Putin is Hublot. Colleagues, this is f***ing insane. Fans and E-Center officers (anti-extremism police).

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow,

which means that in the studio

it is time for the program *Russia of the Future* and Alexei

Navalny, or,

as the Kremlin media called me this week, a lavishly living windbag.

That is what the Kremlin media called me this week.

Please send your questions, suggestions, comments,

and complaints to me, the lavishly living windbag,

your questions, suggestions, and comments,

on Twitter with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture.

As the program goes on, I will try

to talk a bit about what I had planned

and to answer your questions.

I want to begin with an unplanned

topic, but life itself has brought us to it.

It is a very important issue, and everyone is discussing it endlessly:

why is it that in Russia

the economy does not grow, wages do not rise,

nothing develops, and people are fleeing?

Two hundred thousand people leave the country every year,

and right now we are seeing

the answer. If you open any

business news feed, or go on Twitter,

and read it, you will see that it is all filled

with the unfamiliar letters Nginx and the name

of someone you most likely had never heard of before:

Igor Sysoev. If you are not involved in website development,

then, to my shame, I honestly

knew nothing either about the existence

of the company Nginx

or about Igor Sysoev himself. And now

the company is being searched, as I understand it,

Sysoev himself has been detained,

and one of his business partners

has also been detained. And this is, in fact,

a very big and very

important case that explains why, in

Putin's Russia, nothing will develop.

Because the company Nginx,

despite the fact that you may not have

heard of it—I repeat, if you are not in the website business—

website development,

is a very large and very successful project.

Of course, it is not on the scale of Yandex,

but in fact it is probably not something

that should be compared that way. They make web servers, and on those

web servers runs half of the Russian

internet—more than half of the Russian internet.

It is the most popular web server in the world.

Recently, part of this company's shares were

sold to an American

major IT company for

$700 million. In general, everyone expected

that Sysoev would soon

become a billionaire. In other words, this is a big,

cool, successful business—the exact kind of business

that just recently

Putin was talking about when he said: let us help

these people; we need breakthroughs

in the field of artificial intelligence. You are all sitting here,

so smart, programming something,

coding something,

creating something wonderful and groundbreaking.

And very recently, Putin told us a million times

that these businessmen should not be harassed,

that businesspeople should not live

under the threat of criminal charges. Here is Putin, for 34 seconds,

defending business, saying that today

almost half of all cases—45 percent—

opened against

entrepreneurs are dropped before they ever reach

court.

What does that mean? It means that perhaps

for some reason or other, or for reasons that are not clear,

dear colleagues, in order

to achieve the large-scale goals that stand

before the country, we need

to get rid of everything that restricts

the freedom and initiative of entrepreneurship.

Honest business should not

constantly live under the threat of prosecution, constantly

feeling the risk of criminal or even

administrative punishment.

Business should not constantly face

the risk of criminal or administrative

punishment. And there is an absolutely astonishing

document—I cannot show it to you

in full, because there is a lot of fine print there—

but look at what is written by the investigators.

What has now infuriated and driven mad not only

the entire IT community, but also all lawyers,

of course the entire business press, and indeed

any normal person—let us look at

a fragment of the ruling. In fact,

why are they now conducting searches at a successful company

and detaining its founder?

Unidentified persons, no later than October 4,

2004, having obtained access to the rights to

a certain program, unlawfully reassigned to themselves

exclusive and copyright rights to it.

Roughly speaking, what are they accusing

this very Sysoev of?

Of the fact that in 2004—that is, 15 years ago—

15 years ago,

while working as a programmer at Rambler,

he coded something,

then created his own company, and that company

was successfully sold, earning hundreds of millions

of dollars. And now Rambler and

the well-known oligarch Mamut have come to him

and said: listen, you made that thing back in 2004,

and at that moment you were working

for us, receiving a salary from us, and were, so to speak,

our employee, so all of that

is ours, all of it is ours, it should

belong to us—hand it over. And this is

simply astonishing. First, 15 years have passed.

Second, as far as I can see, people are writing

that even the criminal provision itself

under which he is being charged was introduced

into legislation later, in 2006. But

third, if you have any dispute

over this matter, then sue him in

civil court. But no—the whole scenario there, in fact,

is exactly the same as in every such case:

the sequence of actions begins with

mass searches and detentions of everyone.

to terrorize him, not let him out of the office, but

after that, sort it out later — just take away

all that money from him, and actually there's also

an interesting thing here, so this estate-like mindset, as with

something I was completely unfamiliar with, I didn't know

it even existed, is that if you

think that maybe one of the reasons

why there's such a massive crackdown now

by the state against him is that he, like all

IT people, shows off too much

and says bad things about Putin — no.

As far as I saw on Twitter today,

some of his statements were published, and they

were, well, as people usually say, fairly

pro-regime, local-flavor kind of stuff,

meaning the guy most likely, basically,

supports Putin. Yeah, whatever,

whatever — and then the investigators came running and

all these papers, these orders, but

an order like that, under which of course

the judge should be arrested immediately, and

the investigators should be arrested immediately,

because you cannot carry out

mass searches on the basis of something like this:

that you worked for someone 15 years ago.

So all this is exactly as

many people are quite rightly writing today,

people connected to this field.

And the subtitle of our topic, "the incubator

of Russian startups," I simply took from

one person's Facebook post, where he

quite rightly writes that in Russia, really,

pretrial detention centers (SIZO, Russian remand prisons)

are the real startup incubators, because

they grab everyone, drag everyone in, accuse everyone,

bring claims against everyone.

Stanford University, where all those people studied

who went on to build their giant

companies like Google and so on — they

started building those companies while

they were still studying at Stanford.

Stanford doesn't come out and say, "Now everything

belongs to us." That's not how the IT market works, and

in principle, that's exactly how it should work.

You work for someone —

say, the Anti-Corruption Foundation — but while

working there, coding, you became

an excellent lawyer, or an excellent technician,

you invented something, and then became

a billionaire. But it would be pretty strange

if I came back 15 years later and said:

"Girls, there are two of you sitting here with me

helping me go on air — 15 years

ago you did something really great,

so everything you've done, all of it,

belongs to me." It sounds absurd, but in

practice, in Russia right now,

searches are happening, detentions are happening.

There are many different theories about what exactly

they want to take from this man. Leonid Volkov

Leonid

wrote that he has a theory that this

whole conflict is because through his

servers

a large part of the Russian

internet operates, and they want somehow to force him

to become an FSB employee (Russia's security service),

so that he would help block

the internet or something like that. There are other

versions too. I have my own version.

And please, let's show

that photo of Igor Sysoev again. It seems to me

that it actually explains everything.

Just imagine that

you and I are from the Presidential Administration,

the FSB, or oligarchs like Mamut, and here we

sit there looking at this little guy and

simply understand that the crime itself

is that he has $700

million. How can some

random nobody in a shirt,

some pathetic programmer,

a bespectacled nerd, have $700 million?

That in itself is considered criminal.

No, no — $700 million can only

belong to a man who knows how to live,

who buys a yacht,

who buys a plane, who builds a huge

palace.

But these mustached, weird little guys —

come on, really — they were just

sitting at a computer.

Can that really be considered a contribution to

creating something big if you're just

sitting at a computer?

It's enough to pay you a salary —

take your $1,500 a month

a month and be grateful you were even allowed

to sit in the office. That's really

how all of them think.

And actually, it seems to me — I'm practically

certain — that right now this man

will simply be squeezed. Maybe this publicity

will save him a little. Maybe the fact that he

politically takes such a pro-Putin

position will help him. But despite all that,

now that they've come after him like this,

they'll simply take some portion of

those dollars from him, because he shouldn't have

been showing off. And for the rest of us,

what we'll get is one more new mass

exodus of programmers to anywhere at all,

including Belarus. You know that already now

Belarus has become a paradise for IT,

and huge numbers of people from Russia

are moving to Belarus because for

tech specialists, from a business standpoint,

it's a freer country. There you can

actually work normally.

To Belarus, to Cyprus, to America,

of course to Germany, to Israel —

people will scatter in every direction and

take with them their taxes, their

ideas, their salaries, their money, their

future, and we will simply become, as a result of all this,

a little poorer.

And Mamut, who organized all this —

the business press is already writing about this openly, and

some supposedly successful generals

who will become successful once he slips them some money

of course, a little richer, and that’s how it works, unfortunately

that’s how Russia is set up, unfortunately, and

and so, unfortunately, we have nothing

good to look forward to as long as there is no authority except

the special Olympics you’re apparently waiting for

apparently

Valentina Ivanovna Matviyenko, who after

these sad events I

spoke about on the previous program, between

the last program and this one

it finally became clear that Russia

really will be punished very severely for

Putin’s little doping escapades, and

for four years. Let’s take a look, do we have

a graphic, probably, showing what we

will miss—we’ll miss a great deal in

international competitions: the Summer

Olympics, the Winter Olympics, the World

Championships, the Universiade (international university sports games)

to hell with them, no great loss, those

Universiades are just a pointless waste

of money, but for thousands, tens of thousands

of professional athletes, this is simply

right now

a horrible, nightmarish time. They don’t understand it

they don’t understand that they went into

sports schools their whole lives, they spent their whole lives

preparing so that at this

Olympics they could win—and then, oh no, nothing, nothing

will happen. They’ve all been left with nothing

The story of one biathlete really struck me

there’s Larisa Kuklina, she’s from the Tyumen region

she grew up in an orphanage, and her whole

life she invested in one thing:

to win at the Olympics. That was her

chance to achieve her dream

Well, I hope Larisa will be all right

maybe she’ll compete there not under the flag

and so on, but it is precisely people like this

who have now lost their chance to fulfill

their dream

because of Putin—specifically because

one day Putin told Mutko and that whole

gang of his that, damn it, it was so important for us

to win at the Sochi Olympics that, to hell

with it, let’s fake everything. Guys, the FSB (Russia’s security service),

drill through it, make a hole in the wall

and pass it through there, swap out

the urine samples

Putin personally made that decision, and now because of it

145 million people are suffering

who live in our country, but

Valentina Matviyenko said that no,

there is a solution: we should hold our own

Olympics. Let’s take a look. Matviyenko:

I think Russia has such

colossal experience

in holding international sporting

events of the highest level that we

can hold them in our own country; if

you like, our own Olympic Games. The proposal

is for world-class athletes to take part in them. We must, must

push back against the politicization of sport

this is unacceptable. Thirty-one thousand

people are watching us live. Well yes,

Russia can do everything on its own, after

all. We can do absolutely anything, we can

hold our own World Cup in football (soccer)

we can create our own Nobel Prize

and award it, we can hold our own Olympics

we can do absolutely anything at all

by ourselves

After all, we can hold a beauty pageant

an international Miss Universe, and

the only participants in it will be

the women who sit on the Federation

Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament). That wouldn’t be bad either, because

after all, as Valentina

Ivanovna said, Russia has vast experience, and

there’s no need to politicize—what even

is this, really?

The sheer brazenness, cynicism, hypocrisy—it’s unbelievable

“Don’t politicize it,” they say. The whole world

was shouting, from the moment they first caught us

with this doping—not us, we weren’t

to blame for anything; they caught Putin and his crooks

with this doping. And yes, yes, and between

the first time they were caught and the second moment

when they started falsifying things again

fabricating case materials, the whole world

was shouting: guys, don’t do this, don’t

do this, because

all athletes suffer, all athletes in every

country

work themselves to the bone their whole lives to win, and

nobody likes the fact that you simply

at the state level—not just at the level

of some crooked coach or some

team, but at the state level

start falsifying all this. You have simply

broken the whole of sport this way, because

competing at all has become completely

meaningless. The whole world was shouting that this was exactly

what must not be done, that there was no need

to politicize it. But you see, Putin

puffed out his cheeks (put on a show of bluster)

he simply cannot admit anymore that he was

caught in his lies, and everything

he does, all the instruments of governing

the country, are always some kind of

fabrication—from elections to the Olympics

it’s always some endless fake

and he keeps going down that path of fakery

Well, apparently—I don’t even know what

comes next—we’ll have some kind of fake

Olympics. There used to be things like the Friendship Games

in 1984, when

only some athletes came; I even

remember them a little, although I was very

young then, when there were the Friendship Games, and

it was all—well, all the adults around me

joked about it, and it was pretty clear

why: because it was an attempt

to hold our own Olympics

but everyone understood that what had come were simply

some third-rate, second-rate competitors

The athletes were changing something, the Olympics, and...

it's a mockery, and it really is just...

just some kind of nonsense, but the Party (the ruling political machine)...

said it had to be done, the senile General

Secretary said yes, yes, and all of it

was carried out. By the way, now

I'd like to recall Mutko's words from three years

ago, when he said that Russia's suspension

from the Olympics would not be a tragedy.

Let's remember what Mutko said:

"It won't be a tragedy for us if we're not allowed in,

for the country. We won't go, we won't be there,

there won't be some number of medals. They made it clear to us, and we

stopped politicizing

the results of the Olympic Games long ago. For us there are already

other tasks and values now." But the question

is something else entirely, and that is...

31,000 people are watching us live.

Artyom Loshchin asks me: "Alexei,

why do you keep calling everyone 'those guys'?

'Little guy' and that sort of thing — why do I use

that kind of wording for everything? Well, what am I supposed to

call Mutko? This

guy comes out and says, 'Well, for us this

won't be a tragedy at all if we don't

go to the Olympics. Well, there just won't be

some number of medals.'

Of course it's not a tragedy for him, but for

that very Larisa Kuklina (Russian biathlete), it is

a tragedy. Mutko is doing perfectly well already,

very rich, with huge apartments,

a big dacha (country house),

he's most likely a millionaire,

probably a multimillionaire. His face is this

wide, he's got a great haircut already,

everything is great for him now, while things are not

so good for us. So when I say

'those guys,' it's just for variety,

because on my show otherwise I'd

just have to endlessly use

the word 'crooks,' even though the word 'guys' doesn't

always carry a negative connotation. So,

Danil asks: what do you think about the news

that Putin accepted the resignation of the Irkutsk

governor? I read that some

guy from the Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM) was appointed

acting governor of Irkutsk

Region. I think Governor

Levchenko was basically

eaten alive there.

They kept going after him and going after him. As you remember, he won,

he was one of the governors who

won in a second round against a United Russia candidate quite

unexpectedly. Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region

are quite protest-minded, and there everything really

came to a head.

They beat United Russia there, after which Levchenko

was simply methodically destroyed. I

think that maybe they reached some kind of

agreement there,

forced him somehow, pressured him into submitting

his resignation now in order to, in order to

to

carry out the transition more smoothly,

so that at the next

elections there wouldn't again be a harsh, harsh

confrontation. Maybe Levchenko

was promised something in exchange for a voluntary

resignation. But in any case, I hope that

in Irkutsk Region

they won't end up with a United Russia governor,

some outsider governor. This man, I think

his surname is Kobzev,

is from Voronezh Region. So why

was he appointed there? Because, as you know,

there was flooding there recently,

but let's be honest: there are a lot of myths

about EMERCOM, but it most certainly is not

some super-efficient

structure. It absolutely is not,

not for a second. So I look with great

skepticism at the future under

an outsider governor sent to

Irkutsk Region.

So, people are asking about the Moscow City Duma, about

the deputies a lot — I'll talk about that. They're also asking

about Zelensky too, and about the TNT channel,

I'll say a bit more about that later. Right now I want to talk about

those verdicts that were handed down last

Friday after our own broadcast.

It was a heavy feeling, all of it. I

personally went to one of the sentencings, and

Vladimir Yemelyanov got a suspended sentence.

I went to hear his verdict, but it was

obvious that what saved him were his grandmothers.

He's an orphan.

He has two grandmothers depending on him, and simply

he was given a suspended sentence — an absolutely

unlawful suspended sentence, because

a real prison term for this person would have led

to an absolutely colossal

negative public backlash. For the same

reason, thanks to the absolutely

proper, in my view, honest conduct of Yegor

Zhukov and the large support group

he had, he also got a suspended rather than

a real sentence for the absence of any crime.

But there were others — let's look at the full list

of verdicts. There is

Yegor Lesnykh, who got three

years in a penal colony. There was, on the one hand, a rather

touching moment at first,

when he proposed

to his fiancée right there in the courtroom,

and then they sent him away for three years. That completely

stopped being a touching moment.

Maksim Martintsov got two and a

half years in a penal colony. So what we saw

again was the traditional

disgusting Putin-style aikido, in which

when society goes into an uproar,

everyone starts rushing to defend someone —

remember how they defended Golunov, then defended

Pavel Ustinov, and now they started

defending Yegor Zhukov.

They say: okay, okay, okay, if hundreds

of thousands of people are demanding it, then right now we'll

let them go — but we'll still imprison someone.

As a society, you simply can’t all at once

stand up for everyone at the same time. That really is one of

our problems: we can’t unite like a wall

and stand absolutely for everyone simultaneously

all at once.

That’s just how public consciousness works.

Some people get more support,

others get less support. That’s just how

life is, and they understand that life works

that way. So they just take

a few random people—these ones here—

and say: these we’ll let go, let go, but these ones

we’ll make an example of and give them three years

for nothing. And then there was also

we saw an absolutely disgusting,

revolting speech by Putin, a very

revolting one, at what is now called

the Human Rights Council, but

I mean, the Human Rights Council is now

really nothing more than a gathering

of ghouls, and at this gathering of ghouls Putin

this time felt simply

wonderful.

And he

delivered what was in fact one of his

worst and, let’s repeat, most disgusting

speeches in all his 20 years. Let’s

listen—41 seconds—about why a cup will, in the end,

actually eventually turn

into a bullet, and why we need to be careful about that.

Someone threw some kind of plastic

cup at a representative of the authorities,

threw it—nothing happened. Then a plastic bottle,

again nothing.

Then they’ll throw a glass bottle,

then a stone, and after that they’ll start shooting

and smashing up stores.

We must not allow that. Everyone

has the right to express their point

of view and state their position by all

possible, available, but lawful

means. That’s what it’s all about, that’s the whole point.

First of all, every one of you has heard

this strange and absolutely

perverse logic

most often from your own mother or from

a teacher: you didn’t clean your room,

tomorrow you won’t clean at all because I yelled at you,

tomorrow you won’t clean at all, and

the day after tomorrow you’ll mouth off to me and your father,

and then you’ll run away, and then you’ll become

a criminal and start killing people, and

they’ll throw you in prison. Or: what, you were late

to class because your friends held you up? Then

tomorrow you won’t go to class at all,

and the day after tomorrow, if your friends suggest

jumping off a balcony or a bridge,

you’ll go running after them and jump too?

You hear that and think: who even

talks like that, what does that have to do with anything? But when

it’s your mother or a teacher saying it as a

rhetorical device,

that’s understandable. But here it’s the head of state,

who is, after all, a lawyer, and he is directly

saying at the Human Rights Council that

these cases are completely fabricated,

and that this is a kind of ritual punishment,

because all this horror story he told—

about how after that

they’ll go do this, and then they’ll go

kill police officers, then they’ll go to stores

to loot and burn them—

none of that happened. A paper

cup

was there, a plastic bottle was there, that’s it, stop. You have no right

to make any extrapolation

beyond that, because everything else

was invented, made up. And now he says, I

just had them all locked up because, well,

they were talking online. Today they talk online,

and tomorrow who knows what they’ll do.

He didn’t imprison him, he gave him a suspended sentence—but that is still

an unlawful criminal prosecution all the same.

I’ve been given suspended sentences twice.

That’s not some simple matter. It means

you have to report in to the penal supervision system,

they can imprison you at any moment, and

there are many, many other restrictions—absolutely

unlawful ones. Lesnykh got three years.

Why will he sit in prison? Because for Putin this is

a kind of pedagogy, you see. He is

teaching us a lesson

this way—so that you guys

won’t get any ideas. Sure, he only

threw a cup, yes, he didn’t burn down a store

right away, but obviously, good Lord, you’re

that sort of crowd, I know you, you’re the kind of people who,

if we let you off now, you’ll burn

a store down. But all we want is for them

not to steal.

We just want our

candidates to be allowed on the ballot, and nobody

wants to burn down any store, and everyone

understands that perfectly well. But that fiend—and

the Human Rights Council—

was nodding along, sitting there nodding like this.

Disgusting—good Lord, there’s no such thing as

using the word “disgusting” too much today, but that’s

just how it is. The head of the Human Rights

Council, one Mr. Fadeev—in this photo

you can see him sitting there, this old fossil—and there he also

spoke and said, well yes, of course, I

am against

amnesty for these people. Are you really the actual

head of the Human Rights Council? He

is against

amnesty. Innocent people were imprisoned by

the state—our system works like this:

innocent people are jailed, but if people get very

upset, they can sort of be released under

an amnesty, and that way everyone saves face, and

the authorities don’t seem to have backed down, and

people get out. But then this man comes out

and says:

we are against amnesty, let them stay in prison, because

sure, today they threw a cup, but

tomorrow they’ll start shooting down airplanes. And this

is happening—this is happening right in front of us.

in our eyes, so campaigning against Putin

and United Russia must be done always and everywhere—they are

criminals. At the Human Rights Council

it was openly acknowledged that a crime had been committed

a crime: to intimidate others, they imprisoned

completely innocent people. In that sense

we have every possible basis

legal, moral—any kind you like—to fight

this government.

How can we fight them?

Alexei

asks me—JJ, I suppose that's how it's pronounced—

tell us what's going on again

with Admiral Kuznetsov. Admiral Kuznetsov—I

really want to say—has brought together

the topic in a truly astonishing way with the mayor

of Lipetsk, Yevgenia Uvarkina, who

put out a video—well, not exactly put out a video, I

mean, she simply sent it to a chat

with some local officials—a

short video address.

She was outraged with one of her deputies and

other subordinates who, evidently, work in

the Lipetsk city administration, where she

was venting her anger. But the video became a hit;

someone simply forwarded it, and as a result

we learned more about the mayor of the city

of Lipetsk, who, by the way,

I even showed on my program—I

started looking into it a bit and remembered

where we know her from. This is the very same person

who

once already

while speaking at a meeting with

voters, said to someone, “Listen,”

“you ask such, such

a tricky question—do you happen to have a Jewish

surname?” If you remember, that caused

quite a stir. We'd better

watch it first—let's do 23 seconds.

A family-style conversation already—what are you

even saying? She's quite a character,

peculiar.

And so she made this video, and this video

actually—I’ll talk later

a bit about Admiral Kuznetsov—it's simply

yet another excellent example

and an explanation of why nothing will happen. Here

she is a leader of United Russia, one of

its leaders, and she was elected by local deputies. She has

all the power—all power in our country

belongs to United Russia. So what does she need

to do in order to make at least someone, in at least

some way, actually work?

Record videos like this—

fair warning, it's pretty obscene—

and send them to her colleagues in

the executive branch and her fellow party members in

United Russia. Let's listen—one and a half

minutes.

Colleagues, this is—I can’t really reproduce the rest

of it.

Colleagues, this is...

The time is 9:01. Clearly, clearly, working

equipment—one piece, then two pieces of equipment set up,

equipment,

three, four, five, six—and silence. And

there are no people, and nobody [__] is quickly

cleaning up. Where are the people? What the hell are we doing?

And this is with the countdown—you have to deliver by the 20th, the 20th

is the handover, Monday, the governor—and you

understand that by Monday, that's the 10th,

by then the maximum should already be done here,

work should be boiling, just boiling over,

and yet once again, nobody here is

taking hold of anything, nothing gets done. For two years

these miserable sheep pretend that they are

doing something, cleaning up trash ‘intensively,’

‘intensively.’ Every morning, send me video at 8:10

so I can see that all the equipment is in place,

that everyone is working. I want to see on video the number

of people, the amount of equipment, for every

site.

What are you doing?

Well, we... nevertheless,

all the same.

Excuse me, but you can’t remove words from a song.

Did you notice, by the way, that at the end

she says her solution is

that every day at 10 a.m. she wants video sent to her

showing what is where and what is happening—and this

happens at every construction site. Remember

when the Vostochny Cosmodrome project collapsed the first time,

Rogozin was shouting that in his office

there would be screens, and on those

screens there would be video, there would be cameras. Sobyanin

says the same thing: in my office

there are constantly video screens, and I watch

the daily progress, because not

a damn thing works in this country, nobody

wants to do anything. And yes, she

sends these tirades in part

because she is not a popularly elected

mayor—United Russia appointed her,

and basically everyone understands that the main

task of United Russia is, well, basically to steal

something. And in general, all these officials are there

in order to steal something. And if, say,

by the way, you fail to do this,

then no videos need to be sent around—if you

didn’t skim something off that construction site and

kick your share back a little upward and

a little to the people in uniform, then you

will be dealt with pretty quickly.

That is literally the only effective

part of our system that actually works. But

otherwise the system doesn’t work worth a damn.

There is no governability. It seems to us that this is

some tough Putin regime that—well, yes, they

jail people, they repress people,

and we think these are the kind of people who built

an unjust, thieving, corrupt

but effective vertical of power. But no, not a damn thing—

nothing here can happen properly, and

Admiral Kuznetsov is also a perfect

example of the mess that reigns in

the country. Remember how this Admiral

Kuznetsov is Russia’s aircraft-carrying

A cruiser is practical in Russia? In Russia, no.

As for real aircraft carriers, our navy has none.

We basically don't have them at all—historically speaking.

Historically, we have been a land-based country.

Our navy has historically been fairly weak, and this—well, this thing here—

it's not nice to call it this, of course,

a tub, let's say, but it has not been very successful,

and it is not a very successful ship.

For some reason, our authorities marketed it as

a great warship that threatened everyone.

And so it sailed halfway around the world, first to

Syria back then, and everyone laughed at it,

the whole world laughed, because as you

could see, it was sailing along burning diesel and

fuel oil, and everyone was photographing that smoke.

It burned through hundreds of millions of rubles' worth just in

diesel fuel.

It made the trip there and back, came back, and

then they said, you know, because it had been

used so intensively, it now needed everything

replaced immediately—all the engines—and repairing it

would cost 60 billion rubles (about hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars), 60

billion—an absolutely

fantastic sum.

They allocated that money and said it would

be repaired now, then later they said it would be repaired after some time,

and now it has turned out that, well, I

don't think it hasn't burned up—there is a

fire there of a completely

serious scale, one that shows that

things are really very bad with our

aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, or

Kuzya, as the sailors themselves call it.

And this too, you understand, is the main

symbolic ship, and we can't even repair it.

There have already been all sorts of incidents around it,

there were those stories when

scaffolding and construction cranes fell there,

simply because everything is a mess.

The Putin system has in fact taken us back

to something like the 1990s, when there was

endless, constant chaos, because

well, if

Yeltsin was simply drunk all the time,

then Putin is either constantly swimming in a

pool or playing hockey,

playing hockey, or else he is busy with

some kind of personal war with Trump or some

other thing, coming up with some kind of

special operations and declaring that

another ISIS headquarters has been bombed, or that he

is helping Cuba, or conducting some kind of

negotiations with Belarus—that is, he is busy with

big foreign policy, with all that

chess game in which he is supposedly a great,

brilliant strategist. But in reality,

down below, absolutely nothing is happening,

there is no governance at all, there is only

some endless chaos. That's how the system

works. Maksim Chaika asks me:

"Alexei, please comment on the sentence of 6

and a half years in a penal colony, maximum-security, for two guys for

supporting the Rostov fire victims. I

spoke about this a lot on the program

today—or yesterday, probably yesterday. There was an

appeal. It is absolutely unjust.

Really, these two people were simply

standing in a one-person protest during the so-called

Maltsev revolution (a reference to opposition activist Vyacheslav Maltsev), just in

a picket, and both of them got 6

and a half years each. One person there was given a suspended sentence,

someone who really was just passing by,

literally just a passerby, but they grabbed him too,

and then apparently decided not to say,

"sorry"—instead they gave him a suspended

sentence. How can I possibly feel about this?

It is absolute lawlessness, and we

all honestly hoped that between

the first verdict and the appeal there would be

public outrage. I talked about them several times here,

and in general many people

were outraged, and we hoped they might at least

reduce the sentence a little, because they were simply standing

in a one-person protest and they had signs in

support of the Rostov

fire victims—those people whose homes were burned down

in order to clear space for

developers. The system is monstrous; they

simply devour people.

Officials, security officers, anyone at all—people who do not

feel a drop of pity. More than that,

it really turns out they derive

sadistic pleasure from taking two

completely random people with

placards and throwing them in prison.

And it's like Putin says:

today they stand there with a placard, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow they'll be standing there with a

grenade launcher. Are we supposed to

wait until they actually have a grenade launcher?

Better to lock them up now,

give them 6 and a half years while they are still at the

placard stage. And at this logic everyone just

twirls a finger at their temple and says, "Are you completely [__]?"

But this logic really

is built into the foundations of governing

the state. That is why in this country

this regime must be resisted, and we need to fight it

however we can. We have quite a lot of topics

with asterisks replacing swear words,

but I cannot pass over the wonderful events in

the Moscow City Duma.

There, the head of the Moscow City Duma,

United Russia member Alexei Shaposhnikov, whom we

almost defeated—there is not a single

day when I do not regret that, well,

personally, this was my own failure. As you

remember—let me remind you—this

Alexei Shaposhnikov was the subject of our investigations, and

we published exposés about him.

In his district, he really should have

lost, but he had placed there

the Smart Voting candidate instead,

Yefimov. But I failed to notice that this

Shaposhnikov, a cunning crook, had also put there

a spoiler candidate with the same surname, Yefimov. We

sent everyone a mailing saying, "Vote for

Yefimov against Shaposhnikov," and even on

election day all our Telegram channels

And everywhere, all of us sociologists were saying,

that Shaposhnikov had lost and Filimonov had won.

Because people in the exit poll, as they were leaving the

polling station, were saying, “We voted for”

Yefim.

And it was clear that Shaposhnikov had lost.

But some people, damn it, voted for one Yefim,

while others voted for another, and Filimonov, taken together with both of them,

they got more votes combined

than Shaposhnikov did, but in the end Shaposhnikov

won because they split the vote

between themselves. And I’m just worried about my own personal

failure: I wasn’t able to explain how

to do it properly. But this

Shaposhnikov, he really

really went off the rails. I showed you in the previous

video—we can show that previous video too—how

Shaposhnikov once let it all slip there, where later

in the Moscow City Duma (Moscow’s city parliament), not realizing

that his microphone actually hadn’t been

turned off. If possible, show it.

If you can’t, then show the new one where he

We had a big discussion here

about whether I could say this

word on air. Well, just to be safe, I decided not

to—it’s probably not a good idea, after all.

It’s probably obscene. But Shaposhnikov,

nevertheless, uses it quite freely

at meetings. Let’s watch a short

video. And on item 1, ours are against

the appointment of, well, Kalachev...

Alexander—you’ve probably heard it; if not,

thank God. But then someone came up to him,

and she says, “Well, I understand

that they’re all like this here, but we

have to do something,” and this is already the umpteenth time.

And yet, in the Moscow City Duma, they still can’t

manage to get this man somehow

removed from office or do something

about him. More than that, this very

Alexei Shaposhnikov, whom I’ve actually

known for quite a long time—back in the day,

a hundred thousand years ago, Dmitry Gudkov

(a politician you probably know) was obsessed with this

idea of a Youth Public Chamber, and into

that Youth Public Chamber he

tried to bring in various people. I remember there was

I remember there was

a young Rogozin, the younger Rogozin,

he invited Yashin there too,

and among others, Alexei Shaposhnikov as well.

Yes, that’s where I met him, in that

Youth Public Chamber. And now

look how important he’s become: he now heads, in the

Moscow City Duma—you’ll laugh—the commission

for verifying the accuracy of declarations on

the legality of income. In other words,

this is the man who is supposed to check

whether deputies have properly filed

their declarations, and whether they have enough

income to

explain where all this

property came from.

It’s just insane, because we caught

Shaposhnikov with an entire penthouse that appeared from

who knows where. But fortunately, the Communist Party deputy, the brilliant Stupin,

—fortunately, there is Stupin, a genius of a CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) deputy—

asks a question there; you’ll see in a moment.

He asks the presenter, Stepan Orlov, also

a United Russia member, whom we also investigated,

and Stupin asks him

how this can even happen.

Let’s watch. “From the leadership of this

commission, I would like to hear

your assessment of what has been stated in

many media outlets, according to which

Alexei Valeryevich Shaposhnikov

owns a seven-room apartment with an area of

270 square meters (about 2,900 square feet) at the address Moscow,

22 Zoologicheskaya Street, apartment 118.”

And for the head of a commission on

ensuring the accuracy of income and

expense declarations, that’s, well, rather significant, isn’t it?

What’s important is that when you actually check this

information, this information in the public domain

currently has no relation to the

matter under consideration.”

“It has no relation to the matter under consideration?”

A man comes out and says, “You know, we have a commission for checking

income declarations, and we propose

Shaposhnikov for it.”

And then he’s asked: “So he has a

seven-room apartment from an unknown source—who

is he going to investigate, himself?”

“Excuse me, that has no relation to

the matter under consideration.” There you have United

Russia in all its glory. This party needs to be crushed

by every possible means. And by the way, they’re

terribly upset that we keep going after them.

We released investigations—you remember—

you remember,

about Shaposhnikov, about this Orlov, and about

one of my favorite deputies in the Moscow City Duma,

deputy Lyudmila Stebenkova, a truly

remarkable woman, who now simply

can’t stop herself. She has already

spoken several times and talked

about me and about—well, just during

the discussion of any issue, she starts

with, basically, “Why is it that

Navalny is conducting his fake

investigations?” Here is her speech on the topic of

investment—a fragment of her speech

about Moscow’s investment attractiveness:

“And I find it very strange that the pseudo-

investigations of FBK, a foreign agent

under Navalny’s leadership, which today

under the guise of fighting

corruption collects money from citizens

of the Russian Federation in the form of so-called

donations, with the aim of manipulating

public consciousness and, in the long run,

overthrowing the constitutional order, is not

regarded as fraud.”

“So-called donations”—that’s what she was saying during a discussion of

investment

attractiveness in Moscow. And here is what she

said during the discussion of the issue of

the Moscow mayor's report

The issue is that not only was a coalition formed,

between the Communist Party and Navalny,

but also with his foundations and Bakkarin, an agent who, under the guise of

fighting corruption through

all sorts of pseudo-investigations,

is effectively calling for the overthrow of

state authority.

That's what this is about. First. Second,

yes, these elections were dirty.

Dirty elections, and Navalny

indeed, in his so-called investigation, he

as I said, in the so-called investigation,

so at this point, to imagine

either Navalny or those associated with him who are

in the Moscow City Duma, which Mr.

Zyuganov mentioned last week, but they

are, accordingly, pushing the whole narrative

that Noginsk and BK are also pushing,

and foreign agents from BK—just cogs in the machine, godfathers of it all.

Who made these elections dirty?

Of course, foreign agent Navalny. That is,

I wasn't the one barring candidates, I wasn't the one fabricating

votes.

I wasn't the one who organized electronic voting where

votes were stolen, and yet somehow I am the one

calling for the overthrow of the state

system. Ms. Stebenkova is constantly

watching my program and recording

funny videos for me on Twitter as a

response.

If our government consists of people like you,

lying, vile thieves like the entire leadership

of your Moscow City Duma, where in reality

the leadership is nothing but thieves,

from United Russia, then of course I am calling for

the overthrow of this government and of this

system, because you are the worst thing

that exists in our country. Of course we

will, in the end,

overthrow you sooner or later. To wrap up the topic

of the Moscow City Duma, I can't help but respond

and note that, stepping away from

the Communists, he asked an absolutely

correct question to the chairwoman

of the Moscow City Court, Egorova, who came to

the session.

to this meeting, and whereas before there

everyone just sat there without paying attention, now there came

a terrifying, angry woman

who organizes all the fabrication, and

now at least someone is asking

questions. Let's look at this; it's important.

Olga Alexandrovna, from your answer regarding

the verdict in the case of Pavel Ustinov,

to whom Judge Krivoruchko gave

a real prison sentence, you

replied that he was not subject to liability.

At the same time, could you say whether there is any

responsibility at all for a judge

for issuing a knowingly

unjust sentence, confirmed

by a higher court? Does such

disciplinary liability exist, up to and including termination

of powers? For what reason was Krivoruchko

not held accountable? Deputy, this question does not

relate to the matter under consideration. I

have already answered. This is important for appointed

officials. I have answered all of you on these questions

regarding the candidates.

What a painfully nervous reaction.

And yet disciplinary

responsibility

does exist. To ask whether there is responsibility for

a judge who unlawfully imprisoned

a person, knowingly and unlawfully, in prison

as in Ustinov's case

— Judge Krivoruchko can face disciplinary action up

to dismissal.

Just think what a severe punishment that is—

dismissal, an honorable retirement. Because of

this Judge Krivoruchko, several

people are already in prison, and not even because he

jailed them completely unlawfully, but because

they are already starting to imprison those people whom we

are seeing targeted simply because they are enraged by the behavior of Krivo-

ruchko and the entire Moscow City Court, by what is being written

— curses online, and so these

judges, these people, are tracked down, identified, and jailed. Well,

you see, this old lady

gets nervous and refuses to answer.

Shaposhnikov is sitting there at the podium

ringing his little bell—well, there you have it.

That's exactly why none of them should be given

any slack whatsoever. As for the protest

by football fans, I'll say this—I hope I have enough time.

Yevgeny is asking me:

"Ilya Maddison Davydov joined

the LDPR. How would you comment on that?" To me

it seems like some random person—is he or

isn't he? I'm not very familiar, maybe he's

some fairly well-known YouTuber, Ilya

Maddison, so not exactly a nobody. Well, that is

a stupid thing to do, joining the LDPR. Maybe

they paid him money or promised him

some place on a list. It's hard for me to understand

the motivation of a person who joins

the LDPR, which of course

— if United Russia is the party of crooks and

thieves,

then the LDPR is a party of utterly hopeless people.

Well, Crimea will probably speak for itself.

A frequently asked question is: whose is Crimea?

Let's discuss whose Crimea it is. A really

great investigation has just been published by the outlet

Proekt. I recommend it—just google it and read it.

It shows very well whose

Crimea is now: damn it, it belongs personally

to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and

to some of the people around him,

who have created

a lawlessness that still goes beyond the bounds

of even the usual Russian kind, because as soon as

this annexation happened, they simply

really started doing whatever they wanted—

building enormous dachas (country houses), enormous

palaces, and not only that, simply seizing

land and constructing various open-air sites.

for tatami mats—well, this whole story is about

the project I wrote about started with the fact that

it turned out that an entire huge settlement

called Oliva had been subjected to

some kind of

there was some sort of secret

secret order under which people could not

register any rights within

this settlement. For example, if your grandmother

left you a shed, or a house, or

something else as an inheritance, you go to Rosreestr (Russia’s state real estate registry)

and say, “Please register it for me,” and they

tell you, “No, that’s prohibited by a secret

order.”

And any legal actions in general

in the settlement—please show the picture of the house—weren’t

done.

They created a security zone around Putin’s dacha (country residence), and within

that framework, everything that’s shaded there is

the security zone of Putin’s dacha. And there, basically,

you can simply say that nobody—no grandmother,

no grandfather, no young person, no old person—

nobody can register anything.

Because this is, so to speak, Putin’s land, and

he’s going to enjoy himself there, he’s going to

play hockey there—they’re building an entire ice

arena—and he’s also going to

have meals there, and for that they’re building

some enormous

I don’t even know—huge, absolutely huge

and tatami mats, giant tatami mats, out

in the open air.

There, you can see some kind of antennas

that simply jam mobile communications; flights are prohibited,

and

quadcopters immediately lose all

control. And meanwhile, some

people who have lived there their whole lives

are treated as if they are absolutely nobody,

completely nobody. And in this

publication, there’s a genuinely very funny and very

absurd incident described: local

residents once came to the beach as usual

and

were sitting on the beach, apparently eating something or

drinking, or just sunbathing, and then

scuba divers crawl out of the sea—

it turns out they were military divers—

and they demand documents from the vacationers, I mean

you just have to imagine it.

The level of frustration of people who came

to a beach they had been going to for many years, and

there were Soviet

and later Ukrainian

officials and all sorts of bureaucratic crooks there

all the time, but even so, the beach

was always open to ordinary people, and you could always go into the mountains

there, you could walk there often. Now everything is

blocked off: divers emerge from the sea, and in

the mountains there’s a described case where some local resident

was walking with his girlfriend when out of the forest came some kind of

gamekeepers, and they said not to come here again

because it wasn’t just forbidden—

the area was also mined, so that

people like you wouldn’t wander around here. Be sure to read it.

It certainly makes

an impression: in a system where Crimea

is still in a kind of gray

zone—with sanctions, endless disputes, and all that—

into this gray zone

where the law wasn’t really functioning very well anyway,

there burst in

greedy people eager to build palaces there.

All these FSB towers, these compounds,

Medvedev’s dacha, Putin’s dacha, and

they’re simply spending billions to build

some previously unseen, unheard-of

astonishing structures where they will, supposedly,

spend their time.

Now, to the questions. Let me ask Narek Esayan’s question:

“How do you feel about the arrest

of Ivan Zhdanov?”

Guys, how could I possibly feel about that?

The director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

was arrested and jailed for ten days. Well,

do I feel good about it? Of course not.

I feel bad about it. He was simply detained here at the office,

dragged away somewhere, and given

ten days on some kind of

charge over a tweet he wrote

in the summer. But I hope he’ll be released on

Monday—he’s supposed to get out. Listen,

this is just another example of how the Anti-Corruption Foundation

is being crushed. I

didn’t even bother telling you about it anymore

because there are simply so many

routine examples of the campaign against us

that you’re probably tired of hearing about it.

Alexei asks me:

“Are they trying to push Shuvalova out of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF)?”

Yes, this is connected with the Moscow City Duma

communists, of course, and there are different

factions there. They are under heavy pressure from

the Presidential Administration. Under pressure from

the Presidential Administration, they are forced

to keep condemning us, and in particular

they are forced to condemn Yelena Shuvalova,

who isn’t exactly “friends with us” so much as

she is on good terms with her own voters. And when

a voter comes to her and says, “Hold

a roundtable, invite FBK (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) and

everyone else,” she holds the roundtable.

And local people come—140 people.

No one bans the roundtable,

but then they start condemning her because she is

supposedly connected with

that evil Navalny and FBK. But in that

sense, I hope—and am even confident—that

most KPRF deputies

will withstand this pressure,

defending not us, but simply

the interests of their voters, which we

also very much are. We don’t want anything

special from deputies, especially KPRF deputies;

they are simply doing what

normal deputies are supposed to do. Sofia Deryuga

asks: “Alexei, what do you think

about the situation with officials who

They gave themselves New Year’s holidays lasting

almost a month. What are they so tired from?

It really is an amazing thing: State Duma deputies

and, in general, a large number of

officials arranged it so that

this time the holidays are such that they’ll simply spend a month

hanging out somewhere—wherever they

want to hang out, abroad or otherwise.

It’s just some kind of astonishing life. Before this,

we had never seen holidays of this

length. At the same time, what’s interesting is that when it comes

to me, they seem to be operating under

the exact opposite talking points. Someone somewhere

came up with them, and now I’m constantly being chased

by these girls and boys

with cameras from RT and from Rossiya 1

and from the channel where Askar—

who knows—asked me: why have you been on

vacation 15 times lately and

spent 22 million rubles

I was stunned. I ask: 22

million rubles? But they just keep going on

saying, “Comment on how you managed to spend

22 million rubles on vacations.” By the way,

at that court hearing I attended

last Friday,

a girl from

the Rossiya 1 TV channel ran up to me.

Apparently Askar ZD or the channel’s management

sent her over so that, basically,

they could respond to our investigation. Askar

was trying to pin me to the wall with shocking reports about

how I had spent 22 million rubles

on vacations. We had a fun conversation.

I can show you a minute of it;

you can easily find the longer videos on YouTube.

Investigation.

The point is that your colleague, a journalist

from a state TV channel, is rather

talentless, because her program

airs deep in the night, and its ratings

probably aren’t much different from yours.

Please tell me, can your ratings

support your lifestyle? Does your job

allow you to buy a yacht or a plane?

[music]

Do you personally own a plane or a yacht right now?

Personally? No. All right, let me begin then.

Let’s assume you work at Rossiya 1,

hosting a late-night program.

Would you be able to afford a plane then?

And why do you think she’s talentless?

I assume that if your

TV channel put her in the schedule

on Sunday at 12:30 a.m., then I think you

consider her a talentless journalist, and

I’m asking you whether that salary officially

allows her to buy a plane and

a yacht. I answered your question just to see. I already

answered you; now please answer mine.

Can a Russian citizen like Askar Za-

desh do that?

. What kind of question is that?

About talentlessness and so on—it’s unusual for them.

You ask a question, and my daughter got admitted...

turbo

No answers.

You can find the full video online;

it’s pretty funny. With all her questions

and my answers, by the end she was already...

State television.

They’re so used to simply lying

endlessly, and so used to working from

pre-prepared questions and pre-prepared

answers, that when you ask them

an elementary question, you immediately leave them

stumped. And at the same time,

they are absolutely not prepared to apologize. But

if a unique situation arises

in which people from our

television,

the head of our television apologizes to

someone, then of course it will never

be to us or before us—but to

Americans they are ready to apologize. And

one of the things that really

struck me this week was

the announcement of a book by journalist Joshua Yaffa.

He’s a good young guy. He wrote

a book about Konstantin Ernst, the man who

built this machine of lies called

Channel One. These are people who

lie all the time, endlessly, constantly

lie. And among the most famous items in their

very large collection of lies, there are two

main crown jewels. One is, of course, the well-known

story about the “crucified three-year-old boy” (a notorious fabricated Russian TV story from 2014), which

was told on Channel One,

and to this day no one has publicly apologized

for that lie. And the second story is this:

unfortunately, I can’t show that segment

because Channel One will get me banned.

But remember Mikhail Leontyev,

now Rosneft’s press secretary,

a journalist who used to work for Luzhkov’s (former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s) shady television setup,

then moved to Channel One

and hosted a program there where he simply

lied nonstop. And after the

Malaysian Boeing was shot down over Ukraine,

he aired an entire sensational report

claiming that there were satellite images, and that in

those images there was a Ukrainian Air Force plane.

You can see them showing these

images, supposedly taken from a satellite,

and this little streak here, supposedly,

is the fighter jet, and this is the missile flying

to shoot down

the Malaysian Boeing. Naturally, everyone started

laughing at it. It was complete

nonsense. And when journalist Joshua Yaffa

asked Ernst, “Well then, please explain—

please,”

“it was obviously a lie”—what did Ernst

say to him? “Yes, we made a mistake. We’re all

human.” He didn’t say it in exactly those words;

he didn’t say, “Yes, we brazenly lied on air,” but he did admit

that it was incorrect information. But he admitted it

to a reporter from *The New Yorker*.

And he didn’t admit that to you on Channel One, did he?

He didn’t say that to a single Russian

media outlet, no—not on Twitter or on

Instagram or anywhere else, not to a single Russian

person, not to any Russian journalist. He didn’t

say that our TV channel, which

exists on your money and receives

billions, brazenly lied—or, well, made

a mistake, as he would put it. But with Americans

it’s different. It’s just a different treatment altogether.

American correspondents showed up—

a person from the First World, a real person,

not just some [__] who watches

our channel—someone they can just spit on, who cares

about him? But in front of them, you have to apologize.

An American named Joshua Yaffa,

with an exotic name, writing for *The New Yorker*,

you see—so to a person like that

you can’t just lie outright anymore. To him they say: yes, we

made a mistake.

This attitude toward us, toward all the residents of our

country as genuinely second-class people,

is exactly what comes spilling out of this

current government, plain as day.

He would never, ever have said that to any

Russian correspondent—nothing like that.

But in front of Americans, they offer a slight

apology. In front of Russians? As if they’d ever

apologize—they couldn’t care less. And this same

Leontyev, now working at

Rosneft, that very press spokesman,

that journalist, that drunk, who now says

all sorts of funny little things

in defense of Sechin and Rosneft—he, by the way,

said: well yes, we understood, yes, this was,

to quote him exactly,

“From the very beginning, Kostya and I understood that

this was, to some extent, an intellectual

provocation. There were no assertions that

what we were saying in the segment was true.”

Brilliant: you lied in the segment, and then

you say, well, we understood that this was...

Why call it a lie? What a crude

word. It was an intellectual provocation. And

anyway, in the segment we never claimed that all

of it was true. There was no such assertion that

it was true. We merely said there were

satellite images, and in those

satellite images you can see that a Ukrainian

fighter jet shoots down the plane, and that

Ukraine is to blame for everything.”

But there was no explicit claim there that it was

true, so that means it was an intellectual

provocation. It was simply a brazen and utterly

disgusting lie—but again, that was said

only because an American asked.

When we ask about it, they won’t answer us.

You’re asking me about the fans—

and yes, this is an important topic

to cover.

Because in the example of what

is happening now with the fan

movement in general, in the example of this

small outburst, this small demonstration,

this slipping out of the authorities’ control, we can see

that even people loyal to this government understand

that simple loyalty gives you

nothing—absolutely nothing—not even the most basic

elementary rights. We all know perfectly well

that the fan movement, of course,

is diverse. Whenever I generalize here, I already know

I’m simplifying things. But overall, it’s no secret to anyone

that it was precisely the fan movement

that the authorities always used and deployed

for their own purposes, including attacks on the opposition,

and so on and so forth. And then

we saw

the following astonishing turn of events.

I apologize in advance if somewhere

I say something wrong—I don’t know

football that well—but here’s what happened.

Spartak fans don’t like

the footballer Dzyuba, who was once at

Spartak and then moved to Zenit, and there’s

a long and complicated history of mutual dislike there. But

basically, lately they’ve had

this pastime, which is, naturally, fairly

insulting to Dzyuba and fairly

indecent—but that’s football, more or less, and

fans who behave a bit beyond

the boundaries of standard decency are

an inseparable part of football.

It’s their fan business, their own score-settling

between clubs. They chant

various obscene taunts about him, insulting him

from the stands. Well, that’s football—they insult Dzyuba.

Obviously, some people don’t like that,

others don’t like it either. Fine, they don’t like it.

Then negotiate with the fans

or do whatever—take some measures

that are accepted in modern football. But

this is the authorities, this is Zenit, this is Gazprom.

And according to some media reports, Dzyuba

held a meeting there with the management of

Gazprom and the management of Zenit and said,

“You know, guys, if you can’t protect me,

then I don’t understand why I’m

playing for this team.”

And how did they decide to protect him? That’s right: with the help

of the police. So when, once again,

Spartak fans came

to a match against Zenit, above their section

they hung some giant

loudspeakers that drowned out their

obscene chants.

But even that wasn’t the main thing. Before the match and after it,

they literally started

being hunted down by the cops.

Those very people from Center “E” (Russia’s anti-extremism police unit),

the Center for Combating Extremism, were busy

catching fans who were using obscene language to insult

Dzyuba at the stadium. Insults there are, of course,

a bad thing, but generally speaking we

assumed that this definitely was not

extremism, and certainly not something for which

people should be beaten, shocked with Tasers,

or have some of them arrested for 15

days—but, well...

This really is a great turn of events.

The point is that in response to all this,

the fan community, first of all,

the first to react were the fans

of Zenit, who, as a sign of solidarity with

Spartak fans, also began leaving the

stadium. Let’s take a look. Well, after 32 seconds, as I understand it,

the fans simply have a routine like this:

they sit and watch the match for a while,

and then, as a sign

of protest, they leave the stadium after 32 seconds.

Dancing.

And now, in solidarity, fans

at many clubs are leaving the stadium, and this is

truly—I believe this is

a remarkable development, because this

has, of course, long since gone beyond the bounds of

football. They are leaving because they do not

agree with the fact that the police beat them,

that they are arrested and jailed, that in disputes

between clubs and players, all these

long-running stories about who looked at whom,

who played how, and so on—but for us

as a society, which may not, on the whole,

be very interested in football,

or for that part of society that is not

interested in football,

well, let them sort things out among themselves—but

when the police start beating and jailing them,

when state-owned Gazprom is engaged in

organizing a campaign against

the fans—that is called

state lawlessness, and of course I

express my solidarity

with all these people who are protesting

despite the fact that many of

them, including quite aggressively, have

defended this government and beaten people in order

to protect it. Those actions were

disgusting, but the authorities are now treating them

in a way that is no less disgusting.

In some sense, even more disgusting.

After all, this is the state, this is the police—you

can’t do anything to them. What methods do they resort to?

They start arresting fans.

But this is simply lawlessness. By the way,

there was also an interesting reaction from such

hardline pro-Putin people as Edgard

Zapashny—you know, that famous

animal trainer who is ready

to tear his clothes off in public

for Putin, who simply adores this government

and practically licks its boots, literally.

So when this person was asked about

this situation, he said the problem is

the lack of accountability: “I would send in the OMON (Russian riot police),

I’d crush these supporters, break

some of their bones, and tomorrow they’d speak

to me respectfully.” And you just want to say:

is everything all right with your head at all?

“He’d crush them, he’d break

their bones”—what kind of bizarre, obscene

little ditty is that, “break their bones”?

What even is this? This is football; that’s how it works there.

And if you want to reach an understanding with some

fan group, you have tools for that.

You have leverage.

There is the press, there are players, there are

relationships between clubs and

supporters, and without

supporters, clubs do not exist.

You can regulate it. But these people want

to do it precisely this way: “I’d break

their bones.” There you have it.

So, the fans are walking out. Let’s see how

the situation develops from here.

I’ll end the program with the story about the Hublot watches,

which have probably become the main

sensation and topic of discussion on the Russian

internet—another example of how, good Lord,

this government is afraid of everything. We laughed a lot

at how afraid they were of the Yakut shaman (a Siberian spiritual figure from Yakutia),

who, of course, once again

set out on his journey to Moscow. He was again

detained, arrested again, and taken away.

Good Lord, some guy is walking to Moscow, and everyone is

watching it—and his followers too.

And now they got scared of Zelensky’s series

and Zelensky’s jokes.

What happened was this: the TNT channel

quite obviously bought the rights to the series

*Servant of the People*, starring Zelensky.

It’s a comedy series, with lots of different

jokes. Naturally, they

started airing it—they showed one

episode. They bought the rights and paid

a lot of money for them, that’s obvious too. But of course

they started cutting out certain parts. Let’s

watch a few seconds of the original.

To do that, we need to go to the clip—or rather, first

let’s look at what aired on TNT,

and then we’ll look at the original, that is, what

was shown on Russian television.

Konstantin went to the river... [inaudible]

I recommend them—there are only four pairs in the world.

Agreed, think about it.

What a strange, incomprehensible scene.

And now, here is how it looks in the original

series *Servant of the People*: “And Konstantin went

to the river...”

“Hublot. By the way, do you know who owns them?”

“It’s very cold, but I recommend them to you—there are only

four pairs in the world. Agreed? Think about it.”

[music]

They made a joke about Putin—fine. You bought

this series, you cut it out, and after

people noticed that it had been cut,

a call came from the Kremlin and they banned the series from being shown

altogether. But guys, we understand very well

that, first of all, the very idea

of showing Zelensky’s series on

Russian television was initially

approved by the Presidential Administration.

But then—no way, hold on, there are

some jokes in there, even if they were cut out, and

people would later remember those cut jokes on

the internet—we have to ban it.

And this is a huge power, one that...

The police, the National Guard, the FSB (Russia’s security service), and all the rest—

all of them have become so thin-skinned, really.

They flinch at any joke, any jab, any teasing,

at any slogan or post on the internet—they’re afraid of everything.

They’re so delicate. You see, just a little bit of pressure—

once they were squeezed a bit in the Moscow City Duma,

they immediately started speaking out and shouting that

these had been dirty elections, that Navalny had ruined things for them, and

that, in general, everyone was some kind of hostile agent,

foreign agents.

We need to understand that this—

this is a signal: the way they recoil from absolutely anything,

from any little thing—good Lord, even a joke, “Putin Hubble”—

ha-ha-ha—actually, it’s not all that funny.

They got scared, and at a meeting in

the Presidential Administration, they decided

to ban it. All this shows that, in fact,

this is not some mighty and

powerful government at all. If we apply

a bit of effort, we can really, so to speak,

bring them to their senses. And judging by what

they’re doing, it’s plainly obvious that bringing them to their senses

is exactly what needs to be done. Thank you very much, everyone.

Watch my program. See you

next Thursday. Bye.

[music]