Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #007. The June 12 rallies, the “renovation” poll, and the “presumption of trust” in the police

[music]

Good evening from Moscow.

It’s 8:01 p.m. in Moscow, which means we’re live in the studio.

This is Navalny Live. I’m Alexei Navalny, here

to talk with you,

answer pressing questions, and

discuss the issues that were the most

important over the past week. And if you

have questions, please send them to me

on Twitter with the hashtag

Just please don’t be upset that I can’t

answer every question, and many of them

slip by me—there are just an enormous

number of them coming in. The program’s editors

pick some out and send them over to me here. I

will try to answer as many questions

as I can. I feel tremendous

relief that I can begin today’s program

not with Alisher

Usmanov, who was undoubtedly one of the

main

stories this week. And of course we

will talk about that, but more questions came in

about the June 12 rallies, so I’ll start

this program with that topic, because otherwise

for the third time I’d have to begin with

Usmanov, and then this would all turn into

some kind of Usmanov show on the Navalny

Live channel. This week the process of

filing applications began, and I can say that

as of right now, in the June 12 rallies

people in 209

cities across Russia have said they want to take part—220 cities in total,

but the difference, the difference, the difference

is explained by the fact that abroad, our

compatriots want to hold

similar actions outside

Russian embassies and consulates. But 209 cities are

in Russia itself. I can’t give an exact

figure for how many applications have

actually been submitted yet, because this is still a spontaneous

process. We are not controlling it; it is, it is

truly a huge movement

of people who want to take part in our

second anti-corruption rally. But definitely more than

100. And the most important thing I want

to say about this is that, for now, most of our

applications are being approved and granted, and

that is a wonderful thing, because

the authorities have been forced to change their attitude

toward our rallies. Of course, we should

thank everyone who came out to

the unauthorized protests on March 26,

because it became possible to explain to those

people in the Kremlin, the ones who think

they can ban everything, that no—here

a ban won’t work. You can ban as much

as you like, but people will still

come out. As I understand it, that is exactly why

they have now changed

their tactics: they are issuing these approvals

because they understand that in any case people will come out

into the streets, because people have realized that

it is impossible to jail everyone, impossible to

intimidate everyone, impossible to arrest everyone. And

this achievement has, of course, been paid for

with days spent in special detention centers

under administrative arrest by

several dozen people. Naturally,

the highest price has been paid by the three

people who, as of now,

have been arrested on criminal charges. But they

proved that in reality there is nothing terribly

frightening about this. People came out into the streets

in cities all across the country, from Vladivostok

to Kaliningrad, and we all became convinced that

we need to keep going out, not be afraid,

and take part in unauthorized protests.

So for now, we see a trend that

the authorities do not want escalation. They

obviously are not going to meet all our

demands immediately, directly

after the June 12 rally. But at least

we have broken that pattern: they are no longer

trying simply to prove to us again that

“Guys, don’t come out, we’ll arrest all of you.” You

cannot arrest all of us. That is absolutely

certain. However, despite the fact that

right now, I can tell you exactly, we know that

there are currently 46 approved actions and, uh,

29 refusals. In different places, for various, uh,

reasons, it varies: in some places no

alternative was offered, in some places the alternatives

offered so far do not suit us. But overall the trend

is that more are being approved. But of course

these people in the Kremlin would not be themselves

if they didn’t, well, try to mock and humiliate us

over this. Yes, they are forced, for the most part, to

approve our actions. But

of course they want to sneer at us, so

we are seeing completely

outrageous, downright rude things happening in some

regions. For example,

Nizhny Tagil: in Nizhny Tagil, the application

was approved, but it was approved in

a locality that is formally

part of Nizhny Tagil’s territory—88 kilometers (about 55 miles)

from the city—and, I think, they scheduled it for 7

a.m. In Kazan, they also issued

approval for the rally, but

for 7 a.m., explaining that otherwise it would be

very heavily

affected by football fans. In Ufa,

it’s a similar situation. Krasnodar—please

put this on screen. It’s absolutely astonishing. Here,

you see, this spot here—I honestly don’t know

the geography of Krasnodar very well,

to be honest—but this is the place where

the application was approved, and again for 9

a.m. And now the next

image—this is wonderful. I don’t know, is this

some forest clearing or wasteland somewhere on the outskirts of the city, and

this wasteland was designated as the approved site for

holding our anti-corruption

rally.

This is actually a telling thing—what

is happening, the way they mock us. Yes, they

are forced to do this. They understand.

that they understand they have to give us these

permits, they understand that people will still

issue them. But they sat there and thought and thought

about what they could come up with there in the Presidential

Administration. There they were, sitting in these city halls, there

all this local housing and utilities stuff. Well, what can we do

ah, please give us some place like Nizhny

Tagil, for example—what can we do

to really put the squeeze on them?

I can only express my own opinion.

Of course, in these cases we need to

go out into the city center even more actively, even more forcefully

of the city. I mean, are we people or not, after all?

I mean, come on—Nizhny Tagil, you understand,

is a major city, and they say, well, you

go 88 kilometers (about 55 miles). They look at us with a

smile: you want to protest corruption, guys?

Fine, go 88 kilometers and somewhere

out there in some remote settlement

hold it. How are you supposed to respond to that kind of rudeness?

These people who, in fact,

are nobody—no one even elected them, they

represent no one—and they tell us,

well, your place is 88 kilometers away. So

I think that, of course, in those cities, if

the authorities don’t—well, don’t start behaving

normally and don’t stop being rude, then of course

people need to go out into the streets and exercise their

constitutional right: at 2 p.m., in the city center,

with Russian flags. And they keep

saying all the time, well, the place is occupied because

there’s a holiday celebration there. And what about us?

We have Russia Day celebrations too—we are

citizens of Russia, we have Russian flags,

we’re celebrating too, and we need to come out.

That is completely normal. Again, there’s no need

to be afraid of anything. All right, in an isolated

case, with a very small probability,

someone might get 10 days in detention—well, for this

it’s worth serving 10 days. As for me, I’ve

done that many times.

All the rallies were authorized, absolutely

peaceful, and we simply want to say the

words we have a right to say—we have

that right. Well, if there’s this kind of rudeness, you understand,

they give us some swamp filled

with water—the authorities in Syktyvkar. Well then, of course, people need to

go out to the central square. Sergey

Rud writes that in Chelyabinsk everything

was approved. Well yes, wonderful.

Approved—wonderful. They approved it.

In Chelyabinsk and in some other cities they gave out

perfectly normal venues in the city center,

some of them even better ones.

Later, perhaps, but nevertheless

all the same, Cub Illizium writes to me, I

see that officials have a good sense of

humor, only the people aren’t laughing. But in

fact, yes—at first I look at these

swamps and, yes, it’s funny. Sure, they had their laugh and

it’s a kind of joke, but, well,

it really is infuriating, you have to admit.

It really is infuriating. Why do these people—why do they

think they have the right to treat us

like this? I think it’s very important

to gather even more people for the rally and then

go with Russian flags,

joining the general demonstration.

Let’s see what they do with us then.

In Moscow, naturally,

there are a huge number of questions about

Moscow. So, there will be an authorized rally in Moscow,

so on June 12, put everything aside

and plan on going to

a demonstration that will be absolutely

safe and very peaceful.

We’ll say what we believe

needs to be said, from a big stage into a large

loudspeaker. But naturally, in Moscow

we know what the Moscow authorities are like—

they are also

those same hypocritical, unpleasant people who

always want to show how

clever they are, and how they can treat us,

how they can mock us. And

please show the picture of that location.

They really did allocate Sakharov

Avenue. Well, all in all, it’s a normal place,

nothing terrible about it. It was precisely in

that place that, I think, the second

big rally took place during the protests of 2011–2012.

But the wonderful thing is

that they approved both a march and

a rally. And the second image,

please—we simply measured it on Yandex Maps

and for the march they allocated

360 meters (about 1,180 feet). And on top of that, as you can see, the stage

is a little around the corner, arranged that way so that

people who don’t fit in will be

standing there and simply won’t be able to see what

is happening on the stage. So what are the

Moscow authorities doing? All right, take down the images,

thank you. They are deliberately creating

inconvenience. They are making it so that the rally

well,

is harder to organize, so that

it won’t look as good, so that there won’t be

a real possibility for a march, so that everyone comes,

stands around—first of all, for an hour and a half

at the metal detectors, and then goes in, and this so-called march

after that lasts 10 minutes, and then on top of that

the stage won’t even be visible.

But again, it’s obvious rudeness, and these people are simply

taking pleasure in it. Yes, I wrote about this once in

my blog several times. Honestly, this

gets to me, maybe even

more than corruption itself: the way they sit there and

snicker nastily, thinking about how they

can, yes, let’s laugh at

them—let’s allocate a 360-meter (about 1,180-foot) route for the march,

ha-ha-ha, how funny. And let them

talk about corruption during their

360-meter-long march. Naturally, we sent a notice to Moscow City Hall

saying that

we do not agree with this position. But what

they are proposing is simply unsafe.

First of all, naturally, such a crookedly arranged

rally, where people won’t be able to see the stage,

will force people to move closer

and of course it will create unnecessary crowding there

there won’t be any real benefit, but it will create unnecessary

such density that the people who come to the

march—the march itself—they won’t really get, but

to put it bluntly, they also won’t really understand

what is supposed to be happening, so we

are, once again, acting entirely peacefully

within the framework of a normal dialogue, which of course is

quite difficult for us to conduct emotionally

because what we really want is to tell this Moscow mayor’s office

plainly everything we think about it

and simply announce that we will, without any

approvals whatsoever, go to Tverskaya Street

where once again they are telling us there will be a

Russia Day celebration, and we will join that

celebration, but for now we have sent them

a very polite letter, strictly in

accordance with the law, in which we

ask them, well, not to be so rude to the residents

of the city of Moscow and to create some kind of

normal arrangement in which the stage is in a

normal place and the march is a little

longer than 300 meters. In any case, on the [date unclear]

there will be a normal

authorized rally in Moscow, so make plans

put everything else aside and

come. We can see that across the whole country

of course they are being forced to approve all

these

because they have no choice—they understand that

people will come, but extraordinary efforts

are being made to keep people from coming

you of course know a lot about how at

universities they are giving lectures and showing

videos saying that I’m Hitler, but today I was sent

an absolutely astonishing report as well

Please show it

please—one of the towns outside Moscow (in the Moscow region)

Well, I blurred it out so that the person

who sent it to me

—his surname was visible there—because he asked me to

do that. But in one of the towns outside Moscow

and, as I understand it, all across

the Moscow region this is happening. What actually

happens is that a police officer comes

and goes around to all the local activists

and has a talk with them, explains something

to them, and writes up a detailed report

of the working meeting, in which, as you can see,

it literally says at the bottom that if you

are taking part in the rally, then indicate how

you are getting to the site of the event—here,

he will be traveling by public

transport. It’s very funny, and more than once

people have told me about this. Thank you.

Take the report off the screen. The person was telling me that

the people who were drawing all this up—he

was laughing, and that police officer was laughing too, and

of course they were filling out the report and

discussing what nonsense the

higher-ups were engaged in, how stupid all of it was, and how

properly one ought to protest against all of this

by holding rallies. But nevertheless, this is what

the police are doing on a mass scale, and apparently

in our country they evidently have nothing better

to do. Next topic: Shpakov. In the last program

I said that it would be good

to raise money for

another Russian political prisoner

Alexander Shpakov

who has now been absolutely unlawfully

jailed. We showed the video of how he

was literally doing nothing, and they dragged him into a

bus. He has a mother left behind who

is very ill—she is essentially bedridden

—and a daughter whose education still needs

to be paid for. I proposed raising

500,000 rubles (about $8,500 at the time). That money was raised

that very evening, and as of today

we have collected a total of 877,000 rubles (about $15,000), which even

created a bit of a dilemma for us: whether

to give Shpakov’s family 500,000 and the remainder

to the family of another political

prisoner, or to give all 877,000 to him. But

we decided that since we were collecting it

for him, and you were sending money for him, we

will pass all the money on to the Shpakov family

and we will show you the receipts, everything properly. I

just wanted to say a huge thank you

to everyone who transferred this money so quickly

This is extremely, extremely important. With any person—

yes, of course, they cannot imprison everyone

Yes, of course, the authorities

grab only a few people, a very small number

in order to intimidate hundreds of thousands. We

understand that, and we are not afraid, but it is very important for us

not to forget those few people

to support them and, excuse the expression,

to keep them going, including with money

their families, who lose their breadwinner for

some period of time. So once again, thank you

so much to everyone who showed such

solidarity. Now let’s move on to

our Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov

Usmanov. The court—if it can be called a court

at all—you probably saw in the news

that it established the following things

First, that Usmanov did not pay bribes to anyone

—neither to Medvedev nor to Shuvalov. In our

investigation there was nothing about Shuvalov, but

Usmanov’s lawyers rather

thoroughly went through all the instances

when I wrote something about him on my blog

probably going back to 2011, and for

each case they sued me. I

did indeed write that he had paid a bribe

to Shuvalov, and that was not my

investigation—it was an investigation by the Wall Street

Journal, the American newspaper. So anyway,

the court ruled that he did not pay bribes to Shuvalov

did not pay bribes to Medvedev, does not impose censorship at

the newspaper *Kommersant*, and

pays his taxes very diligently. Interestingly,

on this whole issue of rape or no rape

the verdict, the court ruling,

contains absolutely nothing at all, despite the fact that

Usmanov’s side was making a great deal of noise about it there

What people wrote to me most often, in huge letters,

was: please, a little slower. I actually

speak this fast only because

I'm nervous. Sorry, please.

I'll try to speak more slowly. So,

the main thing they wrote

in their ruling—the whole point of

this entire exercise—was to remove the film *He Is Not Dimon to You*.

It sounds like only the parts

concerning Usmanov need to be removed. But since in our case

everything is interconnected, and from the video

it's impossible to remove just that. Of course, they

are demanding that the entire film be taken down,

and of course, as I've already said several times,

I posted the video, I even wrote it on

a cup: of course I will not delete this video.

And the Anti-Corruption Foundation will not delete

anything either. We are not going to do that, and we are not

going

to publish the truth, you know,

publish an investigation, and then say,

"Oh, well, the court has forbidden us

to publish this truth, the court told us

to remove this truth." Of course I will never do that.

And the biggest number of

questions are coming in precisely about this: so

what happens now, what will happen next?

Olga Lobachyova asks: on

what grounds did the court conclude that you personally

are the owner of the account and that you personally must

delete the video? What

evidence was there? The thing is, they didn't

prove it—I said it myself. Well,

Usmanov's lawyer asked me, "Was it you

who published it?" I'm not going to say, "And you

prove that it was me who published it." I'm not

going to play that game. I said: yes,

I published it on my personal account.

I stand by and am ready to prove every word

of what was published there. So they didn't

need to prove that fact.

What happens next is this: well, court bailiffs will come to me,

they'll say, "Here is the court

decision—delete it." And I'll tell them I won't.

After that, they'll probably

keep chasing me around, these bailiffs,

they'll fine me for failure to comply with

the court decision. Well, I do not recognize this

court decision. Let them fine me.

Today Vadim Kobzev, my lawyer,

he

put forward this version in *Novaya Gazeta* (an independent Russian newspaper),

I think, that this could be used

to change my suspended sentence

to a real prison term, because there will be

an administrative case for

failure to comply with a court decision, and that could be used

to argue that I am, so to speak, chronically

violating the law. But I don't know—I think

that this is

unlikely. Theoretically and legally,

it is possible, but in any case I am not

going to delete anything, and I am not going to comply with this

court decision. What do you think about

the rating of your investigation on

KinoPoisk? It's at 9.6. Yes, indeed,

I saw that on KinoPoisk (a Russian film database and review site), our film

was given a rating of 9.6, but there it's already ahead of

*Forrest Gump*, *The Shawshank Redemption*, and

all the masterpieces of world cinema. Well,

I take our film calmly. I

understand that of course it is inferior to *The Shawshank Redemption*,

*Forrest Gump*, and films like that, but

it's pleasant for me—it's support, the fact that people

are spreading the film now, and the fact

that they are giving it a high score simply as a sign of support,

giving it a high

rating. So, returning to the court decision,

a large number of people wrote to me, including

respected people whose opinions

I listen to, and I wanted to dwell on this topic

separately.

"Alexei, you're a presidential

candidate. You're a lawyer, an attorney. How can you

write things like, 'I don't care about

the court's decision, I'm not going to comply with it'? That

undermines trust in the judicial

system. That's not good. Couldn't you

express yourself a bit more

carefully about this court decision—say

that it's bad, that it's unjust,

and therefore you won't comply, but nevertheless

you still have a high level of trust in

the judicial system, because that's so important,

and blah blah blah.'

Well, I'm not going to do that, and this is my

principled position. I truly

do not respect the courts of the Russian Federation. I

believe that the courts of the Russian Federation and

its judges are the worst of all. They are worse than those

who rig elections, they are worse than those

who fabricate criminal cases, they are worse than those

who lie on television, because

the judicial system is the main pillar

of this corrupt regime. The judicial

system is one of the pillars of society.

It is the place where disputes are resolved. That's how I see it.

And you think so too: there should be a place

where we can come and someone will judge between us. This is

one of the most important things humanity has created.

Our lives are

an endless conflict, and there must be a place

where we can come and achieve at least

a somewhat fair decision. Such a

place does not exist in Russia. You can call it a

court, you can put a sign on it,

you can say, "Look, in the picture hangs the famous

Themis statue installed at the Supreme

Court of Russia," and you can see that this is very

symbolic, because the classical

Themis has a sword, she has scales, and she has

a blindfold, because she must not

see who has come before her. She must

deliver justice for everyone regardless

of who stands before her.

But Russian Themis is like

an auntie who looks at the person who

has come before her: if it's an official, then...

If this is the authorities, then it's some Usmanov-type figure.

It always rules in his favor.

I do not respect that kind of judicial system, and

I never will. All authoritarian

regimes are sustained to a large extent by

the judicial system—first and foremost by

the courts, and only then by censorship,

lies, and the repressive apparatus. But

of course the courts are the main thing. That's

what is happening in Venezuela right now, yes.

The opposition there went into

the elections, it won the elections, it gained

a majority in the National Assembly, and

yet Maduro still retains

power in the country. He dissolved parliament

relying on the judicial system. There

are a few lying crooks there

whom he controls. They hung a sign above

themselves saying "court" and say, "Respect

us because we are the court. You can see

it says 'court' here. So everyone is supposed to

respect a court ruling," and they overturn

everything. They are not interested in the will of the people,

they are not interested in rights—people's rights mean nothing

to them, nor do their aspirations or hopes. They are not

interested in the fact that people there are now

living in poverty and standing in enormous lines

to buy food, because they are the court.

And we should not treat the Russian courts

with any respect at all, and I am not going to

treat them with respect.

Here's another example, from

my own personal

experience. I was at a session of the Presidium

of the Supreme Court—the highest instance in

Russia. Supposedly, that is where

the cream of the legal community has gathered—the best

lawyers in Russia, the most respected

people. And there I am, supposed to sit

across from them and feel reverence. My

God, the courtroom is so beautiful. Everything there

is arranged so elegantly, the chairs are

placed just so, there are columns standing there, and

the only thing missing is wigs, and

over all of it there practically hovers

the message: respect

the court. You have no right to say anything against us,

even if you do not like it. Still

you must respect it. But I am sitting there, and I

see that among the members of this Presidium sits

Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court Oleg Sviridenko,

and I know that he is sitting there pretending to be

a great jurist, but he was recently

caught with a stolen

dissertation.

There was an investigation—I was not involved in it. It was

the academic community Dissernet (a Russian network that investigates plagiarism in dissertations); they

found that the gentleman had a stolen

dissertation. And he sits there in that robe, and

above him it says 'court,' but the dissertation is

stolen. And when complaints were filed about

all of this and they tried to strip him of

that academic degree—and they should have stripped him of it

because the dissertation was stolen—

it was sent to the very same dissertation

council of which he is a member, and it all

came to nothing. There was a huge scandal,

journalists

were all over it, there was a lot of talk

about it, but he remained a Doctor of Sciences,

and he demands some kind of respect for himself.

No, I will not respect that. I know that they are

not distinguished jurists at all, just people with

stolen dissertations. I am not going to stay

silent about it. I am not going to feel

any respect for them. Today news came in:

in the Moscow City Court they discovered

You can see the photograph, yes, published by Mediazona (an independent Russian news outlet)

—a person

chained to a wall.

And there are reports, there is testimony, that

these people are chained up like this and beaten,

or chained up and kept that way for

a fairly long time in

that restrained state. Supposedly,

this—well, it looks monstrous—

is meant to be used so that

so that

people under investigation can review

the case materials and not run away anywhere. I

do not understand why they need to be chained up. It

looks quite strange. And if there is concern

that they will destroy the case materials

or eat them, they could tear them up with one hand

or stuff them into

their mouth. And in general this looks

wild. They are people under investigation—they are not even

convicted; they are presumed innocent. They

are being chained up, but in fact all of this

is being used as

a torture device. Imagine that you are

chained by the hand like this and you have to

sit there for hours. And it is well known that in the

Moscow City Court, people under investigation wait

for hours before they are taken into the courtroom, and

they sit in that position, they are beaten,

they are tormented. A large number of

testimonies were published today.

Am I supposed to respect a court like that?

And

the Moscow City Court is the largest court in Russia. Do you know

what comment they made today about

this? They said: well, this

is not

our responsibility—those torture rooms are not something the Moscow City Court is responsible for.

Just

fantastic. In a normal country, in

the beautiful Russia of the future—well, in principle,

what should have happened is this:

the court chair, Yegorova, should have

said, "I am shocked that in our court

something like this is happening, that people are being tortured

right in the building of the Moscow City

Court. I am immediately filing a report with

the police. We want to completely dissociate ourselves from what

is happening. It is absolutely unacceptable." But

instead they say, "Well, it's not us. It's

the police, you know," they tell us.

The city court: and here we’ve even got a wall as well.

It’s padded with foam, so when people in there are

being beaten with batons, we can’t hear it. Excellent

soundproofing, so we don’t know anything

about it. Let the police deal with it.

So what, I’m supposed to respect a judicial system like that?

I’m supposed to respect these people for

all this? I’m not going to do that.

I don’t consider the judicial system at all

to be a judicial system. It’s just a bunch of

hangers-on and lackeys who simply serve

this regime for quite a high salary,

by the way.

So then, Elmir Shamsudinov

asks: in Ufa, at a college, they held

a talk about the June 12 rallies. Anyone who

goes, they said, would be expelled. They’re lying. No one

is going to expel anyone. Last time too

they threatened that. It’s impossible. If someone makes

statements like that,

record them on your phone and

upload it to YouTube. That’s your best

guarantee of safety. No one is going to

be expelled, and at least so far no one has been.

A student paying tuition submitted an application to

hold a rally, and then he was called in

and told, “Listen, withdraw the application and we’ll move you from

a paid place to a

state-funded one.” A funny situation, right?

If you want to switch from a paid place to a state-funded one,

you can promise them something.

“Transfer me, but please don’t make me withdraw

the application,” or ask them to have

someone else found. I mean, we

understand what’s happening: the Kremlin has given

clear instructions to the authorities: don’t do

anything except make sure that on June 12

as few people as possible come out. Our

response is what? To bring out as many people

as possible. Because if we don’t come out, they’ll

go on stealing.

They’ll steal everything, from our future to, I don’t know,

the sun itself, like in a

fairy tale.

So, Valentina Kosterina rewatched it.

Today *He Is Not Dimon to You* ended up on Pornhub.

There’s never been more irony. Valentina, you don’t

have to watch it on Pornhub; for now we still

haven’t had it removed from our main

account, but it really was

funny. And we won’t remove it from our

main account, so you’ll always be able to

watch it on the site, on the blog at

navalny.com/dimon

navalny.com. Well, okay, it’s amusing that

it was even uploaded to PornHub. It’s a good

demonstration that they still won’t manage

to delete it completely. Sure, they’ll try

to block something, I don’t know,

maybe they’ll come here by force,

make me give up my passwords, log into

the YouTube account, and delete the film. So

what? I’ll just restore it again. I

just want it to remain available. I want

people to keep sharing it, because

it’s all the pure truth, and all our

claims against Medvedev are justified, and we

will keep saying that if

the country’s prime minister controls foundations

into which 70 billion rubles (about 70 billion RUB) were pumped, and

expensive real estate was bought, then he must

answer to us, to everyone.

You can’t do that, even in a rich

country, much less in one this poor, so

so yes, upload it

everywhere. Yury Yershov: the more people come out, the

faster this rotten regime will

collapse. Exactly. The fact that it’s rotten doesn’t

mean some kind of catastrophe is inevitable. It

means things will get better. When this

regime goes, there won’t be some kind of

terrible revolution, people won’t be

running through the streets. Things will improve. In a

fairly short time, we’ll simply become

richer, because these people

who seized all this have dug in and

are trying to convince us that if they’re gone,

there’ll be civil war. But

they’re lying. Without them, we’ll simply live

better and more prosperously, because they’ll stop

so thoroughly

robbing us. “I showed the film to my grandmother,” writes

Evgenia Parker. “She came up with some of her own

arguments, reminded me that her pension

was increased by 54 rubles this year — like a spit

in the face. She doesn’t believe it.” Television

propaganda works very well. Of course

television propaganda works

extremely well. Besides, remember: it may not have

been all 18 of Putin’s years in power,

that television propaganda has been operating, but at least

since 2003 it’s all just been brainwashing.

So your

grandmother has had

— excuse me — her ears filled with this nonsense for 15 years. Do you

think showing her the film once

will work? No. Keep working, talk to

your grandmother more often, look for new arguments.

We’re not going to have an easy victory. The country has

obviously been stupefied. But my broadcast

gets anywhere from 600,000 to 1.5 million viewers,

by the way. Subscribe to

our channel, definitely. And even when

a recorded video, not a live stream, gets a million views, that’s good,

2–3 million people watch it, but

they are broadcasting to audiences of millions

every second across several channels.

So there’s no need to think that with one

film we can somehow

overcome that. There are lots of questions about the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Today I was on the program *Where’s the Money?* with

Vladimir Milov — the best

economic program out of those

currently around — and we discussed there in quite some detail

the St. Petersburg economic forum.

You can watch it, but let me show you

the St. Petersburg economic forum in a single

picture. Show the picture — there it is.

And there’s Tula Region Governor Dyumin.

Putin’s former bodyguard is signing

an agreement with the prosecutor general’s eldest son,

Chaika’s son, and an agreement

to continue building a salt monopoly.

That’s what the Chaika family business is doing — there it is in full.

The St. Petersburg Economic Forum — there you have it,

the whole Russian economy, the whole of Russian business.

In Russia, Putin’s former bodyguard

signs an agreement with the eldest son

of the prosecutor general. That’s it — no one else in Russia

has any prospects of doing anything. Everything

that happens is within the inner circle,

which keeps reshuffling property,

which makes money, as we can see,

once again from raw materials. What is salt? The same thing —

a raw commodity. These people have sunk their teeth in, and they’ve already

latched onto Russia, onto its national

wealth, and now they hold

various forums for themselves, do various things, some kind of

panel sessions. But to real life, to

real business, to real development,

this has long had nothing to do with any of that. But

what will any foreign investor do

when they look at what’s going on? Sure,

sons and bodyguards are

doing deals with each other, wheeling and dealing. Where

is there room here for normal business? There

simply isn’t any. So this entire economic

forum... The boy, the boy detained on

Arbat (a famous central street in Moscow) — I’ll probably be the million-and-first

person to comment on this

topic. Everyone has already spoken out, but I still

want

to comment on it, first of all

because it was interesting to watch

the discussion. At first, everyone

was outraged and said, “What a disgrace,”

“the police are arresting a boy,” and I

also wrote that these police officers

are criminals and should be put on trial immediately

for what they did to the boy and his

mother. But then this whole thing started

where everyone began to doubt: well, maybe that wasn’t his mother

but his stepmother, and the boy was apparently

begging, and the boy’s real mother

showed up, and it seemed like this trend began

where we all started saying, “Well, this is

all kind of ambiguous, not quite

what it looked like at first glance,” and several

people wrote to me: “Well, Alexei, you

should take back what you said about

the police being criminals, because

everything there is

complicated.” Okay, let’s think about it

this way. A simple line of reasoning that I have

in my head — I’ll try to share it

with you. Let’s imagine the worst

case: the boy’s evil stepmother

forces him to beg passersby for money

by reciting *Hamlet*, beats him if

he doesn’t bring in enough money, and spends the money

on drugs or on

making this boy

drink vodka too, and the boy is somehow supporting

some horrible dens — that is, let’s imagine

the absolute extreme, the very worst. Well,

even if that is true, it means

one thing: this boy is one of the most

unhappy people in the world. His life is

simply hell, a nightmare. And then let’s

ask ourselves: should

the scene we witnessed

during the detention of this boy

and his maybe-mother, maybe-stepmother — let’s

briefly watch the video again

once more.

Please.

No, I won’t let the child go.

Please, think about what you’re doing to the child.

I

said it. I said it.

No. What

are you doing? He has a mother, he’s alive... Passersby don’t

understand what’s happening, someone is filming it

on a phone — and this is supposed to be care for the boy?

Well, that’s why I wrote what I wrote, and I still

believe that the police officers, of course, should

be put on trial, regardless of what exactly

was going on there. Of course, everyone has a complicated

life; there are no simple situations — stepmother,

mother, everything is complicated, everyone hates each other,

you know how these things happen in families,

it’s always very complicated, everyone suffers,

they got divorced, they can’t divide the children. But

what I want to say is that this is not

a contribution to the public good

when the police grab this boy and drag him

somewhere while he screams, because after all

he is still a little boy. And if he is, all the more so,

a beggar, then he certainly didn’t become a beggar

because life was good. He is suffering, and they

drag him away, leaving him with trauma for the rest of

his life. The police are supposed to exist

to make people’s lives

easier. We created social workers, we

created commissions for juvenile

affairs in order to

help minors who find themselves in

difficult situations. If the police saw

a boy who, well, appeared to be begging,

they should approach him and, in the most

polite, gentle tone, say: “Dear

boy, what’s your name? Where is your mother? Can

we call your mother? Give us her

phone number — you don’t have a phone? Here is ours,

try calling your mother yourself

from our phone. You don’t want to call your mother? You don’t want to say

anything? All right. Then may we simply

sit here beside you and

watch over you for now so that no one bothers you?”

And they should sit down next to the boy and keep an eye

on him, while they themselves call a social worker,

and then a polite lady would come to the boy,

her eyes full

of compassion, and she would not grab

him by the scruff of the neck or drag him away, but would say,

“Dear boy, what happened to you?”

How can we help you? Maybe you need...

a psychologist. Maybe we can feed you. Maybe you're...

hungry. Come on, tell us. Where is your mother? And...

what can we do? Come on...

let's sit down somewhere. I'll take you there. We want...

to help you, boy. That's how it should...

work in a normal system, and there should be no dragging

anyone away, neither in front of passersby nor

even if no one sees it at all.

That's the only way it should happen, and...

no other way. The police and all these

institutions are supposed to help society. And

whether he's a beggar or not a beggar,

first of all, he's not a beggar. This is still

street art — he's performing, reciting all this.

Excuse me, but near practically every

church we also have these beggars sitting there. Well, they

sit there quite legally, they have

the right to sit there. Someone may not

agree with me, but it's a Russian

tradition to end up on the church steps ("на паперти" — begging outside a church); the expression

itself reflects the idea that in Russia, near

churches, unfortunate people sit. Yes, maybe

they are professional beggars, but

you can't say they are happy.

Right? Again, they're not there because of a good

life. They sit there and ask

for money, and they will keep sitting there asking

for money. That's how it works, especially in a poor

Russia like the one we have now. No one is

dragging them away, no one is hauling them off anywhere. That's how it should be.

This is what happens. Unfortunately, when it comes to

these

professional collectors of alms,

the police simply take money. They saw a boy

who hadn't paid some kind of tribute for

this wonderful spot in the city center, on

Arbat. That's why they dragged him away. That's why

this happened — not because they wanted

to help the boy, no way, not to help.

You can't help a boy like that if he's crying, if he's screaming in

the car. So I absolutely believe that

the very framework of this discussion is wrong:

we start trying to figure out what's going on

inside, but we, we, we know that none of this

"they're drug addicts," "someone beats him if he doesn't

beg for alms" — none of that is the point.

If this is happening for some reason, then people

need help. If the state

for some reason wants to get involved at all, then it

should provide help, including to this

unfortunate boy. I'll

give you an example from the practice of

American police. Anyone who has been to the

U.S., or lives there, may have encountered

a situation like this. At least many

of my acquaintances have encountered

it. If you're in some unfamiliar

city walking at night, you're a suspicious

person wandering around some

residential neighborhood. Everyone lives in one-story

houses, and a person is walking, and the police see him.

What do the police do? Well, if the person isn't

— let's say — carrying a TV or holding a rifle,

they don't even start

checking documents right away: "Citizen,

stop there, show me your papers." They drive up to him

and ask, "Where are you headed?" You tell them,

"I'm going home, leave me alone,"

and again they won't say, "Oh yeah? Hands on

the hood, we're checking you." They'll say,

"Come on, we'll give you a ride," because they want

to drive him home and make sure

he goes into his apartment — which means he's not

just loitering around. That's how it should

work. If the person says, "I'm not going,

my home isn't there," and can't

name an address, then probably the police

will follow him, or check, or

take an interest. But no one will simply

drag a person away just because he's

just a person. The police are supposed to help.

An example from my own experience:

when I was studying at Yale University, I

lived in New Haven. It's considered fairly

problematic in terms of

safety, although personally I never

noticed that. It seemed super

safe to me. So the police offered

a special service:

if you're coming back late from

the university to your home, they can

give you a ride. There's a special phone number,

and the police come for you — university police

or regular police — and they literally, like

a taxi, just drive you home. More than that,

if you don't want to be driven

and you're used to walking, someone will come to you

and walk with you, simply like

a personal bodyguard, and chat with you on the way.

I know this from personal experience.

When Zakhar was little, we had a

nanny. They were out walking somewhere in the evening,

it got dark, and I'm sitting at home when I see some kind of

police car bringing my child and the nanny, and

I say, "What on earth happened?" They say,

"Well, we just thought

it was getting a bit dark already, so I called,

and they walked us home." So she was walking with

the stroller, and a police officer was walking beside her.

That's what the police are for: to increase

the public good, to care for

citizens, not to catch them and torment them. Since we've

started talking

about all these arrests of children, I was asked

about this Holi color festival

and the unrest that took place in

Chelyabinsk. Now that is a real example of idiocy.

So here's what happened: they announced

a Holi festival, a festival of colors,

then banned it, but the teenagers came anyway

and staged a full-blown — I don't even

know — some kind of riot with the police and

a showdown. I was simply stunned. Well, my

wife went to this Holi festival with the children.

Holi — honestly, I really...

Here's a photo from Yulia's Instagram, I

found it специально. Honestly, I really...

I was sure it had nothing to do with it.

with some Indian gods — it was just

some paint manufacturers putting on

a promotional campaign and handing out these paints so that

everyone could throw them in each other’s faces.

Wonderful, everyone’s having fun. It turned out

that yes, it’s some kind of pagan holiday in

honor of a Hindu goddess. Well, and Maslenitsa (the traditional Russian pre-Lenten folk festival),

what is that? It’s also a pagan holiday, and

if the church is unhappy with an Indian

pagan holiday, then let’s ban Maslenitsa too.

In any case, nothing at all is happening

except that children and their

parents are having fun and smearing each

other with paint.

[applause]

You see, there’s some kind of scuffle, people grabbing cars,

disorder, and shouting “AUE” (a Russian criminal-prison subculture slogan). You see, what is

the point of this idiocy? Idiocy

has produced more idiocy — that is, children

are shouting the slogans of the criminal underworld, and in doing so

they begin to set themselves against

the state, they begin to relate this way

to

to the state, they begin to relate this way

to the police. How else could they relate?

Why is all this needed? Why this stupidity?

What our authorities are doing — this

constant “don’t allow it” and “ban it” — it simply

brings nothing but problems and costs us

an enormous amount of money. In Chelyabinsk,

the crime situation is difficult, and the police,

instead of doing their

actual job, were breaking up all these

festivals. And remember, a year ago, two

years ago, everyone was saying — human rights activists,

politicians, and I said it too — that when the authorities

start devouring everything around them, when this

mad Leviathan begins to consume

people, jailing them for likes and reposts,

it cannot stop. And everyone always

treats this as some kind of

rhetorical phrase — “the authorities won’t stop

and will keep making things worse” — but in fact

people think it’s nonsense. It’s not nonsense.

You see, that is exactly what happens.

It’s impossible to stop; there always has to be

something else to ban. If the city authorities themselves

and the police themselves internally feel

like bodies that exist only

to prohibit things, then that is what they will

keep doing all the time. They’ll be banning

the Holi festival, and in the beautiful Russia

of the future, everyone will be able to throw

paint at each other — but not brilliant green (a harsh antiseptic dye often used in Russia for attacks and harassment).

As much as they like, until they’re blue in the face, painted every color under the sun,

please — it’s the right

of citizens to do that. Lav Rosla asks:

how do you feel about people in power

starting to follow your example and

use YouTube — for example, the channel

of Roizman (Yevgeny Roizman, Russian politician). Wonderful — Roizman launched

a channel, and I urge people to subscribe to it.

It really makes my heart glad. I very much want

there to be as many channels as possible, for them

to appear in the regions, so that people speak out,

because this is our chance to defeat

the monopoly. In this very first program, in

my first broadcast on Navalny Live, I

said that we launched all this in order

to show everyone that this can be

done, that none of this is expensive, that

completely non-professional hosts

like me can do it. I’m terribly scared to host

every broadcast — it’s the scariest thing

I do in my life. People often ask me

this question: aren’t you afraid to go to

a rally? Aren’t you afraid of detention? No,

that’s not scary. Hosting Navalny Live

is genuinely scary. Even today I tried

to reformat the program and have

Kira Yarmysh, my

press secretary, sit here with me so that, well,

there’d at least be some kind of dialogue, so it wouldn’t be

so scary alone. But we discovered that

these images that appear next to me

wouldn’t appear

properly — they would just show up over her head — so we had

to remove Kira from the broadcast after all. So

of course I support what everyone is doing,

these wonderful

broadcasts. Dmitry Galkovsky with a boy...

There’s nothing complicated about it. And the cops, in any case,

are criminals; at the very least they should have been dismissed from the Interior Ministry.

But they were not fired. As we know, the Interior Ministry

did apologize after all, but nevertheless they

were not dismissed, no one sent them to the dock,

and what is most striking

to me in this story — did you notice?

The authorities immediately came out in

support of them. Here’s a quote from Neverov (Sergey Neverov, a senior United Russia politician):

Why? It seems obvious — everyone

was outraged, so Neverov and

United Russia could have been outraged too and said, well,

why are the police wasting time on nonsense? But no, they

feel obliged, every time

society is outraged by something, to

say that you are outraged for the wrong reasons.

In every single case, every single time when

people are unhappy about something, they absolutely must

justify the worst ghouls,

the police officers who engage in nonsense,

those who torture, and so on. The authorities

consider it necessary to stand

on their side, on the side of the villains, and

to identify themselves completely with them.

Renovation — I seem to have gotten carried away talking, I

see.

It’s 21:08, and I definitely want to get to the topic of

renovation, because we conducted a poll and

as I promised, I’m going to tell you the results

of that poll exactly as they are. Echo of Moscow will be

very pleased right now, but

we need to know what honest sociology says,

what Muscovites really think

about renovation. In short, they

rather support renovation. Let’s

go to the first slide, so, first...

Slide: Do you know anything at all about the renovation program?

Here we can see an interesting

thing: older people, for the most part,

are more aware of the renovation program. This

suggests that Sobyanin's (Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin's)

system of television and newspapers,

and all the many other channels, worked quite well

on this issue, while younger people

who use the internet are less informed

about the renovation program. But nevertheless,

most Muscovites still know about it or

have at least heard something. Now, slide number two,

please: do you support or not

support the program? Here Sergei

Semyonovich (Sergei Sobyanin) is probably rejoicing, and they will now

be saying that even opposition figure

Navalny, with his honest polling,

admitted that people support it. Yes, we can see that

most Muscovites support it or

rather support it, but

what is absolutely

remarkable is that we have seen how, over the past

few months, Sobyanin and the mayor's office

have quite significantly changed their

original program. Today

it was announced that they removed perhaps

the most outrageous provision, the one stating

that among the votes, those of people who did not

vote would automatically be counted as in favor.

Now they have said that

those votes will be divided proportionally.

This shows that those

10% of active opponents are in

the minority. But their role is absolutely

essential in order to protect

the interests of the majority. If it were not for these

active 10% who were outraged on

social media, went to rallies, and

the renovation would have gone ahead in its most terrible

form, the most corrupt

and most nightmarish one. But these 10% came out

and, with their opinion, protected everyone, and

once again this shows how important it is

to voice protest, how important it is

to take to the streets, and that any position held by the authorities

can be broken if you act.

Please show us the next slide.

Active

Citizen — fictitious citizen, as we

know, an absolute fraud.

The mayor's office did a pretty good job, and most

people — and interestingly, by the way,

young people too — think this is the right

way to account for Muscovites' opinions

regarding

the renovation program. In this slide, of course, I

don't like the fact that everyone has been so thoroughly brainwashed and

people believe in the Active Citizen system.

Active Citizen is absolutely

fraudulent.

Still, the fact that people generally welcome

electronic democracy, direct

voting on the internet — if only it

were honest. That would be very good. Next

slide, the last one: do you agree or not

with the demands of the participants in the rally

calling for the cancellation of the program? Here

it gets interesting, because we can see that

the share who agree or rather agree is larger than

the number of those who are dissatisfied. Very actively

dissatisfied are 10%, but they are supported by

a larger number of people. That is, even those

who are generally inclined to support the program

still think it is right that people come out and

speak out, that it is right for people to come forward with

their own specific concerns, and they

support this — uh — more people

support these active 10%. Although

nevertheless, honestly, we are not going to

manipulate the data if the data

may not seem quite as nice to us.

Of course, it would be a great slide if

we could now show that 90% of Muscovites fully

share the protesters' demands, but that is not

the case. We are showing you things as they

are. Putin said something that

honestly just stunned me. I would like

to say a few words about it. Please show

us that quote. You see, I

have already dealt with one U.S. president, and

another, and a third.

Presidents come and go, but policy

does not

change. You see, here I am sitting there as

the president of Russia, and past me, like

commuter trains, U.S. presidents rush by:

one, two, three, four — my God,

some riffraff, some fussy little people,

while I alone am this kind of political

pillar, staying in my place, while they over there

just keep changing and changing. Well, fools, so what?

If they change, that means they are weak. Their presidents

and their strange state. And what is interesting is

that they boast about this — they really

think this is cool, and the population is supposed to

be convinced that it is cool. Some kind of

idiots, those Americans, changing their

presidents. We have one president, and he

stays put. That means he is better because

he has stayed longer. And this is an important thing

that we need to understand and that we

need to answer in response to all this nonsense

about flickering presidents and our

stable one: the main consequence of the fact that

you, my friend, have been sitting there for 17 years while past you

others flicker by is that in Russia

the average salary is 36,000 rubles, while in the U.S.

the average salary, converted into rubles,

is 187,000 rubles. That is what it means.

Rotation of power means

concrete prosperity for citizens. Well,

then he should give an interview and say: here I am,

I sit here while they keep changing and changing. Well,

and yet somehow they still pay people

187,000 rubles, while here it is 36,000. That is what

it means. So this is simply very

important. I decided to dwell on this because, unfortunately,

even among ordinary people there are

There are people who say, “Well, ours—our guy—”

“our president is better, because over there they all”

“keep changing, while ours stays in place. Maybe that”

“is a sign that there’s no one better.” No, it’s simply

the reason why we are poorer, and I can’t

at the very end—not that. It’s good that I managed

to, well,

to respond. “Navalny is awesome,” someone writes to me.

AUE—that’s the “Unified Anti-Corruption Order” (a joking reinterpretation of the Russian criminal slang acronym AUE),

nothing criminal about it. Well, no, I think

even though we can decode

AUE as the “Unified Anti-Corruption Order,” still

let’s refrain

from using that chant too widely.

Now, the police—yes, speaking of AUE.

Today we were simply stunned—I was stunned

to the depths of my soul—by the deputy interior

minister, Mr. Zubov, who stated

that police actions must, a priori,

be considered lawful. Everything a

police officer does is absolutely legal, and if

you don’t

like something, then go to court. And then came the

fantastic phrase: “It must be in the blood”

of every person. In other words, with our very blood

we are supposed to absorb a certain respect and

submission toward the police. And maybe I wouldn’t have

been so angry about that phrase

—outrageous, insulting, and simply

indecent, of course—if I didn’t know who

Deputy Minister Zubov is. Because we’ve been watching this

gentleman for a long time. He was the very

same person who, on behalf of the Interior Ministry,

spoke out against our draft law on

combating illicit enrichment, against

ratifying Article 20 of the convention.

Back then, he spoke for the Interior Ministry and said

that this article must not be introduced because

there must be a presumption of trust

toward officials. And when an official

speaks out against Article 20,

speaks out against fighting illicit

enrichment, speaks out against our

concept that officials must

explain where their wealth comes from, I—I

do something very simple: I go

to the Interior Ministry website, look at the person’s asset declaration,

look in particular at Mr.

Zubov’s declaration—and what do I see there? An official,

a police officer, in government service his whole life: one

Range Rover, another Range Rover, a Land

Rover, a Jeep, a GMC. And his income is 5 million rubles (about $55,000),

his wife’s income is 8 million rubles (about $88,000), and this man

is now trying to prove to me that I

and all of you must have in your blood

—forgive me—respect for him.

We are supposed to assume a priori that he is right about

everything, that he enjoys a presumption of trust, and that we should

just salute and accept that

these people can do whatever they want

with us. No, I’m not going to do that, and

it’s impossible to do that. But answer us,

please, Igor Zubov: where did you get

all of this? What does your wife do that

she has an income of 8 million rubles (about $88,000)? That’s quite a large

income. I think very few of our

viewers earn 8 million rubles (about $88,000), but every one

of us—absolutely all of us—is interested in one thing: with

what money did you buy two Range Rovers?

Why do police officials—well, of course we believe

that a deputy interior minister should earn

a good salary—but I strongly doubt

that even in a developed country like

Germany, for example, a deputy interior minister

would, first, be able, and second,

want to buy such

luxury cars—or that his wife

would have such an

unexplained income.

And we do not need any kind of

respect for you “in our blood.” We

consider it necessary, important, and

the only possible approach that officials

treat people with a presumption

of innocence, that officials proceed from the understanding that

—well, of course, we will not automatically

consider everyone thieves—but if there are these signs,

if you’re an official driving around

all around us in a Rover, then

answer the question. That is how a normal system should exist and function.

It is for this system that we

will all come out, including on the 12th—June 12

—into the streets. And once again I urge everyone

to file applications as actively as possible. If you haven’t

managed to submit an application in your city for a

rally, then apply for a picket. Urge

as many people as possible to come

to these rallies. Spread

the word. Explain why we are going,

why we want answers to

our questions, why instead of answers we are

being told insulting things, why people are

laughing at us—and we are not going to

put up with it. We do not need any submission

before these people “in our blood,” and we will never

agree to what they are offering

us—that they think they

should have a presumption of innocence, while we

are supposed to, like somewhere in Syktyvkar (a city in northern Russia), on some

swamp far from the city center,

stand quietly behind a birch tree and say,

“Excuse us, please, we have a small

little question about corruption…” That

is not going to happen. We will come out onto the main square

and we will say loudly what we want and

what we have a right to. Thank you very much

for being with me on this broadcast.

Subscribe to our channel—here

they tell the truth. Until next

[music]

Thursday.

Uh.