Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #016. Privileged Youth and Neo-Feudalism, Ulyukayev and Sechin, Rap Battles

[music]

Hello, good evening. It's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow.

That means we're live in the Navalny Live studio.

Alexei Navalny is here to

discuss important issues with you,

the key issues of the past week, and Kira Yarmysh, who,

I hope, won't let Alexei dodge

answering these questions. She won't. I

hope so too. We have to begin with,

unfortunately, a disturbing and terrible,

I would say, topic: the terrorist attack that took place

just now, a few minutes ago,

probably half an hour ago in Barcelona. There are already

13 confirmed dead, I think, and 25

or 30 injured.

Our condolences to everyone. I can imagine the horror

that tens of

thousands of families across Russia are in right now, unable

to reach their relatives,

their loved ones who are in

Barcelona. It's one of the most popular

tourist destinations

not just for Russia, but for the whole world. But from Russia,

in any case, it's millions a year, hundreds of

thousands now, and tens of thousands who

are in Barcelona right now. It's

the most popular place Russian tourists go

after

Egypt was closed off and travel to Turkey dropped off.

So of course everyone went to Spain, and this is

a truly terrible situation.

And

what stands out, it seems to me,

is that

a new method has now firmly taken hold,

a new way of carrying out terrorist attacks: very cheap, very

simple, very accessible to anyone. It's

just a vehicle. Before, at least,

the security services fought

terrorist groups

by catching them when they tried to buy

components for explosives

and other similar things; dogs

would go around sniffing for explosives. But with a vehicle,

what can you do? You just go,

rent one for 100 euros, and that's it.

There was shooting not far from the site of the attack, and

hostages in a children's café. So there,

as I understand it, right now

the people who carried it out have barricaded themselves in.

What are the latest updates?

The latest update I'm seeing is this:

it was just released at 20:18.

At least 13 people have been killed, and 32 wounded.

Witnesses reported gunfire not far

from the site of the attack. The truck driver took

hostages in a Turkish café. Whether he has

accomplices is unknown. Yes, but still,

the main number of deaths, as I understand it,

were not even from the shooting — they were

specifically from the use of a vehicle,

an ordinary minivan that you can find anywhere,

and easily rent.

I was in Barcelona for the first time in my

life quite recently, when I went there for

surgery, and I remember when I came up to

that street, I actually went around it

along parallel streets, because I thought I wouldn't

go there. It really was like

a constantly overcrowded bus. In that

sense, of course, any big city

is now becoming vulnerable to these

new kinds of terrorist attacks. It's a major challenge

for the security services and for society as a whole, because

it's extremely difficult to control.

In fact, this kind of attack can

be carried out by a lone individual. He doesn't need any

complex preparations, and he can do it

under the influence of some spontaneous

factors.

We hope your relatives and loved ones are

all right, and that those of you who have

someone in Barcelona will be able

to reach them soon. Our main topic

today is, of course, our friend

Kolya. I even wrote on my cup:

Hi, Kolya.

Hi. Today we released

an investigation about

Nikolai Choles, who turned out to be the secret

eldest son of Dmitry Peskov. Yes, people are writing to us

saying they haven't watched the video about

Peskov yet, or haven't finished it. Well,

please watch it — it's 13 minutes long,

but

please do.

By the way, she's our supervisor — she oversees

the video production side, and

these videos are her constant headache.

When I don't like something, I say,

"Make this part funnier, and here

find a funny insert," and Kira goes

crazy looking for a funny clip. But

every second — truly every second —

of the video is a huge, huge stress.

So I know very well how long it is:

14:28. And you know Nikolai Choles's story well,

but now let's, over the course of

literally 1 minute and 51 seconds —

I've timed it — give a brief summary of what

we released today.

Hi, this is Navalny. Oh, what's this

beautiful car in the photos?

Let's take a closer look at the lucky guy

who owns it.

I've seen that mustache somewhere before, but our

story is still about Nikolai. He's even

more interesting than his dad. You can live perfectly well,

for your own pleasure, at the very

highest level, while doing absolutely nothing.

He uses only the best

cars. The court hearing transcript says

that in 2009, Dmitry

Peskov's offspring, together with two acquaintances, attacked

a teenager near a local McDonald's,

took his money, and beat him. And

a few months before that attack, he had been

given a 10-month suspended sentence for

another attack on a young woman from whom he

snatched a phone. He has not worked since 2015.

Nowhere. Subscribe to our channel here

they tell the truth.

A reminder: you can send us questions

on Twitter using the hashtag #Navalny2018. We

want to hold several

polls today—one on YouTube and several

on Twitter. And our first poll on

Twitter, Navalny, and his VKontakte page

Navalny Live—all the links to our social media

accounts can be found in the description of this

broadcast.

This is what they tell us after every

investigation of ours that involves

officials' children. What do they tell us? They say

some generic, hypothetical Vladimir

Solovyov says you must not investigate the children

of officials. Officials' children are not

to blame. They did not choose their fathers, and

therefore it is very unethical to attribute the sins

of their parents to them. So every time we are

accused of populism and of

targeting completely innocent people.

Indeed, this is the main line of defense,

the Kremlin's main line of defense, and of the

officialdom in general in this situation. They do not

want to discuss the substance of where this

jobless guy got a Ferrari, or why

this unemployed guy flies on a

private jet. They say, well, these are

children—how can you go after children? And

that is the question in our VKontakte and Twitter

polls. Please go there and vote. We are

asking: is it acceptable to conduct

investigations concerning the children

of officials, or are they just children who should be

left alone? And Nikolai Choles himself

did comment to us, gave us some kind of

response. He commented to RBC, and he

called our investigation a horror, a nightmare,

and a provocation.

Well, that is a fairly complete

comment—you rarely get even that much.

So, 15 minutes before the release of the

investigation, we called him. There was an

interesting reply. We did not even

post it. We said: Hello,

we are from the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

could you comment on where you got the money?

Did you really serve time in an English

prison? To which he said: Anti-Corruption Foundation?

I have nothing to do

with corruption—and hung up. And so far

there have been no other comments. As

usual, Peskov is silent. Frankly speaking,

there is not, unfortunately, a large enough press corps

that would force someone to comment

on this—Peskov, Peskov's deputies, or

officials in Russia in general. As far as

I understand it, RBC probably tried to

reach him, and were told that Peskov

is on vacation.

But in general, it is interesting how they reacted to this. Echo

of Moscow (a Russian radio station), yes, Echo of Moscow talked quite a lot

about it today.

They discussed this investigation despite

the fact that Alexei Alexeyevich is on excellent

terms with Dmitry Peskov, but nevertheless

he still somehow let all of this go on air.

Yes, I am a presidential candidate,

I suppose. Let's just conduct

a thought experiment: you have become

the president's press secretary. You

are in that position. You have children. Your children

have been caught in some awful

corruption-related scandal. They have Ferraris,

and, well, you understand where those

Ferraris came from, right? But you do not want to explain it to everyone.

So I am simply

interested: what is one supposed to say in

Peskov's place? It is hard for me to imagine what

Peskov, hypothetically, should say in

a normal country, where this behavior by him

and his son would be considered something

improper. In a normal country—speaking of

a normal country—people would resign.

But obviously he said what

they always say: I do not know, there are

more important problems. For example, the Barcelona

terror attack, and you are asking about some

nonsense. And anyway, this

what does he usually call you—an unknown

gentleman,

a nobody,

is saying some nonsense as usual,

trying to score points for his

political campaign. Therefore,

questions like these, given that at the end

I urged people to sign in support of me—

by the way, I urge you once again to sign—

those signatures are needed. Their line of

defense would probably look something like this: well,

he just wants to gain political

capital. So here we stay silent, but if

suddenly someone does show up—if by some miracle

a brave reporter appears who

corners you with a recorder—then you will

have to say that this is, well, a person

in search of cheap PR,

who has repeatedly published false

information. Who has won in court against him?

Look, Alisher Burkhanovich successfully did

that, so of course we cannot

take any of this seriously. But

of course it is sad that there is no press in this country

that would do its job after us,

because we have laid out the facts, and in

a normal situation, of course, the media should now

pounce on them in order

to perform their function, in order

to get likes and clicks, in order

to get more traffic and report

important information. But that is not happening.

The information Peskov provides

is usually just 'no,' and everyone runs headlines

like 'Peskov commented.' You open

the article, and it just says: 'No.' By the way,

Outrageous things always make the headlines.

Instead of saying, "Peskov declined"

to comment, they make it sound like Peskov

commented, or that Peskov denied it.

Here, it seems to me, it will be harder for him,

because this concerns him personally, and it is

true, of course. Please write to us in

Twitter with the hashtag #Navalny2018.

What would you say

would sound plausible? Let's put together a talking-points memo.

Well, obviously people like Vladimir

Solovyov

Well, the whole set of propagandists, they

will have to say something in defense of

Peskov. Defending him is extremely difficult,

because, well, here you have a young fool and

layabout with these Ferraris, and on his

social media he posted it all himself. This isn't some spy

investigation—he, he, he is saying: guys, I have

a Ferrari, I took a picture with it,

look. And basically, we just showed

all of it. We have an official document from

an English court. In fact, it is hard to refute

this. But we remember a completely

fantastic statement, for example,

from Vladimir Solovyov after the rallies

on the 12th, because we are all

children of corrupt officials—he said that the people who came out into the streets

were the children of corrupt officials, you see.

People are not idiots: they are against corruption, and he

looks at them and says, well, obviously, they

all had iPhones, so they are the children

of corrupt officials. So these people are

so magnificently hypocritical that

they will come up with some kind of justification

anyway. So let's help them

come up with one—write in.

Let's read this: people are writing to us that children need to be

kept under a huge magnifying glass, especially

when they later become

officials and successful businessmen. Well,

basically, that is true. This is apparently on

the question of whether children should be investigated.

Look, I am not trying to take the side of

Peskov, but my children, for example, are kept

under a huge magnifying glass, and I really do not

like it. On the one hand, I am

a political figure. I am a presidential candidate.

Well, I am not an official, but I

am claiming that I want to lead the

state, and probably all the same

rules apply to me as well.

Yes, they do apply. Again, in some

normal country, where there would be normal attention paid to you,

they would not be following your children so closely

through the streets when they are going to

school. Right, I mean, people came to my son

at kindergarten; people follow my wife and

my children around, filming them with cameras. Uh,

I really dislike that very much, and so

the question here is simply to understand where

the line lies between public

oversight and the point where you can simply

take any politician you do not

like and just terrorize them for no reason.

Do you remember, by the way, the situation with

Chirikova (Yevgenia Chirikova, a Russian environmental activist), when they sent

social services to her, which threatened to

take away her children during the whole situation with

the Khimki Forest (a major environmental protest near Moscow)? That was

one of the reasons why she left the

country and is now in political

exile. So, by the way,

on the question of whether children can be touched—well,

they go after children to the fullest extent.

Uh-huh.

In Irkutsk, at our campaign office, they beat up the son

of the man who rented us the office space,

they beat him terribly. And in that

sense, they have been targeting children for a long time. And

Please tell us,

the poll is running on Twitter—what are the

current results, can we

get them yet? There are no results yet, they say, but

go to Twitter and VKontakte and answer

the question: uh, is it acceptable to

conduct investigations concerning

the children of officials?

That is a different matter.

The FSB (Russia’s security service) following people through the streets is

still a different thing, on the question of

where the line is.

I agree, I absolutely agree, and in that

sense, probably if it turned out that my

daughter had a Ferrari and I could not

explain where the money for that

Ferrari came from, or if she posted photos of how

instead of going to school she was

flying on a private jet—well, then probably

those would be signals indicating that

such investigations—this kind of investigation—

should indeed be carried out, rather. But

we keep saying "investigation," but

strictly speaking, what is there to investigate here?

The investigative part on our side, of course,

consisted in the fact that we dealt with

the English court documents and compared many

things. But really, the main

evidence regarding Nikolai Choles (likely referring to Peskov’s elder son) is

Peskov’s elder son’s own

Instagram, essentially.

He does not hide this lifestyle; he

shows it off, throws it in our faces. So

uh, just as there were in fact the children

of Zheleznyak (Sergei Zheleznyak, a Russian politician), if you remember.

One of his daughters was precisely

the reason after which people especially

wrote a lot about how we were acting unethically

.

by drawing attention to children who were

not guilty of anything. There, indeed, the daughters

were not guilty of anything. They were simply

studying peacefully. One works at the BBC, I think,

the eldest—the eldest married a

Scotsman, and the other daughters, as far as I

know, too—at least one more is in

Europe. And Zheleznyak simply claimed 4

years ago—probably five by now—that they

They said they would come back after finishing their studies. Well, here they are.

Of course, they never came back, and that was

one of the reasons why we made

an investigation about them, and not because of their personal

qualities. Overall, no one is really to blame for anything

except Peskov himself and except

the system that

is being built—they are building this very

new feudalism, when this is no longer

an isolated phenomenon. We are simply seeing, on a massive scale,

a situation where senior officials,

while holding government posts,

primarily in various security and law-enforcement

agencies, appoint their children

not even just to some positions

where they can earn a lot of money—

they become the nominal heads of

state corporations, banks, and everything else. And

it seems to me that this theme of the new

feudalism is the main issue here. This is

the question we have on YouTube.

Take a look—right here in this player, in the

right—yes, the upper right

corner, there is a poll. There we are asking

you

what you think: has this new

aristocracy, this new feudalism, already reached

a threatening point in Russia, or

threatening proportions that

really could harm

the country's future, or has nothing

that terrible happened yet? Because, after all,

nepotism and cronyism do exist

in other countries too.

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton—we know

people like that. We know George Bush Sr.,

George Bush Jr.—we know people like that,

we know people like that. And now,

who is the Prime Minister of Canada? Justin Tru-

deau. And whose son is he? The son of that guy—I can't remember

his name—who was also

Prime Minister of Canada, a famous

Prime Minister, Trudeau. In that sense,

one of

the explanations that the Kremlin

constantly gives us when asked, well,

why have they appointed their own children everywhere, is:

they say, this happens everywhere, in fact, even in

developed democratic countries. Children

very often follow in their parents' footsteps,

become politicians, and obviously

their famous last names help them.

What would you say to that, Kira? You don't

agree with that, because it seems to me

—it seems to me, of course, that this is far from

the main thing. In fact, it was probably negligible in terms of

importance among the reasons why Clinton did not

win that election in the U.S., because

she was Clinton's wife. It seems to me

that people were simply tired of that. They

deliberately chose someone completely

the opposite, someone who was not part of

the Clinton world. That's a different situation, but all the others—

George Jr., George Sr., Trudeau, and

so on and so forth—the children do not

simply vanish into thin air; they exist. But

obviously, we all understand that in the West

they hold their positions thanks to their

personal qualities, whereas in Russia a person

holds a position not thanks to

personal qualities, but because

their father put them there. What's more, I really

think this has already become some kind of general

Russian system. It even pushes people,

children who do not even want to be part of it,

into it, forcing them in. That is, it seems to me

that Peskov's daughter would be much

happier living her life in France. Before that, she

had always, as far as I remember, only expressed

that desire. And now she has to

poor thing, deal with either

shipbuilding or

legal proceedings—without understanding anything about it.

And for you personally, does this

system of feudalism get in the way?

Well, of course. Show the secret

photo—Kira didn't know I was going to show

this photo.

A secret photo. And this secret

photo—she really didn't know. You

can see little Kira Yarmysh in it,

taking part in the TV program *Umniki i Umnitsy* (*Smarties and Clever Girls*, a Russian academic quiz show),

a secret from Kira's biography. She

came from Rostov-on-Don

to get a chance to enter

MGIMO. As you know, it is an extremely

prestigious university, and ordinary people rarely get

in. Tell us, you had to

win this program, right? You actually took first place?

Well, no, it wasn't

first place—there were eight winners there.

I was one of the eight. Right.

You studied well,

prepared for *Umniki i Umnitsy*,

probably learned whole

fields of knowledge?

Specialized in something? Well, it's complicated there,

you can't really specialize in anything there.

They give you several topics, usually one month for

one topic, and the topics can be absolutely anything.

For example, in my final the topic was

great politicians, scientists, or figures of

the arts, without any

territorial or time limits, so

it covered everyone. So tell me, as

someone from the regions

who studied and worked in order to come

to Moscow and make something of yourself—how exactly does

this system get in your way? You ended up at the

Anti-Corruption Foundation—well, not graduated from it, but

joined the anti-corruption organization

where, of course, a very cheerful kind of work awaits you.

But you were interrogated, weren't you?

There was one here at the Foundation, and as I said, I was here,

yes, and then there was an interrogation. I wanted to get into—

When you were on *Umniki i Umnitsy*, where did you want

to get into? Well, at that point in my life I generally

dreamed of...

to work at the Foreign Ministry, but I’m very glad. Do you

have the feeling that in the Foreign Ministry there is

this kind of nepotistic system that

makes it hard to break through?

At MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations), probably half

of the students are children of diplomats

who studied at MGIMO themselves and then

got their children in there. No, not exactly that

they “got them in” — I can’t say that. I’ve never

noticed any terrible corruption or

bribery there. Well, maybe I just didn’t

notice it. But as for *Umniki i Umnitsy* (a Russian academic quiz show for students),

that was a completely fair program. There

you really can’t find fault with anything there,

everything was above board. No, I didn’t bribe anyone, and no one

bribed anyone on my behalf. It seems to me completely

impossible to do that. Well, and that’s exactly

why I emphasized in my video

this very problem: it’s not just

some guy with a Ferrari

who upsets us because we don’t have a Ferrari.

These guys with Ferraris simply

bring social mobility to a halt. They don’t

give anyone a chance to get anywhere.

Because they get in, they

take all the best positions, even if they are, say,

people without even a secondary-school

education, or even people who have served time in

prison, with dubious biographies — and they still

have a 100% chance of landing

somewhere, while everyone else’s chances shrink.

That is extremely demotivating for people. So,

people are writing to us there [__] about this topic — not

exactly about this topic, but the only

question is: are we judging the Peskov film — isn’t it

too small-scale after “He Is Not Dimon to You” (Navalny’s anti-corruption film about Dmitry Medvedev)?

Well, by that logic, I should release

an investigation — we should release

an investigation about Dimon (Dmitry Medvedev), then an investigation

about Putin, then an investigation about the UN Secretary-General

Ban Ki-moon, or whoever it is now, and then about the Pope,

and then stop working. We are the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

we look for manifestations

of corruption, we challenge them, and we do

just day-to-day work. And in that sense,

releasing films is not — I mean, we’re not

a TV channel, and I’m not a director who

is constantly trying to outdo some

previous achievement: we won one set of awards, now

we need new awards; you got, uh,

something at Cannes, and next you

need to win an Oscar. This is our job, and the people

who fund the Anti-Corruption Foundation

send us money so that

we can do our daily work.

Big officials, small officials —

the largest share of our

investigations concerns

regional public procurement, where

billions are stolen — more has been stolen there than

Nikolai has, so whether it’s small-scale or not,

I don’t think in those terms. Any

corruption is terrible, and Peskov’s son —

the son of one of Putin’s closest associates — is no less

terrible, considering that we understand perfectly well

that Putin, the security services, whoever you like,

all know very well what is going on there.

Next, some thoughts for us about the fact that

we have two polls.

On Twitter, on the first question, people tell us

that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” uh,

93%, while the view that “they’re children, so you shouldn’t go after

them” got

7%. And on VKontakte, it’s even higher —

96% say that investigating officials’ children is acceptable, and

3% say it isn’t — three and a half. And on YouTube, there’s a poll

about the new feudalism:

has it become a threat to Russia? Those who think so are

96%. But the poll is still ongoing. Still,

if someone thinks otherwise, if someone doesn’t

agree with this, please write to us

with your opinion — we’ll read them out and respond to them.

This new feudalism is

really a very big problem. I

don’t say this often, but I actually

am genuinely convinced — this is not some

conspiracy theory of mine — that Putin is effectively

building a monarchy. It’s no coincidence that lately

quite a few politicians have

said that they want a return of

the monarchy. In reality, he and his group,

understanding that they are, broadly speaking, people who

in the fairly near future

will have to leave power, well, for

biological reasons, are preparing their

children. These are not just my speculations,

it’s not something I’m saying

just to make more people angry. We

see it in practice — that’s what is happening. They

want to hand the country over to their children in order

to guarantee themselves

security and a very wealthy, very

comfortable old age.

And on the subject of this being far from

an isolated case, we even have

a little quiz. You see how we decided

to entertain you — even quizzes. We’re now going to

show you some people, and you’ll

try to guess. And write in

the comments on YouTube, on Twitter, and so

on, who they are. So, show us contestant

number one.

Please tell us, do you recognize this

young man? Who is he? He is

an important person for the country, and we’re

interested to see whether you recognize whose child he is.

This is terrible. You work as the press secretary

of the Anti-Corruption Foundation — you should know these

people, recognize them anywhere, in a dimly lit

subway car, anywhere at all —

pull out your phone and start filming

them. Well then, let’s see how well

the viewers of our program can recognize

this person. A hint: he is a major

state banker. What are people writing to us there? What

questions have come in so far? You can’t judge a person by

their происхождение — you just need to

Put him on trial — that's the radical view.

If you stole, go to prison. What difference does it make

who your father is? That's absolutely true. I, without

any irony, believe that's how it should be. Besides,

of course, if the children of some

Zheleznyak are minors, then they are not

to blame for anything. It's just that their father is

a hypocrite and a crook. But if it's an adult

young man who consciously

acts as one link in this whole chain, then he

of course must bear responsibility

together with his entire family, naturally.

Naturally, the main villain here is Peskov,

or rather, the biggest villain is Putin,

who knows all about this perfectly well.

The other villains are our

law enforcement agencies, including that very

FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service), which is supposed to monitor

things like this and knows perfectly well what

is going on there with this family, is aware of all

these yacht trips, but does not

do anything and instead covers up corruption, and

Peskov. The people who give him bribes

are villains too. All of them should be sitting on the

defendants’ bench. But Kolya too — he is

part of this system.

Exactly right. As for the FSB, how

can Russia’s FSB fight

this nepotism and feudalism if

Mr. Bortnikov’s son is now sitting, uh, on

a bank’s supervisory board, and now also on

the management board of VTB, a state-owned bank,

which, by the way, is a troubled bank that

is constantly costing the budget more, with the state pouring

budget money into it. And this

wonderful representative of the tribe,

the dear son, sits in this state bank and receives

an enormous salary, thereby effectively legalizing

his father’s essentially illegal income. So that money can come into the family,

he doesn't have to receive it only by

taking suitcases of cash from people;

the son can simply bring home

an enormous salary, which at VTB is also

measured in suitcases. Exactly.

Not the Bortnikovs. Show us the next one,

please — the next character.

Write to us, please. You were guessing for a long time,

— two minutes — though that’s probably because

there’s a slight delay on YouTube.

I think he’s easy to recognize. But did you

recognize him? He does look like him. All right, let’s

see whether our viewers can figure out

who this is. And while they haven’t guessed yet, let’s

answer a question someone is writing:

Why did Peskov decide to talk to you?

How did you manage it? He didn’t

decide to talk to us.

When you call them, they always — well,

first of all, you either get the assistants,

or they simply, automatically,

tell you right away that they won’t talk to you:

call the assistants. Or in general, I mean,

they just hang up. So it’s very

hard to get them to talk to us. Ah —

you mean in the video, where we have

that clip where he answered us that he doesn’t

work there? That’s a trade secret — we won’t

say exactly what we did. But when we

uh, already after that, on the eve of the

release, just a few minutes before the investigation came out,

we simply asked him point-blank there and then:

man, what’s going on? He

refused to talk to us. And

it is extremely, extremely difficult to get people

like that to answer. And when I very often

see complaints from journalists — why didn’t you

get a comment from that side?

They don’t give comments. How can I tell journalists

— why don’t you get a comment from them?

Because they don’t give one. When was the last time you

saw a United Russia party member

on some uncensored channel, or at least

one that isn’t fully censored — on Echo, on

Dozhd (TV Rain),

giving an interview to Meduza or

RBC or anyone else? They do not want to give

any comments. It’s the best and most

successful strategy: just stay silent.

So, we’ve already got the answer. In fact,

a lot of people guessed it, but the first was

someone with the username “not a writer,” who said it was Tsyfry. Although

there were other guesses — something about drilling,

a black car, a flashing beacon, everything as

it should be. And I think we’ll see an active

continuation of this wonderful man’s career.

Show the next picture,

please.

I think this one can also be recognized. Do you recognize him?

No? Then here’s the next person.

I’ll give you a hint: he is also

a banker and an energy executive. Meanwhile, we’re being asked:

“Alexei, I have a question for you:

if you become president, won’t you keep the country hooked on

the oil needle, and won’t your children become

a golden burden on the Russian budget?”

The whole country has been put on it, and we need to take

our country off the oil needle. And by the way,

maybe it will be easier for you to

guess this person. His father, in fact,

over the last few years, gave

several very funny interviews — that is, after some 15, uh, years

of Putin being in power, he gave several very

funny interviews saying that it was time

to take Russia off the oil needle. That is,

they’ve been sitting there for 15 years, for 15 years

getting the country even more hooked on oil, and now

suddenly they’ve started thinking about it. And I

already have the correct answer — yes, please tell us.

It’s Ivanov. Exactly right. It’s Sergei

Ivanov Jr. He worked at Gazprom,

then at Gazprombank, and now, uh, at

in 2011 he was chairman of the management board

of SOGAZ, and now he is a senior vice president

at Sberbank. By the way, I remember that even

I — I am a member of the minority

shareholders’ committee of Sberbank,

and I wrote angry letters there: why did you

hire, uh...

the younger Ivanov, because, well, it’s obvious

quite clearly that

this is not

an appointment

based on the principles of meritocracy, that is,

that we hired a good employee on a permanent basis

as Gref says, but simply

giving a cushy job to someone’s son so that

the Ivanov family gets more money through

the state-owned Sberbank. So,

why I won’t impose this nepotism

is very simple: not because I myself

don’t want it. I mean, of course, because I myself

don’t want it. But even if I did want to,

the changes I am proposing in

the political system, the reforms that

we will carry out, simply won’t allow me

to do that, because we will free the media

and there will be no state media, at least not

certainly not in such numbers, and

parliament will have more powers

parliament will be able to conduct investigations, including

into the president; there will be

independent prosecutors, independent

investigative bodies, and an independent judiciary

If it so happens that I become

a bad president and suddenly decide

to appoint, I don’t know, my

nephew, uh, to head Gazprom,

the press and parliament will come after me

with investigations against me. I’ll

simply get impeached. That’s exactly how

it should work. We should not

believe in any particular person; we should

build a new system. Let’s

show the last one, and then we probably

actually have a lot of these

sons of the elite. But that would probably require a 24-hour

broadcast. Who is this young man here?

Do you know him? Aha, by the way, this is

his father currently has very major

political influence. Not many people know this young

man by sight

but keep an eye on him. He, he will be

very, very important

Great suggestion: make a map of all

the sons of the elite and who holds what post. It would be

a massive spectacle, a vivid illustration of the scale

of the disaster. There would be quite a bombshell effect

Media outlets have done similar kinds of

maps, investigations; there was an article in Meduza (an independent Russian media outlet)

and even a game: recognize the person or figure out

where he works. That’s all true, but they just

keep multiplying and multiplying

We’ll do it; we’ve wanted for a long time to make something like

that. It’s just that, you see, every time

when we

publish something that contains a large

amount of already known information,

people start shouting: well, what kind of

investigation is this? Everyone already knew all this. But you’re

absolutely right: here we simply need

to systematize all of it and make it accessible to

the general public. Speaking of the general

public, please help

us spread that very

investigation—and this

broadcast as well. Please like it

The correct answer is

someone wrote to us that it was

apparently that’s what they thought. There were also

guesses that it was Harry Potter

Khovansky (a Russian blogger) has a completely different hairstyle, and not

always a glass behind his back or something, I don’t know

whether he looks like Harry Potter, but I know one thing:

that Vladimir Kiriyenko, the younger son of the very

same Kiriyenko who was once

prime minister and is now

deputy

deputy head of the Presidential Administration

for domestic

policy—the very person who

is responsible for media lies,

falsifications, uh, rigging, and the appointment of

governors. In other words, basically for the entire

repressive machine, including the fight

against our election campaign

As soon as he was appointed, his son

immediately became

senior vice president of the company

Rostelecom, also a company under

state control, and also this

this, uh—well, you can’t really call him a

boy, but a young man at least

handsome, yes, maybe. Yes, they all are

good-looking, seemingly normal guys, but I

am not going, through the state-owned

Sberbank, through the state-owned

Rostelecom, or through the state-owned VTB

to keep paying this bunch of crooks over time

huge salaries. That’s what they are appointed for

because the point is so that the

Kiriyenko family ends up with

several million dollars more

They simply appoint his son to this

position, where he then legally

receives enormous sums of money. And so when

we once again ask where

this lifestyle comes from—where do

all these cars and everything else come from? Not a single

minister, even in a developed country, could afford

that. They say: well, excuse me,

his eldest son works as

a vice president at Rostelecom, uh, he has

large legal income. That’s how it works

That’s how it was with Shuvalov, remember?

He took bribes from Abramovich and from

Usmanov, and then he goes around saying, well,

how can that be, I have legal income. He

legalized that bribe and put it on paper

and now they say: yes, yes, I can buy

a private jet, I can use it to fly

my dogs around on that private jet because

after all, I have legal income—look

at the payment slip. But what do we care about your legal income?

We understand that it is corrupt income

So in the case of Kiriyenko, Patrushev,

Bortnikov, Fradkov, we understand that this is

in effect

it is still corrupt income anyway. And what are we supposed to do?

We’ve received a critical comment here.

Many people go to work with their parents; this is

a common practice, they tell us.

That’s all fine, go ahead, by all means, you can go

work with your parents, but

when your parents work in

public office, there are certain rules.

In Soviet times, there was even a direct

ban on

close relatives working as one another’s

bosses and subordinates.

Probably, in our situation, in our country,

that is the right approach. And then, excuse me, what

we showed you was not about people who simply went

to work. Did Nikolai Chudes go

to work for his parents? Nikolai Chelsea did not

go to work just anywhere — he went to work

for a man who owns a Ferrari,

who flies by private jet.

Did young Bortnikov go to work for his dad at the FSB?

No, he went to work at a state bank, uh,

Kiriyenko, Fradkov — they all went to work

at state banks.

Some kind of Gazprombank — Gazprombank, too,

is effectively a bank under

state control. Insurance companies,

state corporations — as many as you like.

The Patrushevs, both Rogozins, Chaika, Zolotov —

the former governor of St. Petersburg,

good Lord, Matviyenko — there are so many of them

you could list them endlessly. They did not go to work

with their parents in government service; they went

to work where the money is — big money.

To get set up this way is

always feudalism: the fathers and mothers

control the political institutions of power,

while the children sit on the estates, and the whole country

thus ends up under their control — and

both money and power are in their hands, and no one dares make a move. And

here are the poll results. Let’s look at

Twitter, or, uh,

for some reason, on Twitter

there turned out to be more supporters now of the view

that children should not be investigated — 8 percent said

that, while 92 percent said they can be. And now,

on VKontakte, on the contrary, people are more radical there.

They think children can be investigated:

97 percent, and accordingly 3 percent think

they cannot. And on YouTube, apparently feudalism

has become no threat to anyone — everything is still the same, yes,

96 percent to 4 percent. Well, that means at least

we did not offend any of our regular

viewers with our new investigation, and we

will continue doing this because

we believe exposing this system

is very important. Dear officials, if you do not want

the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) poking around in your children’s social media,

then let them live in accordance

with your legal income, and we will not

pay any attention. But not noticing

a Ferrari behind them was simply

impossible. We would not have

— professional organizations did that.

All right, and now

from feudal lords, their children, and the builders of this new

system, let’s move on to the next

topic: a man whom the system

has cast out.

To another collector who was less

fortunate, it seems.

This week, our system has given us two corrupt officials.

This week began

— rather, the trial began, the trial of

Alexei Ulyukayev. To the surprise of many people,

this trial was open, and

completely

astonishing testimony emerged on the first

day of the substantive hearing. We have

a short audio clip with a transcript.

It is very important to listen to. Many thanks

to the publication Mediazona,

which provided us with this video. But before

we start listening, we have a new poll

on Twitter and VKontakte. Just tell

us, please, given that, well,

Ulyukayev seems to be fighting Sechin and

blaming Sechin, yes, for his, uh,

misfortunes, and Sechin seems even worse,

in this situation, do you feel sorry for Ulyukayev

or not? A simple poll on Twitter and VKontakte.

Go there — all the social media links are in

the description for this video. And now let’s

listen to a 1-minute-20-second audio recording of Alexei

Ulyukayev, his statement in

the Zamoskvoretsky Court

in 2016.

2 million US dollars as

a token of gratitude for issuing a favorable

opinion on carrying out the transaction for

the acquisition of a stake in Bashneft had already

been presented; in case of refusal, he would obstruct

the lawful activity by submitting

negative opinions.

Personally, this turned into an excellent result of

our operational-search

measures: a bribe was taken on an especially large

scale, in the amount of 2 million US dollars, in

relation to the Federal Security Service (FSB).

This is an outright provocation on your part.

It is based on knowingly false

grounds.

The chief executive director, Sechin’s

head of security,

and others connected with Sechin in this matter

have stated that the transfer to me was planned in advance

by FSB officers who, over the course of

several weeks, relying on

false testimony, waited for my unlawful

demand for a bribe to be made. Naturally, they did not

get it, because nothing of the sort happened. In the end,

realizing this, he personally

called me himself and, under the pretext of

discussing important current issues

of the company’s operations and a desire to show me

the company,

persuaded me to come to the company.

Rosneft completely ignored the accusation

these circumstances were completely ignored

the transfer of the bag allegedly handed over by Sechin

which, taken together, leaves no

doubt regarding the commission of

a provocation

So, we’re asking everyone: do you feel sorry for him or not?

Sorry for Ulyukayev? And today I saw a news report

saying that VTsIOM (Russia’s state-run public opinion center) conducted a poll, and almost

half of Russians believe that the trial

of Ulyukayev is a show trial

while at the same time almost everyone is convinced that he

is guilty, but nevertheless believes that this is

a demonstrative action rather than a sign of a real

fight by the authorities against corruption. So this

is seen as a real anti-corruption effort by

35%, and I also think that Ulyukayev is guilty

I’ve spoken on this topic before; we recorded a video

about it, but it seems to me that he is being tried

not for what he is actually guilty of, and, uh,

I don’t have any sympathy for him — Ulyukayev doesn’t

make me feel sorry, first of all because I even wrote a blog post

on this subject. I suggest simply

a universal formula for discussions like this

about whether Ulyukayev deserves pity

or not, whether Chubais and other so-called "white" figures deserve pity

or any of the others, as opposed to everyone else

the liberals, who of course, it seems to me,

will all eventually be jailed sooner or later. Well,

the so-called systemic liberals

— the formula should be as follows:

it should be this

you should feel sorry for all of them

exactly to the extent that they felt sorry

for Eldar Dadin (Ildar Dadin, Russian opposition activist), who

at the times when he was being tortured in

the penal colony, beaten, had his head shoved into a toilet

and was threatened with rape. So tell me,

did Ulyukayev write any posts about it? At least

not even resign — just

write something somewhere, say somewhere

that this was wrong — which of them

said even a single word? So why

should we pity them now? Aren’t they the creators of this

system? They are part of this system, they are

responsible for the fact that the system is what it is.

It’s just that when it was devouring other people, they

were perfectly fine with it, and now they think that

because they themselves have suffered, everyone must now feel sorry for them

So, do you agree? Here’s what Yevgeny writes:

Danilchenko says: “No pity. Both are crooks.” Meaning

Sechin and Ulyukayev. And we’re also being told that

Ulyukayev is simply a scapegoat. Well,

that’s basically what we’re talking about. Probably

he is a scapegoat. But I remember how

I, as a minority shareholder in VTB Bank

— a terrible, disgusting bank, the first bank

that I investigated

and published many documents about corruption in —

I attended shareholders’ meetings, and

Ulyukayev was the chairman

of the supervisory board and very often chaired

those shareholders’ meetings, silencing people

like me and not allowing us to say a single word

while doing everything possible to shield the management

In other words, he was covering up corruption, he

was part of it. His declared income

was 59 million rubles (about $900,000 at the time) — 59 million rubles

in 2015, and by then that was already

less than a million dollars, and his wife had 15

million dollars. Where did they earn

that million dollars? How did they earn

that million dollars? We don’t understand. And yet

he is a government official; he was never involved in

commercial activity, and nevertheless

he had enormous income. I have no doubt

that he was involved in corruption, but now

he is being jailed, uh, because of his conflict with Sechin, and in

what was just said now

what struck me most was this

of all

— simply the way they talk to each other.

I mean, right there in court, in front of journalists,

a story is being told about how

there was a summit in Goa at night, and at that

summit Sechin approached Ulyukayev and said

“Come on, Lyosha (diminutive of Alexei), help move this along,” and Alexei

replied, “All right, I’ll move it along,”

“just make it 2 million — dollars or euros, whatever,”

“give me a suitcase full of cash.” And the other one said

as if jokingly, “Fine, I’ll give it to you,”

and that was that — they just went their separate ways.

One thinks he tricked the other, while the other

uh, thinks he persuaded him. Then

Sechin called him and said,

“Come and pick up what’s due to you.”

It is completely unclear how the money was ultimately

transferred, because first of all there is no, uh,

video of the arrest proving that this is true, and

second, at first the press release said that

he received 2 million dollars, and then

that he was searched personally, and then

it turned out that the money had allegedly been placed in some kind of bank

safe-deposit box, and it is unknown

— and Ulyukayev never came to collect it. So then

later there was a version that

that

let me put it this way: they established the existence of

the minister’s claim to this

money

— which is completely unclear. But that’s not the point.

The point is that in principle they could talk about it so

easily — they talked about it

openly, and that is absolutely astonishing.

It means one main thing: that inside

the Russian government, at the level of the very

highest-ranking people — Putin’s closest friend

and ally, and a minister — between them

they really do make arrangements like, “Come on,

we’ll push this through, and we’ll give you a suitcase

full of money.” Maybe, as one version had it,

Ulyukayev wasn’t asking for it for himself

but to reward his staff, and

we know that high-ranking

officials are paid extra in cash, in

envelopes. Right. And it’s clear where that cash

comes from. But in exactly the same way it is brought from

certain state-owned companies in suitcases

So, in other words, talking about suitcases gets personal.

In this system, that is something quite ordinary.

Otherwise, neither Ulyukayev nor the

state prosecution would be talking about it.

I mean, Ulyukayev is not testifying that

Sechin brought this up with me, and I

clutched my chest and ran off to complain

to Putin. And that I had a heart attack, that I was

in shock. You know, like when someone starts shouting,

"Help! Thugs are taking my eyesight away! They're offering me a bribe!"

No, this is completely

normal. Fine, okay, and everyone just

kept quiet, nodded along, like, "Uh-huh, what are you

talking about?" In this system, there are no

innocent people. They are all involved. And when

we say that within the highest

echelons of power there are no corrupt

people, that is simply not true. They are all

tainted. Every one of them is compromised; really, they are all

corrupt, practically speaking.

A corrupt official who takes actual

bribes brings us to the next question.

Kira asked: if all of his crimes were uncovered,

the scale would be colossal — they would have to jail families too, and

there would be unfair trials. That is

inevitable. Is he not afraid that in 50

years he will be called a second Stalin? I am not afraid,

because there is no need to hold unfair

trials. We need jury trials.

A normal, proper jury trial in

which we understand that we can

lose. Whoever it is — I do not know whom I

like or dislike, I love no one in this government.

I do not know — maybe Peskov will end up in the dock.

I know absolutely everything about him.

We know about the yachts and the watches, all of it,

and so on, but I will not have — and should not have —

any mechanism for putting pressure on the court.

And it will be a jury trial. If

the Investigative Committee, the prosecutor's office, or

whoever else did a poor job and failed to

convince the jury, and they acquit Peskov — well,

of course I will be furious, but there will be

nothing I can do. We do not need show

trials. If Ulyukayev is your corrupt official,

then jail him for real corruption.

Do not invent this circus about whether there was

a suitcase full of money or there was not.

They said there was a suitcase with money, that

he was caught red-handed — well then give us

the surveillance footage. Show it to us.

But none of that really exists. It very much

looks as though Sechin set him up.

And that is how it worked. In other words, this is

deception and yet another insult to

justice. Many people really

do feel sorry for Ulyukayev, but the way he is being

jailed is not for what he is actually guilty of. And

that is still disgusting. So no,

you just should not do it that way, that is all. We

will try everyone honestly. And we have

the poll results: do you feel sorry for

Ulyukayev? On Twitter: yes, 14%; no, 86%.

On VKontakte, 86% said yes — though how many of them

support Putin?

I feel sorry for everyone who supports Putin.

Anyway, on VKontakte, yes, almost 20%, and 80%

said no, they do not feel sorry for him. You see, it seems to me

that these are the main reasons,

because everyone understands very well that

it is all pretty obvious.

He was part of this system. He was probably

an unpleasant person. He is guilty of many things,

but they are jailing him simply through

lawless abuse. I mean, I can simply see that

— and again, sorry, I keep talking

about the European Court — but later it will

go and overturn this sentence because

the charges as they were originally announced in

the press and then put down on paper do not

actually correspond to what they

read out in court.

Ulyukayev's lawyers were even outraged

that the written indictment

they had been shown did not

match what was read out in

court. They have already changed many things

because they have no evidence, and

that is probably why, well, there

one in five on VKontakte feels sorry for him.

All right, let us move on. Let us hand it over. I

am sorry, of course — you are probably tired of

discussing this all week, but we

cannot avoid the topic, especially since

Kira has been driving me crazy lately.

I mean, now she has

watched all the rap battles.

Not all of them, but soon she will start speaking in rhyme and

gets very upset with anyone

who looks down on these battles or

says something

wrong about them. You have probably watched

or heard about the battle on Versus in which

the participants were

Oxxxymiron and

Slava KPSS, also known as Gnoyny, and we want

to discuss it. Well, we probably will not

debate which punchline was the best or

the worst. We were asked to ask who won.

Will I say? What am I, stupid? Why would I

say that, so that either Oxxxymiron's fans

hate me or Slava's fans

do? No, I will say this instead:

as they say, it was not friendship that won, but

participation is what matters — all the viewers won,

everyone who watched. That is the most disgusting answer.

Good Lord, I am running in an election. Why would I now

blurt something out and create a whole bunch of

people who would

curse me for that answer? But in fact,

the best punchline is obvious anyway. Let us

play it.

Let us play that part of Slava KPSS's performance where

he said something that I personally liked very much.

It is at 41 seconds.

"He's Not Dimon to You" (a reference to Navalny's anti-corruption film about Dmitry Medvedev) was bolder in that respect

than your [__] album. I'm not a politician, I'm

an artist. I don't file complaints — I write tracks."

But like a politician, you're a populist. Otherwise, why

did you latch onto the topic, acting like you cared so much about Russia?

So much that you were losing your nerve cells from stress, but when

protests were happening here, where were you? Sitting in England.

And so much so that if you compare Egyptian

myths with *Bandit Petersburg* (a famous Russian crime TV series), you'll see

the path of a single hero beneath the guises of these two

the hero's journey

monsters: smashing things up, taking treasures, building

a shrine. He's a hero not because he's a jock and

a fighter, but because he simply can't do otherwise.

Cool, awesome, amazing.

But we want to discuss something because

we found it funny how suddenly

the entire Moscow intelligentsia—that is,

roughly speaking, all of Facebook—discovered

this and said, "My God, it turns out that

there are these amazing Versus battles and

these amazing people whom

tens of millions of people watch. Where have we been

all this time?" And we saw a mass fascination

and some completely, well, kind of

superlative comments

about all these battles.

[music]

Right. The fact that basically the entire press

started writing that

3 million people watched it overnight, and everyone

really did—RBC and *Vedomosti* (major Russian business media), everyone

wrote about it. I mean, obviously, this had never

ever happened before. The only question is:

where were all these people? Had they been living on the Moon

or something before?

There had already been battles like this before, with

huge numbers of viewers.

In 2015, for example—well, take the well-known 39 million views

for Oxxxymiron vs. Johnyboy. I mean,

39 million people—do you realize what

that means? Maybe the latest battle will beat

that record in a couple of years, but 39 million

people—that's not just a lot, that's basically the entire

young population of the country, practically all of it. And by

"young people," let's say we mean those up to

about age 35 watched it. Well, yes—although

all right, with Oxxxymiron you can still write it off as

him being popular. But, man, take, say,

Khovansky vs. Larin—16... in 2016

it got almost 33 million. I mean, or someone else—

you saw it too—Larin and

Dzhakharov also got 22 million, though that was in 2017.

What I mean is, clearly

this didn't start yesterday, uh, and the work has been drawing

such a huge audience. Absolutely.

Exactly. This is a phenomenon that involves

involves

thousands of people directly as participants,

and millions watch them. And what turned out to be interesting

is that there are two

completely parallel realities.

There's this world

of the media establishment, so to speak—

Facebook, newspapers, journalists—whose

audience is actually fairly small—

and then there's a gigantic world, a giant

planet with tens of millions of viewers:

YouTube, and these battle videos in particular. And they

didn't notice each other at all. It's

really interesting, and it reminded me of the situation

with our first rally on March 26, after which

—good Lord—how many times I was asked

the question: "Was it a surprise to you that

young people suddenly came out to protest?"

No, of course it wasn't. How could it possibly have been

a surprise to us when we'd seen those

VK groups, we'd seen those

followers on Facebook, we'd seen the organization itself—

people, even in small

towns, making all this happen. We

understood it. Well, maybe the scale was

a little bigger than we expected, but overall

it was roughly what we wanted and had been working

toward. And it's actually frustrating

that our whole media elite somehow

just

—not exactly "missed" it, because that's impossible—

but they simply don't see

the giant elephant that's right there in their

room.

They're too absorbed in these constant

micro-conflicts inside their little

cosmos. We have a poll, please—on Twitter. We want

to run a poll, please, on Twitter.

And on VK too: did you know about these rap battles

before the latest battle came out

between Gnoyny

and Oxxxymiron?

By the way, as for Oxxxymiron, I

sort of got acquainted with him—I don't know him personally,

I've never met him—but I too was once

part of that same

Moscow intelligentsia that simply

didn't see the elephant in the room. But that was back in

2013. We've now dug up my

tweets. I apologize—there's one that's not very

clean, from when I was looking for Oxxxymiron

in 2013. Please show it. I, uh,

asked who the most popular

rapper was at the time, and they told me there was this guy

Oxxxymiron—and Oxxxymiron replied to me right away.

Show his reply. Ah yes, that's what

happened. But at least from

that moment on, I knew there was such a

huge phenomenon.

I didn't learn about them yesterday. I found out about them

later than I should have, but

still, not yesterday.

I had no doubt.

Here's an interesting thing: many people wrote—and this,

by the way, also shows how little

people understand what's going on there—they

already dashed off columns and posts, but

they still don't want to understand what's happening.

They say one of the reasons for this super-

popularity of battle rap is that censorship—

that it's a censorship-free zone. I,

on the contrary, think

it's more like—well, everyone says that in

society there is a demand for frank, open conversation.

They have a frank conversation, well,

it just happens on a very small scale; they

aren't shy about saying things to each other's faces

everything they think, but on any larger

scale they clearly... well, okay, and

there's censorship when they bleep out

certain things, like remarks about Patriarch

Kirill (head of the Russian Orthodox Church) or about Chechens, but also the very

procedure itself shows it, of course, when they

don't speak openly and directly about certain things

which, exactly, seem to many people

to rap newcomers—people new to rap—they

look at all this and it seems to them that this is

absolute liberation. I mean, people

are yelling at each other, right there

face-to-face at that distance, and so it

seems like the freest thing imaginable. Not at all.

No—we have a short little 15-second clip

about how censorship works at

these battles.

I don't believe in you like... Jubilee, this is

not a position, it's voluntary castration.

Your so-called friends don't exist, they don't

exist, just like a nation doesn't—don't make

that face as if it's so awful; even the

Patriarch was once sperm too.

So, that bleeping wasn't done by us;

that's the original recording of the battle, meaning

they were the ones who censored it. The person

was speaking, well, because he wasn't saying

anything outrageous—he was criticizing Patriarch

Kirill. He said something there about

Chechens, and by the way, he was forced

to apologize afterward—well, in the tradition of

Ramzan Kadyrov (head of Chechnya), and he did it, but

Slava KPSS himself clearly did not want this

censored; the battle organizers censored it

and it's fairly obvious that

there is a great deal of self-censorship there.

As for politics in general, rap is in itself

a culture of political protest,

of social protest, but you won't see

any protest there, and basically this

this little fragment about ganglia—

England?—and the mention of "He Is Not Dimon to You" (an anti-corruption film about Dmitry Medvedev), well,

okay, Gordon is an excellent example in

this sense.

People say it's an excellent album, and certainly there are

a huge number of—not even just

references—it's an album about social

problems and injustice, but everything there is so

metaphorical, so metaphorical. No, I'm not

criticizing it. Listen, a person creates as

best they can create; I can't say,

"Oxxxymiron, please go ahead and put your

rhymes about Peskov in there, come on, compete with something..."

You watch the battle—what can that even

be compared with? And something else—well, naturally, this is

a creative process. But overall, unquestionably,

it seems to me it's impossible not to notice

the obvious self-censorship and the avoidance of, uh,

political topics, even though of course rap

should be talking about that. I mean, roughly

speaking,

modern rap, despite the fact that I

wrote a post saying it's a wonderful phenomenon and

it's great that so many people are

watching it, because it's a competition between two

poets competing in the Russian

language. That's cool. Yes, there's profanity, but

all the same, it's a competition of poets; it's not

a fight, it's not, I don't know, who can eat

more hamburgers faster—it's a competition

of poets. But still, modern rap

is not DDT in 1985 (a Soviet/Russian rock band), it's not

Kino in 1986 (a Soviet rock band). They are clearly avoiding

political topics. What are we hearing there from

our audience? Do we have the results from

VK? "I've been watching for a long time"—almost 70 percent.

"Just found out about it"—around 10 percent, and

"Don't want to know"—almost 20 percent. I watch—

how much? 70 percent. Well, there you go.

Our viewers there are more... that's VK's

Twitter—what about it? No results yet?

Twitter—none yet, there's some kind of

technical problem there. But at least

our viewers on VK know these

uh, these battles well. And that's great, uh,

which means that at least what

we're doing now—placing this kind of emphasis on

YouTube, we've now put more

emphasis on it—this suggests that, well, somehow

we probably sensed a little earlier than this

trend where the

political nerve lies. Though still too late,

probably. Many of the things that we

are doing now should have been done back in

2011 or 2012, and perhaps

that beautiful Russia of the future would be

a little closer to us. But, well, if you knew the cards,

you'd live in Sochi (a Russian resort city). We need to

work better now; we need to do

more right now. But here, given that

we have what we have, please help us,

join in this work.

Like and share.

I was practically about to end on that

grand note. Go ahead, please. Yes,

so, on Twitter: "I've been watching for a long time"—46 percent, "just

found out"—28, and "don't want to know"—26. You see,

the audiences really do differ quite a lot,

the Twitter and VK audiences, in fact.

Twitter still leans heavily toward

that Moscow media crowd which

only found out recently and is generally fairly

self-contained. I'm not complaining right now,

I'm just saying: it's self-contained. It

likes discussing itself, it likes the

events that happen within it, and it doesn't

really need these rap battles. But now rap

battle has been added to that mix, and we all

hope that this, uh, this interest in

YouTube, this interest in, well, these things, won't

be limited to just some kind of

metaphorical discussion of the political

agenda, but will also add

real discussion of the political

agenda and political problems. Thank you.

Many thanks. All the best—we’ll see you.

next Thursday

[music]