BadComedian vs. Basta, Khabib, and Naked People; the Rogozin Rocket

[music]

Hello everyone, it's 8:02 p.m. in Moscow, and

in the studio is Alexei Navalny, or

"Malchish-Plokhish" (a Soviet fairy-tale villain, used here as an insult), as I was called by

the Tsargrad TV channel. When I can't

immediately find on the internet

some insults or name-calling, I

always go to my favorite TV channel,

Tsargrad — there's always something interesting there.

Please send me your questions with

the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, and I will

try to answer them.

And I'll start with what really impressed me —

maybe it didn't impress anyone else, but I'll

explain now why this deserves

admiration: the parents of children who suffered

during that mass food poisoning incident

in Moscow kindergartens

that happened because of

Prigozhin, Putin's cook, have filed one

class-action lawsuit in the Moscow courts. But

it may seem like nothing, but actually, guys,

this is a big deal. Why? Because, first of all,

first,

it's a huge amount of work. Just imagine —

powers of attorney alone — there are 16 people involved now,

but there will be many more. For

each person there's a stack of medical documents. I mean,

any lawyer who has done or

tried to do this kind of work knows that it is

very hard, and it's something to admire.

Second, I've always been in favor of class-action

lawsuits. I tried many times to file them

when

I was acting as a representative of shareholders

in Gazprom, Rosneft, and so on.

The courts always threw out that kind of claim.

And in that sense, I even envy Lyubov

Sobol, who is acting as the legal

representative of these people, because for

any lawyer, this is genuinely great

work.

And third, why this should be admired

and supported:

because in the Beautiful Russia of the Future

everyone will be suing everyone. It's a great

mechanism for achieving justice, if

you have a normal judicial system. In

the Beautiful Russia of the Future, it will exist.

But right now, in theory, what does the state

suggest you do? Your child

was poisoned in kindergarten, you understand that

they were poisoned, you have a paper saying

that they have dysentery — and you are supposed to

go to the prosecutor's office, or you are supposed to

write a complaint to the mayor. And he'll tell you to go

to hell, because the mayor has received

money from that cat Prigozhin

who makes billions from this.

The prosecutor's office is also sitting there

on Prigozhin's payroll. Even if in

the Beautiful Russia of the Future no one is

on Prigozhin's payroll, there will still be some

people there — bureaucrats, officials —

who don't want extra work. Most importantly,

they are not as interested in the matter as you are.

But if the judicial system works, then

Prigozhin — or some hypothetical Prigozhin — will

understand: if you poison children, then here, in

this specific case, say 500 people

ended up in the hospital, you'll be sued

and you'll pay each of them 1 million rubles in compensation

— 500 million rubles, half a billion, is at stake.

So you'll put in extra

controls so you don't get sued. For example,

take Sibay in Bashkortostan,

I talked about it in the previous

program, one of the earlier broadcasts. So

right now people are living literally on the edge

of a giant pit from which

poisonous gas is coming out, and they are literally

being poisoned. They protest,

they hold rallies, and everyone just tells them to get lost.

And the oligarch who owns

that very quarry — abandoned, where

the necessary

land-reclamation work was simply never done — he insults local

residents and says that they are

just faking all of this.

That they're simply pretending,

staging fake footage. He said they were like

the White Helmets in Syria,

who supposedly fake injuries, killings, and

bombed hospitals. Now, if they had

the simple ability — and they will have it

in the Beautiful Russia of the Future — to say: have you

lost your mind, man? And then all together

file a lawsuit and bring medical

documents, then the judge would naturally say:

their health has suffered, so please,

1 million rubles in compensation for each person.

1,000 people — that's 1 billion rubles. Goodbye.

Oligarch, you're not much of an oligarch anymore. Or at least

not as much of one, and so on.

And so on and so forth. As someone

who for decades — well, let me say,

I lived there for 16 years — right in

close proximity to

an oil refinery in Kapotnya (an industrial district of Moscow),

in Maryino, when I lived there — I knew, just like

tens of thousands of people in the area knew, that these

bastards were poisoning us. At night that flare

visibly burned ten times stronger, and

they were burning off some kind of toxic crap there, because

during the day that flare is visible, and

during the day there are apparently some

oversight mechanisms, but at night

— I repeat — it was impossible to breathe.

If it had been possible to sue, that

oil refinery would have

run right away to install treatment facilities,

would have gotten rid of that flare,

because it would have understood: they'll sue us,

they'll bankrupt us. And so, in the Beautiful Russia

of the Future, the ability of injured people

to sue and bankrupt those who

supply poor-quality products, who

poison the environment, who there...

If the police offend you, it’s not just a criminal case.

You also sue them in civil court.

They themselves end up paying you huge compensation.

The city police will know that they can be

sued into the ground.

They’ll hand over their entire budget if necessary—this is

tremendous.

It’s a mechanism of restraint, a mechanism

of balance, and a mechanism for achieving

equality. That’s why I’m incredibly glad about

this first class-action lawsuit. We

understand perfectly well that it has now been

filed.

It was filed against the kindergarten itself and against this Concord LLC

and the women’s department in Riga—

the Moscow Department of Health, the Department

of Education of Moscow. Of course, right now they

control the judiciary and will

brush off all these parents.

Sobyanin (the Mayor of Moscow) is personally interested in making sure this

story gets buried, but even so, this is

very important, because at least the parents

have started acting this way. When

we start suing more often, and filing lawsuits

becomes a routine

tool of protest for us, among other things, it will be

much, much better. I’m very,

very, very glad. Some people ask, well, but

Good evening, Alexei.

I assume you already know that on February 26

the outlet *Current Time* published

an investigation into Prigozhin’s schemes.

Well, of course I know. Read it there on

*Current Time*—they published a big, what do you call it,

a three-part feature about

that very “Putin’s chef.” Well, he’s a crook and a

thief, and they additionally

prove that he’s a crook, a thief, and a murderer.

It’s quite interesting material—give it a read.

There’s a video of a sentence being read out—I’ll show it to you now.

Probably many of you have seen it, but

it’s worth watching. Yes, it’s a 47-second clip,

and in it they literally, in the name of the Russian

Federation, read out a sentence, and then

destroy the criminal. The best part

is that they even, they actually even burn

the criminal. Can you imagine?

The 21st century: a violator is

read a sentence.

Then burned. Let’s take a look at this

triumph of justice and the pinnacle of Russia’s

Russian law-enforcement

and political system. This is what we are building,

this is the kind of society we are building so that

these astonishing things can happen. Forty-seven

seconds of a sentence: “By me, the head of the department…”

“…of state veterinary oversight…”

“…of the Ministry of Agriculture in Saratov Region…”

“…in accordance with the decree of the President of the Russian Federation…”

“…No. 560…”

“…of the Russian Federation, as well as…”

“…the government resolution…”

“…of the Government of the Russian Federation of May 31,”

2005.

“By resolution of the Government of the Russian

Federation of…”

…”

“…Irish amber cheese…”

“…it has been decided…”

“…to seize and destroy…”

“…a batch of cheese weighing 6 kilograms 322 grams…”

…”

…”

And then they set it on fire. Can you imagine? There

are very dramatic shots, we just

won’t show the whole thing for too long; we’ll show you

in the corner how this official

with a big salary stands in front of

boxes of cheese and reads out its sentence.

And says: “You, cheese weighing 6 kilograms…”

Did you hear that? Something like 322 grams.

“In the name of the Russian Federation, in accordance

with the government resolution, you must be

destroyed. Dear cheese, what do you have

to say in your defense? Foreign cheese?”

The cheese, the cheese remains silent. Well, apparently by doing so it

silently confirms its guilt, after which

they take it out of the boxes and throw it,

throw it into the furnace, and there burns this

terrible criminal. What an astonishing

degree of idiocy. I mean, from any

side, from any point of view, yes. But we

can also look at it from a humanitarian

point of view. Saratov Region

is generally recognized as one of the poorest

regions in Russia.

The average salary is 31,000 rubles.

Ten percent of the population

earns less than the amount needed to stay above

the poverty line. Let me remind you that this is

just over 10,000 rubles—that is,

every tenth person in Saratov

Region

earns—well, I mean, they are

truly destitute. And in Saratov Region,

6 kilograms of cheese—good Lord, just take it

somewhere. If you really want to “destroy” it, then

let’s take it, I don’t know, to a nursing home

and let it be “destroyed” there. Let’s take it

to a summer camp, let’s take it wherever

you like, we’ll take it here ourselves at the office

and eat it. No—they destroy it, and this

procedure probably costs even more than

the cheese itself.

The state is doing this. And this

comical reading of the cheese’s

sentence and fate

is a kind of super-idiocy: the destruction of

food.

A poor region, and yet all this immoral

nonsense and stupidity—astonishing stupidity. But the

cheese is from Germany, and these

counter-sanctions don’t work, we understand that perfectly well,

but they still do it anyway,

demonstratively. We’ve generally spent a lot of time

laughing lately at how

they crush geese with bulldozers and all sorts of other

ridiculous things, and it was assumed that

The authorities seem to have realized their 10 centimeters—

they're still destroying cheese, but somehow

they're doing it now without those ritualistic,

ridiculous theatrics, as if, you know, in

Spain they were burning a heretic in the town square.

That's how it was with the cheese, Boris, but they

keep this idiocy going. It will never stop,

ever, and everyone laughs at it, practically dying

of laughter.

I'm more than sure that this video

is being passed around among themselves—over at the Federal Bailiff Service,

where someone was burning it. I'll tell you now:

it was burned by our regional office of

Rosselkhoznadzor (Russia's agricultural watchdog).

They send this video to each other and

laugh, sending those crying-with-laughter emojis

back and forth.

But they keep doing it. Why? Because

the people at the very top encourage this

idiocy. But remember, Putin said that

there is supposedly some economic law: if you

don't—if we don't destroy

6 kilograms and 322 grams of cheese in Saratov Region

(6.322 kg), it will somehow affect

jobs in some way. That's the kind of

idiocy this is.

It's approved in the Kremlin, which means that when it reaches

Saratov Region,

we'll see a sentence passed on cheese. Since we've started

talking about idiocy and

video-idiocy—video idiocy leads us

to this: let's watch Kiselyov. Of course

we immediately turn to Dmitry Kiselyov,

because wherever there's idiocy, wherever there's video,

there he is, gesturing with his hands like this.

Kind of like me, but a little differently—he

does it like this.

Dmitry Kiselyov has somehow staged a

renaissance of atomic war, and once again

he told us that he's ready to destroy

America, and that in general our mission is—and we

should boast about the fact that we're now going to

destroy everyone. Actually, this

mutual nuclear parity has existed

for a long time, and we've been able to destroy America since

the 1960s. On that

rests part of the global balance: we can

destroy America, America can

destroy us, and in that sense, well,

it's stupid to show videos like this and explain

it, because both we and they

have enough missiles to ensure that on

planet Earth no one would be left alive except

cockroaches—or maybe some especially

radiation-resistant turtles, I don't know, whoever else

there might be.

But nevertheless, once again we start

talking about this. And I wouldn't have paid

attention, except there are also these

great, funny little things in this video.

Let's quickly watch Dmitry

Kiselyov—at 1 minute 6 seconds, he's destroying everyone.

Fire, Gendevit.

The government command post where

the presence of the President of the

United States is предусмотрed—Fort Ritchie, Maryland; the

U.S. presidential command post and the command

center of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Let's leave it at that for now. And now—West

McClellan in California, the command of

the strategic offensive forces, and

Jim Creek, Washington State.

Let them calculate.

The range and speed of our advanced

weapons systems—we ask only that.

Let them calculate first. Putin asks them

to calculate.

So let's calculate right now. All these

decision-making centers are not that far from the coast either—

let's say another 400 kilometers (about 250 miles).

That makes 800. Zircon flies at a speed of 11,000

kilometers per hour (about 6,835 mph).

If so, then to cover 800 kilometers

Zircon would take just under five minutes.

A problem for a third-grader.

A problem for a third-grader: we'll

destroy everyone, just do the math. But this is only

the first level

of idiocy. In fact, the deeper

issue is that they,

while making this video,

watching it, apparently think that we should

be filled with incredible pride: yes, we

can destroy Fort Ritchie, a training center

in Maryland—wow, how awesome, we can

destroy it. But what's absolutely astonishing is

that half of these targets that

Kiselyov talked about—well, that same

training center, Fort Ritchie, for example, was closed

in 1998, and McClellan Air Force Base

hasn't been used since 2001. So this

video is clearly intended, of course,

to give some fools inside Russia

a chance to feel proud of something

strange—though there's nothing here to be proud of—

but also to scare Americans. Yet

Americans just laugh at this, because

first of all, in your

propaganda video

you're saying, 'We know where your

training center is,' while showing something that

hasn't existed for a long time. And second—and this is the

main thing—it's hilariously funny and,

on the one hand, on the other hand, very

sad: this famous Zircon missile,

which Putin talks about endlessly,

and which Solovyov has just been talking about,

this very missile has been shown many times,

and our souls were filled

with pride.

That we have a missile, and even, you know,

those who like

to sneer were forced to admit: well,

look, after all, it's obvious that

we really have revived the defense industry—there is

a missile, there it is in the photograph,

just look how beautiful it is. But then

it turned out that it was a Boeing missile.

You see, they simply took a photograph

of an American X-51 missile test

that was conducted five years ago, in 2013,

and this whole famous circus act

turned out to be just a stolen image

from the internet—an American missile.

How we would supposedly like to destroy that very

base. But it is obvious that Kiselyov's program

is mainly for people who do not use

the internet and cannot verify any

information—for those who will probably never

find out that the Zircon missile does not

exist—or at least that

what Kiselyov is showing is an invented

image.

But nevertheless, at the very least, the people

who prepare the program, Dmitry

Kiselyov himself, and those commissioning it in

the Presidential Administration, hold so-called

what are they called again—

some kind of Friday meetings where everyone

is given various talking points,

briefing sessions where they are told:

you must show this, you must

show that. Quite a lot has been written in the press

about this, so we have an idea of what

is really going on there.

They tell them: here, you need to make this kind of

segment. So some guy in

the Presidential Administration, some

Putin aide, told Kiselyov

or his deputy to make a report

about, well, let's calculate it—Putin

said to calculate it, so calculate it, and

show the Zircon missile too. And where are we

supposed to get a Zircon missile from? No problem—

for the Zircon missile, just take a picture of an American

missile. People will swallow it. We'll show it all.

Crooks, thieves, scoundrels who despise

the Russian people. In fact,

this is actually a highly insulting

report for everyone—liberals and

"vatniks" (hardline pro-Kremlin patriots), anyone at all. It really is,

you have to admit, quite insulting. I

mean, this is crap for Russia's military-industrial complex,

for the defense sector. Well, it

shows that, first of all, all of this is a bluff,

a myth, made-up nonsense—none of it exists. But also,

they could at least have drawn their own

Zircon missile, depicted it somehow. But no,

they simply take and steal an American

image.

It is very, very depressing, of course, to

watch this. Someday, let's just

remember this one thing:

when Dmitry Kiselyov

is sitting in the dock and

answering for many different things, and

explaining where he got the money for his apartment—

first and foremost, of course, we will go after him

for illicit enrichment, regardless

of his propaganda antics—he will be

in the dock because he will not

be able to explain where he got the money for

his expensive real estate. But we

absolutely must ask him there:

Dimon (a diminutive nickname), now go on, explain this to us—

right now, here, now that you're already sitting here

repenting, now that you're here,

and you've written about how they forced you, Oleg,

how they pressured you, how you actually always

hated Putin, how every

Thursday, every evening,

you ran to watch YouTube and completely

agreed with everything being said there—how did you

screw up so badly with the Zircon missile, and

don't you think that this is humiliating even

for your vile propaganda

little show? Have no doubt, Dmitry

Kiselyov is watching this program, or

will watch this clip. And I would very

much like him to explain to us,

dear Dmitry, how exactly did it happen

that an American

missile was passed off as a Russian one? Ministerial

rat. Did you hear what Kiselyov said about

400 kilometers (about 250 miles) to America? To that

someone reacts—but no, he was saying that it was

400 kilometers (about 250 miles) from the submarine to

America, and then another 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) to the

targets.

All right, I'll talk about Smart Voting later.

About the previous segment—Vladislav asks,

"Alexei, I am surprised

why sanctioned food is being destroyed.

Couldn't they simply stop buying it

and sell off what has already been bought?" Well,

it is commercial businesses that buy it.

You see, they cannot stop doing that

because you want to eat cheese

produced in France or Germany—

that is, you simply want normal

cheese, as well as

other products. Look at what

they supposedly bring us from Belarus now—oysters

and cheese and everything under the sun—because demand

creates supply. You sit there and say,

"Damn, I want proper cheese,"

you go to the market and buy it. But if you go to any

market—at least in Moscow—

you will see a lot of

so-called sanctioned products.

People bring it in anyway. We are a very

corrupt country, and customs is

one of the most corrupt institutions

in this "cultured" country, so everything

is flooded with so-called sanctioned

products. Where they need to file a report,

they destroy this cheese, but its flow

cannot be stopped. I mean, this could

only be done if everything were fully produced here

in Russia, but some

products, as you yourself understand,

objectively cannot be produced in

Russia because of the climate, for example. Besides,

that,

to shut ourselves off is simply to shut ourselves off,

including from global technologies. But we

No, we can't—we never learned how to produce

this kind of cheese, and we probably never will. In the

global division of labor, if we're going to use

terms like that, okay,

Russia will never be able to produce

cheese like they do in France. There's nothing

terrible about that. It means we should learn

to produce something else, and in that

sense, people in France will buy something

from us—I don't know, maybe bread slicers, whatever.

Or better yet, some kind of machinery or

software. In that sense, the state can't

stop imports; it can only

make money off this

smuggling—specific officials can.

Or it can absurdly destroy goods like this. We

already discussed one idiotic video, but

we've got another idiotic video. Do you

remember, not long ago I showed you one and

was really outraged, because I genuinely

was outraged by that train

that was traveling from Laos across all of Russia,

for thousands and thousands of kilometers, carrying

Czechoslovak tanks made after

the war, passed off as some kind of wartime T-34s

that people were literally bowing to

and praying to. It was, well, the height of idiocy.

Yes, but now something even more outrageous

is happening. Apparently they decided that train worked,

and now

they're hauling something else across Russia, and people are again praying to it and

bowing down and greeting it in cities—it's just

some kind of Syrian junk

being presented as war trophies. That is,

it's supposedly weapons taken from militants in

Syria, where, incidentally, formally speaking, we

don't have any ground troops at all. Right? We

only have ground forces there for

base security. And now across Russia they're

dragging around some scrap metal too and

solemnly

welcoming it at every little station, while Young Pioneers

give salutes and Komsomol members (Communist youth league members) kiss the banner,

and all sorts of generals

talk about what a wonderful thing it is.

Let's listen. Here's a colonel general

from the Ministry of Defense, from the Main

Military-Political

Directorate—that is, a political commissar, a political commissar

telling us what a

great idea this is. Forty-three seconds in: trophy

weapons. Today, on Defender of the Fatherland Day,

we are launching a traveling military-

patriotic campaign.

"Syrian Breakthrough." This campaign is being held

by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian

Federation by decision of the president of our

country.

Departing from Kazansky Railway Station here in Moscow,

this train carrying weapons and equipment seized from

terrorists in Syria will cover nearly 29,000

kilometers and finish on April 27

at Patriot Park.

It's astonishing that these are actually people

in real life, not in a comedy film. This wasn't invented

by some random guys. Danila Poperechny (a Russian stand-up comedian) didn't

make this up for one of his sketches. This is

actually, genuinely happening. These are people with

big salaries, standing there and saying:

"By decision of the president of our country, we

are sending something on a 29,000-kilometer journey for two

months, and obviously spending many millions

of rubles on hauling around some kind of

bits of metal of unclear

origin, and this is called a military-

patriotic campaign, Syrian..." And

what exactly are we celebrating, tell me, please?

I mean, you announced three times that we

had defeated the militants in Syria, and yet

apparently we hadn't, because when there was some kind of

fairly large combat clash

on the ground, involving on one side

those representatives of that very

"Putin's cook" (a reference to Yevgeny Prigozhin) on the other side, and

some Syrians there as well,

and with American support,

unfortunately our side there was completely crushed.

A hundred people were killed

without a single loss on the opposing

side. Is that what you're proud of? I don't

understand. I mean, it's not clear what's

going on, with no clear

end in sight. Putin repeatedly

declared that he had withdrawn the troops, sent in

troops, defeated the militants—oh no, not defeated them,

just a little left, we're continuing

the operation, we've won again, and then a month

later we've won yet again—and now they're hauling this for 29,000

kilometers across the country. All this

just shows that we still have more to see

ahead.

Oh, as the band Nol (a Soviet/Russian rock band) sang: how lovely the berries will be

if the flowers are already so lovely. Because

this is just total trash. People were always

interested in how the Soviet

Union, or North Korea, or Turkmenistan

slides into this kind of extreme idiocy.

You all love watching all sorts of

funny videos from Turkmenistan—how the president

plays golf better than anyone, how he beats everyone,

how he lifts weights, how he

dances better than anyone else, literally

how he, I don't know, sings better than anyone,

recites poetry,

he does everything—and you watch it and

laugh and think, wow, those Turkmens are really something.

Or those famous videos of Kim

Jong-un walking around, and around him, first of all,

there are generals standing there with these little

notebooks, supposedly writing down his wise

thoughts, while ordinary people are weeping. You

can easily find it on YouTube right now—they're crying

and running, and you think to yourself,

well, thank goodness we don't live there. But on

that train traveling from Laos, and

now back again from Laos with those supposed T-34 tanks,

those T-34s, and now again with some kind of

rusty bits of metal that most likely

It won’t even be Syria anymore — it’ll just be scrap metal.

they’ve piled it up

And on this very train, we’ll arrive exactly there.

And we won’t even have time to look around before it happens so fast.

Because now, as you know, they’ve passed

the law on insulting representatives

of the authorities. First of all, and second, because of

this law, state

media are already being shielded from it — that is, Dmitry Kiselyov.

Sorry, I misspoke.

They passed the law on combating fake news, and because of

the fake news law, Dmitry

Kiselyov is exempt, because otherwise you and I

would have had the opportunity to file, for example,

a complaint against him under that law, like:

"Dude, you showed a fake missile,

an American one — so let me now..."

But there will be no administrative liability.

This law is supposedly going to apply to us,

to you and me, but not to Dmitry Kiselyov.

It won’t, because, as that

author said, right now we don’t have the tools

for sufficient oversight, and so, basically,

traditional media are supposedly free of that — well,

what kind of fake stories does Kiselyov tell — but anyway.

One, two, three — by climbing this little staircase, we’ll get fairly

close to the place where Turkmenistan

and North Korea already are. We’re getting very close.

We keep getting newer and newer details about the military

heroics of Putin’s father. It’s already turning out that

he supposedly went on reconnaissance missions there, and tomorrow

it’ll turn out that he personally went there

and captured

Field Marshal Paulus, and something else will come out too.

I assure you, it will all gradually come out.

In the previous program, I talked about

that funny case with Beglov (Alexander Beglov, a Russian official), who

first lied that he had saved a woman from

Then some lackeys came running up and

started saying, yes, yes, yes, he saved a woman

because he’s used to saving everyone, after all

back in 1988 in Armenia,

after the earthquake, he saved a boy from

a house. I mean, people invent these

stories at such a speed that it’s

truly astonishing, and they’ll come up with many more like them,

from fabricated defense successes

to made-up victories. Now let’s

move on to the real state of our

defense-industrial complex, which is

of course very, very depressing. And do you know

which one is Putin’s

favorite factory? What is Putin’s favorite factory?

Tell me — and you know me from this angle,

Alexei — and of course it’s Uralvagonzavod.

The guys from Uralvagonzavod came out

and said they’d come and break up you and

people like you who were gathering there on

Bolotnaya Square (a well-known protest site in Moscow). That video has been shown

many times — 32 seconds, or rather 25

seconds — but we have to keep

watching it, because it’s one of those "spiritual staples" (a Russian ideological buzzword)

of Putin’s 2012 election

and of his current government in general, which

says that there are these supposedly

real Russian people, real men,

who want to look at a train carrying

trophies from Syria, and the next day they

want to look at a train carrying

Czechoslovak T-34 tanks, and they want

to watch Dmitry Kiselyov. So you

there, all you hipsters,

with your paper cups, shut up and be glad

silently

while the real men do what they want.

And these men said it — those 25 seconds

were very important, and they continue

to play

a key role in Putinist ideology. 25

seconds to the screen.

I want to say this about these rallies: if our

militsiya — or whatever it’s called now,

the police — doesn’t know how to do its job and can’t

cope, then we men are ready to go out ourselves

and defend our stability. Well,

of course, within the framework of Russian law.

Look, our police are doing their job — victory

because if events on the square start up, come by

and you’ll see how cool they were joking: we

will come, we’ll disperse them — come on over, guys.

And now I want to say that, well,

you

you filthy Kremlin crooks sold out all

these men. I keep talking here about Uralvagonzavod,

by the way — I mention it constantly here,

but on television they’ve completely stopped

talking about it. I mean,

of course it certainly irritates me

that Uralvagonzavod and

some of its workers were at one time

used for this propaganda,

and probably many people at Uralvagonzavod back then

really did buy into it and thought, well yes,

those Moscow guys are showing off or something,

why are they showing off, everything’s

fine. But now time has passed,

and at Uralvagonzavod people

are taking their own lives because

their standard of living — because there’s nothing to eat, and

now news has come that at this

plant, during a work shift, one of the

employees killed himself. The suicide

of the 27-year-old man happened after

he came out of a meeting with managers where

they said that wages were being cut again,

that it was impossible to raise pay,

to increase wages. And according to the words

of the plant’s employees, this is already the third case

of suicide in recent times. These

suicide cases are in many ways

happening simply because people

have been driven to despair. They have

no prospects at all.

And this is very easy to verify right now.

If you and I simply go to job websites

and imagine that we live in Nizhny Tagil,

a fairly significant number of people

living in Nizhny

Either they are watching this program, or

they’ll watch it later, not live.

That’s how people live there. Whether you’re a man or a woman,

you have to feed your family, you have to

feed your child, or two children, you want to

find a job. It’s a town-forming enterprise (the main employer in the city),

there are two big enterprises there. You look at

Uralvagonzavod, and Putin, after all, keeps saying to

the men there: come on in.

The assumption is that somehow he’ll take care of

them, give them something. So we search, we type in

“jobs at Uralvagonzavod.”

And what do we find there? Gear grinder — 20,000

rubles.

Machine operator — 20,000 rubles.

Milling machine operator — 20,000 rubles. Drill operator —

drill operator, drill operator.

20,000 rubles. How can a family

live and survive on that money? This is for an adult

man. Obviously, a machine operator,

or a gear grinder, or a milling machine operator — that’s

someone who works hard, expends

a lot of physical effort. He needs to eat

properly, at the very least. Could he do that

on 20,000? No, he couldn’t. Why does a state-owned

enterprise under Rostec pay him 20,000?

And right now that question sounds especially

sharp, damn it, against the backdrop of the apartment

that belongs to the head of Rostec,

Sergei Chemezov. This grinder,

all these people, these

workers — how long do you think they would have to work

to buy an apartment like

Chemezov’s?

20,000 years, you understand.

Now, I’m not disputing that the head of Rostec

should earn more than a milling machine operator

at Uralvagonzavod.

But 20,000 years to save up for an apartment like that —

you see, 5-billion-ruble

apartments and 20,000-ruble salaries — how does that

happen? Two weeks ago, 25

Uralvagonzavod workers

went to court over new rules for calculating their

wages, because under the new rules

their pay became

lower. How can you make sense of this?

How can the purchase of

5-billion-ruble apartments and 20,000-ruble salaries

happen at the same time, especially at a factory that Putin is supposed to

practically worship? If you’ve made

Uralvagonzavod the symbol of

your power, then give them money. If you’re

pouring such enormous amounts of money

into defense right now, and all day long

you’re on television just brainwashing everyone

about our missiles, our super-tanks,

our defense industry, how our

American partners should count on our missile

reaching them,

well, if that’s what you’re doing, then

pay them. Yes, yes, maybe there’s no way

to pay everyone 100,000 or 200,000

rubles, which would be a normal

salary for a skilled worker at

a large factory in any European

country. 200,000 rubles would be close to the minimum there.

But at least, I don’t know, raise it to

70,000 to 80,000. Can’t you make it so that

the minimum wage for workers at

Uralvagonzavod is equal to the average salary in

Moscow? You can.

Why not? Because the urge to steal

is so strong that

it would never even occur to Chemezov, not even remotely,

you understand, to buy an apartment not

for 5 billion rubles, but for 1 billion, and

let the rest go to someone else.

It doesn’t even occur to them that they ought

to feel ashamed about this. They do not want

to feel ashamed. And what is Uralvagonzavod to them?

So what if three people took their own

lives? Well, it’s not us — that’s just life,

that’s how life is.

After all, ha-ha-ha, they supported Putin, so

fine, let them now get their fill of that Putin

by the spoonful. And I absolutely do not

approve of those sarcastic

comments. I saw a lot of them, as always,

on Twitter, of course. Everyone

remembered and started writing things like, well,

let them

suffer for how they

voted, let them suffer for what they

were calling for there in their workshop.

That is absolutely the wrong position. They

may have said those things back then, and they may have pressured others,

they may even have spoken sincerely — but still,

they are people. You cannot treat them like that,

you cannot mock them like that, you cannot insult them like that, you cannot

humiliate them like that, you cannot drive people to

suicide. That is what they are actually doing.

Scoundrels — what else is there to say? And you see,

Putin claimed to love Uralvagonzavod, but he does nothing.

More than that,

the workers there have to sue for their wages.

And I’m saying right now, on air:

those 25 people who are suing there — I don’t know whether you have

a union or no union — if

the workers of Uralvagonzavod need

legal help to sue

their management over their wages, then I will help them,

and the Anti-Corruption Foundation will help them,

and you and I, if necessary,

if we need to hire lawyers in Nizhny Tagil,

we’ll chip in and hire lawyers in Nizhny

Tagil. I very much want us to do that

so that we can shove it in Putin’s face, and in the faces of all

the others, and say to them:

here are your workers, you understand, here are your

workers who puffed out their chests over Bolotnaya Square (the site of major anti-government protests in Moscow), and when things got bad for them,

who was it that did not come to help?

It was decent people, the people who gathered

at Bolotnaya Square, who are helping — and you

did nothing except steal from them

the last of what they had. So it turns out that this

program, in a way,

today’s episode is devoted to power, to might.

our defense about mice with our

space industry before we moved on

to Dagestan.

I just can't skip over the topic

of a grand breakthrough in space

that is supposed to happen in the near future,

because, well, in recent years, after

Dmitry Rogozin took charge of the whole

space sector, nothing has really

been happening—except for putting on these,

you know, flashy, loud

presentations. I mean, our Vostochny Cosmodrome

Vostochny

was presented with much less pomp,

even though there was not much there worth presenting,

since everything failed there—deadlines, everything.

But then they also somehow managed

to outdo themselves with this whole spectacle.

We got this super-mega space

presentation that Rogozin held in the presence

of a huge number

of journalists—and it was about an office building

that Roscosmos was going to build, if you can believe it.

Because what Russian space really needs right now,

more than salaries, not

technology, not specialists who

have all scattered, not young people, not even the old

Soviet-era staff who are already too old—no,

none of that is needed. Or if it is, then only

secondarily.

Good contractors who actually build things without

stealing money, like at Vostochny—

no, that's not what's needed. What we need is an office, we need

a major construction project in Moscow, and here you can see

in these images

they really want to build in Fili, in

Filyovsky Park, some gigantic monstrosity

of course of colossal size and,

naturally, shaped like a rocket.

Elon Musk, excuse me, you're a loser,

because you don't understand that in order

for your little thing there to land and

take off better, you need to

build a huge

building shaped like a Tesla—specifically, a Tesla taking off

into the air. Only then will anything

start working. At Roscosmos, that seems to be exactly

how they think: you need a giant building. It

will cost 25 billion rubles (about US$270 million). Apparently there is no

greater priority, it turns out.

Back in the Soviet Union, we had

a huge number of enterprises.

Take the Khrunichev Center plant, for example, on the site

of which they now simply want

to build this monstrosity. And all those other countless

enterprises—they were built, well,

as it turns out, with no office space at all.

There was apparently none to be found anywhere.

The designers must have been sitting

out in the street all the time—there were no design bureaus, none of that.

Korolev (the chief Soviet rocket engineer) must have done it all from a dugout.

And now Rogozin came in, looked around for a year,

and said: guys, I've figured it out—we need buildings

shaped like rockets, and then everything will work.

What I'm saying isn't just some kind of

mockery or sarcasm, you know. This genuinely

really worries me, because

I live in Moscow, and I don't like that these

people are, first of all, going to build this building

for 25 billion rubles (about US$270 million) when we have better things

to spend money on, and we simply do not need

yet another kind of strange, incomprehensible

ugly Pyramid of Khufu looming over Moscow.

NASA, for your information, does not build buildings like that.

If we look at the launch charts, at

the number of launches—let's compare

Russia with the United States and even China—

there, you see, that red, sad red

line going downward is the number

of our launches. You see, it has fallen. In the

space sector, we have started falling behind

in a truly catastrophic way. If you look at

the commercial launch charts, well, we have

completely collapsed there.

We are lagging behind very seriously, even behind

China, and our response to that is to build

a new building. That's the first thing. And second,

come on, guys, let's be honest here—we all

know why.

And why is this happening? If you

live in Moscow, especially in the western

part of the city, then you understand. And if you don't,

let's just look at the picture.

Even Muscovites will find it useful

to get a better sense of where the Khrunichev plant

is located. You see this nice little

spot, surrounded on all sides by the Moscow

River? I mean, it's just amazing, and

a really great place for what? For residential

development, damn it—for luxury housing.

And it has already been stated outright that part

of the Khrunichev plant's territory will be

given over to

an ugly giant rocket costing 25

billion rubles (about US$270 million),

and everything else will be handed over for development.

So basically, we'll just cram in private

housing, and some people will make

a lot of money from it. I think both Rogozin and Sobyanin (Moscow's mayor)

will be very pleased, as will the Moscow

construction establishment, because in

western Moscow

—an environmentally cleaner part of the city—there are no longer

such enormous sites available for

large-scale development. And of course,

the infrastructure there is excellent. Well, the

Khrunichev plant used to manufacture the Proton rocket,

which for many years was the most

reliable launch vehicle in the world.

And only in recent years did it stop

being that way. So what exactly is Putin's fault in this?

That he wrecked the space

industry—even the ultra-reliable Proton

stopped being reliable, and it was

produced there. Obviously,

the utilities, electricity, sewage,

networks, and everything else there are

all in very good shape. In other words, it's a really prime

It’s a site on the west side—just take it and build.

With the Moscow River all around, it’s perfect for housing.

It’ll sell brilliantly—fly off the shelves.

Like hot pies, and they

and they’re destroying the factory for all of this, well,

if such a large facility isn’t needed on this site

such a big factory in our city,

then fine, you can do something else there.

But they’re seriously

trying to tell us that, for the sake of

developing the complex, we’re supposed to stick up a huge

rocket and surround it with commercial housing, but

maybe they should continue doing something on that

territory, since it’s connected to

space—it’s high technology, it’s like

Putin said there,

highly skilled jobs, and

obviously they should be well paid.

Maybe we should keep doing something on that

site, if it’s such a unique place.

But no—they don’t care. Tomorrow

we won’t be here anymore, thinks Rogozin,

Sobyanin, Putin, and all the rest: we need

to grab what we can in five years, and now they’ve simply

seen a piece of land, and on that piece of

land they want to cash in. Of course, I would really

like Muscovites—and really, this

concerns every citizen of Russia—to

understand that this is happening and to treat it

less lightly, simply.

We shouldn’t be outraged that

the rocket costs 25 billion rubles (about $270 million); we

should be outraged that this is

a sham, that instead of

developing the space industry,

this whole gang has given up on

the space industry and rushed off

to actually carry out nothing more than a project

to build luxury housing, and nothing

else. That is exactly

what this is: a luxury housing development

project.

BadComedian—I want to talk to you about

BadComedian, because

I watched his latest video,

where he reviews the film *Gazgolder*.

It’s already got almost five

million views. I think almost everyone

has seen it, but if you haven’t,

watch it through to the end. I watched it, and

usually I watch, laugh—he’s incredibly

funny, what a talented guy—but this time I

actually felt a kind of jealousy,

because in a review that’s almost an hour long,

for the last 20 minutes Evgeny just

took this

pension reform—Putin’s increase in the

retirement age—and just like at the start, when

they showed the destruction of

imported cheese (a reference to Russia’s food embargo), he just took it and

absolutely burned it to the ground, and did it amazingly

well. And it seemed very important to me,

because what we saw there was not just

someone dragging officials’ faces across the table,

all of them,

but, really, this is

a public figure, and this is a person

who normally just reviews movies,

but he considered this important, and he

did it, he did it.

Brilliantly, fantastically. More than that, he

very effectively mobilized public

opinion and showed, with just one of his videos,

how, through the force of public opinion, he even

made one of those people loudly speaking out

in favor of the pension reform—

the rapper Basta—publicly apologize.

But before we discuss Basta, I wanted

to show you a short clip.

I was watching and thinking: why didn’t I do that?

Why didn’t I do it? He just went ahead

and put together a few seconds. Let’s

look at how they lied about the number of

workers per pensioner, because in the logic of this reform

one of the main ideas was a fake one:

that supposedly almost nobody in our country

works, while there are far too many

pensioners. Let’s watch—if I remember right,

it’s literally 40 seconds. We have fewer than

two people

per pensioner—more precisely, 1.8 working

citizens.

1.2 workers support

one pensioner. 1.2—see, that’s just not true.

In today’s Russia, where

half the adult population are pensioners,

and working people are actually a minority—

such a simple thing. Yes, just a few seconds, but he simply

destroyed them—burned it all down.

Absolutely magnificent. And with Basta, it turned out

great. I remember very well

when we were organizing rallies against

raising the retirement age, I was writing

posts, recording videos every day. What an

unpleasant moment it was when the rapper

Basta, at a press conference and then

several times on his social media,

openly came out in support of this

increase in the retirement age. This was

used very actively

by propagandists. I talked about it, and it seemed

pretty obvious to me that he had been paid,

frankly. And in

Evgeny BadComedian’s review, he also

talked about it, and he said there quite clearly and

plainly that

you were paid. There were a lot of

complaints directed specifically at Basta on this issue,

addressed to him,

and they were delivered in a rather

specific, direct, and aggressive

manner. Let’s watch this 42-second clip.

Basta & BadComedian

This is, you know, forced therapy.

It resembles a surgical procedure

that simply has to be done. All of this

is inevitable,

a condition for survival. I’m very sorry, well.

Of course, that’s how it happens, for example, with

Basta (stage name of Russian rapper Vasily Vakulenko) — it’s hard for him to know about the outrageous

tax breaks granted to major corporations.

It’s hard to know that official wages

are understated relative to

labor productivity.

As a result, contributions to the Pension Fund of Russia (PFR) are lower.

He has no time — he sings songs. But why is it that

you, the working class, never asked yourselves

why we ended up in a situation where

supposedly there’s no money — “hang in there, all the best to you” (a reference to a famous dismissive phrase by former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev).

All the best, good luck, and so on — and yet

we keep ending up in this situation over and over again,

when those at the top are supposedly forced not to pay people

or feel the need to squeeze even more out of them

than before.

I’m pointing this out not to say, “Look,”

“how cool, there was this battle between”

Zemlyanoy, Basta, and BadComedian (Russian film critic and YouTuber) — “destroyed,”

sure, someone got “destroyed” there, but much more importantly,

something else happened: public opinion was mobilized.

It was brought together, and that public opinion

ran straight to Basta to tell him, “Dude,”

“how could you do this? You shouldn’t have done it.”

And besides, now

it’s become clear that all of it was a complete lie.

Back then, some people understood it; now

many people understand it — why did you do it?

And Basta apologized — which is absolutely

an amazing thing, something we can and

should achieve through mobilizing this

public opinion. Our public figures,

artists, singers — whoever they may be —

the best of them try to stay silent. Well, actually,

only a very small number of them

speak out. And what does a significant

number of the most disgusting and

corrupt ones think? They’ve sold out. And a large number

simply stay silent.

And that is awful — their silence

is disgusting, especially when we see that

when an opinion leader like

BadComedian specifically starts

speaking out, everything changes instantly, and

Basta came out too — and to give him his due,

yes, he understood, he understood that he

shouldn’t have done it. He understood that

public opinion was completely against it, and

he fully realized it was a mistake. Whether he was paid or not —

he says he wasn’t paid —

no one will know that now, at least

not until we find out. But pressure was put on him, in the

good sense of the word.

So everyone rushed in, and he said something like,

“Alright then, I’ll say that I was wrong.”

Let’s take a look for a minute.

Basta after BadComedian: “Dear friends,”

“After discussing Zhenya BadComedian’s (Evgeny Bazhenov’s) latest release, in which he

reviews our film and touches on

my modest person,”

“my modest person,”

“I decided to record an official video statement.”

“I’ll be reading it, and to be very clear,”

“I want to offer my sincere apologies

to everyone who was not indifferent to, or was offended by,

my position on the pension

reform, voiced by me at a press

conference in Rostov-on-Don in September.”

“I should not have asserted anything

without fully understanding the important nuances

of the pension reform.”

“My opinion was based on several

articles I had read,”

“using inaccurate and distorted data. I am sincerely sorry

that my words were understood

and quoted in that way, and also

compared with the position of propagandists.”

“I also do not understand the accusations of my

being bought by the authorities, financially or

ideologically. I have never had, and do not have,

any such relationship with the authorities.”

“I offer my sincere apologies to everyone

for whom my position became the basis

for a discussion that I would like

to end with my one clear point of view:”

“I do not support the pension

reform; I consider it a major mistake. I have always

had the courage to admit my mistakes,”

“and I believe it is necessary to do so now.”

“Thank you for your understanding. Hugs to everyone.”

“Yours, Vakulenko.”

It’s a success story from every angle, you see.

BadComedian recorded a video and got

more views, and I looked at

the comments — people were simply

thrilled, absolutely thrilled.

With the second part, he got even more

views.

In the end, he’ll probably get

more money, more donations; his

authority has grown. All those cowardly

bloggers and actors who say, “I’m not going

to talk about politics because, well, I don’t know,”

“people might not like it, or my support might

drop, so I’ll just hint at things between the lines” —

no need for that. Here, this person showed

that if you say everything you really think, honor and

respect come from all sides. It benefits him,

and that’s good. It benefits us too, and that’s good,

because Vakulenko also came out and said,

“Guys, I read the wrong article. I shouldn’t have

spoken in favor of it,” and that’s good for him too. People are writing to him,

“Well, Vasya, so after all

you made a mistake and admitted it — that means something.”

People love that. It benefits us, and it benefits him,

as well. That’s great. So, dear

figures of culture,

don’t just talk in your kitchens — speak out, you know,

record it on your phone and post it.

That’s first. And second, everyone, please apply

pressure

to those cultural figures who stay silent, and

give support to those cultural figures

who do not stay silent. That is very

important. So then,

naked men and women are always interesting,

after all, it’s something to discuss, especially since

naked men and women — well, probably if

If they were completely naked, I wouldn’t be able to show them to you.

But

a video with slightly undressed men and

women — it

caused a huge stir this week and became

one of the main news stories, and a very

significant one, it seemed to me, at the news level.

Despite a certain strange

comic undertone, let’s immediately

watch this scandalous 32-

second video.

[music]

edit

And now a significant number of

viewers of the program are saying: you promised

us a naked man and a naked woman — what

is this?

It looks quite modest, doesn’t it?

But because of this theatrical

production in Dagestan, there was almost

a revolution over it, because

Khabib, our famous, celebrated

athlete, currently the most famous

Dagestani in Russia and certainly in the world,

one of the most famous athletes in the world,

in Dagestan he is an absolute legend, and well,

he has 17 million followers

on Instagram — somehow he saw

this video, and the nudity of these people outraged him

so much that he wrote a post on

Instagram, then deleted it, then again

wrote one. Let’s look at this post.

So: naked men and women are kissing

in the city center.

Where is the law? Who will answer for this pornography?

Then he advises the governments of other

countries that they conducted an investigation,

and apologized.

Otherwise, we’ll take to the streets and take

everything into our own hands. Take action — you are mistaken.

And it was really such a harsh attack, with a

fundamentalist character.

Naturally, the frightened, miserable

actors of this troupe from the MMC

from Moscow, the play *Hunt for Men*,

naturally got scared and put out

some kind of apology, and there were really

some dramatic events

around all this.

And this is very important, because we

need to discuss whether it can be

that one person, very, very

popular and very conservatively

minded, can simply literally

drive musicians out of an entire federal subject (region of Russia),

including musicians like Yegor Kreed in particular.

As I recall, he also drove out some rappers, well,

basically everyone else who gets a little

undressed — he just

drives them out of Makhachkala and out of

Dagestan. He has quite a large group

of supporters, people like him, and well, this

looks a little strange. For example, in

Makhachkala there is a beach, and today I did

the strange thing of googling pictures

for the query “Makhachkala beach,”

and there, generally speaking, there are fairly

undressed people — in swimsuits — and they

are on the beach. I don’t know, tell me,

those of you from Makhachkala: are these people

then stoned afterward or what?

What happens? I mean, I assume that

after all, in Makhachkala

there are different kinds of people.

Many love wrestling and love Khabib, and

there are also those who go to the theater.

Some go to the movies, some go to

libraries, and they don’t see any big

problem in the fact that there are books there, and in books

there are different illustrations. Or there is a museum, and in a

museum — imagine this — many

artists painted naked people. But Khabib

hates nudity, and he seems to think that

everywhere naked men and women

kiss, or are simply naked, that is

pornography.

And now, apparently making up to you

for not having shown enough naked

men and women, would you like me to show naked

men in a bathtub? Let’s look at naked

men in a bathtub. Let’s put them on the big

screen — yes, let’s put it on the

big screen, thank you very much.

A terrible photograph. Apparently Khabib should

be shocked, but he won’t be shocked because

he himself is in this photograph. I’m not

trying to tease or mock anyone

or anything like that. What are the men in

this photograph doing? Why are they packed so

tightly into this bathtub? Nothing, they’re not

doing anything, actually. I’m sure that

there is no hidden meaning in this story

and there is no story at all. People simply decided

to get into a bathtub and take a picture.

Do they have the right to do that?

They do. Does someone have the right to post their own

photograph? Yes, they do. Well then, dear

followers of Khabib, and dear Khabib

Nurmagomedov, someone also has the right to go

to a play.

It’s in an enclosed venue, marked 18+.

You cannot come there with children.

Adults come there, people who have

the same rights as you, and they want

to watch a play where people are far

more clothed than those in the bathtub

just now. Well, they kiss there — apparently it is

some kind of production about love, about

relationships, about human relationships. Well,

that’s just how it is: they are connected with the fact that people

argue, kiss, joke with one

another, flirt — that’s how this world works, and

it’s not clear why now, simply at the

first snap of the fingers, at the first

call, people say: now we’ll come and create

disorder in order to “restore order.”

Who is supposed to apologize? Is someone supposed to

run around and

just literally, really, actually run away

People are afraid to go there from Makhachkala (the capital of Dagestan, Russia).

Because, well, let's be honest, they are being told

they are essentially being threatened with violence: “We’ll come and use force,”

“and we’ll restore order ourselves, we’ll beat everyone up.” I,

by the way, am a big supporter of the idea

that religiously minded people should express

their concerns. Absolutely everyone has

the right to do so—there are liberals, there are conservatives,

there are atheists, there are people who are not religiously

inclined. Picket if you want, by all means.

File lawsuits—you absolutely have

every right to. If you don’t like it, take it to

court, you know, hold a picket line, protest,

boycott this theater, or this

venue, or, I don’t know, the director, in order to

ruin them financially—that’s a great idea. Call on all of

Makhachkala to stop going to this theater

because, in your view, there are bad people there, they are

full of what you consider pornography—that’s

a great idea.

You have every right to do that. This happens all

over the world.

In America, for example, there are conservative

communities that go around

boycotting concerts, picketing

them. Madonna’s concerts were boycotted and picketed

for many years by various

people and different groups. Outside virtually every

medical clinic in the United States where

abortions are performed, there is a weekend picket

by abortion opponents—religious

and conservative people. They don’t like it, and they

have every right to speak out against

it, just as Khabib has every right

to raise his voice there, so to speak. Well,

if he believes that people shouldn’t undress and

that everyone should be covered from head to

toe,

he has the right to say that if that’s what he believes in.

But calling for violence—what

is happening now, the way it is

happening like this—

in Dagestan, well, that is Islamist

fundamentalism.

And sooner or later it will lead to violence,

because someone writes a

tweet or an Instagram post, and then

tomorrow some

person who has gone off the rails over it will come running

onto a beach and stab someone, or shoot them,

or attack a woman because

she is showing that her shoulder isn’t sufficiently

covered. This is exactly what whips these fanatics up.

In the previous program, I spoke a lot about

how all these monstrous

conflicts, including those in Moscow,

happen because

Chechen and Azerbaijani communities, among others,

argue with each other, and they happen because

everyone is endlessly offended, damn it,

and everyone endlessly starts writing

on Instagram about how they are so

offended that everyone must

apologize to them, that you must ask

for forgiveness, or else we’ll come and

restore order ourselves.

That should not be happening. I would like

Khabib Nurmagomedov, being a very

authoritative figure in Dagestan and in the

Caucasus in general, to say, for example, that the house

in Kabardino-Balkaria (a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus) that

Kaitov built after getting out of

prison, having served less than ten years for

seven murders—that is the real obscenity.

It’s outrageous that things are arranged so that ordinary people

get 12,000 rubles a month while management

steals billions. If people were writing in his

comments, “Yes, yes, that’s right,”

“we’ll come out and restore order ourselves if

the authorities, the prosecutor’s office, the FSB (Russia’s security service), or anyone else doesn’t

start putting things right”—that would be

great. But threatening some

poor actors who came

simply to perform for the people who bought tickets,

to show, I don’t know, how they walk around there

or take their shirts off,

that, it seems to me, is not cool, and it is not

[music]

it’s not cool, bro. All of this really

is not cool. But getting outraged about watches—

that’s cool. Asking how, exactly,

while earning a salary of 74,000 rubles,

the head of Karachay-Cherkessia (a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus) buys

himself watches worth several million rubles

—several of them. Let’s talk about that.

Let’s put up a great post on

Instagram—it would get a huge

number of likes. But for some reason that doesn’t

happen, and that would be great.

The last thing I want to say: I saw

this news today, and it hit me. I

hope it hits you too, because, well,

because one of Russia’s most legendary

nature reserves, Kronotsky Nature Reserve,

they want to devour it, bears and all.

Those of you who just thought

and said, “What reserve? We don’t know

that one,” I assure you, you do know it.

Because if you’ve seen cool,

funny, amazing—whatever kind of—

photos of bears catching

fish and doing all sorts of funny and amazing

things—those Kamchatka bears, all of that

comes from there. It is the staff of that very

legendary and unique Kronotsky

Nature Reserve who take those photos, and right now

what is happening there is simply a real

outrage.

Because certain wheeler-dealers have decided

to start industrial fish farming there, and for

that they simply need to

crush the reserve’s management, because

of course they are against it—they are scientists, not

businessmen. They say that if you start

industrial fish breeding here

and making money from it, then you will

destroy the reserve. Let’s

Let's leave it alone—it's a nature reserve.

You can't breed commercial sockeye salmon there, or whatever it is

they want to farm there. You can

go to the reserve's website, to its social media pages,

and read about it—it's all explained there in great detail.

So what do people do when they

want to make money? They don't care about

the uniqueness of the reserve or the beautiful,

amazing bears that you and I

watch now—but our children, or our grandchildren,

may never see them except in

photographs—old photographs.

There won't be any new ones.

Naturally, in their usual manner, they

had Darya Panicheva, the head

of the scientific department of this reserve,

arrested and fabricated charges against her,

some kind of embezzlement charges. All

the reserve's staff, with one voice,

say that these charges are completely fabricated.

Look at what they're doing to her.

Here, let me show you a piece of the map. You

see where the reserve is located, right? In

Kamchatka, and you see where the city of Khabarovsk is.

So they arrested her there and transferred her

to a pre-trial detention center (SIZO) in Khabarovsk. I mean,

just imagine the sheer span of Russia and

the fantastical distance involved.

This is a woman who isn't accused of

killing anyone, or of a violent

crime, or anything like that. She's

been charged with embezzlement, and they

shouldn't have arrested her at all.

But they specifically want to break her—and everyone else—

to intimidate them. And so, she has

a minor child, and visiting her

out in the middle of nowhere is practically impossible.

You have to fly via Moscow from

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Khabarovsk, and

they didn't even keep her somewhere locally, in the local police system.

They didn't even hold her there, or in

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky—of course there is

a SIZO in Kamchatka.

They deliberately dragged her to Khabarovsk in order

to send exactly this message to all of you:

we can crush you. Scientists, don't get smart.

We're going to farm fish here and

make money off it. I urge

everyone simply to go

to this reserve's Facebook page and read

about what's happening, support these

people, spread this information, and also

defend this woman, Darya Panicheva,

because, well, they're devouring people, and the reserve

is devouring our bears too.

They're devouring everything in the Beautiful Russia of the Future (an ironic political slogan).

We need bears, and we will love them very much,

because they will stop being

symbols of the United Russia party,

because there won't be any United Russia party left.

See you next Thursday. Bye.

[music]