow above everyone else? If it’s business, then let them

drink at the airport like all ordinary

people—sit there, pour drinks, drink, turn on

that thing, and sing, “Ah, my fate, my fate.”

For the agricultural lobby—people do that, they can

do that—but why is it happening on

a private aircraft? Whose money paid for

this flight? If it was state money, then we

want an explanation.

Why is there some, excuse my language, random guy from

the hill—Medvedev’s aide—on the plane,

his female aide, some PR woman, some Amber or whatever,

who knows what—and this Tkachev? Why should we

be paying for the plane? It’s a fairly

expensive indulgence. If you just

without even digging into it,

quickly google how much a private jet costs,

you’ll see that even a small plane

to rent for a flight to

St. Petersburg

will cost you €2,000.

If you want to fly to Amsterdam, it

will cost you 2.1 million

rubles—that is, €28,000. I assume

they weren’t flying to St. Petersburg,

but somewhere farther. In any case, this

flight—just this trip for these people—

cost several million rubles.

Most likely, we paid for it, and that

is the problem. The fact that they’re drinking—

fine, whatever, that’s not a big deal. It’s not like they’re

causing a drunken scene,

not smashing things, not tearing up the white upholstery, not doing

anything terrible. What is terrible is that

these random, unclear people are sitting on a plane, on

a private jet. And those of us who’ve been around a while, and

politics-watchers in general, older people like me, they

instantly remembered where they had seen

something similar before: efficient

managers flying in a plane with a white

interior. Let’s take a look. Here is

the famous campaign video for the Union

of Right Forces party

from 1999 or 2003—but this already happened.

So there are some guys flying along, I don’t

know—there’s Boris Nemtsov, we can see him,

he’s in this group too—they’re flying

in a private jet over Russia and

discussing important matters, and of course they’ve got

pens in their hands, and they sit there

looking thoughtful and making notes in

notebooks, and some of them have laptops, and these are

the efficient managers. I mean, really,

this regime is constantly

trying to distance itself from the 1990s, saying the ’90s were

awful—even aesthetically, even just

look at the previous authorities, Chubais and

all the rest—and the current ones, they’re all

basically the same. The only difference is that back then they

were sober, with pens and thoughtful

faces, flying in a plane with a white interior,

whereas now it’s already “Ah, my fate, my fate,”

they’ve blasted it from an iPhone or iPad and are sipping cognac.

It’s all the same. It’s actually very interesting,

because, first of all, these are

literally the same people. They

came out of the 1990s, only after many, many, many rounds of

mimicry. Back then, before they got their hands on

power, they climbed into this plane, and they’re still

flying in it. It’s just that now they behave

much more brazenly, and even film it on

a mobile phone, not really afraid

that someone will see them or judge them.

Send me your questions with the hashtag Russia

of the Future on Twitter, and I’ll

answer them.

And on a closely related topic,

there’s Medvedev’s uprising—United Russia’s uprising,

the party led by Medvedev. As

I already said, they have elections in September,

so they need to do something cool right now

because Medvedev’s ratings are lower

than the baseboard, and United Russia’s ratings have already

gone so far down they’ve hit rock bottom—they’re

lying in the basement. And there will be elections—

elections in Moscow, there will be elections

in St. Petersburg. United Russia needs

to come up with something new, cool, trendy, and

youthful. What’s the trendiest, most

youthful word right now? You know, the kind that

when you say it, immediately creates this

sense of something very smart, very

advanced, very technological, like

the future. If there were an audience sitting here—by the way,

I regularly think about

inviting some audience, maybe twenty people,

so it would be more fun for me to host

these programs—you would all probably

shout in unison: startup, startup! That’s

the word—startup. They stick it everywhere, and you won’t

believe it: United Russia has launched

a political startup. Let’s watch

the video we found after they had

posted it on Twitter first; I retweeted it

and wrote, “Ho-ho, a startup,” and they

got scared

and deleted it, but later I found it.

a little video on the website

let's watch 1 minute and 9 seconds

this is United Russia's political startup

it's important because with this startup

they're going to hammer us with it

roughly from next month until

September they'll be showing us various

people, so let's just, well,

prepare ourselves for what we're about to see and

take a look at what United Russia is in its

new image: PolitStart

my mentor never let me relax

I'm a journalist myself, but meeting so many people

speaking, talking to people

getting tangled up and then immediately solving problems

mentorship is a modern

personnel development tool, and the project

PolitStart puts it into practice to the fullest

United Russia should also help

promising party members grow and attract

the very best, most talented

and boldest people into its ranks. Ahead of

the elections, we launched

a new project, PolitStart

during the primary vote we had

a record number of young

participants: 37 percent, and 20 percent

of the party's candidates were under 35 years old

we need to build our political personnel pipeline in advance

together we are stronger

and we'll have more opportunities. Are you still

waiting? Use this opportunity

to take part in PolitStart

Are you still waiting? Use this

opportunity to take part in the project

PolitStart. This is what United Russia's new policy looks like

toward young people and toward

the more advanced part of

society in general

and I'm curious—not that I want to

take part in the PolitStart project

or that it's some great project—but this is going to be

the kind of list of people that we won't

call a hit list, right, but it will be

basically a lustration list (a list for future political purges)

everyone who signs up there will regret it later

but anyway, I went onto this

website, and now you can go there and

take a look

click the registration button

you can see the country's finest people: Medvedev

a crook and a thief

Turchak, who allegedly ordered the murder of a journalist

the country's finest people are urging you to join

208 people have signed up with them so far for

PolitStart. For comparison, here in

St. Petersburg right now, for this

municipal campaign, 3,022 people have signed up

but I have no doubt that of course

as things move along

they'll pad the numbers there however they can, and besides

there will be some real money involved, and that

it'll be very interesting to watch how

all of this develops

it'll be very interesting to watch because

apparently the Kremlin, judging by the number of

speakers backing it and Medvedev's involvement

isn't just casually supporting it anymore

this isn't some nonsense project—this is clearly

a serious thing. After the first

protests—after the 'He Is Not Dimon to You' rallies (anti-corruption protests)

they saw a huge number of young people in the

streets, and they tried to flirt with them

through

rapper Ptakha and Alisa Vox, through all sorts of

stupid things, but this is already a more

thought-out step: they're offering young people

the chance to become the new careerists

to worm their way in somewhere close to Medvedev

to become members of United Russia. They're saying

guys, there's a feeding trough here for you

but don't think you can't get in here

because our broad backs are blocking the way

we'll give you a little path, and it's

called PolitStart—come on in

what I like about

PolitStart is that, first of all, we'll

see a huge number of crooks there

idiots, scams, manipulations, all the rest of it

and secondly

well, this is basically going to be

a confrontation: we have Smart Voting

against United Russia

and they have PolitStart and all the rest of that nonsense

it's always wonderful when they

they

kind of show that, in the end,

there will still be hypocrisy, it will still be

lies, everyone will understand, everyone will

see that it's staged propaganda, and this kind of

little video will be everywhere, and of course

you'll see that it's just

disgusting—the very essence of hypocrisy is this

kind of road for those who have decided to become

young United Russia loyalists. This week there was also

a demonstration of the possible road for

those who do not want to be young United Russia loyalists

and that road, as it turns out, ends

with a pretty serious barrier. An academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences

yes, a full academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences

was asked to propose an initiative

to restrict young scientists from leaving Russia

because, in the academician's view,

this would help prevent the

outflow of talented young people abroad

the problem is enormous; we can see from polls

as was said on the previous program, that 40

percent of young people want to leave

Russia, so the problem really is

very serious. But in this wonderful academician's concept

he simply

decided to lock everyone in

to tell them: you'll stay here developing whatever

things, and you'll sit in your room under

house arrest, basically. The state would

cover students' education costs

and after that they would be required

to work in Russian science for no less than

For 15 years, if you don’t work in

Russian science for at least 15 years and

leave, for example, you’ll have to pay back

the money the state spent on your education, and

that raises a big question for me here,

a huge question for the academician and for

the people who propose things like this:

tell me, please, how is it that the state

that pays for students’ education—where

did it get that money?

I always thought that students

receive free education because

their parents pay taxes, and because

those students will pay taxes in

the future, and a person who receives

an education is not getting it as charity

at all.

They have every right to it; they don’t owe

anything to anyone, including Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Georgy Georgiev.

Why the hell should they also have to

pay money back to someone? This young

person—any student in Russia—by virtue

of having a Russian citizen’s passport

has a share in

the oil and gas revenues, in the gold, the diamonds,

the oil—whatever else there is

in our country—all of that also belongs

to that student on exactly the same basis as it does

to Academician Georgy Georgiev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in general

it’s completely unclear why anyone should have to

pay anything back. But nevertheless,

policy is moving in exactly that direction; I actually think

that one way or another this will be implemented,

because, look, this is a very

simple thing. Right now we’re working with our

trade union, and among others we get letters from

a huge number of researchers.

But if you’re paid a salary of 30,000

rubles a month in Moscow

and in Novosibirsk you’re paid

17,000 rubles, and you understand perfectly well that

you’re a young scientist and you can go to

the States and earn seven thousand dollars

a month, then the thought immediately occurs to you

that

$7,000 a month is better than

17,000 rubles a month. It’s not even that you

want to get as far away from Russia as possible—you

may very well love your country. But if they’ve

stolen everything and pay you 17,000

a month, and don’t even fulfill those miserable

May decrees (Putin’s policy directives issued in May) and don’t pay you the promised

100,000 or 90,000 rubles a month, you’ll leave.

That’s why.

But it would seem fairly obvious

that if we don’t want

young scientists to leave,

then we need to pay them, give them proper incentives,

and we need to give them the opportunity

to work and do science here. That’s how

it works properly. In other words, by these

methods it’s much easier to keep everyone

here, keep young scientists here, and train new ones.

But apparently the Academy of Sciences hasn’t

figured that out, and they just want to shut the borders

and lock everything down—a sharashka-style approach (a Soviet-era prison research lab system).

After all, Sergei Korolev

invented a great deal in the field of space exploration,

the founder of our space

industry, despite the fact that he was imprisoned,

was in a sharashka, and as is well known, his jaw was

broken during interrogation. And still, yes,

we created the Soviet space program. But

with methods like that, it seems to me, in the modern

world we won’t achieve much, and

the only thing we’ll accomplish is

to cement our backwardness. So if

this kind of bill starts

moving forward, I will be firmly

against it, and I urge everyone to oppose it decisively.

People get an education because their

parents paid taxes, and they themselves pay

taxes. People get an education because

they have a right to that public budget, and

they are not obliged to pay anything back to anyone.

Their parents have already paid. So, a lot

of questions. I see that Streltsov asks me:

“Alexei, jokes on TNT (a Russian TV channel) about you—

does that mean the media is starting to slip out

from under the Kremlin’s control, starting to move away from the Kremlin?”

No, I don’t think so. TNT—

there was just one brave, wonderful

comedian who did one little sketch about

me. If anyone saw it, he was joking precisely

about the fact that my surname is supposedly forbidden,

that you’re not allowed to say “Navalny,” and all that. But

you know, in our system where everything is forbidden,

one brave person says a few brave

words, and everyone goes, “Wow, incredible, at least

someone actually said the name Navalny.” But

there’s nothing extraordinary about it, yet it

makes a huge impression on everyone.

They think it means something, but it means nothing except

that there is one somewhat brave

comedian, and that’s all. There are also many questions

about the autonomous internet,

the bill that was introduced, and everything connected

with it.

How is it—the State Duma wants to keep

root servers in Russia. You’ve probably

seen lots of very funny videos

connected with the fact that people in the State Duma

are asked how the internet in general

works, and they say amazingly

funny things. But nevertheless, they are

the “experts,” and they have declared that

we need a sovereign internet. I’m not too

worried about it,

because the only thing I’m sure of

is that those 20 billion

that will be allocated for

isolating the Russian internet from

the rest of the internet

will be stolen. I have no doubt about that.

That’s a law of life, an empirical fact. They’ll buy

some kind of equipment at seven times

the real price and skim off the difference—that’s a fact. It’s just

Our government is so incompetent

that there are some things it simply won’t even be able to isolate.

The Russian internet, though—they can

isolate it the crude way, just by taking an axe to

some cables.

Well, they can isolate quite a lot of things, but I don’t

think this is really possible. In China, the internet

is isolated in a certain sense, yes—but not

completely, because there, alongside the

development of the internet, all those

domestic alternatives were built up—they have their own version of Twitter, their own

version of YouTube, and so on and so forth. They have

everything Chinese there. We have nothing. We

only have Yandex, the search engine,

which is constantly being strangled, it seems to me,

and soon it’ll be strangled completely. So if they

isolate the Russian internet from

the global one, there will be nothing left here. And I

don’t think this is, first of all, even possible

technically, whatever the Kremlin may think.

And actually, for now I don’t

think that’s the real goal.

The real goal is

for some shady firms

to get 20 billion rubles and

split those 20 billion rubles among themselves. That’s

what this bill is really being introduced for.

Can the internet be blocked in some

extreme situations—war, a state of emergency,

martial law? Sure. But they can also, I don’t know,

just shut it off entirely sometimes, like in Ingushetia (a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus),

or cut internet access by half,

or shut down mobile service. In other words,

only decisions of that kind are

possible.

But they can’t be made permanent.

Give me a couple more questions. So—

the internet, the internet, and internet isolation.

Isolation, autonomy—well, yes, they

will keep moving in that direction.

Once again, my answer

is this: will they do something

to make life harder for me, for you, and

for people like us—so that it becomes harder

for me to make this program and for you to watch it?

The answer is yes. They’ll come up with something like that

in the next couple of years. And we’ll come up with something

in response to whatever they come up with.

What will we come up with in response? Well, they’re blocking

our Smart Voting right now, and we’re

inventing some kind of

gadget or workaround that will help bypass

the blocks. Will they be able to make the

internet autonomous and cut off from the outside world?

The answer is no—they won’t be able to do that.

So there’s no need to go looking for some new internet again.

Alexei, what would you say about the so-called ‘sovereign internet’?

What do you think about the statement

by a State Duma deputy that it is necessary

to distribute food products free of charge

shortly before their expiration date

to Russians in need? Well, there are two

issues here.

One is food, and the other is foreign food products

that are currently under sanctions, and

food products that are nearing the end of their shelf life.

As for sanctioned goods, their destruction

is simply a crime against the backdrop of

the huge number of poor people in Russia.

As for expiration dates, that

still falls within a certain

area of market-based decision-making, so retail chains,

manufacturers, and everyone else

should be addressing it in a comprehensive way. But overall, I

believe destroying food is immoral.

“Putin, help us—we voted for you.”

That cry is heard regularly in one

part of Russia or another. This time it

came

from the Omsk region, from the village of Apollonovka. There

there is no communication, no normal life,

no heating,

no roads. Desperate people recorded

an appeal to Putin, and

I think it deserves for us

to watch it, because it frames the issue

in political terms. Basically,

it’s like: “Man, we voted for you—what’s

going on?” Here is this 50-second appeal to

Putin from

Apollonovka in the Kirov region: “Dear

President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,

teachers and school staff are addressing you

on

behalf of the residents of the village of Apollonovka,

in the Kolyosky district of the Omsk region.

"

“In the 21st century, the century of innovative

technologies, our village has no mobile service,

no internet access,

and the problem remains unresolved.

We live with no water,

no gas,

no communications, no proper medical

care.

“We cannot come to terms with the fact that we are being

deprived of

the most basic opportunities to survive.

“We went to the polls and chose you in the hope

of a better life.

“We ask you, our President, not to leave

our appeal without attention.”

You see, we hear a lot about

breakthroughs, roads, digitalization, startups,

advancement, power—some academician

submits a bill against students,

or in favor of banning travel abroad, while here

there are people who can’t even leave their village.

They appeal to the president: “We voted for you,”

and I find it interesting that this is such a

very cleverly composed

appeal. Notice this: you can’t

say they are trolling, but they clearly

meant it that way—an age of technology,

innovative development—they’re always going on about

this innovative development, and these people say:

“We have no mobile service, we have no road,

we can’t leave the village,” and it would seem...

anything that serves the interests of the Kremlin, of Putin, for example

they like to give

a kitten to a girl or a puppy to a boy, or

something like that, yes

to say, you know, Vladimir Putin, in

between swimming and playing hockey

and also

solving Syria’s problems, saw the appeal from

the residents of Apollonovka and thanked them for

the fact that they had voted for him, and switched on

mobile service and repaired the road so that

they could get in and out of the village, but

they did not do that, and they cannot

do it, because in reality

Putin’s ability to improve life in the

country is exhausted by the fact that he

can give a girl a kitten

because his system—even though there is money in it—

cannot make anything happen; they

are afraid of these appeals

they recoil from them because

tomorrow 100 more places like Apollonovka will pop up

or 1,000, because every village in Russia is like

an Apollonovka, especially if we take

any village 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) from Moscow, and they

understand that solving these problems

is impossible, and they do not even want to solve them, and

so the realm of the possible is kittens

for girls, while the realm of what they really want is

simply to steal everything there is

but separately, personally, what really gets me

is this thing that, against the backdrop of

the appeal from Apollonovka, we are already seeing

these Medvedev-style tweets, right

I’ll repeat for the third time: the strategy

for spatial development for

geostrategic territories—seventy-

six trillion rubles

for some kind of ruble chimera

you allocate seventy-six trillion

rubles when you actually have

real, living people—Russians—who are

standing there at a school saying, we have no

mobile service, no road, and they will get

nothing—absolutely nothing

except that they will watch on

television that

they will be told about Ukraine’s problems

while in the background they will be skimming off those

76 billion. In these

appeals I see a very important

a very important political shift

because generally everyone always appeals like this:

Putin, help us, Putin, help us. But this

appeal, despite the fact that it is

very polite—the woman at the school, yes, she

in essence, of course, has an aggressive

character—passive-aggressive—and that is

absolutely right. That is, the residents

recorded an absolutely correct appeal

it should be even harsher, and this

is changing

the rhetoric is changing, the attitude of the residents

of our country—in Apollonovka no one

believes that Putin can somehow

fix anything there, and that is why they are coming forward with

appeals like these. I hope that in

Apollonovka

it will finally dawn on them that

if they block their own road

it will lead nowhere

because their roads are effectively blocked already

well, if they somehow took their

Apollonovka road and got across

something—forded a stream or whatever—and crossed their

road, drove to Omsk, and blocked

a major highway there, then the federal

authorities would much more quickly

and much more willingly begin to solve their

problems

Let’s talk about Putin’s “long will,” and you

are now saying that actually

this is explosive—what is Putin’s “long

will”? But this term was coined by the same

person who called me

“a flock of crows”—our wonderful Alexander

Beglov, who wants to become governor

of St. Petersburg

As I already said, he does amazing

very funny things. Let’s start with

the “crows”

So, Beglov got upset about our

project in St. Petersburg, and he

while meeting with workers there—let’s once again

look at the quote—casually

says: this is why I started talking about elections

to local self-government, because

all sorts of crows have flown in to us

wanting to teach us something, but we here

are no fools ourselves, and we can develop the city and

we can develop local self-government

too, and in general... then he went on

speaking, it’s just too long a quote

So, there is supposedly a St. Petersburg school

of governance that has always been better than

the Moscow one, and basically the idea is

very simple

what is this, you came here from Moscow and now you’re going to

take part in our elections? I am not

running in the St. Petersburg elections; I

really did come here

but all the candidates we had were

Petersburgers, residents of St. Petersburg

and clearly better than Beglov; just looking at

the snow problem, they understand what

needs to be done with the city

And Alexander Beglov means that

there exists some kind of

super-authentic Petersburger, an alpha

Petersburger, an uber-Petersburger, far

cooler than just some

ordinary Petersburgers who came to us and

signed up to run for municipal

deputy positions, and I’m curious to see—I’m

opening Wikipedia together with you right

now to find out just what kind of

Petersburger this Beglov is, and what kind of

super-mega Petersburgers they are who apparently do not need

what's the point, what is there to advise all the others on

the governors and mayors of this wonderful

Gordon, let's take a look, and here they are

Sobchak, the city of Chita

Yakovlev, after him there was the city of Olyokminsk

then Beglov—his term was very, very short

a brief period there before Matviyenko as well

acting governor, and from the side, to us

came, you see, this one from above

this “St. Petersburger” came to us from Baku

I have nothing against someone born in Baku, well

but then don't go telling us that they

are some kind of special Petersburgers. Next,

there was Matviyenko from Shepetivka, then there was

Poltavchenko too, and off to the side we see some kind of

there's a sort of Baku hometown circle that came in, and

and now again Beglov from the same

same side, and don't come back to me with questions

not with wishes about who should be the head, but don't

show off there, please

good Lord, no need—for you of all people, it's not worth

telling us that you're some kind of super-mega

Petersburgers. I mean, a Petersburger is

someone for whom it doesn't matter where you came from—whether from

Baku

I'm from Moscow Oblast, and in general I lived in

a million different military towns

but I'm still a Muscovite, and let them try to say

that I'm not a real Muscovite

if you live in St. Petersburg, love this

city, feel it—then you're a Petersburger

but right now I hope that everyone from

St. Petersburg who is watching this video

will simply be filled, because of this situation,

with righteous anger, and in September, in September

in the upcoming election, Beglov

as the would-be head, will really get it, because

because, well, well, well, it's just outrageous

well, you see, he also—having come from Baku—

acts like he gets to decide who the real Petersburgers are

the real ones, but much more—well, that's the absurd part

another thing: at that meeting he brought in

a super-mega meme called

“the long will of Putin.” Let's watch—43

seconds. It's about how, well, sort of like the poet

and singer Monetochka said: in the '90s people were being killed

everyone was running around naked, children weren't being fed

and if not for Putin's long will alone

none of this would have happened—he saved the country

43 seconds. The acting governor

Beglov is a crazy man. This never

leaves me indifferent

indifferent—the situation when all this

Putinist

vile, lying filth starts telling us

about the terrible '90s. In those terrible

'90s we suffered so much—just look, he

says, come on, remember, guys, those were not easy

times for all of us

let's take a look at the biography of Alexander

Beglov. From 1985 to 1988, head of the department

for construction in the executive committee of the Leningrad City Soviet

you understand, he received—young viewers of my

program probably don't even know what a ration pack was

but I remember it: a bag of food

buckwheat, canned goods

a little bottle of champagne—all this

nomenklatura

this nomenklatura mug, you see, was feeding itself

from special distribution channels

and now tells us about the hard times. In

1989–1990, the Leningrad regional committee of the CPSU

that means an even more substantial little package of

food every week. He oversaw

housing development, microdistricts—that is,

various residential districts are listed. 1990–1991:

well, if things were so hard, then Beglov probably

went underground and fought against, I don't know,

some awful person there

who destroyed our country in the '90s, right?

No—he was deputy head of the directorate

for capital construction of the executive committee

of the Leningrad City Soviet

He was part of the very same authorities that created

the problems he now sits there

talking about as if everything was so terrible. From 1991 to

1997, co-owner of a joint German-Russian

enterprise

with the classy name Melazel, almost like

Azazel. The company had major

partnership ties with the Committee for

External Economic Relations, which

was headed by Vladimir Putin. That was where

the first embezzled, stolen money was made; that was where

they got acquainted. In other words, throughout the '90s they

enjoyed the fruits of those '90s. They

made the '90s, and they carried out those very

reforms, and now these same people

are trying to sell us stories about a terrible country and the long

will. But since we're talking about this, let's

look at what Putin, with his “long will,” was doing

in the '90s, in those terrible '90s. Did he

portray himself as some Colonel Kvachkov-like figure

go underground and fight

against the anti-people government? No, Putin

was that very power

in the '90s, and an adviser to Sobchak (Anatoly Sobchak, former mayor of St. Petersburg) from May 1990; from 1991

from 1991 onward he sat in the government

as acting head of the committee for

external relations of Leningrad

so, in the very wildest chaos of the '90s, he

was a high-ranking official

in the country's second-largest city. He

made those '90s, and when someone had nothing

to eat and had to be taken to a factory canteen

to feed the children, that was directly Putin's doing, because

let's look at, let's remember what

Putin's main achievement was in those

'90s. The main headline about Vladimir

Putin in the St. Petersburg newspapers of the time

was the headline saying that the KGB colonel had ruined

Petersburg. He was selling precious metals

from strategic reserves there to

the Baltics at knockdown prices and stealing

that money, splitting it with all the rest of

that thieving gang

that had formed around Mayor Sobchak. That was

the super-corrupt original city hall, and in this

the people in the super-corrupt city administration

were stealing St. Petersburg residents' money, stealing

the money of those very children who didn't have enough there

they were taken to a factory cafeteria

so what did Putin do next?

In 1996, Sobchak lost the

election.

And where does Putin end up? In the Kremlin. Who

invited Putin to the Kremlin? The number one

oligarch and the number one corrupt figure of that time,

Pal Palych Borodin (Pavel Borodin) — some of you probably

remember this man, the property manager

for the president's office. The first major

corruption scandal of the 1990s involved the company

Mabetex. The Swiss were renovating

the Kremlin and were paying Borodin some kind of

kickbacks. They were caught over those kickbacks, and this whole

scheme came to light. Putin worked for this man,

who was the main corrupt figure of that time.

Of course, the scale of his

corruption, by today's standards,

looks almost laughable — only

they stole some tens of millions of

dollars.

But Putin worked with Pal Palych

Borodin.

Since 1996, very much a man of the '90s,

this man was in the Kremlin, and he bears responsibility for all of this.

responsibility.

He is the '90s, and now he tells us about

some kind of long-term will. What long-term will?

There was only a long arm there,

a very long arm that reached

into everything

and kept grabbing, grabbing, grabbing whatever it could. Guys, I

say this constantly, and I urge you

to remember it and talk about it, because

all of Putin's political rhetoric

is built around some supposed fight against the '90s,

as if we somehow represent the '90s, as if

the opposition wants

to bring back the '90s. But what do I have to do with the '90s?

Like most of you, back then I was...

going to school in the early '90s.

Putin was already Sobchak's adviser then, while I

was still going to school. He was already

selling precious metals abroad at

knockdown prices.

And I was still in school, so the '90s are them,

that's who they are, and we must not give them

the slightest chance to rant endlessly

about how the '90s were, supposedly,

Berezovsky or Yeltsin. No — it was

Berezovsky, Berezovsky, Yeltsin, Putin,

, Borodin, Pal Palych, and all the rest.

That whole gang — Chubais, Kudrin, Beglov —

those damned people, that's what the '90s are: the very same

people who destroyed everything and

robbed everyone, and

and who are still doing it now.

It's just that oil prices rose

dramatically. Even though they

started stealing ten times more, still

all the same,

there was enough money for some people, and the economy

started moving a little simply because there was suddenly a huge amount of

oil money. Damn, I've devoted

a huge part of the program to Beglov,

a massive part of the program, because

in September, the main elections

will be the gubernatorial election in St. Petersburg, and

we need to watch it more closely than

anything else. And the candidate for the post is the most

ridiculous, pathetic guy, and you can see it

even from the way they're now running

their campaign around this snow removal.

Those of you who haven't been to

St. Petersburg recently

might say: why the hell do you

keep talking about this snow all the time?

If you had been there, you would understand

why everyone is talking about it, because

this is — maybe put this photo

full screen to show it now — this is

literally

a post-apocalyptic photograph

showing that St. Petersburg

now looks like a city from — if

you needed to shoot a film with clouds

of devastation. And I also thought that during

the Siege (of Leningrad in World War II), they cleared snow better than

they do now.

And Beglov came up with a really brilliant response

to all this. The city residents can see

that nothing is being cleared, everything is monstrous,

awful — and they're taking pictures. So Beglov

said that all officials should

go out and clear snow from the streets. And it's a stupid

decision — an ultra-mega stupid decision — because

to clear snow from the streets,

you need to organize the machinery,

organize snow removal — in other words, it's

a major logistical operation, and that's the only way

it works. You can't clear it with a shovel — well,

I mean, you can with a shovel if you try: here's

some snow lying here, and we'll move it into

a huge pile over here.

But you can't actually remove it that way, and the officials understand that perfectly well.

They understand it, and basically they don't care.

So they just want

to pose for photos. And someone filmed from a balcony

very briefly — let's show 15 seconds

of how it actually works, how

St. Petersburg officials report

on how they clear the snow:

pose and get a nicely staged

photograph.

Photo report done — they came out, pretended to be snow clearers,

worked a bit, and left.

There actually is an effective way

to clear snow. If you're not an official, if you're

an ordinary person, it works exactly

the same as last year. It all sounds like

a joke — I didn't believe it at first either — but it

really works. Look, in Nizhny Novgorod

there was a huge pile of snow

blocking cars from passing. Here it was,

and then it was gone — someone just took it away, not by doing something stupid again.

They wrote "Navalny" (Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition politician), and instantly...

for several days there was this huge pile,

and nobody wanted to deal with it.

But if you write "Navalny," they clean it up right away.

I talked about this on the program.

You’ve probably heard this joke, that in

St. Petersburg they do it a little differently.

They write "Navalny," but they can’t really remove it

at all, because nothing is actually

organized there, it’s a complete failure, so a janitor comes

and stirs up the snow so that there won’t be

the word "Navalny" visible. It turns into a horrible pile

of snow that stays there. By the way, the same thing

happened in Kirov too. Someone was amusing themselves

like that—as a joke, basically—and they

wrote "Navalny," you see.

And immediately the municipal services department arrived

and cleared the snow. This is an important and serious

issue, one that right now affects

Bashkortostan in particular, and in general affects a huge

number of cities.

Today I saw news that in

Kuzbass, black snow is falling.

Black snowdrifts—but I can see in

the photos that the snowdrifts really are black.

Krasnoyarsk is suffering from environmental

problems. The environmental problems in our country are colossal. But

what is happening right now in the city of Sibay

in Bashkortostan is just something else, absolutely

unthinkable. There, you can see this kind of

haze. There is this enormous open-pit mine

that belongs to the Uchaly Mining and

Processing Plant. There,

they kept extracting raw materials,

hauling them out, digging and digging,

making money and making money. And really,

the entire surrounding area should have

been

incredibly enriched—excuse the expression—

because the owners of the plant

were getting something out of it, but the people should have

been getting wages, the city should have

been receiving payments of some kind. None of that

happened. All that remained was a pit that

was improperly sealed off, and

now this smoke is coming out of it—this is

sulfur dioxide, and right now the concentration of

sulfur dioxide there exceeds the limit by 37 times, meaning

people are literally breathing poisonous

air. This is not an exaggeration. In fact,

they are breathing poisonous air, and their

health is suffering badly because of it.

With each passing day, their

life expectancy is decreasing. What is

happening around this?

It’s just unbelievable. This

plant belongs to

Iskander Makhmudov. He is ranked 16th on the

list of the richest people. In

2018, his fortune was $7.3

billion. It would be logical if

someone said, "Hey, Makhmudov, this is your mine,

you’ve got $7 billion, you made a lot of money

from this pit,

so let’s solve this problem. Start paying

people compensation, do something." You know

what they did? The only thing

they did was install

industrial fans that

try to blow the smoke away so that it goes

simply in another direction instead of toward the most

densely populated areas. But when even the slightest

breeze

blows toward the city, naturally all

that poisonous filth goes there. And there are already

some rallies taking place

and public gatherings about it. But how are the authorities

responding? It’s unbelievable. Right now there is an acting

governor there,

an acting governor who is also

going to run in the upcoming September election,

a man named Radiy Khabirov.

A disgusting crook, he spent many years in

the Presidential Administration, a real crook

and election falsifier. For a while he was

parked elsewhere and made head of

Krasnogorsk in the Moscow Region.

He failed at absolutely everything there that could be failed.

And now they abruptly promoted him and

appointed him to the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Please look at how he

talks to people. At 0:47 he

is asked questions about Sibay, and this is how he

reacts so nervously.

Acting head of the republic,

the acting governor of Bashkortostan, with your permission—

if anything happens, immediately

to the rails—in the event of any disturbance of public order,

if there are any provocative actions,

we have the authority and the ability to deal with it.

As for provocations, I

am telling you: we do not need...

Just answer responsibly.

No one here is afraid of you.

Listen to what kind of

scoundrel he is. People live there.

I can imagine it: I live there, I have

two children, Zakhar goes to school, Dasha goes

to school, and I understand that in the apartment they

sit with the windows sealed shut, and all the more so

when they go outside, they are breathing sulfur dioxide,

sulfur dioxide.

Its concentration exceeds the limit by 37 times—they are breathing poison.

My children are breathing poison. I do not like that.

You come outside, and then

you get a governor who doesn’t tear his hair out,

who doesn’t say, "Yes, I’m going to

write to Putin right now, let Makhmudov do something,

we need to declare a state of emergency."

Declare it.

But they are not declaring a state of emergency,

because declaring a state of emergency

would mean admitting that harm is being done

to people, and they could demand compensation.

It would mean that operations at this mine

must be stopped, that all of this must be acknowledged.

It means that

the oligarch Makhmudov will have to do something.

to pay—no, that isn't done, but this is

here

the face of the nomenklatura (the Soviet-style ruling bureaucracy)

and they look at people who are breathing

poison and say, well, that means

wearing—public order violations, no, here we won't

suppose he's thinking about rallies, you understand

he isn't thinking about the fact that people are being poisoned, he

immediately tells them: the main thing is, don't

hold rallies here, because solving this

problem is not within my authority, but

dispersing you, jailing you, that is

fining you—that is within my authority

absolutely shameless—a person just as

shameless

the mayor of Sibay (a city in Bashkortostan) who came there to a

meeting with residents and said that those who

go out to these rallies are goats and

"cop excrement," I'm quoting—that's what

the absence of elections means, yes, but in

Bashkiria (Bashkortostan), there are no elections, let's be honest

let's say it plainly: everything there is rigged one hundred

percent where needed. Just imagine that

a city's mayor says something like that to its residents

who—well, they didn't just come

to whine, like, we don't like this, we want

all buses to be free, or

why did you put in a pink flower bed there, and

the roses are white, but we want the roses to be

mixed—white and

beige. No, they're saying: dude, you're

poisoning us, and you call us goats in the literal

sense—in the literal sense, that's what he said

there's just a huge pit there, and it wasn't

properly reclaimed; they did nothing there, that is

Mahmudov made

several hundred million dollars from this, and those

hundreds of millions of dollars were made at the expense of

the health of the residents of Sibay, because

well, in a normal country, under a

normal system, they would have forced him to

carry out proper reclamation; he would have had

to spend money, but at least no one would have

been poisoned

here they told him: ah, come on, forget it, just

kick back 15 percent of the potential

costs to us, and go off on your yacht

to party somewhere. I know—our

team in Bashkiria (Bashkortostan) wrote to me that the workers at this

quarry, yes, are ready and may declare

a strike or something else. So even without

our trade union project—and all the more so

with the trade union project—we will provide you with

legal support, and, I don't know,

political support as well—we won't forget about you

because, really

this situation gets to me because

apart from me, many people write about it, but

they write much less; apart from us, no one

will help them

just as no one will help the residents of

Krasnoyarsk, the residents of Kuzbass (the Kuznetsk coal basin), the residents of

any industrial city—Chelyabinsk

which is simply breathing poison, who, well

who suffer from respiratory illnesses

and so on. But this really is a monstrous

thing, just monstrous, and I really want to

help them. So if you are going to organize

a strike, we will help you. Let this

Khabirov go to hell, you understand

with these threats to you—like, here we are going to

put a stop to violations of public

order. Shut the quarry down; let

Mahmudov do something about this quarry

and no one will take to the streets

a short 39-second video—I want

to show it to you because last time

in the ticker, those who don't

show it to me said, well, why are you here

talking about those Jehovah's Witnesses

I talk about Jehovah's Witnesses, and I'll say that

on the project I also show my video about the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)

which I saw on a blog—this

Deacon Kurayev, a well-known religious figure

Andrei Kurayev posted it there, and it is

truly astonishing

it takes place inside the Cathedral of Christ the Savior

in a kind of closed-off

basement room where an

event is taking place

300 high-ranking clergymen are

present; it's impossible to get in there, everything is

by pass only

and so on. Now it's going to run for 19

seconds—count the number of security guards

around the Patriarch

[music]

because the gift

man, lift it higher, higher

school

there are about 15 guards there. It's a closed

event in a closed room where there is no one

except high-ranking hierarchs of the

Russian Orthodox Church, but it looks as if, you know, this

video shows Patriarch Kirill arriving in

Syria to persuade ISIS fighters

to join the Russian Orthodox Church, or as if somewhere in Chechnya

in a forest among some mujahideen, or

the Taliban, or something like that. But no—these are

his own people. So why so much security?

Of course, as an Orthodox believer, it's not

pleasant for me to watch, and I understand that

it is precisely because of this that my church, to which I

belong, is simply losing authority

losing weight, and then you start wondering what exactly you're afraid of

how everything is arranged there at all

if you have to protect yourself from your own hierarchs in such a

way

but, frankly, all of this looks anything but

edifying

and, frankly, it seems to me that many

believers find this unpleasant, and you

understand that something is very seriously wrong

with the way the Russian Orthodox Church is set up, at least in its

leadership. My dear friends, today is, after all,

Valentine's Day, which I

am happily spending with you

well, not only with you, but with my beloved too

When it comes to lovebirds, of course, it's Dmitry

Peskov and Tatyana Navka.

News came in that they may be facing

a possible tax audit in

the United States. The newspaper *Guardian* wrote about it, and

then we found out that this was actually

most likely an audit

triggered by our complaint. So I

wanted to say a few words just

to explain what happened there. It's a very simple

thing: when we released a series of

reports about Peskov at the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

we talked about, among other things,

the half-a-million-dollar watch, about his

yacht where he spent his honeymoon, and

which was, if I remember correctly, the largest

sailing yacht in the world. Fantastic sums of money

were spent by the oligarch Magomedov, who is now sitting

in Lefortovo (a Moscow pre-trial detention prison), I think. We know that

he paid for it. Then there were houses bought for

a billion. In other words, the image of

Peskov does not correspond at all to what

he actually does. And back in

2015, he kept saying:

"Oh, that's my wife, the wealthy figure skater Navka.

Where did the watch come from?

Oh, that's my wife, the wealthy figure skater Navka.

And the house for a billion—how do you know

it wasn't my wife?

A wealthy figure skater, Navka. But we all

understood that this was nonsense—what kind of

"wealthy figure skater Navka"? She could not

possibly, no matter how wealthy,

she simply didn't have tens of millions

of dollars. She wasn't that rich,

this figure skater Navka. But he kept saying it

almost every step of the way, and it kept being

repeated: a very wealthy wife, and

back then we told him publicly, quite

directly. We said: Peskov, either you

explain where you and your

wife, the wealthy figure skater Navka, got the money, or we will file

a complaint against the wealthy figure skater Navka

with the U.S. tax authorities, because

your wife is a tax resident of the United States—

well, that's how it was. He acted as if

he hadn't heard anything, so we filed the complaint.

And if in Russia, you understand, this kind of

lifestyle being incompatible with a salary—and we

understand that people are stealing; if

Medvedev has assets 100 times larger than

his salary, or 1,000 times, or a million times, we

understand that he's a crook, a thief, a bribe-taker. But

legally, here, that means nothing.

But in the U.S., this is a legal concept:

if your expenses and income are incompatible,

if your lifestyle does not

match your salary, that is

grounds for a tax audit. So basically

we wrote: you have

this wealthy figure skater Navka, she is your

tax resident, and her husband

keeps saying that she is super-mega

rich—please check

whether she paid taxes on that. We sent it off and, honestly,

we even forgot about the complaint. And then

later we learned that a tax audit in

the U.S. takes about two years on average, and now it has

just surfaced.

And we can judge this from the *Guardian*

article. We have no connections with the tax authorities,

unfortunately, so we can't find out for sure, but

some obvious issues came up there, things like

she was paying tax on an income of

around $80,000,

or rather she reported about $87,000

a year—completely

modest income, really. And yet

I can see right there in the article that her

declared income from all sources

in 2015 was $87,000,

which, let's be honest, is laughable.

That is several times less than the cost of

the watch that this wealthy figure skater

supposedly gave Peskov, and so on and so

forth. She

was saving on taxes, saying that she

was divorced but had been married for some

period. We found out that she was a

resident until 2015, the *Guardian*

writes, and then ceased to be a tax

resident. That matches absolutely exactly, in terms of

dates, with our complaint and the public

story about how we were going to file

such a complaint. They got scared and

ran—but

the essence of this story is that

we did everything right, that Peskov is lying,

that his wife is some incredibly rich figure skater

Navka. Before 2015, she had no

substantial sums of money at all,

neither in Russia nor abroad. She declared

nothing, and all this money—well,

frankly, it's an open secret—all

these watches, houses, and everything else are bribes

that Peskov received. They are not

Navka's money of any kind. We hope that

it's clear that in Russia, under Putin, Peskov

faces no danger, but we hope that in the U.S.

at least this couple will, one way or another, be

held liable for tax violations. Because

there is no need to lie—you've lied so much,

guys, you're lying on two continents.

You lie in America, you lie here, you

move back and forth across borders, and meanwhile

inside the country you accuse everyone of being foreign agents,

while you yourselves are, quite literally,

international crooks and fraudsters. Since we've started talking about

international

crooks and fraudsters, literally

a Russian Donald Trump has appeared on the scene.

It turns out

Donald Trump built

luxury real estate there, built

real estate developments, and today

the outlet *Baza*—founded by former *LifeNews* journalists—

whose work, well, generally speaking, I...

A LifeNews journalist isn't supposed to love anyone.

But they at least did something.

It seems fairly decent, and I hope it

ends up in decent hands. People change, but in

this case, they did something extremely impressive.

They did a great piece of work: they investigated the property

of Zhirinovsky's son, whom we also

just love. We did a report about him, and we

found his apartment in Dubai several years ago, and there

in Dubai, attached directly to the contract,

was simply his passport — literally his passport

was included there. And the apartment was

442 square meters

worth 86 million rubles at the time

with seven bathrooms in the apartment. Naturally, we

ran around shouting: come on, strip him of

his

parliamentary status, because he had clearly

simply failed to declare foreign

property and, obviously, foreign accounts.

Nothing happened. Back then we were told

that nothing had been proven. A sales contract,

with his surname on it, plus an attached

passport — no, apparently that still isn't

considered evidence. No, go away.

Everything was fine with Zhirinovsky. Zhirinovsky

Jr. And now, journalists from Baza

have found out that since then, the younger

Zhirik has upgraded things considerably.

He has four hotels in Spain: two in Alicante,

one in Ibiza — what a creative guy —

he bought a hotel there too — and one somewhere near

Barcelona.

And all of this came to light because

Lebedev — that's the surname of Zhirinovsky's son —

Lebedev, by the way, is Deputy Speaker of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament),

one of the country's top parliamentarians.

He was explicitly listed in the documents

as the head of the company that

manages these hotels. In 2015,

after sanctions were imposed on him,

he stepped out, and his mother and his wife stepped in.

They own this company. So this is

a clear-cut violation for which he

should be launched out of the State Duma like a cork.

He is engaged in business activity; he

was managing a hotel chain. He did not

declare any of this. He did not

declare it.

And he has no right to own them.

As for the accounts, he and his wife hold such

accounts — they own foreign financial

assets. In other words, it's just

that Baza really grabbed

Zhirinovsky Jr. by the throat, exactly

the same way we grabbed him by the throat

a few years ago. And it will be very

interesting to watch how he

tries to wriggle out of it, because there

are his relatives, his close associates — they are

all in the documents.

He himself is listed there in the documents, these

hotels.

And what's amazing is that Zhirinovsky Jr.,

and Zhirinovsky Sr. alike, are always

pushing this line. There was a quote there,

literally something like this — one of Zhirinovsky's quotes:

"I hate those

politicians who betray the interests

of Russia and trade them for rotten

American sausage." I mean, do you understand?

You own a chain of hotels in Spain and

go around saying this. I cannot believe that

Zhirinovsky Sr. didn't know about it. With

what money is the younger

Zhirik buying all this? It's obvious all the money belongs

to the elder Zhirinovsky. Of course he is

a co-owner of all this. And you own

a hotel chain in Spain, you've invested

your money there, and then you talk about

"rotten American sausage." Amazing

situation.

I was actually quite upset that

this Baza investigation

was seen by so few people. But I hope that now,

thanks to us, thanks to my program, more people

will notice all this, because the issue is important.

I've already gone over time on our program,

but I can't help saying a few words

about one last topic, because we have

the great Dmitry Rogozin and some kind of

completely impoverished Roscosmos (Russia's state space corporation).

It's supposed to be the other way around, because

because

Dmitry Rogozin, as a government official,

is supposed to be modest, while Roscosmos is supposed

to be incredibly cool and high-tech.

After all, it was announced just last week that

we are going to start colonizing the Moon, that we

will fly to the Moon, and that we need special

lawyers. This is not a joke — there were

articles and official statements saying that officials need

to train special lawyers so that

they can litigate over land plots

on the Moon, because someone might challenge them.

And we, supposedly, will say: well, this

beautiful plot here,

on the seafront, so to speak, or in the

picturesque part of some crater — we

must fight for it, fly to the Moon, and so

on. Everything is supposedly so powerful and impressive at

Roscosmos that Dmitry Rogozin flew to

Chelyabinsk Region and visited the

Ust-Katav railcar-building plant.

Everyone calls it a railcar-building

plant, but it is part of Roscosmos. And in order

to get there, he hired

a business jet, of course, because flying

with ordinary schlubs, even in business class, alongside

passengers on a regular commercial flight

to Chelyabinsk — and there are plenty of flights — he could have

flown that way.

But that is beneath the dignity of a Russian

official, so of course he hired

a private jet and a helicopter, paying

6 million rubles for it all, for two days of flights

— 6 million — visited that plant

and told everyone there how great everything was.

Everything is amazing, and then a couple of days later, today...

At this factory, some truly my

things are happening.

Because people came out and said, yes,

damn it, on salaries of 12,000 rubles (about 130 USD) a month

a month. Let's watch 26 seconds of this rally.

The boss gets less than the workers—an improvement.

It's hard to make out exactly what's happening, but

judging by the outlets that wrote about it,

a local pro-management union representative came out there,

naturally, one who had sold out to the plant's management,

and started saying that everything

was fine—and he was booed there.

People are simply complaining that they cannot

live decently on a salary of 12,000 rubles (about 130 USD), and I

think that, of course, Rogozin's flight there for 6

million rubles (about 65,000 USD) certainly made

an impression on them. You see, to fly in on

a private jet to a place where people earn

next to nothing, and then lecture them about how we're going to fly

to the Moon—

how great we are, how wonderful we are, and how brilliantly, under

the leadership of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,

we are developing our Roscosmos—that is,

of course, an extraordinary spit in the face

to these people. This is a restricted-access enterprise;

you can't just walk in there. But from this

report, you can see that even there, openly,

they're talking about organizing a strike. Guys, I support

you however I can, obviously. I mean, of course,

they really need to declare a strike there

so that Rogozin comes back, and this time

on a regular commercial flight, in economy class,

and says: you know, we at

Roscosmos have made a decision that we

will save money on flights, for example, yes, and

when it's possible to fly there on a regular

commercial plane, we will fly on regular

commercial planes so that we can pay you

more. And after all, you at Roscosmos are great

guys—without you, we will never fly to

the Moon. So that you can live a little better, we

will raise your salaries and stop

flying on business jets. I would very much like

for that to happen, but they need to be

forced.

To do that, you have to resist, and we

are ready to help you in every way. You see,

already even two enterprises have moved toward

strikes and work stoppages.

See you all next week.

[music]